Inherit the Flame

Chapter Thirty-Two

Detan was home. The Dread Wind listed in the dock at the Honding family palace, its bulk throwing shadows over the finely manicured courtyard below. All around him servants and crewmembers darted to and fro, moving crates of supplies and essentials off the ship and into palace rooms. Thratia had disembarked some time ago, seeking a room high in the palace’s most prestigious tower. Aella had probably scurried after her, seeking living arrangements that didn’t sway with every breeze.

But Detan just stood there, rooted to the spot at the fore rail, watching the hustle and bustle of the ship’s arrival. Rumors of his impending nuptials drifted on whispered conversations. Wary glances came his way, then darted aside at the slightest hint of his notice. He ignored them.

He was home, and he was not, and what was worst of all, Tibal’s flier, his flier, the Happy Birthday Virra! drifted, tethered to a narrow spire of the palace. His chest ached to know that Tibal was not in the room beside the craft.

“Do you require assistance, young Master Honding?”

A man in the tight, black livery of his family approached him. Salt-white hair curled over his temples, storm-blue eyes peering out at him from within sunken walnut skin. Detan knew those eyes, though the face holding them was much older now. He knew the restrained amusement in the old man’s features, too.

“Gatai?”

The man winked and bowed. “Forever at your service, young master.”

Detan damned near giggled with glee. To the pits with decorum, he threw his arms around the old man’s shoulders and gathered him in for a tight hug. Gatai grunted, peeling himself away with reserved dignity.

“Gatai! You old codger, I can’t believe auntie hasn’t kicked you to the streets yet. Weren’t you dogging the maids’ skirts last time I was here?”

Gatai’s brows rose. “The other valets’ coattails, more like, but I’ve settled down with a man nearly my own age now.”

“You, romancing someone your age? I can hardly believe it.”

Gatai bowed his head. “It’s true, young master. We’ve adopted a little girl together. Trella. But I hear you are prepared to settle down yourself, now?”

The quick twitch at the corner of Gatai’s lips was all Detan needed to understand exactly what he thought of the match, and Detan really couldn’t blame the man. If someone had told him just a few months ago that he’d be swinging into matrimony with Thratia Ganal, he would have lost his lunch all over their shoes.

“Politics does funny things to a man,” Detan said, casting his voice low so that they would not be overheard.

“Ah. I’m sorry to hear it, then.”

Detan slung an arm around his old valet’s shoulders and steered him down the gangplank. When his boots hit the hard stones of the Honding palace’s dock, a faint shudder rocked through him, one Gatai was polite enough to pretend he hadn’t noticed.

Gatai’s discretion was legendary, his charm a veritable force of nature, and if Detan hadn’t had him in his life in those early years after the passing of his mother and father he was certain that he and his auntie would have torn one another to pieces before he’d ever gotten old enough to manifest his deviant ability. If there were anyone he could trust in his old home, it was Gatai. He hoped.

If things had changed so much for the worse that even Gatai would betray him, then he wasn’t convinced the victory he sought was worth having.

“You see and hear everything that goes on in these halls, don’t you, old man?”

Gatai quirked his head to the side in a shallow attempt to hide a prideful smile. “Keen listening is very much a part of my profession, young master. As you well know, it is my duty to be ready to meet your needs before you’ve even expressed them.”

“And to think we use such a marvelous ability for little more than seeing our clothes are laid out and our schedules managed.”

“Some more astute members of the household have experimented in varied uses of my skill sets, young master.”

“Ah, yes, I do remember how deftly you can shin up a tree.”

He shifted, embarrassed. “A good valet is able to manifest the skills the moment requires.”

“A school of thought, I confess, I stole from you.”

“And has the young master taken up the valet profession?”

Detan flashed him a sharp smile. “If the occasion suits me.”

“I had heard much to that effect.”

He didn’t much like the idea of dwelling on just what, exactly, Gatai had heard in the years after he’d escaped the Bone Tower and wandered the Scorched in search of something – anything – to make him feel safe and whole again. Something he still hadn’t found.

“And we return to those marvelous ears of yours.”

With firm pressure he guided Gatai down the paths he remembered were little used in the palace, and after a moment’s observation Gatai returned the pressure, easing Detan down hallways he didn’t recognize that were blissfully empty. Detan could have kissed the man, if he weren’t worried he’d cut his lips on that razor beard of his.

“You have, perhaps, a particular sound you were considering?”

“It has been a long time since I’ve been home,” his voice caught over the final word, the word he’d been trying to keep out of his mind ever since Thratia had forced him to watch the skyscape of Hond Steading roll into view. “And I’m sure there have been many changes, many things I’ve missed. I have heard, for instance, that friends of mine stopped by in my absence but were treated with poor care by my dear auntie. We know she tries, of course, but running this city of ours can just be so stressful.”

His heart thundered so that he felt certain Gatai could hear the frantic thump of it straight through all the layers of clothing Thratia had draped him in. Some things just couldn’t be hidden by finery. This was it. If Gatai brushed him off now, he’d know himself to be truly alone in this palace that was meant to be his.

“The Dame, great though her wisdom is, may have overreacted in the case of your friends. Tensions are high in the city, of course.”

“Of course,” Detan agreed quickly. “And I, as her devoted nephew, would love the chance to explain to my friends that her hostility was not cause for scorn…”

Gatai was not leading him toward his rooms. Though he’d been gone years, he’d scrambled up and down the steps to his suite of private rooms countless times in his life. He knew, no matter where he was in the palace, where his bed lay – like an extension of himself, a phantom limb. His rooms had defined his world as long as he could remember, the time of sharing a bed with his parents lost to the fuzzy memory of early age. They had been his sanctuary. And Gatai was leading him in the other direction.

