“Who are these people?” Dranik asked.
“Deviants working to get other deviants to safety.” Ripka flicked her gaze to Sasalai, whose brows were raised high in curiosity. She’d stopped dragging her feet, and leaned more easily on the cane Tibal kept tucked carefully under the woman’s arm. She should be terrified, but she appeared a strange combination of pissed off and intrigued. Ripka thought she’d like the woman, under different circumstances.
“And this Laella person works for Pelkaia?” Dranik frowned so deeply in thought that Ripka imagined his lips might slip clear off his face.
“Honestly? At this point, I have no idea. But we’re about to find out.”
The Ashfall Lounge was empty for the evening. A little light filtered through the upstairs windows, seeping out around the edges of pulled curtains. Someone was home, someone who was making it pretty clear they didn’t want any company.
“Rules say we go around back and knock the pattern,” Dranik said.
Enard gestured the way. “After you then, sir.”
Dranik quirked a brow at his use of “sir”, but crossed the distance anyway, leading them through the burnt-out remains that gave the theater its sense of danger. He knocked three times, a rather boring pattern in Ripka’s opinion, and they waited tense as rockcats.
The door swung open, and the Songstress stood there in her full get-up, wig and all, but now that Ripka knew what she was looking for the girl couldn’t hide her face.
Laella drew a deep drag from her cigarillo, flicked ash to the floor, and gave the party on her doorstep a long, appraising look. After a moment, she sighed and shook her head.
“I should have known this would happen after you saw me on the patio. Can’t let a mystery lie still, can you, Captain?”
“‘Fraid not,” Ripka said.
“Well, you’d all better come in and have a chat. Is this the deviant?” She tipped her chin to the gagged grandmother.
“No, this is how I treat all my friends.”
Tibal snorted behind her, and Laella narrowed her eyes. “You spent too much time with that Honding man. Now get in, before you’re seen, will you?”
Ripka didn’t much like the idea of entering Laella’s lair without knowing the girl’s motives, but she could hardly quibble with her logic.
“After you,” she said, and Laella rolled her eyes as she spun around, leading them all into the dreary half-light of the theater’s back rooms.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
An empty third cup waited by Detan’s seat at the table, and he was proud his hands did not shake as he poured the pricklebrush tea into it. Misol stationed herself by the door, a threatening phantom, her hands loose at her sides though he could make out no weapon on her body. Not that she needed one. Detan wasn’t exactly handy with, well, his hands, and Aella had his sel-sensitivity locked down tight. That lockdown, more so than the presence of Ranalae, made his skin crawl. Whatever was about to happen here, Aella wanted to be certain Detan couldn’t fight it. Which was pretty rude of her, considering all the time she’d put into honing his abilities.
“It is such a pleasure to see you again, my lord. I hope your time in the Scorched has treated you well?” Ranalae smiled at him over the rim of her cup, all polite formality. Detan wanted to smash her smug face into the table between them, but he forced a cheery smile and put on his hapless-lord persona. He was not about to let her beat him at his own game.
“I find the wide-open skies suit me better than tower walls.”
She flashed him a toothy grin. “Such a pity. I had hoped you might come to enjoy my little tower. We were just beginning to know one another, before you took an early leave of my hospitality.”
Detan raised his cup to her. “Your hospitality, it must be said, has improved some since those days.”
“Oh, dear boy, I think you’ll find it hasn’t. Aella has been telling me so much about the progress you’ve made.”
He shot the girl a sharp glance. “Traitor.”
She rolled her small shoulders. “Oh please, you can’t be that forgetful. I am, as I’ve told you, only interested in what I might learn.”
“Your little friend here was preparing to vivisect me, last I saw her.”
Aella frowned delicately. “Well, we can’t have that. You’re no use to anyone dead.”
“Certain conclusions can be drawn from corpses,” Ranalae corrected with the same casualness as if she were discussing the weather. “But I find your methods thus far fascinating. This injection of Callia’s devising, what does it do for the deviant?”
Detan cleared his throat. “The deviant is right here, you know. You could ask him.”
Aella inclined her head. “The injection does not work for me. His experience may be more valuable than my observations.”
Aella had tried the injections, and they did not work. It took all his long-practiced control to hide his shock. At least he hadn’t been Callia’s first test subject. Pits only knew what went on between those two before they’d apprehended him, and Aella clearly held no love for her adopted mother, as the withered form at her feet attested.
Aella’s self-assurance, her cool distance and easy taunts. If Callia had done to Aella half of what Ranalae had done to him, then… Then he could not find it within himself to blame her for the way she treated Callia.
“Well?” Ranalae prompted. “If you are here, then explain. What does the injection do for you?”
“Increases my irritation with pushy bitches.”
That was probably not the smartest thing he’d ever said. Aella coughed to hide a strangled chuckle, but Ranalae was too busy glaring needles through Detan’s eyes to notice.
“Manners, please, my lord.”
“Manners?” He stared at the teacup in his hand, at the crisp line of his sleeves’ cuffs, so thoughtfully lined in flame-orange. He might be used to playing a part, to putting on a face and dancing to the tune. But usually he set the tune. And this… This twisted mirror of a tea party was just too much.
There was no thought to his impulse. He crushed the teacup in his hands, felt the satisfying give of the polished material shatter beneath his fingers. Hot tea spilled over them, trickled down his palm and forearm, scalding, blending with the blood small lacerations drew forth from his hand.
“Fuck your manners.”
Misol moved, but for once in his life Detan was faster. He grabbed the table by its lip and flipped it while he burst to his feet.
“Restrain him,” Aella snapped as she stood and brushed streaks of spilt tea from her robes.
“Stop,” Detan growled. Misol hesitated, hands up, ready to grapple him into submission. But Detan wasn’t moving toward either woman. He made his body language peaceful, inert. Let the anger in his expression do what he needed it to do to let the women who surrounded him know he was having none of their shit.
“Enough of this pageantry. You brought me here for a reason, Aella, brought me here to meet with this – this monster – to what purpose? Let’s get this horror show over with, and you two both stop pretending you’re anything but the twisted specks of humanity you really are.”
“Well,” Ranalae tsked. She stepped away from the flipped table and stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the damage to her room’s decor with a mild pout of annoyance. She had the look of a woman whose pet had just pissed on the rug. “I thought you had learned control.”
“Control and patience aren’t always bedfellows.”
“Clearly.” Aella shook her head and picked her way around the wreckage to pat a whimpering Callia on the head. The gentle stroking of the desiccated woman’s hair made Detan’s stomach lurch. “We had better begin, then, since the subject is so eager.”