The warden himself sat hunched behind his desk, beady eyes screwed up tight and a tighter scowl on his lips.
“Commodore,” he said, “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”
Well shit. Pelkaia scoffed, buying herself time to figure out a proper response, and Detan prayed to the clear skies that her acting skills hadn’t grown rusty. He caught Tibs’s eye and raised a brow, wondering if they should try to cause a distraction. The warden answered his question for him.
“I have had no progress in rooting out our imperial underminers, if that’s what you’re here about.” The warden’s voice was raw with defensiveness, and he shot an annoyed glance at the guard who’d led them to him. “Or didn’t you notice I currently have my hands quite full? The inmates have been anxious, despite our efforts to keep them subdued. Mudleaf isn’t enough to calm a nervous heart in these circumstances, despite your insistence. A mouse knows when it’s caged next to a lion.”
Detan’s mind reeled. That was all very interesting – if completely without context to him. Thratia had a deal with the warden. Made sense. Thratia wanted the inmates calmed because... lions? Gods below the dunes, but he wished he could find Ripka and New Chum and ask them what in the pits was going on around here. Pitsdamn Thratia, that woman had longer fingers than a willow tree stretched on a torturer’s rack.
“It’s not your progress I’m here about,” Pelkaia said, keeping her voice tight and clipped. A good move, that. Detan would give her a big ole round of applause if he wasn’t playing the part of a docile prisoner. Though he was dying to find out what the agreement was between those two spiders, she didn’t know enough to step out onto that particular stretch of quicksand, and they’d be in it up to their necks in no time if she tried.
“I see.” The warden’s pursed lips got even thinner. Detan caught himself wondering how a man wound up that tight could ever take a shit, then chased the thought away with a revolted shiver. Curiosity wasn’t always a winning state of mind. “Have you brought two to add to your menagerie then?”
Silence all around. Detan stared straight ahead at the wall, not daring to catch anyone’s eye lest he give away the fear racing through his veins like cold iron. Menagerie.
All that sel, in all that empty space. The guards’ rumors... Didn’t take a whole lot of thinking to draw some real stark conclusions from the facts at hand.
Pelkaia had to clear her throat to smooth a rasp from it. “Yes. Of course.”
“Very well.” The warden waved them off with a flick of his wrist. “Though I warn you again that this is madness. You won’t find what you’re looking for in my population, and the more freaks you drag out here the more wound up my cattle gets, even if they don’t quite know what’s making their skin itch.” He glared out the window, lips hitching up in a curl of disgust. “Makes my skin itch.”
He eyed Detan and Tibs then, as if seeing them for the first time. At least Detan no longer had to fake shock and horror at his current predicament. “Bringing them out here yourself, I bet these two are more dangerous than most.”
“You could say that,” Pelkaia said a little too quickly.
“Well, go on then. You know the way, and as you can see I’ve a lot on my hands at the moment.”
“I require your man here to lead the way.” Pelkaia tipped her chin toward the one who’d brought them this far. “With a riot happening, I’d like to keep someone to hand who knows all the pathways.”
He snorted. “Forgot the path you picked already? Typical. Go, then. I’ll send word when I’ve rooted out our little problem for good.” The warden glanced at a strange, silvery curl of bark on his desk and his disgust returned anew. Did the man have a botany problem? Odd thing to be concerned about, with half your prison breaking anything they could get their hands on – heads not excluded.
As the guard led them out into the hall Pelkaia dropped back, hissing low against his ear. “Now what?”
“We’ve got to see it through. We’ve got to get them out.”
“Might be more ‘them’ than we intended,” Tibs murmured low enough for them to hear.
Detan shivered. What in the black skies was Thratia up to on this forsaken hunk of rock?
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ripka marked the doors they passed, struggling to orient herself as Misol set a brisk pace through the labyrinthine corridors of the Remnant. Constructing the pathways so that they were difficult to follow helped stem the possibility of complete mutiny, but irritation at the prison’s designers still rankled her. It was one thing to design against an uprising. This was madness. How the guards, untrained as they appeared to be, kept track of where they were at any given time baffled her. It was no wonder Nouli had managed to hide out within their walls for so long.
