Megan E. O’Keefe
Of Blood and Brine
Originally published by Shimmer, January 20th 2015
Child’s mistress was out when the scentless woman entered the shop and laid a strip of severed cloth upon the counter. For once, Child wished her mistress were at her side.
“May I help you?” Child asked around a clot of fear.
“Make me a vial of this perfume,” Scentless said, her voice honey-sweet though her sillage was hollow, “and another exactly the same, but with the tiniest hint of the sea.”
Child squinted, desperate to find a hint of the woman’s identity beneath the netting she wore across her green-brown eyes. Scentless had forgone the usual patterns women painted around their eyes. Her face was a bare mask.
Unease dampened the palms of Child’s hands. The woman was old enough to have passed her Naming Day, but no matter how Child flared her nostrils and breathed, she could not scent the woman’s name. Scentless wore the wrap all named men and women wore, covered hair-to-toe in thin black fabric to protect her skin from the poison of the sun’s red glare. The cloth of her wrap had a subtle sheen, the fabric so smooth Child could not even see the weave. She must be wealthy. The slender arc of her cheekbones rose just above the bottom of netting, hinting that she was beautiful.
And yet the woman wore no scent. She was nameless.
Even the dead smell, Child thought, then shook herself. This was business. Whatever had urged this woman to go out into the world without a name was none of her concern.
Forcing the pleasant, shopkeeper-smile her mistress had taught her, Child made a show of rinsing her hands in clean water, then scrubbing them with salt and rinsing them again. She dried her hands on a fine, fresh rag, and held them up for Scentless' inspection. The woman leaned forward, sniffed the air, and nodded her approval.
Thus prepared, Child gathered the cloth into her hands and brought it as close to her nose as she dared. The aroma was warm, spice-tinged. Cardamom and violet with the faintest whiff of balsam. The sea would be a pleasant addition to such a scent, but Child had no idea how to blend such an aroma.
“I can recreate this by this evening,” Child said, “but the addition of the sea will take time. There is no single oil for such a scent.”
Scentless inclined her head, the supple fabric of her wrap hissing softly as the folds brushed against each other. “I will need it by the full-moon,” she said, and laid a rope of silver upon the counter alongside the cloth.
Child’s throat clenched. Such a sum was no small thing to turn one’s nose up at, even if the deadline was nigh impossible. Not daring to touch the silver, lest she spoil the cleanliness of her hands, Child folded the cloth and set it aside, then took up a slip of paper and a grease pencil. She breathed deep, settling the butterflies fighting to escape through her lips.
“Forgive my asking, but what is your name? I cannot smell it on you.”
The woman’s eyes crinkled at the corners. Whether in amusement or anger, Child could not tell. “I wear none. Put what you like on your paper, I will return in three days to check upon your progress. I will bring you a gold rope if you finish in time.”
She pressed black-gloved hands together and bowed deep, then turned and stepped from the shop back into the hot red eye of the sun’s regard.
Child stared at the paper, stunned. A whole gold rope. Enough to buy her own wrap, her own name. Chewing her lip, she wrote: Scentless.
Then crossed it out, over and over again, until the name was little more than a black square. Her mistress had not been here. She did not need to know. Heart hammering, Child filled in the square until it was black as coal.
Beneath it, she began to make notes on what she had smelled in the cloth.
Ivy-beneath-cedar returned that evening with wine so rich on her breath Child scarcely scented her arrival. She staggered a step, then slung herself into a creaking chair in their workshop, squinting eyes veined with red spiderwebs at her. Child tensed, turning on her stool so that her back guarded her work, and laid her palm flat over Scentless’s receipt.
“You’re working late,” her mistress slurred.
“We had a new client today. A wealthy one.” Hesitantly, Child pulled the length of silver from the pocket of her apron. Ivy-beneath-cedar’s eyes sparked beneath the netting of her wrap, reflecting the glitter of the lantern light against the precious metal.
“What did she want for so much?” her mistress scoffed, “To change her name?”
“Cardamom-over-violet, centered with balsam,” Child added in a rush, “Two vials.”
“Well.” Her mistress heaved herself to her feet and took the length of silver from her. “That is a simple enough task for you. If you make her happy, we might use some of this for your own Naming Day. You’re meant to take the wrap in what, a month? Two?”
“Four weeks,” Child said, unable to keep a flush from creeping across her cheeks.
“Right. Good girl.” Ivy-beneath-cedar gave her a thick-handed pat on the shoulder. She straightened, brushed the rumpled folds of her wrap smooth, and then stumbled through the back door toward her bedchamber, humming an uneven tune all the while. Child’s small fists clenched. She was no fool. There would be no silver left for her by the time her Naming Day came. Ivy-beneath-cedar would drink every last sliver away.
But the gold rope. That she could use.
Child smoothed the wrinkles her sweating palm had left on Scentless’s receipt and returned to her work, fingers dancing amongst warm amber bottles lit by the glow of her oil lamp. She didn’t dare burn candles—tallow and beeswax were too strong of scent, they would muddy her work. And she needed clarity now, if she were going to distill the sea.
Child walked the edge of the cold shore, bare feet sinking in rough sand. The red glare of the sun cast the pale beige granules in eerie, pink light, as if blood had been spilled across them and then diluted by the waves. Beak-pecked carcasses of sea creatures lay along her path, their poisonous flesh bulbous with tumors even after those few birds who could stomach them had picked them over. Why anyone would desire to smell like those wretched waters, Child could not guess.
The beach was empty, as it always was, save for a small group of mourning. They bundled their dead—two or three, she could not tell—onto a floating bier, set light the wooden slats, and shoved it out to sea. Child caught her breath, anger tightening her fists as flames licked up around the bier, revealing the wraps the dead had been sent to their rest within. Such a waste. But then, they had earned them. It was their right.
She turned upwind to avoid the smoke and breathed deep of the air, closed her eyes, and flared her nostrils. At the base of the scent of the sea was the brittle bark of the trees which ringed it. Warm, dry. Overlaid with the overwhelming crush of the water itself; a cool, menthol middle mingled with the wet vegetal aroma of aquatic plant-life.
But there was something else above it all, something that took those two meager elements and made them say sea. There was brine, metallic iron, and the air itself, crisp as if lightning had just struck. Both aromas too ephemeral to bottle.
She sighed, opened her eyes, and kicked clumps of sand tangled with rotted seaweed. The Cardamom-over-violet she had already made she clutched tight in her pocket, warming the hard glass with her palm. Ivy-beneath-cedar’s workshop was not suitable to this task, she did not have the ingredients required.
Child extended a finger in her pocket, felt the small thread of copper she kept hidden there, her week’s meager pay. She could buy a new fragrant oil or resin.
And then, with the gold rope, she could start her own shop. Blend her own name.
The market awnings of the city Bahat were dyed green, but in the high light of noon the tops of them turned brown under the red light. Child blended amongst the crowd as best she could, but she was tall for her age and that made her difficult to miss. She drew stares, the people of Bahat wondering just what a girl her age was doing unnamed and without her wrap.
Child paused, glancing at the backs of her hands. Even under the shade of her hat the sun’s glare took its toll. Her skin, nearly fourteen summers old, was already dry and cracked as an ancient lakebed.
Soon it would be dangerous to go without. Soon, the cracks in her skin would begin weeping dark fluids, and no emollient salve would hold the spread of the sun-sickness at bay.
Ivy-beneath-cedar wouldn’t care; apprentices were easy enough to come by. The Justice of Bahat would see no harm done, those who failed to earn enough to purchase their own wraps before the sickness took them were considered useless. Just another mouth to feed from the scorched soil.
Child swallowed, shook her head. No. She would capture the sea. She would claim the Scentless woman’s golden rope.
Embarrassment blushed her cheeks, added haste to her steps. She wove amongst the hundreds of other men and women of the market, catching hints of their names as she slipped between them. A blunt name struck her—without nuance, without balance. Myrrh-under-clove, or was it over? She couldn’t tell, the dominate notes had been blended in equal measure. The heady scents competed with one another for dominance, bludgeoning her senses.
Curiosity lifted her head and she turned, following her nose. A male silhouette familiar enough to tickle the back of her mind stood beside a market stall, weighing a bottle in his hand. The man paid for the bottle and set it in his basket—a basket she recognized. That man—no, that boy—was Lemon-over-neroli’s apprentice. Not even twelve summers, and he was already named. Poorly, but named and shielded from the sun none the less.
Child hunched her shoulders and hurried toward another merchant, eager to prove her own worth. The first stall she came too was filled with the usual base notes; sandalwood and patchouli, white musk and dark. She moved on, systematically, sniffing every single offering until her nose went numb and she was forced to rest. Child lingered near the stall of a kafa-maker so that the bitter-bright aroma of his roasted beans would refresh her senses. At the shop her mistress kept a platter of the beans for cleansing the nasal palette, but she hadn’t dared bring them with her. Ivy-beneath-cedar would suspect her of stealing before borrowing.
While Child rested, a tall woman approached and purchased kafa, her voice sweet and her eye makeup elaborate; whorls of black danced like eddies of wind around her lashes. As she turned to leave a breeze ruffled her wrap, blowing her scent towards Child’s overtired nose.
Balsam. Violet. Cardamom.
Child stiffened, sniffed the air once more to be certain. The woman drifted back into the crowd, nursing her kafa. Entranced, Child followed.
Cardamom-over-violet led her out of the market and into wider, half-empty streets, until they were climbing up winding ways and skirting the fences of homes bigger than any shop Child had ever seen.
Strange gardens grew beyond those gates, inedible plants that thrived under the harsh light, their huge leaves drooping between forbidding iron. Child attempted to slow, to blend into those lingering, but her clothes were too filthy and her feet dribbled ocean sand with each step. She did not belong here.
She did not even have a wrap to obscure that fact.
Cardamom-over-violet turned into one of those iron gates, the trailing edge of her wrap disappearing amongst vibrant greens. Child hesitated, then took a few quick steps forward, hoping to catch sight of some small clue, or just another sniff. Just to be sure.
Fingers wrapped round her arm, vice-tight, and yanked her into the greenery.
She stumbled, tripped, tried to wrench away on instinct but her other arm was grabbed and pinned to her side. Cardamom-over-violet peered at her through her wrap’s obscuring eye net, her eyes a familiar green-brown. Child stilled in her grasp.
“Why are you following me?” the woman asked, and though her voice was sweet it was not the honeyed tones Child remembered from Scentless.
“I thought I knew your scent, Cardamom-over-violet. Please forgive me, I was mistaken.”
The woman released her and leaned back, pressing her back against the gate. Relief flooded the woman’s posture, a slump came to her shoulders. “No, forgive me for grabbing you, Child. I am on edge.”
Child eased forward a half-step. “Are you well?”
Cardamom-over-violet’s head jerked forward, her shoulders squared, “I am fine, only grieving. The spirit of my sister…” She broke off, shook her head. “Never mind. I am a silly, mad woman.”
Child licked her lips, clenched her fist around the vial in her pocket. “Maybe it was your sister’s scent I recognized?”
“Impossible,” the woman snapped, “my sister drowned in the sea. An accident. Now go,” she pointed, “back to your world, little one.”
Child crossed Bahat in a haze, unable to peel her fingers from the vial. Cardamom-over-violet’s scent had been correct, she was certain of it. Her nose never lied to her, even if it was tired from a day of blending.
As she pushed her way free of the market press she caught a whiff of something, clean and sharp. Like the rain around lightning. Like the air above the sea. She froze, turned slowly, found the aroma turned with her. Shaking herself, leaves fell from her hat, their vibrant green bruised deep where they had been crushed against her. Leaves from Cardamom-over-violet’s garden.
Before they could be trod upon she scooped them up, gathered them up near her nose and breathed deep. Yes, that was it. That was the scent of the air above the sea. Now she would just need the brine. The iron.
