“You fight in the war, captain? I did.”
She stiffened, not liking the direction this was headed. “No. Too young. I didn’t know you served,” she said, affecting politeness. She itched to abandon Thratia’s showboating and get back to the streets. Even digging through mounds of files in search of a clue about the warehouse, or the doppel, would be more relaxing than this farce.
“I’m a grown man of Valathea, captain, ’course I served. Damned continent didn’t stay Valathean property by the grace of the blue skies, now did it? I didn’t have the favor of youth at the time. Joined with Valathea, as I was descended from them. Strange, don’t you think? My family hasn’t used Valathean names for the last three generations and still I think myself a part of them. I’m light as a Catari.” He held out an arm to the shadow-splintered light, and Ripka bit her tongue. He looked dark as wet sand to her, dark as most Valatheans. Dark as her. “Got a name like a Catari. But I don’t think of myself as such.
“Anyway. We cleaned them out, pushed ’em back into the sel-barren reaches of the Scorched. I worked on the ships, then, didn’t see any real fighting myself. Wouldn’t know what to do with the sharp end of a saber, but I could keep the killing machines going. Keep ’em raining fire from above, turning good sand to glass.” He cleared his throat, glanced around and lowered his voice.
“You know what I brought back from all that?”
Ripka licked her lips, tasting the specter of wine there, wishing her pride would let her grab for the bottle again. Valathea’s war against the native uprising had happened on the fringe of her life. She’d seen Catari refugees filtering through the Brown Wash as a girl. Wretched, beige-skinned exiles who covered themselves head to toe in brown cloth to keep the glare of the sun off. They’d never stayed long, always moving on, deeper into the desert, retreating from the resources that had once been their birthright. Rolled under the advance of Valathea.
Without the Scorched’s selium mines to keep airships moving, the empire’s commerce would grind to a halt, stymied by the unsteady seas that surrounded the imperial archipelago. It was just too bad for the Catari they happened to be here first.
“I can’t imagine,” she said, not able to help the softening of her voice. Her father had served. He hadn’t come back the same, either. Hadn’t stayed home long, once he got back, though she’d been too young to understand it at the time.
“I got a temper like a lit forge, when I’m struck just right. A vicious streak dark as the sea. You ever meet someone like that?”
“Of course, I’m a watcher. I see uncontrollable tempers all the time. I haven’t known you long, Tibal, but that’s not you. Those rabid souls are completely out of control, while you’re one of the calmest folk I’ve ever met.”
“You can thank Detan for that.”
Her face must have given her away, because he laughed. “Look,” he said, “I know it doesn’t seem right, but it’s the truth. Fact is, Detan came ’round my steading near on six years ago now looking for a light tune-up for his flier. Got it done all right, but in the meantime the old man who owned the shop I was working at said something I didn’t like and I lost it – I just… I lost it. Felt like I was back in the Catari war, and everything was fire, so it didn’t matter what burned. I think I woulda’ killed him, had Detan not come back when he did. He pulled us apart and sat me down. Tole me he knew what it was like, to walk that line of fire, that he could help. So I went with him. And he was right, captain, it has helped. Just so long as we keep moving, it helps.”
He looked up then, and she followed his gaze to see Detan staring right at them from across the room. No, it wasn’t them he was staring at, it was just Tibal. As she observed, they locked eyes and Detan raised his brows. Tibal gave a little nod and the other man grinned, going back to whatever mischief he was up to.
“You see?” he said. “We check in on each other like that. If one of us is starting to lose it we scramble, no matter what we’re into at the time.”
“You’re telling me that bumbling idiot has a fearful temper too? Sweet sands, he really should be locked up.”
“Naw, not like mine. He got a handle on his own self, but I needed his help to get a handle on mine. If I’m a lit forge, he’s the slow burn of the desert, and if either of us is a bad man, captain, it’s me.”
Something foul clicked into place in Ripka’s mind, sharp and insistent even through the fog of alcohol. “You met him after the accident on his line, the one that burned half the sel pipes at Hond Steading, didn’t you? His temper have something to do with that accident?”
Tibal’s nostrils flared. “No.” The word was snapped off, defensive, and she filed that reaction away to ruminate upon later. He refilled her drink without asking, and she downed it in one.
“You two are into something, aren’t you?” she asked to cover how unsettled she felt.
“Don’t pay a man to stay still, captain.”
He winked and shuffled off before she could press him, leaving her alone with the bottle and her thoughts. No one bothered to come up to her. Not here. Not in her blue coat with its polished brass buttons.
She sat her glass down, and picked up the bottle.
Chapter 12
Tibs, that old devil, had worked his way clear of the Lady Erst just in time to occupy Ripka. With all the malignant eyes of the house off him for the time being, Detan slunk along the balcony, scouting the entrance to the airship’s dock. When he found it, he wondered why he’d bothered with any semblance of stealth at all.
Thratia had the great double doors to her airdock thrown wide open. A couple of rough looking lads, veneered for the evening in butler’s black, lingered near the entrance, checking the tickets of everyone who passed through. Detan slipped Grandon’s ticket from Grandon’s pocket and squinted down at the elaborate script. It had the round bastard’s name on it.
He shoved it under his shirt, rubbed it against the sweat of his back, then crumpled it and stuffed it back in his pocket. Affecting a drunken stagger, he sauntered forward.
“Your ticket, sir.”
“Oh!” He swayed and patted his breast pockets, then down to his hips. Fumbling, searching, his cheeks flushed as he offered the guard an apologetic smile. “So sorry, I know it’s here somewhere… Ah!” He produced the wadded ticket, the fine paper crumpled tight enough to fit into his fist.
The guard took it and gingerly unfolded it, smoothing the battered mess against his thigh to work out some of the wrinkles. It didn’t do any good. While the tickets themselves were block-pressed, the names had been scribed in by hand. Cheap ink, and the guard squinted down at a smudge where Grandon’s name had been.
The guard glared at it, as if he could threaten the letters into making sense. Eventually, he just sighed. “Go ahead.”
Detan took his ticket back and bowed his thanks before shuffling through the door on wobbly feet. He made sure he was well out of eyesight before straightening up again.
The dance floor was the central attraction for the time being, so he found the airship’s mooring bay thin on visitors. This side of the compound opened up to the night air, and what he had glimpsed from the ferry to the Salt Baths resolved itself into grandeur. He stood on a u-shaped balcony, hanging out over the empty air high above the city. The balcony wrapped itself around the airship, the great behemoth held steady by thick ropes reaching from its deck to tie-points all along the edge of the dock.
A long gangway extended from the ship’s deck to the dock, lamp-lit and inviting. He ascended, unable to help a little tremble of excitement rippling over his skin.