Steal the Sky

Chapter 8

By the time he returned to the bath their salt brick was halfway gone. Detan eased himself into the hot water and tipped his head back with a hearty sigh.

“You look right pleased with yourself.”

“I am right pleased, old chum. This is a lovely establishment Lord Tasay has left us. Shame his line died out, or Thratia wouldn’t be able to muss it all up by angling to get herself elected warden.”

“Right,” Tibs drawled, “because the rule of heirship has worked out so well for the other landed families and their cities.”

Detan scowled and scratched the Honding brand seared into the flesh of the back of his neck, deciding to ignore Tibs’s dig.

“Now,” he scooped up the little bell and gave it a good, bold ring, “where is that New Chum? Somebody drank all our booze and I’ve worked up quite a thirst.”

The steward came loping down the hallway, a bottle in one hand and a cheese plate in the other. Detan gave Tibs a triumphant grin, but the codger just rolled his eyes. Not a fan of subtlety, his wiry old mechanic.

“Would sirs care for another drink?”

“You’re a wonder, New Chum, a wonder!”

The steward poured out the drams and, while Detan watched, the young man’s nose began to wrinkle. “Do either of you sirs smell something burning?”

Tibs gave him a glare that could cut glass, but Detan ignored it and leaned forward over the edge of the tub, sniffing the air. “I do! Is that normal?”

With a face like an undercooked fish, the steward set the bottle and cheese down and scrambled to the end of the walkway. He stuck his head over the edge and peered about while Detan downed a few of the cheese bits. Tibs followed his lead. He’d never been the type to turn down a free plate.

“There’s something burning on one of the vents!” The steward pointed and Detan dragged his gaze along the man’s finger as if he hadn’t known where he’d be pointing. He let loose with what he hoped was a heart-broken screech and leapt to his feet, sending bath water flying in all directions.

“My hat!”

Tibs got the picture then, and lurched to his feet. “My hat!” But his mouth was full of cheese, which rather ruined the effect.

Regardless, Detan thought they both looked positively dashing as they leapt from the bath and snatched up their towels. With a hasty wrap for modesty, they charged down the perilous steps, the steward nipping at their heels, and spilled out into the dangerous terrain of the venting ground. Detan hesitated, drawing back an anxious step and chewing on his lip.

“Follow me, sirs, the way is treacherous.”

The steward strode ahead, and Detan forced himself to check his pace as he scurried along behind. His legs were longer than the young man’s, and he’d scouted the area ahead of time, but being first on the scene would let the sel out of the sack and bring the whole thing crashing down in a hurry.

When they finally made it to the vent in question, Detan pushed ahead of the steward and grabbed up his hat. Tibs’s hat. Detan was rather fond of the old thing, so he’d left it sitting on the edge just close enough to give it a character-building singe.

“Someone has burned our clothes!”

“It must have been a mistake, sirs, I can’t imagine that anyone here would do something like that.”

Detan floundered a little, but good old Tibs had caught up now and gotten all the gears of his mind grinding away.

“Whose vent is this?” Tibs demanded.

“Oh, well…” The steward flicked out the guest list folded in one pocket. Detan grinned, recognizing it from the pad the ticket-taker had written their names on. Perfect.

New Chum’s face went fishy again. “This would be the vent below the bath of Renold Grandon and his party, sirs. The man with whom you had the small confrontation on the sel bridge.”

Detan pumped his fists in the air in victory, but he hoped it looked more like anger to the young steward. Either way, it was energetic enough to set the man reeling. “That mounded ass! Come, Tibal, let us go claim our compensation. Quickly, to the cubbies, before that demon can make off with any more of our personals!”

Allowing the steward to presume he had learned the way from their walk to the vent, Detan shoved the singed hat on his head and charged off through the craggy ground after the culprits.

The timing was sweet as sel wine. Just as Grandon and his group arrived and began to attire themselves, Detan and his entourage of two burst in upon them.

“You!” He pointed a quavering finger at the man, making his eyes wild and wide.

Grandon looked up, yawned, and began toweling off his feet. Detan rather wished he’d left the towel where it was, but he was on a roll now and not about to stop for modesty’s sake.

“You bulbous, petty thief!”

That got his attention. The granite-fleshed man secured his towel and crossed his arms under what, Detan was disturbed to realize, were the male equivalent of bosoms.

“Are you accusing me of something, little man?”

