Steal the Sky (35 page)

When the illusion had passed, there the
Larkspur
hovered. Half its sails were tucked in, its stabilizing wings only half out. Pelkaia stood on the edge of the deck facing them. The rail had been taken down, and she had one booted foot on a roll of canvas as thick around as a corpse. She grinned down at their little gathering, cut Thratia a tight salute.

The ex-commodore strode forward, Callia falling in line at her side. But it was Aella that Pelkaia turned her attention to. The doppel inclined her head, a small smile of genuine respect on her time-worn features. Detan blinked, realizing he was seeing Pelkaia's true face for the first time. He squinted, straining, but was too far away to make out any detail.

“You're good, girl,” Pelkaia called loud enough for all to hear. “But you missed one.”

Aella spun around, overbalanced, and staggered sideways a step. She brought her hands up to cup either side of her head, pressing in as if she could stop the world spinning with the force of her hands.

“Enough of this.” Callia outstretched a hand, selium-filled bangles jangling together, and Detan felt a wrenching in his gut. Something about the sel he held above him felt pestilent, repulsive. He was overwhelmed with the desire to push it away from him before the gangrenous contagion could spread.

No. He shook his head. And held.

The
Larkspur
shuddered, Pelkaia's smile fading as she fought her own battle against Callia's perverse talents. Thratia approached the hull of her ship, Callia on her heels, and reached for the ladder.

Pelkaia kicked the bundle.

The canvas unfurled, dumping a motley collection of half-rotted vines atop the heads of both women. They sent up a chorus of swears, swatting at the tangled vegetable mass, molded flowers mashing into their hair.

Callia's coat was smeared with rot. Detan could have sung at the sight.

“Stop fucking around!” Thratia's cutlass made short work of her entanglement, but she was still smeared in the rich nectar of the sticky blooms. Detan recognized the flowers then: the ones Tibal had pointed out to him at the fete.

Shit.

“Told you,” Pelkaia called, “you missed one!”

The doppel waved her hand, and the missing pipeline popped into existence. No trouble digging there, after all. Only this one was defunct, its leather tube infested with selium-fed bees. Bees that, according to Tibal, were rather fond of thistle blossom.

A swarm rose, a cloud blacker than any he'd ever seen, the buzz in the air heady enough to set his teeth vibrating. They coalesced and turned, irritated by the absence of the sel that had been hiding them. The sel that they had no doubt been happily snacking upon until the moment of its dissolution.

Thratia leapt for the
Larkspur
's ladder. Pelkaia must have been expecting the move, because the
Larkspur
danced out of her reach. Out of all of their reach, flitting further away from the mouth of the Smokestack than anyone could leap.

With one last explosive curse, Thratia threw her blade down and sprinted toward Callia's dinghy.

“And just what the fuck are we supposed to do?” Detan screamed at Tibs above the buzzing roar, the shadow of the swarm preceding them across the ashen ground. Tibs grinned, pointed at the
Happy Birthday Virra!
looping around the mass and headed right for them, Ripka at the helm.

Problem was, Ripka had never flown a damned thing before in her life.

“She's all over the blasted sky!” Detan screeched, trying to get a handle on his panic lest he lose control of his cloud.

Tibal scowled. “I showed her how it's done, she'll–”

The swarm slammed into them. Fist-sized bees, bodies gorged with sel, broke over them like a wave. He heard Thratia screech a war cry, saw dozens of the things drop dead around Callia as she extended her perversion of selium to the gas already in the bee's bellies. Detan spun round, swatting wildly, feeling bloated and fragile bodies burst under each swipe.

There were too many to swat.

B
right hot kisses
of pain blossomed on Detan's arms, his cheeks. Creatures angry that he wasn't food took their rage out on his tender flesh. He screamed, heard Tibs yell something much more manly, and then Tibs yanked him down beside the rock he'd been hiding behind. He had a cloak stowed there, and dragged it over both of them. It was thick and coarse woven, enough to keep the stings at bay as long as they didn't let any gaps show. Hard to do when you had two men crowded under one blanket.

