Inherit the Flame

Chapter Thirty

Thratia did not make Dame Honding board her ship to speak terms, and Detan found that strangely kind of her. Whoever held the ground, held the upper hand, and he knew sure as his nerves were on fire that Thratia was aware of that fact.

But she was a crafty rockviper, his bloodthirsty betrothed, and he suspected that she saw some other upperhand to be gained in dealing with the Dame on her turf. For his part, Detan wished deeply that she’d decided to deal with them on the solid deck of the Dread Wind. Not that he wanted Thratia to have any advantage – he simply wanted to know all the good hiding places, should his dear auntie lash out at him in the way he expected.

He was also convinced that Thratia’d allowed Aella to bring along Callia just to put Ranalae on edge. Disgusting little move that it was, he hoped it played true. If anyone in the whole of the world needed her nerves shaken, it was the mistress of the Bone Tower.

What a sordid little party they made, tromping across the gangplank to his auntie’s flagship. The boards thundered under his boots, the wind pushed at him as if urging him to turn back. He wanted to tell the wind to mind its own pitsdamned business.

Thratia dragged along a selection of her honor guard, and Detan was just now getting the sense that she’d planned their wardrobe to complement his and hers both. They wore the slate grey coats he’d seen hidden under crates of booze in Aransa, but they’d been trimmed with piping of ochre-orange, like his own coat, and bloodstone red like her tunic. Such a small thing, but it was these deft moves of which Thratia was truly a master. Without so much as saying a word, their entourage presented as a cohesive unit, Detan’s importance on par with Thratia’s own. His auntie wouldn’t take long to figure out what hand Thratia was about to deal her.

Ranalae stood at his auntie’s right. For a breathless moment, she was all he could see, though she spared him little more than a cool glance. Auntie Honding, however, appeared to be trying to render him into mush with the sheer force of her glare.

“Well met under blue skies, Warden Ganal, nephew.” Auntie Honding had gotten her smile back on, and made a perfect show of bowing over her upheld palms.

“Well met, Dame Honding,” Thratia replied, and Detan bowed in sync with her to hide his smile at her casual dismissal of Ranalae’s presence. At least they were of one mind when it came to that nasty piece of work.

She could not be ignored for long, however, as she had sighted the withered form of Callia at the end of Aella’s leash. Her face twisted with disgust, smoothed away in haste, and she smiled with all her teeth at Aella.

“What have you done?”

The question took Detan by surprise. He’d expected shock, revulsion, anything except immediate acceptance. He had not considered that she would assume Aella had been the source of Callia’s ailment. Poor foresight, on his part. Just because he’d taken the little tyke for a normal child on first sighting didn’t mean those around her had missed the signs. Aella had the blood of a killer in her veins – and she didn’t even enjoy the act like any other self-respecting psychopath would.

“I have taken care of my ill mother,” Aella said with impressive poise. She stroked Callia’s hair, and that woman tilted her head to accept the affection. Whatever was left rattling around inside Callia’s skull, it didn’t appear to recognize Ranalae. Maybe it just saw another coat, and that was the extent of things.

“A strange illness.”

“Callia’s condition is unfortunate, but we are not here to discuss your past employee’s health,” Thratia interjected, cutting the rising tension between Aella and Ranalae short. “We are here to discuss the future of Hond Steading.”

The Dame’s brows lifted. “Are we? The future of this city is my prerogative, Warden, and I do not recall inviting you to offer advice.”

Thratia’s smile was slow as a rockcat who’d just slapped a paw down on its favorite prey. Detan steeled himself, knowing what was coming.

“And mine, sooner than you’d think. Your heir and I are to be married. We have come to celebrate the nuptials with you, and the handover of the city into his care, of course.”

His auntie’s gaze snapped to him, pure shock registering for just a moment before she managed to compose herself. Detan forced himself to stand still and tall, his face impassive, as Dame Honding took in the situation in full. Her gaze did not fail to linger on the harpoons lining the deck of the Dread Wind, and for that he was proud of her.

