Inherit the Flame

Chapter Twenty-One

Detan woke howling. Fiery pain lanced outward from his shin, shook him out of his dreams and crested his vision with white stars. He curled in upon himself, grabbing his shin, sucking air between his teeth.

He caught the faint scent of musk in each breath and, as the pain faded, grew aware of the silk-smooth sheets tangled around him. Thratia’s bed. Thratia’s scent. The pain fled from him in an instant, and he stumbled, flailing, to his feet. He was alone in the bed. He would have found that a relief, if he couldn’t clearly make out the place where Thratia had curled in the night, her back pressed against him, her sleep-breath slow and even. Should have killed her in her sleep.

But he hadn’t had the heart for that. No, that wasn’t it. He just hadn’t been brave enough to try.

“Good morning, sunshine.”

He spun. Misol stood at the foot of the bed, her spear propped against the crook of her arm, a small smirk flattening her lips. He scowled at her, but that just made her smile. His sleep-slow brain took a few moments to connect the ache on his shin with the shape of her spear shaft, and then his scowl deepened to something more than a mask meant to irritate her.

“Sweet skies, woman, was that necessary?”

“You didn’t wake when I called your name, and I’m not about to touch you while you’re naked.”

“I am not–” But of course he was. Detan swore while Misol laughed, and scrabbled to drag a still sweat-damp sheet around his waist. “Are you here for a reason, or did you just decide there weren’t enough opportunities to be a demon-whipped ass outside of this room?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t flatter yourself. Thratia’s given you over to Aella for the day. Something about not falling behind on your testing.”

“Oh, that’s just fucking lovely.”

Her smirk was back, slow and coy. “Thought you’d be in a better mood this morning.”

“I don’t know what–” but he did. There was no sense playing dumb, or coy, or any other cursed thing. He’d spent the night in Thratia’s room. In her bed. Woke naked as the day he was born and, well, the windows were open but the scent of them pervaded still. His stomach twisted with the memory of what he’d done. For a moment, all he could see was Bel Grandon’s throat lying open at Thratia’s feet.

Long con. Keep it together, Honding. He only had himself to rely on here, after all. Without Tibs to keep him stable, keep him sane, he felt like he was breaking at the seams. Maybe that really had been the wrong move. Maybe he should have spit at Thratia’s feet and refused her advances.

Maybe he was just disgusted with how eagerly his body had reacted, despite his ulterior motives.

Strength fled his limbs. Trembling so that his knees knocked, he staggered, lurched. Heat and bitter bile filled his mouth bare moments before he was at the window, hunched over and retching stomach waters to dribble down the side of Thratia’s precious compound.

“Get yourself together,” Misol said, and there was an even gentleness to her tone that startled him. It was almost a cousin to sympathy.

“Why are you doing this?” he blurted, then bit his tongue until he tasted iron. Just because he was desperate for an ally didn’t mean Misol would be one. Wiping vomit onto the back of his wrist he turned to face her. Had to see the truth in whatever her expression betrayed.

She eyed him. Not to observe his nakedness, he knew that. She was taking in something deeper, using her doppel’s instinct to peel away the layers of masks he wrapped around himself like a shield. Like a cage. He’d never felt so truly naked in all his life.

She sighed then, low and slow, and shook her head. That simple negation wrenched at his gut, made him ache with a renewed sense of loneliness. “My reasons are my own. Now get dressed. I’ll be waiting.”

As the door slammed shut behind her he stood a moment, gripping the sheet to himself like it could hide what he’d done, heart pounding hard enough to echo in his ears. Bile threatened to rise again, tears threatened to smear his vision.

Fuck that. He came here with a goal. With something like a plan. He wasn’t about to crumble just because he’d boned Thratia Ganal. Just because Misol, with her bald head and big stick, wouldn’t be his friend.

Skies above, he was Detan-pitsdamned-Honding. Lord, at that. And this was his game. He’d stumbled across the board mid-play, certainly. Had wandered unwittingly into Thratia’s web. But he was pulling the strings now. Or something like that. Tibs would have a better analogy – probably involving rocks or gears or shit like that – but none of that mattered.

What mattered was this: he had the upper hand. They just didn’t know it yet. And that was exactly what he wanted.

