Steal the Sky

Chapter 29

Detan’s heart leapt straight into his throat and stayed there, pounding away so hard he feared he’d vomit. Sweat slicked his back, his arms, his brow – reaching straight through his threadworn clothes and making him slippery in the grip of the men who held him. He opened his mouth to breathe, to suck down air to slow the dizzy swirl of his mind, but he just gasped like a fish out of water.

A whitecoat. Here. Right-in-fucking-front-of-him.

She hadn’t seen him yet, her annoyed face was pointed straight at Thratia.

“This woman,” the whitecoat said, flicking her wrist toward Ripka, “claims that she has proof of your involvement in a smuggling operation.”

Ripka’s shoulders shot back, straightening as she squared her body for a verbal fight. He could guess what she was thinking – guess she was gearing herself up to throw Thratia beneath the heel of her Valathean masters. Couldn’t she hear the vague amusement tingeing the whitecoat’s voice?

Detan heard. He’d grown used to judging the moods of those monsters. His life had depended upon it, once.

Thratia pursed her lips, gave Ripka a dragging look-over, nodded to herself, then turned back to the doppel and laid one firm, callused hand against her cheek. The doppel’s skin shimmered. A finger poke she could handle – but a whole palm? Even with her control, Detan knew she hadn’t stood a chance keeping it all smooth.

“Ah. So there you are.”

Rage eclipsed the real Ripka’s face, but it wasn’t nearly as terrible as the sudden delight that fell like a spring rain across the whitecoat’s smooth features. The watch captain’s accusations all but forgotten, the whitecoat darted forward and grasped the doppel’s chin between her fingers, twisting it this way and that as she clucked her tongue and nodded approvingly.

“Hmm, yes, such a fine specimen. Marvelous work, Thratia. Wherever did you find the thing?”

“Would you believe she came striding through my front door?”

The whitecoat barked a laugh. “Delightful. Of course she would. Her disguise is nearly perfect. If I looked the part of the watch captain so clearly I daresay I’d go anywhere I pleased.” She flashed a smile. “But, of course, I have my own flavor of authority.”

“Indeed,” Thratia drawled, already bored with the whitecoat’s delight.

Detan forced himself to look away from the nightmare apparition chatting amiably just a few meager strides from him. He caught Tibs’s eye, saw the hard press of his lips and the jutting out of the tendons around his jaw. Couldn’t read a thing in that – angry or just plain scared were a mite hard to tell apart when a man’s features were already made of rock.

“I was just about to condemn her to walking the Black,” Thratia said while Detan tore his gaze away from Tibs and searched the docks, angling for any way out.

“What in the blue beyond would make you want to do that?” the whitecoat asked.

“Seems she set fire to the Hub.”

“The line?” her voice rasped, hinting at panic.

“Fine. My men had orders to secure it straight away should anything go wrong. Lost a whole lot of contained selium, though. Don’t have the details yet but it’ll push production back months.”

“A fire, in the Hub?” Ripka said and took a step forward, toward the doppel. Thratia’s guards found reason to get real cozy on her heels.

“Contained,” Thratia said. “None of your concern.”

Her fists clenched, but her head stayed high. “Lady Callia,” she said, and the whitecoat’s head turned just a fraction in her direction. “I understand that discovering the doppel is exciting. However, I have witness testimony that–”

“Oh hush, girl.” Callia flicked her fingers in Ripka’s direction and wiggled them. “No point in continuing this little dance any longer. Although I would just love to hear who your witness is.”

“I don’t understand–”

“Thratia,” Callia interrupted, “was the doppel wearing the watch captain’s face during this little arson?”

“She was.”

“Then throw the real deal to the Black, and no one will have to know we ever found the creature.”

“Wait just a–” Ripka strode forward, reaching for her cudgel, and was surrounded. Constraining hands closed on her from all sides. Detan grimaced, turning his gaze away in shame as she was pulled back, wrists pinioned, divested of all her weapons even as a rag was tied round her mouth.

“Very well,” Thratia said, but the words sounded hollow to Detan, as if coming from a great depth. The hands around his own arms loosened, a few of his guards shuffled away to deal with the greater threat – the real watch captain. Detan held no illusions on where he stood, his fighting ability was as threatening as a one-winged pigeon. The urge to run swelled within him, crested and broke against the hard shield of his shame.

He couldn’t bolt. Couldn’t just leave the doppel to the fate that made his own guts roil. Couldn’t leave Ripka to walk the Black for a crime in his ragged hands.

“But what,” Thratia just kept on talking, as if this were all a mild amusement, a fun little puzzle for her and her white-coated friend to figure out, “are we going to do about the Honding lad?”

He watched in slow-motion horror as the whitecoat’s back went rigid, her head snapping back as if someone had dealt her a mighty slap. Slowly, as if afraid he would spook and vanish if she moved too hastily, Callia turned.

There was such hunger in her eyes.

Detan froze. Rooted. Worthless.

At first he did not understand what he was seeing. Callia lurched forward, staggering, bending at the waist, her mouth parting wide as she let out an oomph of surprise. People called out, the words meaningless beneath the buzzing inferno of his pulse in his ears, but he understood.

The doppel had wrenched her hands free, had punched Callia in the kidney, and was dancing, twisting, threading her way through. Toward the edge of the dock. Toward the Larkspur.

Thratia barked orders, reached for her knife but the doppel was too quick, moving like liquid, throwing up gleaming flares of sel to blind and distract. Little sparklers. Party favors. The guards’ hesitation betrayed them, torn between chasing the escaping creature and holding on to what they had.

Wood began to groan. Not-Ripka had decided for them.

The Larkspur jerked against its bonds, rocking, the sturdy ropes that tied it down hissing as some tore, creaking as they strained. The guards swarmed to the ropes, Thratia demanding her ship secure, demanding no one escape.

Detan felt the mass of selium in the ship’s belly. Felt the doppel grab and shove it, heave it back and forth, working strain and pressure deep into the wooded ties that held it.

He shut his senses down, too afraid of what he’d do given the right impetus, and elbowed his single captor square in the ribs. One tie gave away. Two, three, the ship gaining freedom in rapid succession. He didn’t see it happen, but he knew the doppel must have jumped because he saw her land, hard and sprawling, barely folding herself into a roll just in time on the gleaming waxed deck of the ship.

She sat on the middle of the deck, legs splayed before her, hands holding her upright, face so set and focused he half expected her to will the whole thing into disappearing.

The Larkspur lurched, its final ties snapping. Detan twisted free of a hand grabbing at his elbow, caught sight of Tibs, caught sight of a familiar length of braided silk. An option.

Saw, from the corner of his eye, rising like a leviathan, the slender whitecoat.

Ripka’s shout raked at him, and he caught her eye, frantic, her whole body straining against the multitude of hands that held her. Couldn’t hear what she said – couldn’t hear what anyone was saying – but he knew, somehow, she was calling for help.

The sight of that rope, dangling, pulled at him.

“I won’t let you walk!” he screamed, not knowing if she heard.

Roaring with effort, he pumped his legs harder than he ever had in his life, barreled straight into Tibs, clutched him tight enough to bruise bone, and leapt.

The Larkspur broke free, sliding out into the night, splinters raining down all around it. Detan strained for the deck, willed himself and Tibs to fly straight as arrows.

And missed.