Misol eyed Ripka, rolled something around in her mouth and then spat black fluid on the grey rocks. “Naw. Just wanted to have a chat with the new bird. You can have her back, now.”
“Well la-tee-da, aren’t you generous. This is real work these gophers are doing, you know. Puts food on your plate, too.”
“Calm your shit,” Misol said, her knuckles going pale as paper against the grip of her spear.
“Want me to tell Warden Radu you’ve been chatting with the scruff when they should be working?”
“Go ahead. Tell him.” Misol smirked at the guard’s flustered expression, winked once at Ripka, and then strolled off back toward the building.
“What a bitch,” the guard muttered.
“I finished my row,” Ripka said, hoping a little good news might ease her captor’s mood.
“Congratulations. Now you got fifty more to do.”
“Fifty? There aren’t even that many in this field.”
“Ain’t the only field on the island, is it? Line back up with the others, no dallying.”
Ripka rolled her shoulders to ease their ache, then glanced back toward the tree Misol had appeared from behind. Wasn’t much to hide behind, there. It was a glorified stick, no wider around than Ripka’s thigh. Misol had been a skinny thing, sure, but not even she could blend so completely with the landscape. Ripka should have noticed her.
“Hurry up!” the guard yelled. Ripka trudged back to work, mind a mess of possibilities.
Chapter Nine
Detan was beginning to think that he’d grown too old for this kind of nonsense, when he rounded a corner and confirmed the fact. Sitting smack in the middle of the lane, cross-legged and drooping with boredom, was a girl of about thirteen. Her round face puckered upon sighting them, as if they were expected. Detan grabbed a hold of Tibs’s coat to keep him from trampling the little thing. Sometimes Detan suspected Tibs’s legs were too long for the man to see the ground.
“Finally,” the girl said. The word was cut in twain by a yawn large enough to make a rockcat jealous. “Thought I’d be here all night, waiting for you two idiots to turn the right way.”
“Begging your pardon, miss,” he stammered between panting breaths, “but we are in a spot of a hurry.”
Shouts echoed behind them, entirely too close.
“And doing a poor job of evasion.” The girl stood in one fluid movement and flexed her bare feet against the stone road. Her sandy hair was a mess of wind-tousled curls, her cheeks puckered with the redness of too long spent in the wind. Trousers, bare feet, running amok in the city in the middle of the night looking like she’d swooped in out of the sky. Pieces clicked into place in Detan’s overheated mind.
“You’re one of Pelkaia’s.”
She gave him a slow, sarcastic round of applause. “They warned me you were clever. Now hurry, before that big brain of yours gets staved in by your new friends.”
“Cheeky kid.”
“You do bring out the best in people,” Tibs said.
The girl took off without another word, slipping along the streets as if she’d been born to them. With a synchronized roll of the shoulders they ran after her, throwing their fate in her small hands and hoping Pelkaia didn’t have it out for them too badly. He recalled how long and hard Pelkaia could hold a grudge, and amended his thoughts. Best not to trust – best to have an eye out for another opening, if that woman was in the mix.
After running what felt like half the night away, but was probably only a mere quarter-mark, the shouts behind them disappeared into the usual mutter and bustle of a city at night. Detan had no idea where they’d ended up – every building in this sea-spit city looked the same – but he didn’t rightly care as long as he wasn’t in imminent danger of a beating.
They staggered to a stop. Tibs and Detan panted while the girl crossed her arms and eyed them, bored now that the threat had passed.
“You two geezers having heart attacks?”
Detan mock-gasped and clutched his chest. “Oh, the cruelty of the young and snot-nosed wounds me so.”
“Ugh,” she said, with all the indignity a teenager was capable of mustering. “You do think you’re clever. Pity.” The girl rose to her toes to peer over his shoulder, and frowned. “More pity, looks like we really did lose them.”
Detan’s brows shot up. “You wanted a fight?”
She shrugged. “Just a little one.”
“Who in the black skies are you?”
She rolled her eyes, turned down a side lane, and vanished in a cloud of mist.
“What in the…”
He scurried after her. The mist felt cool to his skin, sticky with the brine of the sea. He waved his hands through it, tangling his fingers in the smoky wisps. A tingle begged for attention at the edge of his senses. Sel. He scratched the inside crook of his elbow.
She’d made sel look like smoke and melded it with the mist to cover her escape. He stood silent, trying to ignore the pounding of his heart in his ears, but couldn’t hear her footsteps pattering anywhere nearby.
“Creepy kid,” he muttered.
“One of Pelkaia’s, what’d you expect? Now what’d you go and lose our grains for?”
“Ever the miser. Come along, I think I see the Larkspur’s new facade over yonder, which means the flier is close by.”
Detan explained what he’d learned as they plodded along the mist-slick street toward the dock. A fretful wind rolled in off the sea, kicking up dirt and detritus in equal measure. When they drew within sight of the dock’s building, they sought shelter in the leeway of a nondescript brown building to talk through their next steps. Tibs rested his back against the alley wall to look over Detan’s shoulder while Detan watched over Tibs’s. Just because they’d left their pursuers behind didn’t mean they weren’t likely to stumble across someone who’d recognized them.
Detan had made that mistake before. He hunched his shoulders, flipping up his collar to hide the house sigil seared into the flesh at the back of his neck. His hair was long enough to hide it now, but in this wind he didn’t trust to that particular method.
“I suppose you got something good after all,” Tibs admitted when Detan had finished relaying the information he’d squeezed from the guards.
“A little more faith from you, I think, is in order.” He grinned as Tibs rolled his eyes so hard all he could see were the whites of them. “Though the news that the Remnant’s been housing rogue sensitives is a worry.”
“Could be a hook for Pelkaia.”
Detan grimaced. “Could be a hindrance, too. Sauntering in to break out three souls is a bit different than liberating a whole wing of high-priority prisoners.” A stray gust carried the scent of seared fish marinated in some sort of citrus. The hollow in Detan’s belly, alleviated by only a few sips of that nasty ale, rumbled.
“Did you happen to win any grains?” he asked. “I could use a bite or ten. I can’t believe Pelkaia didn’t even treat us to tea. Quite rude of her, after we’d gone to all that trouble to arrange a visit.”
“She never struck me as one inclined to hospitality.”
“Dangers of living your life under a shifting sea of faces, you never know where your manners will come from.”
“Don’t think it works that way.”
“I’m afraid I’m too starved to think straight on the matter.” Detan scowled at the empty alley, all its heaps and piles of rubbish looking decidedly inedible. He kicked the ground, dislodging a pebble, just to show the city how annoyed he was with its shameful lack of provisions.
“There’s food on the flier,” Tibs said.