Steal the Sky (28 page)

A
t night
, the miners' quarter was quiet. These were hard working men and women, tired souls who spent their days laboring for the right of Aransa to exist, and when they went to bed at night little stirred them. Which was too bad, because Detan was mighty willing to do some stirring up.

“Where to?” Tibs asked.

“To the door of spice and vanilla.” He tipped his head toward a block of apartments which had a slight downcrust lean.

The building was a smashed together collection of miniscule apartments meant to make it look like the city cared, like the empire looked after the well-being of the sel-sensitives who served it. They weren't bad, Detan had to admit that much, but they weren't near enough compensation for what the sensitives were put through. Not near enough at all.

Lights were snuffed in all the windows, shutters left open to let in the cool of the desert night. Just one set of windows was sealed tight, the ones he was looking for. With a clenched jaw he stepped right up to the sun-bleached door and pounded on it. Once, twice, three times. Nothing but silence.

“We're in luck, the lady isn't home,” Detan said.

“But her neighbors are.” Tibal gestured with his chin to small faces peering down at them from the curtained windows. Little white eyes that flashed away like minnows in a pool from his sharp regard.

“There won't be trouble,” Detan said.

“You sure about that?”

“Not really. But it sounds nice.”

He'd seen floor plans like these before. They used them often enough in Hond Steading. Drawing from memory, he followed the wall down to where there should have been a split between this building and the next. The builders always said the narrow alley was for safety in case of fire, but really it was a repository for nightsoil and garbage. He froze, realizing he'd walked right past it to the next building.

“Oh, that rockviper…”

He spun around and walked back real slow this time, letting his fingertips brush over the face of the building until they tasted empty air.

“Well, that's unusual,” Tibs said.

He stared down at his hand, buried up to the knuckles in what looked to be a rotted section of rock. Now that he knew what he was looking for, he could feel the fingernail-thin veneer of selium laid over the alley's entrance, could sense it extend all the way up to about twice his own height. It was starting to fade, now. Little tattered ribbons of it coming undone at the anchor points, revealing slivers of the garden behind the facade. He wondered if the neighbors had ever noticed. He doubted they'd have said anything if they did.

“Lot of time and power went into this,” Detan said, unable to keep the warm tinge of admiration from his voice.

He looked back at Tibs's bruised face and his stomach clenched.  He wanted to respect this woman, this creature who had strung them all along so fine and easy. But there was Tibs, his face a mess, and who knew what Ripka's looked like now? Good people, both of them. The doppel should have thrown him to the vultures instead. Then at least they could have been pals one day. Not now. Not ever. Not after she'd flown off and left Ripka to rot.

Gritting his teeth, he stepped through the sel membrane. It moved against him, sensing in him some sort of kinship neither man nor substance understood. Its touch was familiar, wanting. The caress of a lover too far gone to ever hold again.

But then he was through, and all sense of intimacy vanished, as ephemeral as any real lover Detan'd ever held. Tibs followed, stifling a yawn, and Detan wondered if the doppel felt the same thing he did every time she made use of her creation. He shook the memory of her smile from his mind. Set his shoulders. Clenched his jaw.

While Tibs set about picking the lock to the lady's back door, Detan examined the alley. The doppel was clever, and that was beginning to itch at his sense of danger something fierce. She'd had the forethought to put up a real wall just two long steps in from the sel membrane, separating the place where her back door emptied into the alley from all the others.

Through breaks in the crumbling mudbrick he could see that her neighbors had made good use of their alley, keeping it clean and neat. On the doppel's side flowering succulents were planted up the dividing wall. They must have thought her a gentle old lady who just wanted this bit of land for her garden. He picked one of the plant's carnelian blooms and tucked it into his buttonhole.

Tibs opened the lock and stepped aside to let Detan pass first. Neither of them were proper fighting men, but Detan liked to imagine he could be handy with his fists and his knife if the need arose. Things seemed mighty needful now, so he freed the knife from his belt and stepped into the apartment.

It was pitch black inside, and he strained his senses so hard he wondered if he could trust them. There was sel here, somewhere, tucked away and not moving. Detan cursed himself for not knowing nearly enough.

