Break the Chains

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Detan and his motley entourage were led through the twisting corridors of the Remnant and out into the open air. Cold wind raised prickles over his skin. He tried to convince himself that all those prickles were due to the chill. Wasn’t fear at all. Not for Detan Honding. But he’d never been very good at convincing himself of anything at all.

They followed a narrow, packed dirt path through scrub trees and a few rows of carefully tended crops. Great heads of wheat and corn bowed to the winds rolling in off the sea. He couldn’t help but be a little jealous of the variety of foods the inmates had access too. He hadn’t had a good roasted cob of corn in years, not since his auntie had some flown in for his twelfth year celebration. Wasn’t much arable land out by Hond Steading proper. Most of their food came from the coastal farming towns a day’s flight to the north. Yet another way Thratia could cripple Hond Steading.

Detan forced himself to focus. He was here for New Chum and Ripka, sure, but he was here for his auntie, too. Here for her whole city, and that meant seeing this straight through to the end. No running, no failing. He had to get all his happy charges, plus one Nouli Bern, bundled up safe on the Larkspur and make like a monsoon wind for the mainland.

Right, he told himself. He’d been in worse spots. And, sure as the pits were black, he couldn’t allow himself to panic. Not now, not with that great looming mass of selium they were approaching calling out to him on the periphery of his senses.

A small, yellowstone house sat at the end of their chosen path, right smack in the shadow of that giant sheet of sel. He couldn’t see the gas, but he could sense its presence above – ominous, looming. As if it were watching him and daring him every step he took. Daring him to reach for it. To mold together with it. To release its potential.

He stared at the house ahead, refusing to so much as glance at the false, pleasant blue of the sky above. Pelkaia rolled her shoulders uncomfortably, twitched at the ends of the bandana that hid her hair. Sweat stained the collar of her tunic.

“Ugly little place,” Tibs remarked, snapping him out of his mounting anxiety.

“Saying you want to move in?”

“Naw. I think it’d suit you better.”

“Quiet,” Pelkaia-Thratia said, because she couldn’t be seen letting her prisoners chat out their fear right under her nose. He was grateful she let them slip in what little they got. Tibs’s barbs always gave him a sense of calm. Of normalcy.

Of home.

Every step forward he wanted to dig his heels in and refuse. But he was committed, there was no turning back even if he did lose his nerve. When the guard leading them down the path flung open the house’s door, he’d like to think he didn’t flinch. He did, of course, but he’d like to think he didn’t.

The faint light in the room wouldn’t let him see what he was walking into, so he strode in blind, keeping his head up and a stupid, hopefully disarming smile plastered on his face as he followed Pelkaia-Thratia into the dim room. Light bled across the floor from poorly pulled shutters, illuminating floating dust motes.

His eyes adjusted. His smile disappeared.

“My my,” Aella said, cocking her small head to the side as she regarded Pelkaia. “What an unexpected delight, commodore.” The slight emphasis she placed on “commodore” made Detan’s blood run cold. She knew. Of course she knew. And she could dash the facade away, if she so chose. The crook of his elbow burned from her nearness.

Tension gathered in the room, knotted and clotted up just like his anger did when it was preparing to rear its head. He saw the withered creature huddled by Aella’s side, wine carafe clutched in skeletal fingers. Saw New Chum, standing alongside some woman with a spear, face a mass of placid geniality. Saw Ripka, skies bless her, standing between him and Aella, her bruised fists held low, a golden-haired woman with a knife at her side looking just as ready to fight. But no Nouli. Not yet. Ripka’s mouth moved. She thought better of whatever she’d been going to say and closed it.

He ignored their bruises. Their bloodied lips and black eyes. The filth and blood staining their jumpsuits. If he didn’t… Well, it was just better that he saved that information to give due consideration later. When there wasn’t a vaporous cloud calling his name above his head.

“Right,” he said and clapped his hands together, donning his smile like a mask. “It is such a pleasure to see what a lovely young woman you’ve grown into, Aella! Though I must confess I do not believe white becomes you.”

He strolled round the room as he spoke, drawing everyone’s eyes, trying to keep them looking, guessing, trying to figure out how he was going to salvage this mess.

“And you, Callia.” He paused before the withered woman, pointedly ignoring the thin silver chain hanging from a collar around her neck. A perverse shock of pleasure rocked him, made his smile genuine. “You look as lovely without as you are within.”

“Enough.” Aella’s voice lacked the snap of her predecessor’s, but her exasperation was just as cutting. “Misol, secure the building.”

The lanky woman with the spear shot Pelkaia-Thratia a wary glance, but shrugged and angled for a doorway. Going for assistance, Detan realized. Going to gather up all her sister spears and hem them in with pointy edges. Pelkaia’s fists clenched and unclenched at her sides, a hatred deeper than anything Detan’d ever felt burning bright behind her borrowed eyes.

He had Ripka, New Chum, Pelkaia, and Coss. Tibs, too, could be handy with a wrench if pressed to it. Aella was outnumbered now. She wouldn’t be again. There would be no other opportunity.

“You are such a thoughtful host.” Detan sidled up to Callia and took the wine carafe from her trembling fingers. With a flourish he plucked a cup from the neat desk and began to pour.

“Tell me,” he said, keeping his gaze on Aella, not daring to look at either Ripka or New Chum lest he give away his intent. “Do you have my package?”

“I can collect it in a moment,” Ripka answered, crisp and efficient, while Aella’s eyebrows knotted in confusion.

Ah. Well then. What she needed was a distraction. He was good at those. It was cleaning up the mess afterward that’d always proved his problem.

“Be a dear and fetch it, hmm?”

He dashed the cup of wine in Aella’s smug little face.