Steal the Sky

Chapter 39

His fingers had gone numb, and Aella was deaf to his whining. Seemed she was deaf to most things, now that she’d said what it was she wanted to. Without the natural progression of the stars to guide him, he had no way of telling how long he’d been chained up, but his stomach was pretty sure it had been too long. It was all beginning to weigh on him. The pain in his leg, the ache in his arms and back. He shifted, grunting, struggling to find a position that didn’t smart something fierce.

“Will you stop worming around like an infant?” Aella said, her voice soft with exasperation.

“Well, I don’t believe it, you can talk after all. Thought you’d been struck mute from above.”

“Are you so desperate for attention that you cannot go a moment without conversation?”

“You’d be wanting to have a chat too, if you were strung up like this.”

She sighed and gestured with her book. “The others seem to be faring just fine.”

“Well, it’s not my worry that their spirits are broken. How long have they been on this ship, anyway?”

“It varies. We began this expedition two moons ago.”

“Two moons!”

“It took us a quarter of one to get here. Anyway, I don’t see why you’re so worried about their comfort.”

“Ever heard of basic human compassion?”

She glanced down at her book, flipped through a few pages, and shrugged. “Sorry, not in here.”

“What’s that, then? A guidebook on how to be an ice princess?”

“I would kill for some ice right now,” she said as she fanned herself with the slim volume.

“You know what? I believe it.”

Aella rolled her eyes, but whatever retort was coming she snapped off at the sound of footsteps. Callia came floating up the deck, a black-robed attendant at her side. Detan clenched his jaw. He recognized the shape of the case in the man’s hands. Doctors’ tools. Experimental ones. A cool sweat bathed his skin, panic constricting his throat.

“Nothing to say, Honding?” Callia stood back as she spoke, keeping to the shadow cast by a buoyancy sack, and waved the attendant forward.

Detan swallowed around a stone-hard lump and forced a grin. “Nothing polite.”

The attendant handed the case to Callia and produced two pairs of iron shackles. As the big man unlocked the chains about Detan’s ankles and opened the maw of one shackle wide, he caught Aella’s eye. She was nose-down in her book, the pages angled to hide her face from Callia’s view, but her gaze was fixed on him. He raised a brow, she gave a slight shake of her head.

He scowled. It would be so easy to lift his foot up and plant it in the face of the attendant, then he could… What? His hands were still bound, and as long as Aella kept him cut off from manipulating sel, his only probable weapon was stripped from him.

The shackle clanked shut, the opportunity ended.

When his wrists were shackled, the attendant jerked him to his feet. He almost cried out as his weight settled on his injured leg. He swayed, but that only earned him an exasperated sigh from Callia and a quick clip on the back of the head from her attendant.

“Come along then.” She waved toward the cabin quarters mid-ship.

He stood, frozen, willing himself to shrink into obscurity. The attendant gave him a shove from behind with the rounded head of a cudgel. Detan grunted, limping forward, and clanged the metal around his wrists together under the guise of rubbing his arms and hands to get the life back. If he were going to be experimented upon, the least he could do was give these bastards a headache.

“You will stop that,” Callia said as she opened the door into the cabin. It was a finely crafted door, warm-hued wood rubbed with beeswax and carved all around with dancing air-serpents. Looked like something his own auntie would have had commissioned. It would have looked friendly to him, once. Now he hesitated, dreading to cross the threshold into the oil-lit space beyond.

“Don’t know what you mean,” he rambled, hearing his voice grow high and fast as if from a great distance. “And anyway I’d rather stay out here and take in the view. It is lovely, don’t you think?”

Callia’s narrow shoulders tensed at mention of the view, the muscles of her neck standing out sharp above the crisp collar of her clean, white coat.

They always started out so very, very clean.

Callia’s gaze flicked to her attendant’s, scarcely registering Detan as an autonomous human being. To her, he was just another specimen. An unruly one, though, which he hoped was irritating her at least a little.

Pain lanced through his back. He stumbled forward in a blind panic, thrusting weight upon his arrow-skewered leg. Before he could even get a proper curse out the floor rose up and gave him a hearty slap on the cheek, shocking his senses back into sharp awareness. It didn’t last.