He crept forward, hearing nothing but his boots whispering against the rug and his breath pumping in and out at an embarrassing rate. With the little bit of moonlight slipping in through the opened back door he could make out the usual trappings of a sparse living room. A wide table to step around, a hearth and kettle stand, a few chairs covered in quilts like his grandma had once made. A curtain in a doorway, separating this room from the sleeping room.

Knowing he didn't have the time to let his eyes adjust properly, he waved Tibs in and pointed at a brass lantern sitting in the middle of the table. He kept his gaze stuck on that curtained door, waiting for any movement, any sound, any sign at all of life lurking beyond. Straining his sel-sense to the edge, he could feel the sel in there, still and calm.

Tibs got the lamp lit and Detan braced himself, knife held at the ready, for an angry doppel to come at them. After a while, Tibs chuckled into the tense silence. “I think the lady has other business to see to tonight. I doubt we'll be seeing her again, now she has what she wants.” Tibs paused, glancing pointedly at the blade in Detan's hand. “Best put that away, my eye's getting anxious.”

Detan let his shoulders slump. “I really hate this life-and-death nonsense, Tibs ole soul.”

“I know it.”

Still tense as a rockcat in a puddle, Detan motioned for Tibs to follow and crept toward the curtain. He swept it aside and thrust his arm through, knife first, fearing the screech of an angry woman. All he got was silence.

“Welp, that was a whole lot of sneaking about for nothing,” he muttered.

“Indeed.”

The bedroom was empty of living things. Sparse as it was, he couldn't see a single place big enough for a woman of any build to hide. A solid bed took up the center of the room, its linens finer than anything Detan'd seen in a long while. On the wall opposite the foot of the bed was a little table with a mirror and chair, cluttered over with all the strange accoutrements of womanhood. A drying line was hung across the back wall, the doppel's clothes slung over it. No sign of medicines of any sort.

He flipped open the lid of the trunk at the foot of the bed and grunted. Inside, folded with extreme care, were the clothes of a mining man. They'd been scrubbed, but blood was a hard thing to wash away.

“Looks like we found the lass's nest,” Tibs said over his shoulder.

“Let's tear the place apart, see what we can find.”

For the next full mark Detan and Tibs put their backs to the task. Truth was, there just wasn't that much to search through. He found a slim folder in the bottom of the trunk, tied up with a ribbon, and sat down on the vanity stool to pore through it. There were mostly letters of a family nature, and he caught the name of one of the dead boys many times. Her son, Kel.

In the back of it all, he discovered sketches of a man's face done in an unpracticed hand. As he flipped through them, they grew in competency, until he could see all the lines of the man's face clear as his own; lifelike enough that Detan half expected him to turn his head and tell him to sod off and mind his own business. The man looked older than the seventeen monsoons stated in the file he had pulled. Detan frowned, remembering the feel of that report – strange dents in the paper. Had it been altered, too? Why bother?

“Anything of import?” Tibs asked, breaking a silence that had snuck up on them both.

Detan jumped a little and shook his head. “Just what we expected. This doppel of ours is out for revenge. This has gotta be her son, one of the boys that died in that line accident.” He held the picture up for him to see. Tibs took it, his worn face wrinkling as he examined it.

“She's very good.”

“She practiced. A lot. I think she's been planning this a long time.”

“Seems that way. That trick with the alley wall alone must have taken her a good full pass of the seasons to plan.”

“She's gotten so much stronger through practice, all on her own. Look at these.” Detan fanned the progression of faces out on the vanity. “Even just drawing with charcoal, not sel.”

“It's too bad she's done it to become a murderer.”

“Can you blame her?”

“No, not really.”

Detan bowed his head and ran his fingers through his hair. All that talent. All that raw determination, and if Thratia had her way she was going to be gobbled right up by the empire. Oh, she'd make her go through the motions of walking the Black all right, just to show the people that she could, but there'd be someone out on the ridge waiting for her. Waiting to take her to Valathea.

“It's not right. Doing to her what I'm running from myself.”

“She'll have a chance at life. As it stands, Ripka will die. She's not valuable enough for them to save her life, you know that.”