“You stupid sonuva–”

Tibs elbowed him hard in the side. “If you'd just gotten your ass over to this side of the rock when I'd signaled!”

“Signaled! What signal? Oh shit, shit, New Chum–”

“Had his own cloak on his back. Saw him drop down and start crawling to the rendezvous site as soon as Pelkaia made her appearance. Pits below, can't you pay any attention?”

“Rendezvous? Ripka was headed straight for us!”

“Uh, well, I can't say why she'd decide–”

“Shhht.”

Bees dropped from the sky, thunked into view in the tiny little sliver between the cloak and the ground. Fat bodies twitched and collapsed in on themselves with rot.

“Honding,” Callia said, “would you stop cowering?”

“Errr.” Nerves wound tight as a propeller spring, he peeled back an edge of the cloak and glanced up.

Callia stood above them, arms outstretched, the eye of a storm of dying insects. His stomach lurched, reacting to her perversion of the selium all around. It was almost enough to make him lose his concentration on the cloud he held above. Almost.

Her face was half purple, a red welt smack dab in the center of one cheek, her outstretched arms pocked with identical marks. Despite the pain she must be feeling, she smiled. He hated her for that. He hated her for a lot of things, sure, but that smile was an icepick to the heart.

“Get up, idiot.”

“I rather like it down here.”

“You will leave with me. Now. If Thratia lives then she can take back her ship on her own time. I'm done with this place.”

“Well, that's a real nice invitation, but I'm afraid I have plans that I just can't back out of. It would be ungentlemanly of me.”

“Get. Up.”

“Err…”

He looked at Tibs, but he just shrugged. So this was it, then. His rescue. Well, it had been a damned good try. Joints aching, flesh burning, he pushed himself to his feet and let the cloak drop around him. Tibs stood beside him, arms crossed over his scrawny chest.

“I'm coming, too.”

“Fine,” Callia said, her tone flat as a cloudless sky.

From the corner of his eye a familiar shape darkened the sky; careening, bobbing, determined. Detan stiffened his jaw, pushed back his shoulders.
Stall, you mad Honding bastard.
His hands flitted through the air, a hopeless, childlike gesture, as if he could grasp a viable idea from the aether.

Callia smirked, a river viper sensing blood in the water. “Nothing more to say, Honding?”

“I–” He shoved a hand in his pocket in an effort to affect an unconcerned slouch, and his fingers brushed paper. The paper he'd nicked from Thratia. He pulled it free, a neat little square, and flicked it open. The familiarity of the handwriting punched him in the gut. Apothiks were always careless in forming their letters. Bel Grandon was no exception.

“Oh,” he said.

“Now isn't the time for love notes,” Callia grated.

Detan looked up from the familiar scrawl and studied the whitecoat. Strain fractured the lines around her eyes, sallowness had crept into her cheeks. Whatever effort she was expending holding the swarm back was doing her no good. He felt detached – slowed in time – freed somehow from the events around him by the small collection of words he held.

And all the while, he dared not look directly at the black blob bobbing closer across the sky.

“Do you know what this is?” He turned the paper around to face her, and saw her eyes narrow with suspicious recognition. He pressed on before she could answer. “It's a mercer cipher. Not a particularly opaque one, it seems the owner wasn't too concerned about it falling into the wrong hands.” He snorted a bitter laugh. “Maybe she'd hoped it would.”

He flung the paper at her and let it tumble to the ground, wilting in the soot between them. With a pained groan he dragged his good hand through his hair and then took a half step forward, pointing at the discarded note. “I have been an idiot. An absolute, bumbling fool!”

“You'll have no argument from me–”

“Be quiet!” The force of his own voice rubbed his throat raw. Callia flinched, and her momentary lapse of control made him smirk. “That. That little, little scrap, is a list of deliveries. All this time – all this sand-cursed fucking time – I let my fear hang on you. You and your puppet masters. Stupid, stupid man that I am. Thratia trading deviant sel-sensitives for Valathean weapons. Cruel. Typical of her – believable. But do you know what else is typical?”

