Inherit the Flame

Chapter Nine

Aransa. City of fire. City of blood. City of Thratia Ganal. It slid into view upon the horizon just like any other city, the sharp crags of its skyline a black blot under the bowed head of the setting sun.

Such a city should not appear so docile, so sleepy under the lowing of the day’s light. Detan wanted to hate the sight of it. This was the city that had almost trapped him, almost enslaved him. This was the city where he dug deepest, reached out and rendered the sky in flame.

This was the city that broke him, though it took a while for the cracks to show.

And yet he could not hate it. Could not even summon up a mild disgust. Aransa was beautiful, with its dormant mountain cut through with streets and city life facing the relatively blank face of its commerce-supplying firemount. Those black shards of obsidian that stretched between the city and the firemount gleamed even in the setting light, their heat twisting vision into smoky waves. Somewhere beneath those shards a vast chamber of magma dwelt, merging with the desert heat to create a killing field.

He’d walked that field, once. Walked it with Ripka, for Ripka, and had come out the other side a different man.

No, he couldn’t hate it. Aransa was the city that’d forged him. He was only gaining temper, now. Honing his edge for what was to come.

Closer, and the differences began to show. Thratia’s compound had expanded, bled out across the level below. The first time he’d seen it, the size had struck him as ostentatious. Now, with her walls consuming half of a whole level, he realized how wrong he’d been that first time. She’d just been waiting. Waiting to consume the city whole.

And, in a way, he’d let her. He’d scooped up Ripka, Tibs, Pelkaia, and New Chum and sailed out across the sands, leaving Thratia to do whatever she willed. He hadn’t stayed. Hadn’t even considered the possibility of staying to fight back. He’d been consumed by the need to escape the whitecoat’s scalpel looming over his head. A fate he’d bent knee to, willingly, when the opportunity had suited him. Shame burned in his throat.

He was coming back, now. Coming back to set things to rights, if he could at all manage the task. That’s why he’d bent knee to Aella, after all. Not just to save his friends, not just to discover the secrets of his own abilities. But to begin to balance the scales he’d left so terribly out of whack.

Standing beside him on the airship’s forerail, Forge whistled low. “Looks like she’s ready to march.” Her hair obscured her face, but Detan could hear a hint of disdain in her tone.

If Thratia’d bled her presence all over the upper levels of the city, she’d gone and thrown up on the mid-levels. An entire level once given over to rental docks and mercer berths was swarmed with ships of war. Where Thratia’d found the wood to construct them all on such short notice, he hadn’t the slightest clue, but they existed despite their impossibility. Probably she’d had the source for that wood lined up years in advance. Even before her exile from Valathea, Thratia had been admired amongst her peers in their Fleet for her tendency to obsessively plan all her maneuvers.

The ships weren’t things of beauty, not like the Larkspur had been. But then, they hadn’t been built to impress – they were built for one purpose; troop transportation, and to rain fire from above. Each hull was long and lean, the cabins sparse and the rails speckled by heavy harpoon stands. Detan tried to count them, but the curve of the city hid the bulk from his view.

“Not a fan of old Commodore Throatslitter, are you?” he asked Forge.

Her long fingers, the nails trimmed down to stubs and the cuticles splitting, curled tight around the rail. “I got a certain amount of respect for a woman like that, you understand. No one can say she does anything by half measures, and that’s the skies’ truth, but you can’t trust her. Got no honor for anything save her own goals, and those she keeps tight to the chest. A woman like that, she’d do anything if it meant achieving her goal. Anything at all.”

“Says the convict,” Detan mused.

She snorted. “Your hands can’t be clean either, little lord. And anyway, I only did what I had to to make a living. Wasn’t ever quick to kill or anything like that.”

“And how did you make your living?”

She turned to regard him, and when he met her eyes, her look said he was the biggest idiot she’d ever met.

“Oh. Forge. It’s in the name, isn’t it?”

She laughed. “Now he gets it. Wrote up some false contracts, identity papers, things like that. Nothing too cutting, at least not that I knew of, and I confess I rarely looked into the outcome of my works. I was good. Real good.” She picked at her curling, dry cuticles and flicked a bit of skin over the side of the ship.

“How’d you get caught?”

She shrugged. “How’s anybody get caught? Overreached, is what I did. Wrote up a fake manifest for some ship, real bit of bloated nonsense, and the mercer who bought it couldn’t pull it off. He got hauled in, and I didn’t find out about it until he’d already squealed and the watch was knocking on my door. Usually it’s just a jail stint for that kinda work, but Valathea thought they might want my talents someday and kicked me to the R to keep an eye on me. Lucky girl I was, meeting Clink and Honey straight off.”

“Clink I know, but who’s Honey?”

Forge shook her head, slow and ponderous. She stuck her gaze on the approaching city and kept on picking at her nails. “Don’t know her real name, or her whole story. Never bothered to ask – got the feeling that she didn’t want to talk about it, you know? Of the group – me, Clink, Honey, and Kisser – Honey was the first of us. She’d been at the Remnant a long while before she hitched herself up to Clink.

“I asked Clink about it once, how they met and decided to roll along together. She said Honey just came up to her one day, sat down beside her, and that was that. It was Clink’s second day in, and she wasn’t a fool – she could tell everyone in the place was wary of Honey. So she figured it wasn’t such a bad idea to stick with the girl. Then I came along, then Kisser, then the captain – that’s Ripka. Honey liked the captain right off, saw her fight, you know. Honey likes that kinda thing. Escaped with the captain, I think she did, anyway. Never saw her again in the Remnant and we know she wasn’t killed that day. Only Kisser was.”