Misol skirted the edges of the prison and by extension the rec yard at its heart. Each time they drew near an exterior-facing wall she could hear the muffled shouts and thumps and thuds of a riot spun out of control. Ripka cringed. She was the cause of that madness – never mind that Radu had set her up for it – and she’d walked out and left it to fester.
“There’s nothing you could have done,” Enard said.
“Am I so transparent?”
He quirked a tight smile. “I know you.”
“Hush,” Misol advised tartly. “It’s not all friends running through these walls, understand?”
She did. The guard staff of the Remnant was split along loyalties – Nouli had made that clear enough – and the division made it all but impossible for Radu to lead, even if he had been inclined to actually better the conditions of his charges.
Ripka stared hard at Misol’s back. To whom did she answer? Not Radu, that was clear enough. And yet Misol’s name had not so much as twitched an eyelid on neither Nouli nor Kisser, making her unlikely to owe her allegiance to the empire.
“Who–” Ripka began, but Misol waved a hand to shush her.
The next door opened to the bright sky. Ripka brought up a hand to shade her eyes. The sun wasn’t as bright as it had been in Aransa, but after the innards of the Remnant it stung her eyes to tears all the same. Misol gave the area a perfunctory check, then took off at a sharp angle toward the yellowhouse. Ripka’s skin tingled, sensing answers close at hand.
She probably should have been afraid, or at least wary, but the lure of solving a mystery was sunk too deep in her heart. She acknowledged the fear that should be there, and strode off after Misol. Honey hummed softly under her breath, swinging her arms in wide arcs at her side. Definitely should be afraid, she mused. And yet she wasn’t. The end result of too much time spent roaming around with Detan, no doubt.
“Captain,” Enard whispered, laying a hand on her shoulder. “Look.”
He tipped his head to the side, and she stopped cold. Anchored to the roof of the prison’s administrative building was the Larkspur.
Not some other ship, gussied up to resemble the infamous craft. Not swaddled in layers of obscuring selium, as Detan had postulated it would be.
The real thing. Whole, gleaming. Its accordion wings folded at its sides, its hull bearing a few scratches, but nothing to diminish its beauty. The Larkspur. Here.
Detan had come along after all, and they were nowhere near ready for him.
“Huh,” Misol murmured. She stopped a few steps ahead, shifting the spear cradled against her shoulder as if it chaffed. “Looks like she got it back. Good. Didn’t expect her so soon, though.”
“You…” Ripka cleared a hitch from her throat. “…work for Thratia Ganal?”
Misol scoffed. “Not directly.” She turned back toward the yellowhouse and set off again. “I’m just another worker bee in her hive.”
And yet someone Radu feared. Ripka’s mind drew connections between facts as if she were working a case back in Aransa. Misol worked for Thratia, and yet Radu deferred to her, sweated in her presence. The shimmer about the house. That same sheen she’d seen when Misol opened the door in the rec yard. Ripka’s mind had
been too crowded with fear and pain to realize what it meant. What Misol’d used to signal her. Not a trick of the eyes, then. Not her desperation making her hallucinate.
Doppel.
The word clotted on her tongue, her skin itched with the desire to flee. Something was amiss here. Something she hadn’t counted on. Something Detan and the others were walking into, right now, all unknowing. She shared a look with Enard, could see worry crinkling the corners of his eyes.
“You’ll be safe enough here,” Misol said and reached out to open the door to the yellowhouse.
Ripka didn’t want this mystery solved any more. She knew enough to know she should run. Run like the pits were opening up beneath her. But she walked through the door anyway, trailing Enard and Honey in her wake.
Dust swirled in the sunlight filtering through half-shuttered windows, gleaming like fairy dust. Like sel.
And a woman in a long, white, coat turned to smile at her.
“Good evening, Captain Leshe. This is an unexpected pleasure.”
