“Of course, but I haven’t a clue how much berthage that posh dock Pelkaia dropped us at costs, and I doubt the lady paid our fare – no, I’m sure she didn’t. We got lucky sneaking on the first time to grab my shoes, I doubt we’ll be so lucky again. I suppose we could scout another card house, play some local roughs for real gain.”
“Or,” Tibs drawled, reaching into his rumpled grey coat, “we could bribe the dock porter. Did some digging of my own. Turns out his favorite brew is Rinton Red.”
From within the voluminous confines of his coat Tibs produced a dark green bottle two hands tall, with a smudged brown label proclaiming the aforementioned vintage.
Detan stared, open-mouthed, until the dust on the wind demonstrated the benefits of keeping his mouth closed. “What… I mean… When? How? When did you get that? Never saw you leave, and I sure as the pits know you weren’t toting it around with you before.”
Tibs waved a hand through the air and pushed off from the wall, ambling toward the docks with a nonchalant stroll. “I’m not the only one who can lose at cards.”
“What does that even mean? How’d you get it, Tibs? Come on, spill!”
“Nope.”
“Nope? Nope? You can’t answer a question like that with nope. We’re partners. Fess up.”
“Man’s gotta have his secrets.” Tibs tugged the brim of his singed grey hat lower. “Keep an air of mystery about himself.”
“Mystery? You? You’re the straightest nail I’ve never bent. Why, I remember when we first met–”
Tibs shushed him with a wave of the hand as they mounted the steps back to the docks. Detan forced himself to bite his tongue, focusing on the narrow wooden stairs attached to the side of the building. He wondered what the interior held. More taverns and places of business, like the one across the street, or apartments? All the narrow windows had their curtains pulled tight, their shutters locked against sea winds. The air inside had to be vile – stuffy and damp. How people could live like that, all stacked up one atop the other, he couldn’t begin to understand.
As they crested the rooftop, Tibs strolled ahead to have a talk with the porter. Detan gave him a few moments of privacy before sidling up to them, an affable smile plastered on his face.
The porter had the bottle in his hands and turned it over with strange tenderness as he licked pillowy lips. “Which one you say was yours?” he asked Tibs.
“The flier, over there.” Tibs jerked his thumb at their bird, looking mighty rickety next to the reduced grandeur of the Larkspur. Happy Birthday Virra! was painted in pristine purple paint on the side of the buoyancy sack. They’d taken turns refreshing the color every other moonturn.
The porter raised both eyebrows. “And which one of you is Virra, then?”
“He is,” they said in unison.
With a world-weary sigh the porter stuffed the bottle into an oversized pocket and hooked his thumbs in the loops of his trousers. “I suppose berth for such a small vessel won’t amount to much. You in for a day or two?”
“Two, maybe more. We overstay our welcome, another gift’ll be in order,” Tibs said.
The porter chewed this around, cheeks bulging as he poked his tongue against the interior of them, then nodded, subconsciously giving his bottle a pat. “Go on then. And don’t cause no trouble.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Detan said with a chipper wink.
Tibs grabbed his sleeve and tugged him away from the narrowing eyes of the porter. They scrambled aboard in silence, checked the deck for stowaways, then exchanged a questioning glance. It was time to go below.
With an exaggerated yawn and catlike stretch for anyone who might have been watching, Detan entered the cabin sticking up dead center of the flier’s deck, Tibs close on his heels. With a practiced flick of the wrist Tibs threw the lock on the door behind him, and they stood a moment in silence, listening.
Nothing but the wind.
Whistling a chipper tune, Detan dragged one of the limp mattresses they kept for show to the side of the cabin and flipped up the disguised wooden latch on the trapdoor hidden beneath. He hauled it up, grabbed a lantern for light, and shimmied down the narrow ladder.
While the deck and cabin of the flier were modest in their accoutrements, Tibs and Detan had shoved everything they owned of value down into the smuggler’s hold in the keel of their flat-bellied ship. Barrels of booze, a stash of false grain making equipment, luxurious mattresses, all their clothes.
And, apparently, Pelkaia.
She sat on the edge of Detan’s mattress, his favorite silken pillow resting on her knees, a knife that was most certainly not his resting on top of that. She wore her own face, and the dune-smooth lines of her Catari heritage unsettled him. She was of the people his family had inadvertently uprooted, all those years ago when they’d sailed on ancient sea ships in search of better farming and had discovered the Scorched – and the selium – instead.
The simple fact that a people already called this sun-blasted continent home had not stopped the Valathean advance. In some ways, he suspected it’d encouraged them. Valatheans had always been keen on a fight.
“Coulda just knocked,” he said, stepping aside so that Tibs could drop down from the ladder beside him.
“I’m here to offer you assistance, Honding.”
“Ah, well, I hope it’s not with redecorating…”
He cringed as she tossed the pillow to the floor. Fine silk like that shouldn’t be abused so. As she stood, he watched the way she held her knife, low but loose, not preparing for a fight. Her open stance and pursed lips eased the tension between his shoulder blades. Her pointed glance toward the curtained-off section Ripka had used to sleep in brought the tension right back.
“I will help you recover Watch-captain Leshe and your wayward friend. But first…” Pelkaia glanced to the knife in her hand, and he had no idea what to make of the decisive nod she gave herself.
“You’re going to have to help me with a little side project.”
Detan swallowed. “I’m listening.”
Chapter Ten
By the time the dinner bell rolled around, Ripka was ready to eat her own arm – or the raw grain growing around her. The midday meal had been little more than stale water and staler bread, eaten under the paltry shade of a knobby old tree. Her newfound crew trudged back down the path to the prison, rendered silent by exhaustion. Ripka was perversely glad she wasn’t the only one hurting. She’d always counted herself in good shape – she’d had to be to maintain her post as the watch-captain of Aransa – but this was too much. Hours spent bent over, scraping dirt in the sun, was enough to break the spirit of anyone.
Which was precisely why the guards made the inmates do it. Despite her aches, she saw the cleverness in their system. Good behavior got you out where you could taste a hint of freedom, but it also got you so worn down you couldn’t start a fight even if you were itching to pop off. It kept people in line, too, that their food source was tied directly to their work. Ripka held no illusions as to who would be fed first if the island crops failed and the monsoons kept airship delivery at bay. It was, she realized, the only system on the Remnant she’d been impressed by.
They were pat down before they were allowed back in the hallway, pat down again after they’d deposited their buckets stuffed with tools, and then let loose. They wandered in a droopy clump toward the long tables where stale rolls and fruit-pocked mush were being handed out.
“By the blue skies, if I weren’t so cursed hungry I’d swear off eating bread ever again,” Clink said.