Detan’s brows shot up. “You work for the empress?”
“Shut your mouth,” Grumps said.
“Bah.” Greybeard waved Pelkaia and Detan away with a flick of his hand. “Who cares what they hear? Once Tek takes their ship they won’t be telling anyone about this, will they?”
What warmth the fire imparted to his tired skin fled in a flash. They were being held as potential hostages for Tibs and Jeffin. Nothing else. Which meant that the crew left aboard the Larkspur was unlikely to leave it. Whatever Tek concocted to lure them off the ship, Tibs would see through it in an instant. So they were on their own out here. Just Pelkaia, her tired crew, and a couple of pits-battered watchers. Maybe he hadn’t seen anything important in that shadow after all.
Pelkaia stiffened beside him, more than likely coming to the same conclusion. Detan surveyed the state of the watchers. Across the fire, the captain looked hale enough, and by the glower shoving his slate brows down Detan guessed he’d figured out what their future looked like, too. The two watchers tied next to their captain were in a worse state, lolling against each other and generally having a hard time keeping their eyes open. A watcher on the other side of Pelkaia looked like she might be able to get to her feet, but that was about it.
The rest of the crew was exhausted, heads sagging. They may have had the greater numbers, but he doubted they could get the upper hand. If they’d had the strength, they would have fought back when their captors made them leave the most grievously injured of the watchers behind on the beach.
Greybeard shuffled back to his post, and while his back was turned Pelkaia met Detan’s gaze. Her eyes were blood-shot, her temple swollen and purple, her lips tinged with blue from the cold. The sea had plastered her hair to her head, and the warmth of the fire had fluffed it out again. She looked like a wild thing. A creature risen straight out of the thick brush all around them. Wild or not, there was a question in her glance, a slight tip of the chin and raise of the brow that he recognized all too welclass="underline" ready? she was asking him.
He shrugged. Whatever she had planned, he wasn’t going to be more ready for it anytime soon.
“Coss,” she said. Just that. Just his name. But that’s all it took.
Detan’s world turned inside out.
His ears popped, his head spun. Detan swayed, disoriented. People around him shouted things. He had no idea what they were.
“Honding. Focus.” Pelkaia’s voice was in his ear, her shoulder shoved up against his. He’d slumped into her, nestled his cheek against her collarbone. He jerked up, startled. What in the pits had Coss done?
Above the fire an amorphous blob distorted the air, a place of unreality as tall as his arm was long and wide as his waist. It shimmered, then split, each half hurtling toward Greybeard and Grumps respectively. Sel. Out of a dark, empty sky.
Greybeard drew his arm back, taking aim at Coss, ready to throw his knife. Detan’s stomach lurched. It was them, or everyone else. Maybe all of the above, if he couldn’t rein his strength in. Exhaustion swelled through him, threatened to drain away even the weapon of his anger. He breathed deep, watched Greybeard bring his hand back and cock his wrist as if from a faraway place, as if everything in the world were slow but Detan.
Coss slammed the sel blobs into Greybeard and Grumps. The blobs were too big. Detan’d burn them all.
Greybeard leaned forward, oblivious of the real threat behind him, and his hand angled as he prepared to throw. Coss could not move out of the way in time. Not trussed up like that. He was dead already, if Greybeard threw.
Detan let his anger go.
He was warm and he was wet again and he didn’t know why. His ears rang, a soft tin hiss that wouldn’t let him go. He shook his head, struggled to stand, swayed and put a hand down, realized his wrists had been freed. He blinked, saw grey smudges in his eyelids and blinked again. Pelkaia took his arm and eased him back down to a seat on a log. When did he get a log?
Her cheek was smattered with blood, her hair too, and she stared so hard into his eyes he squirmed from the pressure. “What happened?” he asked.
She opened her mouth, closed it, and shook her head. “You tell me.”
Behind her, the watchers and crew members were cutting their bonds with Greybeard’s knife, grime faces spattered with blood like it’d been coming down with the rain. He scowled, rubbed at his temples, and took his hands away to find them wet with blood too. He stared at his reddened fingers, at the speckled faces of the others. Realized with a sharp start why he didn’t see Greybeard and Grumps anymore. So much sel. So little flesh.
The fire had blown out, but a single tree burned merrily enough, its silvery bark letting off a noxious, acrid smoke. Detan grimaced, reached to rub his sore eyes, and thought better of it.
“Find the other three,” Pelkaia was giving orders to her crew. Orders the watchers appeared more than willing to follow. “Don’t parley.”
Determined nods all around. Of course. They wouldn’t want word of this little display leaking out. Detan shivered and lowered his head into his hands, not caring that he smeared his face and hair with another’s blood.
“Honding?” Pelkaia crouched before him, gripped both his wrists in her hands and moved his palms gently away from his face. They were alone now. There was real concern in her eyes, concern so motherly he almost laughed at it.
“I’m uninjured,” he said. Not all right. Not fine. Just uninjured. She seemed to take his meaning, and nodded.
“How long?” she asked.
It took him awhile, but understanding came. “Aransa.”
“The sky?” she pressed.
He swallowed, and nodded.
She sighed and shifted to sit next to him, keeping one hand locked around his forearm as if she were afraid he would blink out of existence if she let go.
“Tibs warned me,” he said. “Warned me I was losing it.”
“You think you’re losing control?” She shook her head. “You’re wrong.”
“That little display not evidence enough for you?”
She pursed her lips, mulling something over. “Think. Think back. What’s changed since Aransa? What really?”
“The sky. I set the sky on fire. It was too much. It…” He cleared his throat. “It opened a door.”
“No.”
“No? No? You’re not in my head, Pelkaia, though pits know you’re trying to be. You’ve no idea what I feel when I try to push it back. No idea how good it feels when I finally let go.”
The rustling of leaves and the heavy thuds of a scuffle echoed back to them over the steady patter of the rain and the howl of the winds and the crackling of the burning tree. He wiped his bloodied hands on his knees and tried to ignore it all. Tried to bring his world in so that all that mattered was the warmth of the fire and Pelkaia’s presence, a grounding weight at his side.
“Think harder,” she said. “Burning the sky was something you’ve always been capable of. The Century Gates, your pipeline at the Hond Steading selium mines. They’re all evidence of your ability, reaching back long before you ever set foot in Aransa. The sky is not what’s changed you.”
“Then why do my small uses spiral out of control? If I’m so unchanged, why does every attempt at deviant power I make go haywire?”
“I never said you were unchanged.”
He scratched the inside of his elbow. “Then what? What the fuck is wrong with me?”
“Nothing’s wrong, either. You still know all your calming techniques, all your meditations, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, thinking back to the small meditations that Pelkaia had taught him on the deck of the Larkspur during the days they were all licking their wounds from Aransa.