Steal the Sky

Chapter 12

Tibs, that old devil, had worked his way clear of the Lady Erst just in time to occupy Ripka. With all the malignant eyes of the house off him for the time being, Detan slunk along the balcony, scouting the entrance to the airship’s dock. When he found it, he wondered why he’d bothered with any semblance of stealth at all.

Thratia had the great double doors to her airdock thrown wide open. A couple of rough looking lads, veneered for the evening in butler’s black, lingered near the entrance, checking the tickets of everyone who passed through. Detan slipped Grandon’s ticket from Grandon’s pocket and squinted down at the elaborate script. It had the round bastard’s name on it.

He shoved it under his shirt, rubbed it against the sweat of his back, then crumpled it and stuffed it back in his pocket. Affecting a drunken stagger, he sauntered forward.

“Your ticket, sir.”

“Oh!” He swayed and patted his breast pockets, then down to his hips. Fumbling, searching, his cheeks flushed as he offered the guard an apologetic smile. “So sorry, I know it’s here somewhere… Ah!” He produced the wadded ticket, the fine paper crumpled tight enough to fit into his fist.

The guard took it and gingerly unfolded it, smoothing the battered mess against his thigh to work out some of the wrinkles. It didn’t do any good. While the tickets themselves were block-pressed, the names had been scribed in by hand. Cheap ink, and the guard squinted down at a smudge where Grandon’s name had been.

The guard glared at it, as if he could threaten the letters into making sense. Eventually, he just sighed. “Go ahead.”

Detan took his ticket back and bowed his thanks before shuffling through the door on wobbly feet. He made sure he was well out of eyesight before straightening up again.

The dance floor was the central attraction for the time being, so he found the airship’s mooring bay thin on visitors. This side of the compound opened up to the night air, and what he had glimpsed from the ferry to the Salt Baths resolved itself into grandeur. He stood on a u-shaped balcony, hanging out over the empty air high above the city. The balcony wrapped itself around the airship, the great behemoth held steady by thick ropes reaching from its deck to tie-points all along the edge of the dock.

A long gangway extended from the ship’s deck to the dock, lamp-lit and inviting. He ascended, unable to help a little tremble of excitement rippling over his skin.

It was unlike any ship he’d ever had the pleasure of setting his boots on before. Sure, he’d seen some mighty fine vessels pass through nearby airspace. Vessels bigger, vessels more ornately adorned. But this craft, this ship Thratia had named Larkspur was, to his mind, the perfect ship. She was streamlined, her body the shape and size of the old sailing ships that had first brought the Hondings across the seas to the Scorched. The only mars to its clean lines were the subtle, accordion protrusions of stabilizing wings. Folded in for now, they were easy to overlook.

He brushed a hand along the fine-grained wood of the railing, marveling at the simple fact that he couldn’t place the species of tree. Detan knelt, gathered up a length from a coil of silk-soft rope, tugged on it and found it stronger than any normal rope had a right to be. This was new. This ship was something special.

“It’s funny, but I don’t recall placing any Hondings on my guest list.”

Detan startled from his contemplation of the fine materials and jerked upright. He turned to find Thratia at his side, close enough to gut him if she felt inclined. Detan swallowed. One never knew just where Thratia’s inclinations lay.

She was a dangerous woman, this exiled commodore of Valathea, yet she looked positively delicate in the long linen skirts of her fellow desert creatures, her hair tied up with ornamental jewels. But Detan saw the sharpened points of her jewel pins, the long slit of her skirt under which she wore martial tights and leather boots in place of silken slippers. Thratia stood with her hands clasped behind her back, shoulders straight and squared. Though Valathean stock ran dark by nature, Thratia’s flesh was deep as the night. She was all muscle and teeth, a fiercely beautiful creature, and Detan admired her in the same way he’d admire a rockcat getting ready to tear his face off.

“Commodore Throatslitter,” he said and snapped a salute.

She grinned. It was not a pleasant experience. “I stopped being a commodore the moment I set sail for the Scorched.”

“And the Throatslitter?”

She shrugged. “We all do what we must to thrive.”

“And what makes you thrive, Thratia?”

Her smile was coy as she took a step toward him. He held his ground, though he felt he’d be considerably more comfortable if he were to leap from the edge of the ship.

“You digress and distract, Honding. You will tell me why you are here, and how.”

He sighed. There was just no dissembling with a woman like that. “My flier’s sacks tore on my way over the Fireline, then I heard about your lovely ship and decided to have a look-see.” He patted the handrail. “I’m glad I did, she’s beautiful.”

“Yes, she is.” Thratia cast a loving eye over the whole of her craft. “But you did not tell me the how of it.”

“Oh, well.” He cleared his throat. “I fell over your garden wall.”

She laughed, and it was worse than her grinning. “You’re an entertaining man, but you come with your own reputation. If I find you near my ship again I will regretfully decide that your continued existence is no longer conducive to my ability to thrive. Understood?”

“Funny, you still talk like a commodore.”

She waved a dismissive hand. “You are but a small distraction, Lord Honding, and I use small things as stepping stones to greater glories. No matter if they are crushed beneath my heel in the process.”

