Inherit the Flame

by Megan E. O'Keefe

  “Sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

  “Always am.” He shot her a wink and headed back toward his people, barking orders with every step.

  Ripka shook her head as she stood and waved farewell to Honey, who cocked her head but otherwise didn’t seem to mind. The woman had people to train how to fight. Ripka’d never seen her happier. Well, maybe once, but she was determined to scrub that memory for good.

  She washed up in the watcher locker rooms, found some extra clothes kicking around the spares room, and followed Falston’s map to a quaint little mudbrick home with creeper vines growing around the doorway. She hesitated on the walkway, listening to the soft talk and occasional laughter of those within.

  Ache filled her from head to toe, every muscle protesting the use she’d put it to over the last few days. She didn’t belong in a house like that. Never had, really. Even when she’d been a part of her family, just her mother and her father, they’d lived in a little one-bedroom stick-built thing way off on the edge of town. Only plant life her mother ever bothered tending was cacti and ground-roots for food, and even those withered after the war. Left to her own devices, Ripka’d only ever taken rooms or rented apartments; she’d even spent a few months in an inn, once. Curtains and vines and girlish giggles just weren’t her thing.

  The map crunched in a fist she hadn’t intended to ball, but there it was. And it was getting late, anyway. The others knew where she was, sure, but she was tired straight to the bone. Falston would understand.

  Before she could get halfway turned around the door banged open, and Falston came rumbling out, dressed in plain brown clothes instead of his watcher blues, a long pipe dangling from his lips.

  “There you are! Was just about to send out a search party. Don’t tell me you got lost?”

  “No, Captain. Just took longer than I’d meant to clean up.” She tried to cover the fact she’d been turning around by shifting her weight. The squint he gave her told her that particular effort had been wasted.

  He let out a long, smoky sigh, and chucked his head toward the door. “Come on in now, monsoon’s getting sticky and the rains’ll come tonight. Mata says so, and Mata always knows.”

  “Mata?”

  “My wife! Mata!” He bellowed the last over his shoulder and flowed back into the household. Ripka clenched her jaw and followed. She wasn’t sociable by nature, but there were certain flavors of rude she wasn’t willing to stoop to.

  “No yelling in the house,” came a woman’s sharp reply. Mata stuck her head around a hall corner, caught sight of Ripka shuffling across the threshold, and broke into a grin like a thunderstorm.

  “There she is!”

  “Hey, you said no yelling.” Kalliah, the little gap-toothed girl she recognized from Falston’s office, bounded after her mother, twin braids swinging.

  “It’s your father’s bad habit, dear, we’re allowed.”

  Falston harrumphed, but hid his smile by taking another long puff of his pipe. “Mata dear, this is–”

  “I know who this is.” She bustled forward, scooped the girl up in one arm, deposited the child on her hip and stuck her hand out for Ripka to clasp. Ripka stared. Mata’d moved faster than any trainee she’d seen that day. “Nice to meet you, dear, now come in and sit down. Food’s just getting hot enough.”

  Ripka gave her hand a wary squeeze, mindful of her callouses, and was surprised to feel matching ones beneath Mata’s fingers and palms. Mata winked in recognition, then swept away back to the kitchen.

  “Pitfire of a woman,” Falston muttered to himself. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “She…” Has hands like a warrior, Ripka wanted to say, but settled on, “seems nice.”

  Falston roared with laughter, clapped Ripka on the shoulder, and practically dragged her down the hall to the kitchen table.

  The rest of the house was little more than a blur, but the family table spilled over into the kitchen, giving Mata just enough room to maneuver about her business, even when she had Kalliah clamped to her hip. Falston sat Ripka down on a chair with its back to a window and a clear view of the exit. Whether he’d done it intentionally or not, she appreciated it all the same.

  “Fal tells me you’ve been doing great work with these new recruits of yours.”

  She blinked, taking a cup of sweet-smelling liqueur from Mata’s hand. “They’re quick learners.”

  “Great teachers make quick learners,” she insisted.