Regret panged through her, bitter and queasy. Regret because she had already made her choice—already knew what she must do. To survive. She drew a deep breath to steady her nerves.
Every good perfumer knew where to find the scent of iron.
She glanced at the angle of the rusted sun, saw it seeping down into dusk. Ivy-beneath-cedar would be out by now, drinking away her silver.
And Child had her own key to the shop.
Scentless came the next morning. Her wrap was the same fine weave, the same loose fit. Her eyes bore no marks, but shone green-brown down at Child. A green-brown that was familiar to her now. Peering through the shadow of Scentless’s eye net, she followed the partial line of a cheekbone, marked the edge of the top of her nose. More than sisters. Twins.
Child’s fingers trembled as she sat the first vial upon the counter, nudged it forward. She had not bothered to set the wax on the cork with the seal of the shop; she wanted no link between the two.
“Here is Cardamom-over-violet,” she said, and watched the corners of the woman’s eyes twitch with subtle recognition.
“And the other?” the woman asked.
Taking a deep breath, Child set a second vial upon the counter. It was a sliver less full than the first, its cork also unwaxed.
“It is unfinished,” Scentless said, her voice as dulcet as ever.
“I need to know two things first.” Child willed strength into her voice, heard it crack anyway.
“Ask,” she said, a lilt of curiosity creeping through.
“First, will you pay me the gold?”
Scentless pulled a rope of glittering gold from within the folds of her wrap and laid it upon the counter with deliberate care. She took her hand back, leaving the gold. A promise.
Child nodded, cleared her throat. “Second. Did you drown in the sea?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed, and she gave a slight shake of the head. “No. I was drowned in the sea.”
“Give me your hand,” Child said as she uncorked the unfinished bottle and slid it forward. Scentless hesitated just a breath, then held her wrapped hand above it. Child grasped it in her own, felt the lush weave of the fabric, softer than any silk. She pricked the woman’s finger with a fine needle. Scentless sucked air through her teeth, but did not flinch.
Child squeezed drops through the cloth into the bottle. Drops that were not red. One, two. The deep-teal ichor was slow, viscous. Child whisked the bottle away and gave the woman her hand back, then stirred the mixture with the needle. Sniffed.
Metallic brine tingled her nose, mingling with the fresh-air aroma of the leaves. It would not last, the ichor would decay and lose its scent, but Child suspected it would last for as long as the woman needed.
She corked the vial, and still did not bother to wax it.
Scentless gathered both, bowed her thanks, and turned to leave.
“Wait,” Child blurted, and blushed as the woman glanced back, one thick brow raised. “What will you do?”
“This,” she held up Cardamom-over-violet, “will be for me. And this,” she held up the other, “is for the sister who squats in my home.”
Long after Scentless had gone, Child closed the shop and stepped under the red light of the sun’s regard, gold rope heavy in her pocket. In one hand she clutched a new vial, its wax stamped with a sigil of her own making. She held it to the bloodied light, the contents sloshing slow and viscous within their confines. It smelled of air and earth, of sand underfoot, and rain threatening above.
Of a storm about to break.
A fitting name, to start a new life in a new city. Far away from the nameless Child who had blended a killer’s end. Ozone-over-fern turned toward the market. She was going to need a wrap before she could buy a workshop of her own.
Steal the Sky
On behalf of Angry Robot, this message serves as an official grant of permission for Megan E. O’Keefe to include 10%, plus or minus a page or two as needed, from STEAL THE SKY in UP AND COMING: STORIES BY THE 2016 CAMPBELL-ELIGIBLE AUTHORS, an anthology put together by S.L. Huang and Kurt Hunt.
Chapter 1
It was a pretty nice burlap sack. Not the best he’d had the pleasure of inhabiting, not by a long shot, but it wasn’t bad either. The jute was smooth and woven tight, not letting in an inkling of light or location. It didn’t chafe his cheeks either, which was a small comfort.
The chair he was tied to was of considerably lesser quality. Each time Detan shifted his weight to keep the ropes from cutting off his circulation little splinters worked their way into his exposed arms and itched something fierce. Despite the unfinished wood, the chair’s joints were solid, and the knots on his ropes well-tied, which was a shame.
Detan strained his ears, imagining that if he tried hard enough he could work out just where he was. No use, that. Walls muted the bustle of Aransa’s streets, and the bitter-char aromas of local delicacies were blotted by the tight weave of the sack over his head. At least the burlap didn’t stink of the fear-sweat of those who’d worn it before him.
Someone yanked the bag off and that was surprising, because he hadn’t heard anyone in the room for the last half-mark. Truth be told, he was starting to think they’d forgotten about him, which was a mighty blow to his pride.
As he blinked in the light, the blurry face of his visitor resolved into an assemblage of hard, almond-brown planes with sandy hair scraped back into a tight, professional plait. Ripka. Funny, she looked taller than the last time he’d seen her. He gave her a stupid grin, because he knew she hated it.
“Detan Honding.” He liked the way she said his name, dropping each syllable in place as if she were discarding rotten fruit. “Thought I told you to stay well clear of Aransa.”
“I think you’ll find I’ve been doing my very best to honor your request, watch-captain. I am a paragon of lawfulness, a beacon for the truthful, a—”
“Really? Then why did my men find you card-sharking in Blasted Rock Inn?”
“Card sharking?” he asked in the most incredulous voice he could muster. “I don’t even know what that is. What’s a sha-ark? Sounds dangerous!”
Ripka shook her head like a disappointed proctor and took a step back, tossing the bag to the ground. Detan was sorry to see such a fine sack abused so, but he took the chance to take in his surroundings. The room was simple, not a stick of furniture in it aside from his own chair and the corner of a desk peeking out from around the eclipsing curve of the watch-captain.
By the color of the warm light, he guessed there weren’t any windows hiding behind him, just clean oil lamps. The floor was hard-packed dirt, the walls unyielding yellowstone. It was construction he recognized all too well, though he’d never had the pleasure of seeing this particular room before. He was in the Watch’s station house, halfway up the levels of the stepped city of Aransa. Could be worse. Could have been a cell.
Ripka sat behind what he supposed must be her desk. No books, no trinkets. Not the slightest hint of personality. Just a neat stack of papers with a polished pen laid beside it. Definitely Ripka’s.
Keeping one stern eye on him, she pulled a folder from the stack of papers and splayed it open against the desk. Before it flipped open, Detan saw his family crest scribbled on the front in basic, hasty lines. He’d seen that folder only once before, the first time he’d blown through Aransa, and it hadn’t had anything nice to say about him then. He fought down a grimace, waiting while her eyes skimmed over all the details she’d collected of his life. She sighed, drumming her fingers on the desk as she spoke.
“Let’s see now. Last time you were here, Honding, you and your little friend Tibal unlawfully imprisoned Watcher Banch, distributed false payment, stole personal property from the family Erst, and disrupted the peace of the entire fourth level.”
“All a terrible misunderstanding, I assure—”
She held up a fist to silence him.
“I can’t hold you on any of this. Banch and the Ersts have withdrawn their complaints and your fake grains have long since disappeared. But none of that means I can’t kick your sorry hide out of my city, understand? You’re the last person I need around here right now. I don’t know why you washed up on my sands, but I’ll give you until the night to shove off again.”
“I’d be happy to oblige, captain, but my flier’s busted and it’ll be a good few turns before she’s airworthy again. But don’t you worry, Tibs’s working on getting it fixed up right.”
“Still dragging around Tibal? Should have known, you’ve got that poor sod worshipping your shadow, and it’s going to get him killed someday. What’s wrong with the flier? And stop trying to work your ropes loose.”
He froze and mustered up what he thought was a contrite grin. Judging by the way Ripka glowered at him he was pretty sure she didn’t take it right. No fault of his if she didn’t have a sense of humor.
“Punctured a buoyancy sack somewhere over the Fireline Ridge, lucky for us I’m a mighty fine captain myself, otherwise we’d be tits-up in the Black Wash right about now.”
Her fingers stopped drumming. “Really. Fireline. Nothing but a bunch of uppercrusts taking tours of the selium mines and dipping in at the Salt Baths over there. So just what in the sweet skies were you doing up there?”
A chill worked its way into his spine at her pointed glare, her pursed lips. Old instincts to flee burbled up in him, and for just a moment his senses reached out. There was a small source of selium—the gas that elevated airships—just behind Ripka’s desk.
A tempting amount. Just small enough to cause a distraction, if he chose to use it. He grit his teeth and pushed the urge aside. If he were caught out for being a sel-sensitive, it’d be back to the selium mines with him—or worse, into the hands of the whitecoats.
He forced a cheery grin. “Certainly not impersonating a steward and selling false excursion tickets to the Baths. That would be beneath me.”
She groaned and dragged her fingers through her hair, mussing her plait. “I want you out of my city, Honding, and a busted buoyancy sack shouldn’t take more’n a day to patch up. Can you do that?”
“That would be no trouble at all.”
“Wonderful.”
“If it were just the buoyancy sack.”
Her fingers gripped the edge of her desk, knuckles going white. “I could throw you in the Smokestack and no one in the whole of the Scorched would lift a finger to find out why.”
“But you wouldn’t. You’re a good woman, Ripka Leshe. It’s your biggest flaw.”
“Could be I make you my first step on a downward spiral.”
“Who put sand in your trousers, anyway? Everyone’s wound up around here like the Smokestack is rearing to blow. Pits below, Ripka, your thugs didn’t even take my bribe.”
“Watch-captain Leshe,” she corrected, but it was an automatic answer, lacking any real snap. “You remember Warden Faud?”
“’Course I do, that fellow is straight as a mast post. Told me if he ever saw my sorry hide here again he’d tan it and use the leather for a new sail. Reminds me of you, come to think on it.”
“Well, he’s dead. Found him ballooned up on selium-gas floating around the ceiling of his sitting room. Good thing the shutters were pulled, otherwise I think he would have blown halfway to the Darkling Sea by now.”
Detan snorted. He bit his lip and closed his eyes, struggling to hold down a rising tide of laughter. Even Ripka had a bit of a curl to her mouth as she told the story. But still, she had admired the crazy old warden, and Detan suspected she might just consider carrying out the man’s wish of turning him into leather if he let loose with the laugh he was swallowing.
He risked opening his eyes. “How in the pits did it all stay in there?”
Her face was a mask of professional decorum. “The late warden had been sealed with guar sap. On all ends.”
“Still got him?…I could use a new buoyancy sack.”
Detan was too busy laughing until the tears flowed to see her coming. She swept the leg of his chair away and he went down with a grunt, but he didn’t care. It was just too much for him to let go. When he had subsided into burbling chuckles, Ripka cleared her throat. He felt a little triumphant to see a bit of wet shining at the corner of her eye.
“Are you quite finished?” she asked.
“For now.”
She produced a short blade of bone-blacked Valathean steel. It probably had a poncy name, but all Detan cared about was the fresh glint along the cutting edge. It was a good knife, and that was usually bad news for him. Good women with good knives had a habit of making use of them in his general direction. He swallowed, tried to scoot away and only dug his splinters deeper.
“Now, there’s no need for—”
“Oh, shut up.”
She knelt beside him and cut the ropes around his wrists and ankles. He knew better than to pop right up. Irritable people were prone to making rash decisions, and he’d discovered there were a surprisingly large number of irritable people in the world. When she stepped away he wormed himself to his feet and made a show of rubbing his wrists.
“Some higher-quality rope wouldn’t be too much to ask for, I think.”
“No one cares what you think, Honding.” She jerked the chair back to its feet and pointed with the blade. “Now sit.”
