Steal the Sky

Chapter 43

Detan sat on the deck of the Larkspur, a cup of tea warming his hands and a large metal firepit warming his toes. Tibal, Ripka, and New Chum sat around the same fire, their figures slumped in unconsciousness, half-drunk teacups spilled from their hands. Tea Pelkaia had made them. A few stains of the stuff were creeping across the Larkspur’s fine wood. Detan sighed. That was going to be a pain to clean up.

He hitched the thick, goats’ wool blanket Tibs had rustled up for him tighter around his waist. It was cold up here, so close to the stars, but the crisp wind felt good on his bare back all the same. Felt like it was leeching some of the heat out of his healing burns. Made his legs feel like numb, dead weight, though. Ripka burped in her stupor, a stream of drool ran down Tibal’s chin. Detan waited.

The tea grew cold by the time Pelkaia emerged from the cabin, stretching herself toward the moonlight. Her face was cast in shadow, but still he saw her turn, saw her shoulders jump just a little in surprise. She sauntered forward, wearing her preferred face, and knelt beside New Chum.

“Had too much to drink, did they?” she said.

“Something like that.” Detan leaned forward and set his mug down before him, giving it a twist as if he were drilling it into place. Pelkaia smiled, and shook her head.

“I should have known.”

“Yes, you should have.”

“How did you know?”

“I’ve been a guest of the whitecoats. Golden needle is what they use to knock off that pesky screaming and squirming that goes on while one’s being cut to ribbons.”

“Ah,” she murmured, the ghost of a real frown scampering across her features. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to bring back sour memories.”

“That’s what you’re going to apologize for?”

She shrugged. “It’s what I’m actually sorry for. Anything else would be a lie.”

“At least you’re honest.”

Pelkaia patted New Chum on the shoulder and walked around the fire to sit beside Detan, close enough he could feel the warmth radiating from her. Could smell the spicy mélange of the oils she wore in her hair. A scent that brought with it memories of her smile, obscured by Ripka’s face, flashing in the dark. Bright. Enticing. Knowing she had him on a string only she could play. He swallowed, shifted, but didn’t scoot away.

She stretched her long legs out, letting the soles of her boots draw close to the dancing flames. His own legs were crossed, and beneath the shelter of the blanket he could feel the wooden handle of his knife shoved in his boot, warm with the heat of his tired body. It would be easy.

He didn’t like easy.

“Which ship?” he asked.

She said nothing, only reached down and patted the smooth wood of the Larkspur’s deck. He nodded. “Why?”

“I told you all along it was mine.”

“Not good enough.”

She sighed, but from the corner of his eye he saw a smile pull up the ridges of her lips. “All right then. Callia’s given up the chase for now, gone north to get her sorry hide across the Darkling Sea before the monsoons strand her behind the Century Gates until the end of the season. Means we’ve got time. Time I plan on using to sharpen a stick to shove in her eye.”

“And the Larkspur?”

Her fingers spider-crawled across the deck, her palm came to rest against the cap of his knee. He did his best not to notice the heat of it. “You’re a hunted man, Honding.”

“I’ve been hunted since I fled Valathea the first time, it’s nothing new.”

“This is different. Back then, they knew your abilities deviated, but not to what extent, and you hadn’t yet done them a personal insult. Callia delayed her trip back to Valathea for a week just on the chance she’d catch you, and I would bet freshwater that she only left when she did so that she could make it there, drop her cargo, and come right back around before the monsoons really get going. After your little demonstration at the Smokestack, you’ve become worth your weight in sel.”

“I can’t even imagine a man’s weight in sel.”

“Exactly.”

He pulled the blanket snug around his waist and tried to keep his shivering from being too obvious. What little of the golden needle had made it into his system was dragging him down, making him drowsy. Detan sucked in a deep breath of the cold night air and tried to calm himself, to focus. Breathe in, breathe out. One-two, one-two.

“Still haven’t told me why you plan on taking my ship,” he said.

“Do you know what I was planning on doing with it, when Tibal found me on the Smokestack?”

“Haven’t a clue.”

“I was debating the merits of shoving it down the throat of a sel pipeline.”

Silence held between them, heavy and tense, while Detan imagined the ramifications. If the line backed up, it could have triggered an eruption.

