“Then they would have already been here.”
That calmed him. He flopped backward, arms dangling along either side of the chair, his head tipped back to stare at the stars. He was working up to something. Rallying his nerve so that he could tell her, confess to her, what had happened. What he’d seen. What he had, though he hadn’t wanted to, been a part of.
“Liberation should never be achieved through bloodshed,” he said to the night sky.
She swallowed. Clenched her hands tighter. She had to find his limits. Had to make him believe she was sympathetic to his so-called mistake. “What if that’s the only way?”
Dranik slammed his fist to the arm of the chair and exploded to his feet, eyes bright with fervor. “It must not be! We are not so oppressed as that. No, I understand why the Desert Wind is decided on the matter, I understand the history better than many others. But we are better than that, we are beyond the petty politics of Valathea. Just because… Because those poor people, the Catari, were unable to establish their freedom from tyranny peacefully does not mean we cannot succeed where they failed. They were few, and unprepared. We are many, some of the greatest minds on the Scorched – if not all Valathea – and we have had warning. There is no reason – none! – that we should reduce ourselves to violence.”
Desert Wind. The importance he lent those words made them glow like a brand in her mind, a key fact to dig into later. If she pushed now, though, when he had whipped himself up so far, he would clam up, embarrassed that he’d let the name slip. She’d seen it dozens of times before. Now, when he was at his most vulnerable – wrought with emotion – was the time to be gentle. To lure him where she wanted him to go.
She thought, a little ruefully, that Detan would be proud of her. Had he been a watcher and received their manipulation training, then that man would have been unstoppable.
“What do you want to happen here, Dranik? What do you want to see Hond Steading become?”
He paced, heels hitting the ground hard enough to leave half-moon divots in the dirt. Under the gleam of the stars, he twisted his hands through his hair, glared at the clear sky, the calm night, as if its peacefulness affronted him. She let him do all this, let him stomp out his anger and wring free his fear. The cup Latia had given her was warm in her palms now, the brew stinging as it slid down her throat. He paced, and paced, and when even the fine edge of her patience began to strain, he stopped.
“I want Hond Steading free.”
“And what does free mean to you?”
He half-turned, glanced down the line of his body at her with fresh awareness in his expression. Maybe she’d revealed too much. Maybe he was beginning to suspect that she was more than she presented herself as. Whatever his thoughts on her, he nodded to himself, and his hands fell slack at his sides.
“A governance chosen by the people. Representative of them.”
“And do you believe that Thratia is likely to allow you that? The woman exiled from Valathea for seizing control of the Saldive Isles – an independent island chain – just because she could?”
The sigh that left him seemed to take all his strength with it. He folded himself back into the chair, hands dangling between bent knees. “No. She won’t. But the Hondings aren’t any better.”
Ripka shook her head, and made her play. “I think you know better than that, Dranik. Think it through, now. Dame Honding is hale, but aging, and her heir is–” Her voice caught, and she covered this by taking a sip from her cup. “– is unpredictable. If you strengthen your forum, make a strong case for your representative government to take control once Dame Honding passes to the endless night, she might just agree. I don’t know much about your city, Dranik, not personally. But I’ve heard of it, all across the Scorched. The Hondings have ruled you all with a fair and even hand, and I don’t believe the Dame would leave you to scramble for the throne, or at the will of the empire, upon her death. This city is precious to her–” She caught herself expressing too much familiarity with the family, saw Dranik’s eyebrows rising, and corrected. “The history of her family is here. She must care deeply for it. She won’t leave you to drift, if you show her a viable alternative.
“But Thratia… I’m from Aransa, you know. Once Thratia has her claws around something she desires, she never lets go. It’s not the people of this city she cares about, anyway.” Ripka dropped her gaze, turned to stare pointedly at the humped silhouettes of the firemounts that lined up back to back along the city’s southern edge.
Dranik pressed his lips together until the blood fled them, staring at those shadows. She needn’t say the truth of the matter out loud. Hond Steading was valuable for its selium. Full stop. The people who lived there were incidental, perhaps worthless, if their lives were not conducive to selium mining.
“Thratia will destroy us.”
Ripka held her tongue, lest he hear the eagerness she felt to encourage this train of thought.
“… I thought. Truly, I thought that she might wake the Dame up. Make her understand that the city is only as valuable as its people, and their input on civic matters is a right. But the Dame has always listened, if not always complied. Thratia will roll over us. Take what she needs. She won’t ever let us be free, and she’s too much the egoist to appoint a plan for after her death. Hond Steading will fall into chaos.”
He was talking himself into it, now. She need only extend a small risk. “When we met, you were all for Thratia’s arrival. What changed your mind?”
He flinched and brushed his fingertips over his bruised cheek. “I was with the Desert Wind, when…” He sighed, shoulders rounding forward as the information he’d feared sharing all night left his lips. “When I realized they were smuggling more than information into and out of the city.”
Fucking got you, Ripka thought. But she kept her expression mostly neutral, allowed a fine line of concern to mark her brow. “What are they smuggling?”
“Into the city? Weapons. Weapons like you wouldn’t believe.”
“And out?”
He jerked backward as if someone had yanked on his hair, stuck his gaze on the sky above so that he would not have to look Ripka in the eye, and said, “People.”
Deviants. They must be. Ripka’s world lurched sideways. She sucked a breath, not needing to fake her shock and disgust, and gripped the cup in her hands hard to hide the shaking in her fingers.
“Will you let me help you undo this, Dranik? Will you let me help you take them down?”
He lowered his head to look at her, tears like stars sparkling in his thick lashes. “Please, gods, yes. Help me.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Detan woke howling. Fiery pain lanced outward from his shin, shook him out of his dreams and crested his vision with white stars. He curled in upon himself, grabbing his shin, sucking air between his teeth.
He caught the faint scent of musk in each breath and, as the pain faded, grew aware of the silk-smooth sheets tangled around him. Thratia’s bed. Thratia’s scent. The pain fled from him in an instant, and he stumbled, flailing, to his feet. He was alone in the bed. He would have found that a relief, if he couldn’t clearly make out the place where Thratia had curled in the night, her back pressed against him, her sleep-breath slow and even. Should have killed her in her sleep.
But he hadn’t had the heart for that. No, that wasn’t it. He just hadn’t been brave enough to try.
“Good morning, sunshine.”
He spun. Misol stood at the foot of the bed, her spear propped against the crook of her arm, a small smirk flattening her lips. He scowled at her, but that just made her smile. His sleep-slow brain took a few moments to connect the ache on his shin with the shape of her spear shaft, and then his scowl deepened to something more than a mask meant to irritate her.