He eyed the rickety structure and shuffled his feet toward the door. “Wouldn’t want to take up any more of your time, watch-captain…”
“Did I say you could leave?” Her knuckles went bloodless on the handle of the blade, her already thin lips squeezed together in a hard line. Detan glanced at the chair, then back at Ripka. A few traitorous beads of sweat crested his brow. He thought about the selium, looming somewhere behind her desk, but shunted the idea aside. She pointed again.
He obliged. He had a life philosophy of never saying no to a lady with a knife if he could help it. And anyway, something had her wound up crankier than a rockcat in a cold bath. She needed something, and needful people often played loose with their gold.
“Thought you wanted me gone yesterday,” he ventured.
“Then it’s too bad you’re here today. I want a timeline from you, understand?”
“Oh, well. Let’s see. In the beginning, the firemounts broke free from the sea—”
“Stop. Just. Stop.”
He shut up. He didn’t often know when he was pushing it, but he knew it now.
“Thratia is making a grab for the warden’s seat, understand? I can’t have you in my hair when I’ve got her in my shadow.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
He grimaced. Detan had been all over the Scorched Continent a half dozen times easy and he had yet to run into a woman more ruthless than ex-Commodore Thratia Ganal. Sure, she was Valathean-bred and all sweetness and light to anyone with gold in their pockets. But it had to be the right amount of gold, backed by the right intentions.
Poor as a smokefish? Better work for her. Enough gold to buy a proper uppercrust house? Best pay your fire taxes, Aransa was a dangerous place, after all. More gold than her? Better invest in whatever she wants and then sod right off to wherever you came from.
A pleasant conversationalist, though, so that was something.
Rumor had it Thratia didn’t appreciate the spidery arm of Valathean law meddling with the Scorched settlements, which meant Ripka was in the shit if Thratia took over. Even with the whole of the Darkling Sea between Valathea’s island empire and the Scorched, the empire’s control over its frontier cities was absolute through its selium-lifted airships and its Watchers. The Watchers held to imperial law, and kept the Scorched’s selium mines producing to fill Valathean needs and Valathean coffers.
And Thratia didn’t much care for Valathean needs, now that they’d kicked her loose.
He stifled another oh, watching the honorable watch-captain through enlightened eyes. The way she kept glancing at the door, as if she were worried someone would barge in. The way she held her knife, point-out and ready to dance. She was scared senseless.
And scared people were easy to play. Detan leaned forward, hands clasped with interest, brow drawn in grave understanding.
“You think she was behind the warden’s death?” he asked, just to keep Ripka talking while he worked through the possibilities.
“That crow? I doubt it. It’s not her style, wasting something as valuable as selium to make a point. The favorite theory going around right now is it was a doppel.” She snorted. “Caught one a few days back, impersonating some dead mercer. City’s been seeing them in every shadow ever since. Might as well be a ghost or a bogeyman, but I can’t ignore the possibility. Your mouth is open, Honding.”
He shut it. “Are you serious? A doppel?”
He’d heard of the creatures—everyone little Scorched lad grew up with stories of scary doppels replacing your loved ones—but he’d never seen one before. The amount of skill and strength it’d take to use a thin layer of prismatic selium to cover your own face, changing hues and sculpting features, was so far beyond his ken the thought left him speechless. He was all brute strength when it came to his sel-sensitivity. He even had trouble shaping a simple ball out of the lighter-than-air gas.
“They’re not pets, rockbrain,” Ripka said. “They’re extremely dangerous and if they’re geared up to attack the settlements then we’re going to have to send word to Valathea.”
Detan’s mouth felt coated in ash. Valathea liked its sel-sensitives just fine, but as Detan had found out to his own personal horror it liked them weak, fit for little more than moving the gas out of mines and into the buoyant bellies of ships. Anytime the sensitives got too strong, or their abilities deviated from the accepted standard, Valathean steel came out ringing.
“That’d mean a purge,” he said.
She tipped her chin down, and her gaze snagged on the knife in her hand as if seeing it for the first time. For just a moment, her mask slipped. Detan squinted, trying to read the fine lines of her face. Was that sadness? Or indigestion? Ripka rolled her shoulders to loosen them and retightened her grip.
“I can’t have half this city’s sel-sensitives wiped out because they might be breeding too strongly. The Smokestack is an active mine, we need the sensitives to keep it moving. I’ll find the murderer before Valathea needs to get involved.”
He shook off the thought of a purge and focused on what mattered: Thratia was filthy rich. And, even as an ex-commodore, the owner of a rather fine airship.
Even trolling around the smaller, ramshackle steadings of the Scorched, Detan had heard of Thratia’s latest prize. The Larkspur, she was called, and rumor had it she was as sleek as an oiled rockcat. Being both fast and large, that ship was making Thratia immensely rich as mercers across the empire paid a premium to have her ferry their goods to the most lucrative ports long before slower, competing vessels could catch up. Detan had no need for the Larkspur’s goods-delivery services, but he rather fancied the idea of ripping the rug out from under Thratia’s quickly growing mercer collective. And anyway, he thought he’d probably cut a pretty handsome figure standing on the deck of a ship like that. Although he’d have to upgrade to a nicer hat.
“Well, watch-captain, maybe we can help each other out.”
She looked like she’d drunk sour milk. “You’re kidding. Only way you can help me is by getting gone, Honding. You understand?” Ripka turned away from him and sat behind her desk once more, her thigh bumping the side with a light clunk as she did so. Detan allowed himself a little smile; so the brave watch-captain wore body armor while in his presence.
“Oh, pah. You and I both know that if Thratia wants the wardenship she’s going to take it. People fear her too damned much to risk not voting her in. And you’ll be too busy chasing your boogeyman to do anything about it.”
“Fear? You got it wrong. They respect her, and that’s the trouble of it. She’ll get voted in, nice and legal. No need for a coup,” she said.
“So what if I could…undermine that respect? Make a public fool of her?”
“The only public fool around here is you.”
“Well, you want me gone, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And I don’t have a flier to get gone with, do I?”
She just frowned at him.
“And you want Thratia undermined, right?”
“I suppose…”
“So I’ll steal her airship!”
“You’re out of your sandbagged mind, Honding.”
“No, no—listen up, captain.” He leaned forward and held his hand out, ticking off the fingers with each point he made. “Thratia’s got power here because she’s got respect, right?”
“And money.”
“Right, and money. So we can get rid of her respect, and a substantial chunk of her money, in one big blow.” He made a fist and raised it up.
“You only made one point there, and you’ve got five fingers.”
“Er, well. That doesn’t matter. It makes sense, Ripka.”
“Watch-captain.”
“Watch-captain.” He gave her a smile bright as the midday sun and leaned back in his chair with his fingers laced behind his head. “It’s brilliant. She’ll look like a doddering fool and you can swoop in and save the day. Then let me go, of course.”
She snorted. “Why in the blue skies would I want to do that?”
“Because I’d tell Thratia it was your idea if you didn’t, obviously.”
“And then I look the fool for letting you escape.”
“No, we let it sit for a while. I’ll slip away after you’ve got the wardenship secured. Tell everyone you shipped me off to serve hard labor on the Remnant Isles.”
She started, eyes narrowing. “You think I want to be warden?”
Had he misjudged? Detan held his hands up to either side, palms facing the sweet skies to indicate he would defer to her better judgment. “Well, you must. Or you’ve got someone in mind, surely?”
She pressed her fingers together above the desk, the arc of her hands outlining the mouth of a cave, and leaned forward as she thought. It was odd she seemed to be thinking so hard about this. He’d thought she’d have someone in mind worth the promotion, but he still couldn’t help but grin. Her body language was open, interested. There was a little furrow between her brows, deep and contemplative. He’d got her.
“Mine-master Galtro would be a good candidate,” she said, and he chose to ignore the hesitance in her voice. Didn’t matter to him who she picked. He planned on being long gone by the time that particular seat was being warmed.
He leapt to his feet and clapped once. “Good! Marvelous! Hurrah! We have a warden! Now you just need to let me do my—”
“Whoa now. What’s in this for you?”
“The thrill of adventure!”
“Try again.”
“Fine.” He huffed. “Say, perhaps, the ship has a little accident in all that excitement. Say, just for example, that some convincing wreckage is found made of the right materials, with the right name emblazoned on the heap. Say that to all the citizens, and let me keep the blasted thing.”
She drummed her fingers on the desk. “Thratia’s compound is the most secure in the whole city. Just how do you think you’re going to get anywhere near her ship?”
“That’s my worry, partner.”
“I am not—”
“Watch-captain.”
She scowled at him, but quieted.
“Look, don’t worry over it all too much and don’t count on it yet either, understand? I’m going to have a look around, see if it’s even doable, and then I’ll contact you again with our options.”
“You get snagged, and I’ll swear I sent you packing this day.”
“Wouldn’t expect it any other way.”
“And if you can’t find a way to work it?”
“Tibal will have the flier fixed up by then, nice and smooth.”
Ripka eyed him, hard and heavy, and he thanked the stable sands that he had a whole lot of practice at keeping his face open and charming. She grunted and dragged open the top drawer of her desk.
“Here.” She tossed him a thin cloth pouch and he rolled it over in his hands, guessing at the weight of the grains of precious metal within. “You’ll need to stay upcrust if you want any chance of getting eyes on Thratia, and I’m guessing ole Auntie Honding hasn’t provided you with an allowance fit for something like that.”
Detan winced at the mention of his auntie, the stern-faced warden of Hond Steading, a mental tally of guilt piling up for every day of the calendar he hadn’t bothered to visit her. Forcing a smile back into place, he vanished the pouch into his pocket and half-bowed over upraised palms. “You are as wise as you are generous.”
“Get gone, Honding, and don’t contact me again until you’ve got a plan situated.”
Detan Honding prided himself on being a man who knew not to overstay his welcome. He made himself scarce in a hurry.
Chapter 2
“Fresh up from the southern coast,” Sergeant Banch said as he passed her an amber bottle, its contents labeled by a stamped blob of wax so cracked and chipped she couldn’t make it out. Like it mattered. Ripka tipped her head back and drank.
The mud wall of the guardhouse was cool against her back, the bottle warm in her hand, and the memory of the rising sun still rosy on her cheeks. So what if the bench was stiff beneath her? So what if the stench of fresh blood clung to her nostrils still? She drank deep, ignoring the murmur of the crowd dispersing just outside the guardhouse door.
It’d been one sand-blighted morning. Executing a man was never her favorite service to perform on behalf of the city, but with rumors flying wild about a killer on the loose, and Warden Faud not two days in the dirt, the city was wound up tight. She’d never seen such a turnout before. She only wished she could have given them the blood of Faud’s murderer, instead of some sandbagged thief. Doppel or no, she had no taste for executing non-violent criminals.
Ripka glanced toward the ceiling, squinting as if she could see through the rafters to the freshly minted corpse of the doppel who’d stolen Mercer Agert’s ship. Brave son of a bitch, he hadn’t blinked when she’d asked if he wanted to meet the axe or walk the Black. He’d opted for the axe, which always surprised her. But then, walking the Black was one pits-cursed way to go.
The Black Wash spread out between the city’s lowest wall and the rugged slopes of the Smokestack—the great, looming firemount from which the city mined its selium. Composed of glittering shards of firemount glass, the path between the city and the Smokestack was blisteringly hot during the day. Merely standing on the black sands could leave your face burned within a quarter-mark.
As long as Ripka’d been in Aransa, she’d never heard of a soul making it across the sands alive. First your face burned, crisped up under the glare of the sun, and any stretch of skin not covered in cloth was quick to follow. If your shoes weren’t sturdy enough—and most condemned were forced to walk in prison garb; thin boots, linen jumpsuits, no hat—then the unweathered shards of black glass would work their way through to your feet before you’d reached the quarter waypoint. By halfway, you were leaving bloodied smears in your wake. By three-quarters, most lay down to die.
