Inherit the Flame

Chapter Three

Aella had cut him down from the ceiling, but left his wrists bound behind his back and the sack slouching over his face. She’d plopped him down in the center of the room, told him merrily there were shards of glass strewn across the floor, and traipsed off to join Misol in concocting whatever foul plan they had in store for him next.

He wasn’t about to let a threat of glass and the fact he’d consented to this madness keep him corralled.

Rolling his shoulders to loosen his stiffened neck, Detan unfolded his legs and slowly, carefully, felt forward. Grit so thick it might as well have been glass dragged at his toes, at the soles of his feet. Aella must have had some poor grunt haul sand up from one of the island’s beachheads.

Painstakingly, he edged out the boundaries of his new space. Aella had left him maybe a stride in all directions clear of the sand and glass. A little halo of safety that was, at best, a paltry illusion. Really, she needn’t bother. No matter how much rope she gave him, he wasn’t about to hang himself by running off. He’d made this trade willingly, bent knee to her not only to free his companions but to find out all there was to know about himself. Such fences as the glass, as the ropes and the chains, were laughable. If he wanted to leave, he could. And though he desired to leave with every fiber of his being, greater forces held him at bay. Locked him in place.

He was corralled tighter by fear than he’d ever be by iron or glass.

Worldbreaker.

Misol tapped her spear butt against the ground, alerting him to their return. Knowing she was there, he could just pick out the whisper-soft patter of Aella’s bare feet against the stone.

“Welcome back. May I fetch you some tea, or some cakes?” he drawled, amused by the sharp halt of Aella’s tread. He could kiss Misol for her subtle announcement. Any chance to startle Aella was one worth taking. “I wouldn’t want you to find my hospitality lacking.”

“I’ve found you some friends to entertain. Misol, bring them.”

Aella stepped beside him, her small body a heavy presence in the air to his left. She yanked the bag off his head. He blinked in the light, twisted until he could see the door.

Two women in Remnant-issued beige jumpsuits shuffled into the room, everything about their posture taut and wary. One had straight black hair cut short, the other hair like wet mud clinging to her cheeks. Both appeared to have taken up the strange hobby of repeatedly getting their noses broken. He’d never seen them before, and for their sake wished he wasn’t seeing them now.

Detan forced a smile and inclined his head to them. “Welcome to my sitting room.”

The brown-haired woman took one pointed look at the circular pit that had been Detan’s training ground for the last few weeks and snorted. “You need a better decorator.”

He grinned. Leave it to Ripka to find friends with cheek, even in this monstrous place.

“This here’s Clink,” Misol said, nodding to the brown-haired woman, “and this is Forge. Ladies, say hello to Detan Honding.”

“Ain’t that a fancy name?” Clink asked.

Forge snorted. “I faked a manifest for a Honding ship once. Big load of dehydrated cactus, tasted like candied diarrhea. More money ‘n sense in that family.”

“Ah. Auntie Honding has always had a questionable palate. Wait. Did you say faked?”

Forge gave him a look like she’d give a slow child. “What you think I’m doing on the Remnant, sightseeing?”

“Speaking of.” Clink narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you doing here?”

“Would you believe sightseeing?”

Both women smirked. Detan decided to like them. He had to like someone around here, and it might as well be these women who had supposedly helped Ripka out during her stay.

“Detan is here to learn the nature of himself,” Aella said.

“Sounds like a waste of time,” Clink said.

Misol hid a smile by turning her head away, but Detan didn’t bother. He laughed out loud. “Feels that way, most of the time. But I’m afraid it’s best for everyone’s safety if I get myself figured out.”

“Everyone’s?” Forge asked, incredulous.

“Everyone’s,” he agreed. Their smirks vanished. Whether they believed him or not, they certainly believed he meant what he said.

“And you’re going to help him.”

“We ain’t the altruistic type,” Clink said, eyes narrowing, but Aella had already shifted her thoughts to the experiment to come, and was deaf to her protests. For all the brainpower that girl was packing, she could be remarkably single-minded at times. Focus like that was a rarity in the adults Detan had stumbled across in his day, but common enough in any hunting viper’s path he’d had the misfortune of crossing.

Aella stepped through the minefield of sand and glass on the tips of her toes, light as a stone skipping across still water. Taking her cue, Misol dug around in a pouch slung about her hips and produced two leather sacks, stitched up tight and bulging all around at the seams. Detan licked his lips. He didn’t need to use his sel-sense to know there was selium in those bladders.

“One for you,” Misol said, and gave the first to Forge. “And for you.” She passed the other to Clink. The women turned them over in their hands, brows furrowed.

“This is sel, isn’t it?” Clink asked.

“Yes it is,” Aella confirmed. Her eyes shone as she leaned toward the two women, practically radiating curiosity.

“What you want us to do with it?” Clink demanded. “We’re not sensitive. Wouldn’t be here if we were, would we?”

“You’d be surprised,” Detan muttered.

