Steal the Sky

Chapter 4

The market bazaar of Aransa was precisely how Detan remembered it. Unfortunately.

Shops were scattered all over the middle level of the city, as if some drunken god of mercers had waved a full bottle about while staggering his way home and wherever the droplets landed a filthy stall had sprung up. Some trades attempted a clumped confederation, but the edges of all of these were loose and fraying.

Produce vendors clustered along the rail that marked the edge of the level, protruding slightly over the level below. When the day was done they hucked the worst of their wares over the edge. Rumor was, some pretty choice mushrooms could be plucked from the shadow of that overhang. Mushrooms which were then resold by the very same purveyors of the fertilizer. Detan shuddered at the thought, or the smell, or really just the whole cursed experience.

Tibs glided through the press of cloth-hawkers and fruit gropers, somehow managing not to bump so much as an elbow with another soul. For his trouble, Detan was jostled and stymied, his feet trampled and his coat wrenched all askew. With a curse, he slapped away the third set of little fingers to go dipping about his pockets, and finally broke through the crowd to the more sedate stalls of the metalmen and woodworkers.

Here, at least, order had been imposed. It seemed even choice real estate wasn’t worth the risk of getting an errant ember in your stall’s awning, and so the hodgepodge of transient sellers stayed far away. Tibs’s sizable head swiveled, seeking the right shop, and Detan left him to it.

He liked to think he had a silver tongue, but these were folk close to the work, real crafters of wood and metal. They didn’t much care for Detan’s style of dealings. Tibs claimed they could smell the Honding blood in him.

Detan doubted they could smell much of anything over Tibs’s own unwashed trousers.

The shop Tibs picked was a good one by the standard of the others. Its paint was fresh and its sign had actual words on it in place of the myriad pictographs its neighbors used. The door hinges didn’t even squeak when Tibs swung them inward. Detan shuffled along behind, hanging back as he let his eyes adjust to the smoky lamplight.

It was smaller than it’d looked from the outside, but then Detan realized that there was a big desk cutting the room in half with a curtain behind it. Workshop adjacent, then. Possibly even a sleeping space. The burly old man behind the counter certainly looked like he might sleep here, he practically had wood shavings for hair.

“Morning, sirs.” The shopkeep adjusted a rather fine looking pair of spectacles and shut the cover on the sketches he’d been muddling through. Nice sketchbook, that. Smooth, pale paper with a creamy hide cover. Detan prepared himself to pay more than the supplies were worth.

“Got a flier needs fixin’,” Tibs said, cutting straight to the quick of it so fast Detan thought the shopkeep would blanch with offense. But no, if anything he looked a mite relieved to get the pleasantries over with.

“Let’s see it then.” He brushed his journal aside, making room for Tibs to place his own sketch on the desk. Tibs set it down and smoothed it out, not too careful, then let it sit there curling back in on itself like a smashed bug.

“Hrm,” the shopkeep said.

“Got the stuff I need?” Tibs prompted.

“Sure, sure. Well, the stuff you need, I got. The stuff you’re asking for won’t be easy.”

Detan blinked at the shopkeeper’s audacity, and Tibs shot a hand back, palm out, telling him to hold still, which was right insulting, because he hadn’t been planning on… oh. He’d taken a half step forward without realizing it.

“The stuff I’m asking for is the stuff I need.”

“This, here, I understand.” The shopkeep traced something on the paper with a finger. “Your flier looks in bad shape, and I can see how you want to patch her up. Looks good, too. Anyway, that’s fine, okay, but your materials take a shift here. You got reinforced leather for the sacks, proper stuff but nothing too fancy, and local wood for the supports and the rails, but all your cabin stuff is just too blasted big. And you’ve designed the whole mess to be removable. I can’t even imagine why you’d want that.

“I’m sorry, sirs, but I can’t recommend this at all. You’re asking for imported materials. They’ll be worth more than the whole thing. And anyway, you don’t need it, yeah? Outfit like this would work well on just a handful of vessels. I can only think of one in the whole city big enough not to be thrown off balance by… ah. I see.”

