Inherit the Flame

Chapter Eleven

Aransa settled into darkness. Detan paced its winding streets, following the dusty, twisting paths cut into the side of the dormant mountain as if finding the right path would reveal to him just what in the pits he was supposed to do now.

He’ll do. Thratia’s words filled every silent moment of his mind. Whatever that viper was up to, he didn’t want anything to do with it, but he could hardly run off now that he’d taken things so far. He had Thratia’s trust, insomuch as she allowed him to wander her city a free man, and that was a prize he wasn’t quite ready to squander. With her trust, he could do a lot of damage to her plans from the inside – if only he knew what they were, what angle he should take.

Aransa was quieter than it’d been since he last walked its streets. A strange hush encapsulated the city, swathed it in muted cotton wool. Last time he’d been here, night was the time to be on the streets, to be seen. There’d been raucous parties and overflowing bars. Except for one night, the night Thratia took control. And it seemed the fear of that night had yet to die out.

A red door appeared to his right. Detan stopped cold, drawing a curse from a man who had been walking behind him. Dust hung heavy on the air, clung to his boots and his hair. He shoved his hands in his pockets, stared at that red door a little longer.

The Red Door Inn. Not the most imaginative name, but in a city full of working-man taverns and rough-and-tumble gambling halls, it stood out for the simple fact it wasn’t an allusion to a curse word or a carnal act. He’d been through that door once. Invited by a sharp-eyed woman who’d wanted to ask him how he’d lost his sel-sense, so she could save her daughter from working the mines.

He hadn’t lost his sense, of course, and though he didn’t tell her that, he’d tried to make her understand that chasing that path was a dangerous one. What she’d decided to do to keep her daughter out of that hard, hot life, Detan didn’t know. Whatever her plan had been, she’d died before she’d had the chance to see it through. Cut down, bleeding her last on Thratia’s dock, all because Thratia wanted to pin the murder on Detan.

The parlor of the Red Door Inn was cool, kept insulated from the desert heat by its thick mud-stuccoed walls and lack of windows. He didn’t recall opening the door, but the brass knob was in his hand, and he stepped into the chandelier light of the entry hall.

“May I help you, sir?” A man in the red-vested livery of the inn hovered at his shoulder, his smile pure solicitation. Of course the welcoming was warmer than last time. Despite the dust on his boots, Detan was a whole lot cleaner than he’d been the last time he’d stepped through that door. Aella hadn’t let him take any of his old clothes with him to Aransa, and so he’d been trussed up in upperclass wear – slim, dark trousers, a contrasting cream vest, and matching dark jacket. Sometime along the way, he’d started dressing like the man his auntie had always wanted him to be. Too bad the inside didn’t match the exterior.

“A table, please,” he said. The thought of cloistering himself away in one of the Inn’s private booths drew him like a moth to a flame. Something strong to drink, and a curtain to pull against the world. In one of those little booths, he could almost pretend for a moment that the world outside was friendly.

The attendant led Detan down the steps of the inn, deep into the bottom levels where only the richest patrons lingered. Detan wondered, fleetingly, if Thratia had put the word out amongst high-brow places that he was residing in her compound now, but cast the thought aside. No, this wasn’t Thratia’s doing. Between his clothes and the brand on the back of his neck, Detan had enough cachet on his own to warrant this flavor of treatment. Didn’t much like being reminded of the fact, though.

A familiar voice shook him out of his moping, brash and male, behind the cloak of a curtained booth. The man called for an attendant, slurring slightly, not reaching for the bell meant to do the job for him. Detan froze.

“Sir?” the attendant asked, all professional concern.

“I…” he cleared his throat. “I’m going to say hello to an old friend.”

The attendant followed his glance to the booth with the slurring man and frowned, weighing the guest’s probable desire for privacy against both rebuking Detan’s wish and having to deal with the drunken man. He eventually shrugged, and gestured toward the booth.

Detan moved before he could think better of it and pulled the curtain. He sat.

Renold Grandon peered at him across the thin, lacquered table. Smoke curled around the man’s eyes, and a glass dangled from his swollen fingers – twin to a litter of empty glasses filling the narrow table. Red blotches bloomed like storm cells across his cheeks, and cactus-prickle stubble clung to his sagging chin.

