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  “Certainly.”

  Pelkaia was proud at the breeziness of her voice, the unconcerned wave of her hand inviting them to have a look-see. Inside she was furious. The question of consent was moot, and the theater of Ripka even bothering to ask insulting. Pelkaia was damned sure that if she’d refused she’d find herself in the clink while the Watch tore her home apart.

  The man, Banch, strode forward and began opening cupboards, rooting around her plain stone mugs and lifting up pictures to see if there were any hidden cubbies lurking behind. Pelkaia watched the watch captain’s face as she observed her partner’s proceedings.

  Captain Leshe was thin of lip and kept them pressed tight, her small pupils following each of Banch’s intrusions. There was distaste in her posture, a certain rigid formality that was an attempt to separate what she knew was wrong from the job she had to do. Ripka seemed to be a good woman. It was too bad Pelkaia’s plans might eventually require her disposal.

  “How long have you been living here?” Ripka asked, as if her little piece of paper didn’t say.

  “Oh, ten years now. I was able to buy the place outright when my boy Kel died at the mines. The bereavement stipend, you understand.”

  The captain’s gaze flicked back to Pelkaia, leaving Banch unwatched as he poked around her bookshelf. Apparently, that little piece of paper didn’t have all the facts after all.

  “You had a son, Miss Teria?”

  “Oh yes, fine boy he was.” Pelkaia licked her lips and looked away. To make herself vulnerable to this woman, this authority figure, was asking too much. And yet, she had a duty to Kel, didn’t she? He’d died a working man, the victim of unsafe conditions allowed to fester in the mines. It might rustle the captain’s suspicions, but Pelkaia reasoned that if she let her voice waver and her eyes mist Ripka would view her as sunk deep in grief, too tired and worn to do any kind of damage. Pelkaia found it too easy by far to dredge up the required quaver to her voice, the moisture to her eye.

  “He had a real talent for sel-sensing. Might have become a shaper, with practice, maybe even an airship captain. But he died in that rockslide on the Smokestack’s third pipeline. His whole line went with him.”

  “I am sorry for your loss, ma’am, and I thank both you and your son for your service.” Her words were automatic, rote. Pelkaia wondered just how many times she’d spoken them.

  Service? More like servitude. “Thank you kindly, captain.”

  “What’s through here?” Banch had given up his search of the bookshelf and stood pointing to the thin curtain that separated her sleeping room from the common. Pelkaia’s skin went cold, her palms clammy. She had to resist an urge to clear a knot of fear from her throat.

  “Just my bedroom.”

  Banch exchanged a look with Ripka, who gave him a curt nod.

  “I am sorry,” she said when Banch pushed the curtain aside and went within. “But the protocols are very precise.”

  “Don’t worry, dear. I understand the shackle of protocol. I worked a line myself, you know, before I became too infirm for it.”

  Ripka frowned at her chart. “Forgive my prying, ma’am, but it says here you’re only forty-eight.”

  “Yes, but I took some damage to my knees and haven’t been right since. The bonewither caught up fast with me, you understand. I hope you’ll forgive me sitting down through this interview of ours. Please do help yourself to a seat if you’d like.”

  The watch captain waved away her offer, shifting her position so that she could better keep an eye on her sergeant. Pelkaia turned to watch as well, and had to suppress a flinch as he dipped his head under her bed. The sel sack was well hidden, but if he were to touch the underside of the mattress he would surely feel the seams. She forced herself to breathe easy.

  “Captain, you best look at this,” Banch said.

  Pelkaia’s heart raced, sticky sweat beading on her brow. With an apologetic shrug Ripka stepped half into the bedroom, head cocked to one side to see whatever it was Banch had found. “What is it?” Ripka asked.

  Pelkaia knew. Slowing her breath, she slipped her hand down the side of her chair and nudged aside the flap of quilt draped over the back of it. Cold steel met her fingertips, and she coiled a fist around the grip of a hidden blade. Tensing her core muscles so that she would be braced to strike, Pelkaia leaned forward, sliding her feet back, bending her knees like springs.