He stopped, blinked over his glasses at them, screwed his face up tight as he looked at Tibs. Detan couldn’t see Tibs’s expression, but he knew well enough the coot wasn’t good at feigning calm when he’d been had.

Time for Honding blood to stink things up, then.

“You told me these market men were discreet!” He stormed up to Tibs and shook a finger at him. “What will our mistress say, hm? Every mog in Aransa is wagging their lips over the tiniest bit of gossip surrounding her, and you bungle this? By the pits!”

Tibs ducked his head down, looking proper contrite, then dragged his hat off and set to fussing with the brim. Detan spared a sideways glance at the shopkeep and found him pale as a desert bone. Good.

“Now, there’s no need for upset, sirs. I’m happy to work quietly. I just needed to be sure you weren’t overreaching yourselves, you understand. Don’t want to be sticking my nose in anyone’s business, just want to make sure I offer a fair deal to all.”

“Well.” Detan cleared his throat, cracked his neck, and smoothed the front of his shirt. “I suppose that will have to do. When can you have these materials?”

“Day or two, sirs. Last shipment of Valathean wood came across on Mercer Agert’s vessel and, well… It’s in escrow, but should be out soon. I’ll put pressure on it.”

“See that you do.” Detan leaned over and flipped the man’s sketchbook open, then scribbled the name of their inn on a blank sheet. “Have it all sent there when it’s ready.”

“That’s not the most, ah, pleasant of addresses.”

“No.” He slammed the sketchbook shut. “It isn’t.”

“Right. Right. Happy to oblige, sirs. Now, ah, about payment…”

The shopkeep glanced to his book, scrawled upon so carelessly, and Detan had to bite back a grin. Just like that, the shopkeep knew they had grains to spare. And people with grains to spare were often the cheapest of bastards.

“Here.” Detan pulled open Ripka’s pouch and tossed a pinch of silver grains down – worth maybe a quarter of the total. “You’ll get the rest on delivery.”

“Yes, sirs, very good, sirs.” He swept up the bits of metal, and by the time he looked up again Detan and Tibs were gone.

Standing in the dusty street, Detan threw a companionable arm about Tibs’s shoulders and slipped his hand up toward the back of his hat. “Almost fouled the whole thing up, rockbrain.”

Tibs shrugged. “Didn’t see another clean angle. We needed that stuff, just like it was. No hiding it.”

Detan narrowed his eyes, realization dawning bright as the desert sun. “You sly son of a–”

“There are women and children present in this market. Sirra.”

Dean jerked his arm back and rolled his eyes, but didn’t needle him further. Tibs could be a pricklebush about that sort of thing.

“Now.” He rubbed his hands together. “For some paint.”

Picking a direction at random, he strode off in search of a sign that might give him a clue. He felt flush with success, the sun warm on his shoulders, a slight breeze alleviating the greasy texture of his hair. If they could just get this one point settled, then they’d be well on their way to calling Thratia’s airship their own. For Ripka, of course. Or whoever she was.

“Not that way.” Tibs’s hand closed over his shoulder, drawing him to a sharp stop. Up ahead, he could just make out the corner of the telltale dyer’s sign, a pot with a brush crossed over it.

“You blind oaf, it’s right down there–”

A door opened beside him, spilling familiar aromas into the sun-warmed air. Hints of pine and sweet, golden cactus needle sparked old memories. Sharp memories.

Memories of blood and pain and straps, of his skin sloughing off and his eyes stitched open. Sweat broke across his brow, sticky and cold.

The woman exiting the shop was slight, stern. The simple sight of her long, white skirt set him trembling. With the dye of her shirt faded by the bright glare of the sun she struck him, so clearly and for just a moment, as a whitecoat. One of Valathea’s dread experimenters, torturers. One of his own jail keepers, not so long ago. Awareness crowded his senses, sharp and frenzied. An animal need to destroy the thing which tormented him welled bright and hot and desperate within his chest. He lifted a trembling hand, outstretched toward the oblivious woman. There was selium in the woman’s bracelets – a Valathean fashion – and a dinghy of an airship passing close above, its buoyancy sacks half-full but tempting.

