“It’s a fete, New Chum. Parties are for toddlers and drunk academy kids.”
“I’m afraid I don’t see the difference, sir.”
“Fancier booze.”
The steward’s smile was dangerously wide, pins drooping from the corners. “Will you be going, sir?”
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
Tibs crossed his arms and snorted. As the steward leaned downward to pull a stitch tight on the cuff of Detan’s new trousers, his shirt slipped, once more revealing the hint of a snake’s back wending its way over the steward’s shoulder. He bit his tongue, recalling Tibs’s admonishment to let the poor lad be, then said anyway, “What’s with the pet viper, New Chum?”
The poor steward jerked upright, sticking his thumb with the needle, and scurried back a step. Eyes darting, he shoved his thumb in his mouth to suck the blood – or, no, Detan realized. The man wasn’t licking his wounds, he was using the prick as an excuse to stall for time while he thought through what to say. Detan grinned.
“Come now, what’s a reptile between friends?”
New Chum straightened his collar and regained his composure so quickly it made Detan dizzy. “It is the mark of poor decisions in my past,” the steward said as he floated forward to take up the hem once more, studiously avoiding all eye contact.
“That’s a Glasseater’s mark,” Tibs drawled, and Detan watched in amazement as the steward’s shoulders drew in with shame. Detan scowled across the steward’s bent back at Tibs. Curse him and his leave-the-lad-be nonsense, he’d been holding out on Detan – had known all along the lad was sporting criminal ink.
“It’s crossed,” the steward blurted, shifting his shirt aside so they could see the thick black line running through the snake’s body. “I’m not associated with them anymore.”
“Not a friendly bunch, Glasseaters,” Detan spoke with care, watching the muscles of the steward’s back bunch with growing tension. “What do they control nowadays?” He looked at Tibs, brows raised. “Selling mudleaf?”
“And a handful of cardhouses,” Tibs amended.
“Not a lot of work there for a nice young man such as yourself.”
With a heady sigh the steward pulled the last stitch taut and rose, once more straightening his shirt and jacket. “My family–” He cleared his throat. “My family has long been in service as valets to bosses of a particular nature. I declined to continue that tradition.”
“I see. Delicate information, that. Why share it with yours truly?”
The steward shifted his gaze pointedly to Detan’s new pockets – pockets he’d been attempting to pick when he’d tipped the walkway with the noblebones on board. “It had occurred to me that you might be sympathetic to certain aspects of my past occupation. Sir.”
Detan grinned and clapped once. “I knew I liked you! What’s your name, New Chum?”
The lad actually flushed. “Enard Harwit, sir.”
“Oh. Ah. I see. Shall we stick with New Chum, then?”
“That would be acceptable.”
“Marvelous.” Detan jumped down from the dais and clapped him on the back. “You’ve been a treasure! Here you are.” He pressed some gold into his hand from the stash he’d taken out of Grandon’s lady’s pockets on the walkway. “Treat yourself, eh? And thank you for taking care of an old Honding.”
“It’s been an honor, sirs.”
Detan could tell by the gleam in his eye the poor sod really meant that. He felt a twinge of guilt, then turned on his heel and hurried out.
When he and Tibs were back on the solid rock of Aransa, the old rat gave him a sturdy punch in the arm.
“You’re a mad bastard, Honding.”
“Pits below!” He jumped and rubbed at the ache. “I was perfectly safe navigating the vents. I got a good look at them from above.”
“It’s not the vents I’m on about,” Tibs said as he marched ahead, taking the lead back into the winding ways of the city. Detan reached up to ruff his hair in frustration, then shook himself and scurried to catch up. Dusk was descending over Aransa, the purple-mottled sky making Tibs little more than a silhouette before him. He stomped with every step he took, wiry fingers curled into knobby fists at his side. Detan slowed his steps and shoved his hands in his pockets, ducking his head down like a whipped dog.
“Is it the clothes?” Detan ventured, “Because, well, I figured that–”
“Nope, that ain’t it either.”
“Er. Well…”
Tibs stopped cold, pinning Detan down with his gaze as easily as he’d drive a nail through a board. “Dame Honding is going to hang you from your toenails, using your name with just anyone like that.”
“Oh! That. Well, it is my name, Tibs.”
“You had better write her a letter, sirra, before the rumors get back.”
Detan sighed and sat down hard on the top of a low, stone fence, heedless of the dust that undoubtedly coated his backside now. “I suppose. Wouldn’t want the old badger to worry, eh?”
“I suggest you do not address it to ‘the old badger’.”
“She’d laugh!”
“She’d fly right out here and beat you with her parasol.”
Detan broke a small rock from the fence and hucked it half-heartedly at Tibs, who stepped nimbly around it. There was still a bit of stiff anger in his posture, a crease of annoyance around his eyes. Detan took a slow breath, and probed.
“Isn’t just the name, is it?”
Tibs stared at some distant point over his shoulder. “Grandon needled your temper, and your first instinct was to reach for it. You losing control?”
It. His sel-sense. Didn’t need to say the words out loud – not on the street, anyway, not where they ran the risk of being overheard. Tibs’s head tilted, his gaze skewing toward the edge of the city, toward the Smokestack, that great firemount from which Aransa mined all its selium gas. Whole lotta’ sel in the city, and not just in ships. Walkways and jewelry, booze and fairycakes. All were laced with the stuff. He could feel its ubiquitous presence, if he let himself open his senses. A grey buzz in the back of his mind, like a swarming of locusts.
It’d be one thing, if he were just hiding his sensitivity to avoid working the mines or the ships. But his own flavor of sensitivity – deviant, as the empire and its whitecoats called it – could be just as destructive as that locust swarm, if he let his temper slip.
He slammed his senses shut, forcing mental barriers into place even as he plastered a goofy smirk onto his chapped lips and laid a hand against his collarbone as if deeply taken aback. “Me? Lose control over that worthless dune slide? Perish the thought!”
There was a smile back in the corner of Tibs’s mouth, little more than a shriveled curl, but that was the best Detan could hope for.
“Now, let’s go make use of these tickets, eh?” Detan ventured a grin.
“Tickets?”
“Check your interior breast pocket, my good man.”
Tibs poked one finger into the fine linen, then hit him with another surly glare. They were fine tickets, he’d snuck a peek while changing. Thick paper with Thratia’s name in big, embossed letters. There was no way Tibs could miss it.
“You expect me to believe you did all that for tickets?”
“Well, and the clothes. I did promise you a feast tonight.”
Tibs scowled. “And is there a reason you couldn’t have just filched them when you were busy rummaging through their pockets on the walkway?”
Detan pulled open the breast of his jacket to display the inner pocket where the ticket was stowed and gestured to the oversized bone button holding it shut.
“They were kept behind buttons, Tibs. Buttons! Sweet sands, but I hate buttons.”