  She could stash the bodies somewhere. Pretend to be Ripka in truth for a while.

  Banch thumped her bed on its post. “Let the record show that this is some fine construction.”

  “Ah, well.” Pelkaia played off the nervous tremor in her voice with a contrite chuckle. “My Kel made it for me. Saved up his wood allowance for a year to get the materials and make it. That was after my accident, mind you. The mattress is no sel cloud but it’s llama-stuffed and just fine for me.”

  The sergeant pressed his hand into the mattress top and nodded appreciatively. “Fine mattress. Your son did good work, ma’am.”

  “You’ll have to excuse Banch,” Ripka said while suppressing a smile. “He’s a connoisseur of naps.”

  He snorted and rolled his eyes. “Nothing worse than an uncomfortable rest, I stand by that.” He brushed his hands together, the search forgotten. “Might sweeten up your disposition, getting a good rest, captain.”

  “But I’d still have to see you every morning. It would spoil the whole effect.”

  Despite her distaste of what these people represented, Pelkaia caught herself chuckling at their camaraderie. It would be a shame indeed if the watch captain became too much in her way. Maybe… Pelkaia chewed her lip, thinking. Maybe she could scare her off.

  “Thank you for your time, ma’am,” Ripka said as Banch caught her eye and shrugged, a pre-arranged signal which must have meant he’d found nothing of import. “We’ll be in touch if we have any other questions.”

  “Happy to oblige, watch captain.”

  The official pair bowed their official thanks and crisp-stepped from her little living room into the street. They shut the door behind them, firm but without banging, leaving Pelkaia alone with her sel and her memories. She sighed and rubbed her temples. Unlike her knees, those did ache.

  Pelkaia sprang to her feet and hurried back to her bedchamber. Opened the bag, pulled a little sel out. She perched on the low bench before her vanity, staring into the pearlescent ball hovering a hand’s width from her nose. Every possible shade, hue, and texture lay within that undulating prism of lighter-than-air fluid. Gas. No one had ever been certain just what it was, only that it worked.

  She dipped her fingers into the little ball and smoothed some of it against her chin and cheek, recalling the fading freckle on the bottom of the watch captain’s chin. All the fine folk of Aransa would be at the Salt Baths by now, primping and scrubbing for the night ahead.

  If only preparing herself were as simple as a soak and a brush. She needed to start now, if she were to arrive at Thratia’s fete in time.

  Just a day ago, she would have turned herself in. So much can change in a day.

  Chapter 6

  The ferry was a narrow contraption with an open-air deck for the passengers and a closed cabin for the captain to escape his clientele within. He was a fine, proper looking captain in the sharp maroon uniform of the Imperial Fleet, with little tin and brass bars arranged up and down his broad lapels. The insignia were all nonsense, of course, but it made the gentry feel like they were getting the real airship experience.

  The captain gave the ferry’s airhorn a toot and it slithered out above the abyss, sliding along two thick guy wires attached to the underside of the ship’s deck by large eyelets. The ferry itself had a middling buoyancy sack, just enough to keep its weight from bearing too much on the wires. Aransa wasn’t about to waste a full airship or its selium supply on simple civic transportation. As it toddled along, Detan spared a worried glance at the breadth of his fellow passengers. A little more sel in the sacks probably wouldn�
�t have gone amiss. It’d ease his nerves, at any rate.

  Despite the lackluster arrangement, Detan enjoyed the opportunity to take in the view. Every landscape of the Scorched Continent was a mishmash of rock and scrag-brush, but they were all still beautiful to him. The geography of the area maintained hints of the lush tropic it had once been, before the firemounts opened their mouths and blanketed the place in death. He couldn’t imagine the verdant wonder of the past, but he could appreciate the rugged charm of the present.

  The closer they drew to the firemount and its adjacent baths, the easier it was to make out the bent backs of the line-workers. Selium-sensitives, born with the ability to feel out and move small amounts of the stuff, were arranged in lines along the great pipeways that ran from the mouth of the Smokestack to the Hub. They urged raw selium gas they couldn’t even see out of the firemount and through the pipes to the Hub’s refinery.

