He poked his head around a corner to get a good look at the gate and saw no one there, as expected. There wasn’t even a lock on it. The latch was a thick bit of timber, rough and splintered from lack of use or care. A fan of black dust spread out from underneath it, the desert seeping in. The gate rattled in its catch, keeping the stiff desert wind out. There was no point in locking it – no sane soul wanted out there.
“Here we are then.” He strode out into the empty street, confident as a cockerel, and dragged up the battered beam. It creaked a protest from rusted hinges, but still it lifted free. He laid his palm against the door and pushed. Ripka’s eyes went wide, a little gasp escaping her.
“You ever been down on the Wash?” he asked.
She shook her head. “There’s no reason for it. We make the violent criminals walk it, of course, but that’s further down the wall, where the guardhouse is. I never dreamed it was so… reflective, up close.”
Detan squinted out at the black sands. A few of the cleaved faces gave off a fey shimmer, catching what little moonlight there was while they waited for the bright of the stars to find them. Detan gave a soft whistle and adjusted the brim of his hat down over his eyes.
“Looks dangerous, out there. But we’ll be fine just so long as we return before the sun rises, eh? And walk soft now, some of those grains are sharp enough to cut straight into your boots.”
Detan stepped out into the Black Wash and paused, allowing his eyes to adjust to the lack of lantern light. Outside of the city’s great wall, the sands of Aransa were gathered in silence. Beauty, he had always felt, was best observed in an aura of quietude, and the Black Wash was no exception. A killing field come every dawn, it was lustrous and silk-soft under the gentler stroke of red moonlight.
Beneath the worn soles of his shoes, he could feel the radiant heat, permeating soft leather and easing his tired joints. Though the sun had slipped past its cruelest angle and given them up to the dark, the sands remembered the brightness of day. Each bituminous grain held on to the memory of the sun, and the threat of the coming dawn. If he stood in one place too long, the heat began to grow uncomfortable.
“It’s so quiet out here,” she said.
Detan glanced back at the city lights sloped up into the night. “Aransa isn’t exactly bustling at the present, captain.”
Whatever awe she felt as she gazed about the place, saucer-eyed and open-lipped, retreated as she followed his glance back toward the city. He knew what she’d be seeing. After all, hers were eyes that cared for that which they regarded. While he saw the light, she’d see the shutters. Where he listened to the quietude of the gently sleeping, she’d hear the vacuous silence of the frightened; the cowering.
Her spine stiffened like steel was shot through it, her jaw came up and straightened. She tucked hair behind her ear and strode sure-footed across the sands toward the Smokestack. He let her lead.
Ripka walked on the sands like she owned them, like she was born to them. Brown Wash girl like her, he supposed she was. Wasn’t much rock in the Brown bigger than a thumbnail, so she had to be used to unsteady footing. Good quality in a thief. Bad quality in a watcher – those had to be rigid, immovable.
“How’d you come by it?” he asked.
They were getting close now, their bodies swallowed up in the shadow of the Smokestack, so that when she turned her head to look at him all he could make out were white eyes and teeth.
“Come by what?”
“Your blues, captain. What’s a Brown Wash girl doing in uniform?”
She turned back to the path, and he figured she was set on ignoring him, which was fair enough. Detan shoved his hands in his pockets and tried not to think too hard about just what he was doing out here, helping a woman of the law break it. Didn’t seem right, working with a blue out of the goodness of his heart.
He grunted at the dark. Too many open ends. For once, he was getting sick of options.
They trudged on, with each step the gentle radiant heat of the sands growing until he caught himself shifting his weight to his toes to give his heels a break, then switching when he felt blisters begin there, the pain tangy and sharp. His already sore toes cracked against something hard and unyielding and he stumbled. Ripka grabbed his shoulder, keeping him upright, and they tangled as he struggled to regain his balance.
“What in the pits was that?” He glared at the sand as if it owed him answers, and nearly lost his lunch as he got a response.
A desiccated corpse lay sprawled across the glittering sands, leathered lips curled away to reveal a grimace of half-rotted teeth in the skull Detan’d stubbed his toe on. The shrunken skin around its gaping eye sockets gleamed in the faint moonlight, and for just a breath Detan thought the corpse had died weeping. But, no, he realized. By the time this body laid down to die there wasn’t any moisture left in it. The glaze frozen on its cheekbones now was the dribble of its eye fluid, boiled over in mimicry of tears.
The corpse’s arms were outstretched, delicate finger bones scattered like fallen petals, gleaming white against the black sand. Whoever they’d been, they’d been reaching toward the Ridge when they’d fallen – perhaps crawling over the bright shards, each desperate lurch digging the bite of a thousand tiny knives deeper and deeper.
“Black skies,” he whispered.
“The walk’s meant to kill you,” Ripka snapped, a wiry defensiveness ratcheting up her voice. “Nothing pretty about it.”
A whip of wind tore past them, rattling the exposed bones, and he shivered, shoving his hands in his pockets as he hurried on, quick to leave the nightmarish scene behind. The sooner he could escape Aransa, the better.
Something long and hard skittered across his foot. Detan jumped back with an undignified yelp, kicking a hand-shaped silhouette high into the air. The insectile creature hissed at the night, the sound raking thorns over Detan’s skin.
Ripka laughed, the sound a little manic. “It’s just a spider.”
“Blasted thing is bigger than any spider has a right to be,” he growled, skirting the approximate area the abomination might have landed in. Still laughing, Ripka turned and swung down with her cudgel – once, twice, a meaty crack-thump following an enraged hiss. Detan took a hesitant step forward, peering into the dark.
“It’s dead,” she announced as she slipped the cudgel back into her belt and pinned him with a sideways glance. “Though I am suddenly concerned that you volunteered to help me.”
He opened his mouth to protest, breathed too deep and starting coughing on dusty air. She thumped him on the back until he regained himself. For a few hesitant breaths he stood, hunched over, palms on his kneecaps to steady himself. Ripka watched him, real concern stitching her pale brows together.
Concern. For him. Detan forced a rueful little smile, and relief flooded her features. She punched him on the shoulder, light and playful, and he went ahead and pretended it hurt.
Maybe some options weren’t so bad after all.
Chapter 26
After they’d walked long enough for the russet light of the moon to drift near its apex, the sands gave way to grey gravel pock-marked with reddened boulders. Bad climbing ground, but the moon was bright and the way was clear.
Detan picked a likely path and then watched Ripka take it in. It was funny, he’d never noticed the way she looked at things before. He’d only ever given mind to the way she looked at him. Usually with exasperation and a hint of disgust.
When the doppel had been parading her face about, it’d usually wrinkle with amusement at a joke he just wasn’t privy to. Now her lips pressed together and her nostrils flared. She reached out to touch the problem at hand, picked her own likely path and found her handhold. Tested it. Climbed.