“But I’d still have to see you every morning. It would spoil the whole effect.”
Despite her distaste of what these people represented, Pelkaia caught herself chuckling at their camaraderie. It would be a shame indeed if the watch captain became too much in her way. Maybe… Pelkaia chewed her lip, thinking. Maybe she could scare her off.
“Thank you for your time, ma’am,” Ripka said as Banch caught her eye and shrugged, a pre-arranged signal which must have meant he’d found nothing of import. “We’ll be in touch if we have any other questions.”
“Happy to oblige, watch captain.”
The official pair bowed their official thanks and crisp-stepped from her little living room into the street. They shut the door behind them, firm but without banging, leaving Pelkaia alone with her sel and her memories. She sighed and rubbed her temples. Unlike her knees, those did ache.
Pelkaia sprang to her feet and hurried back to her bedchamber. Opened the bag, pulled a little sel out. She perched on the low bench before her vanity, staring into the pearlescent ball hovering a hand’s width from her nose. Every possible shade, hue, and texture lay within that undulating prism of lighter-than-air fluid. Gas. No one had ever been certain just what it was, only that it worked.
She dipped her fingers into the little ball and smoothed some of it against her chin and cheek, recalling the fading freckle on the bottom of the watch captain’s chin. All the fine folk of Aransa would be at the Salt Baths by now, primping and scrubbing for the night ahead.
If only preparing herself were as simple as a soak and a brush. She needed to start now, if she were to arrive at Thratia’s fete in time.
Just a day ago, she would have turned herself in. So much can change in a day.
Chapter 6
The ferry was a narrow contraption with an open-air deck for the passengers and a closed cabin for the captain to escape his clientele within. He was a fine, proper looking captain in the sharp maroon uniform of the Imperial Fleet, with little tin and brass bars arranged up and down his broad lapels. The insignia were all nonsense, of course, but it made the gentry feel like they were getting the real airship experience.
The captain gave the ferry’s airhorn a toot and it slithered out above the abyss, sliding along two thick guy wires attached to the underside of the ship’s deck by large eyelets. The ferry itself had a middling buoyancy sack, just enough to keep its weight from bearing too much on the wires. Aransa wasn’t about to waste a full airship or its selium supply on simple civic transportation. As it toddled along, Detan spared a worried glance at the breadth of his fellow passengers. A little more sel in the sacks probably wouldn’t have gone amiss. It’d ease his nerves, at any rate.
Despite the lackluster arrangement, Detan enjoyed the opportunity to take in the view. Every landscape of the Scorched Continent was a mishmash of rock and scrag-brush, but they were all still beautiful to him. The geography of the area maintained hints of the lush tropic it had once been, before the firemounts opened their mouths and blanketed the place in death. He couldn’t imagine the verdant wonder of the past, but he could appreciate the rugged charm of the present.
The closer they drew to the firemount and its adjacent baths, the easier it was to make out the bent backs of the line-workers. Selium-sensitives, born with the ability to feel out and move small amounts of the stuff, were arranged in lines along the great pipeways that ran from the mouth of the Smokestack to the Hub. They urged raw selium gas they couldn’t even see out of the firemount and through the pipes to the Hub’s refinery.
Some of them – the shapers – could do it without moving a muscle, but most had to lean from side to side, channeling their ability through the motion of their arms. Back and forth, back and forth. A rhythmic dance of servitude all down the line. Didn’t matter who you were, if you were born sel-sensitive you worked the lines. If you were very lucky, you got to be a diviner or a ship’s pilot instead.
Detan turned away from the scene. As a young man, he had never been very lucky.
As the ferry bobbed along toward the baths, Detan put a hand on Tibs’s shoulder and turned him about to look back the way they’d come. Aransa was half shadow in the light of the sinking sun, its terraced streets winding down the face of Maron Mountain to the inky sands of the Black Wash below.
For a Scorched settlement, it was a city of impressive size. Maybe fifty thousand souls packed those streets, nothing like the sprawling island cities of Valathea, but substantial all the same. Most of the denizens were born to it now, but a few generations ago it was filled only with those who came to mine the sel, and those who came to profit off their backs. The population boom was perfect for Detan’s purposes – a man like him could pop in and out without being remembered by too many sets of eyes.
“See there?” Detan pointed to the easterly edge of the second level from the top, at a rock-built compound which spread down into the next two levels below. At its highest point a great airship was moored, sails tucked in and massive ropes reaching like spider’s legs from it to the u-shaped dock which cradled it. No buoyancy sacks were visible, though it floated calm and neutral. Just a long, sleek hull, like the sea ships of old. Stabilizing wings protruded from the sides, folded in for now. He had no doubt that airship was the Larkspur. “Looks like Thratia is going to be giving tours tonight.”
“I doubt we’ll find ourselves on that guest list.”
“Pah. Just you wait and see, old friend. Thratia’s no dunce, she’ll be wanting the company and support of such fine upstanding gentlemen as ourselves.”
“As you say.”
The ferry thunked to a stop against the Salt Baths’ port, a jetty of mud-and-stone construction sticking out like a twisted branch from the rock face. A tasteful sign hung above the entrance into the basalt cavern, claiming peace and relaxation for all who entered. From the outside, it looked like the type of crummy dive bar people like Detan were likely to turn up in.
“Thought this place was more cream than water,” he muttered.
A gentleman in a coat just wide enough to encircle his impressive orbit sniffed and looked down a long nose at him. “Well it certainly shouldn’t look it from the outside, young man. This is the Scorched, after all.” He waved an expressive hand. “Ruffians abound in these troubled skies. Wouldn’t want to advertise the place. Could you imagine? Thieves in the baths! What a terror.”
The girthy man shuddered and clasped his waif of a woman closer. Arm-in-arm they disembarked, and as the man stepped onto the dock Detan felt the ship lift just a touch.
Detan shared a look with Tibs. “Thieves in the baths?”
“A terror indeed.”
Grinning, Detan sauntered under the basalt arch with its plain sign. Once within, he found himself blinded by an expansive field of white, brilliant light. As he squinted, bringing a hand up to shade his eyes, he heard a soft chuckle beside him. He could just make out the shadow of a steward shaking his head. “My apologies, sir, but it does take a moment for the eyes to adjust. Blink slowly and keep your head down, it helps.”
Detan thought it was a damned stupid thing to do, blinding your guests, but he kept his head down and his lids pressed shut all the same. It didn’t take long for his pupils to settle down and, as he lifted his head again, his mouth opened just as wide as his eyes.
The cavern was a labyrinthine mishmash of glimmering white stone. Must have been quartz, though Detan’d be the first to admit he didn’t know sandstone from shale. Sel-supported pathways hung through the air, connecting spacious meeting areas which were suspended from a combination of sel bags and guy wires. The cavern was open to the sun up top, which was what had made it so blasted bright. Light bounced off the smooth planes of quartz – no, he squinted at the wall nearest him, that wasn’t right. He stepped closer and brushed a finger against it. The surface was slick, as if it were hungry for the wee bit of moisture in the desert air. He gave it a dubious sniff.