“An interesting travel arrangement for a wedding procession,” she said dryly. “Tell me, nephew, is this… arrangement to your liking as well?”

If the pits opened up and swallowed them all right at that moment, he could die a happy man, but they’d never been likely to do what he’d wanted, and today was no exception. He plastered on the breezy smile of a spoiled aristocrat, content to have a headstrong spouse take the reins, and shrugged.

“I cannot think of a stronger match.” Which was true enough, in a literal sense. He’d bet damn near anything that Thratia could arm wrestle half the women in the Scorched into submission.

“I see. I would like a moment alone with my nephew, if that is all right with you, Warden?”

She flicked a dismissive hand. “He is his own man. Take your time. Ranalae and I have much to discuss.”

Detan was a little insulted to realize Thratia didn’t think he had the balls to say what he felt in private, but then, she probably believed he had acquiesced in truth to her plan. The very sight of a whitecoat had once been enough to make Detan leap, blindly, from Thratia’s dock. She had no reason to doubt that the threat of them taking the imperial throne, and ultimately Hond Steading, would be enough to win him to her as a reluctant ally.

Fool of a woman.

Detan followed his aunt to her private cabin, doing his best to ignore the sideways stare Ranalae had locked on him. Let her stare all she liked; he was beyond her reach, now. Thratia’s protection aside, if she so much as grabbed for him he’d drop this ship from the sky, and he’d bet anything that she knew it, too.

His auntie’s cabin was sparse, but well-lit, which was rather unfortunate, as the sharp light emphasized every line of the scowl that marred her usually genteel features.

“What in the pits are you doing, young man? I haven’t seen a sliver of you since you left Valathea, and now you show up on my doorstep with an invading army – the commander of which you, apparently, intend to wed? Is this how I raised you?”

“Left Valathea? I fled that nightmare, Auntie, and if you haven’t seen a trace of me since that day then I assure you it was for your own safety – and that of everyone in Hond Steading.”

She drew back, her hip knocking the edge of a shelf, and in that slightest of movements, that wrinkled fear around her too-sharp eyes, Detan knew.

Dame Honding: the only family he had left, the woman who had raised him after his parents’ deaths, the singular protectress of all Hond Steading, knew what he was. Knew what had really happened on the side of a firemount all those years ago, when he’d blown a selium pipeline to smithereens and all the miners with it. She knew, and she’d sent him willingly to the Bone Tower. There was no other reason for her to be afraid of him now. He’d never been one to strike out – but a man of his power with his ire up around so much selium could be a deadly thing indeed.

“You knew. You fucking knew, and you told me nothing.” He wanted to raise his voice, to clench his fists and shout the sky down around her, but he simply didn’t have it in him. Oh, the anger was there, he could feel it bubbling just beneath the surface of his skin, but it seemed a distant thing to him now, the sting of her betrayal hollowed by time and distance. And Aella’s training, he’d have to give her credit for that.

“I guessed, I did not know.”

“And you?”

She stared down her nose at him. “I have no sel-sense, as Eletraia was always quick to remind me.”

That name, so long buried, opened a sinkhole in his heart. “Do not blame any of this on my mother. If you even suspected, you should have tested me earlier – told me what I was capable of. You sure as the pits are black shouldn’t have sent me out on the fucking line to endanger everyone!”

“Your mother – and I will say my sister’s name as I please, boy – was supposed to pass the knowledge to you, and if not her then your father after her. I had no way of knowing she’d failed in her task.”

“She was dead before I was twelve! And my father damned near jumped into the grave after her – she – she tried, I think, but there was so little time.”

“And what was I supposed to do with you, after I’d discovered her failure to teach you restraint? She’d never deigned to tell me her techniques, even though the fire she held consumed her from within, so when Ranalae offered to take you in and teach you discipline, how was I to decline? I am sorry I sent you away, but it was far too dangerous to keep you here, you must see that. And spreading the rumor that you’d lost your sel-sense kept you safe, kept your people open to loving you should the Bone Tower ever teach you well enough to return. But when I heard you’d run away from them–”

He thrust a trembling hand between them. “Stop. Just. Stop. Teach me discipline? Run away? Have you no fucking clue what Ranalae is, what actually happens in the Bone Tower? It’s not named for its pretty white walls, Auntie. It’s named for the experiments-turned-corpses buried at its feet.”

