Inherit the Flame Read online

  Essi. Little pouf-headed Essi was supposed to bring her a bucket to wash with in the morning, supposed to knock on the door to raise her from her sleep long before the sun got high enough to glare through her window like it was doing now. Pelkaia blinked, taking in the room through clearing eyes. There was the bucket, full up to the brim by the shut door. But no Essi. And here was Coss. Frowning at her like he’d said something and she hadn’t answered. Probably the truth, that. She forced herself to focus. She was the captain of this ship, and a protocol she’d initiated had been broken. Find out the reason. Find out why Coss was looking at her like he’d seen a ghost, when he wasn’t meant to realize she was teetering on the edge of the pits until she’d fallen into the dark of them.

  “Where’s Essi? Why did she not wake me?” And, unspoken, why are you here now? But she didn’t need to explain that. He knew her well enough to scrape the meaning from the surface of her words.

  “Essi hollered at your door for a half-mark before Jeffin came and got me. Thought you were dead.”

  She was, of course; the timing just hadn’t quite caught up with her yet. But that wasn’t any of his business. “So you decided to let yourself in. Without permission.”

  His expression locked down. Well, as locked down as he could make it. Even stoic, practical Coss couldn’t hide his feelings from her. She’d spent too long making a study of faces, the way they ticked away every emotional beat coursing through a person. It was what she was. Doppel. No, that wasn’t right. Illusionist. Yes. Better.

  “I thought you were ill and needed assistance.” He gave her a slow look, making a point of taking in her still-trembling limbs and the human-shaped imprint of sweat on her sheets. Just as she didn’t need to say everything she was thinking to get her meaning across, neither did he. What a sweet pair they’d made. She missed that. Missed him filling in the blanks of what she didn’t say, missed him supporting her in all the hundreds of subtle ways only a person who has become your other half in truth ever really can. Missed doing the same for him.

  Like now. A few months ago, if she’d seen that look on his face, she’d reach out. Brush his cheek. Give his hand a squeeze. Or even just smile in that way she knew made his belly loose. A little upward quirk of the lips, a sideways peek through her lashes.

  She caught herself halfway between smiling and reaching for him. Shook her head to clear it.

  “I was ill,” she said, realizing she needed to back up her lie about her stomach. “Thank you for checking on me. I’m strong enough to wash now, if you don’t mind…?”

  It wasn’t a question, they both knew that. He pursed his lips at her, shifted his weight uncomfortably in his crouch. He didn’t want to leave, probably feared her drowning in her wash water, but she was captain. And though she hadn’t exactly given him an order… well. She had, really.

  “Call for me if you require help.” So formal. So stiff. Not bothering to hide a grimace he pushed to his feet, knees popping, and made a show of rubbing the small of his back. She almost laughed. How old was he? Thirty, forty? She’d never been good at guessing ages, but whatever his small aches, they were nothing compared to the bonewither eating her alive. She envied him his sore knees, his knotted back. Envied him the time he had left.

  Envied, too, whoever would get to spend that time with him once she was gone.

  He left her there, shutting the door gently behind him, and it took her longer than she’d ever admit to find her feet, to shuffle over to the bucket of sun-warmed water and wash the sticky sweat from her body. The trembling of her limbs sprayed droplets across the floor, sprinkled wet darkness on her walls, her shelf. She grit her teeth, breathed deep and even, and by the time she was washed and dressed in clothes loose enough to hide the bone braces she wore all the time now, she was stable. Calm. Something like her old self.

  Whatever that meant. Standing before her mirror as she forced her hair into a tight queue – Ripka’s style, part of her recalled as she worked – she wondered if the madness that had driven her mother to raving fits was finally taking root in her own mind. She’d caught glimpses of it during those days in Aransa, when Kel was left cooling beneath the sand and she had only her vengeance to nurse. Felt the intoxicating lilt of mania speed her heart and sharpen her mind every time she picked up a blade to draw blood. If it wasn’t for the responsibility of the Larkspur and its crew – she had given up hiding it after the Remnant, given up on being the Mirror – then she would have devolved into her mother’s madness in the days after Aransa.