He stood and paced. Back and forth, back and forth, cutting a trough through the floor with the force of the anger in his steps. Tibs was right, he knew it. He knew he had to find this woman, to trade her life for another. Had to take the scant sel he'd found covering the alleyway and send up a flare, something to get her attention. To lure her near so he could talk her into a trap and hand her over, tied with a bow, to the very people he was running from. If that was even enough to get her attention in the first place, there was no guarantee she'd come running when he signaled.

He growled and kicked the side of the bed that the letters said Pelkaia's son had made her. Kicked it so hard his teeth rattled, but all it gave him back was a hollow thump.

He froze, staring at it. “Oh.”

Detan dropped to his knees and yanked aside the smooth blankets, the thick quilt. He shoved his hands under the small space between the bed and the floor, recalling his sel-sense, remembering the faint tinge of it when he'd first entered the apartment. When he hadn't found any, he'd assumed it was just the phantom of the sel wall clinging to him. He could be a real idiot sometimes.

His fingers found the iron ties on the feet of the bed, anchoring it straight into the ground, and he almost laughed at the simplicity of it all. Fumbling, searching, following his sense, he ran his hands up and grasped the smooth vellum bladder of a sel sack, bulging and full. Enough for her to spend all the time she desired practicing her art. An idea came to him; another option.

“I've found her stash, Tibs!”

“Marvelous,” he droned.

“Might be we don't need her at all.”

“Hold on now…”

He got the cap off and focused all his strength on drawing out a small blob. It was bigger than he would have liked, but it would do. He closed it back up and nearly skipped to the vanity chair. He brushed the folder of letters and drawings aside, and shifted his little blob until it rested on the vanity's top. It fought back, trying to rise up and float as it was meant to, but Detan was strong enough to hold the little ball in place. He was strong enough, all right.

The trouble was making sure he didn't get too strong all of a sudden.

“I don't think this is wise…”

“Shut up, Tibs, I need to concentrate. Go on ahead and talk to our New Chum eh? Dawn is coming and this is going to take me a while to get right. Best be sure the flier's ready to go when I get to the Fireline.”

“We can still find the doppel. If we surmise that she has yet to leave the city, then–”

“No. This way… This way no one has to die.”

“You sure about that?”

“Just go.”

Tibs grunted his disapproval, but he knew as well as Detan did that their chances of finding the doppel before the sun rose were damn near impossible. He had a shot with this. He could do it. He just had to practice. And concentrate. And not get too angry.

He thought of Pelkaia, nursing her pain over all those years. Growing stronger. Better. Refining her raw talent into something that would serve her. Detan didn't have years. But he had a whole lot of anger. He was not, however, angry enough to be a complete idiot.

“Wait!” Detan blurted as he heard the door creak open. Tibs paused, his steps going silent. “Use the replacement cabin you fashioned for the
Larkspur
. Wreck it in the middle of the Black, and stash some water in there for me, will you?”

Tibs chuckled, but the sound was raw. “As you say, sirra.”

The door clicked shut.

Detan exhaled, counted to ten, then slivered off a bit of the sel and floated it up to his cheek.

T
hratia had retrieved
Ripka's blues and forced her to wear them. It shamed her to know that she would stand before the people of Aransa in judgment while wearing the uniform she'd donned to protect them, but the warden had insisted. And though she'd rather rip the coat off and smother Thratia with it, she wasn't exactly positioned to protest.

“I am sorry about this, you know.” Thratia sat on the mudbrick bench beside her and leaned her head against the wall, giving them the illusion of intimacy. All around her Thratia's militiamen skulked, hands ready on weapons. Ripka made a point of not looking in the Valathean dignitary's direction. She kept her eyes straight ahead, her gaze indistinct. She would give them no sign of her anger. Of her fear.

The guardhouse was still night-chilled, and they'd lit only the bare minimum of lamps to stave off the desert heat a little longer. Ripka was grateful for that. She was going to have plenty of time to get acquainted with the sun, no sense in rushing it.

“If you were truly sorry you'd let me go.”

“Can't do it. I know you think I'm after the power, captain, but the truth is I want the best for this city. The only way it's going to survive what's coming is with a strong hand at the tiller. Something Galtro just couldn't provide.”