Detan flung the sheet to the bed and strode over to the water bucket some well-trained but underpaid servant had left him and scrubbed up, each brush with the sponge cleansing away his lingering sense of regret.

By the time he was dressed, in the crisp clothes of a lord that had been left for him folded neatly on a chair, he was almost feeling human again. Though he hadn’t failed to notice that, although the clothes were well-cut and of high quality cotton, they were dyed a smudgey, ashy grey. Like the sky after he’d set it alight.

Probably just a coincidence. Probably Thratia had picked those colors knowing they’d hide dirt more easily.

The worried glance Misol gave him as he stepped into the hall stopped him hard in his tracks.

“What? I know I look sexy in a suit, Misol dear, but–” She snorted and waved him to silence.

“Don’t worry about it.” She hefted her spear and took off down the hall.

“You know, of course, that the moment people start saying things like ‘don’t worry about it’ the intended target of their otherwise benevolent advice can do nothing but worry about it.”

“You talk too damned much.”

“You’re such a stunningly engaging conversationalist, I can’t help myself.”

She rewarded him with dead silence, which was probably fair. The halls of Thratia’s compound – he’d never think of it as her home, it was another species entirely – wound on for ages. Detan fidgeted. Plucked at the fine seams inside his pockets, twitched at the lay of his shirt’s stiff collar. A collar that had been cut just so to reveal the brand at the back of his neck to any who happened to glance his way. He grimaced and pulled his hand back. These clothes had definitely been chosen by Thratia. Only she would turn him into a show-dog like this.

“Where are Forge and Clink?” he asked, and flinched when his voice echoed back at him off the hard stone walls.

“Safe.”

“Could mean a lot of things.”

“Means they’re fine, and the rest is none of your business.”

Well then. If they didn’t want him fraternizing with the other prisoners, then making them his business was exactly what he was going to do. He hadn’t a clue why they’d want them separated, or why they’d draw a hard line about it, but he could spin a lot of guesses – and every last one of them pointed to an advantage he could use.

Except for one reason: that they were already dead. Aella might do that, if she saw no further use for them, and he doubted Thratia would step in to stop her. Doubted Thratia would ever even know. The commodore – and why did she still call herself a commodore, when she held the warden’s seat? – ruled her domain with an iron fist, but he suspected not even Commodore Throatslitter had the wherewithal to micromanage all of her bastard helpers.

The things Thratia counted on to keep her people in line; fear, loyalty, informants. These things didn’t apply to Aella, unless Misol was an informant, which didn’t seem likely. He doubted Aella could ever be properly scared. Pissed off, sure, but the day Aella Ward grew frightened was the day the world came to an end.

Misol thumped once on a heavy, iron-banded door with the butt of her spear, and Detan realized he really should’ve been paying attention to the path they’d taken to walk here. Big, heavy doors like that were hardly ever in his favor.

The door opened to light brighter than the gleam off a bleached bone. He stumbled back a half-step, brought his arm up to shade his eyes while they adjusted. Some fool-headed engineer had wrangled a circular shaft straight through this wing of Thratia’s compound, spearing up all three levels to the daylight above.

No balconies marred the place where those levels should be, not even a window nor a faint discoloration of the stone. It was like being in a well, and judging by the thickness of the door jamb, a well meant to hold a whole pits-lot more than a couple of gallons of fresh water. Someone had gone and brought the desert inside, dusting the ground with mottled beige-and-brown sands, raked into a curling labyrinth. Aella waited from him in the heart of it all, a table propped up to her side with all sorts of nasty equipment he’d come to expect from these sessions. And Callia, of course. Couldn’t forget Aella’s sadistic shadow. The withered woman hunched under the table, drawing in the sand with one finger.

Thratia’d clearly gone a little soft in the head when she’d ordered this place built. It was no sort of arena, no testing ground for her warriors. Anyone standing on the sandy floor was just as likely to get tangled up in events as those being tested. A few good balconies wouldn’t have gone amiss. Maybe a nice little dais from which she could lounge and observe her loyal sycophants fight for her favor.

But no one, not even Thratia, put walls this thick around a practice arena. Nor bothered to band the room’s singular door with hard iron. This room wasn’t built for fighting, it was built for containing. For dying.

