“You think they are?”
“You think Ripka wasn’t?”
She swallowed, catching his meaning. Watchers were just doing their jobs. Doing the best they could to keep their cities safe, never mind their masters.
“We clear?” he said.
“As these skies.”
He released her. She spat at his feet. They stared at one another, nothing in all the world except Pelkaia’s storm-grey eyes tinged with green, her skin of selium peeling in the rain, her thin lips twitching with all the foul words she held back. To put up a mirror to scare off the watchers would be to lose the sel involved in its making. That’d be it. The whole of their reserve. A fortune lost to the storm. To running. She knew it. He knew it. He didn’t dare look anywhere but at her cold, hard stare.
Detan refused to say another word. Just stood steady, and waited for the crest of her anger to break. Her cheeks twitched. She reached up to drag her fingers through wet hair.
“Won’t be any hiding the Larkspur after this,” she said.
Detan turned his back on her, gripped the smooth controls of the ship he’d planned to steal all that time ago.
“Then I suggest you practice putting on Thratia’s face.”
She stomped off, Coss trudging at her heels. Detan shut them out of his mind. Shut the howl of the wind and the cursing of the crew away. Shuttered aside the cold on his skin and the weakness suffusing his bones. Damped the white ember of rage blossoming in his chest.
When he opened his eyes again he was centered, calm. Only Tibs’s voice mattered now. Tibs’s voice, and the feel of the wind.
Tibs marked a course, and Detan began to steer around the rising storm.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The watchers were suicidal. Either that or so frothed with anger at having been played by a couple of conmen and a doppel that they couldn’t see the danger. Didn’t much matter the reason. It only mattered that, as Detan steered the bucking Larkspur through troubled winds, the watchers’ inferior craft dogged their heels.
“Are they trying to get themselves killed?” he called to Tibs above the whip of the winds.
“Are we?”
Detan grimaced and re-squared his stance, gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles went white. Maybe he was as mad as the watchers, but at least Detan figured he had a good reason. His options were limited, after all. He either turned around and got himself arrested in Petrastad, or risked the storm to reach the Remnant. Neither path had a particularly sunny outlook. He told himself he was doing it for Ripka, New Chum, and the hope of Nouli. Told himself the risk was worth it, that it’d be all right in the end.
Didn’t matter what he told himself. The storm was the storm, and every new gust threatened to cartwheel them through the clouds.
The cloud suck towered on his left, the mighty edifice of wind and rain and lightning indifferent to his struggles. Detan wrinkled his nose at it in defiance. Couldn’t ever count on the weather to have any manners. The wheel gave a shiver, just to shake his nerves up some more, and the nose of the ship jerked upward.
Someone let out an undignified squeal. The podium shuddered as a deckhand rolled into it. The wheel jerked from Detan’s hands and spun, slamming into a half-pulled chock peg. Wood cracked, split down the middle, shards scattered across the deck. He grabbed for the wheel but the ship swerved to larboard, dipping as the wheel forced the wings to bank.
His heels kissed the sky as his ass became acquainted with the deck. He swore, pain exploding in his backside, teeth jarred by the impact. Scrambling, slipping, he hauled himself half-upright and fumbled for the wheel. A gust rocked the ship, tossing him. He missed, grabbed the little cherry red wheel instead. It was tough, whoever had made it hadn’t wanted it pulled without real effort, but Detan’s weight hauled down on it as he scrambled to his feet, not realizing what he held.
The ship dropped. Hard.
“Close it off!” Tibs screeched. With a curse Detan grabbed the main wheel and yanked it over, setting the Larkspur straight again. He got his wits together enough to realize what he’d done and cranked the cherry wheel back until it wouldn’t turn anymore. Too late to do much good. He’d purged one of the buoyancy sacks. A neat trick, if a sel-sensitive were prepared for it, ready to take control of the sel and push it out with enough force to speed the ship along. But none of them had been ready for it. And now the ship was sinking.
“Jettison!” he yelled loud as he could above the winds.
Crew scrambled. Barrels of water and coils of rope and sacks of cloth were heaved to the sea. The cabin doors were yanked open, every scrap of inessential materiel thrown to the yawning black. The ship settled into an unsteady neutral. Detan shook so hard he had to set a fresh chock in the wheel to keep from vibrating them into a turn. That was too damned close.
He rose to his toes and peered over the top of the podium. A wind-whipped deckhand staggered to his feet, looking like he’d kissed the wrong end of a porcupine.
“You all right?” Detan called above the winds.
The deckhand shook his head to clear it and prodded at his newly purpled cheek. “Whole enough.” He tested the tie-line hooked to his belt that held him to the ship. “Still secured.”
“Wonderful.” Detan beamed at him. The deckhand beamed back. “Now don’t touch my fucking podium again.”
The deckhand blanched, cut an awkward head-bobbing bow, and scuttled back to whatever his position was.
“Good for the morale,” Tibs drawled.
“When being charming will wiggle us away from this storm, then I’ll put the manners back on.”
Detan wound up the starboard propeller, hoping the extra propulsion would force them to turn despite the winds. He’d rather use the stabilizing wings to ease into the turn at a gentle bank – or, pits, even the sails – but with the winds gusting he didn’t dare take the ship off a neutral attitude. If cloud cover washed over them again, he’d bet his new boots they’d be in the water before he could find the horizon again.
“West thirty degrees,” Tibs called.
The propeller’s gear wheel groaned in his hand as he heaved it around. Even the fine gear ratios of Valathean engineering had a hard time gaining traction against these winds. A gust rocked the starboard, swung up out of nowhere, and the ship slewed, drawing startled yelps all around.
Detan glanced up on instinct, and regretted it as soon as his vision cleared the podium’s top. The Larkspur’s ponderous turn kept it level, but the deck was scattered with crew who’d been knocked over by the gust, dragging themselves back to their feet. A few crew had latched themselves into the auxiliary cranks on the propellers, adding their muscle to his when the wheel he controlled signaled them to heave-to. Their extra strength was, no doubt, the only thing standing between Detan’s manipulations of the ship and the force of the storm winds.
The cloud suck loomed off the prow. Wasn’t close enough for Detan to make out much detail, thank the clear skies, but it was close enough to make his skin crawl. Crackles of lightning tore through its heart, great swathes of grey-black cloud twisting around an eye bigger than the whole of Petrastad. He couldn’t see the top of it, it reached so high. The whole of the massive system bled out into a smear of steely grey. No stars peaked through those clouds. His stomach clenched.