He tensed, preparing to push Gatai away should he need to free himself. “Has auntie moved my rooms?”

“Not at all. But Cook Rachie has sweated all morning over your favorite handpie, and I won’t see her effort gone to waste. The pantry, if you remember, is this way, young master.”

“I remember.”

Which was, of course, an understatement. If his room had been his sanctuary, the pantry had been his hideout. He didn’t care to remember the amount of times Gatai had found him there as a young lad, escaping punishment, or hiding away so that the staff of the palace would not see his tear-puffed eyes. It was not exactly an auspicious place to hold a meeting. But it was the quietest room in the palace, a place where a young boy had once secreted himself away to cry and rail at the frustrations of his mother’s illness.

Gatai, that clever old goat. He had something to tell Detan. Something he didn’t want half the household eavesdropping on.

Buried beneath the palace, the pantry never quite shook off the cold of the earth. Detan shivered, glad of the fine coat Thratia had given him – then desired nothing more than to rip the garment off and set it alight. He crossed his arms to still his hands while Gatai assured himself the place was empty and the door securely latched.

“This place has grown ears,” Gatai said.

“That’s a biological impossibility.”

“You know very well what I mean, young master.”

Detan paced a tight circle around a fig barrel. “I expect no less from my dear auntie and Thratia both. I’ve assumed myself eavesdropped upon from the moment I…” Bent knee to Aella. He swallowed, waved away the rest of his sentence as if it didn’t matter. “I am used to playing a part, Gatai. Don’t worry about this rockbrain.”

“You do not understand.” Gatai wrung his hands together, the most worried gesture Detan’d ever seen from the usually composed chap. “It is more than the usual listening – yes, and more than Thratia’s spies as well. Ranalae has threaded her own people throughout the palace, throughout the city. Nothing happens here nor out there that she does not know about. Young master, forgive me, but… What are your intentions for Hond Steading?”

Detan swallowed. He’d already been less than enthusiastic with Gatai regarding his entanglement with Commodore Throatslitter, but to reveal all just might see him bound by a noose instead of a wedding band. Gatai’s forehead furrowed in worry, re-creasing familiar lines. Lines Detan himself had given the poor man.

“To see it safe.”

“Define safe.” His old eyes hardened. He’d always made Detan say what he meant, instead of his usual dance around the particulars.

“No Thratia. No Ranalae.”

“You?”

“I would prefer my auntie continue as she has, until she no longer can.”

“And then?”

He hedged a glance toward the door, imagining the scuffle of feet, the rustle of cloth as an ear pressed against the door. Paranoia, plain and simple. The servants held this part of the house, and unless things had changed drastically since Detan’s time, they were all fiercely loyal to their keymaster.

“I don’t know. I suppose I’ll ask the people, when it comes to that.”

Gatai smiled slowly, and a tremble in his hands that Detan hadn’t noticed before stilled. He was not asking Detan of his plans out of old friendship, then. He was asking because he had a daughter. Trella. Detan committed the name to memory.

“I always knew there was more than gravel between those ears of yours,” Gatai said.

“Yeah, piss.”

Gatai snort-chuckled and shook his head. “Language, young master. And be assured, the staff here is with you in whole. None of us wish to see a changeover in power, and we are all quite certain the majority of the city feels the same way. No one wants a coup into the hands of the likes of Ganal, or that Ranalae woman – she disturbs us all.”

Detan went cold. “Has she harmed you, or any of the staff?”

He shook his head. “Not to my knowledge. It is not what she’s done, so much as…” he waved a hand. “The way she looks at the world. It is difficult to articulate with care. Cook Rachie said she ‘gives her the heebies’, and that is as succinct as I can make the matter.”

“If she shows too great an interest in any of the staff, alert me immediately.”

Gatai bowed his head. “You have experience with this woman?”

“Experience I would like to forget.” Detan shook off the shadowed claws of Ranalae and pivoted focus to the slim glimmer of hope in his life. “There are two women on the Dread Wind, prisoners of Thratia’s assistant, Aella. She has kept them as leverage against me and I – I have promised to see them freed, if I can at all manage it. Their names are Forge and Clink, and they are, to the best of my knowledge, the only prisoners traveling with Thratia’s fleet. I need to find out where they’re being held.”

He bowed. “Consider it done. If they are in the palace, we will find them.”

Relief washed through him. “Thank you. I will need them both, if anything I attempt to do here is to work.”

“And what is it you will attempt to do?”

Detan cast his gaze around the spacious pantry, taking in the barrels of staples and delicacies both. Foodstuff that would soon be repurposed for his wedding feast. At least the booze would be good, Auntie Honding always stocked the best stuff. He blinked, staring at a barrel of mulled cider, the edges of an idea taking shape in his mind.

“I have a few options.” He flashed Gatai a grin, but the stodgy old man seemed unimpressed. “Once you find the women, Gatai, if you could…” he swallowed, fearful of asking. “Do you think it possible you could find my friends? The ones auntie tried to lock in the Cinder?”

Gatai frowned. “Searching outside the palace is more difficult, especially for a group of people who have, no doubt, gone into hiding. I will send feelers out, and let you know what is discovered. Do not pin your hopes on the results, young master.”

Detan sighed until he was completely deflated. “I am just so tired of working alone.”

Gatai squeezed his shoulder. “Young master, you’re not alone any more.”