“Is Honey a short, sturdy woman with a mess of blonde curls?”

“That’s the one.”

Detan nodded. “I saw her that day. As far as I know, she walked out with Ripka.”

“You know… Part of me’s happy she’s free, the Remnant’s no place to live. But the smart part of me… Well, I wonder if the world wasn’t better off with her tucked away there, you know?”

“If Ripka’s got her, it’ll be all right.”

Forge clucked her tongue against her teeth and leaned back to stretch. “Wish I shared your faith, little lord.”

“You two.” Misol snapped her fingers at them as she approached. “Get away from the rail now, we’re preparing to dock.”

“Straight to the compound, then?” Detan asked.

Misol shrugged. “There’s not exactly room on the eleventh, now is there?”

They retreated from the fore rail, but Detan lingered nearby, watching the massive structure that was Thratia’s home and stronghold grow closer and closer. The pilot was fidgety with the controls, yawing the ship at random angles as he approached. Detan grit his teeth to keep from yelling at the man for being a moron.

They angled toward the old u-dock, the very berth where he’d first sighted the Larkspur. The dock upon which Bel Grandon had died, just to make Detan’s life a little harder.

He swallowed a lump in his throat. It didn’t go anywhere.

The crew called out to one another, hauling ropes and throwing anchor, as the ship slid into port. Those huge, hugging arms of deck reached out to give the ship shelter, though this ship was considerably smaller than the Larkspur had been. Where once crates of supplies – smuggled weapons and uniforms – had littered the ground, there was only empty space, now.

Empty, aside from Thratia Ganal and her entourage.

Ignoring Misol’s warning about being near the fore rail, Detan stepped forward. He didn’t have a lot of pride left, nowadays, but he’d be damned to the pits if he cowered in a cabin while they docked. He wanted to be the first thing she saw, as this ship of hers came running to her call. Wanted her to know he’d come back, and though he’d bent knee to Aella, he wasn’t cowed. Wanted her, above all else, to see him grinning like he owned the world she’d threaded her fingers through – she just didn’t know it yet.

Thratia stood at the spearpoint of her group of guards and attendants, posture as straight and sure as ever, chin lifted to meet the incoming ship. She wore granite-grey leggings, a bloodstone-hued tunic cut close to her lithe body. No weapons. Not even a wisp of armor. He wasn’t the only one faking confidence, then.

Her hair was braided, pulled back from her shoulders to reveal the burn-scar that marred her cheek. The flesh rippled from the left side of her chin all the way up to her ear, the skin a warped pattern of shiny waves and eddies. Detan wondered if it hurt – if she pulled her hair from it to keep the ache at bay – but no. That wasn’t Thratia’s way. Even if it did ache, she’d still pull her hair back to display the injury.

The injury he’d given her.

They stared at one another as the ship tied in and the gangplanks were thrown down. She’d tried to kill him, or capture him, more than once. And here he was, strolling into her home under the power of one of her lackeys. Knee already bent, head bowed to her whims. She had called for him, reached south across the Scorched to a knobby little island in the middle of the Endless Sea and said: come.

And he had. He’d come when she called. Because he desired nothing more than to make her regret it.

He was on the dock, couldn’t even recall walking down the gangplank, standing in front of Thratia. Trying real hard not to look down, not to spare the boards beneath his feet a glance. He didn’t want to see the stain of Bel’s blood there. Didn’t want to see that it’d been scrubbed clean even worse.

“Thratia. You’re looking better every day.”

She cut her gaze to Aella. “You told me he’d changed.”

“He’s started to,” the girl corrected.

A sane woman would have sighed. Would have glared at him and told him to shove it, or otherwise admonished him for mocking the very wound he’d dealt her. Thratia’s lips didn’t even twitch. She cocked her head to the side, looked him over real slow, and nodded to herself. “You’ll do.”

“Excuse me?” he asked, but she had already turned her back on him.

“See Aella’s people settled,” she said to her entourage. “Get secure facilities for the two prisoners, and show the guards where the training grounds are. Upper floor rooms for Aella and the Lord Honding. Honding has free run of the city, do not detain him. Aella–” She turned back to the girl and jerked her head to the side. “With me. My people will make sure Callia’s settled.”

And just like that, Thratia was gone, Aella floating along at her side like a ghost. Her people swarmed Aella’s guards, the ship, bundled off Clink and Forge and set to carrying Callia away to be looked after. Detan found Misol directing the unloading of the ship and looked at her, open-mouthed.

“That’s it?” he asked.

Misol shrugged. “I don’t make the rules. Explore the city, if you’d like.” She grinned a little. “I won’t stop you.”

“Lord Honding?” an attendant sidled up to him. “Would you like to be shown your rooms?”

“I…” he stammered, annoyed that Thratia, of all people, had managed to put him at a loss for words. “No. No. I’m going to go for a walk. Get my land-legs back.”

“As you wish. When you return, any of the house staff will be able to show you to your rooms, you have but to ask.” The attendant dipped her head and raised her palms above her head. “Skies bless,” she said, and bustled off to see to her other duties.

“Skies bless,” Detan responded by rote, numb with shock. Whatever he’d been expecting in Thratia’s home, it hadn’t been a household holding to the old functions of politeness. He certainly hadn’t expected to be turned loose to do as he pleased just like any other guest.

Time to test the leash, he thought, and turned his back on the ill-omened dock to greet the streets of Aransa.