“I’d rather not chat with you at all. Just what are you doing back in Aransa?”
That was… odd. Detan frowned, squinting at Ripka’s face. With timid care he extended his senses, feeling for the presence of selium about her. It was there, but faint, hardly worth remarking on, and his abilities were so unreliable that he could just as easily be picking up on the phantom of Thratia’s ship – or any other source of selium nearby. Pinpointing tiny caches of the stuff had never been his specialty.
He tried to conjure up the memory of the way he’d seen her in the morning. Sandy hair pulled back? Yep. Grey eyes looking mighty pissed? Still got ’em. Forehead good for headbutting? Flat and affirmative. Had she had those freckles this morning?
Nope.
He poked her in the face. Nothing changed, save her expression getting darker.
“Have you lost your mind, Honding?”
Detan choked on a laugh. “No more than usual. Fancy a drink?”
“Just stay out of trouble. I have enough worries without you getting tangled up in things.”
“So I’ve heard.”
She stepped close enough for him to scent the cactus-flower extract she wore, mingled with the greasy tinge of her blade oil, and narrowed her eyes. “What have you heard?”
“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all.” He gave her his winning smile, and even this Ripka seemed to hate it, which was something of a relief. “Just old nanny-gossip, you know the type. Oh, look, there’s Tibal! Tibs! Tibs old chum!”
He waved at him, but Tibs was busy chatting with a rather lovely woman in a low-backed dress. She had her back to Detan’s view, and Tibs shot him a glower over her shoulder. He didn’t seem too pleased with the lady’s company, but Detan figured anything would be a sight more pleasant than getting pinned down by Ripka Leshe. The real one, at any rate.
“Pleasure to see you again, watch captain. Have a good evening! Enjoy the party!”
He wiggled away from under her stern eye, feeling it bore a hole through him as he sauntered with affected nonchalance toward Tibs. He felt those eyes peel away and slumped with relief. He needed more time to work out an angle before he could let the real Ripka know that they were plotting to steal Thratia’s ship together. Doppels really knew how to throw a spanner in the works.
A few steps away from Tibs, and that’s when it hit him. The tall woman who was wagging in Tibs’s ear was the Lady Halva Erst. Detan recalled, with mounting horror, the iron straight edge of her back and worse, the cutting barbs that often left her lips. No wonder poor Tibs looked so sour-faced.
Three years. He couldn’t believe it’d already been three years since he last saw the stern side of her jaw, lifted in hatred as he skimped out at their engagement party. It had been regretful that matters were forced to progress to that point, but Detan had needed a foot-in at the Erst estate to pinch old Daddy Erst’s atlas. A singular work, that atlas.
Finest he’d ever used, and his aunt couldn’t have been cheerier when he gave it to her for her birthday. She did, after all, loathe the Ersts and all they stood for. Which he found odd, considering they were just a family of sel diviners, but he wasn’t fool enough to ever question his auntie’s taste.
Tibs seemed to be doing a good job of extricating himself from the lady. He had made it damned near to the drink table, and Detan well knew the fair lady couldn’t stomach being in the presence of a drunk. Realizing he was not at this party to socialize, he tipped his hat in apology to Tibs and slunk off toward the back of the balcony in search of the airship’s moorings. He was, after all, a professional. And there was work to be done.
Chapter 11
Ripka went in search of another drink. She was not technically on duty tonight, this was a personal appearance, and yet she still felt strange pouring herself out a deep red draught while wearing her blues. Oh, to the pits with it.
She let the mulled almond flavor wash down her throat until the glass was empty. Maybe, if she were drunk enough, then she could do as Banch suggested and force some answers out of the woman they’d captured at the warehouse. That damned smuggler had proven taciturn at best, not even giving up her name.
Without the information rattling around in that woman’s walled-off mind, there was no way to say for certain who those weapons were for, or where they were coming from. The papers had been empty of house seals, signatures carefully obscured, and the honey liqueur could only be traced back to the stone wall of the Mercer’s Collective. None of them were willing to throw their fellows to the Watch, lest it start a chain reaction, and Ripka couldn’t even be sure that the owner of those bottles knew of the deadly cargo hidden beneath them.
Ripka snorted to herself. She’d done her fair share of damage in a fighting ring, but if she ever got drunk enough to be party to torture, she’d more likely fall flat on her face the moment she stepped in the woman’s cell. At least they still had the sensitive man. He was holding out, but he sweated so much every time Ripka interrogated him they had to supply him with a change of clothes after each encounter. It was, she hoped, only a matter of time.
At least she’d managed to scour that honey-crap out of her hair.
With a sigh, she reached for the bottle again, and found Tibal handing it to her. “Looks like you be needin’ this, captain.”
She set her glass down a touch too fast and had to grab at it to keep it from tipping over. “I’m quite finished Tibal, thank you.”
“Suit yourself.”
Her nose wrinkled with distaste as he took a draw straight from the bottle. At least he looked cleaner than the last time she had seen him, though whatever ablutions he’d attempted for the party had failed to pry the axle grease from his fingernails. “Neither of you should be here, you know.”
“Got nowhere else to be at the present. What about yourself? You don’t strike me as the fete-going type, and Thratia’s got enough muscle here that she doesn’t need the Watch. Surely you’ve got your own business to be about.”
Her jaw clenched, clamping down words too sharp and raw to let loose. Phantoms of her own little apartment rose in her mind, the too-clean living room and the spotless hearth, its cookstone as fresh as the day she’d bought it. The only foodstuff she owned was a bottle of wine, as dark as the one Tibal drew from now.
“Just why do you hang around with that lout, anyway?” she said, forcing her voice to aloofness, though that proved difficult when her lips felt thick and numb. Damn Thratia and her unwatered wine. Or just damn Thratia all together. “He’s a liar and a thief, a bad man any way you look at him. You have talent, Tibal, you’re a damn fine mechanic and a dutiful soul. I remember offering you a job, once–”
“Answer’s no, captain. I got a job.”
“What you do is not a job, it’s survival.”
“All jobs are about surviving, just on different levels. Like the city here.” He shrugged and drank deep. “Look now, I owe a great deal to that man and I won’t have you poison my mind against him. You’re better than that.”
She crossed her arms and tried to look stern, but the flush of wine was in her cheeks and she knew she just looked surly. “And just what is it that you owe him? Did he lock you into some sort of commitment?”
Tibal took another draw and then set the bottle down with care. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and his hand on his trouser leg, his eyes narrowed and sharp as flint. She was too tired to deal with any of this tonight. The doppel was out there still. Or worse, in here. She didn’t need Detan and his partner… manservant… mechanic? What was he? No matter, she didn’t need them demanding her attention.