“I grow weary of this.” Callia gestured toward him, a casual turning of the wrist, and he felt the sense of decay within him intensify. He staggered sideways, clutched his side, sweat forming rivers all across his skin. Tibs gripped his arm, held him upright.

Detan drew his lips into a skeletal grimace. Clinging to what control he had left, he reached out, shunted aside his sense of the cloud above and grabbed for the bee nearest Callia.

It was instinct, pure and primal. He didn't even feel the surge go out. The bee burst apart, roiling with flame. Not close enough to do more than singe the cursed woman, but it was enough. Callia swore, leapt to the side. Her grip on him extinguished as she dealt with the shock and pain.

He extended himself until his muscles quivered, taking the cloud in mind once more. All around him he felt the sel in the bellies of the bees more keenly. But they were a tight-packed mass. To try and blow just one again would mean losing control and blowing them all. New Chum was out there. Ripka and Aella. He couldn't risk it. But now, with the weight of the cloud resting heavy on his mind… Now he had an idea. An option.

“You. Will. Listen.”

She glared at him, but said nothing.

“Why was she disposed of, Callia? Why was General-fucking-Throatslitter kicked out of the Valathean Fleet? It wasn't for cutting throats, we both know that.”

Callia licked cracked lips. “She wouldn't relinquish power after conquest of the Saldive isles.”

“Wouldn't. Relinquish. Power. And you've been giving her weapons – weapons! I'd wondered, wondered why Thratia cared so much about cutting Galtro down where he stood. She's a psychopath, power hungry, cold hearted. Pressed for time by you. But she's not stupid. Never that. She risked a lot, killing the mine master. Could have just won the seat fair as scales but no. He needed to go then. The doppel was just a convenient scapegoat.

“He was going to fix the mines.” He thrust a finger towards the hive-infested pipeline. “Get Aransa's selium production back up to a hundred percent. It was his job, to keep them running, and by the pits he was good at it. But without that sel honey, the Grandons couldn't make their liqueur, and without that conveniently unique good to export, how was your little friend Thratia going to hide her distribution network?”

“She wouldn't–”

“You have no idea what she's capable of. How many arms do you think she needed to take Aransa? Placid, scared Aransa. Too frightened by the specter of the doppel to do any harm, too happy to have her by half. They would have voted her in – she didn't need all of that. Not here.” He thrust a finger at the paper. “Pick it up.”

Never taking her gaze from Detan she crouched, took the slip of paper in one hand and stood. She did not read it so much as flick her eyes to it in brief increments, absorbing the information in bits while refusing to release her awareness of her surroundings. He'd expected as much.

As he watched, her face grew drawn, her jaw tense and her lips pressed bloodless. He knew what she was seeing – had read it himself. A list of coordinates, deliveries made and planned, all over the Scorched. All of the Grandons' honey liqueur. The liqueur, and their false-bottomed crates.

He watched understanding settle within her – smooth the tautness of her shoulders, darken the glare of her eye. Callia folded the paper along its crease, tucked it into a pocket. Evidence, he presumed, for whatever she meant to bring against Thratia. Whatever she was planning, it was already too late.

A shadow passed above them, bigger than any selium-enriched bee, and all three looked to the sky.

Happy Birthday Virra!
swung into position above them, slicing through the cloud of angry insects. Ripka roared something incomprehensible as stingers alit upon her arms and cheeks and chest – any likely fleshy place. Callia's face twisted in annoyance and she reached up to extend her selium power to Ripka.

But Ripka didn't have a lick of sel-sense in her entire body.

The watch captain swung down from the thick rope-ladder and lashed out with one of Tibs's strange, overlong wrenches. She cracked Callia straight in the head, and the bitch went down like a landslide. Detan would have whooped with joy, if the area wasn't then immediately invaded by the bees.

They were flooded by the things. Detan dropped to his knees, saw Ripka slip the ladder, lost track of Tibs as he rolled in the dirt, stings blossoming all over like molten metal was raining down upon him. He screeched into the buzzing madness, felt his grip on the selium cloud slip.