“Hush,” Aella ordered him. “All you have to do is to stand on opposite sides of the room, and hold those tight. Can you do that?”

The women exchanged a look. It was Clink who asked the pertinent question, “Why?”

“We’re going to put Detan here through his paces. See how much he’s learned.”

“And if we refuse?”

Aella’s excitement dimmed like a snuffed candle. “There are quite a few people in this prison who would like dearly to have some time alone with you two, after your assistance in Ripka Leshe’s escape. I can arrange that meeting, if you’d like.”

They swallowed in unison. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Excellent.” Aella was all warm smiles and friendly chatter as she ushered the women to their places. “Now, Detan, this is for you. Get to know it well, you have only a few moments.”

She thrust a third bladder of selium into his hands. He turned it over with care, tracing his thumb along the seams, extending his sel-sense just enough to know the exact shape of the selium hidden within. How it pushed against the leather, how it’d found a little weakness in one of the seams and was bunching up against it. Selium was good at that. At finding the weak points and pushing, pushing. Maybe he was kindred spirits with the gas after all.

Aella snatched it from him, and before he could complain the sack was back over his head.

“Now.” Soft footsteps, fading to silence. “You must work your little deviation upon just this sphere, understood? It alone is not being held by the women. It alone will not harm anyone, if you manage to control yourself and set fire to it and only it.”

“Set fire?” Clink blurted.

“Erupt may be a better word,” Aella corrected with slow care.

“Erupt?”

“Hmm? Yes, erupt. Like the firemounts. Now hush,” Aella ordered. “I’m shuffling the women’s positions now, so that you cannot rely on their placement from before the bag was pulled over your head. If they speak, or make the slightest noise, they will be moved.”

Detan closed his eyes and strained, struggling to listen for the patter of their footsteps. Aella was the lighter of the three, and her step was soft against the stone, but she paced and paced, until he couldn’t tell where she’d begun and where she’d ended up.

“There,” she said. “The sphere is placed. Find it. Destroy it.”

Sweat beaded across his forehead, sticking to the bag. “And if I can’t?”

“Neither of these women will eat again until you do.”

Right. He really hadn’t known what he’d expected, but it wasn’t that. Pain for himself he could handle, but watching the two women who saved Ripka starve to death just wasn’t something he was willing to do. But neither was he willing to blow their hands off. Which, of course, Aella knew.

Get it over with, he scolded himself, and let his body relax, slumping, as he gradually grew in awareness. He started with his toes, feeling and flexing every muscle, working his way up until he was aware of every last crease of his forehead. That was the easy part.

He waited until his breath came smooth and easy, then reached out. His sel-sense flared within him, drawing from an old well of anger and hurt. It boiled through him like fire, seared his soul like something far worse. He wanted to flinch away from the power, from the potential that lurked within him. Had spent the past few years of his life doing just that. But he couldn’t. Not any more. That was why he was here, after all. To examine that fire, that great gaping maw of rage, and bend it to his will.

Detan probed his anger. His arms tensed. He forced himself to ease them, struggling to find a balance. If he relaxed too much, he lost his edge, couldn’t force the selium to slam itself together and burst apart. But neither could he grow too tense. He knew all too well the devastation he was capable of when he let his rage take the reins of his talents.

He was cold. Absolutely shivering. Sweat streaked down the muscles of his bare back, coalesced in a river along the valley of his spine. How long had he sat there, sweating and fretting? He couldn’t think of that. Couldn’t let the passing time worry him. Someone shifted aching feet, impatient. He zeroed in on the sound and couldn’t pinpoint who it was. Not that that was the point. If he cheated this test, he cheated himself.

He gave up on hesitance, reached his sense with deliberate care to examine the sources of sel in the room. Three, as promised. All of them hauntingly familiar. Which one had been his? Which one had Aella let him hold in his hands?

Cruel as she was, she wouldn’t have cheated him in this. Wouldn’t have given him an impossible task to solve. Though her reasons eluded him, she desired to know the secret of his abilities – and its limits – just as sorely as he did. Perhaps more, he sometimes thought. There was little that woman wouldn’t do to achieve her goals, and Detan had his boundaries.

He let the three globes fill his mind. Held them like shining stars in the dark, fireflies disrupting the wave of his sense reaching out from the center of his being. Five strides away, six, and five again. Three points of a triangle of which he was the heart, the center, the core of destruction. He held them all, turned them over. Compared them not to his memory but to each other. Equal in size, Aella would have made sure of that. But one… One felt denser, somehow, crammed tight, bulging against the seams with eager gluttony. He discarded it.

The second and third hung in his mind now, and he imagined a bright line of light bridging them as he weighed them against each other, sought new methods of comparison. Aella would not have made the trick so obvious as to pack two of the globes tight-full. Or would she? Devious creature that she was… He jettisoned the thought. Nothing to be gained down that path, nothing at all. Aella’s psychology wasn’t what he was trying to figure out. This wasn’t game theory, this wasn’t a gambling hand. He either had the flavor of the globe, or he didn’t. And if he didn’t, some poor woman would die.

