For just a breath, Detan went very, very still. Of all the petty bullshit he’d encountered over the years, this self-imposed division of allegiance speared deepest. Who in the fiery pits was Jeffin – wretched, weak-willed Jeffin – to denigrate this woman for her blood? She was deviant. End of fucking story.
For the first time in a long, long while, a cold stone of rage metamorphosed in his heart, in his belly. More than just the little ticks of annoyance and impatience he’d been so easily shunting aside. The icy fingers of it extend out from his core, threaded through him, steeled him for what was to come.
Voice like gravel, he said, “She’s not like us?”
“No!” Jeffin barked, too tied up in his own anger to sense Detan’s burgeoning rage. “She’s a pits-cursed monster!”
Detan heard, as if from a great distance, Tibs take a sharp breath. And then his focus narrowed, encompassing only the inflamed face of the man before him, the tipping point of all his frustrations.
“Am I a monster?” he asked, voice smooth as silk, though it sounded far away to him. Dreamy.
Jeffin’s hand dropped, his pale brows pushed together in confusion. “No, that’s… You’re Scorched! Like the rest of us.”
He stepped forward. Jeffin stepped back. A woman’s voice murmured, but all Detan could hear was Tibs say hush.
“Scorched, am I?” He held up his hands between them, turning them over so Jeffin could get a good, long look at his heritage-darkened skin, his Valathean-long fingers. “Who the fuck do you think I am? I am, by blood, an honest-to-skies lord of your hated empire. That make me a monster?”
“No! I said you were–”
Detan surged forward, grabbed Jeffin by the lapels of his false commodore’s coat and rammed his back against the cabin’s wall so hard the mirror jumped. A woman screamed, someone clapped with glee, and somewhere in the distance he heard Tibs yell sirra! but he didn’t care. He was going to squeeze some pits-cursed sense out of this grubby lout Pelkaia had scavenged up.
Jeffin squawked, a wheeze of air squeezed from his throat. Detan lifted him, lifted him so that his stupid little brown boots could no longer touch the floor. With his forearm bracing Jeffin against the wall, he slammed his free fist into the wall beside the lad’s head. Grinned as he squealed with fright. Grinned at the satisfying crack of the wood.
“Listen to me, you dripping shit. Purebred Valatheans ain’t the only monsters roaming this sun-slapped continent, understand? Weren’t Valatheans who turned me over to the whitecoats, weren’t just Valatheans who jeered at Aransa’s walls while deviants were forced to walk the killing heat of the Black Wash. The empire sets the rules, but it ain’t imperial blood that enforces them, it’s superstition and hate and fear. We deviant sensitives got enough people to call us monsters without doing it to ourselves.”
“I never meant–”
Detan squeezed.
“I know what you meant. You meant she was different. Meant she hadn’t grown up chasing sandrats for supper, or crushing palm leaves for a drink.”
His vision narrowed, seeing only Jeffin’s red face, growing redder from fear and lack of air. Saw the sweat on his brow, the frantic twitching of his gaze as he searched for someone to save him. Jeffin wasn’t sorry about what he’d said. Was only sorry it’d bit him in the ass. Even if he did apologize to Laella, he’d never mean it. Not really.
A tremble began beneath Detan’s skin, a tingle like the wind before the crack of lightning. He went rigid. White stars crept to the edges of his vision as his barriers broke, as his sense of the world expanded – came to encompass the great swathes of sel wreathing the ship, hiding it. Keeping all aboard it safe.
There was so much. And it would be so easy.
If Jeffin wouldn’t atone, then…
“I’ll show you a monster.”
A woman gasped. “We’re losing the mirrors! The sel’s just… It’s disappearing!”
Running outside the cabin. Shouts. It didn’t matter. Punishing Jeffin – that mattered.
“Detan, no!” Tibs yelled.
Not sirra, not Honding. Tibs had called him Detan. Had sounded afraid when he said it.
With a pained growl Detan tore away from Jeffin, let him fall to the hard ground without a care. He pivoted, yanked the cabin door open and bolted out onto the deck, elbowing aside startled deviants who came running at the shouts.
He ran until his chest hit the Larkspur’s rail and gripped it so hard the wood groaned, his bones creaked. He gasped cold night air, sucked it down to drive back the heat of his anger, trying to submerge the rage.
No use.
Whirlwinds of sel thrashed around him, sparkling and flashing, ribbons like lashes speeding faster and faster, attracted by his anger. Craving his destruction.
Shouts echoed to him – Tibs keeping the startled crew back – but the words were little more than a low fizz below the roar of the winds the sel-storm kicked up. He could not hold.
Could not take them all out with him.
Roaring defiance, he threw his hands toward the sky and called upon every ounce of skill he’d used as a selium miner, utilizing the motion of his body combined with his will, to direct where he wanted to the sel to flow. It carved up, damned near leapt with joy, spiraling into the cloud-strewn sky.
He could not wait any longer, could only pray he’d pushed what he’d gathered far enough away. Anger poured through him, boiled through his veins, arced along his extended sel-sense until it reached the whipping strands of selium and then rended them, tore the effervescent gas apart molecule by molecule.
The sky burst with flame. Clouds ignited in shades of blood and gold. Heat washed over him, kissed the top sail. Someone screamed fire and he heard the scramble of the crew as they went for the water buckets, the smothering tarps. He didn’t look. Couldn’t turn away until it’d all burned out and the sky returned to the dark-ash of the night.
He’d contained it, somehow. Kept it away from the buoyancy sacks in the belly of the ship. Kept maybe half the mirror-ring safe. That’d have to be enough.
When his rage had burned through he turned, arms shaky, forehead crested with sweat. The crew stared at him, the only movement a lazy tendril of smoke winding up from the top mast where a fire had gotten started and been promptly squashed. Eyes he did not know, wide with fear and awe and, just maybe, something like respect, pinned him down. Demanded answers.
He never had any.
“Laella.” He pointed to the woman, her face slack with shock. He had no time to assuage her worries. They needed to get out of here before watchers showed up to investigate his conflagration. “Get that coat off Jeffin and practice your best commodore impersonation. The rest of you, get this ship looking like something a Fleetie would be proud of. We’re going to go break your captain out, and then we’re going to rescue my friends. Understand?”
Nervous nods all around.
“Go!” he yelled, and they scattered like dropped grains.
Tibs slipped up beside him, pressed a water cup into his hand. “Not the method I would have chosen.”
Detan’s laughter was frantic, shuddering. He only stayed on his feet because Tibs held the back of his upper arm, propping him up so that no one could see how badly he needed the support. So much for not being a monster.
Chapter Twenty