Steal the Sky

Chapter 33

On the Scorched, the heat rose before the sun did. Detan felt the first probing rays of it before the light crested the flat and ruddy horizon, bringing prickling sweat and parched lips. He shifted the too-wide shoulders of his stolen shirt and dreamed of water.

He wouldn’t dare drink. The veneer was too thin, and his struggle to keep it all in place was doing more to make him sweat than the sun ever could. Just ahead rose the guardhouse roof from which the guilty of Aransa were given their choice with the rising of the sun: face the axe, or walk the Black Wash and let the desert decide the depth of your sin. Ripka wouldn’t take the axe, he was sure of that. She would take her chances with the wilderness that had forged her.

If she didn’t, Detan was going to be mighty upset.

Light snapped free of the horizon at last, chasing down the heat. The mud and stone buildings of Aransa grew warm and vibrant in the rays, no longer grey and dingy under the shadow of night. There was movement amongst the people gathered, anxious and tense. Sour sweat tinged the air, a bitter mingling of excitement and heat and fear.

Dark figures emerged upon the roof, familiar to him even in silhouette. Thratia, slender and full of swagger. Ripka, stiff-backed and stern. Thratia’s militiamen came behind, and the round-shouldered form of Ripka’s sergeant. Another watcher hovered beside the sergeant, his movements furtive and uncertain, but the cut of his coat gave away his profession. And another Detan didn’t recognize.

Squinting, he watched the unfamiliar figure. The doppel? No, she wouldn’t dare come this close. Thratia was bound to have a sensitive amongst her guards, and she would have them on high alert this morning. The unknown figure was tall, rectangular beneath the hem of a long coat. He swallowed, and decided to move before his fear anchored him.

Whatever was being said up there, he couldn’t hear it. His focus on holding his sel mask was so intense he didn’t dare think on anything else. He sidled up to the crowd and weaved his way through while keeping his head down, his face hidden.

Elbows bumped him, fingers reached for his pockets. Sweat threatened to mar his mask, to set his tenuous control trembling. Someone grabbed his wrist, jerked him to the side. Detan staggered, jostling those pressed up against him, and glanced back to see a stone-grey sleeve attached to a rather scarred face.

“Just what in the shit are you doing–” Foamy flecks burst from the militiaman’s lips, his voice a growl above the complainant murmur of the crowd. Detan jerked his arm, yanking his wrist free. His hastily wrapped, rubbed-raw hand scraped in the grip of the militiaman’s. Needles of pain threatened to overwhelm his control but he bolted forward, spurred on by fear, shoving people aside in his need to reach the roof before Ripka could make her decision. Before that stone-sleeved arm could detain him and ruin the whole thing.

Luckily, no one kept an eye on the guardhouse door, but he supposed that was only natural. Only an idiot would charge up there uninvited when a death sentence was being handed down.

He burst through the door and scrambled across the small room, sucking down air that stank of all that was left unclean in the cells, and found the ladder to the roof. No time to think. No time to let himself back down. He grabbed the rungs and hauled himself up into the full light of the sun.

“Hold him.” Thratia’s voice was cool as the desert night, but he sensed a tinge of high-strung unease in it. Rough hands, familiar to him now, dragged him off the last bit of the ladder and his head rushed and buzzed as he split his attention between holding the sel mask and watching the people on the roof.

“Well, well.” Thratia prodded his face with one finger, and he damn near laughed as her mouth opened and her pupils widened enough to make her whole eyes black.

It was just a thin layer. He didn’t have the requisite skills to change its structure, to shift the color. But he could make it thin enough to make it clear, and even clear sel rippled when touched. One little ripple was all he needed to sell the thing. A murmur passed through the crowd, and Detan had to fight down an urge to try and listen to what they were saying. The words didn’t matter. They’d seen the sel on his face. He could wager a good guess what the whispers were about.

Her dark eyes narrowed with resumed control. “What are you up to, Honding?”

He rasped a laugh. “I’m honored you think my technique is the truth, but we both know the Honding lad doesn’t have enough sel-sense to illusion up a turnip, let alone a face.”