For him.

His throat went dry as the sand under his boots. He stopped mid-stride, caught the smug look on Aella’s face as she watched his realization take hold, and decided not to give the little witch the satisfaction.

Decided, most assuredly, not to think about the fact that Thratia had to order this thing built the day he left Aransa – the day she discovered what he was capable of – in order to have it prepared for him now. Busy, busy bee.

“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine?!” He threw his arms out in welcome and strode forward, owning every step he took with a mud-eating grin. He certainly ignored the derisive snort from Misol as she shut and bolted the door behind him.

Aella was wearing a civilian-styled tunic over a long skirt this time, both in refreshing shades of rare gemstones. Callia still wore her white coat, grubby at the hem, but he ignored her. Focused on Aella’s even stare. Callia had been neutralized – by Aella’s own hand. Whatever fear that woman once inspired in him, whatever tortures she’d visited upon his scarred flesh, she was no risk to him now, broken as she was. He could only hope that one day his own fears would be as beaten down as her body was now.

“You have come unprepared for our session,” Aella said, cool as ever, one blonde little brow perked in probably-faked annoyance.

“My spirit is always ready for the pleasure of your company.” Feigning clumsiness, he stumbled a step from the table and kicked a plume of fine sand at Callia. The broken woman shrieked and tumbled backward, clawing at her eyes with both hands. Aella swore and dropped to her knees to aid her. Detan took the moment to get a look at the instruments on the table while being unobserved. Well, mostly unobserved. He felt Misol’s stare on his back, but the doppel said nothing to alert Aella to his intentions.

Aella’d brought the usual tools of her trade. Scalpel, flint stone, pliers, bags of selium and empty sacks as well. Rope and leather and other gleaming things that looked threatening but he couldn’t name. In the name of research, that girl carried a kit that’d make a professional torturer wet themselves with glee. Skies above, she probably had some potion in there designed to make a man wet himself against his will.

There was no sight of the syringe that carried his usual injection of diviner blood and selium. He tried to ignore the fact, he really did, but after missing his dose the night, before anxiety was creeping in. A presence he had come to expect, invisible but always there, was slowly slipping away. A certain heaviness to the air, a tactile sensation every time he drew a breath. That injection had made him aware of all the tiny particles of selium suspended in the air, even if he couldn’t reach them, and losing them now was like having swaddling stripped away and being left bare-assed in a cold wind.

He swallowed his anxiety, recalling one of the meditative exercises Pelkaia had practiced with him in the time immediately after he’d set Aransa’s sky on fire: think of a singular goal, and breathe evenly. The goal was easy enough – get that injection. That first part was making the second markedly harder.

“Try to watch yourself, you clumsy oaf,” Aella said after she’d settled Callia’s whimpers and given the woman a metal mixing rod to draw in the dust with. Callia shot him little glares every so often, hard to see through the sunken skin shriveling up her face like an old plum, but each one of those little glares he took small pleasure in.

Should have been ashamed of that but, well. Callia had tortured him. And Detan had never been above small pettiness.

“A thousand apologies.” He held his palms to the glaring sky and bowed over them expansively. Already the heat was beginning to draw prickles of sweat between his shoulder blades. He considered asking Aella if she’d swap clothes with him, then decided better of it. She didn’t appear in the mood to tolerate his antics too long, and he knew from hard experience that pushing her now could lead to greater punishment down the road.

And anyway, his one goal wasn’t about being comfortable. It was about getting that injection. And finding out what had happened to Clink and Forge. So, fine, two goals. But Pelkaia wasn’t here to scold him about lack of focus, so to the pits with it.

“You should apologize to whoever made you that suit, it won’t survive this. Skies above, Honding, You’ve been given the run of the city. The servants answer to your needs. Did you not think you could ask for something a little less formal?”

He winced, subtly embarrassed that he hadn’t thought about the fact that their training sessions were quite intense, and he was likely to ruin all the fine stitch work that been put into what he wore now – not to mention stain that ash-grey fabric with sweat. But, more importantly, Aella’d let slip that the servants would treat him as the Lord Thratia was parading him around as. Handy, that little piece of information. Servants would no doubt have less compunction about being forthright with him than his current companions, and anyway, they always had the best gossip. Considering the pits-cursed nightmares he’d dragged himself through over the last few months, he was in desperate need of a juicy story or two to wind down with. Something with an illicit affair being walked in on.

