Steal the Sky

Chapter 25

Worry dug its claws deep into Detan’s mind, distracting him with whispers of disaster. They scurried through the ferry district, one scant level down from Thratia’s compound, moving fast but not so quick as to draw attention to themselves. Every corner he turned, he half expected to run chest-first into one of Thratia’s grey coated sycophants.

Some little part of him wanted to. There was enough sel around the ferries for him to deal with any trouble if it came to it, but he couldn’t be sure he’d be able to contain himself once he’d started. It was the sliver of him that didn’t mind that fact that worried him.

They came to the end of a long row of shuttered and tarped foodstalls, their owners skedaddled off to safer locales for the time being. He didn’t blame them. Half the city had tucked themselves in for an early night – hoping against the gathering shadows that things would push on like normal come the dawn. They were probably right. Whoever held the reins of the city mattered little in the day-to-day lives of the common folk.

Detan slowed and reached a hand back to forestall Ripka. Her boots stopped scuffling over the dirt-packed road, and he edged up to the end of a large cart, poking his head around the side to get a look at the ferry station.

Wasn’t just grey coats minding the way. There was a small group of people, local stock every one, and they were all backed up at the docking gate for the ferry that went out to the Hub. Between the group and the dock tall, stern-faced Valatheans in uniforms as pale blue as the skies their homeland commanded stood at ease, pikes resting in the crooks of their arms. One yawned; another fanned his obsidian, reddening cheeks with a folded bit of milky paper.

“What is it?” Ripka whispered.

“Best see this for yourself,” he murmured.

Detan pressed himself back against the cart, giving her room to creep around without being seen. She practically floated forward, adjusting her gait so that her steps were so light the leather soles didn’t so much as whisper on the hard-packed dirt road.

“What is the empire doing here?” she whispered.

Detan grabbed her elbow and dragged her back around the curve of the alley. “You tell me, miss watch captain. I try not to have anything to do with folk in uniform.”

Her gaze darted side to side, a brief moment of real panic. “How in the pits should I know? Thratia’s cut me out of everything.”

He cursed and spat, wondering if those pretty blue uniforms were under Thratia’s command or a whitecoat’s. Didn’t much matter, he didn’t plan on making their acquaintance. “We’ll have to keep low and to the lee side of buildings. Use the shadows as best we can as we make the crossing.”

“Crossing? We’re not getting on that ferry, Honding.”

He grinned, saw the whites of her eyes grow wide and bright as knives in the dark. “Who said anything about a ferry?”

Get on the ferry, hah. Not with those flower sniffers hanging about. Why, the two of them would be tipped right over the edge of the ferry if they ever made it on to begin with. He had an idea what they needed to do. It was the only path left open to them if they wanted to see the Hub tonight, and by the way Ripka clammed up, she knew it, too. Without a word of conference, they adjusted their path toward the lowest level of the city. Toward that last wall between civilization and wide open, hungry desert.

They had to cross the Black.

The very idea made his skin itch with the urge to flee. It was safe enough at night, sure. At least, the sun wouldn’t bake you to a streetcart delicacy within a dozen paces of the city while the sky was dark. If you didn’t mind the heat trapped in the sand, making each step like dancing a jig in a bread oven. If your shoes were stable enough to hold up to the bite of the unweathered obsidian shards. If you knew your way, cut the path short. If you made it back before the sun came up.

If, if, if. His stomach rumbled a protest and he grimaced, wiping sweat from his brow on the back of his hand.

It didn’t help to ease his poor nerves that Ripka was looking around at her own city like she’d never seen it before. Sure, things were different. Not a lot, mind you, but Thratia’s people were out in force and it left a subdued hush over the whole of Aransa. People took to their homes and stayed put. It wasn’t natural, things being so quiet this time of night. The citizenry should be out, taking advantage of the cooler weather to bicker over the price of roots and meats. Instead, the local cricket population took up an unsteady song, as if they weren’t sure whether it was wise to fill the unnatural silence.

“They’re everywhere.” Ripka’s voice was so alien in this place empty of human babbling that he jumped and damned near hit his head on a low-hanging awning.

He glanced over his shoulder, ready to give her the rough side of his tongue, then stopped cold when he saw where she was looking. Not at the people and their homes, their markets and their washing. No, her keen eyes had plucked out other figures moving amongst the shadows and the leeways, keeping their presence felt but not seen. Shadows of hands held shadows of weapons, ready to become corporeal at any moment.

“Just stay steady, they won’t be harassing us any if we look like we’re in a hurry to get where we’re going. Chances are Thratia’s got ’em spread thin and communication won’t get ahead of us. Come on now, the gate’s a few levels down and then it’s just us and the sand to the Hub. Anyway, the way we’re moving they’ll probably assume we’re all on the same side. Buncha pals, us and them.”