  Some of them – the shapers – could do it without moving a muscle, but most had to lean from side to side, channeling their ability through the motion of their arms. Back and forth, back and forth. A rhythmic dance of servitude all down the line. Didn’t matter who you were, if you were born sel-sensitive you worked the lines. If you were very lucky, you got to be a diviner or a ship’s pilot instead.

  Detan turned away from the scene. As a young man, he had never been very lucky.

  As the ferry bobbed along toward the baths, Detan put a hand on Tibs’s shoulder and turned him about to look back the way they’d come. Aransa was half shadow in the light of the sinking sun, its terraced streets winding down the face of Maron Mountain to the inky sands of the Black Wash below.

  For a Scorched settlement, it was a city of impressive size. Maybe fifty thousand souls packed those streets, nothing like the sprawling island cities of Valathea, but substantial all the same. Most of the denizens were born to it now, but a few generations ago it was filled only with those who came to mine the sel, and those who came to profit off their backs. The population boom was perfect for Detan’s purposes – a man like him could pop in and out without being remembered by too many sets of eyes.

  “See there?” Detan pointed to the easterly edge of the second level from the top, at a rock-built compound which spread down into the next two levels below. At its highest point a great airship was moored, sails tucked in and massive ropes reaching like spider’s legs from it to the u-shaped dock which cradled it. No buoyancy sacks were visible, though it floated calm and neutral. Just a long, sleek hull, like the sea ships of old. Stabilizing wings protruded from the sides, folded in for now. He had no doubt that airship was the Larkspur. “Looks like Thratia is going to be giving tours tonight.”

  “I doubt we’ll find ourselves on that guest list.”

  “Pah. Just you wait and see, old friend. Thratia’s no dunce, she’ll be wanting the company and support of such fine upstanding gentlemen as ourselves.”

  “As you say.”

  The ferry thunked to a stop against the Salt Baths’ port, a jetty of mud-and-stone construction sticking out like a twisted branch from the rock face. A tasteful sign hung above the entrance into the basalt cavern, claiming peace and relaxation for all who entered. From the outside, it looked like the type of crummy dive bar people like Detan were likely to turn up in.

  “Thought this place was more cream than water,” he muttered.

  A gentleman in a coat just wide enough to encircle his impressive orbit sniffed and looked down a long nose at him. “Well it certainly shouldn’t look it from the outside, young man. This is the Scorched, after all.” He waved an expressive hand. “Ruffians abound in these troubled skies. Wouldn’t want to advertise the place. Could you imagine? Thieves in the baths! What a terror.”

  The girthy man shuddered and clasped his waif of a woman closer. Arm-in-arm they disembarked, and as the man stepped onto the dock Detan felt the ship lift just a touch.

  Detan shared a look with Tibs. “Thieves in the baths?”

  “A terror indeed.”

  Grinning, Detan sauntered under the basalt arch with its plain sign. Once within, he found himself blinded by an expansive field of white, brilliant light. As he squinted, bringing a hand up to shade his eyes, he heard a soft chuckle beside him. He could just make out the shadow of a steward shaking his head. “My apologies, sir, but it does take a moment for the eyes to adjust. Blink slowly and keep your head down, it helps.”

  Detan thought it was a damned stupid thing to do, blinding your guests, but he kept his head down and his lids pressed shut all the same. It didn’t take long for his pupils to settle down and, as he lifted his head again, his mouth opened just as wide as his eyes.

  The cavern was a labyrinthine mishmash of glimmering white stone. Must have been quartz, though Detan’d be the first to admit he didn’t know sandstone from shale. Sel-supported pathways hung through the air, connecting spacious meeting areas which were suspended from a combination of sel bags and guy wires. The cavern was open to the sun up top, which was what had made it so blasted bright. Light bounced off the smooth planes of quartz – no, he squinted at the wall nearest him, that wasn’t right. He stepped closer and brushed a finger against it. The surface was slick, as if it were hungry for the wee bit of moisture in the desert air. He gave it a dubious sniff.

  “I’ll be blasted. Is that all… salt?”