With no water, and no shade, the heat of the air dried out your lungs, made every breath a pink-tinged rasp. Dried out your eyes, too, and many were weeping blood while they were still close enough to the city walls for people to see what should have been the whites of their eyes turned angry red. Most were jerky before they made it within throwing distance of the Smokestack.
It was miserable, and it was deadly. But it was a whole lot less final than a beheading. At least you had a chance out there. Under the axeman’s swing, your chances were used up in one swoop.
She took another draw on the bottle. It did little to wash away the memories of this morning’s execution, the phantom heat of the black sands at her back.
“Think the vultures are gone yet?” she asked.
“’Nother half-mark, I bet. The undertaker’s not done dicing him up, and there’s some that will want a memento. Bit o’ hair, a real knuckle bone to throw. Shit like that.”
Ripka cringed and took another swallow. “Damn savages.”
“Says the Brown Wash girl.”
She laughed, alcohol burning in her throat, and fell into a coughing fit. Oh well. At least the guardhouse was nice and cool. “Don’t see why they have to chop the poor bastards up anyway.”
“You know how Valatheans get about graves. Put the whole body in one place and people will make a shrine of it. Then we’ve got a martyr on our hands.”
“Pah, no one’s going to make a martyr of a doppel. They’re piss-scared of them.”
“You’d be surprised,” a woman said.
Ripka glanced up from the bench and squinted at the backlit figure. Tall, strong, womanly in a way that rankled Ripka with jealousy. Thratia. She wore a simple bloodstone-hued tunic, martial leggings and tall leather boots. No fancy attire for Thratia—she liked to keep her appearance akin to the common folk of Aransa, nevermind her massive compound sprawling across half the city’s second level. Sad thing was, most of the locals fell for her of-the-people charm.
Ripka snapped her a half-hearted salute and nearly clanged the bottle against her head in the process.
“Morning, Thratia. You do know this is a guardhouse? Not usually open for visitors, if you take my meaning.”
Thratia brushed the long warbraid from her shoulder and shut the door behind her, dipping them all back into the dim light of dusty lamps. Ripka made a note to have the men who usually manned this place scrub it down.
“I do not mean to interrupt your—” she let her eyes roam over the bottle in Ripka’s hand and the blue coats of their uniforms slumped over the backs of chairs, “—work. But, after observing today’s execution I wanted to commend the forces of the Watch for your fine administration of justice here in Aransa.”
“Really. That’s all?”
“Well…”
Ripka chuckled and waved the bottle in her direction. “Go on then.”
“I had expected you to encourage the condemned to walk the Black.”
“Encouraged? That’s not our place. It’s been the condemned’s choice since the day Aransa was settled, and it’ll stay that way.”
“I understand there is a certain level of patriotism involved in the display of choice, and that is valuable. However, walking the Black is a unique feature of Aransa, and I believe it would do the people good to see the condemned die not only by the will of the city, but a feature of the city itself. In the case of doppels, it would also enhance the message that they are not wanted here, as they would be cast out. Forced to walk away from the city to die.”
Ripka frowned, wondering just how much Thratia had rehearsed that little speech. “And how do you suggest we encourage them to make that choice?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Thratia waved a dismissive hand through the air. “You could always get rid of the option of the axemen. Make it hanging or walking.”
“Hanging’s a sorry way to die.”
“Exactly.”
Ripka leaned forward, sat the bottle on the bench beside her, and rested her forearms across her knees. Thratia stayed where she was, a single step in from the door, her charcoal arms crossed over her chest and a little smile on her face so small and warm Ripka half expected her to offer up a sweetcake to share. Ripka cleared her throat.
“I’ll take that under advisement, Thratia. Thank you for your visit.”
“I hope to share many more visits with you, watch-captain. Best of luck in apprehending the doppel who murdered Warden Faud.” She bowed at the waist, nothing mocking about it, and stepped back out into the bright of day.
Banch and Ripka sat for awhile, letting the rum they’d drunk warm up the chill Thratia had left behind. She ground her teeth, then plucked a wax-wrapped nub of barksap from her pocket and popped it into her mouth to chew over.
“There goes our new boss,” Banch said.
Ripka chucked him in the arm, nearly missed and had to put a hand on the bench to keep from sprawling to the ground. “Resigned to it already? Mine-master Galtro could win it. Thratia’s a skies-cursed murderer. Even Valathea thought she was too brutal to keep around. You think Aransa will vote in the woman they call General Throatslitter behind her back?”
“Please, they call her that to her front. It’s practically a rally cry. They love that she stuck it to the empire.”
“She refused to relinquish power after her conquest on behest of Valathea of the Saldive Isles. Nothing heroic about that.”
Banch rolled his shoulders and snagged the bottle back, tested its weight with a disappointed scowl. “Tell it to the folk in the lower levels she’s been sending food to. Tell it to the mercers who’ve been promised they can use that fancy new ship of hers for faster trade.”
“I just don’t trust her, Banch. She’s up to something.”
“O’ course she is. Everyone on this sunblasted continent is.”
Ripka rolled her eyes and dropped her head back against the wall, letting the chill of it seep through her hair and sooth the itch of her sun-kissed scalp while she thought.
Just why was Thratia so keen to send people to walk the sands? Walking the Black meant that if you were very, very lucky you just might survive. If Ripka was sure about anything, it was that Thratia felt no mercy for those who stood for judgment on the guardhouse roof. Why would she want a doppel, of all things, to have a chance at life?
So she could use them.
Ripka shot up from the bench and heaved herself up the ladder to the roof where the execution had taken place. The undertaker was still busy at his work and gave her a cheery, gore-smeared wave when she glanced his way.
Clenching her jaw, she strode to the back edge of the roof and leaned out just as far as she dared. The Black Wash splayed below her, glittering so bright she had to squint and bring a hand up to shade her eyes. She stared straight on at the sharp crest of the Smokestack and the Fireline Ridge spread out around it, waiting for her vision to get used to the blinding light. Banch hauled himself up beside her.
“Just what in the pits are you doing, captain?”
“There, look.” She pointed at two glints of light, figures moving across the rugged side of the Fireline up toward the ferries that shuttled people back and forth from the city to the selium mines and Salt Baths. The mines were shut down for the day due to an infestation in one of the pipelines, and the baths were clear on the other side of the Fireline—too far by half for a leisurely stroll.
“Aw shit. Do you think we’ll have to send a rescue?”
“Those aren’t lost bathers.”
The figures sped up, moving with expert ease over the rough terrain. The glints she had noticed came from low about their waists, about the right place for a sword handle to rest.
Banch’s voice was very, very quiet. “Thratia’s?”
“Who else? I suppose now we know why she wants us to make the doppels walk.”
She turned away from the vista and forced herself to look at what was left of the nameless doppel. He was a brave man, and now she suspected she understood why he’d been so sure of the axe. She’d heard horror stories of Valatheans enslaving the doppels, using their desire to be close to selium to secure their loyalty. It was illegal, of course, even the imperials saw using the doppels as cruel and unsavory. But Thratia hadn’t been exiled to the Scorched Continent for being kind and cuddly.
“Come on, Banch. We’ve got to find our killer.”
Before Thratia does.
Chapter 3
The downcrust levels of Aransa were hotter than a draw on a jug of spicewine. Ripka had set Detan free just a mark or so after sunrise, and already the streets were baking. He tugged his shirt-ties loose as he wandered down the cramped streets to where he’d left Tibs with the flier, winking at ladies as he passed.
Not that there were many ladies with a capital “L” this far down in the city. The real desert flowers liked it up top where parasols and shade trees were plentiful. He figured the women down here were more fun, anyway. At least they weren’t shy with their hand-gestures.
He found Tibs lying under the fronds of a reedpalm, his hat pulled down over his eyes and his back propped up against the carcass of their six-man flier. Tibs was a scrawny bastard, long of limb even when he was slouched. Last night’s clothes clung to him in disturbing pleats of grime and sweat, and his boots were beginning to separate from their soles. Hair that Detan suspected had once been a pale brown stuck up in strange angles from under his hat.
Detan crept up on him, squinting down into the shadow that hid his sun-weathered face. Tibs was breathing, slow and even, so he turned his attention to the flier.
It was long and flat, maybe a dozen and a half long paces from end-to-end, crafted in the style of old riverbarges. Its sel-sacks, which would normally be ballooned up above it under thick rope netting, lay crumpled on the deck. Though rectangular of body, Tibs had worked up a neat little pyramidal bowsprit to make it a titch more aerodynamic, and Detan had made blasted sure that the pulley-and-fan contrivance of its navigational system was made of the best stuff he could afford. Or steal. Even its accordion-like stabilizing wings, folded in now, were webbed with leather supple and strong enough to make a fine Lady’s gloves feel coarse and cheap.
Midship, right behind the helm, rose a plain-walled cabin just wide and long enough to house two curtain-partitioned sleeping quarters. It was a good show for guests, but the real living space was hidden in the flat hold between deck and keel. Though the space was not quite tall enough for Detan to stand straight within, it ran the length of the ship—a sturdy little secret placed there by the smugglers who had originally built the thing. To Detan’s eyes, it was the most beautiful thing in the whole of the world.
Unfortunately, the buoyancy sacks lay flaccid and punctured and the right rudder-prop was cracked clean off, rather ruining the effect
Detan glowered and kicked Tibs in the leg. He squawked like a dunkeet and flailed awake, knocking his hat to the black-tinged dirt.
“The pits you doing, Tibs? You haven’t even touched the old bird.”
Tibs reached for his hat and picked off a spiny leaf. “Oh I touched it all right, just couldn’t do a damn thing for it. What you think I am, a magician? The buoyancy sacks are as airtight as pumice-stone and the mast is as stable as mica on edge, lemme tell you.”
“Please do tell me, old chum, because I sure as shit don’t understand your miner-man rock babble.”
The lanky man rolled his eyes as he hoisted himself to his feet, and to Detan’s never-ending consternation took his time about brushing the dust from his trouser legs. Damned funny thing, a mechanic with a fastidious streak.
“Simple-said, there’s no repairing either of the buoyancy sacks. They were half-patches long before they took this latest damage and that mast is about as stable as a—well, uh, it’s just fragile, all right?”
“Was that so hard?”
Tibs grunted and wandered over to the flier. He gave one of the sacks a nudge with his toe and shook his head, tsking. “Got no imagination, do you?”
“I got enough imagination to figure out what to do with a lippy miner.”
“I’m your mechanic.”
“Mechanic-miner then.”
Detan snatched Tibs’s hat off his head and put it squarely on his own. Tibs plucked it back with a disappointed cluck of the tongue. “Tole you to bring a spare.”
“Well, I didn’t think I’d be doing barrel-rolls over the Black Wash last night. Sweet sands, Tibs, what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking I’d like very much to get away from the ship shooting spears at us. Sirra.”
Detan ignored his smirk and took over his old chum’s spot under the reedpalm. He sank down onto the black dirt and tipped his head back against the tree’s rough trunk. In the shade, the breeze didn’t feel like it was trying to steal his breath away. His eyes drifted shut, his muscles unknotted.
Tibs kicked his foot.
“What?” Detan grumbled.
“You win us enough to fix her up?”
“Better.” He wrestled with his belt pouch and tossed it up to his companion. Tibs poured the contents out in his wide, flat hand, barely able to contain all the fingernail-sized grains of brass and silver. He whistled low. “Mighty fine haul, but may I ask who’s going to be hunting us down to get it back?”
“You lack faith, old friend. That there is a genuine upfront payment from Watch-captain Ripka Leshe herself.”
Tibs did not look as impressed as Detan would have liked. “Payment for what?”
“She’s hired us to steal Thratia’s lovely new airship, the Larkspur, of course. Seems the ex-commodore is getting a mite too comfortable here in Aransa, and needs to be shown her place.”
