“If you recall, you were contracted to steal this ship for me.” She laid a hand against the smooth wood of her cabin wall. “It was never meant for you.”
Detan snorted. “More the fool you were, thinking I’d intended to just hand it over.”
“And yet you did just hand it over.”
“Only because you’d drugged the others! What was I supposed to do? Fight you off with my back crisped like I’d taken a nap on a firepit? Pits below, Pelkaia, you’ve never given us – never given me – any choice in your games. Everyone bends to your demented agenda, or you break them. Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t leave you to rot in that cursed hole of a city. Why I didn’t let Thratia run you through.”
“Everyone always bends to my agenda?” She rose up, shoulders straightening, chin lifting, fury sparking bright in her eyes. Detan took a hesitant step back, trying to get a leash on his temper. Tibs would kick his teeth clean out if he blew this chance over a squabble.
“Pelkaia, look, I don’t want to–”
“I don’t care what you want,” she growled, fists clenched at her sides. “You come onto my ship, ask me for help, and then insult me? Maybe Ripka and New Chum got themselves arrested to relieve themselves of your company.”
“No matter what you think of me, those two deserve–”
“Deserve a better friend than you.”
A heavy tattoo pounded on the door before it was wrenched open. The sturdy man who’d freed his wrists stuck his head in and raised both brows.
“Hate to interrupt the domestics,” he said, “but it appears someone is trying to board us. Rinky little flier. Got Happy Birthday Virra! painted on the side.”
“Tibs!” Ignoring Pelkaia’s scowl, Detan pushed past the first mate and spilled out onto the deck, casting around for the flier’s familiar silhouette. It bobbed in the air off the starboard side, a collection of rather large spring-loaded harpoons pointed at it by the stable hands of the Larkspur’s crew.
“Stand down!” Detan ordered, and received nothing but blank stares and a few light chuckles. Right. Like they’d listen to him. Plastering on a fake smile, Detan sidled up as close as he could to the rail and squinted against the silvery light glinting off nearby clouds.
Tibs stood on the flier’s deck, cutting a rather obvious target, one hand cranking the wheel that powered their rear propeller while the other hand kept his hat stuck to his head. Poor sod must be wearing himself out, fighting a headwind while trying to keep up with the much larger – and faster – Larkspur.
“Stand down,” Pelkaia said, voice raw with irritation but modulated with the tones of easy command. Her crew shrugged and swung their weapons aside, lounging against the harpoon stands as if they did this sort of thing every day. Detan swallowed. Maybe they did. Maybe Pelkaia had grown far more militant than he’d guessed.
“Wave the boarding flag, Coss.”
The first mate scrambled to a canvas sack tacked against the cabin’s exterior wall and pulled out two bright red flags on stubby sticks. He flashed the semaphore for safe-to-board, and Tibs eased the flier toward the Larkspur’s sleek hull.
Pelkaia’s crew hopped to work. Although their expressions were bright with curiosity, they didn’t say a word. Their shoulders were hunched, each move made with mechanical precision. Someone threw a tie-rope across and Tibs anchored it, wiry shoulders slumping with relief now that he didn’t have to keep pace with the speedier ship.
Once secured, Tibs hauled himself up a rope ladder. The first mate and another man helped him to crest the high rail. Tibs dusted his breeches with one hand and tipped his hat brim to Pelkaia.
“Much obliged, captain.”
“A pleasure to see you, Tibal,” she said, then jerked her head to the first mate. “Show these gentlemen to a cabin, Coss. And lock the door.”
“Wait just a sands-cursed moment…” Detan began.
“We’ll drop them in Petrastad.” She turned her back on Detan while she spoke with Coss. “They can find their own way from there.”
With a sheepish grin, Coss grabbed Detan and Tibs by the upper arms and steered them midship. He opened a door to a small sleeping cabin, and shoved them inside.
“Sorry ’bout this,” Coss said, and locked the door anyway.
Tibs caught Detan’s eye and tipped his hat back. “Conversation went well, then?”
Detan grimaced. “Beautifully.”
Chapter Three
The Remnant’s newest inmates arrayed themselves in a snaking line, each and every one shivering from the cold in their thin linen jumpsuits but doing their damnedest to hide it. Ripka stood with New Chum to her right and an unknown woman to her left, squinting against the salt-laden wind that whipped her hair across her face. She’d been on the Remnant’s island for less than a day, and already she hated it.
Though the sun was just as bright as it was over the Scorched, the Endless Sea sucked up the warm rays and held them, making the beach waters balmy but the air crisp and unforgiving. For Ripka, who was used to wearing her heavy coat all over Aransa’s sun-bleached streets, the exposure to the cold made her teeth chatter.
She curled her toes in her boots, an old watcher trick to warm her feet. A little chill wasn’t going to deter her from her mission. She would find Nouli Bern. She would get him to Hond Steading before Thratia’s invading army knocked on that vulnerable city’s doors. With his engineering genius on their side, with his inside knowledge of Thratia’s methods, they could not lose. Or so she told herself.
Ripka had lost one city to Thratia’s thorny hands. Had watched as Thratia spun the city into fear and traded its residents into slavery in exchange for weapons. She would not lose another.
They waited on a balcony overlooking the rec yard, their backs to a building that was used for all the bureaucratic minutiae that went along with running a prison. Three identical buildings hemmed in the rec yard, narrow balconies banding the five stories of each.
The captain sauntered along the line of new intakes, somehow managing to peer down at every inmate, even those who were taller.
“Welcome to the Remnant,” he said when he’d made a complete pass and returned to the center. “My name is Captain Lankal, and I’ll be your director for the duration of your stay.”
Nervous chuckles all around. The only way off the Remnant was to be recalled by a Valathean court to fight for the Fleet and your freedom. That, or take a swim with the sharks surrounding the island. Both options had an equal chance of survival.
“You stand in the bird’s nest,” he continued, gesturing to the stone beneath their feet. “A balcony which all must pass through to enter, or exit, the docks that harbor airships to and from the mainland. For many of you, this will be the last time you stand upon these stones. But if you behave yourselves, and are kind to your fellow inmates and guards, you may just see this view again.”
A sober silence spread throughout those gathered, one the captain let percolate. His warnings held no sway over Ripka – she planned to quit this place before the month was out and the monsoon season came – and so she took the opportunity to glance over his shoulder to the rec yard below.
There, the prison’s population mingled. As the Remnant was never at capacity, men and women were allowed the common areas together, and the privacy of personal cells to retreat to during the night. These inmates were, it was said, the vilest scrapings of the Scorched’s bootheels. The most ruthless cutthroats, traffickers, and political prisoners. The empire’s general opinion on the matter was that if you were tough enough to deserve a sentence here, you were tough enough to weather the presence of your fellows’ company.