Inherit the Flame

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Ripka was less comfortable with the stability of the upstairs floor than she was with the entire situation. Every step they took the boards creaked in protest, and some of the steps up to the second floor swayed alarmingly. By the time they reached Laella’s office, she was sweating, and it had nothing at all to do with the mild weather.

“This place is a deathtrap,” Ripka said.

Laella threw herself backward into an overstuffed chair, arms splayed out across the cushions, and shrugged. “It was what I could afford, and the natural ambiance is a draw for the well-to-dos around here. They feel like they’re getting away with something, even though the place is legally owned. I’m no squatter.”

“This is all fascinating,” Tibal said, “but could we perhaps discuss the deviant in the room?”

All gazes turned to Sasalai, who was looking a touch peaky. Ripka shooed Laella out of the only seat and eased the older woman into it. She looked grateful, but Ripka still made sure to move her cane out of striking distance before getting too close.

“This deviant in particular, or deviants as a whole?” Laella plucked her wig from her head and tossed it onto a stand on the room’s only table.

“Laella,” Ripka said, and watched the girl cringe at the use of her real name. “Stop dancing around. Get to the point already. What are you doing here? Are you working with Thratia?”

She flicked her gaze to Dranik and chewed the corner of her lip.

“He’s fine. He’s with us,” Ripka said.

Laella let out one long, drawn-out sigh and slumped against the wall with her hands folded across her stomach. “Listen, it didn’t take me long to figure out what was going on at the bright eye berry cafes after we arrived here, all right? I knew Thratia was working through them somehow, or at least using them as a way to collect people sympathetic to her cause, so I went poking around. Turns out, looking like a posh Valathean gets you some cred.” She flashed a bright smile. “And it was easy enough to twist a few arms into thinking I was in tight with our dear commodore. Once I’d delivered a few likely ‘messages’ from the girl on high, I started changing tack. Asking for things – supplies and such for a stockpile, I claimed. Eventually I hit upon the idea to use them to snag the local deviants out from under the empire. Look, I know it’s messy, but–”

“You don’t work for Thratia Ganal? At all?” Dranik’s jaw hung open, his eyes wide as saucers.

Laella sniffed and tossed her hair. “I’d rather lick a shit-smeared shoe.”

“Skies above,” he murmured. Enard gave him an awkward pat on the shoulder. Ripka wasn’t feeling quite so charitable.

“So I spent the last couple of days working to get close to Pelkaia’s network? Pits below, why didn’t you lot tell me what you were up to? I could have helped.”

“Uh, yeah, about that.” She twisted an already braided chunk of hair around one finger. “Pelkaia doesn’t know about any of this.”

Tibal whistled low.

“It’s not like that,” Laella insisted. “I’m not selling them or anything. I found a place, a safe place, for them to live, and used my resources to set up a system to get them there. Valathean-founded cities just aren’t safe for deviants any more.”

“And the Larkspur isn’t a safe place?” Ripka prodded.

Laella winced. “I… don’t know. Pelkaia hasn’t been herself, lately. She’s ill, but she’s trying to hide it, and Coss isn’t… well, he’s pretending everything’s all right, and it’s not. She can’t stop talking about putting an end to Thratia, which is well enough, but her level of obsession isn’t. We didn’t sign up to be soldiers.” She glanced to Sasalai. “And I don’t think anyone should be conscripted just because they’re deviant and have nowhere else to go.”

“Perhaps we should ask Sasalai what she wants, now that her ability has been discovered,” Ripka said.

Tibal took a knee before the elderly woman, his hands braced on the arms of her chair, and tried his best to look contrite.

“Now, ma’am, you know we’re not here to harm you. Your deviant sel-sense has been discovered – not just by us – and we want to keep you safe. I know it wasn’t right of us, grabbing you like we did, but if you’d like to hear us explain it all we will. I can promise you this: no one in this room means you harm.” He half-turned over his shoulder. “Isn’t that right?”

A chorus of agreement all around. The woman’s eyes softened, just a touch, but as Tibal reached for her, her back stiffened and she leaned away, angling herself out of his reach. Ripka shook her head.

“You’ve got her pinned there. Here, shoo.” She nudged Tibal away from the woman and stepped around behind her, sliding her thumbs under the knot on the gag to keep it from tugging too much against the woman’s face as she wriggled the knot loose. She’d done the maneuver enough times as a watch-captain, it came easily to her now, though she was out of practice.

“You’ll feel a slight tug–”

The floorboards shook, jarring her hands. Shouts echoed from the bottom floor of the theater, deep and controlled – a pattern she recognized.

“What is this?” Laella snapped, springing toward the door. Ripka grabbed her elbow and yanked her back.

“Watchers,” she hissed, low so that she wouldn’t be overheard. “Stay quiet. Don’t step heavily, all of you. Laella, is there another way out of here?”

Her eyes were huge. Skies above, the girl was so young. Stupidly brave, for doing what she’d done. Brave and bold and reckless, assured in her own success. She had probably never even considered the possibility of being caught. From the look in her eye, she was considering the consequences in depth, now.

“There’s a fire ladder outside the window,” she whispered almost too low for Ripka to make out.

Thank the skies for that. “Tibal, can you handle Sasalia’s weight? Enard will go down first, and I’ll be last out.”

Enard frowned at this, but did not protest. The two of them were the only hands in the room with any real fighting experience, and things could get messy on the ground just as easily as they could in this room.

“I have her,” Tibal said.

Sasalai yanked her gag the rest of the way free.

Laella gasped, Tibal lunged for the woman, but it was done so quickly the scream was out of her lips before Tibal’s legs had even begun to move.

