“Got a date, eh?”
“I can, and will, throw you off this dock.”
He held up both hands, palms out. “Fine, fine, suit yourself. But I just cannot let you be seen running about the place at all hours in a getup like that. It’s ungentlemanly.”
“Pardon me, but–” Tibal said so damned close to his ear Detan jumped half his own height and nearly went sprawling amongst the crates.
“Sweet skies, Tibs! You cannot do that to a man!”
“Apologies, but as I was saying, it may be prudent for you and the watch captain to discuss matters somewhere a bit more secure. There was a guard making a regular patrol of this door.”
Ripka half-turned and opened the door behind her a little wider. Detan peered into the shadows, and was surprised to see a slumped man leaning against the wall just outside. The man was breathing, real slow, a long line of drool wetting his twisted collar.
“Thank you, Tibal, but the discussion is over anyway,” Ripka said.
“Fiery skies it is!” Detan grabbed her by the elbow and dragged her away from the door. “Why are you here, watch captain? Specifically. And keep in mind I’m on the security detail here tonight, I got rights enough to be asking. Rights Thratia’d be pleased as punch to back up.”
“Really?” she drawled. “Thratia often keep her security personnel under guard behind locked doors?”
He scowled. “Fine. Then why don’t you just tell me out of the goodness of your lawful little heart?”
She shook off his grip and glanced about her new location, checking the shadows, but poorly. Detan grit his teeth in frustration as he watched her. All frontal assault, pride and bluster. The blue hand of justice. She had no business skulking about anywhere, let alone in Thratia’s compound.
Pits below, didn’t she know you had to let your eyes adjust to the light before you picked the shadows to check? All she was seeing was shapeless dark, but he saw the barrels and the dust bunnies. The loose floorboards and the stray ropes. A breeze picked up across the dock and Ripka folded her arms over her chest in response.
“Blasted skies, woman, you’re damn near freezing and it’s clear as quartz you don’t know a thing about sneaking.”
She sucked her lips back until they were a hair-thin line, her brows pushing together in irritation. “Look, Honding, just let me do what I came here to do. Then I’ll get you two out of here.”
Tibs slithered forward, dropping his voice into the same, smooth pitch Detan had once heard him use to calm an angry donkey. “It would perhaps help, watch captain, if you were to inform us of what exactly it is you came here to do.”
Detan stared in amazement as she gave Tibs’s question serious consideration. The same damned question he’d put to her not more than a dozen heartbeats ago. Well, he supposed it didn’t much matter how the information came to light, just so long as it did. Still, his ego ached that she would answer Tibs’s queries and not his. Maybe she was just thick and needed to be told things twice.
When she spoke it was with a drawl born of hesitation, lips turned down as if each word offended her so grievously she had no choice but to make the appropriate expression. “You are aware that Mine Master Galtro was found murdered this afternoon?”
Detan sucked air through his teeth in shock. “Sorry to hear it, captain. He was a fine man, even a lout like me saw as much.”
“Well.” She sniffed and shifted her weight. “I appreciate the sentiment, but what I need now is action. The scene of the crime looked wrong, and I’m certain there were some files missing. Since it’s clear enough you won’t stop chewing my ear unless I tell you, well, I’m here to see if Thratia’s got those files squirreled away anywhere.”
“Wrong how?”
“Honding, I really don’t have the time for this.”
“Come on, just walk me through it.”
Ripka rolled her eyes but she did it, walking him through the place with her words just as she’d done with her own sore feet. Through the front door of the Hub and there’s dead blues on the ground, laid to rest with swords and crossbows. Into the records room and the shelves have been tossed. There’s Galtro, back against the wall in a pool of his own vitals, with a poke hole in his belly. Three dead men in the room, all Thratia’s, and they’d been done in with a mix of daggers and Galtro’s sword, which she found further off than he’d ever be able to chuck it.
“Wait, now, what weapons had Thratia’s men got?”
“Swords and a crossbow.”
“I see.”
“I reckon you do. Now, if you don’t mind.”
“Hold now, captain,” Tibs said. “I am sorry to press, but there appears to be something you’re not sharing.”
“What? You want me to tell you what color pants they were all wearing? Pits below, you’ve got the thrust of it already.”
“Yes, quite, but forgive me if I’m not convinced that all that was enough to send an upstanding servant of the populace on a breaking and entering spree.”
Skies above, but Tibs was good at digging to the heart of matters. Detan watched as Ripka shifted her weight, adjusted a weapon’s strap, pressed her lips together, and then finally let loose with a puff of a sigh.
“I’m just not certain on the other thing, all right?”
“Let us examine it then, captain.”
She pursed her lips together, as if deep in thought, then shrugged. “Fine, fine. There were footprints in the blood that didn’t belong to anybody. Workman’s prints, big flopping boots with the weight all rolled down in the toes. Not to mention their eyes were all closed. You ever see four men dead all at once, and not a one left staring at nothing?”
With a grimace Detan shook his head. No, no he hadn’t. It was rare enough for one soul to keep their eyes shut crossing into the dark, most went in wide-eyed and were left wanting. Four dead with closed eyes was unheard of.
“Somebody closed ’em,” he said.
“Right. It must have been the doppel.”
“Sure.” Detan frowned down at her. “But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”
Her jaw clenched so hard he could see the sinew of her neck stand out, ready to snap. But she spoke anyway. “I gathered some… information.” There was a clot in her throat. She cleared it away. “There are weapons in the city, being handed out to Thratia’s supporters… smuggled in the bottom of crates.” Ripka’s words quickened as she warmed to the subject. “Valathean weapons, if what I saw is true of the bunch. And just how do you think she’s paying for them all? It’s not with grains. She wouldn’t dare be so obvious.”
“It’s… a trade?” Detan was unable to hide the rasp in his own throat as realization took hold.
“I have good reason to believe so. Yes. I came here looking for a paper trail, something tangible. If Thratia’s caught out selling humans, even if they’re doppels, the people won’t have her. Without them, she won’t be able to keep her hold no matter what Valathea does. And I don’t believe the empire will want to be publicly connected with her once that comes out – the slavery of doppels is illegal, even if they turn a blind eye to it when convenient. But I need evidence of her network, I need the names of everyone involved.”
She didn’t just need the doppel dead, then. Thratia was worried about a different kind of contract. He felt cold, hollow. To still the tremble in his fingers he locked eyes with Tibs, and his friend gave him a subtle nod. Trading a doppel, a live deviant sensitive of any variety, meant only one thing: whitecoats.
Valathea may not publicly hold with the live trade of sensitives, but a little slavery in the name of experimentation, of progress, wasn’t beneath them. Oh no, deviant sensitives weren’t to be suffered to live so long as they were free. But pinned to a board like a butterfly, sliced open and pieced back together again to see how they worked? How they could be used? That was all right by Valathea, just so long as it was their whitecoats doing the slicing.