“Sweet skies, woman, was that necessary?”
“You didn’t wake when I called your name, and I’m not about to touch you while you’re naked.”
“I am not–” But of course he was. Detan swore while Misol laughed, and scrabbled to drag a still sweat-damp sheet around his waist. “Are you here for a reason, or did you just decide there weren’t enough opportunities to be a demon-whipped ass outside of this room?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t flatter yourself. Thratia’s given you over to Aella for the day. Something about not falling behind on your testing.”
“Oh, that’s just fucking lovely.”
Her smirk was back, slow and coy. “Thought you’d be in a better mood this morning.”
“I don’t know what–” but he did. There was no sense playing dumb, or coy, or any other cursed thing. He’d spent the night in Thratia’s room. In her bed. Woke naked as the day he was born and, well, the windows were open but the scent of them pervaded still. His stomach twisted with the memory of what he’d done. For a moment, all he could see was Bel Grandon’s throat lying open at Thratia’s feet.
Long con. Keep it together, Honding. He only had himself to rely on here, after all. Without Tibs to keep him stable, keep him sane, he felt like he was breaking at the seams. Maybe that really had been the wrong move. Maybe he should have spit at Thratia’s feet and refused her advances.
Maybe he was just disgusted with how eagerly his body had reacted, despite his ulterior motives.
Strength fled his limbs. Trembling so that his knees knocked, he staggered, lurched. Heat and bitter bile filled his mouth bare moments before he was at the window, hunched over and retching stomach waters to dribble down the side of Thratia’s precious compound.
“Get yourself together,” Misol said, and there was an even gentleness to her tone that startled him. It was almost a cousin to sympathy.
“Why are you doing this?” he blurted, then bit his tongue until he tasted iron. Just because he was desperate for an ally didn’t mean Misol would be one. Wiping vomit onto the back of his wrist he turned to face her. Had to see the truth in whatever her expression betrayed.
She eyed him. Not to observe his nakedness, he knew that. She was taking in something deeper, using her doppel’s instinct to peel away the layers of masks he wrapped around himself like a shield. Like a cage. He’d never felt so truly naked in all his life.
She sighed then, low and slow, and shook her head. That simple negation wrenched at his gut, made him ache with a renewed sense of loneliness. “My reasons are my own. Now get dressed. I’ll be waiting.”
As the door slammed shut behind her he stood a moment, gripping the sheet to himself like it could hide what he’d done, heart pounding hard enough to echo in his ears. Bile threatened to rise again, tears threatened to smear his vision.
Fuck that. He came here with a goal. With something like a plan. He wasn’t about to crumble just because he’d boned Thratia Ganal. Just because Misol, with her bald head and big stick, wouldn’t be his friend.
Skies above, he was Detan-pitsdamned-Honding. Lord, at that. And this was his game. He’d stumbled across the board mid-play, certainly. Had wandered unwittingly into Thratia’s web. But he was pulling the strings now. Or something like that. Tibs would have a better analogy – probably involving rocks or gears or shit like that – but none of that mattered.
What mattered was this: he had the upper hand. They just didn’t know it yet. And that was exactly what he wanted.
Detan flung the sheet to the bed and strode over to the water bucket some well-trained but underpaid servant had left him and scrubbed up, each brush with the sponge cleansing away his lingering sense of regret.
By the time he was dressed, in the crisp clothes of a lord that had been left for him folded neatly on a chair, he was almost feeling human again. Though he hadn’t failed to notice that, although the clothes were well-cut and of high quality cotton, they were dyed a smudgey, ashy grey. Like the sky after he’d set it alight.
Probably just a coincidence. Probably Thratia had picked those colors knowing they’d hide dirt more easily.
The worried glance Misol gave him as he stepped into the hall stopped him hard in his tracks.
“What? I know I look sexy in a suit, Misol dear, but–” She snorted and waved him to silence.
“Don’t worry about it.” She hefted her spear and took off down the hall.
“You know, of course, that the moment people start saying things like ‘don’t worry about it’ the intended target of their otherwise benevolent advice can do nothing but worry about it.”
“You talk too damned much.”
“You’re such a stunningly engaging conversationalist, I can’t help myself.”
She rewarded him with dead silence, which was probably fair. The halls of Thratia’s compound – he’d never think of it as her home, it was another species entirely – wound on for ages. Detan fidgeted. Plucked at the fine seams inside his pockets, twitched at the lay of his shirt’s stiff collar. A collar that had been cut just so to reveal the brand at the back of his neck to any who happened to glance his way. He grimaced and pulled his hand back. These clothes had definitely been chosen by Thratia. Only she would turn him into a show-dog like this.
“Where are Forge and Clink?” he asked, and flinched when his voice echoed back at him off the hard stone walls.
“Safe.”
“Could mean a lot of things.”
“Means they’re fine, and the rest is none of your business.”
Well then. If they didn’t want him fraternizing with the other prisoners, then making them his business was exactly what he was going to do. He hadn’t a clue why they’d want them separated, or why they’d draw a hard line about it, but he could spin a lot of guesses – and every last one of them pointed to an advantage he could use.
Except for one reason: that they were already dead. Aella might do that, if she saw no further use for them, and he doubted Thratia would step in to stop her. Doubted Thratia would ever even know. The commodore – and why did she still call herself a commodore, when she held the warden’s seat? – ruled her domain with an iron fist, but he suspected not even Commodore Throatslitter had the wherewithal to micromanage all of her bastard helpers.
The things Thratia counted on to keep her people in line; fear, loyalty, informants. These things didn’t apply to Aella, unless Misol was an informant, which didn’t seem likely. He doubted Aella could ever be properly scared. Pissed off, sure, but the day Aella Ward grew frightened was the day the world came to an end.
Misol thumped once on a heavy, iron-banded door with the butt of her spear, and Detan realized he really should’ve been paying attention to the path they’d taken to walk here. Big, heavy doors like that were hardly ever in his favor.
The door opened to light brighter than the gleam off a bleached bone. He stumbled back a half-step, brought his arm up to shade his eyes while they adjusted. Some fool-headed engineer had wrangled a circular shaft straight through this wing of Thratia’s compound, spearing up all three levels to the daylight above.
No balconies marred the place where those levels should be, not even a window nor a faint discoloration of the stone. It was like being in a well, and judging by the thickness of the door jamb, a well meant to hold a whole pits-lot more than a couple of gallons of fresh water. Someone had gone and brought the desert inside, dusting the ground with mottled beige-and-brown sands, raked into a curling labyrinth. Aella waited from him in the heart of it all, a table propped up to her side with all sorts of nasty equipment he’d come to expect from these sessions. And Callia, of course. Couldn’t forget Aella’s sadistic shadow. The withered woman hunched under the table, drawing in the sand with one finger.