Steal the Sky

Chapter 41

Bright hot kisses of pain blossomed on Detan’s arms, his cheeks. Creatures angry that he wasn’t food took their rage out on his tender flesh. He screamed, heard Tibs yell something much more manly, and then Tibs yanked him down beside the rock he’d been hiding behind. He had a cloak stowed there, and dragged it over both of them. It was thick and coarse woven, enough to keep the stings at bay as long as they didn’t let any gaps show. Hard to do when you had two men crowded under one blanket.

“You stupid sonuva–”

Tibs elbowed him hard in the side. “If you’d just gotten your ass over to this side of the rock when I’d signaled!”

“Signaled! What signal? Oh shit, shit, New Chum–”

“Had his own cloak on his back. Saw him drop down and start crawling to the rendezvous site as soon as Pelkaia made her appearance. Pits below, can’t you pay any attention?”

“Rendezvous? Ripka was headed straight for us!”

“Uh, well, I can’t say why she’d decide–”

“Shhht.”

Bees dropped from the sky, thunked into view in the tiny little sliver between the cloak and the ground. Fat bodies twitched and collapsed in on themselves with rot.

“Honding,” Callia said, “would you stop cowering?”

“Errr.” Nerves wound tight as a propeller spring, he peeled back an edge of the cloak and glanced up.

Callia stood above them, arms outstretched, the eye of a storm of dying insects. His stomach lurched, reacting to her perversion of the selium all around. It was almost enough to make him lose his concentration on the cloud he held above. Almost.

Her face was half purple, a red welt smack dab in the center of one cheek, her outstretched arms pocked with identical marks. Despite the pain she must be feeling, she smiled. He hated her for that. He hated her for a lot of things, sure, but that smile was an icepick to the heart.

“Get up, idiot.”

“I rather like it down here.”

“You will leave with me. Now. If Thratia lives then she can take back her ship on her own time. I’m done with this place.”

“Well, that’s a real nice invitation, but I’m afraid I have plans that I just can’t back out of. It would be ungentlemanly of me.”

“Get. Up.”

“Err…”

He looked at Tibs, but he just shrugged. So this was it, then. His rescue. Well, it had been a damned good try. Joints aching, flesh burning, he pushed himself to his feet and let the cloak drop around him. Tibs stood beside him, arms crossed over his scrawny chest.

“I’m coming, too.”

“Fine,” Callia said, her tone flat as a cloudless sky.

From the corner of his eye a familiar shape darkened the sky; careening, bobbing, determined. Detan stiffened his jaw, pushed back his shoulders. Stall, you mad Honding bastard. His hands flitted through the air, a hopeless, childlike gesture, as if he could grasp a viable idea from the aether.

Callia smirked, a river viper sensing blood in the water. “Nothing more to say, Honding?”

“I–” He shoved a hand in his pocket in an effort to affect an unconcerned slouch, and his fingers brushed paper. The paper he’d nicked from Thratia. He pulled it free, a neat little square, and flicked it open. The familiarity of the handwriting punched him in the gut. Apothiks were always careless in forming their letters. Bel Grandon was no exception.

“Oh,” he said.

“Now isn’t the time for love notes,” Callia grated.

Detan looked up from the familiar scrawl and studied the whitecoat. Strain fractured the lines around her eyes, sallowness had crept into her cheeks. Whatever effort she was expending holding the swarm back was doing her no good. He felt detached – slowed in time – freed somehow from the events around him by the small collection of words he held.

And all the while, he dared not look directly at the black blob bobbing closer across the sky.

“Do you know what this is?” He turned the paper around to face her, and saw her eyes narrow with suspicious recognition. He pressed on before she could answer. “It’s a mercer cipher. Not a particularly opaque one, it seems the owner wasn’t too concerned about it falling into the wrong hands.” He snorted a bitter laugh. “Maybe she’d hoped it would.”

He flung the paper at her and let it tumble to the ground, wilting in the soot between them. With a pained groan he dragged his good hand through his hair and then took a half step forward, pointing at the discarded note. “I have been an idiot. An absolute, bumbling fool!”

“You’ll have no argument from me–”

“Be quiet!” The force of his own voice rubbed his throat raw. Callia flinched, and her momentary lapse of control made him smirk. “That. That little, little scrap, is a list of deliveries. All this time – all this sand-cursed fucking time – I let my fear hang on you. You and your puppet masters. Stupid, stupid man that I am. Thratia trading deviant sel-sensitives for Valathean weapons. Cruel. Typical of her – believable. But do you know what else is typical?”

“I grow weary of this.” Callia gestured toward him, a casual turning of the wrist, and he felt the sense of decay within him intensify. He staggered sideways, clutched his side, sweat forming rivers all across his skin. Tibs gripped his arm, held him upright.

