Steal the Sky (16 page)

Detan couldn't blame him. Pink daisies would break the character of any man.

While the valet directed them about their business, all eyes were drawn to the commotion, and feet were drawn steadily away from it. Detan slunk back, drifting along the edge of the crowd, his way made clear even if those darting from his path pretended to never have seen him.

Contagion was the swiftest way to become both the most ignored and most watched man in the room.

“A moment.” The Lady Grandon intercepted his slow retreat and pulled a palm-sized notepad from her pocket. She gave it a few spirited prods with a pencil then ripped the top page free, folded it, and thrust it toward him. “I insist you go to my clinic so that my people may do what they can to ease your suffering.”

“I will go there straight away, madam, and if I survive this dreadful curse then I will be forever in your debt. I will make certain that all generations to come after me pay homage to your own. I will–”

One of the salvage men let out a howl. He hopped around on one foot, clutching at the other, and the lanky man beside him shrugged a mute apology. Tibs. Detan scowled. Even when relegated to a wordless role, that bastard could be a stern critic.

Lady Grandon cleared her throat. “Brevity, I believe, is prudent in the face of your ill-health.”

“You are as wise as you are generous.” He bowed extravagantly, those nearest to him recoiling a few extra steps.

They would be a while yet moving the flier, and so Detan made his escape into the dusty road, working up a good limp and a soft, painful groan whenever he drew close enough to be overheard. Once he'd shambled past the bright-painted doors of Grandon's neighbors, he paused to read the note. It was an address all right – but to a posh club upcrust a good few levels. He knew the place. It was carpeted and slung all about with chandeliers, and known for serving the hardest hitting cocktails of those establishments who served them in clean glasses.

Detan chewed his lip and waited for the filthy procession to pass by him. He fell into step behind Tibs and flicked his hood back up.

“What'd the lady pass you?”

“An invitation to drink.”

Tibs sucked air through his teeth and chewed it around a bit. “Going to go?”

“If only to be certain I don't actually have sand scabies. She damned near had me convinced.”

“Bad idea.”

“Always good to have a lady of the medical profession on your side, my good man.”

He grunted, and they lapsed into silence. The way to the Salt Baths was not long by ferry, but they planned to march the flier all the way down to the desert and then fly it in under its own power, low and slow. There'd be plenty of time to convince Tibs of Lady Grandon's merits along the way.

His erstwhile companion let loose with a reedy sigh.

“What's wrong, Tibs?”

“Purple. Why did it have to be purple? That damned dye doesn't come out of anything, let me tell you.”

Under the harsh eye of the sun Detan adjusted his hood, shuffling around the parts of cloth that were damp with sweat. He'd be soaked before they even made it to the lowest levels. He'd have to buy water once there, no way around it. Real flowers like those painted on the flier he reckoned would need a quarter of a man's daily water to keep on looking so pert. The blasted things didn't even provide food. He glowered at them.

The pink flowers shone back at him, relentlessly cheerful. He spit, and trudged onward.

I
t was
a relief to have the makeup off, even if the bruise remained, but still Detan felt unkempt. Unwell. The double doors to the Red Door Club reared up before him, their scarlet paint pristine despite the glare of the desert sun. No windows faced the street; not a soul behind those doors cared what the dusty road and its worn inhabitants looked like. Detan had never been inside the place before, but he knew the type.

These upcrust beds of convenience were stepped all along the rise of Aransa, and if they bothered with windows at all they were pointed out into the air, toward the Fireline and the humped shoulders of the Smokestack.

He didn't have any business at all knocking on a door to a place like this, save the scrawled note Lady Grandon had shoved in his hand. Dangerous business, getting mixed up in the private affairs of the wealthy, and wasn't he mixed up in too much dangerous business to begin with? Didn't help matters much that the lady in question was a pits-cursed apothik. With all their aprons, gloves, bottles and strange tinctures, apothiks were one short step from whitecoats. Detan suppressed a shiver. Best to follow Tibs's advice, as always. What good was having a wingman if you never listened to him?

Detan turned, and one of the great red doors swung open. Rarified air blended with the dust and heat of the street. The air from within was cool from the low light, laden with the rich aromas of argent-leaf smoke and rare flower oils. A narrow man dressed in the brick-red vest of the club's livery stepped out and glanced around the street until he found Detan. At the sight, a twitch took up residence in the corner of the young man's eye.

“Lord Honding?” the man ventured.

“Who?”

The man's stiff shoulders slumped under the force of a long-suffering sigh. “The Lady Grandon requests that–” he cleared his throat and raised his voice in imitation, “–you either get in here out of the heat or scurry back into whatever sandcave you fell out of.”

“Er, right. Yes. Very good. Lead the way, good man.”

The attendant guided him through the maze of private booths and winding bartops while giving Detan nothing more than the flat of his back. He couldn't even be spurred into conversation when Detan inquired as to the origin of the Red Door's garish livery.