Some woman who had helped Ripka. Saved her life, most probably, when the Remnant was boiling with riot over the rumor of a blue coat in their midst. Her face filled his mind, the harsh regard of her stare when he said something irritating a warm balm. He pushed her away. This wasn’t about her. Wasn’t about Tibs or his Auntie or New Chum or any other soul that had the misfortune of having earned his affections.

Focus. Weigh the two. Feel them out. Identical in density, or as near as could be achieved by human hands and talents. He suspected that if he dug deeper, if he reached into that miniscule level of the world that bare eyes couldn’t see – that he only glimpsed when the injections were fresh in his veins – that he might find a difference otherwise undetectable. Nothing intentional though, unless Aella had much more refined sensitives hanging around here who he had yet to meet.

She didn’t have that. But she knew he could push himself that way. Had been trying to make it second nature to him. An idea struck. Stoking the coals of his rage, banking them to keep them hot, he focused in on one sphere and reached for those fine particles. Nothing. He turned his attention to the other. Imagined what he was looking for like dust in the air, drifting, invisible until the glint of sun hits just right. Imagined his anger as that light, his rage the source of that sun.

Found what he was looking for, in miniscule amounts, woven into the fabric of the bladder’s interior in tiny pockets, like quilting. Like what Pelkaia’d done to Ripka’s jacket so she’d always know where she was.

Detan didn’t hesitate. He flared his anger, directed it into those tiny pockets. Heard a whoosh and a cry and a gasp. Aella – for who else could it be? – clapped for joy.

“Well done,” she cooed as she yanked the bag off his head. He looked around, blinking, came up out of his meditative stupor to discover his legs cramped, his head pounding, his feet two clumps of tingling, limp meat. A great maw of hunger crooned in his belly, and his mouth was thick with dryness.

Forge and Clink eyed him like a rockviper that’d suddenly reared up and started hissing. They held their intact globes gingerly, away from their bodies as if that’d do any good at all. In one corner of the room, a smear of soot marred the wall, charred fragments of leather curling on the ground.

“How long?” he asked, and had to stop to cough and lick some moisture into his lips.

“Only seven marks.” Aella beamed, proud. “Impressive for a first try.”

Seven marks. When Aella’d first dragged him into this room for his daily testing his belly had been warm with breakfast and his eyes dry against the rising sun. That sun was gone, now. Hidden behind the curve of the world for a mark or two at least. Gingerly, he unfolded his legs and winced as the blood flowed back to his feet. Felt like he’d stomped all over a cactus, but at least he could still feel something.

“Did he do that?” Clink demanded, thrusting a finger at the fiery smear.

Detan forced himself to crawl to wobbly feet. Misol was beside him in an instant, propping him up. He almost laughed. Couldn’t let the merchandise get any more damaged than required.

“I did that,” he confirmed, watching her eyes widen and her nostrils flare.

“Sweet skies,” Forge murmured.

Detan drew himself up and turned to Aella. “Feed them. Shelter them here, in the yellowhouse. They’ve earned that much.”

“Yes, yes,” she said, waving a dismissive hand. “Skies know we have the room. And I’ll need them close at hand for further testing. I wonder if we could shave a mark off your time on the next attempt.”

He winced at the thought. Seven marks. Seven long marks sitting on that floor in nothing but his pants and his sweat, huddled up under that sack on his head and thinking, thinking. It had felt like only moments to him. He’d have been surprised to hear it’d been a single mark, let alone seven. How could he ever become effectual, and safe, if it took him so long to master himself, to gain control? A man who takes seven marks to fire an arrow at his enemy is a dead man.

“Problem with that,” Misol said. “A letter came for you around mark four, Miss Ward. I looked to see how urgent it was, and figured it could wait until this was finished, but you’d better see for yourself.”

Misol passed Aella an envelope with a broken wax seal Detan recognized as Thratia’s. His stomach dropped. Nothing Thratia had to say to Aella could be any good. The girl’s eyes flicked over the missive, a faint tension thinned her lips. With a sigh she snapped the paper shut, propped her hands on her hips, and set a heavy glare on Detan. He met her gaze, calm and easy. After seven marks rooting around in his own head, that girl didn’t much disturb him any more. He’d seen darker things.

“Thratia requests the Lord Honding’s presence in Aransa. In all haste.”

“For what purpose?” he asked.

She rolled her bony shoulders. “No idea. But I jump when called, don’t I? Misol, pack up, we leave in the morning.”

Misol eyed Forge and Clink. “And these two?”

“Oh. Bring them along. Why not? I suppose we can get some work done along the way. And pick out whoever you need to help you handle the lot.”

“Yes, Miss Ward.”

Detan swallowed. He’d seen darker things than Aella’s glare, that was true, but a whole lot of them had to do with Thratia Ganal.