  Or dedicated her life to destroying Thratia Ganal.

  Maybe that was what she was doing, after all. She had gathered a cadre of skilled deviants, stolen them away from Thratia’s reach, trained them up to be stronger and more refined than they had any right to be as non-Catari.

  In those moments she had felt calm. Centered. As if in rescuing her little collection of deviants she was doing a good thing. And she had been. Still was. Rumors swirled about deviants hiding in Hond Steading, after all. That was the only reason they were still lingering here. Fishing, fishing.

  But maybe those were just the reasons she gave them all. Lies she’d told to herself. Maybe… maybe the madness had never really left her. Could it ever? She recalled islands of sanity in her life, oases of peace raising her children bracketed by hard rage and desperation.

  She had done good, in the literal sense. Had saved lives. But she was doppel – illusionist – and duplicity was bred into her bones. Bones that were leaking their true nature throughout her now.

  She had been saving people, yes. But she had also been gathering them. Gathering weapons.

  Weapons Thratia Ganal was coming to meet.

  Pelkaia smiled at herself in the mirror, and did not bother covering her Catari features with a false face today. When she opened her cabin door to gaze upon her crew, to issue the orders for the day, she looked upon them all – each in turn – and saw them for the truth beneath the veneer.

  Sharpened spears, under her command. Weapons the likes of which hadn’t been released upon the Scorched since the time of Catari dominance.

  And as they smiled at her, waved good morning and asked after her recovery from her so-called stomach troubles, she realized the true extent of her command, here and now. They trusted her. Implicitly.

  Pelkaia looked upon her unknowing soldiers, and was filled with joy.

  Chapter Eight

  Ripka was being followed. At first she suspected the watchers, tailing her to report back to their captain, but not a hint of blue flashed in the corner of her eye. No, someone else was shadowing Ripka’s heels, and it wasn’t likely to be anyone friendly.

  She didn’t dare pick up her pace or start weaving through streets, lest she alert her tail that they’d been spotted. She kept her gait a slow, easy stroll. Just a woman new to the city out for a little exploring. Anticipation tingled in her fingertips. She wished she had her weapons – a cutlass, a baton, anything really. But she was no longer a watcher, and normal citizens didn’t roam the streets armed to the teeth.

  Despite her unease, a little thrill went through her. It’d been a long time since she’d played any flavor of cat-and-mouse game. She meant to win.

  The street opened up into a stall market, hot spices and pungent dyes heavy on the air. She cut close to the right-hand stalls, weathering the clamor of excited vendors with polite, but firm indifference. She had no interest in their goods, she just wanted to see what her follower would do in a denser crowd.

  The crowd congealed behind her as she passed, as it always did in busy marketplaces, but this had a different feel to it, a touch of tension. Someone was moving quickly back there, trying to keep Ripka in their sight. She grinned a little, pretended to finger a light-woven scarf, then stepped into the narrow space between two stalls, flicking her gaze back the way she’d come. A hint of an arm as a person – by build she suspected a woman – slithered back into the crowd. Nothing recognizable. Nothing even inherently threatening. Bu
t that arm had been clothed in russet, not watcher blue.

  While her follower was busy avoiding Ripka’s backward stare, she slipped behind a pile of rugs and darted into a side-alley, drawing raised eyebrows from the rug seller, but nothing more. Back pressed against the stone of the alley wall, she waited. A smear of a shadow approached, movements halting and furtive. The shadow stopped to finger the same rug Ripka had.

  The shadow drew close. Ripka tensed. An arm swung into the alley and Ripka was upon it in a second, yanked hard on the forearm and pivoted, swinging the woman like a club into the alley wall.

  She smacked the stone with a grunt and a yelp of surprise, bush of pale blonde hair catching some of the dust that showered down upon her. Ripka’s eyes widened.

  “Honey!”

  She released her and stepped back, wary. Honey was her ally – or had been, in the Remnant – but the woman’s lust for violence wasn’t something to be ignored. Ripka wouldn’t have been surprised at all if Honey’d decided to hunt Ripka through the streets, just for fun.

