The Proposal Game

by Megan E O'Keefe

  "Detan Honding." He plastered on what he felt was a rather triumphant grin, but the girl didn’t even blink. She scrawled his name on the bottom of the list as if he were any other random piece of rabble.

  "Someone will be right with you, Mr. Honding."

  "Lord—" he began, but she had already walked out of earshot.

  "Real nice," Tibs said as they took seats at the table the young watcher had indicated. "And here I was thinking you weren’t trying to get locked up."

  "This is disgraceful, is what it is. Time was when any poor soul could wander right into the station house and meet with the watch-captain. Most would have to pay a bribe to get back out again, sure, but this is ludicrous. Insanity. What sort of Captain makes herself unreachable?"

  "One who’s actually doing her job and doesn’t have time for nonsense?"

  "I’d like to think so," a woman said somewhere behind Detan’s head. He was rather annoyed with himself for flinching.

  Pasting on another pleased grin, Detan slid out of the chair and swung around to face the voice. She was lean of frame and tall enough to stand eye to eye with him. Sure enough, she wore the decorated jacket of a watch-captain, the little tin pins and crisp ribbons dangling from her epaulettes declaring she’d been captain three years and a deputy two years before that. Young for her post—and a rapid rise. Detan wondered if that meant she were competent, or the daughter of someone wealthy. In one hand she carried a thick envelope stuffed full with dog-eared papers, the other hung empty by her weapons belt.

  "Hullo," he said, pretending ignorance. "Are you our assigned watcher?"

  Her smile was simple, and predatory. He couldn’t help but notice an awful mess of scars over her knuckles. "I’m quite certain you know precisely who I am."

  "I, uh—"

  "Captain Ripka Leshe." She inclined her head to him. "And you are Lord Detan Honding, so this must be your traveling companion Tibal…?"

  "Just Tibal," Tibs said.

  "So you say." She tapped the folder against her thigh. "You rather agitated my assistant. I wonder whatever for?"

  "It was not my intention, of course," he said. The corner of her lip twitched—a suppressed smirk?—and Detan found himself wondering if maybe he’d bitten off more than he could chew in rattling her cage. "But violent robberies do tend to stir the blood."

  "A violent robbery? Is this something you’re planning?"

  "Planning? Hah! No, it is something that’s already happened—to me. I was beaten senseless in the middle of the street on the fourth level. The fourth! I was just a bare few steps from the doors of the fine Oasis."

  "And did you know your attackers?"

  Her question, so sincere and apt, rocked him back a half-step. He took a breath and gathered himself. "I do not associate with the likes of robbers."

  "Lord Honding," she spoke slowly, stepping forward to lay the folder on the table. It had his name printed on the front in a neat, familiar hand. The old Watch-captain’s records, then. "I feel I must let you in on a little secret. I do, in fact, know all about you. About your cons and your games, about your history in this city. Such things make it very difficult for me to believe you are completely without fault in this case."

  He licked his lips. "Captain Ganner had a grudge against me, I’ll grant you, but this was an honest-to-skies robbery. Well, honest on my end, I wouldn’t make any claims regarding the truthfulness of my assailants."

  "They did him some real harm, Captain," Tibs said as he reached over and tugged the hem of Detan’s shirt up just enough to reveal the deepening bruises beneath.

  Captain Leshe’s lips pursed in real disgust at the sight of his abuse. "I am sorry that someone in my city has done you harm. Be that as it may—"

  "Wait, wait." Detan stuck both his hands out and patted the air. "Regardless of what you think of me, I have been attempting to turn over a fresh leaf. Lady Halva Erst, an upstanding member of your own city, has accepted my hand in marriage and I will not be denigrated like this."

  "Congratulations on your nuptials." She smiled. "I hope you do not intend to live here in Aransa."

  "Now wait just a moment, Captain, this city is her home and I—"

  "And you, I must kindly ask to leave." She sighed once, shaking her head. "Though I suppose it would be fine to wait until after the marriage is complete. I wouldn’t want to upset her father any more than necessary.

