“Long time,” she said, after the silence had grown too wide.
“Mmhm,” he said.
She fidgeted with the frayed hems of her sleeves. Didn’t he have anything to say to her after all of this? After all she’d been through on behalf of their mutual scheme?
“Where’s Honding?”
He spat over the rail, shoved his hat on, and stomped off back toward the cabins. Ungrateful man. No matter what spat had brewed between Tibs and Detan this time, he could at least answer her with words instead of bodily fluids. Ripka stared out across the fading Remnant, too choked with questions to give voice to any particular one.
Chapter Forty-Four
Aella had given Detan a room to share with the man he’d been chained to when Callia’d held him captive, because she’d thought it was funny. Old friends reunited, but this time free of locks, she’d said, winking, and he’d wanted to vomit all over her pretty little slippers to show her what he thought of that particular notion.
But he’d smiled, and made nice with the old man, and told himself again and again this was the best course. He was doing this for a reason. Not just for his own control, but for his Aunt, for Ripka, and… and Tibs, too, if he’d ever come around to believing a word he said again.
Even with the layer of sel gone to hide the Larkspur, he’d grown too anxious beneath that low, stone roof, craving nothing but the sky and the stars and the wind above his head. And so he’d left, wending his way across the island, testing the length of his new leash. Aella’d let him wander all the way down to the shore, to a crumbling cliffside with a scrap of a wall left from what had once been a lookout post, and didn’t send anyone looking for him.
She wasn’t worried about him. That galled him more than anything.
He leaned against the wall, rested his arms over the top of it, and stared at the sky until his eyes watered. Not tears. Not exactly. He’d have plenty of time for those, later. This was something like penance. A taste of the pain he knew he deserved for what he’d said to Tibs. A taste of the pain for never getting the chance to say what he wanted to Ripka.
He stared, and his eyes dried out, and they watered again. The cold seeped into his knees, his chest. If he merged with the stone, joined with rock and myth as a statue grown here on the island, he wouldn’t have minded. Then maybe someone might take pleasure from his life someday, reading the fairytale of the Remnant’s stone man. Or a dog would come along and piss on his leg.
He shook his head. Ripka would whip him bloody for being so melancholy. He had to gather himself. To get ready to fight a war of a different flavor than Pelkaia desired.
Aella stepped behind him, a waif of a shadow thrown over his shoulder. Small as she was, that shadow felt heavy across his back.
“This is a long way from the yellowhouse,” she said.
“Wanted to see how far you’d let me go. How far that trust of yours extended.”
“You presume I trust you, Honding?”
He traced the path the Larkspur had taken away from him, clinging to the faint evidence of its passage in the smearing of the clouds, and allowed himself a tight smile.
“You presume your trust matters?”
She scoffed and stepped beside him, laying her hands on the crumbling stone top of the wall. “You are in my power now. Even you must see that.”
His laugh started out as a low rasp, then mounted to a raving roar. He knew he must sound mad – wondered if indeed he had finally cracked – but found little point in caring. When his laughter had subsided to hiccupping chuckles, he wiped the wet from the corners of his eyes and faced her. Her small face was slack, eyes wide with surprise.
She would never believe he had been turned, not really. Would never believe he’d constrained his spirit, bent himself to another’s will. And so if he could not fake docility, he would have to fake madness. Flaunt arrogance. It was not so far a stretch.
“I have knelt for greater masters than you, and risen whole,” he said, voice rising as he warmed to the task. “I have stood in the mouth of a firemount constrained by my greatest fear and still, still I stole from you everything I sought to take. Even now I stand before you beaten, and yet you cannot see behind the captivity – cannot see that while you crow your triumph I have stolen the most valuable mind in all the world from beneath your stunted nose.”
“What do you mea–”
“Be quiet! Your ignorance does not compel me, nor do your threats. I have been trading my freedom for victory the whole of my sorry life. Gloat, if you will. Toast with your cursed sycophants and send glowing words back home to your master. But do not, not for a single beat of your blackening heart, think you ever hold power over me. Your triumph is temporary. I have stolen the sky from you and yours, stolen the bread from your mouths and the heart-knot of your scheming. Do you think I cannot take a city from you? A continent? A future?”
She ruffed her hair with her fingers, and his heart panged with how young she looked. “Your honesty endangers you, Honding.”
“Oh, Aella. I will be honest with you. And still I will win.”
“You are without your friends here, be reasonable.”
“Tell me, do you truly believe that my being without my friends makes you safer?”
She was quiet for a while, staring at the clouds through which the Larkspur had left. Though her cheeks were still rounded with youth, and her build slight and willowy, she held her experiences around her shoulders like a cloak. Wrapped herself in the cruel details of her past. When she spoke again her voice was quiet, smooth. It was the most honest tone he’d yet to hear from her.
“I will not crow victory at you, as you say. Instead, I will ask you a single question, Lord Honding.” Her hand disappeared within the folds of her white coat. She pulled something small, something gleaming, from her pocket. It clinked as she set it on the top of the stretch of wall between them. She pulled her hand away.
A single syringe lay on the grey stone. Its steel tip glinted in the faint starlight. The smoky-red liquid within shimmered, swirling with its own currents. He’d know it anywhere. The same fluid that Callia had injected him with in Aransa, opening him up to greater power and greater shame. The same fluid that would, if Callia were to be believed, enslave him to be near selium at all times. A leash, tied to his blood. One that’d been tugging at him, quietly, since he’d first tasted it near on a year ago now.
He licked his lips, and could not take his eyes from it.
“This is your price. This is what it costs, to learn from me without imprisonment.”
“That wasn’t a question,” he rasped.
She lifted the syringe. Held it poised. Ready. Extended her hand for his arm. “Some questions do not require words.”
Detan Honding knelt.
Acknowledgments
While the mad rush of drafting a novel is an inherently solitary act, this story wouldn’t exist without the advice and support of a great many wonderful people.
First and foremost, thank you to my long-time writing group, Earl T Roske, EA Foley, and Trish Henry, for your always insightful critiques. And, of course, for suffering my caffeine-hyped ramblings about plot, characterization, and worldbuilding.
Thank you to my Secret Agent, Sam Morgan, and the whole JABberwocky team for backing up this crazy thing that’s become my writing career.