“You and your foul aficionados stole my and my man’s clothes and tossed them to the vents!” He pointed at the singed edge of his hat. “This dear old thing barely escaped your brutality.”

Grandon grunted. “If your clothes were burned it was probably because the cleaning staff thought they were rags. You have no proof.”

“Proof! I have all I need!” He took the hat off and waggled it at Grandon. “No one would be stupid enough to go to the vents without a guide.”

“A terribly stupid thing to do indeed, sirra.”

“Yes. As I was saying, no one would brave the danger of the vents alone, and therefore you and your gaggle are the only ones who had access to the thing! A simple task, to tip them over the edge from your tub.”

“He does have a point, sir,” the steward said, and Detan jumped a bit because he’d damned near forgotten New Chum was standing right smack beside him.

“A point? That rat? Do you have any idea who I am?” Grandon hauled himself up to his full height and pinched his face in a way that might have looked hawkish on a narrower man, but in truth just ended up looking constipated.

“I reckon you’re Renold Grandon.” Detan tapped the guest list poking out of the steward’s breast pocket. “Like the paper says.”

“You’re blasted straight I am! Got a ten percent ownership in Aransa’s selium mine, and I will not be treated like this by some withered example of wormwood.”

Detan re-adjusted his slipping towel. He was not about to back down on account of an accurate insult.

“And do you have any idea who I am, Grandon?”

“Oh, sirra, I don’t think that’s really nec–”

He shushed Tibs with a wave of his hand. His heat was up again, something about this fellow just didn’t sit right in Detan’s mind, and some things were worth sticking your neck out over. Things like his own sorry pride.

“Yes, I do.” Grandon smirked.

He swallowed. Had he miscalculated? Had he swindled this overinflated sack in the past? Is that why he got his goat up so easily?

“Oh yes.” Grandon trudged forward and stabbed a finger at Detan’s chest. “I know your type, boy. You spend your time slithering about the downcrust scraping together coin from sap to sap until you’ve got enough in your filthy fist to think you can make it up here with the Right Sort. Well, you’ve pushed the buttons on the wrong man, you swine. I will have you run out on the Black Wash with the morning sun for the mild inconvenience you’ve caused me and mine. You understand? I will see you burn for wasting my time.”

Detan put his hand out and laid it flat on the big man’s chest. He quirked a smile, saw Grandon’s confusion, and gave him a light shove. Grandon had to either take a step back, or topple.

He stepped back.

“So. You don’t know who I am.”

Grandon opened his mouth, but Detan stepped toward him and Grandon gulped air as he took another step back to avoid coming chest-to-chest with him. Rage colored his cheeks and chest like an allergic reaction. Detan pressed on before he could recover his momentum.

“My name is Detan Honding.” He shoved a hand out. “And the pleasure’s all mine, Grandon.”

The big man narrowed his eyes at the extended hand. His friends went quiet. “You’re not a Honding.”

“Check the guest list.”

“You lied on it.”

Detan sighed and turned around. He caught Tibs’s eye as he turned, and he had his lips pressed together like it was the only thing keeping him from using some mighty cruel words. Oh well. He was in it now.

He reached back and lifted the hair that hung above the nape of his neck. There, burned in white scar flesh with puckered pink edges, was his family crest. A pickaxe and sword, crossed over the full sail of an old sea ship with the three stars of the landed below. A bit redundant, those landed stars, as the Honding family had been the first of them all to claim land rights on the Scorched. They’d earned it, the whole damned continent, by finding the secret veins of selium gas with sensitives they didn’t even know they had.

“Thought all but Dame Honding died off. Thought her nephew died in a mining accident,” Grandon croaked. It was a lame protest. There were people who would fake a crest, sure, but not a Honding one. There were easier things in the world to pretend to be.

“Sorry to disappoint you then, Grandon, but here I am.”

Grandon wasn’t a landed man, but he knew his manners. He backed off with a grumbled apology.

“Now, the steward here is going to have a look around your cubbies. If you’re clean, then we’ll forget about all this. If not, well, we’ll work that out when we come to it.”

The steward glided forward as if shaking down one of the wealthiest men in all Aransa was just another daily toil, and gave a good and thorough search of Grandon’s cubbies and all his accomplices. Out came Detan’s fine leather money pouch, and then Tibs’s cloth pouch stuffed with Ripka’s.

Tibs gave him a hard look as he took his pouch back, no doubt wondering just what in the fiery pits Detan’s plan had been if they’d ended up losing all their money and the stall tab for their flier. It seemed to Detan he couldn’t rightly complain. They’d gotten it back, after all.

