When she stood, her knees were shaky and her hands abraded.
“You all right?”
She glanced over at the doppel, its miner’s attire covered in black dust and its face skewed from the fall. The Detan-mask was twisted, one cheek drooping so much that the selium had lost its color and returned to its usual prismatic shimmer. It looked as if the heat of the desert was melting the creature away, and the fact that it looked like Detan unsettled her greatly.
Where was that dustswallower, anyway? Probably halfway across the Scorched by now. Served her right, putting her faith in a conman. No, that was unfair. Maybe he’d just run out of time.
“Leave me be, creature,” she snapped as she took her first few steps across the Black.
With each step, she grew to realize that her blues were dangerous to more than her pride. As the heat rose, her ruined coat trapped it against her skin. She unbuttoned it, let it hang open to catch the breeze on the thin off-white shirt she wore beneath, but she would not drop it. Not this close to the city.
Never mind that one of her own watchers had betrayed her – and for what? Thratia wouldn’t give Taellen any favors. Not after this. Not after he’d proven how thin his allegiance really was. She pumped her legs harder, forcing herself away from Aransa as quickly as she could without breaking into a full run. Heat began to well out of the neckline of her coat, making her breaths short. To be accused of arson and theft was one thing. To have her own people point at her and say she betrayed her service to them was just too much.
Precious water rimmed her eyes, and she wiped it furiously away.
“Easy now, Ripka,” the doppel said, its voice rough with imitation of the real man.
“Captain,” she said on reflex, and regretted it. Could she still call herself the watch captain? Maybe. She supposed it didn’t matter, anyway. It was a little something to hold onto until she died.
Ripka stopped her march and looked around. The city wall loomed behind her, but any sheltering shadow it may have offered was blasted clear by the sun’s unforgiving angle. What was the sun to forgive? It was insensate, inexorable. It didn’t notice, and it wouldn’t have cared, that Ripka was about to die under its glare.
Faint white glints winked at her between the matrix of the black sands, and with a sinking stomach she recognized them for what they were. Bones, broken and scattered. Most were unrecognizable now, their shape worn down by the bite of obsidian, their placement skewed by the winds. She looked upon them all, swallowing a lump of self-loathing. She’d done this, she’d created this grisly graveyard, in sending the condemned to walk. And now she was about to lay down and join them. Ripka pushed aside all feeling and trained her gaze on the path she must walk to survive.
In the direction of the sun the Fireline Ridge rose, its pocked back looking like the whipped hide of a great beast, the Smokestack jutting like a broken spine from the middle. It cast a shadow across the sand, reaching toward her. A false promise. There was no way she would make it there before the heat took her. Maybe she could find something in the wreckage of the Larkspur to shade herself with.
It seemed so close, that humped shelter of stone. But she knew all too well that the distance was distorted by the wavering horizon, that whatever she found in the Larkspur would offer little relief.
Under the full light of day, the black grains absorbed the heat and threw it back at you until you collapsed from heat sickness. She knew the signs, the symptoms. Dizziness, delirium. Clotted tongue and a cessation of sweat. The backs of her hands already felt dry, her tongue too big for her mouth. Soon her skin would begin to blister, to peel, to slough off to the sand below. If she were lucky she might faint from the pain before organ failure began. Before her eyes began to burst their fluids from their sockets.
Even if she did make it to the ridge, her life was forfeit. The climbing there was rough, the heat made it scorching, and if she made it up to one of the facilities on the ridge she would be recognized.
Your life, once condemned, was free for the taking. And with accusations of hiding sel-sense riding the winds, there wasn’t a soul alive that’d ever offer her shelter. She urged herself toward the ridge with long, ground-eating strides, and the doppel rushed along to catch up.
“Angle south towards the baths,” it said.
“I’ll go where I please.”
“Pits below, do you still not see it?”
She stopped dead and turned to regard the doppel. Its face was still melting, pearlescent selium mixed with the diamond glitter of sweat. Ripka brought her hand up to shade her eyes and still had to squint, the reflection from the sand was so bright. The doppel grinned at her in a stupid, familiar way. The voice it affected was damned near perfect. Her back stiffened.
“You dustswallowing idiot–”
“Easy now. Save it until we’re at the ridge. Thratia has got me figured out but the rest don’t and I’d rather not give them any ideas.”
“Why?”
“She can’t search the city in earnest for a doppel the people think is out here dying in the Black, understand? Gives us a chance to find her still.”
“What do you care?”
“Keep pushing me and I’ll find reasons not to.”
His voice was strained, snappish. Even beneath the selium his cheeks were slapped red by the sun, rosy despite his deep tan. Sweat poured off him, and he swayed a bit where he stood.
“You injured?”
“Hah.” His laugh was coarse and wild. “Not yet.”
“Who’s keeping that selium on you, anyway?” Her eyes narrowed, cold suspicion creeping through her. “You got the doppel hiding out here somewhere?”
He tilted his head and licked his lips. “I told you I don’t know where she is.”
She sucked air through her teeth in a sharp whistle. “Then you’re still–”
“Just walk, all right? I got enough on my mind. This isn’t easy.”
He trudged off, cutting a tight line toward the baths, and she followed at his side. To take her mind off the heat, she stole glances at him as he struggled along beside her. While the sun’s blaze was tough on her, it seemed to be taking an extreme toll on him.
Each step was slightly off center from the last, causing him to sway and veer at random. By midway across the Wash his clothes were soaked through and his breath came in gasps. Watching his struggle made her own pain feel small.
“You have to rest,” she said.
He came to a sharp halt, as if all this time he’d been dragged forward by an unseen pulley that had just been cut, his limbs going straight and still. “Can’t stop too long,” he rasped. “The sun doesn’t stop just because you have.”
Ripka tore a strip from her shirt and tied it around her forehead to keep the sweat from her eyes. He stared at it, mouth open. “Want me to make you one?”
“I can’t…” He staggered, startling her into motion. She grabbed his arm, holding him upright.
“Look, whatever you’re doing with that selium is going to kill you before the sun does. You’ve got to stop it. We’re far enough away from the wall no one will notice. Just drop it.”
“Hah.”
“Don’t ‘hah’ at me. Let it go, Detan. Now.”
He rolled his eyes to look at her, wide and white and wild. “First time you ever called me Detan.”