And they were here. In Aransa. Had to be, if Thratia was dealing with them. He felt the shadow of that imperial cruiser he’d noticed on his way up the steps pressing down on his mind like a lead weight, pushing aside defenses he’d spent the past few years of his life building. Crumbling walls that held back darker memories, and darker urges.
Sweat sheened his skin, immediate and slick, and he spat bitter bile on the ground.
“Honding?” There was a soft edge to Ripka’s voice, a note of gentle worry. He pressed his eyes shut, squeezing so hard white lights spun behind his lids. Echoes of his own screams crowded his mind, pushed aside gates he’d built against raw instinct. He felt the tickle of his sensitivity returning, the promise of release if he just reached out and touched the selium buoyed in the belly of the Larkspur, vast and inviting.
“Sirra.” Tibs had his fingers hooked in Detan’s shoulders like claws and he shook him once, hard, snapping Detan’s head back and his eyes open. He stared at Tibs, focusing on his breathing, seeing nothing but the webs of wrinkles radiating out from his old friend’s calm, brown eyes. Tibs raised a brow in question, and he nodded, stepping back. He was under control. For now.
Detan knew too well what was at the end of the line for the doppel if Thratia got her claws in her. And here was sweet little Ripka, thinking Thratia meant mere jail or death for the doppel. He’d laugh, if he could feel anything through the ringing in his ears.
It wasn’t the purge that had Thratia nervous. That’d be bad for Aransa, sure, but the city would recover. But even General Throatslitter had mind enough to fear dealing with whitecoats. She’d had to have been desperate to make a deal with those monsters.
Execution for the doppel’s crimes was one thing, but nobody deserved that. Not even a madwoman. Understanding passed in a glance between him and Tibs, and he let out a defeated sigh.
Ripka’s eyes narrowed. “What is it?”
He shook his head to clear it and crossed to the edge of the deck, staring out at the city splayed below. Nothing seemed particularly out of place. He’d seen violent power upheavals before. They were bloody, drawn-out things. Fires in the streets and heads in the gutters. He didn’t see any evidence of something like that brewing here, and for that he was grateful. When a city went feral, who survived the changeover was often a matter of pure chance, and he hadn’t lucked through too much of late.
I should grab Tibs and go, he thought, eyeing the sleek shape of the Larkspur. Maybe the doppel wouldn’t make it through Thratia’s tightening net. Maybe they’d be safe out there after all.
But he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t leave her to what he’d lived through himself.
Ripka’s fingers coiled around his arm and pulled him around to face her. “Tell me.” There was no anger in her voice, it sounded almost pleading. But he couldn’t explain – not really. To admit knowledge of what happened in the whitecoats’ tower would be to admit his sel-sense remained, albeit in a twisted form. He closed his eyes for just a heartbeat, and decided on a path.
“You’re looking under the wrong roof,” he said.
She threw her hands into the air in frustration. “Then where do you suggest I look? I’ve got no lead on the doppel. All the information I do have points here.” There was a hitch in her throat that Detan chose to ignore, a subtle shifting of her eyes toward the floor. She was ashamed of something. The thought made him unreasonably angry.
“Sure you do.” He forced the biggest smile he could muster, piling his fear under false bravado. “You know just exactly where to look! You won’t find your evidence here, she’s too careful for that, but I bet ole Galtro kept real precise records of every ship in and out of his docks – even if the cargo was sparse on the leaving, eh? And you said yourself the records room had been tossed over. Either there’s incriminating evidence in there about her, or a way to identify the creature she doesn’t want you getting to first. If you catch the blasted thing, then she can’t trade it to Valathea.”
Ripka snorted. “Thratia’s got the Hub on lockdown while she completes her ‘investigation’.”
Tibs cleared his throat. “If you would agree to suffer the Lord Honding’s company, watch captain, I believe Thratia’s prohibitions will not prove a hindrance.”
“Oh no, I’m not going to be seen breaking into a place with that rat.”
“Psh, you’re one guard-check away from being seen that way right now. Look, Rippy–”
“Watch captain.”
“Right. I’m the man for this. It’s clear as a still sky you don’t know about the greyer side of life, and I’ve spent my days learning how to turn soot into salt, eh? I can have us in and out in a snap. That is, if Tibs here is all right watching the Larkspur on his lonesome.”
“I believe I’ll manage. I don’t think the doppel will be doing much ’sides laying low tonight,” Tibs said.
Detan clapped. “Then it’s settled! Come on, Rip.” He scurried past her and opened the door to the servant’s entrance. “Out of the dark and into the shit with it then, eh?”
“You don’t make a lick of sense, Honding.”
He shrugged. “I hope that particular expression will not become clear to you in time.”
As they started down the short steps back out into the Aransan streets, Detan found himself praying to the sweet skies for the first time in a long, long while. Either Tibs would get the doppel out of the city – noisily, so there’d be no question of a purge to clean away the stain of a hidden doppel – or Ripka would arrest the thing and take its head.
Despite what she’d done to Faud, and maybe even Galtro, he found himself hoping she’d get to Tibs before Ripka got to her. But even if she didn’t, dead was still better than the whitecoats’ tower. He was sure of it.
Chapter 25
Worry dug its claws deep into Detan’s mind, distracting him with whispers of disaster. They scurried through the ferry district, one scant level down from Thratia’s compound, moving fast but not so quick as to draw attention to themselves. Every corner he turned, he half expected to run chest-first into one of Thratia’s grey coated sycophants.
Some little part of him wanted to. There was enough sel around the ferries for him to deal with any trouble if it came to it, but he couldn’t be sure he’d be able to contain himself once he’d started. It was the sliver of him that didn’t mind that fact that worried him.
They came to the end of a long row of shuttered and tarped foodstalls, their owners skedaddled off to safer locales for the time being. He didn’t blame them. Half the city had tucked themselves in for an early night – hoping against the gathering shadows that things would push on like normal come the dawn. They were probably right. Whoever held the reins of the city mattered little in the day-to-day lives of the common folk.
Detan slowed and reached a hand back to forestall Ripka. Her boots stopped scuffling over the dirt-packed road, and he edged up to the end of a large cart, poking his head around the side to get a look at the ferry station.
Wasn’t just grey coats minding the way. There was a small group of people, local stock every one, and they were all backed up at the docking gate for the ferry that went out to the Hub. Between the group and the dock tall, stern-faced Valatheans in uniforms as pale blue as the skies their homeland commanded stood at ease, pikes resting in the crooks of their arms. One yawned; another fanned his obsidian, reddening cheeks with a folded bit of milky paper.