Remembered it.

Straining against his pain, Detan yanked the cloud lower, tugging it below the cloudline until anyone who looked up could see the pearlescent globule. If anyone could see anything at all through the mass of buzzing life all around them.

He drew it lower, lower, trembling with the strain until the first of the pits-cursed creatures caught a sniff of it. It was irresistible to the little bastards.

All in a rush the swarm lifted, delved into the cloud of nectar. Detan laughed, wild and high, as he shoved himself up on his elbows and tipped his head back to watch the sky. His selium cloud was requiring less and less energy to hold as the infestation gobbled it up. He frowned, struggled to his feet and saw Tibs do the same. They stared at one another, stupefied with relief. Even Ripka was back on her feet, looking like she'd made love to a cactus, but otherwise whole.

Callia lay unconscious between the three of them, her breath coming easy, a little trickle of blood seeping down her temple. Detan's fists clenched. He stepped toward her.

“Wait,” Aella rasped, as she dragged herself to her feet and trudged toward them. “Leave her.”

Detan's head throbbed so hard he could barely think. “She's a monster.”

“She thinks you are, too.” Aella set her feet apart, braced herself, and held out a threatening hand. “I said leave her. I've still got enough left in me to handle
you
, Honding.”

He gritted his teeth, clenched his fists in impotent rage. “Come with us.”

“No one's going anywhere.” Thratia's voice, sharp as her will, cut across them all. The four jumped, guilty as if they'd been caught with their hands in the agave candy, and stared at the relatively unscathed ex-commodore. Detan blinked, not understanding, then looked beyond her and saw the sail of Callia's dinghy flapping limply. She'd gotten to it in time. Pitsdamnit.

“You're done, Honding,” Thratia called as she collected her discarded blade. He could almost hear the smirk she wore.

Detan realized he'd sunk to his knees, Tibs crouching at his side. Didn't know how he'd gotten there, but the sooty ground felt soft. Nice. Better than the cloud pressing in on his head.

Ripka and New Chum staggered toward them, and a lump formed in his throat as he saw Ripka reach for the knife he'd given her. She was so blasted shaky New Chum had to lend her an arm, but she came to stand before him. Between him and Thratia.

“You're outnumbered, warden.” Ripka said. “Best hurry back to Aransa before things get violent.”

Thratia spat in the dust. “You've got less strength in you than a fresh-plucked whore. Lay down your weapon and I'll consider not stuffing you head-first in a pipeline.”

A balmy shadow passed above and Detan tilted his head back, unable to understand what he was seeing. The
Larkspur
slid in under the cloud of ravenous creatures, drawing hard to a stop just between Detan and Thratia. The ground-anchor was flung from its deck, nearly missing the edge of
Happy Birthday Virra!
. It bit into the soot-and-ash concoction of the ground, the harpoon at its end spring-released by the pushback so that it gripped the soil and held tight.

The next thing to fall from the
Larkspur
was Pelkaia.

Detan stared, dumbfounded, as she soared from the ship's bowsprit, a flat cushion of sel held under her feet completely by will. She hit the ground, knees flexing, sel dissipating but not vanishing – he could feel it, the feather-thin shawl she worked it into, wrapped around herself. Shimmering and distracting, a shifting cloak of light. Not nearly beguiling enough to hide the length of steel that appeared in her hand.

“Pelkaia! No!” Detan called, but she did not so much as glance over her shoulder.

Thratia weighed the cutlass in her own hand, eyed this fresh threat, and smiled. “You're no more use to me alive.”

Pelkaia did not break her stride. Their blades crashed, steel screeching against steel, the sound piercing through the drone of the bees and Detan's own sorry yelling. Panic reared up in his chest, bright and wild, as they pushed apart.

Break. Attack. Guard. He didn't know a lick of the proper terms, could barely recall the word
riposte
from his ancient schooling, but even to his untrained eye Thratia had the advantage. She was the superior swordswoman. And Pelkaia was tired. Run-down. Desperate.