  Falston hauled a huge pot of roast gamebird off the oven-top and placed it with a clunk in the center of the table. Ripka’s stomach rumbled. Audibly. Mata laughed. “Thank you, dear.”

  Ripka covered her embarrassment by taking a quick sip of her drink. Honey liqueur. Laced with selium bubbles. She nearly choked.

  “Are you all right?” Mata came around the table in a second and patted her firmly on the back. Ripka waved her away, wiping tears from her eyes.

  “Fine, fine, just… Where did you get this?”

  Falston narrowed his eyes at her. “The open market this morning. Some Mercer from the west makes it.”

  “Renold Grandon,” she said, rolling the cup around in her hand.

  “Grandon, that’s the name. You know him?”

  “He’s Aransan. Long-time ally of Thratia. This been coming into the city for a while?”

  “A day or so,” Mata said.

  Falston and Ripka exchanged a long, heavy look.

  “No business at the dinner table,” Falston said.

  She nodded, understanding. When Ripka had arrived in Hond Steading, Grandon’s liqueur had been nowhere to be found, and so she’d focused on the bright eye berry cafes. If Thratia had now begun slipping weapons into the city, it was probably too late to stop them. She’d tried. And she’d missed.

  “Can I get you something else?” Mata asked.

  “No,” she smiled as she took another swallow without choking. “This is wonderful, thank you. The little bit of home surprised me, that’s all.”

  Mata gave her a look that said clear as day she didn’t believe her for a second, but wasn’t about to argue with a guest in her own kitchen.

  Kalliah clambered atop a chair and propped her fists on her hips, head high. “I’m gonna be a lady captain too!”

  The adults laughed while the girl looked put upon, and the evening fell into small talk and praise of the food. Ripka grew warmer with every bite and sip. By the time they were finished, Ripka felt heavier than she’d ever felt in her life.

  She made her goodbyes and dragged herself to the door, sluggish with sleep and food, Kalliah dogging every step she took with made-up stories of the little girl’s exploits as a captain.

  Mata ushered the girl off to bed, then rejoined Falston and Ripka on the front step, and pretended rather smoothly not to notice that their topic of conversation had switched from watcher business to the clearness of the night the moment she appeared.

  “Pleasure to have had you,” Falston said and clapped her hard on the shoulder.

  Mata swooped in, gripped her hand and pulled her into a half-hug, leaning close to whisper lightning quick so that her husband wouldn’t notice, “Look after him.”

  She was away in an instant, but the words clung to Ripka like cactus thorns.

  “Thank you for your hospitality.” She managed a smile, hoped it looked genuine, then made her escape before Falston could pick up on the shift in her mood. She didn’t want to explain to him that his wife was worried for his safety. Even less, did she want to explain to Mata that what they were doing now was very, very dangerous?

  And she’d begun it. She’d reached out to Lakon for help and stood in that forum, swaying the people of Hond Steading to hand over their wellbeing to protect a city that might not be savable. In a week’s time, they could all be dust. And that’d sit on Ripka’s shoulders, if she hadn’t gone and joined them.

  A steady monsoon of rain began to fall, warm and thick. She was soaked through before she reached Latia’s
house, and all she wanted was a dry change of clothes and a warm bed. When she opened the door, however, what she found was a full house waiting up for her in the living room. Every head swiveled towards her as she stepped inside.

  “What’s happened?” she said, reaching instinctively for her weapons belt.

  “Nice to see you too, Cap’in,” an all too-familiar voice drawled.

  Ripka pushed rain-drenched hair from her eyes and squinted through the low light. Forge and Clink sat alongside Honey on the couch, their grins a mirror of one another’s.

  “Holy shit,” Ripka said. “What…?”

  “Got a package for you. From that Honding idiot.”

  Clink pulled a bundle from her severe, black uniform – a Honding servant’s uniform – and handed it out. Ripka crossed the room shakily, not quite believing what she saw, and undid the string. A handful of heavy, fine parchment with the letterhead of house Honding fell out. Along with a thick, brass signet ring. Detan’s. Had to be.

  Forge whistled low. “Guess he’s got ears after all.”

