Steal the Sky

Chapter 11

Ripka went in search of another drink. She was not technically on duty tonight, this was a personal appearance, and yet she still felt strange pouring herself out a deep red draught while wearing her blues. Oh, to the pits with it.

She let the mulled almond flavor wash down her throat until the glass was empty. Maybe, if she were drunk enough, then she could do as Banch suggested and force some answers out of the woman they’d captured at the warehouse. That damned smuggler had proven taciturn at best, not even giving up her name.

Without the information rattling around in that woman’s walled-off mind, there was no way to say for certain who those weapons were for, or where they were coming from. The papers had been empty of house seals, signatures carefully obscured, and the honey liqueur could only be traced back to the stone wall of the Mercer’s Collective. None of them were willing to throw their fellows to the Watch, lest it start a chain reaction, and Ripka couldn’t even be sure that the owner of those bottles knew of the deadly cargo hidden beneath them.

Ripka snorted to herself. She’d done her fair share of damage in a fighting ring, but if she ever got drunk enough to be party to torture, she’d more likely fall flat on her face the moment she stepped in the woman’s cell. At least they still had the sensitive man. He was holding out, but he sweated so much every time Ripka interrogated him they had to supply him with a change of clothes after each encounter. It was, she hoped, only a matter of time.

At least she’d managed to scour that honey-crap out of her hair.

With a sigh, she reached for the bottle again, and found Tibal handing it to her. “Looks like you be needin’ this, captain.”

She set her glass down a touch too fast and had to grab at it to keep it from tipping over. “I’m quite finished Tibal, thank you.”

“Suit yourself.”

Her nose wrinkled with distaste as he took a draw straight from the bottle. At least he looked cleaner than the last time she had seen him, though whatever ablutions he’d attempted for the party had failed to pry the axle grease from his fingernails. “Neither of you should be here, you know.”

“Got nowhere else to be at the present. What about yourself? You don’t strike me as the fete-going type, and Thratia’s got enough muscle here that she doesn’t need the Watch. Surely you’ve got your own business to be about.”

Her jaw clenched, clamping down words too sharp and raw to let loose. Phantoms of her own little apartment rose in her mind, the too-clean living room and the spotless hearth, its cookstone as fresh as the day she’d bought it. The only foodstuff she owned was a bottle of wine, as dark as the one Tibal drew from now.

“Just why do you hang around with that lout, anyway?” she said, forcing her voice to aloofness, though that proved difficult when her lips felt thick and numb. Damn Thratia and her unwatered wine. Or just damn Thratia all together. “He’s a liar and a thief, a bad man any way you look at him. You have talent, Tibal, you’re a damn fine mechanic and a dutiful soul. I remember offering you a job, once–”

“Answer’s no, captain. I got a job.”

“What you do is not a job, it’s survival.”

“All jobs are about surviving, just on different levels. Like the city here.” He shrugged and drank deep. “Look now, I owe a great deal to that man and I won’t have you poison my mind against him. You’re better than that.”

She crossed her arms and tried to look stern, but the flush of wine was in her cheeks and she knew she just looked surly. “And just what is it that you owe him? Did he lock you into some sort of commitment?”

Tibal took another draw and then set the bottle down with care. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and his hand on his trouser leg, his eyes narrowed and sharp as flint. She was too tired to deal with any of this tonight. The doppel was out there still. Or worse, in here. She didn’t need Detan and his partner… manservant… mechanic? What was he? No matter, she didn’t need them demanding her attention.

“You fight in the war, captain? I did.”

She stiffened, not liking the direction this was headed. “No. Too young. I didn’t know you served,” she said, affecting politeness. She itched to abandon Thratia’s showboating and get back to the streets. Even digging through mounds of files in search of a clue about the warehouse, or the doppel, would be more relaxing than this farce.