Detan drew his lips into a skeletal grimace. Clinging to what control he had left, he reached out, shunted aside his sense of the cloud above and grabbed for the bee nearest Callia.

It was instinct, pure and primal. He didn’t even feel the surge go out. The bee burst apart, roiling with flame. Not close enough to do more than singe the cursed woman, but it was enough. Callia swore, leapt to the side. Her grip on him extinguished as she dealt with the shock and pain.

He extended himself until his muscles quivered, taking the cloud in mind once more. All around him he felt the sel in the bellies of the bees more keenly. But they were a tight-packed mass. To try and blow just one again would mean losing control and blowing them all. New Chum was out there. Ripka and Aella. He couldn’t risk it. But now, with the weight of the cloud resting heavy on his mind… Now he had an idea. An option.

“You. Will. Listen.”

She glared at him, but said nothing.

“Why was she disposed of, Callia? Why was General-fucking-Throatslitter kicked out of the Valathean Fleet? It wasn’t for cutting throats, we both know that.”

Callia licked cracked lips. “She wouldn’t relinquish power after conquest of the Saldive isles.”

“Wouldn’t. Relinquish. Power. And you’ve been giving her weapons – weapons! I’d wondered, wondered why Thratia cared so much about cutting Galtro down where he stood. She’s a psychopath, power hungry, cold hearted. Pressed for time by you. But she’s not stupid. Never that. She risked a lot, killing the mine master. Could have just won the seat fair as scales but no. He needed to go then. The doppel was just a convenient scapegoat.

“He was going to fix the mines.” He thrust a finger towards the hive-infested pipeline. “Get Aransa’s selium production back up to a hundred percent. It was his job, to keep them running, and by the pits he was good at it. But without that sel honey, the Grandons couldn’t make their liqueur, and without that conveniently unique good to export, how was your little friend Thratia going to hide her distribution network?”

“She wouldn’t–”

“You have no idea what she’s capable of. How many arms do you think she needed to take Aransa? Placid, scared Aransa. Too frightened by the specter of the doppel to do any harm, too happy to have her by half. They would have voted her in – she didn’t need all of that. Not here.” He thrust a finger at the paper. “Pick it up.”

Never taking her gaze from Detan she crouched, took the slip of paper in one hand and stood. She did not read it so much as flick her eyes to it in brief increments, absorbing the information in bits while refusing to release her awareness of her surroundings. He’d expected as much.

As he watched, her face grew drawn, her jaw tense and her lips pressed bloodless. He knew what she was seeing – had read it himself. A list of coordinates, deliveries made and planned, all over the Scorched. All of the Grandons’ honey liqueur. The liqueur, and their false-bottomed crates.

He watched understanding settle within her – smooth the tautness of her shoulders, darken the glare of her eye. Callia folded the paper along its crease, tucked it into a pocket. Evidence, he presumed, for whatever she meant to bring against Thratia. Whatever she was planning, it was already too late.

A shadow passed above them, bigger than any selium-enriched bee, and all three looked to the sky.

Happy Birthday Virra! swung into position above them, slicing through the cloud of angry insects. Ripka roared something incomprehensible as stingers alit upon her arms and cheeks and chest – any likely fleshy place. Callia’s face twisted in annoyance and she reached up to extend her selium power to Ripka.

But Ripka didn’t have a lick of sel-sense in her entire body.

The watch captain swung down from the thick rope-ladder and lashed out with one of Tibs’s strange, overlong wrenches. She cracked Callia straight in the head, and the bitch went down like a landslide. Detan would have whooped with joy, if the area wasn’t then immediately invaded by the bees.

They were flooded by the things. Detan dropped to his knees, saw Ripka slip the ladder, lost track of Tibs as he rolled in the dirt, stings blossoming all over like molten metal was raining down upon him. He screeched into the buzzing madness, felt his grip on the selium cloud slip.

Remembered it.

Straining against his pain, Detan yanked the cloud lower, tugging it below the cloudline until anyone who looked up could see the pearlescent globule. If anyone could see anything at all through the mass of buzzing life all around them.

He drew it lower, lower, trembling with the strain until the first of the pits-cursed creatures caught a sniff of it. It was irresistible to the little bastards.

All in a rush the swarm lifted, delved into the cloud of nectar. Detan laughed, wild and high, as he shoved himself up on his elbows and tipped his head back to watch the sky. His selium cloud was requiring less and less energy to hold as the infestation gobbled it up. He frowned, struggled to his feet and saw Tibs do the same. They stared at one another, stupefied with relief. Even Ripka was back on her feet, looking like she’d made love to a cactus, but otherwise whole.