The voice was older, deepened by the lengthening of the girl’s throat as she’d grown. Grown tall and thin, though the hint of hips pushed at the rectangle her coat was trying to make her into. The girl – she must be thirteen or fourteen, now – wore her chestnut hair up high on the back of her head, wisps escaping to give her a harried look. The look of a young woman who worked hard, long hours. Ripka had no doubt of that. She’d only met her once, and briefly, but that girl’s name was burned into her mind. Seared there by the fear Detan’s voice had carried when he’d spoken it.
“The pleasure’s mine, Aella Ward,” she lied, hoping to keep things congenial until she could find her footing again.
They locked gazes, smiling at one another with all their teeth. Misol didn’t seem to notice the tension.
“You know her?” Misol said. “She’s the one I was telling you about. The one that could see the strangeness in the house and kept coming back to it.”
“Ah,” Aella clucked her tongue against her teeth. “I am afraid you were mistaken, Misol. Captain Leshe’s keen perception is well known to me, but I am quite certain she does not possess sel sense of any kind.”
Ripka suppressed a flinch, understanding the ice in Aella’s tone. It’d been Callia’s mistake, Aella’s adopted mother, to assume Ripka possessed sel sense. To presume that she could make Ripka ill with it, and that presumption had allowed Ripka to crack her over the head with a wrench. Ripka never had found out if the woman had survived that encounter. Ripka’d left her breathing, but that was all she knew for certain. When Detan had told her later what they’d done to him… Breathing might have been more than she deserved.
“Why are you here, Aella?”
The girl smiled, showing some of the youth hidden in the roundness of her cheeks. “I could ask the same of you, Leshe. I know you well enough to know you did nothing so untoward as to actually deserve that costume you’re wearing.”
Before Ripka could respond, a soft ruffling of cloth drew her attention. The sound emitted from behind a broad desk, and the soft hiss of chainlinks followed.
“Ah, she’s awake.” Aella turned toward the desk and held one hand out low. “Come say hello to our guest.”
A dark grey hand slipped into Aella’s, its fingers knobby with bulging knuckles and thick veins. Misol glanced away, fidgeting with the leather wrap on her spearshaft. Ripka braced herself. Anything that could unsettle the doppel was bound to be poor news for her.
A rickety woman half crawled, hunched over and trembling in a robe of sky blue silk, from behind the desk. Steel-grey hair fell over the sides of her face, hiding her expression, and the knobs of her spine poked up against the fabric that covered her. She straightened herself as best she could, little more than a stunted hunch, and peered at Ripka through fringed bangs.
Ripka’s breath caught.
“Callia?”
The withered woman made a soft sound and cocked her head to the side. Ripka tried to keep the shock – the revulsion – off her face, but knew she did not succeed. “What... What happened to her?
Aella rolled a small shoulder and gave Callia’s hand a gentle squeeze. A length of glittering chain passed from Callia’s hand into Aella’s, its terminus somewhere amongst Callia’s shaggy hair. “Her mind was damaged by your blow. Halfway through our journey across the Darkling Sea she mixed up her medicines and poisoned herself. Such a tragedy. I did not know enough to ensure her survival, so we raced back to the Scorched and threw ourselves upon Thratia’s generosity.”
“I see,” Ripka said, gut clenching. “And I suppose your shifting allegiance is a result of admiration for Thratia’s... generosity.”
Aella beamed at her. “I knew you’d understand. How could I return to my old masters after Thratia went out of her way so? She did all she could, but I could not return Callia to Valathea in this state. It would shame her. And so here we remain, doing what work we may.”
Ripka could almost see Aella’s triumph, burning bright behind too-sharp eyes. Ripka knew damned well Callia would have received no trumpeted glory upon her return to Valathea. Her failure to capture both Detan and Pelkaia would have ruined her standing within the order of the whitecoats and, by proxy, undermine Aella.
Ripka wondered how long Aella had waited before switching her adopted mother’s medicines for poison. How long she’d pretended to be distraught before hitting upon the “sudden” inspiration to turn back to Aransa and throw herself at Thratia’s feet.