“We have robes you can borrow,” the steward said. “Until the watch captain gets here to take your statements. I will order some new clothes for you right away, sirs.”

“No need to get the Watch involved, but I won’t be the one wearing the loaner robe.” He grinned over at the steward. “You handy with a needle and thread, New Chum?”

“Yes, sir.”

The steward sent Grandon and his companions on their merry way with nothing more than a thin robe each to their names. At least they smelled fresh, and Detan figured they might think twice before messing with a dirty sod next chance they got. He sighed. More than likely they’d go whining to their friends about those bully Hondings. He clenched his jaw. It’s not like his aunt would ever hear about it, and people probably wouldn’t believe them anyway. They’d think he’d just gone and got himself swindled by an imposter.

Which was half right.

“Hold still, sir.”

Detan grumbled as he forced himself to stand still. It wasn’t easy with Tibs glaring at him like that, but even old Tibs had to admit he looked good in his new ensemble. Grandon’s friends had sported some pretty refined taste, and one had been remarkably close to Tibs’s measurements. Only Detan needed the adjusting – he’d always been weirdly narrow in the shoulders compared to other men his size. He figured it made him better at getting out of tight spots. Or into them.

“You know we can take your measurements and send for a whole new set of clothes, sir,” the steward mumbled around the pins held between his lips.

“It’s the principle of the thing, New Chum. I want Grandon and his pals to see me strutting about in their own suits. Serves ’em right. And anyway, these seem fresh made.”

And their inner pockets were stuffed with tickets to Thratia’s fete. Tickets Grandon and his chums had gone and forgotten all about when they’d realized they’d be marching home in loaner robes.

“I suppose they were made for the party tonight, sir. We’ve been busy all day with people coming in to get cleaned up for it.”

“It’s a fete, New Chum. Parties are for toddlers and drunk academy kids.”

“I’m afraid I don’t see the difference, sir.”

“Fancier booze.”

The steward’s smile was dangerously wide, pins drooping from the corners. “Will you be going, sir?”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

Tibs crossed his arms and snorted. As the steward leaned downward to pull a stitch tight on the cuff of Detan’s new trousers, his shirt slipped, once more revealing the hint of a snake’s back wending its way over the steward’s shoulder. He bit his tongue, recalling Tibs’s admonishment to let the poor lad be, then said anyway, “What’s with the pet viper, New Chum?”

The poor steward jerked upright, sticking his thumb with the needle, and scurried back a step. Eyes darting, he shoved his thumb in his mouth to suck the blood – or, no, Detan realized. The man wasn’t licking his wounds, he was using the prick as an excuse to stall for time while he thought through what to say. Detan grinned.

“Come now, what’s a reptile between friends?”

New Chum straightened his collar and regained his composure so quickly it made Detan dizzy. “It is the mark of poor decisions in my past,” the steward said as he floated forward to take up the hem once more, studiously avoiding all eye contact.

“That’s a Glasseater’s mark,” Tibs drawled, and Detan watched in amazement as the steward’s shoulders drew in with shame. Detan scowled across the steward’s bent back at Tibs. Curse him and his leave-the-lad-be nonsense, he’d been holding out on Detan – had known all along the lad was sporting criminal ink.

“It’s crossed,” the steward blurted, shifting his shirt aside so they could see the thick black line running through the snake’s body. “I’m not associated with them anymore.”

“Not a friendly bunch, Glasseaters,” Detan spoke with care, watching the muscles of the steward’s back bunch with growing tension. “What do they control nowadays?” He looked at Tibs, brows raised. “Selling mudleaf?”

“And a handful of cardhouses,” Tibs amended.

“Not a lot of work there for a nice young man such as yourself.”

With a heady sigh the steward pulled the last stitch taut and rose, once more straightening his shirt and jacket. “My family–” He cleared his throat. “My family has long been in service as valets to bosses of a particular nature. I declined to continue that tradition.”

“I see. Delicate information, that. Why share it with yours truly?”

The steward shifted his gaze pointedly to Detan’s new pockets – pockets he’d been attempting to pick when he’d tipped the walkway with the noblebones on board. “It had occurred to me that you might be sympathetic to certain aspects of my past occupation. Sir.”

Detan grinned and clapped once. “I knew I liked you! What’s your name, New Chum?”

The lad actually flushed. “Enard Harwit, sir.”

