Inherit the Flame

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Ripka awoke to find Honey at her side. The woman slept, curled on the rug by Ripka’s bed like a puppy, breathing peacefully in the shaft of morning light that fell upon her. Ripka rubbed at her eyes, scraping away sleep crust and tear stains alike, and pushed hair from her face. Had she wept in her sleep? If so, she had no doubt Honey had heard and come to lend her presence, if not her words.

Any other time she would have found Honey lying there creepy. Now, she just smiled. If someone loves you, you revel in as much time with them as you possibly can. She’d learned that the hard way.

“Honey,” she said, swinging her legs off the bed. The woman didn’t stir. She crouched beside her and brushed her hair, gently, away from her face. In sleep, the woman looked dreamy as a ceramic doll, her features unlined and innocent.

It had taken a great deal of time to scrub the blood out of her hair the night before.

“Come on, girl, rise and shine.” She gave Honey a shake, and she blinked awake with a startled, piggish snort.

“Are we under attack?”

Ripka sighed and sat back on her heels, dangling her hands between her knees. “No. Not any more.”

Honey rolled to her feet and stretched, working the kinks out of her body from having spent the night on the floor. She hummed a little, warming her voice, and while once that would have sent shivers down her spine, Ripka just laughed. Honey pouted at her.

“What?” Honey murmured.

“Your singing…” She trailed off, seeing a dark crease form between Honey’s brows. Pits, but that woman was sensitive about her voice. She settled back into a cross-legged position, wincing as her sore ribs shifted beneath the wrap the apothiks had bundled her up in. She was simply tired of not knowing her friends well enough, of keeping them distant for fear of… Of so many things. Maybe Honey really didn’t want to tell her. Maybe she just didn’t know how.

“What happened?” she asked eventually. Honey’s perfectly smooth face scrunched up as she worked through the question.

“I used to sing,” she said, quietly, and fiddled with the hem of her nightshift. Ripka reached out, took her hands and turned them over, palm up. The pale flesh there was crisscrossed with countless scars, the marks left behind from many, many knife fights. She’d ignored them when she’d first seen them on Enard’s hands, so very long ago now, and been blindsided by his past. Nothing good lay behind those scars on Honey’s hands. She wanted to know anyway.

“What happened?” she repeated.

Honey curled her fingers to hide half the scars, head cast down so that her hair fell over her expression. It took her a while, but she found the words eventually.

“I loved to sing. My parents…” Twitch of the lips, as if the word were foreign to her. “I sang for their money.”

She fell quiet again, but Ripka had learned the texture of her silences, and this one meant she was building up the words she wanted to say.

“People wanted to give me money for other things, too.”

Ripka swallowed and squeezed Honey’s hands. Whatever had happened to her as a young woman, Ripka could only guess – and guess well, as during her time in the watch she’d seen some truly horrendous parents – and, in a strange way, she was proud of Honey for learning to sing with her knives. She hoped she could learn to sing without them someday.

A knock sounded on the door, and both women flinched, reaching for weapons they didn’t carry in their nightshifts.

“Who is it?”

“Dame Honding.”

Ripka gave Honey a sly glance and whispered, “I guess we are still under attack.”

Honey smiled. At least she was beginning to catch on to Ripka’s sense of humor.

“Come in.”

The Dame looked surprisingly hale for having suffered a full night of having her palace ripped apart. She glided into the room, servants carrying trays of hot cakes and steaming bright eye berry tea on their hips behind her, ordered the placement of the meals, and then ushered the servants right back out again.

“Good morning to you both. My apothiks tell me you both suffered injuries, but will recover?”

Ripka pressed a hand over her broken ribs and nodded. “Lots of bed rest in our future, but we should pull together quickly. Thank you for the food, and the use of your apothiks.”

“It is, I’m certain, the absolute least I can do.”

The Dame grabbed one of the room’s chairs and turned it around to face them as she sat, her ankles crossed and her skirt lying just so across her lap. Even in distress, she carried herself with dignity, with passion and grace. It was as reflexive to her as reaching for a cutlass was to Ripka.

“My dear, I know things have moved very quickly here as of late, and I have come to offer you an apology. I tried to hide you away from the trouble, to keep you safe, and that was a mistake. I should have listened to you from the very beginning. My nephew tells that Thratia claims the empress is dead, and that he believes her. I find I believe this, too. The empress I knew would never be so crass as to send her people to invade us, skies forbid. My, ah, people, are putting questions to Ranalae to find out the truth of the matter.”

Ripka winced. “I’d rather not know the details of that, Dame. Forgive me, but I’ve had my fill of Valathean politics.”

“Understood. But I hope you will be amenable to politics of a different nature.”

Ripka frowned. “Of what kind?”

“Local, my dear. Captain Lakon’s death leaves a very large hole in our community. I, for one, would be honored if you took up the position.”

Her throat went dry. She’d never dreamed of being a watch-captain again. Never even dreamed she’d be a watcher, or allowed to serve anywhere near them. To have worked with Falston so closely in his final days, to have been welcomed there and honored… That was a treasure. A memory she wanted to keep pure.

And she could never look his men in the eye without hearing his wife’s voice: keep him safe.

“I’m sorry, Dame. You honor me. But I’m sure there are viable candidates in your local watch. I will help you interview and select, if you’d like.”

“I’m sorry to hear you won’t take the job, but I will accept your offer to help in the selection process. Things will be busy, around here, for a time. What will you do afterward?”

Now there was a question she hadn’t dared to think of. Losing Enard… Her throat knotted. She glanced to Honey, to the open admiration there, and sighed. There was one task she’d promised herself, and Enard too. One thing she had left to do.

“I’d like to return to the Remnant Isle prison. The warden there is corrupt as a sewer line, and I promised myself I’d clear him out and set things right just as soon as I could.”

“You are a strange woman, Ripka Leshe, but I see your reasoning. If I can help in any way – funds, transport, men-at-arms, you have only to ask.”

“Thank you, Dame.”

She stood in one fluid movement and stepped to the door.

“Dame?”

She paused, fingers on the handle.

“Yes, Miss Leshe?”

“Go easy on Detan, won’t you?”

She smiled, small and slow and genuine. “I’ll do my best.”