  “What are you doing following me like that?”

  Honey peeled herself off the wall with a little grunt and adjusted her clothes, wiping away grit and bits of slime as best she could.

  “I was bored,” she said in her whisper-soft rasp. “Dame Honding says I’m not to play with the knives, they’re for the kitchen staff.”

  Ripka swallowed a laugh. “Well, she’s not wrong. Did I hurt you?”

  Honey’s eyes widened as she prodded at the forearm Ripka had yanked on. “Just a little bruise.”

  “I’m sorry about that, I didn’t know it was you.”

  “I don’t mind.” She lapsed into her usual silence, watching Ripka with those wide, reverent eyes. Honey, bored. In a city of hundreds of thousands. Ripka swallowed. In bringing Honey here she had, inadvertently, released a viper into a nest of pinkie rats.

  Before they had arrived at the city, Ripka had made sure Honey had a new set of clothes outside of the worn old jumpsuit the prison had given her. They were a little big; the new clothes hung down around her body making her look like an underfed urchin.

  “Hey, you two!” The proprietor of the rug stall stuck his head down the alley, pinched eyes narrowed with suspicion. “I don’t like no one sneaking around my goods, understand? Get lost a’fore I call the watch.”

  Honey began to hum softly to herself.

  “Took a wrong turn. Don’t mean any trouble!” Ripka grabbed Honey by the wrist and yanked her along the alley to the other side. This street was quieter, a residential neighborhood with a sparse scattering of foot traffic. Ripka huffed the warm desert air and breathed out with a heavy sigh.

  “Honey,” she began haltingly. “This city is in danger, and I have a lot of work to do to try and keep it safe. You–” she bit her lip, cutting off what she was going to say: you can’t keep dogging my heels. What else was Honey going to do? This wasn’t a woman who made easy friends, and for some reason she’d taken a liking to Ripka. “You want to help me?”

  Honey visibly brightened. “What do I do?”

  Ripka knew of Honey’s more violent skills, but the fact remained that she hadn’t a clue how the woman had come to be the way she was. What Honey’s life had been before the Remnant was a mystery to Ripka, but she might yet be harboring some skills that could be of use.

  “What did you used to do, before we met?”

  She frowned. “Hung with Clink and the girls.”

  “Yes, but, before that – before the Remnant?”

  Honey buttoned up her lips and just stared. Ripka knew better than to think that it was because she didn’t understand.

  “All right then, you don’t have to tell me. I have to go and stake a place out. It’s watcher-work, but I think you could help. All you have to do is be quiet, and remember everything you see and hear. Can you do that?”

  Honey, always a riveting conversationalist, nodded.

  * * *

  They found the bright berry cafe at the end of the market, tucked under a faded garnet overhang in the shadow of Hond Steading’s forum, a place the Dame had built to allow the intellectuals of her city to debate the problems of the time.

  Ripka hadn’t known what to expect, really. The taverns of Aransa that had sold Renold Grandon’s honey liqueur, hiding weapons of Thratia’s loyalists in the bellies of the crates, had been middling places. Places where the working class of Aransa gathered to drink, gamble, and talk out their worries. Bright Eyes, as the cafe’s slapdash painted sign declared itself, was packed with men and women whose nails Ripka found suspiciously clean.

  Small round tables spilled out into the street, barely large enough to support two of the small sienna-glazed mugs of tea the cafe sold. Patrons leaned over their steaming mugs, either engaged in animated conversation with their partners or bent over sheaths of ragged-edged papers. The tannic-sweet aroma of the tea was so heavy on the air that Ripka felt more alert just by taking a deep breath.

  A harried waitress emerged from the cafe’s doors, spotted Ripka and Honey standing there, and bustled right up to them. She’d piled her hair atop her head and speared both sides with two charcoal pencils. She bared her teeth at them in a forced smile.

  “Got a table around back that just opened up. You want it?”

  “Sure,” Ripka said.