  “We’re going to a wedding,” Tibal drawled, and Ripka didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or cry.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  The flier’s wheel beneath his hands, the cool air pushing back his hair. These things combined to ease in him a tension he hadn’t realized he was carrying. Despite returning to his familial home, this was where he belonged. The sky was his real home, the selium in the buoyancy sacks above his head an extension of himself. Nowhere else had ever made him feel so whole.

  The only trouble was, he had an unfortunate habit of setting the whole thing on fire now and then. Had been his habit, he reminded himself. His control was growing by bounds every day. Even without active training, he knew he had begun to outpace Aella’s expectations. He could see it in the hunger in her eyes. Girl might be cold as a fish most of the day, but any progress on her research lit her up like a firemount.

  Best not to think of firemounts, just now.

  He steered away from the palace, put his back to the vista of the city that was both his duty and his burden.

  He hadn’t known what he was going to do when he took the flier. Had only been acting on an intense desire to get away from Thratia, from the palace, from the hulk of responsibilities and terrors that rested on his shoulders, penning him in. But now that he had the wind in his hair and the wheel beneath his hands, he was able to think clearly in a way that’d eluded him ever since he’d found himself bending knee to Aella on the Remnant.

  If Thratia thought she’d bag him as a husband, roll up his city in some neat little farce of a contract, and kick him to the whitecoats to deal with, she was fucking delusional.

  He yanked on the wheel, listened to the wind scream as he brought the flier hard around and pointed it straight toward the northern coast. He wasn’t running. Not this time. Not ever again. But he couldn’t do what he set out to do alone. There was only one person left in Hond Steading who could help him pull this off without major bloodshed.

  It was just too bad for him that she hated him with a burning passion.

  Detan brought the flier, smooth as oil, alongside the sleek figure of the Larkspur. The ship’d been docked on the north edge of the city, far away from the population center, but that hadn’t hidden it from his view when he’d flown in on the Dread Wind. A ship like the Larkspur was hard to miss – it drew the eye, the heart. Thratia had good taste in ships, that was for sure. Too bad she had terrible ideas about everything else.

  “Ho, Larkspur!” he called, and waited. And waited. No one seemed to be aboard, or no one who wanted to talk to him, anyway. He guided the flier to the opposite side of the dock, dropped a handful of grains in the porter’s lockbox and tied off.

  The Larkspur’s gangplank tongued the dock, and as he strode up it he wondered who in the pits had been dumb enough to leave it down with a non-responsive crew on board. Ships like the Larkspur drew a lot of eyes, and sticky fingers, too.

  He mounted the deck, ready to ream some lackey of Pelkaia’s for poor ship management, and stopped cold. Pelkaia herself sat in the center of the deck on a lounge chair tucked up under the shadow of the mainmast. Her head was tipped back, eyes stuck on the empty sky, a plethora of bottles scattered across the deck around her. Pools of shadow gathered in her sunken cheeks and, for just a heartbeat, he thought she was dead. Her head lifted. She squinted at him a moment, slow to recognition, and snort-laughed.

  “Of course it’s you.”

  “Skies, Pelkaia. What’s going on here?”

  He crossed to her side and toed an empty bottle. Not booze, as he’d first thought, though there was a fair amount of that kicking around nearby. The distinct tang of medicine – sedatives, painkillers – hung on the air, clinging to Pelkaia like a cloud despite the soft breeze.

  “They left,” she said.

  “Who left?” He hunkered down into a crouch beside her and reached to check her pulse via her wrist. She didn’t so much as flinch when he touched her. The beat of her heart was sluggish, but steady.

  “Everyone.”

  Shit. Coss, the crew… Coss. No wonder she was drinking herself stupid with anything she could find. He hadn’t been with those two long, but even he could see they’d cared about each other, and Pelkaia’d seemed considerably less nutty with Coss around to keep her stable.

  “You gonna let their leaving kill you?” he asked.

  She squinted at him. “You are such an idiot.”

  “So I’ve been told. Come on now. Sit up. I’m not your biggest fan, Pelly my dear, but I’ll be damned if I let you waste away on the deck of this ship. You know how hard it is to clean a rotten body stain off hardwood?”