Tibs squeezed his shoulder, cutting off his sense of the sel. “Just a plain apothik. No whitecoats here.”

“Right.” Detan’s voice was rough and clotted. He cleared it. “Right.”

“Whitecoats don’t come to the Scorched, they stay in their tower,” Tibs said.

“Yes… Of course.”

“Seems to me.” Tibs removed his hand and drifted a step back, away from that accursed building. “That the paint can wait until we get the equipment, eh? And anyway, I’m ravenous as a silk-widow that’s spent all day making a new web.”

Detan followed, snared by the need to be close to a friend. To safety. Glad for air that smelled of nothing but dust and wood and vegetal rot. He rubbed his palms against his thighs, leaving sweaty smears. Took a breath. Steady, Honding.

“Food? But Tibs! You only just ate lunch yesterday. Are you really so insatiable?”

“Like a wild beast. I know it’s not very genteel of me, but I reckon I make up for it with my table manners.”

“Well.” He clapped Tibs on the back. “Two gentlemen such as ourselves certainly cannot go out to dine in this state.” He gestured to his ragged clothes, stained with the black dust that permeated all of Aransa. “It would not be proper, I’m sure of it.”

“I believe we’re adequately attired for that meatstick cart.” Tibs gestured toward a market cart tucked amongst the other foodmongers. The enterprising street chef had jars marked with a variety of symbols crowded on the top of his cart, each filled with a sauce of a different color. As patrons handed over their smallest grains, the proprietor produced a spitted piece of meat from somewhere below the cart’s top and dipped it into a sauce of the purchaser’s choosing.

The smell of it made his stomach rumble. Detan half-turned, edging toward the cart, when he caught another aroma – bitter, tannic. A tea cauldron simmered at the elbow of the meatstick-maker, its cutting aroma reminiscent of the medicinal brews the whitecoats had pressed upon him. He shivered and turned away.

With a hand on his companion’s shoulder Detan clucked his tongue, forcing himself to light-heartedness, and steered Tibs firmly back down the street. “But how will I enjoy a proper display of your table manners at a cart, old friend? No, no. No slumming it for us.”

With a flourish he produced a droop-brim hat from within his coat and thunked it on his head. It was a much nicer fit than the burlap sack had been. Tibs looked at him like he’d stepped on a fire ant mound while pantless.

“Hey, that’s my hat. I just had it–”

“I believe you’ll find it’s on my head. Now, let us away to the Salt Baths so that we may present a proper image when we go for supper later.”

“Oh? And that proper supper wouldn’t happen to be at Thratia’s fete tonight, eh?”

“I can’t imagine what would make you think such a thing, Tibs. I, for one, was not even cognizant of the–”

“I saw you nick the handbill off the fence by the inn on our way out.”

Blast! Detan was beginning to think that Tibs could be halfway across the Scorched from him and still know whenever Detan helped himself to something useful. Or pretty. Or nifty. He adjusted the hat and smiled. At least the old rockbrain still missed some things.

“Oh. Well.” He cleared his throat and ushered Tibs onto the main road. “I may have procured a certain advertisement to that effect, yes. What better opportunity to survey her ship?”

“You do realize that there are baths at our inn, which is considerably closer – and already paid for.”

“Baths? Pah. If you count a lukewarm bucket as a bath.” He swept a pointed gaze over Tibs. “Which you obviously do. And, regardless, do you have attire worthy of one of Thratia’s fetes? Because I certainly don’t.”

Tibs jingled Ripka’s grain pouch. “I don’t mean to shock you, but we can buy those things. With money.”

Detan rolled his eyes. “And do you think she’ll just hand over a ticket to us? Or are you going to buy a ticket, too? Sweet skies, Tibs, I thought you were the cheap one!”

Tibs gave him that sour, you-just-can’t-help-yourself look which never failed to wind his gears. This time, he resolved to rise above. Ignoring his companion’s dour disposition he took the stairs up to the next level two at a time, drawing an annoyed glare from the guards stationed at either end on the top of the steps. Too bad for them, it was still open-market hours, and upperpasses weren’t required to move from one level to the next until well after moonrise. Not that he had a pass.