The attendant grabbed him by the short chain between his wrists and hauled him half to his feet. Detan grunted as the world went hazy at the edges; what little blood was left in his veins failed to keep up the flow while he was being yanked about.

He was dragged down a dark hallway, the tops of his feet rubbed hot and raw over a plush rug. Funny, he thought. Got a hole in my leg bigger than the Smokestack’s maw, but it’s a little rugburn that wrecks my damned day.

The world tipped on its side and blackness crept to the corners of his vision as his feet left the ground. Detan steeled himself, clinging to consciousness, and felt an unforgiving slab of a hardwood table beneath him, firm and cold. He squirmed, trying to orient himself, and got a flash of directed lantern light in his eyes for his trouble. Detan squeezed his eyes shut and prayed to the blue skies for the blessed fumes of golden needle tea to drag him under soon.

He wished he’d taken unconsciousness up on its offer when he’d had the chance.

“Aren’t you going to knock me out?” he croaked as the attendant wrenched his arms above his head and strapped them down. His legs were already secured. He hadn’t even noticed.

“Not this time,” Callia said. “I will need you conscious to record accurate results.”

Detan bucked against the weight of his chains, wishing for once in his life that he’d eaten anywhere near the same amount Tibal did. If he were just a little bit stronger, a little heavier, then maybe…

A thick leather strap was hauled over his chest, buckled down so tight it compressed his ability to breathe. His breath came in short gasps, his lungs working rapidly against panic and constriction to fuel the rising demands of his body.

Standing beside him, Callia clucked her tongue and laid a cold hand on his forehead.

“You are embarrassing yourself. Settle, and I will loosen the strap.”

He went limp. There was no other option.

The strap eased up a notch, and he filled his lungs with blessedly cool air.

“Golden needle, please,” he begged. Heat rose in his cheeks, but he ignored it. Shame could be handled later. Now, now he just needed to make it through what was coming.

“I said no.” She tapped his forehead once with the tip of her finger and stepped away.

He clenched his fists, counting backwards from ten. Then from twenty. Oh, fuck it, he thought. Without access to selium, his temper was no danger. At least the anger made the pain less.

“You see,” she said over the soft sounds of glass and metal clinking. “Though I have never had the pleasure to work on you personally, Lord Honding, I have read my colleagues’ extensive notes on the matter.”

“Oh good, you can read.” He bit his lip, cursing himself in silence.

“Be quiet. As I was saying, before your rather uncouth escape from the Bone Tower, my colleagues were having a difficult time regulating the intensity of your particular skill.”

Bone Tower? He’d never even known that pit-cursed place had a name. Callia appeared at his side, a long syringe filled with a murky pink-red solution in one hand. The mixture swirled as she gestured, the pale red shot through with opalescent wisps, lightning mixed with smoke. It was a fine syringe, by his estimation. Rare, quality work. The thought didn’t soothe his nerves any.

Detan pressed his lips together to keep his retorts to himself and glanced around the room, trying to find something, anything he could use. There was too much light in his eyes to make out any of his surroundings. Lamps had been shuttered and directed at him, presumably so Callia could see what she was doing. He doubted she was unaware of the isolating effect on him.

She didn’t seem like the type of woman to be unaware of anything at all.

When he had been quiet for a few heartbeats, she continued: “My research, however, has led me in a different direction. This–” she tapped the side of the syringe with the back of a fingernail, “–is my own special mix. Selium blended with the blood of some of our strongest diviners along with some extra little goodies to keep your body from rejecting it. The theory is quite simple. I put forth that combining the diviner’s art of locating even the tiniest pockets of selium, no matter how long dormant the firemount, is an essential skill for the refinement of any deviant talent. With the ability for finesse in place, the deviants will grow.”

He shook with a mixture of laughter and fear. “You want me to become stronger? You trip and stick yourself with that thing? Get a little sel on the brain?”

She sighed. “No, I want you to become more refined. There is a difference. Please do try to pay attention. The treatments, it seems, have the added benefit of increasing the deviant’s desire to be near selium to comfort the mind. Which is why we will begin now. Our path back to Valathea will take us through sel-dry settlements only. Understand?”