  "And," she continued before he could pull himself together enough to protest, "Since I am, naturally, concerned for your well-being while you remain in my city, I will arrange a private watcher for you. One to follow you around at all times to be certain that you’re not… robbed again."

  "That hardly seems—"

  "Are these all of the complaints you have to file with the watch today?" she asked, smiling that bright, sharp smile.

  "Well, I suppose I’d like to file a complaint about being kicked out of the city."

  "I’m sorry, Lord Honding. My decision is final." She picked the folder up, tucked it under one arm, and inclined her chin toward him. "Enjoy the rest of your stay. I expect you to be gone within a day of your wedding. If you are not, I will have you removed. Good afternoon."

  She turned away and strode toward the back of the room, pausing only a moment to pass the folder she had carried off to another watcher.

  "Well, that was terrible," Tibs muttered.

  "Oh, stop it. At least we’ll have a bodyguard now."

  "You mean leash-keeper?"

  "Same thing."

  The man she’d handed the folder to flipped it open and skimmed a few pages, his brows drawing tighter together with each new line. Detan cringed. "Wonder what the old sod wrote about us." After a moment’s thought over the possibilities, Detan whispered, "Come on, let’s get out of here."

  "Thought you wanted a bodyguard?"

  "Sirs?" the watcher to whom Captain Leshe had passed the folder must have slipped up beside them while they were speaking, because Detan almost jumped out of his skin at the voice appearing over his shoulder. He was getting real sick of soft-stepping watchers.

  "Well," Detan grumbled, "at least we know you’re light of foot."

  The watcher in question didn’t look particularly stealthy. He was stood a good half-head taller than Detan, with shoulders wide enough to pull at the seams of his coat. "I’m sorry if I startled you, sir. My name is Banch Thent. I’ll be seeing to your care during your stay in Aransa."

  Banch’s tone rolled right over the word "care" and for that Detan was grateful. He’d rather not have to deal with a smug watcher on top of it all.

  "Well, Banch, I place my wellbeing in your capable hands."

  "Thank you, sir. If you have no objections, I’d like to visit your rooms at the Oasis now to determine their defensibility."

  Detan half-bowed and gestured toward the door. "After you, my good man."

  The big bastard smiled indulgently. "You first, sirs. The rear is a more defensible position. Please attempt to stay no more than three strides ahead of me."

  Detan caught himself grinning. Well, Ripka’s watchdog had a brain somewhere in that thick skull after all. Trouble for him—it was always difficult to slip off when someone was keeping an eye on you from behind—but he could learn to work with that. He’d have to.

  "I feel safer already!" Detan sauntered back out into the desert heat, ignoring Tibal’s unamused eye roll. That old rock always took his sweet time when it came to seeing the fun in a good challenge.

  13

  "Is this your idea of a joke?" Silka’s voice was hard and smooth as a riverstone, which meant Halva had really screwed up. They stood under the sparse shade of a reedpalm in Halva’s garden, trusting the heat and vegetation to keep any would-be eavesdroppers at bay.

  Silka shook the thick, folded sheet of paper at her and Halva flinched back. "I thought you’d find it amusing—"

  "Amusing? Have you gone sun-mad? Skies above, Halvie, I do love you but—an engagement party? To Detan Honding?
Do you have any idea what a tizzy my mother is in? You’d think someone told her I was liable to drop dead of old age at any moment. She’s calling me an old maid now—bah! I wish I was an old maid!—but this little stunt of yours has put the wind up her. She’ll have me married off to the first marginally acceptable man she can con into it!"

  "She can’t force you, you know, there are laws against that sort of thing."

  Silka snorted and threw herself into a chair with a grunt. "There aren’t any laws against guilting a woman to death. Or throwing her out on her backside."

  "She wouldn’t!"

  "She most certainly would." Silka dragged her fingers through her hair and sighed. "My family doesn't even have a concordant to lose, and I haven’t been able to secure an apprenticeship anywhere. It’s either join the Air Fleet or marry well for me."

  Guilt blossomed in Halva’s heart, seeing the thin lines of distress spread from Silka’s eyes and lips. Shunting aside her own worries, Halva pulled a chair close to her friend’s side and sat, patting her knee. "You stop that now, it’s not like you to mope."