“You wouldn’t really have…”

Pelkaia tilted her head and looked at him. There was no smile on her lips, no sheen of amusement in her eyes. Just placid, determined calm. The same fierce light she’d had in her eyes when she’d dragged him all the way out to the Hub, knowing a whitecoat was waiting for her to slip and land in her clutches. Pelkaia was willing to burn the world and herself with it if it meant she’d take down those she’d believed wronged her. He believed she would have shoved it down the pipeline. He really did. Worse of all, he didn’t blame her for wanting to. Not one bit.

“I can’t let you take it. Not for that.” His fingers closed tight around the knife handle. If she would just look away…

“I’m past that. I plan on using this ship against Valathea, but not in such a literal fashion.”

“Any particular reason you don’t want us,” he gestured to their drugged companions, “a part of it?”

She looked away, studying the limp-doll figures, and drummed the fingers of her other hand against her thigh, a habit she’d picked up from imitating Ripka. He wondered just how much of Pelkaia was Pelkaia, and just how much were little pieces of all the others she’d mimicked melded together. But was that fair, really? How many people were entirely themselves, anyway?

“This stretch of time I’ve been given, this little extension of life. I’ve been thinking I should do something with it, since it was given to me.” She glanced sideways at him, and he looked straight to the deck boards, unmoving. “I believe I’ll go find others like us. Maybe even pull them together.”

“Like us.”

Pelkaia cocked her head, and smiled. “You’re a good man, Detan Honding. It’s your biggest flaw.”

“Could be I make you the first step on my downward spiral.”

She bit her lip as she regarded him, and for a moment she seemed at ease, the lines around her eyes softening.

“You’re not ready for this, Detan. You scrape across the Scorched ruffling the feathers of those vaguely related to the ones who wronged you, but never really biting deep. Never staying in one place too long. With the flier, you can do that. You won’t raise eyebrows skating into any backwash town on that old thing… I don’t know why you won’t take up the real fight.

“Maybe you’re afraid you’ll get yourself killed. Probably you’re afraid you’ll get others killed in your name. I’ve got none of those compunctions. I’ve paid my blood price. What I want now is war. Maybe you’ll come see me when it’s what you want, too.”

His fingers trembled as he reached up to rake one hand through his hair. His head throbbed as if the center of his forehead had its own, tiny heartbeat. Hot and angry and beat-beating away at his skull. Pelkaia had walked him through some of her meditation techniques, and that had been the only thing to ease his discomfort. That, and time. Time he was running short on now, it seemed.

She stood, and he stood beside her, grabbing her arm.

“Got one more question for you, before we part ways.”

“As you like.”

“Something’s been kicking around the back of my mind these weeks. Your boy, Pelkaia. How old at the end?”

The hard muscles of her arm went stiff beneath his fingers, her eyes narrowing just a touch. “If you saw the fi–”

“No good. You think I wouldn’t notice an older number scratched off and replaced with seventeen? I could still feel the dents the ink made in the paper. Funny thing, those little dents. Felt like they wrote out two-and-seven, not one-and-seven. But here you are, face bare to the sky, not looking a day over thirty-five. Not possible, that, unless I’m deeply mistaken on certain matters of anatomy.”

She closed her eyes, bending her head in sorrow, and spoke in such a low hiss Detan almost missed it. “He was supposed to last.”

Ah, there it was.

“How many? How many sons and daughters have you outlived?”

With a subtle twist of her shoulder she freed her arm from his grasp and turned, stepping up close enough that the scent of the oil she used to tame her hair nearly overwhelmed his senses. Hot breath wafted against his throat. He shivered.

“Enough,” she said.

“That’s fair. Stay out of their hands, Pelkaia, whatever you do. You’ve no idea what they’ll do to carve the secret of your longevity out of you.”

Detan settled back down on the deck and stretched his legs out with a contented groan.

“What are you doing, Honding? Aren’t you going to help me prep the flier?”

He tipped his head up to watch the stars pass above. Up this close, they were as bright as a lamp in the dark and as large as his own two hands laced together. Even at night he could see little sparks of sel catching and snuffing out high above the cloud line. What he’d started at Aransa was having a hard time finishing. He shivered under their knowing glare and pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders.

“Not having it, Pelkaia. You want my ship, you’re going to have to do the work and carry my sorry hide off it.”

The tea was cold and bitter, but he got it down in one go.