Steal the Sky

Chapter 14

The absolute first thing Detan did was find a food cart. He stuffed his face with half-burned grit roots and old, unidentifiable meat while Tibs watched, chewing around something wrapped in what looked suspiciously like a leaf. When the rumble in his stomach had settled, Detan slumped back against the wall of a building in the shade of a reedpalm and sighed.

“May I ask why you were arrested, sirra?”

He grimaced, dragged back from his contemplation of the gentle breeze and the warm, contented feeling only a full belly can bring. “To make a point, I’m afraid. It was the doppel who dragged me in and the real thing who found me. Those two are dancing round each other like territorial scorpions.”

“Dancing around you?”

He winked and waved his arms to take in his whole body. “I am quite the prize, as you can no doubt see.”

“Did it occur to you they might be interested in me?”

“Aren’t you married, Tibs?”

Tibs scuffed a shoe in the dust. “Only a little.”

“I’m afraid that’s an all or nothing sort of situation for most women.”

“Well, it’s only on paper. And I haven’t seen Silka in a year, you really think she isn’t taking care of her needs without me?”

Detan recalled the stern-faced woman who had nearly gotten him arrested by planting stolen property on him and shuddered. “I try not to think on it…” He trailed off as Tibs’s expression soured.

“You know, because the very idea of her betraying you is too terrible.”

Tibs’s brows lifted, two fuzzy worms threatening battle to one another. “Really?”

“Sure.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I’m hoping you’ll do me the kindness of pretending you do.”

Tibs kicked a gnawed animal bone into a trash heap and shrugged. “What now? You get any good eyes on the ship?”

Detan sucked air between his teeth and nodded. “You’d wet yourself if you saw it, the thing is beauty wrought of plank and sail. The hull is formed like an old trader vessel, with the sel sacks inside of it. Made of half a dozen woods I can’t even identify. Even the tie-ropes are soft as silk, the stabilizing wings made of the supplest leather I’ve ever seen. Softer than the commodore’s hands, that’s for sure. It’s gorgeous, Tibs. Gorgeous.”

“Well now that we know you’ve proper appreciation for the aesthetics, can we move on to the part where we steal it?”

“Oh.” He shrugged and pushed away from the wall, wandering down the packed road toward the level-stairs. “When I was arrested we went out the servant’s entrance. Guarded, but not astutely, and before that I kicked one of those delightful little ropes over the edge, so we can get the flier under it and climb on up. I feel you’re rather missing the salient point, however. What was really interesting about last night, Tibs, was the freckles.”

“The freckles?” Tibs drawled, and Detan got the distinct impression the old goat was humoring him.

“Indeed. Yesterday morning’s Ripka had none, and yet the real deal at the party was quite spattered with them. And the second Ripka, the one who threw me in the clink, had sprouted freckles as well.”

Tibs chewed empty air a moment while he thought. “So the doppel must have revised her appearance.”

“Indeed, and that means she’d seen Ripka in the personal after our encounter and before the party. And guess who was rustling up all of the seventh level poking around for disaffected sensitives of unusual strength?”

“The watch captain.” Tibs came to a rather annoying halt at the bottom of the level’s steps. “Our rooms are in quite the other direction. Unless you fancy an upgrade?”

“Oh, come on, Tibs, we’re going to go find that doppel.” He bowed before the steps up to the city and gestured Tibs forward, drawing an irksome glance from the slate-grey uniformed guard posted nearby. Detan frowned. Weren’t all the city guard meant to wear a blue uniform one shade lighter than the Watch?

“Are you sure about this?” Tibs said, drawing Detan’s thoughts away from the odd guard.

“Pah, calm down. Ripka intimated that she interviewed every retired sel-sensitive on the seventh. There can’t be that many.”

“Certainly. But how do you propose we find them?”

“You can’t have forgotten how this works so quickly. Now hush.”

“You seem mighty desperate to find this doppel,” Tibs said.

