Inherit the Flame

Chapter Fourteen

Given the opportunity to be elsewhere, not even Thratia’s lackeys were populating her compound. Detan’s boots echoed in the empty entryway, the angry brightness of the chandeliers not enough to penetrate the shadows that gathered in the high ceilings. A few staff dotted the place, seeing to the type of menial chores Detan had spent most of his life trying to pretend didn’t exist. If Tibs hadn’t made him dust the flier on occasion, he probably wouldn’t know which end of a broom was up.

Despite the meager audience, he sauntered past the single, half-asleep guard at the door and slapped a pompous grin on his face. Body language wasn’t just about fooling onlookers, after all. The demeanors he switched as often as he changed his longjohns – often enough, thank you kindly – were just as much about convincing him of his adopted role as they were about fooling others.

And he could really use some convincing now.

A glimpse of pale blue silk caught his eye, the silhouette under the long robe tickling his memory. The young woman’s head was turned down as she flipped through a heavy ledger, her body canted away, but he recognized her all the same.

“Aella.”

Her head lifted, and she scanned the room until she found him coming toward her. She placed a tight, practiced smile on her small face. “Did you enjoy your wander through the city?”

He wasn’t about to let her drag him around with smalltalk the same way he did everyone else. “I didn’t recognize you without your coat.”

“Ah. That.” She looked down at herself, as if seeing the pale dress for the first time. It fit her well, ending just above the ankle bone, the shoulder seams crisp at the top of her arms. He’d never seen her in anything like it before, though there was no way she could have had something made for herself so quickly since their arrival. Thratia’s work, then. Seemed Detan wasn’t the only one concerned with maintaining appearances. He just couldn’t figure out what angle Thratia was working.

“Warden Ganal reminded me that I was no longer a whitecoat. And while she allows Callia to wear the garment – she does moan if you take it away – the Warden wants her people to bear as little resemblance to that particular institution as possible.”

“But you are a whitecoat.”

She shook her head, hand slipping across the ledger she held to obscure the words written there. “I gave them up when I entered Thratia’s employ. They would not welcome my return now, and I am pleased with my current position. The Warden treats me well.”

“Does she? Or does she just treat you less poorly than Callia did?”

“I see no point in the distinction.”

A flare of anger, just a brief simmer, that she would embrace the role she’d been crafted for so thoroughly while he fled from his own mold. “You are perpetuating what she did to you, what she crafted you to be. Callia’s mind is gone, Aella. You don’t have to please her, to follow in her shadow. There are places in this world Thratia and Valathea cannot reach, and you of all people have the strength to reach them if you so chose.”

She lifted both brows at him, tucking the ledger beneath her arm. “I am no more a prisoner here than you are. Or will you tell me now you are being held against your will? That you desire to flee and cannot?”

“Why do you stay?” His breath rasped, his fists clung to the air at his sides, color rashed his collarbone and cheeks.

“I think…” She pursed her lips at him, tilted her head to the side. “I think you’re asking yourself that question.”

With a condescending pat on the arm and a faux-sympathetic smile, Aella turned and made her way up the steps to some upper room, some inner sanctum to which he was not privy. Detan watched her go, breathing slowly, trying to calm his twitching nerves. The functions of the compound moved on around him. Servants tended to household needs while Thratia’s people worked on all the little plans that made her interests move forward.

Not a one of them paid him any mind. He was certain that if he stopped one, asked direction or assistance, they would provide it to him. Perfunctorily, as a matter of their duty to their mistress. Surely he had a room, somewhere. Surely he could take a meal if he so chose – demand fresh clothes, a bath, any of the little everyday facets of a life.

But he did not belong here. They had no need of him, no care for him. Not even Aella seemed interested in him any more, now that she had other tasks to attend to. He stood rudderless in a sea of someone else’s making and felt himself come adrift.

Detan could bear a lot of indignity, but being ignored was simply galling.

He strode across the wide hall that’d once hosted a gala he’d crashed and angled toward the steps up to the airship dock. If he were going to be forgotten about, he’d use the time to prepare something for them to remember him by.

He swooped out onto the dock, pushing the doors wide, prepared to charm his way past guards and caretakers to make his way onto Aella’s transport vessel. He hadn’t expected to see Thratia herself, leaning against the soft curve of the u-dock’s rail, the dock clear of every other soul.

If she’d heard him enter, she made no sign of it. She rested her forearms against the smooth rail, fingers interlaced, stooping to lean against the railing. He’d never seen her slouched before, had never seen her in any posture save ramrod straight.

Desert wind pushed her short hair against her scarred cheek, the ebony flesh tinged pink even in the warm glow of the oil lamps. Night crept in, reaching to meet her from across the horizon, bruised-purple and blue fingers of darkness lying in sheets against her skin. There was something intimate in the way she merged with the encroaching night.

“Did you enjoy your walk?” she asked.

He flinched, glad she wasn’t looking at him, his bravado evaporating. Here was the woman he meant to undermine. To keep from his home as if she were a viper and he the charmer, tangled together in a dance that could leave either one of them killed. And in that moment, watching the colors of the sun bleed out across her pucker-scarred cheek, he knew he did not understand her. Knew nothing about her, truly.

She was strong and brave and fierce and cruel, and rumors about her spun themselves into sand-devils all across the Scorched. They called her General Throatslitter. She’d been too hungry for power for Valathea to keep her. Exiled, kicked from the isles that’d been her home, to this dusty stretch of endless sand and sel she’d come, and rebuilt herself. And he did not know why, save that she wanted it. But want alone wasn’t enough to move most people.

Something had moved Thratia Ganal. Something besides the stories people told about her, something she kept close.

Something he could use.

“City’s gotten quiet,” he said. She didn’t move, didn’t so much as cock her head his way, so he sauntered over, adopting all the lazy affectations he’d refined over the years, to stand beside her.

Aransa really was beautiful from up here. Purple shadows draped the brown and yellow stones of the city’s deep-cut layers, smearing into hints of red and black spotted through with the warm glow of hearth fires and the sharper punch of candles and lamps, scattered like stars. Last time he’d seen this view, he hadn’t been properly positioned to appreciate it. It was hard to admire a landscape when you were pretty certain you’d just jumped to your death.

“They’re frightened,” she said.

“Because of you.”

She snorted. A warm burst of air, shoulders jerking forward. Her breath smelled of bright berry tea, and he was brought back to that terrible moment when she’d leaned into him on this dock all that time ago and whispered, hot, against his ear: I’m going to forge you an enemy.

“I won’t deny that. But this is better than the alternative.”

“Living without fear?”

“Blissful ignorance. Blind vulnerability. They’re safer now, whether they realize it or not.”

“Because General Throatslitter has claimed them as her chattel? Better to be slaves, than enemies?”

She shook her head, slow and sad, like a parent disappointed in a particularly thick-headed child. When the sun had given itself up to the night she half-turned, leaning her hip against the rail, and regarded him with slow care. He bit back a wisecrack and turned to face her instead.

“It’s funny. You almost look like a lord.”

“Almost like I was born to it.”

“Raised to it, maybe. You know better than most it doesn’t matter what womb you pop out of, so long as you act the part.”

“And what part have you been acting?”

Her smile slipped like a faultline. “Why don’t I show you?”

He swallowed. “What do you mean?”

Thratia pushed away from the rail, stood straight once more and turned her knife-sharp gaze down upon him. “It’s time you met the Saldivians.”