He ignored their bruises. Their bloodied lips and black eyes. The filth and blood staining their jumpsuits. If he didn’t… Well, it was just better that he saved that information to give due consideration later. When there wasn’t a vaporous cloud calling his name above his head.
“Right,” he said and clapped his hands together, donning his smile like a mask. “It is such a pleasure to see what a lovely young woman you’ve grown into, Aella! Though I must confess I do not believe white becomes you.”
He strolled round the room as he spoke, drawing everyone’s eyes, trying to keep them looking, guessing, trying to figure out how he was going to salvage this mess.
“And you, Callia.” He paused before the withered woman, pointedly ignoring the thin silver chain hanging from a collar around her neck. A perverse shock of pleasure rocked him, made his smile genuine. “You look as lovely without as you are within.”
“Enough.” Aella’s voice lacked the snap of her predecessor’s, but her exasperation was just as cutting. “Misol, secure the building.”
The lanky woman with the spear shot Pelkaia-Thratia a wary glance, but shrugged and angled for a doorway. Going for assistance, Detan realized. Going to gather up all her sister spears and hem them in with pointy edges. Pelkaia’s fists clenched and unclenched at her sides, a hatred deeper than anything Detan’d ever felt burning bright behind her borrowed eyes.
He had Ripka, New Chum, Pelkaia, and Coss. Tibs, too, could be handy with a wrench if pressed to it. Aella was outnumbered now. She wouldn’t be again. There would be no other opportunity.
“You are such a thoughtful host.” Detan sidled up to Callia and took the wine carafe from her trembling fingers. With a flourish he plucked a cup from the neat desk and began to pour.
“Tell me,” he said, keeping his gaze on Aella, not daring to look at either Ripka or New Chum lest he give away his intent. “Do you have my package?”
“I can collect it in a moment,” Ripka answered, crisp and efficient, while Aella’s eyebrows knotted in confusion.
Ah. Well then. What she needed was a distraction. He was good at those. It was cleaning up the mess afterward that’d always proved his problem.
“Be a dear and fetch it, hmm?”
He dashed the cup of wine in Aella’s smug little face.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
A good plan, Detan had taught her, functioned on three founding principles: it must be followed, it must be trusted, and it must be thrown straight out the window when it inevitably goes to the pits.
She ran like her ass was on fire, only vaguely aware of the shouts behind her. Detan knew what he was doing. He must. She just had to get Nouli. If he proved reluctant, then she’d knock him on the head and drag him out. If Kisser was in her way, she’d knock her on the head and drag her out, too.
She brushed past the woman who must be Pelkaia, skin crawling all the same as she touched the likeness of Thratia. Honey darted in front of her, blonde mop of hair glowing in the sunlight as she flung the door open. The three of them spilled out into the breezy day, the weather cool and pleasant and bright, cheerfully ignorant of all Ripka’s plans evaporating before her eyes. Her heels skidded in the dirt outside the yellowhouse’s door. Enard grabbed her arm, steadying her.
His expression was calm, controlled. Willing to do whatever needed doing next. Would have made her a fine deputy, had circumstances turned out very differently.
“What now?” he asked.
Shouts and clangs and grunts sounded behind her. She pretended not to notice. Detan had given her a task. She knew how to perform her duty.
“We need Nouli.”
“Kisser’s uncle?” Honey asked.
“You know him?”
She toyed with the ends of her hair, gaze tracking some sea bird as if it were the most fascinating thing in all the world. She was bored, Ripka realized. Bored and looking for some new challenge – or more than likely for someone new to kill. “Met him once. Don’t know where he is.”
Ripka eyed the path back to the prison, laying a map in her mind over what she saw. They weren’t far from where Nouli’s workshop should be, but then, there was no telling what would happen if they re-entered those hallways. They could get lost. They could be captured. And while Honey was itching for another bloodbath, Ripka had no stomach for it.
Enard cleared his throat.
“I’m thinking,” she snapped.
“Had you, perhaps, considered the grate against the wall?” His tone was gentle, but still held a rebuke. She’d been too tangled up in the strange doors and labyrinthine pathways. She’d let the complexity of the situation blind her, when the solution was so simple. Nouli’s venting window had been covered with a grate, a rather obvious addition to any stone wall. They just had to find it.
“Clockwise or counter?” she asked.
“I’ve always been fond of widdershins.” Enard grinned down at her, his sweat-slicked hair swooped over to one side. She would have chuckled if she weren’t so very aware of the shouts of battle behind her.
“Let’s go.”
They cut across the fields, ignoring the possibility of detection from above. Things were moving too quickly, and she could hear hints of the riot raging within the prison’s choking arms. The guards would, hopefully, be too busy to pay the fields any mind. And if they weren’t – well, Honey was more than willing to deal with them.
Each time they passed a window that could not be Nouli’s, a lump of dread hardened in Ripka’s heart. How long had they been away from the yellowhouse, from whatever nightmare battle raged within? She had no doubt that Pelkaia could handle herself in a fight, and that lackey of hers had stood with the stance of one who’d seen one too many rows, but Detan and Tibs weren’t prepared for this. She wondered how much sel Aella had tucked away in that house, and just how angry and scared Detan might actually be, and forced herself to move faster.
“Captain,” Enard said from somewhere behind her, the question in his voice strained by lack of breath. She paused halfway up a hill, and was shocked to realize how far ahead she’d run. Enard and Honey approached the base of the hill, their faces red from exertion.
“What?” she asked, voice thready from lack of air.
“Look around.”
The hill she stood atop was one of a handful arranged to form a narrow valley in the fields. There was nothing natural about their placement. The humps were too regular, the spacing almost perfect. And while the contents of the valley could not be seen from anywhere below the hills – and what inmate ever had reason to climb them? – the crop was obvious to her now. Hip-high shrubs laden with dark, black-brown leaves bowed in the wind, the sun making their glossy foliage gleam like an oil slick. Though the valley funneled most of the wind out toward the sea, Ripka could scent the sun-warmed leaves. The sticky tar aroma of mudleaf.
So here was Radu’s cash crop, carefully tended alongside the food crops. She had never been so desirous of a flint to strike in all her life.
“Oh,” was all Honey said as she came to stand alongside her.
As the scent of the mudleaf plants wafted up to her, Ripka recalled with sudden clarity the faint aroma of mudleaf in Nouli’s laboratory, and she choked back a laugh. Of course he wasn’t a user of that rival drug. He’d never risk slowing his already damaged mind. No, he’d just had his workshop placed near the one place the fewest inmates on the Remnant would be allowed to go.