“What is it?” Ripka whispered.
“Best see this for yourself,” he murmured.
Detan pressed himself back against the cart, giving her room to creep around without being seen. She practically floated forward, adjusting her gait so that her steps were so light the leather soles didn’t so much as whisper on the hard-packed dirt road.
“What is the empire doing here?” she whispered.
Detan grabbed her elbow and dragged her back around the curve of the alley. “You tell me, miss watch captain. I try not to have anything to do with folk in uniform.”
Her gaze darted side to side, a brief moment of real panic. “How in the pits should I know? Thratia’s cut me out of everything.”
He cursed and spat, wondering if those pretty blue uniforms were under Thratia’s command or a whitecoat’s. Didn’t much matter, he didn’t plan on making their acquaintance. “We’ll have to keep low and to the lee side of buildings. Use the shadows as best we can as we make the crossing.”
“Crossing? We’re not getting on that ferry, Honding.”
He grinned, saw the whites of her eyes grow wide and bright as knives in the dark. “Who said anything about a ferry?”
Get on the ferry, hah. Not with those flower sniffers hanging about. Why, the two of them would be tipped right over the edge of the ferry if they ever made it on to begin with. He had an idea what they needed to do. It was the only path left open to them if they wanted to see the Hub tonight, and by the way Ripka clammed up, she knew it, too. Without a word of conference, they adjusted their path toward the lowest level of the city. Toward that last wall between civilization and wide open, hungry desert.
They had to cross the Black.
The very idea made his skin itch with the urge to flee. It was safe enough at night, sure. At least, the sun wouldn’t bake you to a streetcart delicacy within a dozen paces of the city while the sky was dark. If you didn’t mind the heat trapped in the sand, making each step like dancing a jig in a bread oven. If your shoes were stable enough to hold up to the bite of the unweathered obsidian shards. If you knew your way, cut the path short. If you made it back before the sun came up.
If, if, if. His stomach rumbled a protest and he grimaced, wiping sweat from his brow on the back of his hand.
It didn’t help to ease his poor nerves that Ripka was looking around at her own city like she’d never seen it before. Sure, things were different. Not a lot, mind you, but Thratia’s people were out in force and it left a subdued hush over the whole of Aransa. People took to their homes and stayed put. It wasn’t natural, things being so quiet this time of night. The citizenry should be out, taking advantage of the cooler weather to bicker over the price of roots and meats. Instead, the local cricket population took up an unsteady song, as if they weren’t sure whether it was wise to fill the unnatural silence.
“They’re everywhere.” Ripka’s voice was so alien in this place empty of human babbling that he jumped and damned near hit his head on a low-hanging awning.
He glanced over his shoulder, ready to give her the rough side of his tongue, then stopped cold when he saw where she was looking. Not at the people and their homes, their markets and their washing. No, her keen eyes had plucked out other figures moving amongst the shadows and the leeways, keeping their presence felt but not seen. Shadows of hands held shadows of weapons, ready to become corporeal at any moment.
“Just stay steady, they won’t be harassing us any if we look like we’re in a hurry to get where we’re going. Chances are Thratia’s got ’em spread thin and communication won’t get ahead of us. Come on now, the gate’s a few levels down and then it’s just us and the sand to the Hub. Anyway, the way we’re moving they’ll probably assume we’re all on the same side. Buncha pals, us and them.”
She nodded a tight, formal jerk of the head. Detan was used to this – to sneaking and skulking and keeping your head down while your eyes were up – but she wasn’t, and he’d be ground-bound if she wasn’t behaving like an old pro at it. She kept her movements tight and clean, her eyes sharp and roving, searching, looking for the next spot to make a dash to or the next pair of eyes to slip away from. He was beginning to feel too big for his own body, clumsy and obvious.
“You all right?” she whispered.
He shook his head to clear it. “Right as rain in a monsoon. You’d make a damned fine footpad, you know.”
They dashed across a wide lane into another alley, serpentining their way down the slope of the city. They stood for a moment, stilling their hearts so that they could hear. No one was about. He felt silly being so paranoid. But then, it was usually when you felt in the clear that something rose out of the muck and bit you.
“Was one, once,” she murmured.
“You’re pulling my sail.”
“It’s true. I was born in the Brown Wash. There’s silver mining there, and a reedpalm paper factory, but that’s it. My parents weren’t lucky enough to be industry folk so I stole for food. Lots of the kids did it. It was bad, there.” She looked around at the mud-daub village that comprised the lowest level of Aransa. Half-made roofs lay open to the empty sky, water pumps were hung with little painted symbols that meant they’d been pumped dry for now, try again later. Those few unfortunate souls that had further to go to make it to the safety of their homes moved with furtive steps that had nothing to do with tonight’s tension.
These were hard-bitten folk, wiry limbed and browned through to the bone by the sun. They had hunger’s cheekbones, sharp and cruel. He glanced Ripka’s way and caught her scowling at a poster on the wall of the alley calling for the downtrodden to vote for Thratia. They’d been seeing them everywhere the last five levels.
“What do they think she’ll do for them? Don’t they know she’s called Throatslitter for a reason?”
He shrugged. “That’s not how it works down here, Rip, you know that. They love her because they see her as having bucked the empire to come onto the Scorched and lead them to a better life. Better yet, she’s gone native in their eyes. You see any of the Valathean guard this far down? Nope, of course not, she doesn’t want her image mixed up with them down here. There’s too many of them for her to risk losing their support. And anyway, she could be called Commodore Babyspiker and as long as she had a plan to get food and water down here, they’d vote her in. Galtro have any plans like that?”
She set to chewing on her lip. “His idea of the downtrodden were the miners and their families.”
“Hah. The lucky and the pampered, in the eyes of these folk. Hush now, we’re getting closer.”
Down by the final wall between Aransa and the desert, the locals had made it home already. They reminded Detan of sand mice, tucked away in the shadow of their dens, hoping a preying eye wouldn’t look too close. Wouldn’t catch that glimmer of light between the crooked shutters.
They needn’t have worried, there wasn’t much call for a patrol this close to the Black Wash. It was night, sure, but few people were fool enough to risk a trek out there at any time of day. All it took was a rolled ankle or a bit of confusion, just enough to slow you down, and if the sun slunk up and caught you there wasn’t any coming back from it. You cooked, plain and simple. It was the central reason all of Aransa’s supplies came in via airships. No one wanted to risk a caravan out in that madness.