“Up here! Help! Help!” Sasalai’s lungs were surprisingly robust for her age. The stamp of footsteps turned their way immediately, pounding up the stairs. Ripka had only a moment to stare at the woman, who risked being hanged if her ability were discovered, before the watchers burst through the door.

“Hands high! All of you!” a sturdy male voice she was grieved to recognize bellowed.

Ripka lifted her hands to the air, fingers splayed, as all the others did, and turned, slowly, to face Watch-captain Lakon. His eyes bulged. She really couldn’t blame him.

“Leshe?” he asked, bewildered. The crossbows pointed at her chest from his flanking watchers, however, did not waver.

“Long story.” She tried an embarrassed smile, but his expression just hardened into a firm mask.

“I’ll have it all from you, then. Restrain them.”

The watchers of Hond Steading were quick to act on their captain’s orders. They flowed into the room, filling it with blue, and made no comment as they went about binding the wrists of everyone save Sasalai, and divesting them of weapons.

“Are you all right, ma’am?” Lakon picked up Sasalai’s cane and offered it to her. She took it in trembling hands.

“They kidnapped me.”

Ripka bit back a protest as Lakon threw her a questioning glance. “I see. Can you walk? We’ll need you to give a full statement at the station house.”

“Boy, I’d sprint to the station to file this complaint. I’ve never been so rudely manhandled in my life.”

Lakon helped the woman to her feet and handed her off to the care of a watcher, keeping his own crossbow ready at his side as they ushered the group down the creaking steps, one at a time – it seemed Lakon was just as wary of the building’s construction as Ripka – and out into the night.

She took in the area on instinct. Low light, little to no foot traffic, plenty of twisting streets and vague garden walls and alleys to obscure her way with. If she zig-zagged, and used the alleys and rock walls, she’d be nearly impossible to hit with that crossbow. But then, there were the others, and she couldn’t be certain they’d be so lucky. Couldn’t be sure Laella would even think to run if they all made a dash for it. She told herself she’d escaped from worse situations – near death on the Black Wash, the fortress of the Remnant. But each of those times, she’d had help coming for her: Detan.

Detan was in the city now, but she very much doubted he’d be of any help to her this time around.

She grit her teeth and glared at her feet, struggling to work up a plan.

For the second time that night, the ground shook. She blinked at her feet, wondering for just a moment if she were going mad or about to faint. Little plumes of dust swirled around her toes, and gravel jittered against her boots.

Slowly, reluctantly, she lifted her head and looked around. Everyone was scanning the buildings, the sky, looking for the reason why the ground had shrugged and shuddered, then fallen still.

A crack broke the night, louder than anything she’d ever heard – ever felt – in her life. It slammed her ears and vibrated her teeth, made her heart jump with fear. The watchers spun in uneasy circles, seeking the threat, eyeing the fleet of ships which blotted the sky with wary eyes.

Enard said, “There.”

They all turned to his voice, followed the line of his sight.

An orange smear bled across the underside of the clouds, seeping out from the eastern ridge of the largest firemount’s puckered mouth. Ripka went cold, straight to the bones, her stomach dropping out from under her.

She’d never seen anything like it before, but she knew what it was instinctively. Had been told scary stories of such a thing as a child.

The ground shakes. The firemounts crack open their mouths. And then, the fire. The soot and the smoke and the boiling, pooling ash.

People screamed, ran from homes, watched horror-eyed through their windows, knowing that if the flow was coming their way they were already dead. The stories were pretty strict about that: once you’d seen it, it was already over.

“How…” Lakon trailed off, leaving his mouth half-open on the aborted sentence.

The largest firemount of Hond Steading had been dormant as long as there had been a city here. This should not be happening. But, of course, the records were imprecise, and firemounts unpredictable.

Pearlescent wisps drifted in the orange glow of the lava, flickering out as they dissipated, consumed by some internal fire. Selium. Burning.

Tibal hissed through his teeth. Ripka went stiff all over.

Not a natural event, then, if the talents a man were born with could be disconnected from nature. Detan had done that. Someone had pushed Detan to do that. Which was, in a way, a good thing. This was not a complete eruption event. He must have blown a pocket near the surface of the firemount’s mouth, and that glow… It could be lava. It could be fire from Detan’s handiwork. There was no way to tell for sure.

What she was sure of, however, was the drumbeat rumble of stone cascading down the side of the firemount, toward the eastern edge of the palace and its connected residential quarter.

“Those people will need help,” she said, struggling to keep from sprinting toward the destruction with every crash that echoed through the night. Screams rose up to meet those breaking noises, and they jarred her all the way through. They could not just stand there.

Lakon frowned. He lowered the crossbow and tugged at his mustache, gaze stuck on the cloud of dust rising from the falling rocks.

“Protocol says we wait for the dust to settle. Could walk into a pyroclastic flow.”

“This is not an eruption event,” Ripka snapped. “And those people can’t wait.”

“What in the pits else could it be?”

Tibal threw her a sharp look that she ignored. “I know Thratia, and I know her weapons. That was not an eruption.”

Lakon chewed his lip while his watchers shifted uneasily, eyeing the destruction.

“Those people need help…” a young female watcher said.

Lakon closed his eyes and leaned his crossbow against his leg so that he could rub the heels of his palms against his eyelids. He blew air through his nose so hard his mustache puffed outward.

“I know you, Captain, or of you, anyway. I don’t know what was happening here tonight, but, no one appears hurt–” Sasalai opened her mouth to protest and he shot her a glare. “And those people definitely are hurt.” He locked his gaze on Ripka. “You are sure? You stake your life and your reputation on this not being an eruption?”

“I know what caused that. I swear it.”

“Very well. Remove their bonds, men. We’ll need the hands. I suspect we’re going to have a lot of digging to do.”