Inherit the Flame
Page 37
“It is, I’m certain, the absolute least I can do.”
The Dame grabbed one of the room’s chairs and turned it around to face them as she sat, her ankles crossed and her skirt lying just so across her lap. Even in distress, she carried herself with dignity, with passion and grace. It was as reflexive to her as reaching for a cutlass was to Ripka.
“My dear, I know things have moved very quickly here as of late, and I have come to offer you an apology. I tried to hide you away from the trouble, to keep you safe, and that was a mistake. I should have listened to you from the very beginning. My nephew tells that Thratia claims the empress is dead, and that he believes her. I find I believe this, too. The empress I knew would never be so crass as to send her people to invade us, skies forbid. My, ah, people, are putting questions to Ranalae to find out the truth of the matter.”
Ripka winced. “I’d rather not know the details of that, Dame. Forgive me, but I’ve had my fill of Valathean politics.”
“Understood. But I hope you will be amenable to politics of a different nature.”
Ripka frowned. “Of what kind?”
“Local, my dear. Captain Lakon’s death leaves a very large hole in our community. I, for one, would be honored if you took up the position.”
Her throat went dry. She’d never dreamed of being a watch-captain again. Never even dreamed she’d be a watcher, or allowed to serve anywhere near them. To have worked with Falston so closely in his final days, to have been welcomed there and honored… That was a treasure. A memory she wanted to keep pure.
And she could never look his men in the eye without hearing his wife’s voice: keep him safe.
“I’m sorry, Dame. You honor me. But I’m sure there are viable candidates in your local watch. I will help you interview and select, if you’d like.”
“I’m sorry to hear you won’t take the job, but I will accept your offer to help in the selection process. Things will be busy, around here, for a time. What will you do afterward?”
Now there was a question she hadn’t dared to think of. Losing Enard… Her throat knotted. She glanced to Honey, to the open admiration there, and sighed. There was one task she’d promised herself, and Enard too. One thing she had left to do.
“I’d like to return to the Remnant Isle prison. The warden there is corrupt as a sewer line, and I promised myself I’d clear him out and set things right just as soon as I could.”
“You are a strange woman, Ripka Leshe, but I see your reasoning. If I can help in any way – funds, transport, men-at-arms, you have only to ask.”
“Thank you, Dame.”
She stood in one fluid movement and stepped to the door.
“Dame?”
She paused, fingers on the handle.
“Yes, Miss Leshe?”
“Go easy on Detan, won’t you?”
She smiled, small and slow and genuine. “I’ll do my best.”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Thratia’s fleet had been spotted that morning, cresting the sandy dunes which hemmed in Aransa. Just a mark out, as the airship flies, the people were saying, and the streets of Aransa were abuzz with the return of their tyrant lord. The fleet bobbed low in the sky, struggling against heavy winds due to a lack of selium to vent. Pelkaia could tell. She had a clear view from the window of Thratia’s bedroom.
More than a mark, probably, the way they were fighting that wind. But she could wait. She’d waited years. Her body wouldn’t fail her in the next few moments.
She peeled off the servant’s face she wore to sneak her way into Thratia’s compound, watching her natural face come into view in Thratia’s vanity mirror. Sallowness made her skin yellow-pale, deep lines traced every edge of her features. She was old. So very old. And it was beginning to show. She tucked the selium into a small bladder, and hid it away in her pocket on instinct. Everything was ready. She had only to wait.
The knife at her back was almost as old as she was, a Catari blade of simple make. There was no real ceremony in what she’d come here to do. No real passion, either. It was something she’d been driving toward since they day they’d told her her son, her sweet Kel, had gone to the skies.
She took no pleasure in what was to come, aside from a job well done.
One mark. Two. Thratia must be in the city now, tying up her affairs before returning to her home. It was late. She’d sleep soon. Even monsters needed their rest. Pelkaia most of all, these days.
Pelkaia tucked herself into a shadow between the wardrobe edge and wall, and waited.