Detan cringed, remembering the creature’s little trick the night before. As he glanced at his old friend, he imagined his face as if it were a mask, the body belonging to something altogether different. Steal the ship for the doppel, or Tibs gets framed for whatever she has coming. He shivered.

If he could catch her unawares, then maybe he could change her mind. Maybe he could force her to let him and Tibs just go.

“You look sick,” Tibs said. “What happened?”

“Try not to think so hard, old chum, you’ll get more wrinkles.”

“Sirra.” Tibs stopped cold, hands shoved in his pockets, wiry eyebrows pushed down in annoyance. “Tell me.”

“We can’t keep the ship,” he blurted.

“Why?” His voice was almost calm enough to sooth Detan’s frayed nerves. Almost.

With a muted growl of frustration he dragged his fingers through his hair and tugged. “Listen, Tibs, about last night…”

While he explained the doppel’s threat, Tibs’s expression soured, his relaxed demeanor giving way to tightened, bunched shoulders and fists clenched so hard Detan could see the bulge in his pockets. When he finished the sordid little tale, Tibs let out a heavy breath and shook his head.

“We should scamper. We stay much longer, we’ll both lose our tempers.”

Detan grimaced. “She’ll chase us. I’ve no doubt of that.”

“Then what?”

“We find her, and try to make a deal.”

Tibs grunted, but held whatever retort was coming. They sped up and crossed straight to the seventh level. The locals ignored them as they went about their business, buying bland fruits and leaf-flat breads from the few stalls set up to capture those unwilling to brave the market level below. Detan felt strange in last night’s finery, but then there were a great many people milling about with rumpled hair and twisted collars much like his own. Thratia’s fete, it seemed, had carried on well after he’d been hauled off.

Detan spotted a slender alley and ducked inside, thinking it a good enough place to keep an eye on the comings and goings. Didn’t hurt that the shade of the high, canted walls was a balm to his sun-tired skin.

Tibs leaned his back against the dusty alley wall, and Detan was quite surprised to see just how well he blended into the mud brick and black grit. Out in the street, urchin children scrambled back and forth, nimble hands weaving a familiar pattern around the more savory looking denizens. Detan chuckled as one particularly enterprising youth slipped the rings off an older woman’s fingers and skittered off.

When one drew near, Detan eased himself out of the shadows just enough to be seen and the kid stopped short, his dust-coated face hard and impassive. “Wha’ you want, mister? I don’t do nothin’ perverted.”

“Nothing like that, young chap.” He knelt down to get a better look at the bony creature and proffered a crust of bread stuffed with the mystery meat and veg. The kid snapped it up and dug in, little jaw working around a cancerous looking bulge. “Just need some information.”

“What kind?”

“Residences.”

“What?”

“Who lives where, kiddo.”

His small eyes narrowed. “You looking to bunk a place? That’s Skelta’s territory, I don’t wan’ nothin’ to do with it.”

Detan shook his head. “We just want to visit someone, no bunking of any kind involved.”

“I don’ know everyone.”

“You know the old sel workers? They’ve got more than most, probably good pickings there.”

He nodded, unwilling to confess outright.

“Right. So, point their places out to me and it’ll be a silver grain for you.”

The kid’s eyes bulged. “I’d be beaten to tar, walkin’ round with silver.”

“I’ll break it into coppers then, so you can hide half.”

He shrugged. “Okay. Money first.”

The kid slunk into the alley and Detan handed it over, counting by twos. The kid’s lips worked as he followed along the count, then he stuffed half in one pocket and half in a bag around his neck.

“Got paper?”

Detan produced the only paper he had, his filched party ticket, and handed it to the kid who smoothed it flat on the ground. The urchin crouched over the paper, a little nub of charcoal from a fire clutched in his knobby fist, and licked the charcoal tip so that it would draw a darker, finer point. With care he sketched out the street and its primary crossroads, drawing right to the edges of the ticket. Then he began to mark little stars in certain spots, putting numbers beside them. When he was done, he jumped up and secreted the charcoal away before dusting his hands on his trouser leg.

