Break the Chains

Chapter Nine

Detan was beginning to think that he’d grown too old for this kind of nonsense, when he rounded a corner and confirmed the fact. Sitting smack in the middle of the lane, cross-legged and drooping with boredom, was a girl of about thirteen. Her round face puckered upon sighting them, as if they were expected. Detan grabbed a hold of Tibs’s coat to keep him from trampling the little thing. Sometimes Detan suspected Tibs’s legs were too long for the man to see the ground.

“Finally,” the girl said. The word was cut in twain by a yawn large enough to make a rockcat jealous. “Thought I’d be here all night, waiting for you two idiots to turn the right way.”

“Begging your pardon, miss,” he stammered between panting breaths, “but we are in a spot of a hurry.”

Shouts echoed behind them, entirely too close.

“And doing a poor job of evasion.” The girl stood in one fluid movement and flexed her bare feet against the stone road. Her sandy hair was a mess of wind-tousled curls, her cheeks puckered with the redness of too long spent in the wind. Trousers, bare feet, running amok in the city in the middle of the night looking like she’d swooped in out of the sky. Pieces clicked into place in Detan’s overheated mind.

“You’re one of Pelkaia’s.”

She gave him a slow, sarcastic round of applause. “They warned me you were clever. Now hurry, before that big brain of yours gets staved in by your new friends.”

“Cheeky kid.”

“You do bring out the best in people,” Tibs said.

The girl took off without another word, slipping along the streets as if she’d been born to them. With a synchronized roll of the shoulders they ran after her, throwing their fate in her small hands and hoping Pelkaia didn’t have it out for them too badly. He recalled how long and hard Pelkaia could hold a grudge, and amended his thoughts. Best not to trust – best to have an eye out for another opening, if that woman was in the mix.

After running what felt like half the night away, but was probably only a mere quarter-mark, the shouts behind them disappeared into the usual mutter and bustle of a city at night. Detan had no idea where they’d ended up – every building in this sea-spit city looked the same – but he didn’t rightly care as long as he wasn’t in imminent danger of a beating.

They staggered to a stop. Tibs and Detan panted while the girl crossed her arms and eyed them, bored now that the threat had passed.

“You two geezers having heart attacks?”

Detan mock-gasped and clutched his chest. “Oh, the cruelty of the young and snot-nosed wounds me so.”

“Ugh,” she said, with all the indignity a teenager was capable of mustering. “You do think you’re clever. Pity.” The girl rose to her toes to peer over his shoulder, and frowned. “More pity, looks like we really did lose them.”

Detan’s brows shot up. “You wanted a fight?”

She shrugged. “Just a little one.”

“Who in the black skies are you?”

She rolled her eyes, turned down a side lane, and vanished in a cloud of mist.

“What in the…”

He scurried after her. The mist felt cool to his skin, sticky with the brine of the sea. He waved his hands through it, tangling his fingers in the smoky wisps. A tingle begged for attention at the edge of his senses. Sel. He scratched the inside crook of his elbow.

She’d made sel look like smoke and melded it with the mist to cover her escape. He stood silent, trying to ignore the pounding of his heart in his ears, but couldn’t hear her footsteps pattering anywhere nearby.

“Creepy kid,” he muttered.

“One of Pelkaia’s, what’d you expect? Now what’d you go and lose our grains for?”

“Ever the miser. Come along, I think I see the Larkspur’s new facade over yonder, which means the flier is close by.”

Detan explained what he’d learned as they plodded along the mist-slick street toward the dock. A fretful wind rolled in off the sea, kicking up dirt and detritus in equal measure. When they drew within sight of the dock’s building, they sought shelter in the leeway of a nondescript brown building to talk through their next steps. Tibs rested his back against the alley wall to look over Detan’s shoulder while Detan watched over Tibs’s. Just because they’d left their pursuers behind didn’t mean they weren’t likely to stumble across someone who’d recognized them.

Detan had made that mistake before. He hunched his shoulders, flipping up his collar to hide the house sigil seared into the flesh at the back of his neck. His hair was long enough to hide it now, but in this wind he didn’t trust to that particular method.

“I suppose you got something good after all,” Tibs admitted when Detan had finished relaying the information he’d squeezed from the guards.

“A little more faith from you, I think, is in order.” He grinned as Tibs rolled his eyes so hard all he could see were the whites of them. “Though the news that the Remnant’s been housing rogue sensitives is a worry.”

“Could be a hook for Pelkaia.”

Detan grimaced. “Could be a hindrance, too. Sauntering in to break out three souls is a bit different than liberating a whole wing of high-priority prisoners.” A stray gust carried the scent of seared fish marinated in some sort of citrus. The hollow in Detan’s belly, alleviated by only a few sips of that nasty ale, rumbled.

“Did you happen to win any grains?” he asked. “I could use a bite or ten. I can’t believe Pelkaia didn’t even treat us to tea. Quite rude of her, after we’d gone to all that trouble to arrange a visit.”

“She never struck me as one inclined to hospitality.”

“Dangers of living your life under a shifting sea of faces, you never know where your manners will come from.”

“Don’t think it works that way.”

“I’m afraid I’m too starved to think straight on the matter.” Detan scowled at the empty alley, all its heaps and piles of rubbish looking decidedly inedible. He kicked the ground, dislodging a pebble, just to show the city how annoyed he was with its shameful lack of provisions.