Detan was starting to wish he was better at keeping his mouth shut when a commotion at the entrance drew Thratia’s attention away. There was Ripka, pits bless her, striding across the walkway with two young lads in their official blues flanking her. Thratia’s lip curled and she spat over the railing of the ship. Somehow, she managed to make even spitting look delicate and controlled.

While Thratia and Ripka locked eyes and lifted chins, Detan gave a surreptitious kick to the coil of rope tied to the railing. It slithered off without drawing notice. Another option for him to draw upon later.

“Watch Captain Leshe, this is a surprise.” Thratia’s tone made it clear it wasn’t a pleasant one. Detan was just working out how best to drift back and escape the notice of either of those two dirt devils when damned Ripka pointed a finger straight at him.

“Pardon the interruption, Thratia, but I am obliged to take that man into custody.”

“So soon?” The commodore smirked. “He’s only been in town a day.”

A chill prickled Detan’s back – how did Thratia know that?

“Apparently that was all the time he needed to get into trouble. Come with me please, Honding.”

Detan glanced between Ripka, Thratia, and back again. Thratia seemed amused, and Ripka just a touch bored, which was really insulting. “Hey, now, hold on a tick, what is it I’ve done?”

“We’ll discuss your charges at the station.”

The watchers strode up the gangplank. He had half a mind to make a run for it, to leap into the abyss and trust to his luck, or just bolt straight through them. Neither option was likely to result in him coming through with all his bits intact. So he acquiesced, allowing his wrists to be bound behind his back. No burlap sack over the head this time, which he took as a good sign.

“Take him through the servant’s exit, please. I’d rather not have him paraded through the celebration.” Thratia waved her hand toward the opposite side of the dock where a narrow door stood without a single lantern nearby to light it.

“Not wasting oil on the servants, eh?” Detan said.

“They function fine without it. I trust you won’t trip.” She smiled, patted him on the cheek with one chilled palm, and sauntered back across the deck to entertain her guests.

“Easy now,” one of the watchers said as he grabbed Detan’s shoulder and steered him back down the gangplank.

“I’m always easy,” he quipped, but his heart wasn’t in it.

The way Ripka moved wasn’t right. Sure, she carried herself with the sort of self-assured confidence only a uniform could muster, but there was something relaxed about it. Something swaying. Ripka normally had the body language of a cave bear: guarded, wary, but still certain she was the biggest bad in the room. A sort of lock-step manner.

This Ripka, who strolled along beside him with her freckled chin tipped up and a smile plastered on her face as if she knew a joke no one else did, was too smooth. Too sure. Entirely too likable. This Ripka, he decided, was not Ripka. He kept his trap shut until they had made their way down the narrow stairs, past a half-drunk set of guards playing ten tiles, and out into the anonymizing bustle of the city.

He leaned close, catching the scent of spiced vanilla oil in her hair, and grinned to himself. The real Ripka, who’d cornered him on the balcony, had been wearing cactus flower. “So, what’s your name?” he whispered.

She startled, just a touch, drawing her head back in surprise as she looked down her borrowed nose at him. “I am Watch Captain Leshe. Please try to remember it.”

“Really?”

She smiled with all her teeth. “Really.”

The so-called watch captain drifted to the back of the group, leaving behind nothing but the memory of her scent, and let her clueless companions in blue haul him along to the station house. They found him a nice cell, with mud-daub walls and a big wooden door that made a satisfying clang when they shut it on him. There wasn’t a light in his room, or a window to the outdoors, just a little portal cut in the door with iron bars shot through it. He leaned against it, pressing his face to the bars to get a better look at his surroundings. It was all in darkness, only a smudge of light from the guard’s lamp breaking up the shadows.

“Do you need anything, captain?” a watcher asked.

“No, thank you,” not-Ripka said to the men he could no longer see. “I will take matters from here.”

There was some shuffling, an exchange of paperwork, and then the hall door shut and they were alone. A pair of old oil lamps kept the room beyond his cell lit, and though his view was limited he could make out the thick wooden desk both lamps rested on. Not-Ripka crossed to it and sat on the edge to face him, her arms folded.

“So,” he drawled as he let his hands hang out between the bars, “what’s your name?”

She smiled. “What gave it away?”

“Your legs are too long.”

“Are you a connoisseur of the watch captain’s legs?”

“I’m a connoisseur of all ladies’ legs. But I wonder – you took a mighty risk traipsing into Thratia’s fete like that. Ripka could’ve been just around any corner at any moment. What if her watchers catch you two in the same room? The same building?”

A sly smile graced the doppel’s lips as she ran her fingers along the lapel of her blue uniform. “I’ve made arrangements that allow me to know where she is at any given moment. I’m shocked you haven’t noticed. Your lack of diligence does not invest me with confidence, but I suppose some things can’t be helped.”

“Oh, it’s my diligence you’re worried about? Miss, you should spend some more time worrying about Ripka’s. That’s a thornbrush you’re trifling with.”