  “Tip me over the side, then.”

  “Pits.” He wrangled an arm under her shoulders and hefted her more or less upright, got her legs slung over the side of the chair so she’d be forced to bend them. Every move she made her joints crackled, and it was real hard to ignore just how firm her bone-braces had gotten since last he’d seen her. If Coss leaving wouldn’t kill her, the bonewither soon would.

  After she was more or less stable, he went rummaging through the ship for some water, and came across cactus pulp juice. Good enough. She probably needed the extra nutrients.

  By the time he returned she was looking a little more clear-eyed, but not much. Still managed to sit up straighter when she saw him, though, so that was something. Pride could get a body through a lot of things.

  “Drink this, you damn fool of a woman.”

  He helped her sip down half the bottle before she started spluttering.

  “Why do you care?” she asked.

  “Saved your ass once or twice before. Seems I’m making a habit of it.”

  “Honding.” The sharpness was back in her voice, the subtle edge of exasperation. He grinned at her, and her frown just got deeper. That was as good a sign as any.

  “Need your help.”

  She snorted and reached for the juice. He handed it off to her, watched her throat bob as she forced a bigger swallow than she was ready for. “What is it this time?”

  “You still want a shot at Thratia?”

  There it was. She was back in a heartbeat, everything about her sharp and alert. If Detan knew one thing for sure about dear, crazy Pelly, it was that revenge would keep her walking and talking long after she’d been buried in a deep grave.

  “Explain.”

  “I’ll need you to work with an old friend of mine, name’s Gatai. He’ll handle most of the logistics, but he’ll need your particular talent. Once you’ve finished, you’ll have to return to Aransa, then wait for Thratia to come crawling back with her tail between her legs.”

  “You think I can make it to Aransa in this shape?” She flung an arm out, taking in the whole of the empty Larkspur. Her arm trembled from the effort, and he wondered if she’d meant that to be part of her little display. Probably not.

  “Gatai will get you a flier you can handle. Yo
u’ll be out of the city, en route to Aransa, long before the party even begins. You’re in poor shape, Pelly dear, but we both know you can rally yourself for one last push if it means a shot at Thratia.”

  Her eyes narrowed with suspicion, but she nodded. “I’m listening.”

  He gathered himself, and explained his plan, such as it was. She listened with rapt attention, eyes growing brighter as each word fell into place. When he was finished, he didn’t need to ask her what her answer would be, but she provided one anyway.

  “I’ll do it, but not alone.”

  “Gatai will provide you with–”

  She kicked one of the empty bottles hard enough that it shattered in a puff of glass shards. “Your wedding is in two days. That is no time at all to prepare what you ask, even with your friend’s help. I need a favor.”

  “Anything.”

  Her brows rose. “I doubt that. But all I need is for you to deliver a letter to Nouli. Can you?”

  “Absolutely.” If he couldn’t do it himself, he could always hand it off to Gatai.

  She took a moment to scrounge up some paper from a pocket and scrawled something brief, folded it, and passed it over. He put it in his own pocket and stood, offering her his hand. She eyed him a moment, then took it and allowed him to heft her to her feet.

  “Chances are I won’t be seeing you again, I think,” he said. Skies, he wasn’t very good at this good-bye goatshit. Pelkaia was a walking nightmare for him more often than not, a crazy murderous nightmare, but he still had a soft spot for the nutter. At the very least, he understood her reasons.

  She squeezed his arm, a soldier’s grip, and offered him what might be the first real smile he’d ever seen on her naked, true face. “Good luck.”

  “And you.”

  He left her to prepare, and waited until he was halfway back to the palace before taking a peek at the note she’d written Nouli.

  * * *

  The favor I must ask of you is, as it turns out, for all our benefit. I will come to discuss matters with you soon. As a token of my faith, here are the coordinates to a Catari meeting place. I will leave you once our task is complete, but if you travel to this location, leave a message in my name – Pelkaia Ariat Teria. The shamans will come for you, and share their knowledge. May you find your cure, as I could not.