She nodded a tight, formal jerk of the head. Detan was used to this – to sneaking and skulking and keeping your head down while your eyes were up – but she wasn’t, and he’d be ground-bound if she wasn’t behaving like an old pro at it. She kept her movements tight and clean, her eyes sharp and roving, searching, looking for the next spot to make a dash to or the next pair of eyes to slip away from. He was beginning to feel too big for his own body, clumsy and obvious.

“You all right?” she whispered.

He shook his head to clear it. “Right as rain in a monsoon. You’d make a damned fine footpad, you know.”

They dashed across a wide lane into another alley, serpentining their way down the slope of the city. They stood for a moment, stilling their hearts so that they could hear. No one was about. He felt silly being so paranoid. But then, it was usually when you felt in the clear that something rose out of the muck and bit you.

“Was one, once,” she murmured.

“You’re pulling my sail.”

“It’s true. I was born in the Brown Wash. There’s silver mining there, and a reedpalm paper factory, but that’s it. My parents weren’t lucky enough to be industry folk so I stole for food. Lots of the kids did it. It was bad, there.” She looked around at the mud-daub village that comprised the lowest level of Aransa. Half-made roofs lay open to the empty sky, water pumps were hung with little painted symbols that meant they’d been pumped dry for now, try again later. Those few unfortunate souls that had further to go to make it to the safety of their homes moved with furtive steps that had nothing to do with tonight’s tension.

These were hard-bitten folk, wiry limbed and browned through to the bone by the sun. They had hunger’s cheekbones, sharp and cruel. He glanced Ripka’s way and caught her scowling at a poster on the wall of the alley calling for the downtrodden to vote for Thratia. They’d been seeing them everywhere the last five levels.

“What do they think she’ll do for them? Don’t they know she’s called Throatslitter for a reason?”

He shrugged. “That’s not how it works down here, Rip, you know that. They love her because they see her as having bucked the empire to come onto the Scorched and lead them to a better life. Better yet, she’s gone native in their eyes. You see any of the Valathean guard this far down? Nope, of course not, she doesn’t want her image mixed up with them down here. There’s too many of them for her to risk losing their support. And anyway, she could be called Commodore Babyspiker and as long as she had a plan to get food and water down here, they’d vote her in. Galtro have any plans like that?”

She set to chewing on her lip. “His idea of the downtrodden were the miners and their families.”

“Hah. The lucky and the pampered, in the eyes of these folk. Hush now, we’re getting closer.”

Down by the final wall between Aransa and the desert, the locals had made it home already. They reminded Detan of sand mice, tucked away in the shadow of their dens, hoping a preying eye wouldn’t look too close. Wouldn’t catch that glimmer of light between the crooked shutters.

They needn’t have worried, there wasn’t much call for a patrol this close to the Black Wash. It was night, sure, but few people were fool enough to risk a trek out there at any time of day. All it took was a rolled ankle or a bit of confusion, just enough to slow you down, and if the sun slunk up and caught you there wasn’t any coming back from it. You cooked, plain and simple. It was the central reason all of Aransa’s supplies came in via airships. No one wanted to risk a caravan out in that madness.

He poked his head around a corner to get a good look at the gate and saw no one there, as expected. There wasn’t even a lock on it. The latch was a thick bit of timber, rough and splintered from lack of use or care. A fan of black dust spread out from underneath it, the desert seeping in. The gate rattled in its catch, keeping the stiff desert wind out. There was no point in locking it – no sane soul wanted out there.

“Here we are then.” He strode out into the empty street, confident as a cockerel, and dragged up the battered beam. It creaked a protest from rusted hinges, but still it lifted free. He laid his palm against the door and pushed. Ripka’s eyes went wide, a little gasp escaping her.

“You ever been down on the Wash?” he asked.

She shook her head. “There’s no reason for it. We make the violent criminals walk it, of course, but that’s further down the wall, where the guardhouse is. I never dreamed it was so… reflective, up close.”

Detan squinted out at the black sands. A few of the cleaved faces gave off a fey shimmer, catching what little moonlight there was while they waited for the bright of the stars to find them. Detan gave a soft whistle and adjusted the brim of his hat down over his eyes.

“Looks dangerous, out there. But we’ll be fine just so long as we return before the sun rises, eh? And walk soft now, some of those grains are sharp enough to cut straight into your boots.”

Detan stepped out into the Black Wash and paused, allowing his eyes to adjust to the lack of lantern light. Outside of the city’s great wall, the sands of Aransa were gathered in silence. Beauty, he had always felt, was best observed in an aura of quietude, and the Black Wash was no exception. A killing field come every dawn, it was lustrous and silk-soft under the gentler stroke of red moonlight.