“So you got rid of him, then? I'm going to die anyway, you might as well relieve the burden with a confession before I go.” She clamped her jaw shut, regretting the ragged anger of her tone.

“Galtro was dead the moment he took that job. It was just a matter of time.” She shrugged one shoulder, infuriatingly indifferent to the destruction she'd wrought.

“His wardenship candidacy?”

“No, no. Being the mine master. You haven't been here long enough to see it, captain. I know you come from a town with no sel mines. The truth of it is, souls just don't last that job. Suicide, or a vengeance killing, one or the other always catches up eventually.”

Ripka clenched damp palms, taking a breath to smooth the raw edge creeping into her voice. “He was good at his job, he made sure the miners were as safe as they could be. Only had one accident during his whole tenure.”

“One's enough. Regardless, there are other duties that come with that job.”

“Like what?”

Thratia tipped her chin in the direction of the whitecoat. Callia had her back to them, long and straight, impervious to the dust and grit all around her. Ripka got chills just looking at her. She pitched her voice low.

“What will you do with Aransa, Thratia?”

The once-commodore pursed her lips and leaned forward, letting her forearms rest against her knees. She stayed quiet longer than was comfortable, Ripka's stomach knotting over and over again. When Thratia spoke, her voice was markedly gentle.

“You won't be around to see it, lass. And that's a blessing.”

Thratia pushed to her feet and dusted her hands, wiping away Ripka with each stroke. “Best prepare your conscience, yeah? Sun's coming up.”

Gathering a breath of courage, Ripka said, “I've a favor to ask of you, warden.”

Thratia paused, cocked her head to the side to watch Ripka from one eye. “Ask it.”

She clenched her jaw, knowing what that meant. Knowing no promises would be made, no favors kept if they didn't thread their way conveniently through Thratia's plans. Ripka straightened her shoulders and met Thratia's stare. “Whatever happens, do not instigate a purge.”

Genuine surprise widened Thratia's eyes, pursed her lips. Ripka held her breath as the ex-commodore cast a sideways glance at Callia. The whitecoat wasn't paying them any attention. Thratia turned, leaned down to bring her face closer to Ripka's and whispered, her voice harsh and her breath hot with anger. “Understand this – I will not allow such a thing to happen. Never.”

Ripka leaned her back against the cool wall and watched Thratia stroll to Callia's side, her heart thundering in her ears with every step. Of course. Thratia'd never wanted a purge for Aransa; but the doppel sure had needed a stick of fear to jab Ripka with. Sick laughter threatened to break through Ripka's lips, but she swallowed it down.

Watching from beneath her lashes, Ripka studied Callia, or tried to, her attention kept drifting to her once-sergeant. Banch stood beside the whitecoat at parade rest, wringing his hands behind his back because he thought no one would notice them. He kept trying to catch Ripka's eye, to give her some sort of signal that he was sorry. That he'd never wanted any of this to happen. That he'd had no idea he'd be the new watch captain.

Poor sod didn't even know Ripka had recommended him.

Taellen lingered nearby, back straight enough to match the whitecoat's, a barely controlled tremble of fear in the tightness of his jaw. Though he stood at attention, his eyes were downcast, his mouth curved into a soft frown. Ripka couldn't work out why Thratia had decided to drag the rookie out here for this, and decided she didn't care. Whatever the reason, there was nothing she could do about it now.

She closed her eyes and sighed. Banch was a good man. He wouldn't be fool enough to let his emotions be played by a common murderer. He'd take care of the city when she was gone.

Gone. She had to stop thinking like that. Detan was shifty as the night, but he had a core of goodness in him. He wouldn't let her down if he could help it.

As the sun crept skyward, spilling warmth and light through the cracks in the brick, she couldn't help but think of all the things she might have done differently in her life. All the paths that wouldn't have led her to this bench.

Digging deep, she summoned up the face of her mother. Her father. How long had it been? She'd lost count, and time apart had smoothed the details of her recollection. One piece was still clear, her father's voice, raspy with dry amusement,
spine like iron, brain like a boulder, that's my girl.

“Time to go, captain.”

Ripka stood. Straightened her blues. She did not let them help her up the ladder.