Inherit the Flame

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Ripka arrived first of the group. Latia had drawn her curtains, but still a warm, homey light escaped around the edges. Ripka wanted nothing more than to drag herself to that door, to pound on it and throw herself on Latia’s fussy ministrations. But it was a bright day, and Latia had drawn the curtains. Whatever was going on inside those walls, she wanted no one to see.

Enard and Honey could not have possibly made it to Latia’s house before Ripka, hampered as they were by Honey’s injury, and Tibal would not risk knocking on a stranger’s door. Which meant that something else had happened. Something Latia did not want the average gravel of the city to see.

Ripka leaned her back against the wall of a closed tavern and caught her breath. Silence pervaded the neighborhood so early in the morning, its bohemian residents still in bed or off to see to more mundane chores. The scarce population was a false wind, so far as Ripka was concerned. There were fewer eyes to note her presence, but she stood out like rain on a summer day. Especially standing about in her hotel robe with hints of blood beginning to seep through around her thighs and hips.

Footfalls alerted her to a passerby, and rather than being spotted she ducked down into a service alley that ran alongside the tavern. It stank of stale ale and fouler things, but Ripka’s watcher training had long ago bashed any squeamishness out of her nostrils.

She angled herself to see who approached, and nearly cried out with relief when she spied Tibal strolling alongside Enard, Honey supported between them.

“Here,” she said, stepping out of the alley.

“Ran across these two on my way in, and weren’t many eyes around to see us,” Tibal said. She couldn’t blame him for assisting, even if a group of three was more conspicuous. Honey’s cheeks were pale enough to have turned beige, her lips wrinkled with dehydration. Despite her assurances that she knew what she was doing, the woman was still in need of care. Crazy didn’t make you invincible.

Honey looked at Latia’s house and said, “Something’s wrong.”

“I know.” Ripka explained for the guys, “She usually leaves the windows wide open during the morning. She’s a painter, and loves the natural light. We don’t have much choice, though. We’ve got to have her help. Ready?”

Honey nodded, curls hanging limp around her cheeks, and the four set off at a hobbling, stunted pace. Ripka steeled herself, and knocked.

The door flung open. A red-cheeked Latia glared out at them, mouth half-opened in defiance, then recognition caught up with her, and her jaw dropped all the way open.

“Sweet skies!” She flung the door wide and stepped aside. “Get in, get in. You see?” She hollered over her shoulder. “Told you there was a good reason she didn’t show!”

Dranik stood in the frame of Latia’s patio door, jaw agape as he watched the four pile into Latia’s small sitting room. Dranik could wait.

“Honey’s injured.” Ripka put some command into her voice, and Latia jerked as if someone’d yanked on her arm. “Skies! A moment – I have fresh cloth around here somewhere. Dranik, make yourself useful and boil some water. How bad?”

Latia became a whirlwind of activity while Ripka helped Enard ease Honey onto one of Latia’s many lounge chairs.

“It’s shallow. She’s just put too much weight on it, too soon.”

Enard and Tibal wisely stepped back from the rush around Honey, putting their backs to the curtained windows while Latia and Ripka peeled Honey’s robe away and set about stitching and binding her wound. Dranik came scurrying into the room moments later, a steaming kettle of water hissing in his hand.

“What in the pits happened?” he demanded, as he knelt alongside Honey and offered the hot water to Latia to clean the wraps before binding Honey’s thigh.

To this, Ripka had no good answer. She hesitated only a moment, then decided to err on the side of truth. If they were going to work together, they had to trust one another, and Ripka couldn’t very well expect him to let her into his inner circle if she lied to him now. She couldn’t think of a convincing lie, anyway. The truth would be enough of a stretch.

“We were detained overnight in the Hotel Cinder by the Honding family guards. Honey’s injury allowed us an opportunity to escape this morning. I am sorry I missed your meeting, Dranik, but–”

“Pits take my meeting.” He bounced to his feet, shooting the men a hard look. “How did you get detained? And who in the pits are these two people?”

“Friends of mine, I trust them both with my life.”

“That’s all very well and good for you, but–”

Ripka was on her feet before she’d realized it, closed the distance between her and Dranik and pressed her face so close to his he had to step back or be headbutted. Her robe fell open, revealing the smears of blood on her nightshift, and she watched with perverse satisfaction as his throat bobbed.

“I have had one pits-cursed night, in no small part because of my efforts on behalf of this city. They are my friends. They are trustworthy. Their names are Enard and Tibal. You will treat them with the same courtesy you have shown me, or I will walk right the fuck out that door and leave you to unravel your own shitpile. Am I quite understood?”

“Yes,” he squeaked.

“Say hello to Tibal and Enard.”

“Uh, I… Hello, Tibal and Enard.”

“Smile.”

He did.

She slumped away from him, took an unsteady step backward, and tried very hard not to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.

“Pardon me,” Latia said, “that was all very convincing, and you four are very welcome in my home but, with all respect, what the fuck happened?”