“I wanted nothing but the best for our little chats, Aella dear. You do know how I look forward to them so.”

The corners of her lips twitched – something like a smile, something like a smirk. When he’d first met her, minding his leash on Callia’s airship of nightmares, he’d thought that expression was a smile. Normal little girls smiled when someone cracked a joke, after all. But Aella was no normal girl. She was cold straight through, worse if what Misol had intimated was true – not cold at all. Just… hollowed out inside. Empty. That lip twitch could mean anything. Annoyance, amusement. Pleasure at having witnessed someone – anyone at all – score a verbal point. She did seem to like to spar with him, though her patience with such things had grown thinner lately.

If she even had patience. If Misol’s theory was to be believed, then Aella was a walking blank slate. But that just couldn’t be right. The girl had passion, drive. They were just pointed in what Detan felt were rather unfortunate directions. He wondered, just for a moment, if he could manage to reorient those passions. Harness her drive for something that didn’t end in him sweating blood for data.

Callia shuffled in the dirt, and those thoughts evaporated like so much mist in the desert.

“Let us begin,” she said, and reached for a bladder of selium.

Detan made a show of stripping off his coat, laying it with care on a blank space on the table, and then rolling up his sleeves. He paced, cutting lines in the sand with his new, too-shiny boots, working up a proper coating of dust. Never could trust a Scorched man with shiny shoes. But the dust just wouldn’t stick. Thratia’d had them polished sleeker than a crow’s back.

“What’s the rush?” He was sweating now in full force, dampness seeping through his back in ribboned patterns. The scars on his back never sweated. Most of the time, he could ignore that. But now the memories of the fire he’d set to the sky came crashing back, his imagination so strong he could almost feel the lick of the flames eating his shirt away, kissing his skin all over. The same flames that’d mottled Thratia’s cheek.

Awareness of the selium seeped into his being, his senses reaching out on instinct, finding the bladder Aella held, feeling out its shape and its volume. Some small part of him lamented that there wasn’t nearly enough there for him to set the sky afire again. Maybe… Maybe he could thrust it up. Make a little fire. Just fill in the top of this thrice-cursed well with some real life. Show the sun’s rays what real heat could do.

Pain splashed over him, danced those thoughts away. He winced, hopped back, grabbed at his shin and cursed himself and Misol and just about any other handy name that came to mind. The doppel just looked at him, gaze hooded and bored.

Aella sighed and clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “As I feared. As soon as withdrawal sets in, he becomes almost as unpredictable as before his training.”

“What–” he sucked air, made himself put his aching leg down and resist an urge to blow all four of them to itty bloody bits. “What in the pits did you do to me just then? I wasn’t even thinking about…” he waved a hand, describing the rough shape of a blob of selium with the edge of his palm. “And then I was ready to blow us all to smoke.”

“I did nothing to you, I merely introduced the presence of selium. Made you remember its existence, its nearness. You have grown so unstable over the night without your dose that that was all it took.”

“Donkeyshit,” he snapped. “I’ve never felt that way before – never without reason.”

“And don’t you have one?” She gave him a real smile now, a coy little thing that he’d bet his right testicle she practiced in the mirror to get just right. “You have quite a lot to be angry about, Honding. All the time. We all do, really. All the petty injustices of the world, they just pile up. Mount and mount until we break. Some people reach for a bottle, some mudleaf. Some practice meditations, or skies forbid, talk their worries out with another sympathetic being. We’re all simmering, just a little. You’re just quicker to boil than others, and the injections have made you more sensitive. And yet, without them, your irritation comes so swiftly it’s like you’ve never had them at all. Fascinating.”

“Fascinating? Really? Would you find it just plum-bloody-interesting if I stubbed my toe and took all our heads off in retaliation? Skies above, Aella, you swore you could teach me control. Real control. This is moving backwards.”