He nodded, not trusting his voice.

“Good.” Callia snapped her fingers at her attendant. “Go and fetch Aella.”

The attendant shuffled out of the room, and Callia turned back to her preparations. Detan’s heart hammered as he tipped his head this way and that, struggling to see anything in the room that wasn’t light. He failed, so he fell back to his next best tool. Conversation.

“Afraid to give it a try without the kid around to keep you covered, eh?”

“Hardly. She is an added safety precaution. I can assure you that I can handle anything you attempt myself.”

Detan felt cold, right down to his fingertips. “You telling me you’re deviant too? You’re doing this to your own people?”

She appeared at his side once more, a frown on her delicate, dark face. A face that had never seen more than a candlemark in the sun at a time. “We all have our talents, Honding. And despite what you believe, I am trying to help these creatures.”

“Help? This is–”

The door clanged open and Callia looked up, a pleased smile on her cushy lips. Detan shook his head and scowled. He shouldn’t be giving her any compliments, even if they were just in his own head.

“Aella, sit there.”

There was a soft shuffling of feet to his right side, where he suspected the door must be, and then the creak of wood. Callia nodded.

“The subject may react strongly at first. Be prepared to increase dampening.”

“Yes, mistress.”

Detan clenched his fists. He clenched his jaw. He strained with all his might against the bonds.

The needle found him anyway.

Liquid fire filled his veins, searing him from the inside out. With a roar he lurched against the chains and the leather, heedless to the groan of his ribs under the strap. His eyes flew wide, wider than they’d ever been in his life, taking in every last detail of the room beyond his prison of light.

Bits of selium hung in the air, particles so fine he hadn’t noticed them before. They glowed before him, like motes of dust in a sunbeam. People were talking around him, high and strained, but he couldn’t make out the words. He could sense it everywhere, an impenetrable, constant cloud. There was selium below the table, too. The table that was trapping him.

Finesse.

He turned his anger in upon himself, and the table cracked beneath him.

“Shut him down!”

“Shit!”

Detan crashed to the floor, heaped amongst the rubble of his makeshift gurney, and rolled on instinct to the right. His moment of clarity was lost, the miniscule flecks of sel once more beyond his senses. The back of his shirt was burned clear off, he could feel scraps of it sticking in the mess of his flesh. Flesh that stank of char. His stomach gave a traitorous rumble.

No time for that.

Sourceless hands reached for him, and he swung his arms in a wide arc, letting the chunks of wood dangling from his chains do the work for him. He scrambled to his feet and stumbled into a hallway, crashing against the opposite wall as his feet tangled in debris. Cursing, he kicked himself free and hopped-ran down the hall toward the friendly, air-serpent door. Footsteps pounded behind him, urging him forward.

He got the door open, bloodied and bound hands slipping too many times on the polished brass knob. He stumbled out into the faint light of fake stars and froze. Soldiers ringed the cabin, alerted by the sounds of the blast. Silvery steel glinted all around him, brighter than the pinpricks of sel had been. He could feel the selium above, swelling the buoyancy sacks.

These were evil people.

Just one little spark.

His fellow captives looked up at him, shocked out of their stupor, eyes wide with horror.

Detan let his hands fall, sank to his knees. Something encroached over his senses, fell like a curtain. Heavy hands closed on his shoulders, and a smaller one grasped his chin, tipped his head back. For a single thumping of his heart he stared into Aella’s eyes, a sliver of worry hinted at by fine wrinkles in her forehead. Then Callia laid a cloth over his mouth, and he breathed deep the aroma of golden needle.

Cold water shocked him out of his drugged stupor. Detan jerked upright, the chains around his wrists and ankles snapping him back down. He blinked, groaning, struggling to clear water from his eyes. He found himself chained face-down on a rough woven cot, too scared to move lest he disturb the early crusting over of the scabs on his back. Whatever had been left of his shirt was cut away, though the smell of burned fibers remained. He turned his head and peered through the distortion of water caught in his lashes.

Figures swam into view before him. The attendant retreated from his side, an empty bucket in his hands. Callia strode forward with Thratia in her wake. The refined calm of the ex-commodore’s face was lost under a storm cloud of anger. Detan forced the biggest, stupidest smile he could muster onto his face. They were still in Aransa.