Callia lay unconscious between the three of them, her breath coming easy, a little trickle of blood seeping down her temple. Detan’s fists clenched. He stepped toward her.

“Wait,” Aella rasped, as she dragged herself to her feet and trudged toward them. “Leave her.”

Detan’s head throbbed so hard he could barely think. “She’s a monster.”

“She thinks you are, too.” Aella set her feet apart, braced herself, and held out a threatening hand. “I said leave her. I’ve still got enough left in me to handle you, Honding.”

He gritted his teeth, clenched his fists in impotent rage. “Come with us.”

“No one’s going anywhere.” Thratia’s voice, sharp as her will, cut across them all. The four jumped, guilty as if they’d been caught with their hands in the agave candy, and stared at the relatively unscathed ex-commodore. Detan blinked, not understanding, then looked beyond her and saw the sail of Callia’s dinghy flapping limply. She’d gotten to it in time. Pitsdamnit.

“You’re done, Honding,” Thratia called as she collected her discarded blade. He could almost hear the smirk she wore.

Detan realized he’d sunk to his knees, Tibs crouching at his side. Didn’t know how he’d gotten there, but the sooty ground felt soft. Nice. Better than the cloud pressing in on his head.

Ripka and New Chum staggered toward them, and a lump formed in his throat as he saw Ripka reach for the knife he’d given her. She was so blasted shaky New Chum had to lend her an arm, but she came to stand before him. Between him and Thratia.

“You’re outnumbered, warden.” Ripka said. “Best hurry back to Aransa before things get violent.”

Thratia spat in the dust. “You’ve got less strength in you than a fresh-plucked whore. Lay down your weapon and I’ll consider not stuffing you head-first in a pipeline.”

A balmy shadow passed above and Detan tilted his head back, unable to understand what he was seeing. The Larkspur slid in under the cloud of ravenous creatures, drawing hard to a stop just between Detan and Thratia. The ground-anchor was flung from its deck, nearly missing the edge of Happy Birthday Virra!. It bit into the soot-and-ash concoction of the ground, the harpoon at its end spring-released by the pushback so that it gripped the soil and held tight.

The next thing to fall from the Larkspur was Pelkaia.

Detan stared, dumbfounded, as she soared from the ship’s bowsprit, a flat cushion of sel held under her feet completely by will. She hit the ground, knees flexing, sel dissipating but not vanishing – he could feel it, the feather-thin shawl she worked it into, wrapped around herself. Shimmering and distracting, a shifting cloak of light. Not nearly beguiling enough to hide the length of steel that appeared in her hand.

“Pelkaia! No!” Detan called, but she did not so much as glance over her shoulder.

Thratia weighed the cutlass in her own hand, eyed this fresh threat, and smiled. “You’re no more use to me alive.”

Pelkaia did not break her stride. Their blades crashed, steel screeching against steel, the sound piercing through the drone of the bees and Detan’s own sorry yelling. Panic reared up in his chest, bright and wild, as they pushed apart.

Break. Attack. Guard. He didn’t know a lick of the proper terms, could barely recall the word riposte from his ancient schooling, but even to his untrained eye Thratia had the advantage. She was the superior swordswoman. And Pelkaia was tired. Run-down. Desperate.

The weight of holding the cloud bore down on his mind; his fingers took up a tremble not even the deepest of breaths could still.

“Time to go,” Tibs said, impossibly calm. Familiar hands grabbed Detan’s armpits and hauled him upward but he lurched forward, stayed on his knees, unable to peel his gaze away from the blurs of sel and steel.

What Pelkaia lacked in native talent, she sure as shit made up for it in ingenuity. The sel cloud around her she manipulated into sparks of light, threw up tiny walls to cover her feints. He’d never seen anything like it. And he was pretty sure Thratia hadn’t either – otherwise Pelkaia’d be skewered by now.

Thratia parried a thrust hard, twisting so that Pelkaia jerked sideways. The doppel stumbled over ash-slick ground, her side wide open to Thratia’s leisure. Detan called out a warning, but he knew it was no good. Thratia’s blade swung in, almost lazy in its arc, and opened the side of Pelkaia’s hip.

Somehow Pelkaia got a blast of sel between them, bright as day, and shoved it straight in Thratia’s eyes.

“Catari bitch!” Thratia barked.

Pelkaia whirled. The sleek outline of Thratia drew Pelkaia’s blade as a magnet pulls north. The blade skimmed off boiled leather, bit down and caught in thick padding. Detan held his breath as Thratia’s armor peeled open. Before Pelkaia could press her strike Thratia sidestepped and snapped her blade down, batting Pelkaia’s wide.