  The steward was a hard slab of a young man in a crisp black suit, his brass buttons polished to perfection and his mud-brown hair oiled into non-negotiable stillness. He was giving old Tibs a once-over, and it was clear to Detan that the fellow didn’t know what to make of a patron bringing along his manservant. To clear the air a bit, he gave Tibs a companionable thwack on the shoulder and gestured to all of what surrounded them.

  “Can you imagine, Tibs? All this must have been drug up from the flats, that’s halfway to the Darkling Sea from here.”

  Tibs gave an appreciative whistle, and the steward rallied to his profession, sensing his rank was indeed somewhere below the manservant.

  “Indeed, sirs, the salt bricks you see here in the Grand Cavern were quarried to the specifications of Aransa’s Founder, Lord Tasay, who missed the luxurious bathing houses of his home in Valathea and sought to make Aransa a destination of luxury as well as commerce.”

  “Well, aren’t you just the font of history.”

  The steward bowed. “It is my duty to guide and inform, sirs. Is this your first visit to the Salt Baths?”

  Detan stepped out of the way of a few of the folk they’d ferried in with. Now that everyone’s eyes were adjusted the regulars went about their business like they owned the place, and Detan considered the possibility that at least some of them must have a staked interest. After all, someone had to pay for the upkeep.

  “That obvious, eh?”

  His smile was dutifully abashed. “I mean no disrespect. It is my duty to assist, sirs.”

  “Lead on then, my good man.”

  The steward bowed again, something Detan wasn’t quite sure if he liked. Sure, the respect it afforded him was nice, but all that bobbing about was starting to make his head spin.

  Tibs eyed the grandeur all around them with deep-rooted suspicion, his wrinkled face pinched up tight. “Don’t suppose this is what Ripka had in mind when she paid us,” he whispered.

  Detan waved a dismissive hand. “I doubt the dear watch captain would complain about the improvement to our…” he wrinkled his nose, “auras.”

  They followed the steward out onto one of the sel-lifted walkways, milling along behind the group of uppercrust who’d come over with them. The pack of well-to-dos were making a sweet time of it, putting their heads together and whispering between giggles.

  He tried to ignore it, he really did. But when he heard them make a smart remark about Tibs’s hat he couldn’t help himself. Opening his senses, he felt for the sel in the walkway and gave it a little nudge.

  Ahead of them, the walkway lurched. If anyone had thought to look Detan’s way at that m
oment they would have seen him put a steadying hand on Tibs’s shoulder just before the thing went wonky. The upcrusters cried out, toppling and tangling in a tumbleweed heap, and Detan got his other hand out just in time to grab the steward’s jacket to keep him from going full over.

  The steward’s jacket twisted, skewing around his neck, and for the barest of moments Detan caught a glimpse of tattoo snaking across the strident young man’s skin. Scales, yellow and red ink with a slash of black through it, the hint of a serpentine body. He thought he recognized the mark, but couldn’t quite place it.

  When the swaying came to a stop the steward rushed forward, leaving Detan alone to suffer a sharp elbow in the ribs from a surly Tibs.

  “Oof!”

  “You deserved that, sirra.”

  Realizing that there was no point in arguing just who, exactly, deserved what while Tibs was in such an uncharitable mood, Detan decided to take advantage of the situation. He swaggered forward and offered helping hands to the felled noblebones, hefting them to their feet while his fingers helped themselves to their pockets. Not one of them noticed. They were all too busy working out where to place the blame.

  “Just what sort of hovel are you running here?” The man who had expressed terror at the presence of thieves jabbed a stubby finger at the steward as he was hauled back to his feet.

  “I assure you, sir, that the Salt Baths have your safety as our top priority–”

  “Hogwash! I will see this place–”

  “Well, now,” Detan drawled as he helped a lady to her feet and dipped his fingers in her one unbuttoned pocket. “I daresay this isn’t the fault of this fine establishment.”

  “Oh? You do, do you?” The man rounded on Detan, the steward all but forgotten in the face of a juicier target. “And what would a dustswallower like yourself know about fine establishments? Why, the very idea that they even let you in here–”