Inherit the Flame

Chapter Five

Monsoon season made its presence known with a toothy growl. Sticky winds rocked the transport ship Aella had commandeered for their travel, pitching the deck to and fro. Detan hunkered by the cabins, his ass on the deck and his back shoved against the wall, head in his hands. He wasn’t sure what was more nauseating, the buck of the ship or the incompetence of the pilot.

“It’s not that bad,” Misol said. She leaned her back against the deck-rail with her elbows propped up on it, head tipped back to feel the full extent of the winds. Droplets of moisture collected on her bald head, making it gleam. Not a hint of green marred her cheeks, the bitch.

“Trust me, it’s worse when you know everything the pilot is doing wrong.”

“Didn’t think you had a perfectionist nature.”

“My dear woman, there are some disciplines in which I will not put up with sloppiness: the piloting of airships, the brewing of ale, and making love to women.”

“What about making love to men?”

“Haven’t yet had the pleasure.”

“Pity for you.” She picked at her teeth with one thick thumbnail. “Too bad you skipped dinner. Aella may not be much for domestics, but the girl can cook.”

“Of course she can. How else would she know what meals pair best with which poisons?”

“Aww, she’s not that bad, either.”

“You weren’t the one tied to a ceiling with a bag over your head.”

“Not my fault my deviation doesn’t require that sort of training, and it ain’t Aella’s fault either. You don’t like what you gotta do, blame yourself.”

“I hardly see how it’s my fault.”

“Don’t you?” Misol whistled low and slow, then shook her head. “I know you’re not stupid, but sometimes I wonder if you might be blind. You think Aella had to wrap me up in chains to get me to figure out how to make my face look like a man’s?”

“I’m not exactly free here, Misol.”

She snorted. “Sure you are. Got that crap in your veins leashing you, but both Aella and I figure you could probably whip up your own brew if you really put your mind to it. It’s not to keep you close, anyway, it’s more to help you with your training. Skies above, you think I’m watching you because we’re afraid you’ll run? I’m just along to be an extra set of hands – and keep an eye on Forge and Clink, now. Aella’s got no worry you’ll bolt.”

“If I left–”

“She’d do what? Hunt down that little friend of yours? Girl’s got no time for that bullshit. She’d come after you, sure, but she’d come with an offer in hand and it wouldn’t be chains. She wants you compliant. Makes it easier when she’s got to rile you up, you know she’s just working to figure out what you can do – not being mean for the sake of it.”

“That girl’s cold as a glacier. You expect me to believe she’s not taking at least a little pleasure in this?”

“Pleasure? Maybe, I don’t know. But if she’s getting any joy out of this it’s not because she’s putting the heat to your toes, it’s because she’s getting answers for once. It was harder for her, trying to pin down her theory when it was just us regular deviants. Not a lot to suss out in people like me and that blue guy. But you? You’re malleable, and quick to change. It’s that quickness that she’s counting on.”

“Took me seven marks to figure out her last puzzle. Ain’t quick by any stretch.”

Misol sighed as if she were trying to explain herself to a particularly slow child. “Stay with me now. You got a temper in you, don’t you? Keep it locked down with jokes and other bullshit but you’ve got a streak in you hotter than a firemount flow. That right?”

He shifted, the scars of his back hot against the wall. “I got a handle on it.”

“More or less. Don’t matter how hard you squeeze it down, it’s still in there. And when you touch sel, if you’re not careful, you make things burn right up with the heat of that anger.

“Now, take me. I’m a doppel, I can change my face around anyway I’d like using sel. All my life I had a hard time trying to decide what I wanted to be. Spent some time farming, some time bartending, and a half dozen other things before I picked up the spear and Aella stumbled across me. Things starting to look clear?”

“Doesn’t hold up. You call yourself a doppel, but that’s Valathea’s word. I knew a woman like you – called herself an illusionist – was Catari through and through. Could do a whole pits-lot more than just change her face, and didn’t have to mess about shaving her head, either. She made the hair she had work.”

Misol whistled again. “Musta’ been real good, and I wonder what her personality was like, but she’s not here to test, so that ain’t the point. Look at Callia. I didn’t know her before her accident, but she’s got a deviation almost as rare as yours. She can do this twisting thing – make anyone manipulating sel feel like it’s perverted, disgusting. She makes it feel like raw corruption, like chugging a flask of rotten water. Now, woman like that musta been a real piece of work when she had her wits about her, but look what it did for her. She survived that poisoning, maybe even thrived from it. There’s not another body alive I know of that could take the dose Aella said Callia consumed and come out the other side alive. It’s like her body welcomed it, sucked it up like a sponge. She’s rotten all through, and thrives on it.”