Fretting so that he could hardly keep his head still, Detan gave up his attempts to cajole the man into anything like gentlemanly chatter. The club, he found, was quite larger than it had looked from the street. Three stories rolled down the face of Aransa, the top story the one which opened to the street. With each narrow set of stairs they ambled down the decor grew finer, the chandelier makers more generous with their crystal.

Live flames licked behind the barrel-sized creations, casting twisting prisms of light over all the open tables and booths. Detan frowned. There wasn't a soul to be seen at those open tables, and every little booth had its tiny red curtain drawn.

The silent valet delivered Detan to a booth near the back of the bottom floor, its client hidden away behind one of those thick crimson curtains. Though he was certain they were along the back wall of the club, still no windows pierced the structure to break up the gloom.

At least it was cool in here. The sweat between his shoulder blades was beginning to chill and prickle. Not an altogether pleasant sensation.

The stone-faced valet picked up a narrow silver bell from a hook on the edge of the booth and gave it a jingle. It was an offensively gentle sound, like fairies pissing on a tin roof.

“Sands below.” Lady Grandon's voice drifted from behind the curtain. “There's no need for that nonsense.”

Detan beamed at the valet, but his sour little face hadn't moved a muscle. He just hung the bell back up and wandered off to whatever bitter business needed seeing to next. Pity there was no time to work on the chap. With a flourish, Detan swept the curtain aside and half-bowed into the filmy light of the two-seater booth.

“At your service, lady.”

Lady Grandon exhaled a plume of silvery smoke, a black-lacquered extender hanging from her lips. “Of course you are, boy. Now sit. I am pleased, of course, by your miraculous recovery.”

He shuffled into the booth and pulled the curtain tight. With the light of the common room cut off, the darkness was held back only by the bulbous glass of a dust and grease-smeared lamp.

The low light softened the lady's features, made her already artfully arranged face difficult to read. She'd held meetings like this before, he realized. Probably in this same booth every time. He grinned. It was always a pleasure to work with a professional.

“The delicate ministrations of your nursemaids were all the balm I needed to return to glowing health.”

She pursed her lips. “You haven't set foot in my infirmary. I doubt you even know where it is.”

“And yet you yourself proclaimed me dangerously ill. Only days left on this big ball of dust, if I recall. That's quite a shock to a man's mind, you understand.”

She flicked ash into a black-glazed plate and drew smoke once more, the little cherry ember of her cigarette a brilliant pinpoint of light in the gloom. “You deserved a shock for interrupting my daughter's party.”

“An unfortunate necessity to ensure the young lady's safety from contagion, I assure you.”

“Please.” She waved the hand holding her extender, tracing a loop of smoke in the air. “Can we dispense with such nonsense? I'm growing too old for unnecessary games.”

“Games are a necessary part of life, dear lady. Why, just this morning, I–”

She snapped the fingers of her empty hand a beetle's width from his nose.

“I said enough. I've asked you here to warn you, not to waste my time.”

“Warn me? Whatever for?” Detan forced his tongue to be still, to let her fill the gap in conversation. This was not a woman who could be distracted by his rambling ways.

“You kicked a hornet's house, getting under my husband's skin. And while I thank you for it, out of a certain sense of comradeship with your old aunt I feel compelled to tell you to skip off Aransa just as quick as you can. My husband may be occupied with matters political for the time being, but the first chance he gets he'll come for you. I suppose you are not staying in the same locale in which my lord discovered your flier?”

“Whoa now, lady, back up just a second. I don't know what you know about my dear old auntie, but I'll hear it off you now.”

She dashed her ash again and picked up an obsidian decanter. From it she poured two snifters, the round bottoms held upright in a little pot of sand, and nudged one toward him. The rim was already garnished with a thumbprint-sized section of dripping honeycomb.

He picked it up, squinted at it. Sniffed it. Gave the bottom a little flick. It smelled of warm honey and the thick-petaled, pink flowers his auntie liked to keep in boxes outside her windows. Detan sipped and was surprised to find the thick liquid laced through with miniscule bubbles of effervescent sel. He was even more surprised to find his lips not at all numb. It was good to not be poisoned.

“Dame Honding and I attended a private academy together as girls. I have not seen her in decades, you understand, but there is a flavor of loyalty amongst young school girls which stands all tests of time. Now, a return to more pertinent matters. My husband will be briefly occupied in acquiring a new vessel for our daughter, but such a thing will not take long, and then he will set his fervid eyes on you, my boy. Shove off before he has the chance.”

Detan stared at the sun-weathered face of his companion, trying to imagine it as a young girl terrorizing the schoolmasters of the Scorched's Academy for Young Ladies. She seemed older than her years to him, but then the desert was unkind to the delicate.