  "It’s even less like me to get married."

  "It won’t come to that, not if you don’t want it."

  "The Fleet, then." Silka’s lips pursed tight. "It’s the only other way."

  "I’m sure we can think of something. What about the watch? Have you inquired after a position there?"

  "Sure, and so has every other hard-up soul in all Aransa. They’re full up."

  Halva scowled at the empty air somewhere over Silka’s shoulder, letting her gaze unfocus as she dug through memory in search of an idea. The Fleet, she decided, would not do. Too often local joiners were shipped off into any old far-flung sector of the Scorched, where they spent their days chasing rumors of Catari uprisings and securing selium mines against bandits.

  "You can’t join the Fleet," she said.

  Silka rolled her eyes. "I’d enjoy it, at least. The martial arts have always appealed to me."

  "But they could send you anywhere."

  "Traveling actually sounds nice."

  "Without me?"

  Her friend’s grave expression melted under the force of her sudden, barked laugh. "It would be a terrible hardship, but we’d survive."

  "You would. I’d wilt with sadness."

  "Oh pah, you’ll have Cranston’s shoulder to weep on."

  "If he ever forgives me. And anyway, it’s not the same. He’s not you."

  Silka leaned forward, bright eyes narrowing with suspicion. "What do you mean, forgives you?"

  Carefully restrained emotions threatened to bubble to the surface. Halva cleared her throat once, twice. Wrung her hands together in her lap and glanced around the garden to be doubly sure no curious ears lingered nearby. She took a slow breath, steadying the nervous buzz in her stomach, and leaned forward to whisper.

  "He’s here. He’s back early."

  "What?" Silka blurted loud enough to sting Halva’s ear. She jerked back and looked around, heart racing until she was certain her father wasn’t going to come stomping down the path.

  "Shh, Silkie. I didn’t know, and he, he tried to surprise me in the garden..."

  "Here?"

  "There." She gestured toward the thorn bushes which lined the back wall. "But then Honding came calling. Cranston hid, of course, and I did everything I could to distract Detan and father from the bushes and, well, I fear I did too much. The issue of marriage arose—"

  "No! He heard?"

  "Heard everything." Halva gathered her courage with a breath. "And came bursting from the shrubbery."

  "Sweet skies," Silka murmured.

  "Oh, he was livid. But I couldn’t tell him just then, of course. You see, father brought Honding straight to the garden. He hadn’t been given our special tour yet and I was afraid that if I spurned him I would never see him again. And I thought, well, if there was to be an engagement party for such an important man—"

  "Then surely the Warden would come calling, and you could show him your research."

  "I knew you’d understand! But Cranston, he was so furious..." She groaned and brought her hands up, pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes to still the ache growing behind them.

  "I can’t say I blame him. It must have been an awful shock." Silka reached out and squeezed Halva’s intertwined hands. "But don’t you worry, I’ll have a word with him and get it all straightened out. We’re going to have to move fast now, you know. This party—" She waved the offending invitation. "—is in two days. You might not have time to give Honding the tour."

  "Then what? There must be something."

  Silka winked. "We’ll have to do his shopping for him."

  "You have something in mind?"

  "That depends. How committed are you to giving up the divining and going full over into horticulture?"

  "Completely! I don’t have the tiniest sliver of sel-sense, and neither does Cranston."

  "Well then, we’re just going to have to take the choice away from your dear daddy."

  "You don’t mean..."

  "Yes, yes I do."

  "The family atlas," they said in unison. Hope bloomed fresh and bright in Halva’s heart.

  14

  Detan pressed his ear against the smooth, cold door of his room in the Oasis. Night fell across Aransa, and most of the hotel’s guests had gone out to find food or other forms of succor. He should be out on Aransa’s streets, getting all ready so that he might stand a chance of escaping the Lady Erst’s affections, but he was stymied. The hall was silent as a windless dune, save for the intermittent steps of one Watcher Banch Thent.

  "It’s no good," Tibs said, "he won’t abandon his post."