“I’ll give you that Callia’s rotten, but what about Aella? That girl’s cold as a night is long, but she can’t make sel feel cold. Can only shut it down.”

“You got your metaphor confused with reality there, Honding. She ain’t cold – she’s empty. Cultivates indifference like it’s a sport and she’s its top athlete. Doesn’t feel a damned thing, half the time. You watch her react to something. She always takes an extra beat, this little hesitation while she figures out what reaction she wants to have that’ll get her the result she wants.”

“What in the pits does that have to do with me?”

“You really don’t get it, do you?” She rubbed her fuzzed scalp with one hand. “If she can teach you to be calm, to douse your temper, and still control the flame you wield? Then maybe she could try to feel again, without fear of losing the talent that defines her very existence.”

Aella marched toward them, a forced smile on her face, slippered feet scuffing the deck in the unsteady gait of those who weren’t used to airships – as if their feet being in contact with the wood at all times would keep them from flying off.

“We will reach Aransa before nightfall,” Aella said. “I haven’t a clue why Thratia wants you, but if she’s going to make use of you then I won’t have you embarrass me with ineptitude.”

“Wouldn’t that be a disaster,” he drawled.

She fixed him with a narrowed gaze and clasped her hands to her hips. “Get up, now, and come along. We’ve some time yet to put you through your paces before we reach the city.”

Detan groaned. “I still say my practicing on a live, selium-bloated ship is a terrible idea. A better test of my refinement, I’m sure, would be to relieve the poor pilot of his post for just a while.”

She slashed a hand through the air. “You’re not flying this ship, Honding, though I suppose there’s something to be said for your enthusiasm.”

“Only thing I’m enthused about is not throwing up on my shoes. Where’d you find this pilot, anyway? Couldn’t be a Fleetie.”

Aella fixed him with a scowl. “Stop attempting to distract me. You’re overdue for a dose, and I want to test your fine control while you’re waning.”

Detan looked at her. Really, really looked, since the first time he’d seen her sitting barefoot on a barrel aboard Callia’s ship. She was just as neat as ever, her clothes finely made and the seams perfectly pressed, the colors all working together to harmonize with her natural hues. The white coat smoothing out her silhouette was jarring, sure, but she wore it with confidence, like it was armor, the pockets heavy with the tools of her trade. She coiled her hair up tight against her head, and plucked every stray strand from her youth-dewy face.

She gave the impression of total control, everything in its right place, nothing out of line or harmony. She was, Detan realized with a start, a walking doll. And she’d done it to herself. Even the annoyed creases between her brows were false. There was an aloofness in her eyes he’d always ascribed to the same flippancy he felt most of the time, but, no. Her detachment was something deeper, everything about her exterior a carefully planned and executed show. He felt a little sorry for her, then realized it didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be able to relate to his sympathy anyway.

“Come on,” she said, tapping her foot with calculated impatience.

Misol was watching him. He met her eye, and nodded understanding even as he grunted and levered himself to his feet. “Bank your coals, girl, I’m coming. Things are stiffer than they used to be.”

The scar tissue on his back pulled, the length of his forearm itched with raw puncture wounds. There was an ache in his joints that’d never been there before, a radial warmth that both worried and distracted him. He’d lost both his parents to bonewither. He knew too well it was a sorry way to die.

“Say, Aella,” he said, as he stretched out and followed her back toward the cabin she’d commandeered for research purposes. “You think all this messing with sel, and the injections, could speed up the onset of bonewither?”

Aella flicked the needle of her syringe with one finger, watching the little bubbles within burst and sputter. She glanced up at him over the point of steel, brows pinched, and shrugged. “Oh. Definitely. Now sit down on that bench. I want to see if you can identify all the sources of sel on the ship before we renew your injection.”

Wonderful, he thought, and closed his eyes, reaching for his sense slowly, carefully. Ignoring that bright, magma-hot vein of anger that threaded through everything he’d ever been. Forced himself to forget the face of his mother, sunken as her cheekbones dissolved, even as he touched all the sources of sel on the ship with his mind.

Drone-like, he began to count them off, and wondered if Aella suspected he knew her secret fear.