Ripka frowned. “We can’t go back into the city, we’re all too recognizable. Pelkaia, would you consider–”
“No bones, captain. I can’t get too far from the Larkspur or I’ll lose my hold over the sel hiding it. I’ve already lost control of a few little misdirections I left in the city.”
“I can go.”
They all looked at the steward, the young man whose name Ripka still didn’t know. He stood alongside Tibal, his uniform well pressed despite the heat, wind, and steam. His sandy hair was still parted to perfection straight down the middle.
“That could work,” Tibal said, tapping the end of his chin with one finger. “You could go in, say you’re there on behalf of the doppel. Tell Thratia she’s feeling guilty and wants to make a trade – Detan for the Larkspur.”
“I will not,” Pelkaia protested.
“Easy, Pelkaia, you know Detan and I don’t want them to have access to that ship any more than you do.”
Indignation filled Ripka, raising the small hairs all over her body. She turned to glare at Tibal. “You two planned with this murderer?”
“We didn’t plan for this.” He shot a glance at Pelkaia, one laced with grudging respect. “She just didn’t give us much choice. All right, New Chum. I guess that means it’s up to you. Think you can get her to come out here?”
“Certainly. It is my job to guide, after all.”
“Right then, we can take the flier back to the Salt Baths and let you take it from there. I’m afraid we can’t get much closer without being spotted. Will that be close enough?”
He bowed his head. “That will be just fine. The ferry will come for me if I call it.”
The sun was at its zenith when they left the steward on the little ledge where they had last seen Detan. Ripka stood behind Tibal, her arms wrapped around her waist against the breeze, her gaze fixed on the sticky, rotting stain throbbing with flies at her feet. Detan had been injured, and not lightly. They had no way of knowing how bad off he was. The pool was big enough to be worrisome, but Tibal seemed certain that they would have left the body to bloat if he were dead.
Ripka wasn’t so sure. It was possible they would take the body back with them to perform whatever experiments they had in mind on what was left of his flesh. Were the secrets to his strange ability hidden in the workings of his brain? She didn’t know, but she was sure that whitecoat would be very much interested in finding out.
“He’ll be all right,” she found herself saying to Tibal, just to fill the void of silence.
He snorted. “It’s not Detan I’m worried about, lass, though I appreciate your thought.”
“Then what are you worried about?”
“This whole sand-cursed city. You’ve seen what he can do when he’s angry, you saw that flash on the cliffside. Make no mistake, he’s gotten it under control some since we first met, but there’s a reason he went to the sel-less middle of the Scorched when he got away from Valathea the first time. And a real good reason why he doesn’t stay long in sel cities. Why he doesn’t dare go home. They got five firemounts in Hond Steading. You know what he could do with that?”
Ripka swallowed and tried to pull her arms tighter around herself. “You’re saying he could blow this whole mine?”
“Lass, he could blow this whole city if he’s good and riled. Come on back up now,” Tibal called as he turned back to the flier. “We’ve got to pay a visit to the salvage men before that pit-crusted woman comes to pay us a visit.”
Ripka stoutly avoided thinking on what in the blue skies Tibal would want with the minders of the city’s garbage heap. But not as actively as she avoided thinking of the whole of Aransa torn to bits by the anger of one man.
Chapter 39
His fingers had gone numb, and Aella was deaf to his whining. Seemed she was deaf to most things, now that she’d said what it was she wanted to. Without the natural progression of the stars to guide him, he had no way of telling how long he’d been chained up, but his stomach was pretty sure it had been too long. It was all beginning to weigh on him. The pain in his leg, the ache in his arms and back. He shifted, grunting, struggling to find a position that didn’t smart something fierce.
“Will you stop worming around like an infant?” Aella said, her voice soft with exasperation.
“Well, I don’t believe it, you can talk after all. Thought you’d been struck mute from above.”
“Are you so desperate for attention that you cannot go a moment without conversation?”
“You’d be wanting to have a chat too, if you were strung up like this.”
She sighed and gestured with her book. “The others seem to be faring just fine.”
“Well, it’s not my worry that their spirits are broken. How long have they been on this ship, anyway?”
“It varies. We began this expedition two moons ago.”
“Two moons!”
“It took us a quarter of one to get here. Anyway, I don’t see why you’re so worried about their comfort.”
“Ever heard of basic human compassion?”
She glanced down at her book, flipped through a few pages, and shrugged. “Sorry, not in here.”
“What’s that, then? A guidebook on how to be an ice princess?”
“I would kill for some ice right now,” she said as she fanned herself with the slim volume.
“You know what? I believe it.”
Aella rolled her eyes, but whatever retort was coming she snapped off at the sound of footsteps. Callia came floating up the deck, a black-robed attendant at her side. Detan clenched his jaw. He recognized the shape of the case in the man’s hands. Doctors’ tools. Experimental ones. A cool sweat bathed his skin, panic constricting his throat.
“Nothing to say, Honding?” Callia stood back as she spoke, keeping to the shadow cast by a buoyancy sack, and waved the attendant forward.
Detan swallowed around a stone-hard lump and forced a grin. “Nothing polite.”
The attendant handed the case to Callia and produced two pairs of iron shackles. As the big man unlocked the chains about Detan’s ankles and opened the maw of one shackle wide, he caught Aella’s eye. She was nose-down in her book, the pages angled to hide her face from Callia’s view, but her gaze was fixed on him. He raised a brow, she gave a slight shake of her head.
He scowled. It would be so easy to lift his foot up and plant it in the face of the attendant, then he could… What? His hands were still bound, and as long as Aella kept him cut off from manipulating sel, his only probable weapon was stripped from him.
The shackle clanked shut, the opportunity ended.
When his wrists were shackled, the attendant jerked him to his feet. He almost cried out as his weight settled on his injured leg. He swayed, but that only earned him an exasperated sigh from Callia and a quick clip on the back of the head from her attendant.
“Come along then.” She waved toward the cabin quarters mid-ship.
He stood, frozen, willing himself to shrink into obscurity. The attendant gave him a shove from behind with the rounded head of a cudgel. Detan grunted, limping forward, and clanged the metal around his wrists together under the guise of rubbing his arms and hands to get the life back. If he were going to be experimented upon, the least he could do was give these bastards a headache.
“You will stop that,” Callia said as she opened the door into the cabin. It was a finely crafted door, warm-hued wood rubbed with beeswax and carved all around with dancing air-serpents. Looked like something his own auntie would have had commissioned. It would have looked friendly to him, once. Now he hesitated, dreading to cross the threshold into the oil-lit space beyond.