“There’s food on the flier,” Tibs said.

“Of course, but I haven’t a clue how much berthage that posh dock Pelkaia dropped us at costs, and I doubt the lady paid our fare – no, I’m sure she didn’t. We got lucky sneaking on the first time to grab my shoes, I doubt we’ll be so lucky again. I suppose we could scout another card house, play some local roughs for real gain.”

“Or,” Tibs drawled, reaching into his rumpled grey coat, “we could bribe the dock porter. Did some digging of my own. Turns out his favorite brew is Rinton Red.”

From within the voluminous confines of his coat Tibs produced a dark green bottle two hands tall, with a smudged brown label proclaiming the aforementioned vintage.

Detan stared, open-mouthed, until the dust on the wind demonstrated the benefits of keeping his mouth closed. “What… I mean… When? How? When did you get that? Never saw you leave, and I sure as the pits know you weren’t toting it around with you before.”

Tibs waved a hand through the air and pushed off from the wall, ambling toward the docks with a nonchalant stroll. “I’m not the only one who can lose at cards.”

“What does that even mean? How’d you get it, Tibs? Come on, spill!”

“Nope.”

“Nope? Nope? You can’t answer a question like that with nope. We’re partners. Fess up.”

“Man’s gotta have his secrets.” Tibs tugged the brim of his singed grey hat lower. “Keep an air of mystery about himself.”

“Mystery? You? You’re the straightest nail I’ve never bent. Why, I remember when we first met–”

Tibs shushed him with a wave of the hand as they mounted the steps back to the docks. Detan forced himself to bite his tongue, focusing on the narrow wooden stairs attached to the side of the building. He wondered what the interior held. More taverns and places of business, like the one across the street, or apartments? All the narrow windows had their curtains pulled tight, their shutters locked against sea winds. The air inside had to be vile – stuffy and damp. How people could live like that, all stacked up one atop the other, he couldn’t begin to understand.

As they crested the rooftop, Tibs strolled ahead to have a talk with the porter. Detan gave him a few moments of privacy before sidling up to them, an affable smile plastered on his face.

The porter had the bottle in his hands and turned it over with strange tenderness as he licked pillowy lips. “Which one you say was yours?” he asked Tibs.

“The flier, over there.” Tibs jerked his thumb at their bird, looking mighty rickety next to the reduced grandeur of the Larkspur. Happy Birthday Virra! was painted in pristine purple paint on the side of the buoyancy sack. They’d taken turns refreshing the color every other moonturn.

The porter raised both eyebrows. “And which one of you is Virra, then?”

“He is,” they said in unison.

With a world-weary sigh the porter stuffed the bottle into an oversized pocket and hooked his thumbs in the loops of his trousers. “I suppose berth for such a small vessel won’t amount to much. You in for a day or two?”

“Two, maybe more. We overstay our welcome, another gift’ll be in order,” Tibs said.

The porter chewed this around, cheeks bulging as he poked his tongue against the interior of them, then nodded, subconsciously giving his bottle a pat. “Go on then. And don’t cause no trouble.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Detan said with a chipper wink.

Tibs grabbed his sleeve and tugged him away from the narrowing eyes of the porter. They scrambled aboard in silence, checked the deck for stowaways, then exchanged a questioning glance. It was time to go below.

With an exaggerated yawn and catlike stretch for anyone who might have been watching, Detan entered the cabin sticking up dead center of the flier’s deck, Tibs close on his heels. With a practiced flick of the wrist Tibs threw the lock on the door behind him, and they stood a moment in silence, listening.

Nothing but the wind.

Whistling a chipper tune, Detan dragged one of the limp mattresses they kept for show to the side of the cabin and flipped up the disguised wooden latch on the trapdoor hidden beneath. He hauled it up, grabbed a lantern for light, and shimmied down the narrow ladder.

While the deck and cabin of the flier were modest in their accoutrements, Tibs and Detan had shoved everything they owned of value down into the smuggler’s hold in the keel of their flat-bellied ship. Barrels of booze, a stash of false grain making equipment, luxurious mattresses, all their clothes.

And, apparently, Pelkaia.

She sat on the edge of Detan’s mattress, his favorite silken pillow resting on her knees, a knife that was most certainly not his resting on top of that. She wore her own face, and the dune-smooth lines of her Catari heritage unsettled him. She was of the people his family had inadvertently uprooted, all those years ago when they’d sailed on ancient sea ships in search of better farming and had discovered the Scorched – and the selium – instead.

The simple fact that a people already called this sun-blasted continent home had not stopped the Valathean advance. In some ways, he suspected it’d encouraged them. Valatheans had always been keen on a fight.

“Coulda just knocked,” he said, stepping aside so that Tibs could drop down from the ladder beside him.

“I’m here to offer you assistance, Honding.”

“Ah, well, I hope it’s not with redecorating…”

He cringed as she tossed the pillow to the floor. Fine silk like that shouldn’t be abused so. As she stood, he watched the way she held her knife, low but loose, not preparing for a fight. Her open stance and pursed lips eased the tension between his shoulder blades. Her pointed glance toward the curtained-off section Ripka had used to sleep in brought the tension right back.

“I will help you recover Watch-captain Leshe and your wayward friend. But first…” Pelkaia glanced to the knife in her hand, and he had no idea what to make of the decisive nod she gave herself.

“You’re going to have to help me with a little side project.”

Detan swallowed. “I’m listening.”