  "A man has to piss sometime," Detan grumbled as he paced the edge of a small round rug in the center of the room. "It’s not natural, the way he keeps on."

  "Could be he already went and you missed it."

  He stopped short. "You think?"

  "Nope." Tibs licked his thumb and turned the page on his ragged book.

  "Pits below, you’re no help at all."

  "Not trying to be."

  Deten gave the overstuffed chair Tibs lounged on a kick, but the old rock-brain just grunted and kept on reading. Typical. Muttering expletives under his breath, Detan sat down hard on the edge of his bed and rested his forearms across his knees. He glared at the door.

  "This is insufferable."

  "Now you know what it’s like being trapped with only you for company."

  He rolled his eyes as he heaved himself back to his feet and stood a moment, trying to decide between pacing and listening at the door again.

  "Argh," he said.

  "Sweet sands, you are daft."

  "Oh really, Tibs? And just what would you do about it?"

  With an exaggerated sigh Tibs closed his book and laid it in his lap. "You can’t shake the man."

  "No..."

  "So use him." Tibs brought the book back up.

  "Huh." Detan propped his fists on his hips and stared at the door, rummaging up what he knew of the man standing on the other side. Young, ambitious. Eager to please his new Captain. Had a rather quick smile when it came to talk of the engagement. A romantic, then.

  "Ohhh," Detan said.

  "Finally." Tibs tucked the book back onto a shelf and pushed to his feet. Detan decided it would be rather charitable of him to ignore the exasperated tone of his old friend. Pulling straight the sweat-wrinkled collar of his ghastly tunic he reached out and swung the door open.

  Watcher Banch blinked up at them from the soft candlelight of the hall, a little frown shuffling his brows into an arched caterpillar. "Is everything all right, sirs?"

  "I’m afraid not." Detan sighed hard enough to make his shoulders slump and his lungs wheeze. "It’s just that, you see, I would like to arrange a pleasant surprise for my dear bride. But, every time I work up the nerve to do it, I’m reminded of those brutes and I fear venturing out into the night."

  The w
atcher’s acute concern softened into the kind of worry often seen crinkling around grandmothers’ eyes when they fear they haven’t cooked quite enough food to feed everyone to death. "Maybe something could be arranged? I can call a runner-boy, if you’d like. The night market is bound to have something of interest."

  "I fear no runner-boy can help me out of this spot, my dear man. You see, my darling girl—that’s Halvie, of course—has intimated to me that she is dearlyfond of airships, but hasn’t set foot on one since she was a little girl. It just so happens that my valet and I—"

  "Mechanic," Tibs cut in.

  "Yes, my mechanic and I, arrived in Aransa on a rather fine flier. I would so love to moor the thing close by so that I could take her on a jaunt after the party—a surprise, you understand. A little whisking-away. But I daren’t brave the streets to reach the thing. It’s currently stashed at a dock on the eleventh level, you see. It seemed a cheap and simple solution at the time, but now... Now I fear too much potential for peril lies between me and the old bird."

  With a pained groan Detan slumped against the doorframe and leaned his head against it, watching Banch from the corner of half-lidded eyes. The young watcher pursed his lips and rolled them around, hooking his thumbs into the thick leather of his black belt. Considering, no doubt, how much harm could possibly come to them in the dead of night in levels as low as the eleventh.

  "Well," Banch dragged the word out, "I suppose it would be all right. And anyway, you can’t just abandon your flier down there." His eyes narrowed in mild suspicion. "Just what is the flier of Lord Honding doing so far downcrust?"

  "We arrived at night," Detan supplied, having anticipated the question, "and so dropped the old bird as close to the night market as we could get. Dear Tibs’s stomach was liable to crawl out through his teeth if we didn’t find food, and fast."

  The explanation was plausible enough. The eleventh was scattered with more rental docks than most, a loose confederation of those poor souls who either dreamed of working their way onto the big ships someday, or otherwise consigned themselves to a lifetime of garbage-shuttling and salvage-picking. The trash of Aransa was dumped by those brave spirits in a crevasse amongst the dunes—out of sight, and downwind.