“Then why don’t you show us your real face, doppel?” Thratia’s voice was smooth, bemused. The expression she showed him now was not one belonging to a woman who had just captured the thief of her finest possession. It didn’t matter. He just needed the crowd to believe it.

“You don’t deserve it,” he spat.

Her lips twitched and she stepped back, arms crossed over her ribs. “All right then, creature. Where’s my ship?”

She’d made her voice loud, loud enough to be heard by the people gathered nearest the guardhouse, so Detan did the same. “I destroyed your ship. Smashed it against the sand, every little bit of it, over and over again.”

Another ripple passed through those gathered, but it was nothing compared to the bright spark of rage on Thratia’s face. Apparently she was more than willing to believe he’d done her ship harm, even if she couldn’t swallow him as the doppel.

He’d never seen such anger before. Her whole body went rigid, every last muscle winding up in preparation for a strike that wasn’t coming. She may have been a cruel woman, but she had mastered her temper long ago.

“You broke. My ship.” There was nothing bemused about her voice now.

“Don’t believe me? Take a look.”

He gestured to the Black Wash, and prayed Tibs had made it look good. Thratia snatched a sighting glass from Callia’s outstretched hand and snapped the little brass tube open. She brought it up to her eye and scanned the darkened sands. Even Detan could see it with his naked eye, a little heap of brown wood in the middle of the obsidian sand.

“Why?” Her voice was tight, irritated, but not yet convinced. The false cabin hadn’t supplied nearly enough material to make it look like a whole ship had been destroyed out there.

“This city, your city, murdered my son.” The words sounded false to his ears, hackneyed and bitter. Whatever Pelkaia would have said in truth, he couldn’t imagine. A real mother’s grief was far beyond his basic mummer’s skills. But he’d pushed out the words with all the venom he could muster, lifted his head high with defiance. It’d have to do.

Another wave through the crowd, this time stronger. Thratia rolled her eyes, all the hot anger evaporating from her posture. Detan clenched his jaw, waiting for Thratia to act. To call him out. To expose his tone for lacking a real mother’s grief. Instead she stepped forward, laced her fingers under his chin and tipped it to the side so that she could whisper flat against his ear.

“Careful now. I’ve been having a little chat with my friend, the Lady Callia. You see her there?” She turned his head for him, just enough to see the willow-thin figure of a woman dressed in pale blue silks, a slim-cut white coat on despite the heat. Everything about her posture radiated boredom, but she was looking at him with eyes so intense it made him want to squirm.

Fear shot straight through him, tingling his toes and chilling his guts so fast he nearly lost his hold on the sel. He grabbed it again, straining his senses with a grunt, and nearly overdid it. The corners of Thratia’s eyes crinkled, recognition of his struggle, and she kept on whispering. “She let me know a little secret, understand? Let me know that that conning fop Detan Honding is a very wanted man indeed.”

He swallowed dry air. “So what? The people gathered here see a doppel squaring off with their new warden. Officially the punishment for doppels is death.” He raised his voice, clear and high so they could all hear it. “I choose to walk the Black.”

She pushed his head away with a flick of her wrist and strode toward Callia. Detan watched them confer, heads close together. He stole a glance at Ripka, and saw nothing short of iron-hot hatred in her eyes. Well, at least she believed he was the doppel.

“I’ve decided,” the new warden said.

Thratia broke away from Callia and stood near the edge of the guardhouse roof. She held her arms out, palms spread up in welcome to the sun, and lifted her voice. “We have two guilty souls before us this morning, Aransa. Your corrupted watch captain conspired with this abomination, this doppel, to burn the Hub to a husk and steal my ship. Those very boots the doppel is wearing left prints in blood at the place of Mine Master Galtro’s death. The watch captain was seen lurking about the Hub just before the flames began. And here now, a confession. The doppel tells me it smashed the Larkspur, turned it to kindling in the sand.

“That ship was not just mine, Aransa. That ship was meant to bridge the long gap between this fine city and all the others of the Scorched. To carry supplies and news, to have our streets run flush with trade. And now we are stymied, we are thwarted, by this creature’s misplaced revenge.