Beneath the worn soles of his shoes, he could feel the radiant heat, permeating soft leather and easing his tired joints. Though the sun had slipped past its cruelest angle and given them up to the dark, the sands remembered the brightness of day. Each bituminous grain held on to the memory of the sun, and the threat of the coming dawn. If he stood in one place too long, the heat began to grow uncomfortable.

“It’s so quiet out here,” she said.

Detan glanced back at the city lights sloped up into the night. “Aransa isn’t exactly bustling at the present, captain.”

Whatever awe she felt as she gazed about the place, saucer-eyed and open-lipped, retreated as she followed his glance back toward the city. He knew what she’d be seeing. After all, hers were eyes that cared for that which they regarded. While he saw the light, she’d see the shutters. Where he listened to the quietude of the gently sleeping, she’d hear the vacuous silence of the frightened; the cowering.

Her spine stiffened like steel was shot through it, her jaw came up and straightened. She tucked hair behind her ear and strode sure-footed across the sands toward the Smokestack. He let her lead.

Ripka walked on the sands like she owned them, like she was born to them. Brown Wash girl like her, he supposed she was. Wasn’t much rock in the Brown bigger than a thumbnail, so she had to be used to unsteady footing. Good quality in a thief. Bad quality in a watcher – those had to be rigid, immovable.

“How’d you come by it?” he asked.

They were getting close now, their bodies swallowed up in the shadow of the Smokestack, so that when she turned her head to look at him all he could make out were white eyes and teeth.

“Come by what?”

“Your blues, captain. What’s a Brown Wash girl doing in uniform?”

She turned back to the path, and he figured she was set on ignoring him, which was fair enough. Detan shoved his hands in his pockets and tried not to think too hard about just what he was doing out here, helping a woman of the law break it. Didn’t seem right, working with a blue out of the goodness of his heart.

He grunted at the dark. Too many open ends. For once, he was getting sick of options.

They trudged on, with each step the gentle radiant heat of the sands growing until he caught himself shifting his weight to his toes to give his heels a break, then switching when he felt blisters begin there, the pain tangy and sharp. His already sore toes cracked against something hard and unyielding and he stumbled. Ripka grabbed his shoulder, keeping him upright, and they tangled as he struggled to regain his balance.

“What in the pits was that?” He glared at the sand as if it owed him answers, and nearly lost his lunch as he got a response.

A desiccated corpse lay sprawled across the glittering sands, leathered lips curled away to reveal a grimace of half-rotted teeth in the skull Detan’d stubbed his toe on. The shrunken skin around its gaping eye sockets gleamed in the faint moonlight, and for just a breath Detan thought the corpse had died weeping. But, no, he realized. By the time this body laid down to die there wasn’t any moisture left in it. The glaze frozen on its cheekbones now was the dribble of its eye fluid, boiled over in mimicry of tears.

The corpse’s arms were outstretched, delicate finger bones scattered like fallen petals, gleaming white against the black sand. Whoever they’d been, they’d been reaching toward the Ridge when they’d fallen – perhaps crawling over the bright shards, each desperate lurch digging the bite of a thousand tiny knives deeper and deeper.

“Black skies,” he whispered.

“The walk’s meant to kill you,” Ripka snapped, a wiry defensiveness ratcheting up her voice. “Nothing pretty about it.”

A whip of wind tore past them, rattling the exposed bones, and he shivered, shoving his hands in his pockets as he hurried on, quick to leave the nightmarish scene behind. The sooner he could escape Aransa, the better.

Something long and hard skittered across his foot. Detan jumped back with an undignified yelp, kicking a hand-shaped silhouette high into the air. The insectile creature hissed at the night, the sound raking thorns over Detan’s skin.

Ripka laughed, the sound a little manic. “It’s just a spider.”

“Blasted thing is bigger than any spider has a right to be,” he growled, skirting the approximate area the abomination might have landed in. Still laughing, Ripka turned and swung down with her cudgel – once, twice, a meaty crack-thump following an enraged hiss. Detan took a hesitant step forward, peering into the dark.

“It’s dead,” she announced as she slipped the cudgel back into her belt and pinned him with a sideways glance. “Though I am suddenly concerned that you volunteered to help me.”

He opened his mouth to protest, breathed too deep and starting coughing on dusty air. She thumped him on the back until he regained himself. For a few hesitant breaths he stood, hunched over, palms on his kneecaps to steady himself. Ripka watched him, real concern stitching her pale brows together.

Concern. For him. Detan forced a rueful little smile, and relief flooded her features. She punched him on the shoulder, light and playful, and he went ahead and pretended it hurt.

Maybe some options weren’t so bad after all.