She shrugged, as if it mattered not at all to her. “You really can be thick sometimes. This isn’t a regression – not technically. It’s a revelation. A hint as to what exactly is pumping through those veins of yours, or going on in that tiny brain. Did you know, before I left the Bone Tower, that the whitecoats had yet to discern just where exactly in the body sel-sensitivity originated from? I can’t even tell you the amount of cadavers they mucked around in trying to find a source, peeling the brain layer by layer looking for any anomaly. They found nothing in all that long research, and here you are upset because your control slipped a touch. Pah. You’re cleverer than that, though you try very hard not to be. Think it through, now. The injections gave you finer control, and the removal of them has shaken the baseline of ability you already possessed. Why?”

“I am not your tailcoat-clinging whitecoated pupil, Aella. This isn’t some twisted school quiz – and don’t expect me to believe for a moment that your esteemed colleagues in the Bone Tower were rummaging around in the bodies of just the dead.”

An eyebrow twitched, her head jerked back just slightly. He’d scored a point against her, reminded her of things that broke through even her veneer of indifference and unsettled her. His small victory lasted only a breath.

She reached into the pocket of her tunic, produced a syringe, showed it to him, swirled it, let the sel mingling with the blood gleam in the light.

“I mixed it just a moment ago, before you arrived. Thratia has a whole stable of diviners, did you know? She cultivates that deviation, sends them out into the harsh and hot world to find untapped resources of selium. They were all happy to donate a sample, after Thratia explained the situation to them. This one’s from a woman. Healthy girl. Keen sel-sense. She was eager to help.”

Aella tucked the syringe back into her pocket and pinned him with a look. “Such a shame blood goes to poison so quickly in this heat.” She glanced at the hot sky. “We’d better work quickly. That woman has gone out scouting, and do you want to know a secret?”

He grit his teeth and asked, “What?”

“There just aren’t that many people in the world who can donate blood for these types of things.” She stroked her pocket, cradling the outline of the glass hidden within. “Took us – apothiks and whitecoats both, you know – ages to figure out the secret. Some bodies produce blood of a certain, special flavor. It can harmonize with all other types. But try to mix any other two together?” She drew her thumb across her throat and made a croaking sound. “It’s not a pretty way to go.”

“Aella.” He hated the rasp that’d worked its way into his voice but, to pits with it, if she thought he was dangerous – thought he verged on going out of control – then maybe she’d give him the injection for all of their safety. He caught himself scratching at his inner elbow, in the place where previous needles had left tiny scars, and forced himself to make fists instead. “It wasn’t my fault I missed last night’s dose. Whatever you’re punishing me for, bring it up with Thratia. I have to do as she says, same as you.”

“We are not the same,” she snapped, fingers clenching around the syringe so hard he winced, fearing she’d break it. “And unlike you, I can do as I please. Thratia may have taken you to her bed, but do not confuse her use of you as a political tool with protection. You came to me – kneeling – to discover the secrets of your power and I have found something here, Honding. Found something interesting, and short of killing you I have free rein to do as I please, do you understand? I will make you understand yourself, whether you’re willing or not.”

“This can’t be useful, please–”

She waved him off. “That’s withdrawal talking. Unfortunate, but we can work through it. Now–”

Detan lunged. Hadn’t even thought about it. One moment he was standing there, trying to find another angle to weasel that syringe into his arm without losing too much dignity, and the next he was lurching forward like someone had yanked on his puppet strings.

But he’d never been a fighting man, and that was probably best for them all.

Misol swept his legs with the butt of her spear and he went down hard, chest-first into the hot sand. His instincts reached out, flung in all directions, mapping all the amounts of selium in the room. Numbness fell over him like cold water – Aella clamping negating power over his.

He shivered, clinging to the scorching sand, and tried to pretend that in the moment he’d lunged, in the moment Aella’d leapt back to avoid him, he hadn’t heard the crack of glass. Wasn’t seeing, now, the dribble of sel-infused blood pooling on the ground.

Aella sighed, low and disappointed. Detan picked up his head, forced himself to look at what he’d done. A red smear spread out from Aella’s pocket and she was, gingerly, peeling off the over-tunic.

“If your little fit is over,” she said, and he wanted to weep as she chucked the ruined garment to the ground and stood over him, hands propped on her still-small, childish hips. “Let us begin.”