Detan did not believe in ghosts. But sitting in that booth, that same booth where Bel Grandon had summoned him to to ask a question all that time ago, he thought he could feel her. She was in the smoke swirling between him and Renold now, in the heady-sweet scent of alcohol in the stale air. The very memory of her stern gaze forced Detan to sit straighter with some foolish hope that, if only he presented himself well, he could do honor to her memory.

He bore Renold’s drunken stare, and thought of the first time he’d seen the man. Bloated on his own importance, swaggering with his mistress as he gallivanted through the Salt Baths. Renold had done nothing to offend Detan, save being a likely target when Detan was in need.

Detan had looked at Renold Grandon, and thought, he’ll do.

And an innocent woman had died.

And countless futures were snuffed to dust with her passing.

“You,” Renold said, but there was very little malice in it. Just a wan sort of tiredness that bit deeper than anger ever could have.

“Me,” Detan agreed.

Renold looked at him. Really looked. His swollen face puckered up as he squinted, digging with his gaze into all the details that made up Detan now. His clean hair, his expensive clothes. The leanness of his frame, and perhaps even the slight hunch he harbored due to pain in his shoulder from Aella’s careful administrations. He swept all this up, counted it, and with a snort dismissed Detan as irrelevant. Little more than a fly drawn to the stench of his sorrow.

“I didn’t–” Detan began, but Renold cut him off with a sharp gesture, spilling dribbles of liquor down the side of his hand.

“You didn’t hold the knife that split her throat,” he sneered. “You don’t have the steel in you. But she does, our fearless commodore, and you riled her up as sure as a man pulls back a knife hand to strike.”

Detan swallowed, laced his fingers together under the table to stop their tremble. “Thratia killed Bel to make you hate me. To make you hunt me.”

Renold studied the depths of his glass, as if he could see his dead wife’s face lurking within. “Told you that, did she? And you believed her? Dumber than I thought. No. She knew I’d never believe a floundering fop like you could have ever spilt real blood. Not Bel’s, anyway. That was a warning for me, not you.”

A little flare of anger sparked in Detan’s blood, fleeting but sharp. Sel’s presence loomed in the liqueur, in the lanterns, in the… He shut his sense down. Forced himself to focus. “And this is how you answer her?”

Renold’s bloodshot eyes roamed the empty glasses on the table that his wife had used so often to host her private meetings. He breathed deep, let out a slow breath, and pierced Detan with a stare. “Virra, our daughter, captains a ship in Thratia’s fleet as a sensitive pilot. It was Bel’s greatest ambition to see that Virra never had to work the mines. Yes. This is how I answer her.” He bared his teeth. “And aren’t we all just one big happy family?”

Ill with revulsion, Detan pushed to his feet and staggered through the curtain that separated that booth from the rest of the world. The cool opulence of the Red Door Inn pressed all around him, mirroring a deeper cold, one which ensconced his bones and chest and made him gasp despite the delicately perfumed air.

Ignoring the concerned queries of the valet, he dragged himself up the stairs to the final floor, legs growing heavier with every step, and only when he was out on the blistering hot streets of Aransa, dust on his shoes and dry air whipping the moisture from his eyes, his lips, did he feel he could breathe again.

He had been so very tempted, walking down these beaten streets to this pristine door, to flee. To take to the open skies once more. To find another flier, another path to freedom from duty and consequence. Now the very thought churned his stomach, broke sweat across his chest and brow.

What good was his freedom, when he had done as Thratia? What good was he, when he had looked at a man and thought: he’ll do, without ever considering the breadth and depth of the consequences?

Whatever freedom existed for him out there in the empty sky, he had not earned it.

Detan straightened his lapels, stood tall and brushed the dust from his coat sleeves. Aransa stretched out around him in all directions: the shanty towns downward, the tenuous government-worker class upward, and topping it at its very peak, lower only than the city’s highest garden, Thratia waited.

She’d looked at him, and said, he’ll do. He knew not what for, yet, but with the memory-scent of Bel’s cigarillos warm in his nostrils, he was going to find out. And whatever the consequences were, wherever the pain fell, Detan would see it through, or break himself trying.