“There you are, mister. Number is the count of doors down from the right, then up.”

The kid ran off while Detan was still staring open-mouthed at the makeshift map. It was a genius system, the counting pattern, and he was certain it was code amongst the urchin’s fellows. For once, he didn’t feel like he’d overpaid.

“Clever kid.”

“You got that right.”

Detan picked up the map, careful not to smudge the lines. “Well, let’s start with 6-3 here.”

“Lead the way.”

Detan gave the first door a rapid one-two-three thump, and it opened almost before he could take his hand back. Bushy brows peered out at him, granite-grey ridges over black-brown eyes.

“What?” the man grunted, pipe smoke heavy on his breath.

“Hullo, good sir! We’re visiting with the honored sensitives of the city to inquire about their–”

“Are you from the Watch?”

“Er, well, no.”

“The Hub?”

“I’m afraid we’re not acquainted with the specifics of–”

The man spat at Detan’s feet and slammed the door shut. A little wuff of dust wafted onto his face, shaken from the lintel by the man’s over-exuberant use of his portal. Detan coughed.

“Well, couldn’t have been him anyway.” He brushed dust from his shirt, found it already mingling with his sweat and well on its way transforming into mud.

“Really? You convinced he doesn’t dress up as the lady watch captain in his off hours?”

“Mightin’ be that he does, old friend, but he’s still not our creature. I remain convinced that the doppel is a woman. And taller.”

“As you say.”

He scratched out 6-3, and they moved on to the next.

The second door wouldn’t even open for them despite the light in the window and the alluring scent of cooking spices seeping from within. The third produced a perfectly pleasant woman who offered them a rather terrifying mug of hot tea, her hands trembling so that the clay cup clanked against its saucer. Detan sensed sel in that woman’s house, but he was beginning to realize such secret caches were far from unusual in this neighborhood. Sensitives felt comfort in being close to a source of sel. It wasn’t a compulsion, but he certainly understood the appeal.

At the fourth door, a hunched woman with grey-green eyes and a slump to her shoulders opened the door a crack, her gaze narrowed in suspicion. Sweet spices drifted on the air, they must have interrupted her baking. His stomach gave a hopeful rumble.

“May I help you?”

“I hope so.” He beamed and thrust out a hand. She just looked at it. “We’re here conducting a small review of the retired sel workers in the area, ma’am. I was wondering how being retired is treating you?”

“It was rather quiet and pleasant until a few moments ago.”

“Oh… ah. Do you mind if we come in?”

“Yes.”

She closed the door, leaving Tibs and Detan locked out of yet another home of Aransa.

“This is going great, sirra.”

“Oh, shut up. That woman had a sel supply somewhere in her house. She’s a candidate.”

“So? The last one did too. You said yourself almost all of them have. And this one had a limp, anyway.”

“Could have been an act.”

Tibs sighed and looked down at the map. “Come on then, six more houses we have yet to get banned from.”

They dragged themselves back that night exhausted, with stubbed toes and an annoyingly persistent lack of leads. Detan threw himself down on the bed and groaned as the tired muscles of his back stretched.

“Happy with yourself, sirra?”

Tibs was, he noted with no small amount of irritation, looking quite vibrant. Detan chalked it up to him having had the luxury of their rented room to himself the night before.

“Shove it, Tibs. You just don’t understand what it’s like to spend the night in jail and find your plans all thwarted in the morning.”

“Thought you didn’t make plans.” There was bitterness to Tibs’s voice, a sharp edge that raked thorns over Detan’s consciousness. They’d failed to find the doppel. Now they had a choice to make, and the unspoken weight of it hung between them, heavier than any sel ship’s ballast. Leave town and risk pursuit, or dance on the doppel’s strings. Neither option was appealing.

He grimaced and flopped over onto his side, staring out into the little goat pen that housed their flier.

It was gone.

“Tibs, did you take the flier somewhere last night?”

“No. I spent the evening fixing it up. Why? Oh.”