He beamed up at Tibs, relishing the slow shock that widened his eyes and parted his lips. It was good to surprise the shriveled smokeweed of a man, but it didn’t last. Tibs’s eyes narrowed and his shoulders tensed. “That doesn’t sound much like the watch-captain.”
Detan frowned. “No, it doesn’t, does it? But that’s the way it’s been played to us. We just have to get a step ahead.”
Tibs sighed and cast a longing look at their downed bird. “Sounds like a mess. Maybe we should just take the money and move along. Thratia isn’t known for her forgiving nature, you know, and monsoon season’s coming. Wouldn’t want to get stuck in a sel-mining city come the rains, would we?”
Detan flinched at the thought of being stranded here, so very close to the Smokestack. All that tempting selium being pumped out from the bowels of the world no more than a ferry ride away. It was hard enough keeping his sensitivity to himself when they were in the sel-less reaches of the Scorched. Stuck in a city full of it? He’d give himself away in a single turn of the moon.
For the barest of moments he considered writing to Auntie Honding for enough grain to get the flier airworthy again. But he knew well enough that any response from his dear old auntie would come with strict instructions to return home at once for a lengthy stay, complete with brow-beating. And he knew damned well that lingering at Hond Steading, with its five selium-producing firemounts, would make hiding his sel-sensitivity from the proper authorities a sight more difficult than managing Aransa’s single mine.
Detan squared his shoulders, forcing his body to display the confidence he wished his mind held. They had time before the rains came. He was sure of it. “Make off with Ripka’s money? She’d have us hanged if we ever showed up here again!”
“More like have our heads lopped off.” Tibs grimaced and spat into the dust.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“City’s all worked up over it. Seems a doppel got caught impersonating some puffed-up mercer. Our new benefactor took his head clear off at sunrise. Not a friendly town for sel-sensitives of deviant abilities, you understand.”
At sunrise. He glanced up the city toward the station house, and though he couldn’t see it from this vantage he imagined all the little watchers returning to it after a good morning’s work.
Takes some time, to lop a man’s head off and clean up the mess. Enough time for Ripka to make it back to the station, little more than a mark after sunrise, to question him then kick him loose? And what of those who had arrested him—they’d said they were acting on the captain’s orders. Where had she been, to see him and order his arrest at the Blasted Rock in the wee hours of the night while preparing to execute a man? He’d never seen her at the inn, true, but…
Detan cleared a sudden hitch in his throat, and Tibs narrowed his little lizardy eyes down at him. Stranger yet, in all her talk of doppels Ripka had failed to mention that she’d done one in just that morning.
He decided not to mention the watch-captain’s lapse of memory to Tibs. It was usually best not to worry the man with silly things like that. Ole’ Tibs liked straight paths, and dithered at forks. Tibs would spend his life wasting away at a crossroads if Detan wasn’t there to push him along. He smiled at what a good friend he was.
“Don’t worry yourself overmuch, Tibs, it’ll give you wrinkles. Now, the watch-captain has asked for our help and on my honor I won’t be leaving the poor woman without assistance. Could you do that? Just leave her here with Thratia itching to take power?”
Tibs gave him a rather ungentlemanly look, but Detan fancied himself too well-bred to be given a rise by that sort of thing.
“I suppose we must help the watch-captain,” he grated.
“Splendid!” Detan clapped his hands as he sprang up and strode over to the downed flier. “Now we have to get this old bird airworthy again.”
“I thought we were soon to acquire a much finer vessel?”
“Have you no sentimentality? We can’t just leave it!”
A little smile quirked up the corners of Tibs’s dry, craggy face. “I suppose not.”
“Brilliant! One step ahead already!”
* * *
They hired a cart to help them move the flier up a few levels to the inn Detan had scouted on his way through the city. It wasn’t upcrust by any stretch of the imagination, and he figured that made it the perfect place to lay low. Thratia never came down this way herself, and Ripka only when there was something that needed cleaning up. It was a nice bonus that the innkeeper didn’t know him, and that he was less likely to run into any of the uppercrusts he’d swindled in the past.
Their room had a half-door in the back that swung open into an old goat pen, just big enough to stash the flier in. Wasn’t likely anyone would steal it, but he felt better about having it close. From the edge of the pen they could see the sweep of Aransa, or at least all those levels that tumbled out below their room.
The downcrust levels were a hodgepodge of daub and stone construction with a few brave souls throwing up the occasional scrap-wood wall. The houses huddled up the side of the mountain, clinging to the good stable rock beneath, and the city was a mess of switchbacking streets. Glittering black sands reached across the distance between Aransa and the Fireline Ridge, the firemount they called Smokestack spearing straight up through the center of the ridge, belching soot and ash. The winds were in their favor today, and so the greasy plume drifted off to the desolate south instead of laying a film of grime over all Aransa.
Blasted dangerous place to stick a city.
From this far away, the glint of metal holding leather-skinned pipes to the Smokestack’s back was the only evidence of the firemount’s rich selium production. Dangerous or not, there’d be folk settled here until the sel was gone. Or until the whole damned place blew.
“Enjoying the view?” Tibs slunk up beside him and wiped his hands on the filthiest rag Detan had ever seen.
“Hasn’t changed much, has it?”
“Don’t suppose it has a need of change. Anyway, bags are stored and the flier’s tarp-tied. Smells like goat piss in there so don’t come whining to me when the whole blasted contraption stinks of it later.”
“I’d never blame the odor of goat on you, old chum. Your bouquet is entirely different, it’s…” He waved a hand to waft up the right word. “It’s distinct.”
Tibs ignored the slight and kept his eyes on a brown paper notebook clutched in one hand. Somehow he’d rummaged up a bit of pointed charcoal and was using it to sketch broad strokes that eventually came together to form their flier. Or, what would have been their flier, if it were in one piece. New formulae appeared around their cabin, and Detan went cross-eyed.
“You can’t possibly know what you’re doing there.”
“Just ’cause you’re an idiot doesn’t mean everyone else is. Sirra.”
“We’re gonna need something to wreck,” he said, anxious to be of some use, “a decoy.”
Tibs just grunted.
Detan grinned. Couldn’t help himself. Some sense was emerging from the mist of numbers and angles, familiar shapes made bigger, stronger. Their tiny little cabin adapted for an entirely larger vessel all together. Adapted further to be modular, easy to piece apart and slap back together again. Easier still to wrap around their current cabin until the time it would be needed.
It was perfect, really. This way they didn’t need to know what Thratia’s ship looked like ahead of time—all ships had cabins on their decks of some kind or another. Once the ship was in hand, he and Tibs could break off Thratia’s original and leave it as a wreck somewhere in the scrub beyond the city. Work up a good fire around it and no one would go looking for the rest of the ship; they’d assume it’d all burned up and give up the trail.
Then he and Tibs could shift the knock-down cabin from their flier onto the deck of Thratia’s ship to cover any holes their hasty carpentry might leave behind. Nothing more suspicious than a big ole ship trundling around the skies without a cabin.
“Oh, that’s clever!” he blurted as Tibs’s plan crystallized in his mind.
“One of us has to be. I’ll need to get a look at the real bird to make sure it all connects, but it should work well enough for a quick switch.”
He gave Tibs time to work out the finer details, then watched in admiration as the crusty man ran his charcoal bit back over all the salient points, thickening the lines as he committed them to memory. When he was finished, Tibs tore the page out, crumpled it, and shoved it in his pocket.
Detan threw an arm around his shoulder. “Come along, now. Let’s go spend some of Ripka’s grains.”
On behalf of Angry Robot, this message serves as an official grant of permission for Megan E. O’Keefe to include 10%, plus or minus a page or two as needed, from STEAL THE SKY in UP AND COMING: STORIES BY THE 2016 CAMPBELL-ELIGIBLE AUTHORS, an anthology put together by S.L. Huang and Kurt Hunt.
Chapter 1
It was a pretty nice burlap sack. Not the best he’d had the pleasure of inhabiting, not by a long shot, but it wasn’t bad either. The jute was smooth and woven tight, not letting in an inkling of light or location. It didn’t chafe his cheeks either, which was a small comfort.
The chair he was tied to was of considerably lesser quality. Each time Detan shifted his weight to keep the ropes from cutting off his circulation little splinters worked their way into his exposed arms and itched something fierce. Despite the unfinished wood, the chair’s joints were solid, and the knots on his ropes well-tied, which was a shame.
Detan strained his ears, imagining that if he tried hard enough he could work out just where he was. No use, that. Walls muted the bustle of Aransa’s streets, and the bitter-char aromas of local delicacies were blotted by the tight weave of the sack over his head. At least the burlap didn’t stink of the fear-sweat of those who’d worn it before him.
Someone yanked the bag off and that was surprising, because he hadn’t heard anyone in the room for the last half-mark. Truth be told, he was starting to think they’d forgotten about him, which was a mighty blow to his pride.
As he blinked in the light, the blurry face of his visitor resolved into an assemblage of hard, almond-brown planes with sandy hair scraped back into a tight, professional plait. Ripka. Funny, she looked taller than the last time he’d seen her. He gave her a stupid grin, because he knew she hated it.
“Detan Honding.” He liked the way she said his name, dropping each syllable in place as if she were discarding rotten fruit. “Thought I told you to stay well clear of Aransa.”
“I think you’ll find I’ve been doing my very best to honor your request, watch-captain. I am a paragon of lawfulness, a beacon for the truthful, a—”
“Really? Then why did my men find you card-sharking in Blasted Rock Inn?”
“Card sharking?” he asked in the most incredulous voice he could muster. “I don’t even know what that is. What’s a sha-ark? Sounds dangerous!”
Ripka shook her head like a disappointed proctor and took a step back, tossing the bag to the ground. Detan was sorry to see such a fine sack abused so, but he took the chance to take in his surroundings. The room was simple, not a stick of furniture in it aside from his own chair and the corner of a desk peeking out from around the eclipsing curve of the watch-captain.
By the color of the warm light, he guessed there weren’t any windows hiding behind him, just clean oil lamps. The floor was hard-packed dirt, the walls unyielding yellowstone. It was construction he recognized all too well, though he’d never had the pleasure of seeing this particular room before. He was in the Watch’s station house, halfway up the levels of the stepped city of Aransa. Could be worse. Could have been a cell.
Ripka sat behind what he supposed must be her desk. No books, no trinkets. Not the slightest hint of personality. Just a neat stack of papers with a polished pen laid beside it. Definitely Ripka’s.
Keeping one stern eye on him, she pulled a folder from the stack of papers and splayed it open against the desk. Before it flipped open, Detan saw his family crest scribbled on the front in basic, hasty lines. He’d seen that folder only once before, the first time he’d blown through Aransa, and it hadn’t had anything nice to say about him then. He fought down a grimace, waiting while her eyes skimmed over all the details she’d collected of his life. She sighed, drumming her fingers on the desk as she spoke.
“Let’s see now. Last time you were here, Honding, you and your little friend Tibal unlawfully imprisoned Watcher Banch, distributed false payment, stole personal property from the family Erst, and disrupted the peace of the entire fourth level.”
“All a terrible misunderstanding, I assure—”
She held up a fist to silence him.
“I can’t hold you on any of this. Banch and the Ersts have withdrawn their complaints and your fake grains have long since disappeared. But none of that means I can’t kick your sorry hide out of my city, understand? You’re the last person I need around here right now. I don’t know why you washed up on my sands, but I’ll give you until the night to shove off again.”
“I’d be happy to oblige, captain, but my flier’s busted and it’ll be a good few turns before she’s airworthy again. But don’t you worry, Tibs’s working on getting it fixed up right.”
