Calson sighed and leaned back, letting his arms go slack at his sides. “All right then. Dranik, we’ll let your friends play tonight. As a trial only. Anything I don’t like happens and you’re all out – you too, Dranik.”
Dranik nodded. “You won’t regret it.”
The bucktoothed woman snorted, proving herself more astute than she let on.
“We’re agreed, then,” Ripka said, “now let’s hear what’s expected for this job.”
Calson ruffled his hair, grimaced, then pulled a leather-wrapped bundle of papers from his interior jacket pocket and dropped it on the table with a puff of dust.
“Orders came in this morning. Got a new mark.”
“Another deviant?” the wiry man asked.
“Aye,” Calson said.
Ripka stiffened, and listened to the details of the woman they were meant to sell into slavery for Thratia Ganal.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Detan was home. The Dread Wind listed in the dock at the Honding family palace, its bulk throwing shadows over the finely manicured courtyard below. All around him servants and crewmembers darted to and fro, moving crates of supplies and essentials off the ship and into palace rooms. Thratia had disembarked some time ago, seeking a room high in the palace’s most prestigious tower. Aella had probably scurried after her, seeking living arrangements that didn’t sway with every breeze.
But Detan just stood there, rooted to the spot at the fore rail, watching the hustle and bustle of the ship’s arrival. Rumors of his impending nuptials drifted on whispered conversations. Wary glances came his way, then darted aside at the slightest hint of his notice. He ignored them.
He was home, and he was not, and what was worst of all, Tibal’s flier, his flier, the Happy Birthday Virra! drifted, tethered to a narrow spire of the palace. His chest ached to know that Tibal was not in the room beside the craft.
“Do you require assistance, young Master Honding?”
A man in the tight, black livery of his family approached him. Salt-white hair curled over his temples, storm-blue eyes peering out at him from within sunken walnut skin. Detan knew those eyes, though the face holding them was much older now. He knew the restrained amusement in the old man’s features, too.
“Gatai?”
The man winked and bowed. “Forever at your service, young master.”
Detan damned near giggled with glee. To the pits with decorum, he threw his arms around the old man’s shoulders and gathered him in for a tight hug. Gatai grunted, peeling himself away with reserved dignity.
“Gatai! You old codger, I can’t believe auntie hasn’t kicked you to the streets yet. Weren’t you dogging the maids’ skirts last time I was here?”
Gatai’s brows rose. “The other valets’ coattails, more like, but I’ve settled down with a man nearly my own age now.”
“You, romancing someone your age? I can hardly believe it.”
Gatai bowed his head. “It’s true, young master. We’ve adopted a little girl together. Trella. But I hear you are prepared to settle down yourself, now?”
The quick twitch at the corner of Gatai’s lips was all Detan needed to understand exactly what he thought of the match, and Detan really couldn’t blame the man. If someone had told him just a few months ago that he’d be swinging into matrimony with Thratia Ganal, he would have lost his lunch all over their shoes.
“Politics does funny things to a man,” Detan said, casting his voice low so that they would not be overheard.
“Ah. I’m sorry to hear it, then.”
Detan slung an arm around his old valet’s shoulders and steered him down the gangplank. When his boots hit the hard stones of the Honding palace’s dock, a faint shudder rocked through him, one Gatai was polite enough to pretend he hadn’t noticed.
Gatai’s discretion was legendary, his charm a veritable force of nature, and if Detan hadn’t had him in his life in those early years after the passing of his mother and father he was certain that he and his auntie would have torn one another to pieces before he’d ever gotten old enough to manifest his deviant ability. If there were anyone he could trust in his old home, it was Gatai. He hoped.
If things had changed so much for the worse that even Gatai would betray him, then he wasn’t convinced the victory he sought was worth having.
“You see and hear everything that goes on in these halls, don’t you, old man?”
Gatai quirked his head to the side in a shallow attempt to hide a prideful smile. “Keen listening is very much a part of my profession, young master. As you well know, it is my duty to be ready to meet your needs before you’ve even expressed them.”
“And to think we use such a marvelous ability for little more than seeing our clothes are laid out and our schedules managed.”
“Some more astute members of the household have experimented in varied uses of my skill sets, young master.”
“Ah, yes, I do remember how deftly you can shin up a tree.”
He shifted, embarrassed. “A good valet is able to manifest the skills the moment requires.”
“A school of thought, I confess, I stole from you.”
“And has the young master taken up the valet profession?”
Detan flashed him a sharp smile. “If the occasion suits me.”
“I had heard much to that effect.”
He didn’t much like the idea of dwelling on just what, exactly, Gatai had heard in the years after he’d escaped the Bone Tower and wandered the Scorched in search of something – anything – to make him feel safe and whole again. Something he still hadn’t found.
“And we return to those marvelous ears of yours.”
With firm pressure he guided Gatai down the paths he remembered were little used in the palace, and after a moment’s observation Gatai returned the pressure, easing Detan down hallways he didn’t recognize that were blissfully empty. Detan could have kissed the man, if he weren’t worried he’d cut his lips on that razor beard of his.
“You have, perhaps, a particular sound you were considering?”
“It has been a long time since I’ve been home,” his voice caught over the final word, the word he’d been trying to keep out of his mind ever since Thratia had forced him to watch the skyscape of Hond Steading roll into view. “And I’m sure there have been many changes, many things I’ve missed. I have heard, for instance, that friends of mine stopped by in my absence but were treated with poor care by my dear auntie. We know she tries, of course, but running this city of ours can just be so stressful.”
His heart thundered so that he felt certain Gatai could hear the frantic thump of it straight through all the layers of clothing Thratia had draped him in. Some things just couldn’t be hidden by finery. This was it. If Gatai brushed him off now, he’d know himself to be truly alone in this palace that was meant to be his.
“The Dame, great though her wisdom is, may have overreacted in the case of your friends. Tensions are high in the city, of course.”
“Of course,” Detan agreed quickly. “And I, as her devoted nephew, would love the chance to explain to my friends that her hostility was not cause for scorn…”
Gatai was not leading him toward his rooms. Though he’d been gone years, he’d scrambled up and down the steps to his suite of private rooms countless times in his life. He knew, no matter where he was in the palace, where his bed lay – like an extension of himself, a phantom limb. His rooms had defined his world as long as he could remember, the time of sharing a bed with his parents lost to the fuzzy memory of early age. They had been his sanctuary. And Gatai was leading him in the other direction.