Detan sprang to his feet, but wiry old Tibs still beat him to the door. There was a fierce ache in his legs, but he didn’t let that stop him from pounding down the dusty hallway with Tibs at his side. They reached the rickety desk their proprietor sat behind at the same time, both whoomping as their stomachs and hands smacked into the edge of it.

A little puff of dust wafted up. The proprietor didn’t seem to notice.

“Excuse me.” Detan cleared his throat and the proprietor looked up from his accounts. He was a man of middling years with hair gone all to ash and his cheeks gaunt from a steady diet of spicewine and more spicewine, judging by the smell of him. He peered up at them from his little alcove, squinting against the low lamplight so that his brow and cheeks wrinkled right up and covered his eyes.

“What?” he said.

“Upon careful purview my companion and I have discovered that the contents of our acquired place of rest have gone missing.”

“What?”

“Our flier’s gone.” Detan sighed and slapped the ticket stub for the pen on the desk. “And our account is paid in full, I assure you.”

The proprietor squinted over the desk at the stub and smacked his lips. “Number eight-six, eh. Yeah, your man came and picked that wreck up earlier today, round lunch hour. Said to thank you kindly fer it and give you this.”

Gnarled and smoke-stained fingers passed a folded slip of paper across the desk. Detan snatched it up and danced away from the proprietor, turning the paper over to make out the droopy wax seal. Despite an overabundance of wax muddying the details, the family crest was clear enough in the crimson globule. It was just too bad he hadn’t a clue what it meant. Despite the intense education of his youth, Detan found all the iconography of the sigil a mystery to his eyes. He suspected Auntie Honding would turn her nose up at it as a gaudy example of the peacocky nature of the new-rich.

“Go on,” Tibs urged.

Detan broke the seal and flipped the thick, cream-hued paper open. Tibs crowded him, peering over his shoulder to get a better look.

Dear idiots,

I have taken your heap of a flier in trade for the clothes you wrongfully acquired this evening. The thing is such a wreck that I hardly think the trade fair, but I suspect you possess nothing of equal or greater value in all the world. I suppose after some much needed repair it will make a suitable gift for my daughter’s birthday.

Regards,

Renold Grandon

A cold shiver of rage added a tremble to Detan’s fingers, and he was annoyed to see the paper shake with it. As his anger mounted, his senses widened. Awareness of all local sources of sel bled into his mind. A little stash behind the proprietor’s counter – probably infused in alcohol – a great pool of it in a nearby buoyancy sack, no doubt a part of a neighbor’s flier. Their presence called to him, cloying and hot, an inviting outlet for his fury. Detan closed his eyes, willed cool sense into the blood pounding through his body.

Beside him, Tibs chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” Detan snapped, though at the sound of Tibs’s amusement the rising tide of his anger crested and broke.

“Well, it’s a pretty good move, don’t you think? I reckon you’d do the same, if you were him.”

“Pits below, Tibs, don’t encourage the man.”

“Not like he’s here to hear it.”

Detan scowled, but the raw edge of rage had gone out of him. His sense of sel closed, his heart slowed its frantic pace. It was, in fact, a tidy little move. Put in the same position, he probably would have pulled something similar.

He was going to enjoy ripping it all apart.

“I say.” He whirled back upon the proprietor. “Try not to let any more strangers walk off with our things while we’re out, if it’s not too much trouble.”

The wiry old bastard snorted and flipped a page on his ledger. “No promises, boys. No one in Aransa who’s got all their sand between their ears is going to help you against Grandon. That man keeps a grudge closer than a lover and has the grains to back up anything he wants to do. He comes back asking for your shitshorts and I’ll hand ’em over with a smile.”

“Charming,” Detan muttered.

Then brightened.

“There is one brave soul in all Aransa willing to stand with us against Grandon.”

“Oh,” Tibs groaned. “We’re going back on the ferry again, aren’t we?”

Detan threw an arm around Tibs’s shoulders and ushered him back out into the street. “Didn’t I tell you? A lifetime’s worth of goodwill!”