“Still dragging around Tibal? Should have known, you’ve got that poor sod worshipping your shadow, and it’s going to get him killed someday. What’s wrong with the flier? And stop trying to work your ropes loose.”
He froze and mustered up what he thought was a contrite grin. Judging by the way Ripka glowered at him he was pretty sure she didn’t take it right. No fault of his if she didn’t have a sense of humor.
“Punctured a buoyancy sack somewhere over the Fireline Ridge, lucky for us I’m a mighty fine captain myself, otherwise we’d be tits-up in the Black Wash right about now.”
Her fingers stopped drumming. “Really. Fireline. Nothing but a bunch of uppercrusts taking tours of the selium mines and dipping in at the Salt Baths over there. So just what in the sweet skies were you doing up there?”
A chill worked its way into his spine at her pointed glare, her pursed lips. Old instincts to flee burbled up in him, and for just a moment his senses reached out. There was a small source of selium—the gas that elevated airships—just behind Ripka’s desk.
A tempting amount. Just small enough to cause a distraction, if he chose to use it. He grit his teeth and pushed the urge aside. If he were caught out for being a sel-sensitive, it’d be back to the selium mines with him—or worse, into the hands of the whitecoats.
He forced a cheery grin. “Certainly not impersonating a steward and selling false excursion tickets to the Baths. That would be beneath me.”
She groaned and dragged her fingers through her hair, mussing her plait. “I want you out of my city, Honding, and a busted buoyancy sack shouldn’t take more’n a day to patch up. Can you do that?”
“That would be no trouble at all.”
“Wonderful.”
“If it were just the buoyancy sack.”
Her fingers gripped the edge of her desk, knuckles going white. “I could throw you in the Smokestack and no one in the whole of the Scorched would lift a finger to find out why.”
“But you wouldn’t. You’re a good woman, Ripka Leshe. It’s your biggest flaw.”
“Could be I make you my first step on a downward spiral.”
“Who put sand in your trousers, anyway? Everyone’s wound up around here like the Smokestack is rearing to blow. Pits below, Ripka, your thugs didn’t even take my bribe.”
“Watch-captain Leshe,” she corrected, but it was an automatic answer, lacking any real snap. “You remember Warden Faud?”
“’Course I do, that fellow is straight as a mast post. Told me if he ever saw my sorry hide here again he’d tan it and use the leather for a new sail. Reminds me of you, come to think on it.”
“Well, he’s dead. Found him ballooned up on selium-gas floating around the ceiling of his sitting room. Good thing the shutters were pulled, otherwise I think he would have blown halfway to the Darkling Sea by now.”
Detan snorted. He bit his lip and closed his eyes, struggling to hold down a rising tide of laughter. Even Ripka had a bit of a curl to her mouth as she told the story. But still, she had admired the crazy old warden, and Detan suspected she might just consider carrying out the man’s wish of turning him into leather if he let loose with the laugh he was swallowing.
He risked opening his eyes. “How in the pits did it all stay in there?”
Her face was a mask of professional decorum. “The late warden had been sealed with guar sap. On all ends.”
“Still got him?…I could use a new buoyancy sack.”
Detan was too busy laughing until the tears flowed to see her coming. She swept the leg of his chair away and he went down with a grunt, but he didn’t care. It was just too much for him to let go. When he had subsided into burbling chuckles, Ripka cleared her throat. He felt a little triumphant to see a bit of wet shining at the corner of her eye.
“Are you quite finished?” she asked.
“For now.”
She produced a short blade of bone-blacked Valathean steel. It probably had a poncy name, but all Detan cared about was the fresh glint along the cutting edge. It was a good knife, and that was usually bad news for him. Good women with good knives had a habit of making use of them in his general direction. He swallowed, tried to scoot away and only dug his splinters deeper.
“Now, there’s no need for—”
“Oh, shut up.”
She knelt beside him and cut the ropes around his wrists and ankles. He knew better than to pop right up. Irritable people were prone to making rash decisions, and he’d discovered there were a surprisingly large number of irritable people in the world. When she stepped away he wormed himself to his feet and made a show of rubbing his wrists.
“Some higher-quality rope wouldn’t be too much to ask for, I think.”
“No one cares what you think, Honding.” She jerked the chair back to its feet and pointed with the blade. “Now sit.”
He eyed the rickety structure and shuffled his feet toward the door. “Wouldn’t want to take up any more of your time, watch-captain…”
“Did I say you could leave?” Her knuckles went bloodless on the handle of the blade, her already thin lips squeezed together in a hard line. Detan glanced at the chair, then back at Ripka. A few traitorous beads of sweat crested his brow. He thought about the selium, looming somewhere behind her desk, but shunted the idea aside. She pointed again.
He obliged. He had a life philosophy of never saying no to a lady with a knife if he could help it. And anyway, something had her wound up crankier than a rockcat in a cold bath. She needed something, and needful people often played loose with their gold.
“Thought you wanted me gone yesterday,” he ventured.
“Then it’s too bad you’re here today. I want a timeline from you, understand?”
“Oh, well. Let’s see. In the beginning, the firemounts broke free from the sea—”
“Stop. Just. Stop.”
He shut up. He didn’t often know when he was pushing it, but he knew it now.
“Thratia is making a grab for the warden’s seat, understand? I can’t have you in my hair when I’ve got her in my shadow.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
He grimaced. Detan had been all over the Scorched Continent a half dozen times easy and he had yet to run into a woman more ruthless than ex-Commodore Thratia Ganal. Sure, she was Valathean-bred and all sweetness and light to anyone with gold in their pockets. But it had to be the right amount of gold, backed by the right intentions.
Poor as a smokefish? Better work for her. Enough gold to buy a proper uppercrust house? Best pay your fire taxes, Aransa was a dangerous place, after all. More gold than her? Better invest in whatever she wants and then sod right off to wherever you came from.
A pleasant conversationalist, though, so that was something.
Rumor had it Thratia didn’t appreciate the spidery arm of Valathean law meddling with the Scorched settlements, which meant Ripka was in the shit if Thratia took over. Even with the whole of the Darkling Sea between Valathea’s island empire and the Scorched, the empire’s control over its frontier cities was absolute through its selium-lifted airships and its Watchers. The Watchers held to imperial law, and kept the Scorched’s selium mines producing to fill Valathean needs and Valathean coffers.
And Thratia didn’t much care for Valathean needs, now that they’d kicked her loose.
He stifled another oh, watching the honorable watch-captain through enlightened eyes. The way she kept glancing at the door, as if she were worried someone would barge in. The way she held her knife, point-out and ready to dance. She was scared senseless.
And scared people were easy to play. Detan leaned forward, hands clasped with interest, brow drawn in grave understanding.
“You think she was behind the warden’s death?” he asked, just to keep Ripka talking while he worked through the possibilities.
“That crow? I doubt it. It’s not her style, wasting something as valuable as selium to make a point. The favorite theory going around right now is it was a doppel.” She snorted. “Caught one a few days back, impersonating some dead mercer. City’s been seeing them in every shadow ever since. Might as well be a ghost or a bogeyman, but I can’t ignore the possibility. Your mouth is open, Honding.”
He shut it. “Are you serious? A doppel?”
He’d heard of the creatures—everyone little Scorched lad grew up with stories of scary doppels replacing your loved ones—but he’d never seen one before. The amount of skill and strength it’d take to use a thin layer of prismatic selium to cover your own face, changing hues and sculpting features, was so far beyond his ken the thought left him speechless. He was all brute strength when it came to his sel-sensitivity. He even had trouble shaping a simple ball out of the lighter-than-air gas.
“They’re not pets, rockbrain,” Ripka said. “They’re extremely dangerous and if they’re geared up to attack the settlements then we’re going to have to send word to Valathea.”
Detan’s mouth felt coated in ash. Valathea liked its sel-sensitives just fine, but as Detan had found out to his own personal horror it liked them weak, fit for little more than moving the gas out of mines and into the buoyant bellies of ships. Anytime the sensitives got too strong, or their abilities deviated from the accepted standard, Valathean steel came out ringing.
“That’d mean a purge,” he said.
She tipped her chin down, and her gaze snagged on the knife in her hand as if seeing it for the first time. For just a moment, her mask slipped. Detan squinted, trying to read the fine lines of her face. Was that sadness? Or indigestion? Ripka rolled her shoulders to loosen them and retightened her grip.
“I can’t have half this city’s sel-sensitives wiped out because they might be breeding too strongly. The Smokestack is an active mine, we need the sensitives to keep it moving. I’ll find the murderer before Valathea needs to get involved.”
He shook off the thought of a purge and focused on what mattered: Thratia was filthy rich. And, even as an ex-commodore, the owner of a rather fine airship.
Even trolling around the smaller, ramshackle steadings of the Scorched, Detan had heard of Thratia’s latest prize. The Larkspur, she was called, and rumor had it she was as sleek as an oiled rockcat. Being both fast and large, that ship was making Thratia immensely rich as mercers across the empire paid a premium to have her ferry their goods to the most lucrative ports long before slower, competing vessels could catch up. Detan had no need for the Larkspur’s goods-delivery services, but he rather fancied the idea of ripping the rug out from under Thratia’s quickly growing mercer collective. And anyway, he thought he’d probably cut a pretty handsome figure standing on the deck of a ship like that. Although he’d have to upgrade to a nicer hat.
“Well, watch-captain, maybe we can help each other out.”
She looked like she’d drunk sour milk. “You’re kidding. Only way you can help me is by getting gone, Honding. You understand?” Ripka turned away from him and sat behind her desk once more, her thigh bumping the side with a light clunk as she did so. Detan allowed himself a little smile; so the brave watch-captain wore body armor while in his presence.
“Oh, pah. You and I both know that if Thratia wants the wardenship she’s going to take it. People fear her too damned much to risk not voting her in. And you’ll be too busy chasing your boogeyman to do anything about it.”
“Fear? You got it wrong. They respect her, and that’s the trouble of it. She’ll get voted in, nice and legal. No need for a coup,” she said.
“So what if I could…undermine that respect? Make a public fool of her?”
“The only public fool around here is you.”
“Well, you want me gone, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And I don’t have a flier to get gone with, do I?”
She just frowned at him.
“And you want Thratia undermined, right?”
“I suppose…”
“So I’ll steal her airship!”
“You’re out of your sandbagged mind, Honding.”
“No, no—listen up, captain.” He leaned forward and held his hand out, ticking off the fingers with each point he made. “Thratia’s got power here because she’s got respect, right?”
“And money.”
“Right, and money. So we can get rid of her respect, and a substantial chunk of her money, in one big blow.” He made a fist and raised it up.
“You only made one point there, and you’ve got five fingers.”
“Er, well. That doesn’t matter. It makes sense, Ripka.”
“Watch-captain.”
“Watch-captain.” He gave her a smile bright as the midday sun and leaned back in his chair with his fingers laced behind his head. “It’s brilliant. She’ll look like a doddering fool and you can swoop in and save the day. Then let me go, of course.”
She snorted. “Why in the blue skies would I want to do that?”
“Because I’d tell Thratia it was your idea if you didn’t, obviously.”
“And then I look the fool for letting you escape.”
“No, we let it sit for a while. I’ll slip away after you’ve got the wardenship secured. Tell everyone you shipped me off to serve hard labor on the Remnant Isles.”
She started, eyes narrowing. “You think I want to be warden?”
Had he misjudged? Detan held his hands up to either side, palms facing the sweet skies to indicate he would defer to her better judgment. “Well, you must. Or you’ve got someone in mind, surely?”
She pressed her fingers together above the desk, the arc of her hands outlining the mouth of a cave, and leaned forward as she thought. It was odd she seemed to be thinking so hard about this. He’d thought she’d have someone in mind worth the promotion, but he still couldn’t help but grin. Her body language was open, interested. There was a little furrow between her brows, deep and contemplative. He’d got her.