“Miss?” She allowed her voice to shift, to grow tired and aged. Showing off, no doubt. Detan wondered how long it’d been since she’d an audience for her talents. In her new gruff voice, she shifted the tones down to be distinctly masculine. “You assume too much. I could be male for all you know, or old and withered.”

“Sel can’t hide the way you move, lady, or the way you smile. I’ve spent a long time watching people. The way they tip their heads when they’re curious, or flatten their lips when they’re frustrated. I know every eye twinkle and every lip curl. You’re good, but now that I know what I’m looking for, well, you can never be that good. The real question I have for you, doppel, is when am I going to get some food in here?”

“Illusionist,” she snapped the word off, bringing Detan’s eyebrows up. Touchy girl, when it came to her talents. He could work with that.

“Fine, fine, you keep the old traditions, eh? One of the last holdouts, I would think. Most of the old sel workers are dead to bonewither or in diaspora in the south. But here you are, trotting out Catari words like they’re the common vernacular. Now why is that?”

“Just because the words are old doesn’t mean they’re wrong. It was your people who insisted on learning them, after all, and I do mean your people.”

He grimaced and tipped his head down to study all the little cracks in his door. “Wasn’t me on that expedition, I can’t be blamed for what’s passed.”

“But you can be for perpetuating it.”

“Illusionist, then. Fine. Makes no difference to me.”

“It should.”

“Well, it doesn’t. And what do you want with me, anyway? I’m a Honding, remember, and you’ve made it clear as a calm sky you’re not a fan of us founders.”

“Founders?” She snorted. “I don’t have the time to correct what’s wrong with that notion. And what I want, Honding, is assurance that you’re going to do what I paid you for.”

“Paid for with stolen silver.”

“You’re the last person I’d think would quibble about a bit of pinched grain.”

“True.” He picked his head up. “But why do you want me for it? You can’t even fly the thing yourself, and there have to be easier ways out of the city if it’s the law you’re running from.”

She laughed a little, shaking her head. “I’m not running from anything. And that ship is perfectly suited for single-pilot flight, if that pilot is an illusionist.”

That startled him. He frowned at her, extending his senses. His knowledge of the way the doppels worked their illusions was rough at best. He knew any color could be pulled out of selium with careful manipulation, that furrows could be filled in and bulbous bits sculpted, but he was shocked to feel the impossibly thin layer of sel the doppel had coating her skin.

In his mind’s eye, he could just see the topography of her real features beneath the veneer, an indistinct muddling under the fine manipulations of the sel. He came back to himself, panting.

“My control is complete, as you can see for yourself.”

“How…”

She shrugged. “It is natural for me. Manipulating the sel bladders of a ship is not such a difficult thing in comparison.”

“Fine, you can fly it. Marvelous for you, I’m sure, but that still doesn’t mean I’m willing to get my head lopped off for your trouble.”

“Here’s the deal, Honding. I’m not going to threaten you, I just want you to watch. Carefully.”

She stepped away from the desk and pulled a slender hand mirror from her pocket. She peered at herself, then her eyes looked a touch glassy and her face began to change. Detan scowled, struggling to see past the obscuring bars on his window and the eclipsing mirror.

Giving up on regular sight, he extended his sel-sense and focused on her minute movements, manipulations on a scale so small he was certain he could not see the effect with the naked eye.

Curious, he extended his own control of the substance and tried to pry a piece of it loose. She made a small grunting noise, annoyance, but nothing budged. She had mastered the selium she commanded, it was not for him to manipulate.

Her face seemed to lift off, the mask floating just before her real skin. He could not see her through it, and he gritted his teeth in frustration. As he watched, the elements rearranged themselves. Stretching, compressing, separating and joining at different angles. The hues changed. Now deeper, now bright, and when she pulled the mask taut against her skin he found himself looking straight into the eyes of Tibal.

“Now that’s… That’s just not right.”

Tibal’s face, Ripka’s body. The stuff of nightmares. He shuddered.

“You understand? I will see him walk the Black, just to spite you, if you do not do this thing for me.”

“Fine, yes, all right. Just please put the pretty face back on. Pits, woman, you have no idea what you’ve just done to my dreamscape.”

Tibal-Ripka rolled its eyes and the sel mask pushed away from it again. Hovering, reshaping, coming to settle back in an arrangement he was perversely glad to see.

“Better.”

“I will hear your plan now.”

He blinked, and laughed. “Plan? I don’t make plans. I allow for options.”

“Fine, what are your options?”

“Not likely, lady. You got me on the leash to steal the Larkspur, fine. But how I go about doing it is my own business. If I need your assistance, I’ll need a way to contact you.”

“Not going to happen. You do this without my hand in it, or not at all. I have other things worth doing for the moment. This is why I hired you, Honding. I suggest you live up to your name.”

She turned and snuffed one of the lamps, picked up the other one.

“You’re going to leave me here?”

“Oh yes. The watch captain needs a reminder of my reach. Enjoy your night.”

She strode from the room, taking the lamp with her, and when the door clinked behind her Detan dropped his forehead against the metal bars. He did it again, harder, just for good measure. He really wished he’d eaten at Thratia’s.