“Oh. Ah. I see. Shall we stick with New Chum, then?”

“That would be acceptable.”

“Marvelous.” Detan jumped down from the dais and clapped him on the back. “You’ve been a treasure! Here you are.” He pressed some gold into his hand from the stash he’d taken out of Grandon’s lady’s pockets on the walkway. “Treat yourself, eh? And thank you for taking care of an old Honding.”

“It’s been an honor, sirs.”

Detan could tell by the gleam in his eye the poor sod really meant that. He felt a twinge of guilt, then turned on his heel and hurried out.

When he and Tibs were back on the solid rock of Aransa, the old rat gave him a sturdy punch in the arm.

“You’re a mad bastard, Honding.”

“Pits below!” He jumped and rubbed at the ache. “I was perfectly safe navigating the vents. I got a good look at them from above.”

“It’s not the vents I’m on about,” Tibs said as he marched ahead, taking the lead back into the winding ways of the city. Detan reached up to ruff his hair in frustration, then shook himself and scurried to catch up. Dusk was descending over Aransa, the purple-mottled sky making Tibs little more than a silhouette before him. He stomped with every step he took, wiry fingers curled into knobby fists at his side. Detan slowed his steps and shoved his hands in his pockets, ducking his head down like a whipped dog.

“Is it the clothes?” Detan ventured, “Because, well, I figured that–”

“Nope, that ain’t it either.”

“Er. Well…”

Tibs stopped cold, pinning Detan down with his gaze as easily as he’d drive a nail through a board. “Dame Honding is going to hang you from your toenails, using your name with just anyone like that.”

“Oh! That. Well, it is my name, Tibs.”

“You had better write her a letter, sirra, before the rumors get back.”

Detan sighed and sat down hard on the top of a low, stone fence, heedless of the dust that undoubtedly coated his backside now. “I suppose. Wouldn’t want the old badger to worry, eh?”

“I suggest you do not address it to ‘the old badger’.”

“She’d laugh!”

“She’d fly right out here and beat you with her parasol.”

Detan broke a small rock from the fence and hucked it half-heartedly at Tibs, who stepped nimbly around it. There was still a bit of stiff anger in his posture, a crease of annoyance around his eyes. Detan took a slow breath, and probed.

“Isn’t just the name, is it?”

Tibs stared at some distant point over his shoulder. “Grandon needled your temper, and your first instinct was to reach for it. You losing control?”

It. His sel-sense. Didn’t need to say the words out loud – not on the street, anyway, not where they ran the risk of being overheard. Tibs’s head tilted, his gaze skewing toward the edge of the city, toward the Smokestack, that great firemount from which Aransa mined all its selium gas. Whole lotta’ sel in the city, and not just in ships. Walkways and jewelry, booze and fairycakes. All were laced with the stuff. He could feel its ubiquitous presence, if he let himself open his senses. A grey buzz in the back of his mind, like a swarming of locusts.

It’d be one thing, if he were just hiding his sensitivity to avoid working the mines or the ships. But his own flavor of sensitivity – deviant, as the empire and its whitecoats called it – could be just as destructive as that locust swarm, if he let his temper slip.

He slammed his senses shut, forcing mental barriers into place even as he plastered a goofy smirk onto his chapped lips and laid a hand against his collarbone as if deeply taken aback. “Me? Lose control over that worthless dune slide? Perish the thought!”

There was a smile back in the corner of Tibs’s mouth, little more than a shriveled curl, but that was the best Detan could hope for.

“Now, let’s go make use of these tickets, eh?” Detan ventured a grin.

“Tickets?”

“Check your interior breast pocket, my good man.”

Tibs poked one finger into the fine linen, then hit him with another surly glare. They were fine tickets, he’d snuck a peek while changing. Thick paper with Thratia’s name in big, embossed letters. There was no way Tibs could miss it.

“You expect me to believe you did all that for tickets?”

“Well, and the clothes. I did promise you a feast tonight.”

Tibs scowled. “And is there a reason you couldn’t have just filched them when you were busy rummaging through their pockets on the walkway?”

Detan pulled open the breast of his jacket to display the inner pocket where the ticket was stowed and gestured to the oversized bone button holding it shut.

“They were kept behind buttons, Tibs. Buttons! Sweet sands, but I hate buttons.”

Tibs sighed as he turned to go. “You really are terrible at this,” he muttered under his breath. Detan smiled to himself as he followed his old friend out into the deepening dark.