“A few days ago I took it upon myself to intercept a message the Dame Honding sent to her Valathean contacts. That interception was discovered sometime yesterday, and we were apprehended last night and detained until the Dame could figure out what to do with us. That clear enough?”

Latia’s eyes were wide as saucers. “You stole information from the Dame?”

“I would steal her knickers off her wrinkled ass if it meant I could keep this city safe. Do you understand me now, both of you?”

“I…” Dranik mustered a shred of dignity. “Why? Why do you care so much about this city?”

Ripka looked at the mess she’d made. At Latia and Dranik, pale with fear. At Enard, pushed away from her so thoroughly that she hardly thought his name unless it was in the context of saving the city. And Tibal, whose friendship she’d nearly lost for good due to her own anger, her own rash decisions. Even Honey only tolerated her out of some misguided sense of loyalty to Ripka’s violent streak.

Hond Steading’s fate had so consumed her, her loss of Aransa so undermined her confidence, that she’d been working this job from the wrong angle. Taking on Detan’s mannerisms, his panache for misdirection. That’d almost gotten them all beheaded at the Dame’s hand. It was time to play this game on a more comfortable footing. And time, too, to make some pretty hard apologies. But those would have to wait. Now, she needed Dranik on her side. Her real side.

“My name is Ripka Leshe, and I was watch-captain when Aransa fell. I have lost one city to Thratia Ganal. I will not lose another. Do you see that I am quite serious, and that I mean to help you all?”

“I never doubted your intent,” Dranik stammered, “but when you didn’t show up–”

Latia swatted at him. “Stop simpering and find these people some fresh clothes, and draw some bathwater, for skies’ sake. I take it you four don’t exactly enjoy wearing all that blood.”

Ripka shot Latia a fierce grin. “Red’s not my color.”

“Skies, but I must paint you.”

“Later. Now, we have a city to save, and very little time to do it. Valathea is already moving in, and I’d bet anything Thratia’s forces will arrive in full within the week. Dranik – those contacts of yours, can you take me to them?”

He paused halfway to the patio to draw fresh water, frowning hard. “They were annoyed when the new recruits I promised them didn’t show, but–”

“But consider how much more pleased they’ll be with four new sycophants.”

“Ah. Yes. That could work.” He scurried out the door, bucket swinging from one hand, and let out a startled yelp.

“What is it now?” Latia was on her feet in an instant, but Ripka made it to the patio first. There was no one there, just Dranik, bucket dropped at his feet, head tipped back as he stared at the swathe of blue sky above all their heads.

A sky that wasn’t so blue any more. A fat shadow spilled over Latia’s garden wall, swelling with every inch it claimed across the tiles. Ripka swallowed once, then followed Dranik’s gaze to the sky which was pristine just a few moments ago.

The largest ship she’d ever seen marred the clouds. Though she could only see its belly and a sliver of its deck, it still managed to blot out the sun. Structures dotted the side that she could see, the ship twisted into a three-quarters view that rapidly dwindled as it slithered into position. It took her a moment to place those structures, as she had never seen so many clustered in one place before – harpoon guns, all of them, and the largest of their kind.

It approached the city from the west, its accordion wings throwing shadows so wide they almost ate up the entire city. Valathea, she knew, would come from the north – across the sea and over the delta. The only thing west of Hond Steading was Aransa.

Was Thratia Ganal.

Enard and Tibal came to flank her, and their combined shadow formed a smaller version of the great ship’s: Ripka as the body, Enard and Tibal as the splayed wings.

“She comes,” Dranik said, voice quiet with tension.

But there was more than Thratia Ganal on that ship, and only the two men who stood beside her knew that with the same certainty she did. A greater threat, or savior, arrived in Hond Steading this morning.

Thratia Ganal was expected, counted upon, prepared for. She was a force of nature, but one that could be predicted and moved against with enough time and effort.

Detan Honding, however, was a wildcard. And though Ripka believed in the deepest recesses of her heart that he’d only bent knee to Aella to save them all from the fate he’d since endured, she could not know what that fate had done to him. Could not know what plans he made now, what schemes were spooling out from his lips all across the city. After spending half a year as a willing captive of Thratia and Aella, she could not even be certain that he still counted those two his enemies. For all she knew, he came to bend Hond Steading to Thratia’s will.

But no. He wouldn’t. She knew that man, in the way she knew herself. Knew that despite all his gruff games, his quick tongue and his light fingers, he was wrapping himself in deception to hide the core of goodness in him. The core that had been bruised by the Bone Tower so badly it had retreated to the deepest recesses of his being.

“So soon,” Latia murmured. “I thought we’d have some time yet to prepare.”

“There’s no preparing for what’s on that ship,” Tibal said. Ripka had never agreed with him more in her entire life.

“What do you mean?” Latia asked.

Ripka said, “Detan Honding has come home.”

“Skies help us all,” Tibal whispered, too soft for anyone but Ripka to hear.