“The empress would never–”

“The empress is dead!” Shit. He hadn’t meant to say that, hadn’t meant to clue his auntie in to Thratia’s little tale of a political coup. He needed his auntie blind to Thratia’s motives, needed her to keep Ranalae around so that the imperial fleet’s presence would perform as a stopgap to keep Thratia from swooping right in. Without Ranalae’s numbers here, bolstering the city’s defenses, Thratia may not even need him to take control.

And then he’d be given over into Aella’s complete care. Thratia’s loyalties were to her own power, and the second she didn’t need him as an heir she’d relegate him to specimen.

“Don’t be a fool,” she snapped. “I received a letter from her just this morning.”

Delivered by Ranalae’s couriers, no doubt, but he wasn’t about to press the point.

“You washed your hands of me. You cut me loose, bundled me away to the whitecoats and never gave it a second thought. Did you ever write to them to ask how my so-called training was going? Did you ever inquire after their methods of teaching? No, you fucking didn’t, because as strong as you are, as clever as you are, I think you knew.

“Not wholly, not the complete picture, but a smart woman like you should have a pretty good idea of what an empire would do with a man who could be turned into a walking weapon. But you saw a solution to your little problem, a way to clean up the mess you felt my mother left behind, so you shoved me away behind those walls, across a sea, and thought no more of me.

“Were you afraid, when you’d heard I’d escaped? You must have had an idea as to why.” He stepped forward. She stepped back. He let the words course through him, let the old hurts bleed out through his lips, and marveled, silently, that he didn’t feel the slightest urge to tear the sky to pieces while he rode his anger.

“You must have wondered if I might come home, looking for vengeance. Is that why you only ever wrote to me of banal things? Is that why all your letters were about who married who, and what crops were doing well that year? To keep an eye on my mental stability without ever asking outright? Not once. Not fucking once, did you ask what had happened to me there. Did you ask if I was safe? If I was hurting? You let the rumors swirl about a disgraced lord who’d lost his sel-sense and turned to conning for food and fun, and stuck your head deep in the sand.

“If you’re angry at all that I’ve come here with Thratia on my arm, you have only yourself to blame. You cut me loose, left me to suffer, and didn’t so much as send a bouquet of flowers, but you couldn’t be bothered to renounce me as heir, either, and now it’s biting you straight in the ass, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t abandon you,” she whispered, and he felt ill to see a sheen of tears building in the corners of her eyes. “Tibal was supposed to–”

“What the fuck do you know about Tibal?”

She pressed her lips shut hard, as if to snap back the words. “He never told you?”

A knock on the door made them both jump. “Everything all right in there?” Aella’s voice, smooth, but tinged with warning. His senses had reached out without his conscious agreement at Tibs’s name, he hadn’t even noticed. Some wounds were just too fresh to risk picking at. Whatever his auntie thought she knew about Tibs would have to wait.

“Fine,” he grated, reeling himself back under control. Aella must have jumped out of her skin when she’d felt him reach out like a shockwave. His sphere of influence was beginning to unsettle even himself. It seemed every time he reached, he reached farther than before. Not necessarily a good thing, when one was surrounded by five active selium mines. He’d better get off this ship, before his auntie got them all blown to bits.

“Did Pelkaia make it here?” he asked. She blinked, the change in subject sudden enough to take her off guard.

“Yes – and your friends, Tibal, Ripka, and those others. I don’t like that Honey woman.”

“I don’t really care what you like.” The words were out before he could stop them, his temper still high though he’d reeled in his power. As a young man, he would have rather cut his own tongue out than speak this way to her. His auntie had been the domineering force of his life ever since the day his mother had died – for his father’s spirit had fled on that day, as well – guiding, but always firm. Now, he’d discovered there were greater terrors in the world. And he’d faced them, and won.

