He was also convinced that Thratia’d allowed Aella to bring along Callia just to put Ranalae on edge. Disgusting little move that it was, he hoped it played true. If anyone in the whole of the world needed her nerves shaken, it was the mistress of the Bone Tower.
What a sordid little party they made, tromping across the gangplank to his auntie’s flagship. The boards thundered under his boots, the wind pushed at him as if urging him to turn back. He wanted to tell the wind to mind its own pitsdamned business.
Thratia dragged along a selection of her honor guard, and Detan was just now getting the sense that she’d planned their wardrobe to complement his and hers both. They wore the slate grey coats he’d seen hidden under crates of booze in Aransa, but they’d been trimmed with piping of ochre-orange, like his own coat, and bloodstone red like her tunic. Such a small thing, but it was these deft moves of which Thratia was truly a master. Without so much as saying a word, their entourage presented as a cohesive unit, Detan’s importance on par with Thratia’s own. His auntie wouldn’t take long to figure out what hand Thratia was about to deal her.
Ranalae stood at his auntie’s right. For a breathless moment, she was all he could see, though she spared him little more than a cool glance. Auntie Honding, however, appeared to be trying to render him into mush with the sheer force of her glare.
“Well met under blue skies, Warden Ganal, nephew.” Auntie Honding had gotten her smile back on, and made a perfect show of bowing over her upheld palms.
“Well met, Dame Honding,” Thratia replied, and Detan bowed in sync with her to hide his smile at her casual dismissal of Ranalae’s presence. At least they were of one mind when it came to that nasty piece of work.
She could not be ignored for long, however, as she had sighted the withered form of Callia at the end of Aella’s leash. Her face twisted with disgust, smoothed away in haste, and she smiled with all her teeth at Aella.
“What have you done?”
The question took Detan by surprise. He’d expected shock, revulsion, anything except immediate acceptance. He had not considered that she would assume Aella had been the source of Callia’s ailment. Poor foresight, on his part. Just because he’d taken the little tyke for a normal child on first sighting didn’t mean those around her had missed the signs. Aella had the blood of a killer in her veins – and she didn’t even enjoy the act like any other self-respecting psychopath would.
“I have taken care of my ill mother,” Aella said with impressive poise. She stroked Callia’s hair, and that woman tilted her head to accept the affection. Whatever was left rattling around inside Callia’s skull, it didn’t appear to recognize Ranalae. Maybe it just saw another coat, and that was the extent of things.
“A strange illness.”
“Callia’s condition is unfortunate, but we are not here to discuss your past employee’s health,” Thratia interjected, cutting the rising tension between Aella and Ranalae short. “We are here to discuss the future of Hond Steading.”
The Dame’s brows lifted. “Are we? The future of this city is my prerogative, Warden, and I do not recall inviting you to offer advice.”
Thratia’s smile was slow as a rockcat who’d just slapped a paw down on its favorite prey. Detan steeled himself, knowing what was coming.
“And mine, sooner than you’d think. Your heir and I are to be married. We have come to celebrate the nuptials with you, and the handover of the city into his care, of course.”
His auntie’s gaze snapped to him, pure shock registering for just a moment before she managed to compose herself. Detan forced himself to stand still and tall, his face impassive, as Dame Honding took in the situation in full. Her gaze did not fail to linger on the harpoons lining the deck of the Dread Wind, and for that he was proud of her.
“An interesting travel arrangement for a wedding procession,” she said dryly. “Tell me, nephew, is this… arrangement to your liking as well?”
If the pits opened up and swallowed them all right at that moment, he could die a happy man, but they’d never been likely to do what he’d wanted, and today was no exception. He plastered on the breezy smile of a spoiled aristocrat, content to have a headstrong spouse take the reins, and shrugged.
“I cannot think of a stronger match.” Which was true enough, in a literal sense. He’d bet damn near anything that Thratia could arm wrestle half the women in the Scorched into submission.
“I see. I would like a moment alone with my nephew, if that is all right with you, Warden?”
She flicked a dismissive hand. “He is his own man. Take your time. Ranalae and I have much to discuss.”
Detan was a little insulted to realize Thratia didn’t think he had the balls to say what he felt in private, but then, she probably believed he had acquiesced in truth to her plan. The very sight of a whitecoat had once been enough to make Detan leap, blindly, from Thratia’s dock. She had no reason to doubt that the threat of them taking the imperial throne, and ultimately Hond Steading, would be enough to win him to her as a reluctant ally.
Fool of a woman.
Detan followed his aunt to her private cabin, doing his best to ignore the sideways stare Ranalae had locked on him. Let her stare all she liked; he was beyond her reach, now. Thratia’s protection aside, if she so much as grabbed for him he’d drop this ship from the sky, and he’d bet anything that she knew it, too.
His auntie’s cabin was sparse, but well-lit, which was rather unfortunate, as the sharp light emphasized every line of the scowl that marred her usually genteel features.
“What in the pits are you doing, young man? I haven’t seen a sliver of you since you left Valathea, and now you show up on my doorstep with an invading army – the commander of which you, apparently, intend to wed? Is this how I raised you?”
“Left Valathea? I fled that nightmare, Auntie, and if you haven’t seen a trace of me since that day then I assure you it was for your own safety – and that of everyone in Hond Steading.”
She drew back, her hip knocking the edge of a shelf, and in that slightest of movements, that wrinkled fear around her too-sharp eyes, Detan knew.
Dame Honding: the only family he had left, the woman who had raised him after his parents’ deaths, the singular protectress of all Hond Steading, knew what he was. Knew what had really happened on the side of a firemount all those years ago, when he’d blown a selium pipeline to smithereens and all the miners with it. She knew, and she’d sent him willingly to the Bone Tower. There was no other reason for her to be afraid of him now. He’d never been one to strike out – but a man of his power with his ire up around so much selium could be a deadly thing indeed.
“You knew. You fucking knew, and you told me nothing.” He wanted to raise his voice, to clench his fists and shout the sky down around her, but he simply didn’t have it in him. Oh, the anger was there, he could feel it bubbling just beneath the surface of his skin, but it seemed a distant thing to him now, the sting of her betrayal hollowed by time and distance. And Aella’s training, he’d have to give her credit for that.
“I guessed, I did not know.”
“And you?”
She stared down her nose at him. “I have no sel-sense, as Eletraia was always quick to remind me.”
That name, so long buried, opened a sinkhole in his heart. “Do not blame any of this on my mother. If you even suspected, you should have tested me earlier – told me what I was capable of. You sure as the pits are black shouldn’t have sent me out on the fucking line to endanger everyone!”