Eventually, the door swung open. She’d lost track of time, of course, but days and marks and months and years were meaning less and less to her. It was dark, and Thratia was here, and she was yawning and stripping her boots off and going through the whole night-routine Detan had told Pelkaia she did, every night, step by step.
Such a methodical woman. You had to be methodical to be a murderer. Pelkaia knew that, too.
Thratia sat at her vanity, twisted off the top of her scar cream, and slathered the balm against her cheek – against the mark Detan had left her, so long ago that the memory was growing hazy. But most memories were hazy, now. Pelkaia knew only two things: what she must do, and what would come after.
Thratia stretched out in her bed, wriggling her muscles, settling into the covers. She left a light burning, as she always did, fearful of being surprised in the dark.
Surprise, Pelkaia thought.
Marks drifted by again while the cream did its work. Soaked into her hardened skin and brought with it the Catari poisons Pelkaia had laced it with. Sometime, eventually, Thratia jerked up in bed, gasping, clawing at her throat, eyes wide as she scrabbled about her nightstand for a glass of water. Wasn’t there. Wasn’t a drop in the room. Pelkaia’d made sure of it.
“No good,” Pelkaia said, and stepped from the shadows.
Thratia, to her credit, was on her feet in a moment, blade in hand even though her eyes bugged out and her mouth gaped open, struggling for air that just wouldn’t come.
“You crushed my son.”
Thratia lunged at her, but the motion was weak, and Pelkaia had no trouble batting it away with her own blade.
“Not you, personally, of course. But you signed off on the papers. Put him there in that landslide for the cover up. Do you know me, Thratia Ganal? Do you know who’s killing you now?”
Thratia backed against the wall, barely able to keep the tip of her blade up. Pity Pelkaia hadn’t trusted her health enough to take Thratia in a fair fight. She’d like to draw this out, hear what Thratia had to say for herself. But ultimately, none of that mattered. Never had.
Pelkaia slit Thratia’s throat. Left her bleeding her last in her own bed. Put the servant’s face back on, and waltzed out like she’d never been there.
There’d be chaos in the morning, sure. A city without its dictator would be lost for awhile. But Detan knew what was coming, had sent urgent messages ahead of her to sympathetic contacts in Aransa so that they’d be prepared. Some man named Banch Thent.
Didn’t matter to Pelkaia. All that mattered now was the second thing she had to do, wanted to do.
Pelkaia walked the Black.
Chapter Sixty
Detan found it rather rude that his auntie sent him a summons while he hung out in Ripka’s room, chatting, instead of coming to visit him like she had the ladies.
Tibs a steady presence beside him, they limped their way down the halls, nursing aches and pains and generally taking their sweet time of it. If his auntie wanted to speak with him, she could wait. He was sick to the bone of jumping to other people’s needs.
They found her sitting on her big chair – she’d pinch his ear if she ever heard him call it a throne – arms folded across her lap while she listened to Gatai deliver some dire news or other. Detan pictured himself in that same chair, and his stomach dropped.
The moment she sighted them, she waved Gatai away with one hand, leaned forward.
“I hope you both
are well?”
Detan exaggerated his limp, just for the pits of it, and Tibs joined in. The Dame rolled her eyes and slumped back in her chair. “Will you two ever stop?”
“Stop what, exactly, ma’am?” Tibs asked.
“You are well?”
“We made it down here without fainting, so I suppose that’s well enough,” Detan said.
“And what will you do now, nephew?” Dame Honding asked, eyes like flints that’d just been put to the spark. Detan looked to Tibs, saw the question in his single, cocked eyebrow, the hint of a smile in the corner of his boot-leather lips.
“Ole Rippy’s got a lot of work to do, getting the Remnant into shape, don’t you think, Tibs?”
“It ain’t an easy thing, keeping a prison in shape, that’s for sure.”
Auntie Honding cut a hand through the air. “Miss Leshe is perfectly capable of the task she has chosen. What of you, nephew?”