“Mine-master Galtro would be a good candidate,” she said, and he chose to ignore the hesitance in her voice. Didn’t matter to him who she picked. He planned on being long gone by the time that particular seat was being warmed.
He leapt to his feet and clapped once. “Good! Marvelous! Hurrah! We have a warden! Now you just need to let me do my—”
“Whoa now. What’s in this for you?”
“The thrill of adventure!”
“Try again.”
“Fine.” He huffed. “Say, perhaps, the ship has a little accident in all that excitement. Say, just for example, that some convincing wreckage is found made of the right materials, with the right name emblazoned on the heap. Say that to all the citizens, and let me keep the blasted thing.”
She drummed her fingers on the desk. “Thratia’s compound is the most secure in the whole city. Just how do you think you’re going to get anywhere near her ship?”
“That’s my worry, partner.”
“I am not—”
“Watch-captain.”
She scowled at him, but quieted.
“Look, don’t worry over it all too much and don’t count on it yet either, understand? I’m going to have a look around, see if it’s even doable, and then I’ll contact you again with our options.”
“You get snagged, and I’ll swear I sent you packing this day.”
“Wouldn’t expect it any other way.”
“And if you can’t find a way to work it?”
“Tibal will have the flier fixed up by then, nice and smooth.”
Ripka eyed him, hard and heavy, and he thanked the stable sands that he had a whole lot of practice at keeping his face open and charming. She grunted and dragged open the top drawer of her desk.
“Here.” She tossed him a thin cloth pouch and he rolled it over in his hands, guessing at the weight of the grains of precious metal within. “You’ll need to stay upcrust if you want any chance of getting eyes on Thratia, and I’m guessing ole Auntie Honding hasn’t provided you with an allowance fit for something like that.”
Detan winced at the mention of his auntie, the stern-faced warden of Hond Steading, a mental tally of guilt piling up for every day of the calendar he hadn’t bothered to visit her. Forcing a smile back into place, he vanished the pouch into his pocket and half-bowed over upraised palms. “You are as wise as you are generous.”
“Get gone, Honding, and don’t contact me again until you’ve got a plan situated.”
Detan Honding prided himself on being a man who knew not to overstay his welcome. He made himself scarce in a hurry.
Chapter 2
“Fresh up from the southern coast,” Sergeant Banch said as he passed her an amber bottle, its contents labeled by a stamped blob of wax so cracked and chipped she couldn’t make it out. Like it mattered. Ripka tipped her head back and drank.
The mud wall of the guardhouse was cool against her back, the bottle warm in her hand, and the memory of the rising sun still rosy on her cheeks. So what if the bench was stiff beneath her? So what if the stench of fresh blood clung to her nostrils still? She drank deep, ignoring the murmur of the crowd dispersing just outside the guardhouse door.
It’d been one sand-blighted morning. Executing a man was never her favorite service to perform on behalf of the city, but with rumors flying wild about a killer on the loose, and Warden Faud not two days in the dirt, the city was wound up tight. She’d never seen such a turnout before. She only wished she could have given them the blood of Faud’s murderer, instead of some sandbagged thief. Doppel or no, she had no taste for executing non-violent criminals.
Ripka glanced toward the ceiling, squinting as if she could see through the rafters to the freshly minted corpse of the doppel who’d stolen Mercer Agert’s ship. Brave son of a bitch, he hadn’t blinked when she’d asked if he wanted to meet the axe or walk the Black. He’d opted for the axe, which always surprised her. But then, walking the Black was one pits-cursed way to go.
The Black Wash spread out between the city’s lowest wall and the rugged slopes of the Smokestack—the great, looming firemount from which the city mined its selium. Composed of glittering shards of firemount glass, the path between the city and the Smokestack was blisteringly hot during the day. Merely standing on the black sands could leave your face burned within a quarter-mark.
As long as Ripka’d been in Aransa, she’d never heard of a soul making it across the sands alive. First your face burned, crisped up under the glare of the sun, and any stretch of skin not covered in cloth was quick to follow. If your shoes weren’t sturdy enough—and most condemned were forced to walk in prison garb; thin boots, linen jumpsuits, no hat—then the unweathered shards of black glass would work their way through to your feet before you’d reached the quarter waypoint. By halfway, you were leaving bloodied smears in your wake. By three-quarters, most lay down to die.
With no water, and no shade, the heat of the air dried out your lungs, made every breath a pink-tinged rasp. Dried out your eyes, too, and many were weeping blood while they were still close enough to the city walls for people to see what should have been the whites of their eyes turned angry red. Most were jerky before they made it within throwing distance of the Smokestack.
It was miserable, and it was deadly. But it was a whole lot less final than a beheading. At least you had a chance out there. Under the axeman’s swing, your chances were used up in one swoop.
She took another draw on the bottle. It did little to wash away the memories of this morning’s execution, the phantom heat of the black sands at her back.
“Think the vultures are gone yet?” she asked.
“’Nother half-mark, I bet. The undertaker’s not done dicing him up, and there’s some that will want a memento. Bit o’ hair, a real knuckle bone to throw. Shit like that.”
Ripka cringed and took another swallow. “Damn savages.”
“Says the Brown Wash girl.”
She laughed, alcohol burning in her throat, and fell into a coughing fit. Oh well. At least the guardhouse was nice and cool. “Don’t see why they have to chop the poor bastards up anyway.”
“You know how Valatheans get about graves. Put the whole body in one place and people will make a shrine of it. Then we’ve got a martyr on our hands.”
“Pah, no one’s going to make a martyr of a doppel. They’re piss-scared of them.”
“You’d be surprised,” a woman said.
Ripka glanced up from the bench and squinted at the backlit figure. Tall, strong, womanly in a way that rankled Ripka with jealousy. Thratia. She wore a simple bloodstone-hued tunic, martial leggings and tall leather boots. No fancy attire for Thratia—she liked to keep her appearance akin to the common folk of Aransa, nevermind her massive compound sprawling across half the city’s second level. Sad thing was, most of the locals fell for her of-the-people charm.
Ripka snapped her a half-hearted salute and nearly clanged the bottle against her head in the process.
“Morning, Thratia. You do know this is a guardhouse? Not usually open for visitors, if you take my meaning.”
Thratia brushed the long warbraid from her shoulder and shut the door behind her, dipping them all back into the dim light of dusty lamps. Ripka made a note to have the men who usually manned this place scrub it down.
“I do not mean to interrupt your—” she let her eyes roam over the bottle in Ripka’s hand and the blue coats of their uniforms slumped over the backs of chairs, “—work. But, after observing today’s execution I wanted to commend the forces of the Watch for your fine administration of justice here in Aransa.”
“Really. That’s all?”
“Well…”
Ripka chuckled and waved the bottle in her direction. “Go on then.”
“I had expected you to encourage the condemned to walk the Black.”
“Encouraged? That’s not our place. It’s been the condemned’s choice since the day Aransa was settled, and it’ll stay that way.”
“I understand there is a certain level of patriotism involved in the display of choice, and that is valuable. However, walking the Black is a unique feature of Aransa, and I believe it would do the people good to see the condemned die not only by the will of the city, but a feature of the city itself. In the case of doppels, it would also enhance the message that they are not wanted here, as they would be cast out. Forced to walk away from the city to die.”
Ripka frowned, wondering just how much Thratia had rehearsed that little speech. “And how do you suggest we encourage them to make that choice?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Thratia waved a dismissive hand through the air. “You could always get rid of the option of the axemen. Make it hanging or walking.”
“Hanging’s a sorry way to die.”
“Exactly.”
Ripka leaned forward, sat the bottle on the bench beside her, and rested her forearms across her knees. Thratia stayed where she was, a single step in from the door, her charcoal arms crossed over her chest and a little smile on her face so small and warm Ripka half expected her to offer up a sweetcake to share. Ripka cleared her throat.
“I’ll take that under advisement, Thratia. Thank you for your visit.”
“I hope to share many more visits with you, watch-captain. Best of luck in apprehending the doppel who murdered Warden Faud.” She bowed at the waist, nothing mocking about it, and stepped back out into the bright of day.
Banch and Ripka sat for awhile, letting the rum they’d drunk warm up the chill Thratia had left behind. She ground her teeth, then plucked a wax-wrapped nub of barksap from her pocket and popped it into her mouth to chew over.
“There goes our new boss,” Banch said.
Ripka chucked him in the arm, nearly missed and had to put a hand on the bench to keep from sprawling to the ground. “Resigned to it already? Mine-master Galtro could win it. Thratia’s a skies-cursed murderer. Even Valathea thought she was too brutal to keep around. You think Aransa will vote in the woman they call General Throatslitter behind her back?”
“Please, they call her that to her front. It’s practically a rally cry. They love that she stuck it to the empire.”
“She refused to relinquish power after her conquest on behest of Valathea of the Saldive Isles. Nothing heroic about that.”
Banch rolled his shoulders and snagged the bottle back, tested its weight with a disappointed scowl. “Tell it to the folk in the lower levels she’s been sending food to. Tell it to the mercers who’ve been promised they can use that fancy new ship of hers for faster trade.”
“I just don’t trust her, Banch. She’s up to something.”
“O’ course she is. Everyone on this sunblasted continent is.”
Ripka rolled her eyes and dropped her head back against the wall, letting the chill of it seep through her hair and sooth the itch of her sun-kissed scalp while she thought.
Just why was Thratia so keen to send people to walk the sands? Walking the Black meant that if you were very, very lucky you just might survive. If Ripka was sure about anything, it was that Thratia felt no mercy for those who stood for judgment on the guardhouse roof. Why would she want a doppel, of all things, to have a chance at life?
So she could use them.
Ripka shot up from the bench and heaved herself up the ladder to the roof where the execution had taken place. The undertaker was still busy at his work and gave her a cheery, gore-smeared wave when she glanced his way.
Clenching her jaw, she strode to the back edge of the roof and leaned out just as far as she dared. The Black Wash splayed below her, glittering so bright she had to squint and bring a hand up to shade her eyes. She stared straight on at the sharp crest of the Smokestack and the Fireline Ridge spread out around it, waiting for her vision to get used to the blinding light. Banch hauled himself up beside her.
“Just what in the pits are you doing, captain?”
“There, look.” She pointed at two glints of light, figures moving across the rugged side of the Fireline up toward the ferries that shuttled people back and forth from the city to the selium mines and Salt Baths. The mines were shut down for the day due to an infestation in one of the pipelines, and the baths were clear on the other side of the Fireline—too far by half for a leisurely stroll.
“Aw shit. Do you think we’ll have to send a rescue?”
“Those aren’t lost bathers.”
The figures sped up, moving with expert ease over the rough terrain. The glints she had noticed came from low about their waists, about the right place for a sword handle to rest.
Banch’s voice was very, very quiet. “Thratia’s?”
“Who else? I suppose now we know why she wants us to make the doppels walk.”
She turned away from the vista and forced herself to look at what was left of the nameless doppel. He was a brave man, and now she suspected she understood why he’d been so sure of the axe. She’d heard horror stories of Valatheans enslaving the doppels, using their desire to be close to selium to secure their loyalty. It was illegal, of course, even the imperials saw using the doppels as cruel and unsavory. But Thratia hadn’t been exiled to the Scorched Continent for being kind and cuddly.
“Come on, Banch. We’ve got to find our killer.”
Before Thratia does.
Chapter 3
The downcrust levels of Aransa were hotter than a draw on a jug of spicewine. Ripka had set Detan free just a mark or so after sunrise, and already the streets were baking. He tugged his shirt-ties loose as he wandered down the cramped streets to where he’d left Tibs with the flier, winking at ladies as he passed.