  The waitress turned on her heel so sharp she’d make a watcher look sloppy, and stormed the doors of her cafe. They were deposited at a tiny round table with precariously high stools on the cafe’s back patio. The waitress vanished, returned with a couple of matched cups and saucers, and hit them with a hard stare.

  “You want it hot?”

  “Uh, sure,” Ripka said.

  The waitress snorted, disappeared, and returned with a piping hot pitcher full of bright eye berry tea. She doled out both mugs, then dashed them off with something from an amber glass bottle. Something that, as soon as it hit the hot liquid, sent up a steaming curl of biting alcohol. Ripka wrinkled her nose.

  “What’s that?”

  The waitress scowled. “That’s your heat. First tea refills are free, rest cost you a small copper grain. Want any more heat, and it’s double that. Cause any trouble, you’re banned for life.”

  “Lot of people cause trouble here?”

  The waitress puffed a curl of hair from her eyes and pursed her lips like she’d kissed a cactus. “Lady, there’s nothing worse for trouble than a couple of bright-upped brainiacs.”

  With that pronouncement, she swept from the patio and left Ripka and Honey alone with their drinks. Ripka gave hers a tentative sniff. Bright eye berry was a common enough staple at all watcher station houses. She’d never been a regular drinker herself, she preferred her teas heavy with spice, but the bright eye taste never quite managed to offend her. She took a sip. Couldn’t much taste the sweetness of the tea over the acrid bite of the dash of whisky.

  Honey stared at her cup like it was a viper rearing to strike.

  “Everything all right?” Ripka asked.

  “Smells sweet,” she said.

  “Not a fan of the sweet stuff? Unfortunate name choice, then. Go on and give it a taste. It’s not too bad – the whisky cuts the sweetness.”

  Honey gave it a taste, and a flicker of pleasure crinkled her face. “Oh. That’s nice.”

  “See? Drink it slow, now, I want to get a good look at this place.”

  Honey sipped quietly while Ripka leaned back, cup in hand, and took in the view. The interior of Bright Eyes Cafe hadn’t been much to look at. It’d been a cramped space, just a handful of tables and narrow chairs, the air heavy with smoke. But the patio was wider than she’d expected, and whoever owned the place had put some effort into the details. The stone walls hemming them in were crawling all over with spiny-leaved vines, sporting the tiny buds that could be harvested and roasted to make the eponymous tea. Huge umbrellas dotted the patio, dropping and faded, but well patched and providing much-needed shade. Whether by chance or choice, t
he patio was angled to take advantage of the evening breeze.

  Ripka sighed, leaning into her seat, truly relaxed. Here, she couldn’t see the Honding family palace. Here, she could pretend the city would carry on like this forever.

  “I say, it’s not right. The old Dame has got to see sense.”

  Ripka searched those gathered for the voice and found the source. A man no more than twenty leaned across a table toward two companions, gesturing with every word. A rat’s tail of a beard clung to his chin, and he wore a drooping hat that the poor soul probably thought gave him a rakish air, but really just gave off the rather unappealing message that he was, as it were, limp.

  His companions did not seem half so moved by the man’s words as he’d hoped they would be. To his right, a woman in a cheap beige shift with hints of ink and paint about her fingers leaned back to put distance between them and snorted. To his left, a man just slightly the speaker’s senior toyed with the rim of his cup, fingers drumming against his knee under the table. The nervous man wore a suit coat despite the steamy monsoon warmth, the elbows and hemline patched with ruddy brown to contrast the overall hue of mustard. The colors would have made most complexions on the Scorched look as if they were suffering from sand scabies, but this man was dark enough to carry them off.

  “Let it go, Dranik,” the woman said. “The Dame knows what she’s about.”

  “Does she?” the young man pounced. “She’s what, seventy-five? She could be going raw in the head and no one would dare point it out. We need a new system in place. A representative law code.”

  “My own grandma’s near ninety,” the patched man offered, “and sharp as Valathean steel.”

  “Bully for her, but I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

  “I don’t see how any of this is relevant.” The woman shook her cup for a refill and clucked her tongue. “The Dame will do as she wills. It’s not for us to decide.”