“Hullo, commodore. Coming with us to Valathea?” The words raked hot coals over his throat, but it felt good anyway.

“Hardly. Is this yours, Honding?” Thratia stepped aside so that he could see the man who stood behind her.

“New Chum!”

“Good evening, Lord Honding.”

“What are you doing on this broken crate?”

“I’ve come to retrieve you.”

He rattled his chains. “I don’t think these people push over for politeness, New Chum.”

“Your man here,” Thratia prodded New Chum in the side with the pommel of her blade, and Detan realized he’d never even seen her draw it, “is proposing a trade.”

“A trade? What for, a day pass to the Salt Baths?”

“For my ship.”

Detan swallowed, licked his lips. Was the steward here on Tibal’s behalf, or had he turned over on them? With Detan’s mind made sluggish by the golden needle he’d begged for, he couldn’t make the pieces fit. Couldn’t be sure.

New Chum had to be here with Tibal’s consent – had to be. It wouldn’t make any sense for him to come and trade for Detan if he were working on his own. He’d be after something more lucrative for himself.

“So, it occurred to me,” Thratia stepped forward and knelt before Detan. She lifted her blade and laid it, light as a feather, just against the underside of his chin. She tilted his head up, peering into his eyes so intently it made his skin crawl, “that you do know where my ship is.”

“As a matter of truth, I don’t. In fact, it seems you and I are the only ones who don’t know where the damned thing is hiding.”

She grinned, not a pleasant effect. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s occurred to me that Tibal, the doppel, and quite probably Ripka all know where it is. What about you, Callia? You got a manger full of sensitives here. Can’t you find a little ole ship? Or are you holding out on your bosom companion?”

Thratia stood and turned to the imperial, nothing at all friendly in her expression, which pleased Detan something fierce. Driving a wedge between those two was almost worth the scorched back. Almost.

“Can any of these husks sense my ship?” Thratia demanded.

Callia rolled her delicate shoulders. “We’ve tried, of course. We are still here because we suspect the doppel may have to move the vessel soon, and in doing so we will note its presence. But, for the time being, no, we do not know where it is.”

With Thratia’s back turned and Callia’s attention on her, Detan stole a glance at Aella. The cursed girl winked. He had no idea what to make of it.

“Very well.” Thratia sighed and turned back to Detan, waving her blade absently at New Chum. “What’s to stop me cutting it out of your steward, then?”

New Chum cleared his throat for attention. “Foreseeing your conclusions, I’ve arranged for the ship to be destroyed if Detan and I are not both well and free when we arrive at the location.”

“Really now.” Thratia scowled. “And just what other arrangements have you made?”

“Our terms are quite simple. The commodore, Dignitary Callia, Detan, myself, and a single escort of your choice are to go to the location of the ship. Whereupon, if Detan and I are released unharmed, we will turn the vessel over to you and then leave Aransa in your capable hands.”

Detan tried to keep his face impassive, but that didn’t sound right to him. It wasn’t the way Tibal worked whenever he took the reins – a fair trade of hostages just wasn’t his style. And there was, of course, no possible way Thratia or Callia would ever just hand him over. Not without blood. He shivered. Fortune was smiling on him though, because none of the involved parties saw the shadow of doubt worm its way across his face.

Thratia replaced her sword and crossed her arms. “And how will we get there?”

“I would assume on one of this vessel’s fine emergency fliers.” The steward gestured toward the small dinghies tied to the rim of the deck.

“Fine. Pick someone useful to take with us, Callia.”

She pointed a slender finger to Aella. “Go prepare yourself, and a flier.”

The girl stood and bowed. “Yes, mistress.”

As she disappeared to the other side of the ship, Detan overheard Thratia whisper to Callia. “You sure you want that girl with us?”

“Oh, yes.”

Detan frowned. He didn’t like any of this at all. Not only was Tibal up to something, but Callia obviously had her own ideas about just how this was going to go. He bit his cheek and scowled at the empty air. He hated being left in the dark, but he could work with that. Most of all, he hated being useless.

“Hey,” he rattled his chains. “Can’t take me there like this, can you?”