Not that there were many ladies with a capital “L” this far down in the city. The real desert flowers liked it up top where parasols and shade trees were plentiful. He figured the women down here were more fun, anyway. At least they weren’t shy with their hand-gestures.
He found Tibs lying under the fronds of a reedpalm, his hat pulled down over his eyes and his back propped up against the carcass of their six-man flier. Tibs was a scrawny bastard, long of limb even when he was slouched. Last night’s clothes clung to him in disturbing pleats of grime and sweat, and his boots were beginning to separate from their soles. Hair that Detan suspected had once been a pale brown stuck up in strange angles from under his hat.
Detan crept up on him, squinting down into the shadow that hid his sun-weathered face. Tibs was breathing, slow and even, so he turned his attention to the flier.
It was long and flat, maybe a dozen and a half long paces from end-to-end, crafted in the style of old riverbarges. Its sel-sacks, which would normally be ballooned up above it under thick rope netting, lay crumpled on the deck. Though rectangular of body, Tibs had worked up a neat little pyramidal bowsprit to make it a titch more aerodynamic, and Detan had made blasted sure that the pulley-and-fan contrivance of its navigational system was made of the best stuff he could afford. Or steal. Even its accordion-like stabilizing wings, folded in now, were webbed with leather supple and strong enough to make a fine Lady’s gloves feel coarse and cheap.
Midship, right behind the helm, rose a plain-walled cabin just wide and long enough to house two curtain-partitioned sleeping quarters. It was a good show for guests, but the real living space was hidden in the flat hold between deck and keel. Though the space was not quite tall enough for Detan to stand straight within, it ran the length of the ship—a sturdy little secret placed there by the smugglers who had originally built the thing. To Detan’s eyes, it was the most beautiful thing in the whole of the world.
Unfortunately, the buoyancy sacks lay flaccid and punctured and the right rudder-prop was cracked clean off, rather ruining the effect
Detan glowered and kicked Tibs in the leg. He squawked like a dunkeet and flailed awake, knocking his hat to the black-tinged dirt.
“The pits you doing, Tibs? You haven’t even touched the old bird.”
Tibs reached for his hat and picked off a spiny leaf. “Oh I touched it all right, just couldn’t do a damn thing for it. What you think I am, a magician? The buoyancy sacks are as airtight as pumice-stone and the mast is as stable as mica on edge, lemme tell you.”
“Please do tell me, old chum, because I sure as shit don’t understand your miner-man rock babble.”
The lanky man rolled his eyes as he hoisted himself to his feet, and to Detan’s never-ending consternation took his time about brushing the dust from his trouser legs. Damned funny thing, a mechanic with a fastidious streak.
“Simple-said, there’s no repairing either of the buoyancy sacks. They were half-patches long before they took this latest damage and that mast is about as stable as a—well, uh, it’s just fragile, all right?”
“Was that so hard?”
Tibs grunted and wandered over to the flier. He gave one of the sacks a nudge with his toe and shook his head, tsking. “Got no imagination, do you?”
“I got enough imagination to figure out what to do with a lippy miner.”
“I’m your mechanic.”
“Mechanic-miner then.”
Detan snatched Tibs’s hat off his head and put it squarely on his own. Tibs plucked it back with a disappointed cluck of the tongue. “Tole you to bring a spare.”
“Well, I didn’t think I’d be doing barrel-rolls over the Black Wash last night. Sweet sands, Tibs, what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking I’d like very much to get away from the ship shooting spears at us. Sirra.”
Detan ignored his smirk and took over his old chum’s spot under the reedpalm. He sank down onto the black dirt and tipped his head back against the tree’s rough trunk. In the shade, the breeze didn’t feel like it was trying to steal his breath away. His eyes drifted shut, his muscles unknotted.
Tibs kicked his foot.
“What?” Detan grumbled.
“You win us enough to fix her up?”
“Better.” He wrestled with his belt pouch and tossed it up to his companion. Tibs poured the contents out in his wide, flat hand, barely able to contain all the fingernail-sized grains of brass and silver. He whistled low. “Mighty fine haul, but may I ask who’s going to be hunting us down to get it back?”
“You lack faith, old friend. That there is a genuine upfront payment from Watch-captain Ripka Leshe herself.”
Tibs did not look as impressed as Detan would have liked. “Payment for what?”
“She’s hired us to steal Thratia’s lovely new airship, the Larkspur, of course. Seems the ex-commodore is getting a mite too comfortable here in Aransa, and needs to be shown her place.”
He beamed up at Tibs, relishing the slow shock that widened his eyes and parted his lips. It was good to surprise the shriveled smokeweed of a man, but it didn’t last. Tibs’s eyes narrowed and his shoulders tensed. “That doesn’t sound much like the watch-captain.”
Detan frowned. “No, it doesn’t, does it? But that’s the way it’s been played to us. We just have to get a step ahead.”
Tibs sighed and cast a longing look at their downed bird. “Sounds like a mess. Maybe we should just take the money and move along. Thratia isn’t known for her forgiving nature, you know, and monsoon season’s coming. Wouldn’t want to get stuck in a sel-mining city come the rains, would we?”
Detan flinched at the thought of being stranded here, so very close to the Smokestack. All that tempting selium being pumped out from the bowels of the world no more than a ferry ride away. It was hard enough keeping his sensitivity to himself when they were in the sel-less reaches of the Scorched. Stuck in a city full of it? He’d give himself away in a single turn of the moon.
For the barest of moments he considered writing to Auntie Honding for enough grain to get the flier airworthy again. But he knew well enough that any response from his dear old auntie would come with strict instructions to return home at once for a lengthy stay, complete with brow-beating. And he knew damned well that lingering at Hond Steading, with its five selium-producing firemounts, would make hiding his sel-sensitivity from the proper authorities a sight more difficult than managing Aransa’s single mine.
Detan squared his shoulders, forcing his body to display the confidence he wished his mind held. They had time before the rains came. He was sure of it. “Make off with Ripka’s money? She’d have us hanged if we ever showed up here again!”
“More like have our heads lopped off.” Tibs grimaced and spat into the dust.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“City’s all worked up over it. Seems a doppel got caught impersonating some puffed-up mercer. Our new benefactor took his head clear off at sunrise. Not a friendly town for sel-sensitives of deviant abilities, you understand.”
At sunrise. He glanced up the city toward the station house, and though he couldn’t see it from this vantage he imagined all the little watchers returning to it after a good morning’s work.
Takes some time, to lop a man’s head off and clean up the mess. Enough time for Ripka to make it back to the station, little more than a mark after sunrise, to question him then kick him loose? And what of those who had arrested him—they’d said they were acting on the captain’s orders. Where had she been, to see him and order his arrest at the Blasted Rock in the wee hours of the night while preparing to execute a man? He’d never seen her at the inn, true, but…
Detan cleared a sudden hitch in his throat, and Tibs narrowed his little lizardy eyes down at him. Stranger yet, in all her talk of doppels Ripka had failed to mention that she’d done one in just that morning.
He decided not to mention the watch-captain’s lapse of memory to Tibs. It was usually best not to worry the man with silly things like that. Ole’ Tibs liked straight paths, and dithered at forks. Tibs would spend his life wasting away at a crossroads if Detan wasn’t there to push him along. He smiled at what a good friend he was.
“Don’t worry yourself overmuch, Tibs, it’ll give you wrinkles. Now, the watch-captain has asked for our help and on my honor I won’t be leaving the poor woman without assistance. Could you do that? Just leave her here with Thratia itching to take power?”
Tibs gave him a rather ungentlemanly look, but Detan fancied himself too well-bred to be given a rise by that sort of thing.
“I suppose we must help the watch-captain,” he grated.
“Splendid!” Detan clapped his hands as he sprang up and strode over to the downed flier. “Now we have to get this old bird airworthy again.”
“I thought we were soon to acquire a much finer vessel?”
“Have you no sentimentality? We can’t just leave it!”
A little smile quirked up the corners of Tibs’s dry, craggy face. “I suppose not.”
“Brilliant! One step ahead already!”
They hired a cart to help them move the flier up a few levels to the inn Detan had scouted on his way through the city. It wasn’t upcrust by any stretch of the imagination, and he figured that made it the perfect place to lay low. Thratia never came down this way herself, and Ripka only when there was something that needed cleaning up. It was a nice bonus that the innkeeper didn’t know him, and that he was less likely to run into any of the uppercrusts he’d swindled in the past.
Their room had a half-door in the back that swung open into an old goat pen, just big enough to stash the flier in. Wasn’t likely anyone would steal it, but he felt better about having it close. From the edge of the pen they could see the sweep of Aransa, or at least all those levels that tumbled out below their room.
The downcrust levels were a hodgepodge of daub and stone construction with a few brave souls throwing up the occasional scrap-wood wall. The houses huddled up the side of the mountain, clinging to the good stable rock beneath, and the city was a mess of switchbacking streets. Glittering black sands reached across the distance between Aransa and the Fireline Ridge, the firemount they called Smokestack spearing straight up through the center of the ridge, belching soot and ash. The winds were in their favor today, and so the greasy plume drifted off to the desolate south instead of laying a film of grime over all Aransa.
Blasted dangerous place to stick a city.
From this far away, the glint of metal holding leather-skinned pipes to the Smokestack’s back was the only evidence of the firemount’s rich selium production. Dangerous or not, there’d be folk settled here until the sel was gone. Or until the whole damned place blew.
“Enjoying the view?” Tibs slunk up beside him and wiped his hands on the filthiest rag Detan had ever seen.
“Hasn’t changed much, has it?”
“Don’t suppose it has a need of change. Anyway, bags are stored and the flier’s tarp-tied. Smells like goat piss in there so don’t come whining to me when the whole blasted contraption stinks of it later.”
“I’d never blame the odor of goat on you, old chum. Your bouquet is entirely different, it’s…” He waved a hand to waft up the right word. “It’s distinct.”
Tibs ignored the slight and kept his eyes on a brown paper notebook clutched in one hand. Somehow he’d rummaged up a bit of pointed charcoal and was using it to sketch broad strokes that eventually came together to form their flier. Or, what would have been their flier, if it were in one piece. New formulae appeared around their cabin, and Detan went cross-eyed.
“You can’t possibly know what you’re doing there.”
“Just ’cause you’re an idiot doesn’t mean everyone else is. Sirra.”
“We’re gonna need something to wreck,” he said, anxious to be of some use, “a decoy.”
Tibs just grunted.
Detan grinned. Couldn’t help himself. Some sense was emerging from the mist of numbers and angles, familiar shapes made bigger, stronger. Their tiny little cabin adapted for an entirely larger vessel all together. Adapted further to be modular, easy to piece apart and slap back together again. Easier still to wrap around their current cabin until the time it would be needed.
It was perfect, really. This way they didn’t need to know what Thratia’s ship looked like ahead of time—all ships had cabins on their decks of some kind or another. Once the ship was in hand, he and Tibs could break off Thratia’s original and leave it as a wreck somewhere in the scrub beyond the city. Work up a good fire around it and no one would go looking for the rest of the ship; they’d assume it’d all burned up and give up the trail.
Then he and Tibs could shift the knock-down cabin from their flier onto the deck of Thratia’s ship to cover any holes their hasty carpentry might leave behind. Nothing more suspicious than a big ole ship trundling around the skies without a cabin.
“Oh, that’s clever!” he blurted as Tibs’s plan crystallized in his mind.
“One of us has to be. I’ll need to get a look at the real bird to make sure it all connects, but it should work well enough for a quick switch.”
He gave Tibs time to work out the finer details, then watched in admiration as the crusty man ran his charcoal bit back over all the salient points, thickening the lines as he committed them to memory. When he was finished, Tibs tore the page out, crumpled it, and shoved it in his pocket.
Detan threw an arm around his shoulder. “Come along, now. Let’s go spend some of Ripka’s grains.”
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