There were plenty of cities between the Darkling Sea and Aransa. Plenty of apothiks skipped over so that she could ask Thratia directly for aid. Ripka wondered if that were the point. If having sought help at a coastal city would have left Callia too hale, too willing to point a finger Aella’s way.
“Thratia is capable of mercy, when so moved to it,” Ripka said, hoping her tone implied agreement with Aella’s actions. She needed to get out of here. Needed to grab Nouli by the scruff and run as quick as she could toward the Larkspur.
“Speaking of,” Misol said, and Ripka almost screamed just to cause a distraction. She should have thought to drag the conversation away from all mention of Thratia. “The Larkspur has put in over by Radu’s office. We should get a visit from the commodore shortly.”
Aella’s icy gaze snapped to Ripka and froze, holding her, hunger burning behind her too-small pupils. Ripka forced herself to keep her face smooth, impassive, but knew that forced calm would tell Aella as much as full-on panic would.
“Is it now?” the girl asked Misol, but did not so much as glance away from Ripka. “You’re certain it’s the Larkspur?”
“No mistaking a ship like that.” Misol grabbed Ripka’s shoulder and started to steer her around. “I’ll take this lot back to their cells, then. Don’t want the commodore finding any normals kicking around here, eh?”
“I think not.” Aella’s voice was a crisp slap.
Misol froze. “No?”
“No.”
Misol shrugged and dropped Ripka’s shoulder. “Whatever suits you.”
Aella cradled Callia’s chin in one hand. “Go and fetch us some wine.” Her words were tight, precise. She placed the other end of Callia’s leash back into her hand and waved her off. The skeletal woman shuffled away toward a door at the end of the room, surprisingly quick and smooth of movement for one so worn.
Ripka forced herself to keep a small, ambivalent smile on her face as Aella turned back to her. The girl beamed. “I can’t wait to welcome our new guests.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Detan and his motley entourage were led through the twisting corridors of the Remnant and out into the open air. Cold wind raised prickles over his skin. He tried to convince himself that all those prickles were due to the chill. Wasn’t fear at all. Not for Detan Honding. But he’d never been very good at convincing himself of anything at all.
They followed a narrow, packed dirt path through scrub trees and a few rows of carefully tended crops. G
reat heads of wheat and corn bowed to the winds rolling in off the sea. He couldn’t help but be a little jealous of the variety of foods the inmates had access too. He hadn’t had a good roasted cob of corn in years, not since his auntie had some flown in for his twelfth year celebration. Wasn’t much arable land out by Hond Steading proper. Most of their food came from the coastal farming towns a day’s flight to the north. Yet another way Thratia could cripple Hond Steading.
Detan forced himself to focus. He was here for New Chum and Ripka, sure, but he was here for his auntie, too. Here for her whole city, and that meant seeing this straight through to the end. No running, no failing. He had to get all his happy charges, plus one Nouli Bern, bundled up safe on the Larkspur and make like a monsoon wind for the mainland.
Right, he told himself. He’d been in worse spots. And, sure as the pits were black, he couldn’t allow himself to panic. Not now, not with that great looming mass of selium they were approaching calling out to him on the periphery of his senses.
A small, yellowstone house sat at the end of their chosen path, right smack in the shadow of that giant sheet of sel. He couldn’t see the gas, but he could sense its presence above – ominous, looming. As if it were watching him and daring him every step he took. Daring him to reach for it. To mold together with it. To release its potential.
He stared at the house ahead, refusing to so much as glance at the false, pleasant blue of the sky above. Pelkaia rolled her shoulders uncomfortably, twitched at the ends of the bandana that hid her hair. Sweat stained the collar of her tunic.
“Ugly little place,” Tibs remarked, snapping him out of his mounting anxiety.
“Saying you want to move in?”
“Naw. I think it’d suit you better.”
“Quiet,” Pelkaia-Thratia said, because she couldn’t be seen letting her prisoners chat out their fear right under her nose. He was grateful she let them slip in what little they got. Tibs’s barbs always gave him a sense of calm. Of normalcy.
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