“Aw shit. Do you think we’ll have to send a rescue?”
“Those aren’t lost bathers.”
The figures sped up, moving with expert ease over the rough terrain. The glints she had noticed came from low about their waists, about the right place for a sword handle to rest.
Banch’s voice was very, very quiet. “Thratia’s?”
“Who else? I suppose now we know why she wants us to make the doppels walk.”
She turned away from the vista and forced herself to look at what was left of the nameless doppel. He was a brave man, and now she suspected she understood why he’d been so sure of the axe. She’d heard horror stories of Valatheans enslaving the doppels, using their desire to be close to selium to secure their loyalty. It was illegal, of course, even the imperials saw using the doppels as cruel and unsavory. But Thratia hadn’t been exiled to the Scorched Continent for being kind and cuddly.
“Come on, Banch. We’ve got to find our killer.”
Before Thratia does.
Chapter 3
The downcrust levels of Aransa were hotter than a draw on a jug of spicewine. Ripka had set Detan free just a mark or so after sunrise, and already the streets were baking. He tugged his shirt-ties loose as he wandered down the cramped streets to where he’d left Tibs with the flier, winking at ladies as he passed.
Not that there were many ladies with a capital “L” this far down in the city. The real desert flowers liked it up top where parasols and shade trees were plentiful. He figured the women down here were more fun, anyway. At least they weren’t shy with their hand gestures.
He found Tibs lying under the fronds of a reedpalm, his hat pulled down over his eyes and his back propped up against the carcass of their six-man flier. Tibs was a scrawny bastard, long of limb even when he was slouched. Last night’s clothes clung to him in disturbing pleats of grime and sweat, and his boots were beginning to separate from their soles. Hair that Detan suspected had once been a pale brown stuck up in strange angles from under his hat.
Detan crept up on him, squinting down into the shadow that hid his sun-weathered face. Tibs was breathing, slow and even, so he turned his attention to the flier.
It was long and flat, maybe a dozen and a half long paces from end to end, crafted in the style of old riverbarges. Its sel sacks, which would normally be ballooned up above it under thick rope netting, lay crumpled on the deck. Though rectangular of body, Tibs had worked up a neat little pyramidal bowsprit to make it a tad more aerodynamic, and Detan had made blasted sure that the pulley-and-fan contrivance of its navigational system was made of the best stuff he could afford. Or steal. Even its accordion-like stabilizing wings, folded in now, were webbed with leather supple and strong enough to make a fine lady’s gloves feel coarse and cheap.
Midship, right behind the helm, rose a plain-walled cabin just wide and long enough to house two curtain-partitioned sleeping quarters. It was a good show for guests, but the real living space was hidden in the flat hold between deck and keel. Though the space was not quite tall enough for Detan to stand straight within, it ran the length of the ship – a sturdy little secret placed there by the smugglers who had originally built the thing. To Detan’s eyes, it was the most beautiful thing in the whole of the world.
Unfortunately, the buoyancy sacks lay flaccid and punctured and the right rudder-prop was cracked clean off, rather ruining the effect
Detan glowered and kicked Tibs in the leg. He squawked like a dunkeet and flailed awake, knocking his hat to the black-tinged dirt.
“The pits you doing, Tibs? You haven’t even touched the old bird.”
Tibs reached for his hat and picked off a spiny leaf. “Oh I touched it all right, just couldn’t do a damn thing for it. What you think I am, a magician? The buoyancy sacks are as airtight as pumice stone and the mast is as stable as mica on edge, lemme tell you.”
“Please do tell me, old chum, because I sure as shit don’t understand your miner-man rock babble.”
The lanky man rolled his eyes as he hoisted himself to his feet, and to Detan’s never-ending consternation took his time about brushing the dust from his trouser legs. Damned funny thing, a mechanic with a fastidious streak.
“Simple-said, there’s no repairing either of the buoyancy sacks. They were half-patches long before they took this latest damage and that mast is about as stable as a– well, uh, it’s just fragile, all right?”
“Was that so hard?”
Tibs grunted and wandered over to the flier. He gave one of the sacks a nudge with his toe and shook his head, tsking. “Got no imagination, do you?”
“I got enough imagination to figure out what to do with a lippy miner.”
“I’m your mechanic.”
“Mechanic miner then.”
Detan snatched Tibs’s hat off his head and put it squarely on his own. Tibs plucked it back with a disappointed cluck of the tongue. “Tole you to bring a spare.”
“Well, I didn’t think I’d be doing barrel rolls over the Black Wash last night. Sweet sands, Tibs, what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking I’d like very much to get away from the ship shooting spears at us. Sirra.”
Detan ignored his smirk and took over his old chum’s spot under the reedpalm. He sank down onto the black dirt and tipped his head back against the tree’s rough trunk. In the shade, the breeze didn’t feel like it was trying to steal his breath away. His eyes drifted shut, his muscles unknotted.
Tibs kicked his foot.
“What?” Detan grumbled.
“You win us enough to fix her up?”
“Better.” He wrestled with his belt pouch and tossed it up to his companion. Tibs poured the contents out in his wide, flat hand, barely able to contain all the fingernail-sized grains of copper and silver. He whistled low. “Mighty fine haul, but may I ask who’s going to be hunting us down to get it back?”
“You lack faith, old friend. That there is a genuine upfront payment from Watch Captain Ripka Leshe herself.”
Tibs did not look as impressed as Detan would have liked. “Payment for what?”
“She’s hired us to steal Thratia’s lovely new airship, the Larkspur, of course. Seems the ex-commodore is getting a mite too comfortable here in Aransa, and needs to be shown her place.”
He beamed up at Tibs, relishing the slow shock that widened his eyes and parted his lips. It was good to surprise the shriveled smokeweed of a man, but it didn’t last. Tibs’s eyes narrowed and his shoulders tensed. “That doesn’t sound much like the watch captain.”
Detan frowned. “No, it doesn’t, does it? But that’s the way it’s been played to us. We just have to get a step ahead.”
Tibs sighed and cast a longing look at their downed bird. “Sounds like a mess. Maybe we should just take the money and move along. Thratia isn’t known for her forgiving nature, you know, and monsoon season’s coming. Wouldn’t want to get stuck in a sel-mining city come the rains, would we?”
Detan flinched at the thought of being stranded here, so very close to the Smokestack. All that tempting selium being pumped out from the bowels of the world no more than a ferry ride away. It was hard enough keeping his sensitivity to himself when they were in the sel-less reaches of the Scorched. Stuck in a city full of it? He’d give himself away in a single turn of the moon.