And would again.

“You really are just like Elatraia. Careful it doesn’t burn you up from the inside, too.”

He ignored the jab, and fell back on formality. “We will bring the Dread Wind to the palace to begin preparations for the marriage ceremony. See that my friends come to see me.”

“They have fled into the city, or so my guards tell me. I have no way of contacting them.”

“Fled?”

A flicker of uncertainty crossed her face. “I had placed them under house arrest at the Hotel Cinder until this whole silly invasion of your betrothed was over. They took poorly to the treatment.”

He snort-laughed. “I can only imagine. Why in a clear sky would you ever find it necessary to lock them up?”

“They intervened one too many times in my methods of preparing the city.”

“Do you know how you can be certain you’ve walked down the wrong path?”

“I suspect you’ll tell me.”

“Ripka Leshe disagrees with you.”

“This is my city.”

“For now,” he said, and sighed, reaching up to drag a hand through the hair he’d worked so hard to arrange into nobleman perfection. “Be safe, Auntie.”

She reached to him, fingers curling to clasp his shoulder, but he had already turned, and felt little more than the brush of her fingertips against his sleeve. The air had grown cooler while he’d been in that cabin, the sunlight muted by a lazy drifting of clouds. He shoved his hands into his pockets and strolled over to Thratia’s side, sliding his affable smile back into place like slotting a key.

“Auntie Honding has offered us use of her private dock for the Dread Wind while you and I prepare for the happily-ever-after.”

Thratia’s brows lifted, but Dame Honding had followed him out just close enough to have overheard, and she nodded mute agreement.

“This is preposterous,” Ranalae insisted, her color already up as she continued on whatever argument she and Thratia had been having before the Hondings reappeared. “Dame Honding does not wish to relinquish control of her family’s holdings to you, Thratia. We all know this wedding is a farce. To the pits with your heir, Dame, this is an invasion – though a subtle one. Our fleet is well equipped. If Thratia wishes to claim your city, then let her try to take it from us.”

Dame Honding looked at Ranalae like she’d discovered a stray dog digging up her garden. “Hond Steading stays in the Honding family blood, and Detan is my only heir. Who he chooses to wed is his own business.”

“You wrote to our empress asking for protection from this woman, and now you spread your arms and welcome her to your family bosom?”

“Are you blind, or just stupid?” Detan said, keeping his voice level lest Aella get jumpy over him arguing with a whitecoat – with the whitecoat.

“Excuse me, boy?”

“Boy?” Detan snorted and pulled himself to his full height. All this bickering was beginning to wear on him. “I am heir to this city, Ranalae, while you are little more than its guest.”

“This city is defended.” She spread her arms to indicate the ships she’d brought with her, mingled in amongst Hond Steading’s regular fleet. It made him ill to see them there, the weapons of a monster arrayed like spike pits around the city he loved.

“By me.” Detan held up a hand, a casual gesture, and poised his fingers as if ready to snap them. “Would you care to do battle, Ranalae of the Bone Tower? You know what I am, let’s not forget that, and you know who’s been training me. Tell me, do you think your ships could answer your call before I dropped them all from the sky? You are correct – this negotiation is a polite farce. But it is a farce because we could wipe you from the sky without a thought, you dribbling sycophant.”

“You would destroy all those lives, just to prove a point?”

“Ranalae, I would burn the very ship I stand on now if I could be assured no trace of you or your forces would be left on this world.”

He turned, taking Thratia’s elbow firmly in hand as if he did so all the time, and called over his shoulder. “Make the dock ready, we will arrive before nightfall.”

When they were back on the heavy deck of the Dread Wind, Thratia extricated her arm from his grip and raised a brow at him. “Impressive performance, Honding. I almost believed you’d burn us all myself.”

He closed the space between them, set both palms against the cabin wall to either side of her face, and leaned down, over her. “That was no performance, lover. If I have a chance to burn that woman and all that would continue her work from the world, make no mistake: I will take it, no matter the cost.”