Pelkaia swore, her shoulder overextended, body pivoting as it moved with the steel. She stumbled, fell hard to one side – hard enough to pop the blade from her grasp.

Trembling, she levered herself to an elbow, reached – scrambling through the scorched dirt – for her weapon. Thratia’s boot pressed into the small of Pelkaia’s back.

“Enough,” Ripka said, taking a halting step toward the fallen doppel.

Thratia looked up. Smirked. “Maybe I will find a use for her alive after all.”

Detan got an idea.

“New Chum,” Detan rasped as quietly as he could. “Be a dear and hold our virtuous watch captain, will you?”

The blessed little steward bowed his head and took a half-step forward to grab Ripka’s arm. It was no great struggle to hold her in place, she was worn through.

Detan caught Aella’s eye, and understanding passed between them. The girl’s face was red, her hair hanging limp and sweaty around her child-pudgy cheeks, but she was ready.

Aella shifted her stance, palms held up toward the skies. She could keep them clear of the backlash – could deaden even the reach of flaming sel. He hoped.

Aella nodded.

“Hey, Thratia! Thratttiiiaaaaa!” Detan raised his voice, praying for all he was worth that Pelkaia would catch his meaning, that she’d ditch what little sel she was still holding onto before he let loose.

“What?” Thratia snarled.

“I suggest you cover your eyes!”

High above, he blew the sel.

A flash so white its very light burned him filled the crater. People cried out all around him, voices so wild with panic he couldn’t tell them apart. Fire boiled in the cloudless sky, great roiling waves of it. Flaming corpses rained down all around them, chitinous bodies turning to charcoal long before they broke upon the ground.

At the moment of ignition he collapsed, Tibs’s grasp doing nothing at all to keep him upright. He laid there for a moment, stunned, drained, watching colors like sunset blossom and blister the sky above. People screamed their fear and their anger all around him, familiar voices merging into one great crescendo of what-the-fuck-did-you-do-Honding. He grunted, unable and unwilling to explain himself.

His anger was gone. He felt… Light. Free.

“Get up, damn you!”

Tibs, good ole Tibs, grabbed him by the wrists and yanked him to his feet. He staggered, his leg reminding him it was in worse shape than his back felt. Tibal shouldered his weight and began to drag him off. He dug his heels in.

“The others!”

“Are fine!” Tibs shoved him forward, the bastard. He was too weak by far to attempt any kind of protest. He tried to turn his head, tried to see what had become of Pelkaia. Of Thratia. But Tibs just kept shoving him along, straight toward the flier’s dangling ladder.

“Sandsdamnit Tibs, let me see!”

Tibs growled low in his throat, a sound so rare that it made Detan’s knees go weaker than they already were. He was about to mutter some apology when Tibs jerked him around, pointing him straight at the scene of the fight. Pelkaia was still on the ground, but she was pushed to her knees and elbows, New Chum and Ripka closing on her fast. Thratia – where? He couldn’t see… oh.

The warden lay on the ground a good ten paces from Pelkaia, curled on her side with one arm flung out. Her chest rose and fell in a reliable rhythm, but that didn’t stop Detan’s stomach from lurching at the sight of the smoke curls peeling away from her, at the scorched mass of her hair. Pelkaia had found something to do with the sel she held, all right.

If Thratia survived this, Detan was a dead man. It might take her a while, but Thratia’d make sure of it. The knowledge settled around him like a mantle, just as heavy as his anger had been. He shuddered.

Thratia’s leg twitched, her head turned.

“Time to fucking go,” Tibs said.

“Wait, the girl!”

“No more waiting!”

“But–!”

Aella pushed herself to her knees and glared at him. “Go, you idiot.”

“I thought–?”

“I didn’t want you around.”

“What?”

She stood and smiled, brushing grey ash from her blue dress. “Callia was always going to fail, Honding. Her circus is all she’s ever cared about – tunnel vision, she can’t see beyond it. And I need her alive, you understand? Alive to stand judgment for her failures. And then, well, I’m the only Valathean-bred and trained body positioned to take the reins she’s dropped. Her manicured heir – everyone knows it. I’m her ward! But you, Lord Honding, could have made things very difficult for me if you’d come around. You and your sour, noble blood.”

“But you–”

“I just didn’t want the competition!”

New Chum staggered over to them, missing his eyebrows, with Pelkaia held upright between himself and Ripka. Without another word they hurried as best they could toward the ships while Thratia and Callia were laid out flat.

Happy Birthday Virra! and Larkspur were in excellent shape, not even a singe on their gleaming hulls. The bubble of air around them was strangely cool despite the raging inferno of the sky above. He glanced over his shoulder at Aella.

She winked.