“Deviant power, me? What nonsense! Though I am flattered to hear you found the display convincing, it was just a harmless parlor trick. See? Smoke powder.”
He stood in the center of the gulf between the two forces and faced the watchers, his body a wall between his hands and Pelkaia’s crew. He held up a hand and snapped his fingers, feeding a sliver of anger into the sel. A bright, hot spark ignited. Detan cut off his connection to the spark, but it snaked out in all directions anyway. It lashed the air with the frantic motions of a beheaded snake, growing bright enough to send the watchers squealing and scampering.
He grimaced. Lost control. Again.
“Oops. Time to go!” He sang as he spun on his heel and grabbed the sleeve of the nearest scrubber-of-the-deck. The grubby man shook off his grip, but he followed Detan all the same. Indignant the man may be, but he had his survival instincts intact. Pelkaia gave the command to retreat and they fled as one, leaping the thick rail of the Larkspur’s deck.
With his sore, bare feet safely aboard the Larkspur’s silk-smooth deck he spun around and crowded the fore rail, hooting as the watchers recovered and dashed after them. Pelkaia vaulted the rail and stood beside him, her alien face grim. When all souls were back on board, he felt her extend her sel-sense. The massive presence of selium tucked away in the hull jerked to the side. The ship scuttled sideways, dancing out of the pursuing watchers’ reach.
Detan cursed and hugged the rail to keep from falling. Out on the spire the watchers rallied – damnably efficient folk – and scampered towards their own flier, the craft that’d brought them up to the jetty so that Detan could kiss the sands from the skies.
Not a quick ship, not compared to the sleek beauty of the Larkspur, but quick enough to get them into arrow-firing range. Detan had long ago learned never to trust his luck, nor his skin, to poor aim. Pressed against the rail, he shifted his weight back and forth in a shuffling little dance, waiting for the crew to do something. Anything.
They didn’t.
“Begging your pardon, Pelly old girl, but some sel wouldn’t go amiss right about now.”
Pelkaia raised her hand, and for one mad moment he thought she would slap him. He cringed back, and she rolled her eyes. She ripped her false face off and flung it toward the watchers. Detan scrambled to extend his much clumsier sel-sense and grab the sel, then float it over to the stone arch between the jetty’s edge and the flier’s dock. The watchers were drawing close.
Sweating something fierce, he forced the fistful of incandescent gas against the arch’s keystone and opened himself to it, venting his frustration.
For just a breath, the siren call of the sel surrounding him – more than the gas in the buoyancy sacks below – threatened to overwhelm him. A ring of sel orbited the ship, shifted to a mirror shine, a great swollen hoop ripe and ready for him to explode. A flutter of panic itched up his arm and he cut off his senses, digging his fingers into the rail so hard his nails bent backward.
Stone groaned, men cried out, and the whole thing went to the pits in a puff of dust and the flailing of blue coats running to clear the avalanche. He slumped, giving up his weight to the rail in exhaustion, too terrified to look back and see how large his conflagration had grown.
A cheer went up from the crew behind him, a good rousing tally-ho of the spirit, and he forced himself to plaster a smile back on his sweat-slick face and whirl around to take a bow. He liked to tell himself his knees didn’t wobble and his arms didn’t shake. If they did, the others were too polite to bring it up.
“With me, clown.” Talon-like fingers dug into his shoulder. Pelkaia marched him forward in a neat line, the crew’s eyes stuck to them like wool to a fine-toothed cactus. He smiled at them, and managed a few little waves, but each time he did, Pelkaia dug her nails in deeper. By the time they made it to the confines of her cabin – a space that was once his cabin – he thought his shoulder would be crushed to bits.
Though the unstable nature of ships didn’t allow for a lot of decorative leeway, Pelkaia’d done her room up in full Catari style all the same. Indigo prayer mats embroidered with crisp white stars hung from the walls, strings of beads carved from all the rock types the Scorched had to offer looped her bed rail. It seemed Pelly didn’t mind discovery of her bloodline anymore, no matter its outlawed status with Valathea. Detan wasn’t sure if that was good for his schemes or not.
He kept his trap shut, tamping down the urge to make a smart remark about being dragged straight to the bedroom, and tried to look contrite. “I am so glad you got my message!”
Her sun-bleached brows shoved together. “Your message…? Oh, oh gods above and below, the rumors–”
“Tibs is such a little gossiper.” The moment she closed her eyes in annoyance he flit his gaze around the cramped room to see if there was anything he could use to convince her to help him in his schemes. Too soon her eyes snapped back open, and he shrugged, palms out as if in offering.
“And what were you going to do if I hadn’t received your so-called message?”
“Die of shock, more than likely. You’ve created a few choice rumors of your own, you know. Stories of a black ship snaking through the night, picking up any sel-sensitives with the tiniest deviation of ability. You’re damned near a folk legend, Pelly. Say, I wonder if anyone’s written a song about you? Something stompy, with a banjo. Oh! I bet–”
“Shut up.”
He did.
“What do you want, Honding?”
“A long, fulfilling life. Possibly a chilled drink and one of those pastries with cactus pear jelly in the center. Do you have any?”
“Honding!”
He ducked his head to fake being chagrinned and ran one hand through his dusty, greasy hair. He had to get the contrition just right to win her to his cause. Had to measure the subtle shift of his weight to one side, as if uncertain, the soft blush of rising embarrassment, the catch of emotion in his throat. It was a real good thing Tibs had made him practice so many cursed times.
“I need your help, Pelkaia. Ripka and New Chum, they’re in trouble.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she leaned forward, interested. “What’s happened?”
“We were up in Kalisan… Sightseeing.”
“Sure you were.”
“Well, Ripka caught a rumor from some old watcher buddies that Kalisan’s warden was preparing to make a move on some local deviants. He’d planned on wrapping them up with a bow and handing them over to the whitecoats for a favor. Wasn’t any way we could get in touch with these deviants, understand, so we poked around a bit. Found out the old warden was right particular about a certain notebook. Ripka went for it – took New Chum with her – without telling me or Tibs and got caught.
“Rumor is, she managed to hide the book somewhere before she got brought in, but no one knows where. She and New Chum got shipped off to the Remnant prison to sweat out their worries and consider how much smoother things might be if they give the crusty old warden back his intel. We tried to intervene during the transport, but missed the chance, so, you see–”
Pelkaia held up a silencing hand. “You expect me to believe Ripka would make a move like that without assistance?”
“A lot’s changed since you skirted off with my ship,” he snapped, not needing to fake indignity. “And Ripka is her own woman. Just because she’s taken berth on my flier doesn’t mean she tells me every cursed thing.”