“I’m a grown man of Valathea, captain, ’course I served. Damned continent didn’t stay Valathean property by the grace of the blue skies, now did it? I didn’t have the favor of youth at the time. Joined with Valathea, as I was descended from them. Strange, don’t you think? My family hasn’t used Valathean names for the last three generations and still I think myself a part of them. I’m light as a Catari.” He held out an arm to the shadow-splintered light, and Ripka bit her tongue. He looked dark as wet sand to her, dark as most Valatheans. Dark as her. “Got a name like a Catari. But I don’t think of myself as such.

“Anyway. We cleaned them out, pushed ’em back into the sel-barren reaches of the Scorched. I worked on the ships, then, didn’t see any real fighting myself. Wouldn’t know what to do with the sharp end of a saber, but I could keep the killing machines going. Keep ’em raining fire from above, turning good sand to glass.” He cleared his throat, glanced around and lowered his voice.

“You know what I brought back from all that?”

Ripka licked her lips, tasting the specter of wine there, wishing her pride would let her grab for the bottle again. Valathea’s war against the native uprising had happened on the fringe of her life. She’d seen Catari refugees filtering through the Brown Wash as a girl. Wretched, beige-skinned exiles who covered themselves head to toe in brown cloth to keep the glare of the sun off. They’d never stayed long, always moving on, deeper into the desert, retreating from the resources that had once been their birthright. Rolled under the advance of Valathea.

Without the Scorched’s selium mines to keep airships moving, the empire’s commerce would grind to a halt, stymied by the unsteady seas that surrounded the imperial archipelago. It was just too bad for the Catari they happened to be here first.

“I can’t imagine,” she said, not able to help the softening of her voice. Her father had served. He hadn’t come back the same, either. Hadn’t stayed home long, once he got back, though she’d been too young to understand it at the time.

“I got a temper like a lit forge, when I’m struck just right. A vicious streak dark as the sea. You ever meet someone like that?”

“Of course, I’m a watcher. I see uncontrollable tempers all the time. I haven’t known you long, Tibal, but that’s not you. Those rabid souls are completely out of control, while you’re one of the calmest folk I’ve ever met.”

“You can thank Detan for that.”

Her face must have given her away, because he laughed. “Look,” he said, “I know it doesn’t seem right, but it’s the truth. Fact is, Detan came ’round my steading near on six years ago now looking for a light tune-up for his flier. Got it done all right, but in the meantime the old man who owned the shop I was working at said something I didn’t like and I lost it – I just… I lost it. Felt like I was back in the Catari war, and everything was fire, so it didn’t matter what burned. I think I woulda’ killed him, had Detan not come back when he did. He pulled us apart and sat me down. Tole me he knew what it was like, to walk that line of fire, that he could help. So I went with him. And he was right, captain, it has helped. Just so long as we keep moving, it helps.”

He looked up then, and she followed his gaze to see Detan staring right at them from across the room. No, it wasn’t them he was staring at, it was just Tibal. As she observed, they locked eyes and Detan raised his brows. Tibal gave a little nod and the other man grinned, going back to whatever mischief he was up to.

“You see?” he said. “We check in on each other like that. If one of us is starting to lose it we scramble, no matter what we’re into at the time.”

“You’re telling me that bumbling idiot has a fearful temper too? Sweet sands, he really should be locked up.”

“Naw, not like mine. He got a handle on his own self, but I needed his help to get a handle on mine. If I’m a lit forge, he’s the slow burn of the desert, and if either of us is a bad man, captain, it’s me.”

Something foul clicked into place in Ripka’s mind, sharp and insistent even through the fog of alcohol. “You met him after the accident on his line, the one that burned half the sel pipes at Hond Steading, didn’t you? His temper have something to do with that accident?”

Tibal’s nostrils flared. “No.” The word was snapped off, defensive, and she filed that reaction away to ruminate upon later. He refilled her drink without asking, and she downed it in one.

“You two are into something, aren’t you?” she asked to cover how unsettled she felt.

“Don’t pay a man to stay still, captain.”

He winked and shuffled off before she could press him, leaving her alone with the bottle and her thoughts. No one bothered to come up to her. Not here. Not in her blue coat with its polished brass buttons.

She sat her glass down, and picked up the bottle.