“Not that way.” Tibs’s hand closed over his shoulder, drawing him to a sharp stop. Up ahead, he could just make out the corner of the telltale dyer’s sign, a pot with a brush crossed over it.
“You blind oaf, it’s right down there–”
A door opened beside him, spilling familiar aromas into the sun-warmed air. Hints of pine and sweet, golden cactus needle sparked old memories. Sharp memories.
Memories of blood and pain and straps, of his skin sloughing off and his eyes stitched open. Sweat broke across his brow, sticky and cold.
The woman exiting the shop was slight, stern. The simple sight of her long, white skirt set him trembling. With the dye of her shirt faded by the bright glare of the sun she struck him, so clearly and for just a moment, as a whitecoat. One of Valathea’s dread experimenters, torturers. One of his own jail keepers, not so long ago. Awareness crowded his senses, sharp and frenzied. An animal need to destroy the thing which tormented him welled bright and hot and desperate within his chest. He lifted a trembling hand, outstretched toward the oblivious woman. There was selium in the woman’s bracelets – a Valathean fashion – and a dinghy of an airship passing close above, its buoyancy sacks half-full but tempting.
Tibs squeezed his shoulder, cutting off his sense of the sel. “Just a plain apothik. No whitecoats here.”
“Right.” Detan’s voice was rough and clotted. He cleared it. “Right.”
“Whitecoats don’t come to the Scorched, they stay in their tower,” Tibs said.
“Yes… Of course.”
“Seems to me.” Tibs removed his hand and drifted a step back, away from that accursed building. “That the paint can wait until we get the equipment, eh? And anyway, I’m ravenous as a silk-widow that’s spent all day making a new web.”
Detan followed, snared by the need to be close to a friend. To safety. Glad for air that smelled of nothing but dust and wood and vegetal rot. He rubbed his palms against his thighs, leaving sweaty smears. Took a breath. Steady, Honding.
“Food? But Tibs! You only just ate lunch yesterday. Are you really so insatiable?”
“Like a wild beast. I know it’s not very genteel of me, but I reckon I make up for it with my table manners.”
“Well.” He clapped Tibs on the back. “Two gentlemen such as ourselves certainly cannot go out to dine in this state.” He gestured to his ragged clothes, stained with the black dust that permeated all of Aransa. “It would not be proper, I’m sure of it.”
“I believe we’re adequately attired for that meatstick cart.” Tibs gestured toward a market cart tucked amongst the other foodmongers. The enterprising street chef had jars marked with a variety of symbols crowded on the top of his cart, each filled with a sauce of a different color. As patrons handed over their smallest grains, the proprietor produced a spitted piece of meat from somewhere below the cart’s top and dipped it into a sauce of the purchaser’s choosing.
The smell of it made his stomach rumble. Detan half-turned, edging toward the cart, when he caught another aroma – bitter, tannic. A tea cauldron simmered at the elbow of the meatstick-maker, its cutting aroma reminiscent of the medicinal brews the whitecoats had pressed upon him. He shivered and turned away.
With a hand on his companion’s shoulder Detan clucked his tongue, forcing himself to light-heartedness, and steered Tibs firmly back down the street. “But how will I enjoy a proper display of your table manners at a cart, old friend? No, no. No slumming it for us.”
With a flourish he produced a droop-brim hat from within his coat and thunked it on his head. It was a much nicer fit than the burlap sack had been. Tibs looked at him like he’d stepped on a fire ant mound while pantless.
“Hey, that’s my hat. I just had it–”
“I believe you’ll find it’s on my head. Now, let us away to the Salt Baths so that we may present a proper image when we go for supper later.”
“Oh? And that proper supper wouldn’t happen to be at Thratia’s fete tonight, eh?”
“I can’t imagine what would make you think such a thing, Tibs. I, for one, was not even cognizant of the–”
“I saw you nick the handbill off the fence by the inn on our way out.”
Blast! Detan was beginning to think that Tibs could be halfway across the Scorched from him and still know whenever Detan helped himself to something useful. Or pretty. Or nifty. He adjusted the hat and smiled. At least the old rockbrain still missed some things.
“Oh. Well.” He cleared his throat and ushered Tibs onto the main road. “I may have procured a certain advertisement to that effect, yes. What better opportunity to survey her ship?”
“You do realize that there are baths at our inn, which is considerably closer – and already paid for.”
“Baths? Pah. If you count a lukewarm bucket as a bath.” He swept a pointed gaze over Tibs. “Which you obviously do. And, regardless, do you have attire worthy of one of Thratia’s fetes? Because I certainly don’t.”
Tibs jingled Ripka’s grain pouch. “I don’t mean to shock you, but we can buy those things. With money.”
Detan rolled his eyes. “And do you think she’ll just hand over a ticket to us? Or are you going to buy a ticket, too? Sweet skies, Tibs, I thought you were the cheap one!”
Tibs gave him that sour, you-just-can’t-help-yourself look which never failed to wind his gears. This time, he resolved to rise above. Ignoring his companion’s dour disposition he took the stairs up to the next level two at a time, drawing an annoyed glare from the guards stationed at either end on the top of the steps. Too bad for them, it was still open-market hours, and upperpasses weren’t required to move from one level to the next until well after moonrise. Not that he had a pass.
Not that that tiny little fact would have stopped him.
It’d been awhile since he’d perused Aransa, and though his extended absence had clearly eased Ripka’s heart he found he was a bit sick with the missing of it. It was a good city, laid out nice and clear, and was free with water due to its proximity to a network of flush aquifers. The ladies here didn’t fuss about with modesty, either. It was blasted hot, and even the uppercrust bared their shoulders and trusted in wide, shadowy hats and parasol bearers to keep the burn off.
Yes, Aransa was a good city indeed.
“Tibs, my good man, can’t you keep up?”
Tibs was staring overlong at what was advertised to be a rack of lamb roasting in a shop window, but Detan rather suspected it was a gussied up sandrat. Detan snagged Tibs’s arm and dragged him off to many a weak protestation.
“If we bent the winds at every rumbling of your gullet, old friend, we’d still be in shanty towns picking sand from our teeth.”
“As you say,” he muttered.
The line for the ferry to the Salt Baths was long, but not so long they couldn’t all be crammed onto the floating conveyance. Detan, tugging Tibs along beside him, sidled up to the end of the line and freed his friend’s arm. He worried Tibs would go wandering off at the merest sniff of scallion, but Detan was too busy working at blending in with the uppercrust to keep an eye on him. When you’re with the high-tossers, it’s all hands-in-pockets and slouching like a loose grain slide. He couldn’t be seen caring about anything, that would give the game away.
And these were definitely the uppercrust. Seemed no one wanted to arrive at Thratia’s with sand in their hair or dust on their trousers. All the better for him – he liked a variety of marks to choose from.