Detan just kept on looking at Tibs, not daring to glance into the smolder of his aunt’s expression. “Know what prisons need lots of? Locks, you know. Gotta’ keep ‘em all in nice and snug – that’s the idea.”
“True ‘nough, can’t be much of a prison without locks.”
“Will you both stop your inane babbling–”
“Need metal for locks, though. Good iron ore.”
Tibs quirked a grin, catching on. “Yes indeed, sirra.”
“And I just happen to know that rotten ole’ Mercer Grandon is sending a fresh load of the stuff down the eastern caravan route, to a weapons forge on the coast there. Trunk-loads of it.”
“Dangerous route, that. Bandits rove those skies.”
“Bandits?” Detan faked a shiver. “What’s the sky coming to?”
“Heard tell most mercers running routes down that skyroad hire mercenaries to see ‘em through.”
“But wouldn’t you know it, Mercer Grandon is in a pinch. Put a lotta’ money behind some venture that fell through – something to do with honey.”
“You don’t say,” Tibs drawled.
Dame Honding threw her arms into the air and let loose an exasperated huff. “Are you even listening to me, boy?”
He gave up the limp and stepped closer to the throne, leaving Tibs just an arm’s length behind him. Caught between two Honding futures, he thought, and neither one of them he really wanted.
“I have never stopped listening to you, Auntie. But this…” he dragged his gaze over her throne, tipped his chin to stare pointedly at the family crest carved into the wall above her head. “This is not what I do. This is not how I help. Not yet, anyway. The world needs a little time to get used to me in it. And…” He swallowed, thinking of a particular sunset on a particular beach. “I have some promises yet to keep.”
Detan straightened, feeling the ache in every joint, and turned toward the door. With his aunt’s shadow thrown over his shoulder he hesitated, just a breath. Then Tibs was beside him, offering an arm to take some of Detan’s weight. He picked up like they’d never stopped chatting.
“It wouldn’t do to leave the mercer in such a lurch, would it?” Detan asked.
“Wouldn’t be right.”
“Wouldn’t be gentlemanly.”
“Mmhmm. And we can’t leave Ripka without proper supplies. It’d be beastly of us.”
“Downright traitorous.”
Shuffling, limping, they made their way down the long strip of red rug that spilt like blood from the foot of the Honding family throne. His aunt’s shadow did not waver over his shoulder, but it did not cause his knees to quake as it once would have. Outside, the night gleamed on, a bruise-black sky shot through with hundreds of thousands of stars.
His flier waited. The open sky waited.
He was leaving Hond Steading, but he was going home.
Acknowledgments
The third book in a trilogy is a daunting, exhilarating task to undertake, and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without a team of wonderful people having my back.
First, thank you to my amazing fiancé, Joey Hewitt, who makes sure I do things like eat and sleep on occasion.
A huge thank you to all of my writer buddies, whose support and encouragement are invaluable to me: E A Foley, Trish Henry, Earl T Roske, Andrea Stewart, K A Rochnik, Courtney Schafer, Gama Martinez, and Vylar Kaftan.
Thank you to my kickass agent, Sam Morgan, and all of the team over at JABberwocky. And thank you to Paul Simpson, Marc Gascoigne, Michael R Underwood, Penny Reeve, Phil Jourdan, Nick Tyler, and the rest of the Angry Robots for all their insight and support throughout this series.
Thank you too, to all the wonderful bookstores who have hosted me. And to all of the wonderful writers and readers I’ve encountered along the road: you’re too many to list, but you are invaluable. Thank you.
And of course, thank you to all of you readers who have come with me on this journey through the Scorched Continent. I hope you’ll travel along with me to many strange worlds yet to come.
About the Author
Megan E O’Keefe lives in the Bay Area of California and makes soap for a living. (It’s only a little like Fight Club.) She has worked in arts management and graphic design, and spends her free time tinkering with anything she can get her hands on. Megan is a first place winner in the Writers of the Future competition, volume 30.
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meganokeefe.com • twitter.com/meganofblushie
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