Poor sod didn’t even know Ripka had recommended him.
Taellen lingered nearby, back straight enough to match the whitecoat’s, a barely controlled tremble of fear in the tightness of his jaw. Though he stood at attention, his eyes were downcast, his mouth curved into a soft frown. Ripka couldn’t work out why Thratia had decided to drag the rookie out here for this, and decided she didn’t care. Whatever the reason, there was nothing she could do about it now.
She closed her eyes and sighed. Banch was a good man. He wouldn’t be fool enough to let his emotions be played by a common murderer. He’d take care of the city when she was gone.
Gone. She had to stop thinking like that. Detan was shifty as the night, but he had a core of goodness in him. He wouldn’t let her down if he could help it.
As the sun crept skyward, spilling warmth and light through the cracks in the brick, she couldn’t help but think of all the things she might have done differently in her life. All the paths that wouldn’t have led her to this bench.
Digging deep, she summoned up the face of her mother. Her father. How long had it been? She’d lost count, and time apart had smoothed the details of her recollection. One piece was still clear, her father’s voice, raspy with dry amusement, spine like iron, brain like a boulder, that’s my girl.
“Time to go, captain.”
Ripka stood. Straightened her blues. She did not let them help her up the ladder.
Chapter 33
On the Scorched, the heat rose before the sun did. Detan felt the first probing rays of it before the light crested the flat and ruddy horizon, bringing prickling sweat and parched lips. He shifted the too-wide shoulders of his stolen shirt and dreamed of water.
He wouldn’t dare drink. The veneer was too thin, and his struggle to keep it all in place was doing more to make him sweat than the sun ever could. Just ahead rose the guardhouse roof from which the guilty of Aransa were given their choice with the rising of the sun: face the axe, or walk the Black Wash and let the desert decide the depth of your sin. Ripka wouldn’t take the axe, he was sure of that. She would take her chances with the wilderness that had forged her.
If she didn’t, Detan was going to be mighty upset.
Light snapped free of the horizon at last, chasing down the heat. The mud and stone buildings of Aransa grew warm and vibrant in the rays, no longer grey and dingy under the shadow of night. There was movement amongst the people gathered, anxious and tense. Sour sweat tinged the air, a bitter mingling of excitement and heat and fear.
Dark figures emerged upon the roof, familiar to him even in silhouette. Thratia, slender and full of swagger. Ripka, stiff-backed and stern. Thratia’s militiamen came behind, and the round-shouldered form of Ripka’s sergeant. Another watcher hovered beside the sergeant, his movements furtive and uncertain, but the cut of his coat gave away his profession. And another Detan didn’t recognize.
Squinting, he watched the unfamiliar figure. The doppel? No, she wouldn’t dare come this close. Thratia was bound to have a sensitive amongst her guards, and she would have them on high alert this morning. The unknown figure was tall, rectangular beneath the hem of a long coat. He swallowed, and decided to move before his fear anchored him.
Whatever was being said up there, he couldn’t hear it. His focus on holding his sel mask was so intense he didn’t dare think on anything else. He sidled up to the crowd and weaved his way through while keeping his head down, his face hidden.
Elbows bumped him, fingers reached for his pockets. Sweat threatened to mar his mask, to set his tenuous control trembling. Someone grabbed his wrist, jerked him to the side. Detan staggered, jostling those pressed up against him, and glanced back to see a stone-grey sleeve attached to a rather scarred face.
“Just what in the shit are you doing–” Foamy flecks burst from the militiaman’s lips, his voice a growl above the complainant murmur of the crowd. Detan jerked his arm, yanking his wrist free. His hastily wrapped, rubbed-raw hand scraped in the grip of the militiaman’s. Needles of pain threatened to overwhelm his control but he bolted forward, spurred on by fear, shoving people aside in his need to reach the roof before Ripka could make her decision. Before that stone-sleeved arm could detain him and ruin the whole thing.
Luckily, no one kept an eye on the guardhouse door, but he supposed that was only natural. Only an idiot would charge up there uninvited when a death sentence was being handed down.
He burst through the door and scrambled across the small room, sucking down air that stank of all that was left unclean in the cells, and found the ladder to the roof. No time to think. No time to let himself back down. He grabbed the rungs and hauled himself up into the full light of the sun.
“Hold him.” Thratia’s voice was cool as the desert night, but he sensed a tinge of high-strung unease in it. Rough hands, familiar to him now, dragged him off the last bit of the ladder and his head rushed and buzzed as he split his attention between holding the sel mask and watching the people on the roof.
“Well, well.” Thratia prodded his face with one finger, and he damn near laughed as her mouth opened and her pupils widened enough to make her whole eyes black.
It was just a thin layer. He didn’t have the requisite skills to change its structure, to shift the color. But he could make it thin enough to make it clear, and even clear sel rippled when touched. One little ripple was all he needed to sell the thing. A murmur passed through the crowd, and Detan had to fight down an urge to try and listen to what they were saying. The words didn’t matter. They’d seen the sel on his face. He could wager a good guess what the whispers were about.
Her dark eyes narrowed with resumed control. “What are you up to, Honding?”
He rasped a laugh. “I’m honored you think my technique is the truth, but we both know the Honding lad doesn’t have enough sel-sense to illusion up a turnip, let alone a face.”
“Then why don’t you show us your real face, doppel?” Thratia’s voice was smooth, bemused. The expression she showed him now was not one belonging to a woman who had just captured the thief of her finest possession. It didn’t matter. He just needed the crowd to believe it.
“You don’t deserve it,” he spat.
Her lips twitched and she stepped back, arms crossed over her ribs. “All right then, creature. Where’s my ship?”
She’d made her voice loud, loud enough to be heard by the people gathered nearest the guardhouse, so Detan did the same. “I destroyed your ship. Smashed it against the sand, every little bit of it, over and over again.”
Another ripple passed through those gathered, but it was nothing compared to the bright spark of rage on Thratia’s face. Apparently she was more than willing to believe he’d done her ship harm, even if she couldn’t swallow him as the doppel.
He’d never seen such anger before. Her whole body went rigid, every last muscle winding up in preparation for a strike that wasn’t coming. She may have been a cruel woman, but she had mastered her temper long ago.
“You broke. My ship.” There was nothing bemused about her voice now.
“Don’t believe me? Take a look.”
He gestured to the Black Wash, and prayed Tibs had made it look good. Thratia snatched a sighting glass from Callia’s outstretched hand and snapped the little brass tube open. She brought it up to her eye and scanned the darkened sands. Even Detan could see it with his naked eye, a little heap of brown wood in the middle of the obsidian sand.
“Why?” Her voice was tight, irritated, but not yet convinced. The false cabin hadn’t supplied nearly enough material to make it look like a whole ship had been destroyed out there.