Not that that tiny little fact would have stopped him.

It’d been awhile since he’d perused Aransa, and though his extended absence had clearly eased Ripka’s heart he found he was a bit sick with the missing of it. It was a good city, laid out nice and clear, and was free with water due to its proximity to a network of flush aquifers. The ladies here didn’t fuss about with modesty, either. It was blasted hot, and even the uppercrust bared their shoulders and trusted in wide, shadowy hats and parasol bearers to keep the burn off.

Yes, Aransa was a good city indeed.

“Tibs, my good man, can’t you keep up?”

Tibs was staring overlong at what was advertised to be a rack of lamb roasting in a shop window, but Detan rather suspected it was a gussied up sandrat. Detan snagged Tibs’s arm and dragged him off to many a weak protestation.

“If we bent the winds at every rumbling of your gullet, old friend, we’d still be in shanty towns picking sand from our teeth.”

“As you say,” he muttered.

The line for the ferry to the Salt Baths was long, but not so long they couldn’t all be crammed onto the floating conveyance. Detan, tugging Tibs along beside him, sidled up to the end of the line and freed his friend’s arm. He worried Tibs would go wandering off at the merest sniff of scallion, but Detan was too busy working at blending in with the uppercrust to keep an eye on him. When you’re with the high-tossers, it’s all hands-in-pockets and slouching like a loose grain slide. He couldn’t be seen caring about anything, that would give the game away.

And these were definitely the uppercrust. Seemed no one wanted to arrive at Thratia’s with sand in their hair or dust on their trousers. All the better for him – he liked a variety of marks to choose from.

As he tipped the brim of his hat down over his eyes to add that roguish mystique the upcrust ladies were all aflutter over, Detan reflected that all the posturing in the world wouldn’t make up for the holes in the knees of his britches. Which left the gentleman’s last resort – good, hard grains.

It didn’t help matters much that Tibs was trying to blend in the same way. Detan leaned over to hiss a whisper at the man, which was a funny thing to do when you were both slouching like your spines were made of rotwood.

“You’re supposed to be my manservant, remember? Don’t look so blasted confident.”

Tibs rolled his eyes. “Why can’t you play the manservant for once?”

“Because I actually know the plan. And besides–” he waved an arm down his torso, “–no one would believe it.”

“You’re right, you’d make a terrible manservant.”

“You dustswallower! I’d be a marvelous–”

“Excuse me, sirs.” The ticket seller reached their spot in line, his little pad of yellowed passes ruffling in the breeze. “It’s two silver grains each to the baths.”

Detan wasn’t much surprised to see Tibs’s jaw drop open at the price. Tibs wasn’t a man to go about wasting his grains, and during normal circumstances Detan was right glad for his persnickety friend’s tight-pocket affectations. Now, however, required a different sort of dealing. The kind of dealing that got filthy men past top-button gatekeepers. In Detan’s experience, such a thing required the liberal and unfettered lubrication of gold. It was just a crying shame he didn’t have any.

“Only two? By sel! Such a bargain. Certainly fair enough to leave a little left over for yourself, eh my good chap?” Detan leaned in as he spoke, plunking the requisite grains into the official looking pouch as he plunked another silver in the man’s personal pocket. While the ticket seller had been looking at them like something unpleasant scraped off his shoe, he now seemed inclined to their favor. Or, at least, he wasn’t scowling.

The ticket seller tapped his pocket with the edge of his hand, feeling the weight, and shrugged. He took their names on a slip of paper, his brow raising slightly at Detan’s, but the silver weighed enough to stifle any comments.

“Enjoy the baths,” was all he said.

After he shuffled off, Tibs hissed in Detan’s ear. “Moonturn’s worth of rent, that was.”

“And a lifetime’s worth of goodwill!”

“If by a lifetime you mean until we find ourselves in this line again.”

“Do you ever plan on seeing the baths again?”

“Well, no…”

Detan beamed and threw his arm around Tibs’s shoulder. “What did I tell you? A lifetime’s worth of goodwill!”