And how long had it been since he'd last seen his aunt? Nothing but letters and parcels strung out between them for the last few years. He cleared his throat of an imagined lump and sipped again. The liquor was cool and palliative, a viscous balm to his unsteady nerves. On second taste he found the flavor deepened by muddled cactus pulp – his aunt had favored cactus liquors, too. He shook his head. Best not to dwell on matters familial while in uncertain company.

“Why the rush for a flier at all? I supposed mine was a theft of opportunity, not a predestined desire.”

Something ticked beneath the thin skin of the lady's careful mask, a little flicker of pain trembling along her cheekbone. She drank of her own vial, nibbled on the edge of the honeycomb and placed it back in the sand.

“Our daughter is sensitive, and growing stronger. Not too strong, mind you, she's nowhere near verging on becoming a doppel, but her strength has been noticed. The mine master wants her training for the line soon, but I'd much rather see her in the skies than working in that… mess. Renold and I decided to teach her piloting so that she may easier find a place upon a vessel. Unless…”

“Yes?”

Lady Grandon breathed deep of the smoke-laden air, a nervous gesture so far outside her characteristics thus far that Detan felt his own chest clench with anxiety.

“I've heard, of course, that the young Lord Honding's sensitivity for selium dried up. Renold was too disgusted by you to put the question to you himself, but, considering our familial friendship, I had hoped you might be forthright about the circumstances.”

He waved his hand in the air, cutting her off before she could press him further. “My loss of sensitivity was achieved through great trauma, lady. The loss of life of my entire line back in Hond Steading inspired it. It is not a route I think viable for your girl.”

She sighed heavily, her sharp shoulders sagging forward. “I was afraid of that.”

“If I could help…”

“Just leave town, Honding. My girl is safe in my hands, but I will not be distracted further. If Renold decides to move against you, I will not stand in his way again. For the moment he thinks me merely incompetent, in that I was tricked by your performance into believing you truly ill. I will not risk his realizing I was insidious instead.”

“You don't seem a mite fond of your husband, lady. Going to the same school as my aunt I can take a guess at what name was yours before you wed, one with deep roots, eh? Doth the lady bear the stars of the landed?”

Her eyes flashed, and her lips pressed tight around the extender of her cigarette, but she said nothing. He nodded to himself and drained the last of the liquor.

“So you've got resources all your own. Why don't you pull them, take your girl and go?”

Thin streams of smoke snaked from her nostrils. “You've misunderstood. My husband and I loved one another once, long ago. We've drifted apart in age and ambition, he to his merchanting and me to my medicine, but our resources remain inexorably pooled behind
our
girl. As much as I disapprove of certain aspects of his business, he does not meddle in my interests nor I in his. We are an alliance. Alliances are necessary for survival on the Scorched, young Lord Honding. To whom do you hold?”

His back stiffened of its own accord. “I got people I'd stick my neck out for.”

She snorted. “Only worth it if the feeling is mutual, hmm?” She stubbed the cherry end of her cigarette against the ashtray as if she were spearing some rare delicacy.

“There's something to be said for selfless sacrifice,” he said, annoyed by the defensive timbre creeping into his voice against his will.

“Hah. Not your style in the slightest.”

“You hardly know me, lady.”

“But I know of you, young man, and I know the temper of the blood that flows through your veins. You're a stubborn, idealistic people. It's what drove your ancestors to sail to the asshole of the world in the first place.”

“I think I know my own temperament well enough.”

“As you say.” She gestured toward the thick curtain with an idle flick of the wrist, and the gesture was so like his aunt's own that he stood without thinking, thin glass vial still clutched in one hand, honey dribbling over his fingers.

“Leave Aransa, Honding. Before you have to stick your neck out.”

D
etan blinked
in the sunlight just outside the Red Door Club, sweat seeping a slow return to his brow and the hollow between his shoulder blades. He looked down at the empty vial in his hand, rolled it back and forth a few times with the edge of his thumb, then dashed it to a thousand glittering fragments against the club's scrubbed feldspar steps and ground the sweet honeycomb beneath his heel.

“That nice of a talk, eh sirra?”

Tibs detached himself from the shadows across the street, but did not come near. He lingered off to the side, well out of sight of any idle passersby. Detan joined him, sighing in the slim shade offered by the neighboring building's roof overhang.

“It seems that we have been instructed in no uncertain terms to make our way out of Aransa, double-time.”

“And what are we going to do about that?”

Detan blinked once more, but not because the light stung him. A smirk threatened to overwhelm his features, and so he let it, and knew he must look deranged as he turned back to Tibs.

“Come along, Tibs old chum. We're going to make sure New Chum keeps the flier well out of Grandon's reach and then, tomorrow morning – well. With any luck we'll be clear of this rotten hunk of rock by dinner time.”

“And the doppel?”

“We're going to make her come to us.”