“In my mind I am certain that the watch captain acted in good faith. Hers is a loyal soul, a Brown Wash soul, and the doppel clearly has twisted her into believing she was doing right. It grieves me, but she is still guilty. Guilty not only of theft and destruction, but of hiding from you, Aransa, her meager ability to sense selium.”

A harsh gasp wound through the crowd, disgusted enough to make even Detan take a step back. He glanced sideways at Ripka, saw the slack shock in the sagging of her jaw, the panic in the whites of her eyes. Thratia bowed her head, letting the angry murmurs spend their course, and then raised her voice once more.

“I know it is difficult to believe. But this woman,” she thrust a finger towards Ripka, “hid her ability to keep herself from the line. To keep herself in the Watch, where she supposed she served you better. Young Watcher Taellen here,” she gestured to the nervous man in blue that Detan had noted earlier, “observed her use these skills himself.”

“I am not sensitive!” Ripka lurched a full step forward before her watchers gathered her under their control, faces contorted by grief and guilt.

“Then why,” the whitecoat spoke as she stepped forward, brows arched high, “do you carry selium on you? I can sense it from here, my dear.”

Ripka’s lips pursed, her shoulders shot back – confident the whitecoat was wrong. Confident that she could prove herself innocent of at least this accusation. The presence of sel was slight about her, but with Detan’s senses ratcheted so high up he could feel it now. Little slivers of the stuff hidden in the seams of her blues. A memory of Pelkaia-Ripka stroking the lapel of her matching jacket as she mocked his lack of observation crowded into his mind.

Dread coiled in his chest. There was nothing he could do.

“Your coat, please.” The whitecoat held her hand out, long fingers splayed. Momentary confusion crested Ripka’s brow, but she slid the garment off and passed it over.

“Watch carefully,” the whitecoat said as she lifted the coat into the air so that those gathered could see. She slipped a knife into her hand – a simple thing for cutting twine and paper – and inserted it into the seam running along the coat’s lapel. With a flick of the wrist she opened the cloth. A slender, pearlescent wisp wafted into the searing light of day.

The crowd howled its outrage, but Detan kept his gaze on Ripka. Her expression twisted – first bewilderment, then bright hot anger as realization settled. There was nothing she could do, no protest she could make that would undo the damage done. Any attempt to quibble would make her look like a gibbering fool.

Without a word, Ripka extended her hand for her coat. Callia handed it back without comment. Ripka shrugged it on, straightening the sliced lapel, shoulders stiff with more than pride now. She clasped her hands behind her back so that those gathered could not see them tremble. A little spark of pride burned in Detan’s chest and he held himself straighter in her shadow.

“I will not pass judgment on this,” Thratia said, raising her voice to drown out the anger of the crowd. “The theft and fire are crime enough to land her here. And so, the choice. The doppel has already attested its wish to walk the Black. What say you, Miss Leshe? Will the sand cleanse your sins, or the axe?”

Ripka lifted her chin, raised her voice to carry. “I will walk.”

The crowd murmured its approval, and Thratia clapped her hands together above her head. “So be it. Watch Captain Banch, please direct the condemned.”

Detan was thrust forward by the men holding him and made to stand side by side with Ripka, their backs to the crowd and their faces toward the dawn. It was already oppressively hot, vision-warping waves of heat rising up from the glittering black sands. He tried not to think of the corpse he’d stumbled across in the night, desiccated and groping toward a succor it’d never reach, but the vision crowded his mind all the same, and he swallowed a rise of bitter bile. He hoped there were fewer spiders this time.

From the corner of his eye he could see Ripka, steady but wide-eyed. He wanted to say something to alleviate her fear, to give her some hope, but he didn’t dare for fear of being overheard. And anyway, she was doing her best not to look at him, her lips held in thin disgust and her back straight as a mast-pole. Facing her death with dignity and pride. He didn’t dare sully that.

Thratia leaned over his shoulder and murmured so that only he could hear, “I’m not fooled, Honding. Enjoy your last moments of freedom.”

The new warden laid her hands on both of their backs, and shoved.