It was unlike any ship he’d ever had the pleasure of setting his boots on before. Sure, he’d seen some mighty fine vessels pass through nearby airspace. Vessels bigger, vessels more ornately adorned. But this craft, this ship Thratia had named Larkspur was, to his mind, the perfect ship. She was streamlined, her body the shape and size of the old sailing ships that had first brought the Hondings across the seas to the Scorched. The only mars to its clean lines were the subtle, accordion protrusions of stabilizing wings. Folded in for now, they were easy to overlook.
He brushed a hand along the fine-grained wood of the railing, marveling at the simple fact that he couldn’t place the species of tree. Detan knelt, gathered up a length from a coil of silk-soft rope, tugged on it and found it stronger than any normal rope had a right to be. This was new. This ship was something special.
“It’s funny, but I don’t recall placing any Hondings on my guest list.”
Detan startled from his contemplation of the fine materials and jerked upright. He turned to find Thratia at his side, close enough to gut him if she felt inclined. Detan swallowed. One never knew just where Thratia’s inclinations lay.
She was a dangerous woman, this exiled commodore of Valathea, yet she looked positively delicate in the long linen skirts of her fellow desert creatures, her hair tied up with ornamental jewels. But Detan saw the sharpened points of her jewel pins, the long slit of her skirt under which she wore martial tights and leather boots in place of silken slippers. Thratia stood with her hands clasped behind her back, shoulders straight and squared. Though Valathean stock ran dark by nature, Thratia’s flesh was deep as the night. She was all muscle and teeth, a fiercely beautiful creature, and Detan admired her in the same way he’d admire a rockcat getting ready to tear his face off.
“Commodore Throatslitter,” he said and snapped a salute.
She grinned. It was not a pleasant experience. “I stopped being a commodore the moment I set sail for the Scorched.”
“And the Throatslitter?”
She shrugged. “We all do what we must to thrive.”
“And what makes you thrive, Thratia?”
Her smile was coy as she took a step toward him. He held his ground, though he felt he’d be considerably more comfortable if he were to leap from the edge of the ship.
“You digress and distract, Honding. You will tell me why you are here, and how.”
He sighed. There was just no dissembling with a woman like that. “My flier’s sacks tore on my way over the Fireline, then I heard about your lovely ship and decided to have a look-see.” He patted the handrail. “I’m glad I did, she’s beautiful.”
“Yes, she is.” Thratia cast a loving eye over the whole of her craft. “But you did not tell me the how of it.”
“Oh, well.” He cleared his throat. “I fell over your garden wall.”
She laughed, and it was worse than her grinning. “You’re an entertaining man, but you come with your own reputation. If I find you near my ship again I will regretfully decide that your continued existence is no longer conducive to my ability to thrive. Understood?”
“Funny, you still talk like a commodore.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “You are but a small distraction, Lord Honding, and I use small things as stepping stones to greater glories. No matter if they are crushed beneath my heel in the process.”
Detan was starting to wish he was better at keeping his mouth shut when a commotion at the entrance drew Thratia’s attention away. There was Ripka, pits bless her, striding across the walkway with two young lads in their official blues flanking her. Thratia’s lip curled and she spat over the railing of the ship. Somehow, she managed to make even spitting look delicate and controlled.
While Thratia and Ripka locked eyes and lifted chins, Detan gave a surreptitious kick to the coil of rope tied to the railing. It slithered off without drawing notice. Another option for him to draw upon later.
“Watch Captain Leshe, this is a surprise.” Thratia’s tone made it clear it wasn’t a pleasant one. Detan was just working out how best to drift back and escape the notice of either of those two dirt devils when damned Ripka pointed a finger straight at him.
“Pardon the interruption, Thratia, but I am obliged to take that man into custody.”
“So soon?” The commodore smirked. “He’s only been in town a day.”
A chill prickled Detan’s back – how did Thratia know that?
“Apparently that was all the time he needed to get into trouble. Come with me please, Honding.”
Detan glanced between Ripka, Thratia, and back again. Thratia seemed amused, and Ripka just a touch bored, which was really insulting. “Hey, now, hold on a tick, what is it I’ve done?”
“We’ll discuss your charges at the station.”
The watchers strode up the gangplank. He had half a mind to make a run for it, to leap into the abyss and trust to his luck, or just bolt straight through them. Neither option was likely to result in him coming through with all his bits intact. So he acquiesced, allowing his wrists to be bound behind his back. No burlap sack over the head this time, which he took as a good sign.
“Take him through the servant’s exit, please. I’d rather not have him paraded through the celebration.” Thratia waved her hand toward the opposite side of the dock where a narrow door stood without a single lantern nearby to light it.
“Not wasting oil on the servants, eh?” Detan said.
“They function fine without it. I trust you won’t trip.” She smiled, patted him on the cheek with one chilled palm, and sauntered back across the deck to entertain her guests.
“Easy now,” one of the watchers said as he grabbed Detan’s shoulder and steered him back down the gangplank.
“I’m always easy,” he quipped, but his heart wasn’t in it.
The way Ripka moved wasn’t right. Sure, she carried herself with the sort of self-assured confidence only a uniform could muster, but there was something relaxed about it. Something swaying. Ripka normally had the body language of a cave bear: guarded, wary, but still certain she was the biggest bad in the room. A sort of lock-step manner.
This Ripka, who strolled along beside him with her freckled chin tipped up and a smile plastered on her face as if she knew a joke no one else did, was too smooth. Too sure. Entirely too likable. This Ripka, he decided, was not Ripka. He kept his trap shut until they had made their way down the narrow stairs, past a half-drunk set of guards playing ten tiles, and out into the anonymizing bustle of the city.
He leaned close, catching the scent of spiced vanilla oil in her hair, and grinned to himself. The real Ripka, who’d cornered him on the balcony, had been wearing cactus flower. “So, what’s your name?” he whispered.
She startled, just a touch, drawing her head back in surprise as she looked down her borrowed nose at him. “I am Watch Captain Leshe. Please try to remember it.”
“Really?”
She smiled with all her teeth. “Really.”
The so-called watch captain drifted to the back of the group, leaving behind nothing but the memory of her scent, and let her clueless companions in blue haul him along to the station house. They found him a nice cell, with mud-daub walls and a big wooden door that made a satisfying clang when they shut it on him. There wasn’t a light in his room, or a window to the outdoors, just a little portal cut in the door with iron bars shot through it. He leaned against it, pressing his face to the bars to get a better look at his surroundings. It was all in darkness, only a smudge of light from the guard’s lamp breaking up the shadows.