“When we started getting reports of a plain-clothes woman roaming the city, acting suspicious by checking out dark alleys and warning citizens against easily stealable items, well, I confess there was a bit of a betting pool on who would find you first – I guess Halka won. She’ll be insufferable about it.
“You really riled up the populace, you know. It’s one thing to be told to mind your goods by a watcher, but when a perfectly sane and healthy-looking woman comes up to you and tells you the same it really puts the wind up these desert flowers. The High Ridge Ladies’ Club is all afuss – they think it’s some grand conspiracy, though skies know what the conspiracy they’ve dreamed up is for. You’ve caused quite the stir in the city, Captain Leshe.”
“Please, call me Ripka. I apologize for frightening your citizens; that really wasn’t my intention.”
He held up a hand to forestall her. “You misunderstand me. I’m glad you did. This city has been too cursed safe, and all the older generation are set in their ways, not thinking at all that anyone could dare do anything to harm them, or steal from them. But Hond Steading’s getting big, and with the refugee problem spilling over from Aransa and some of the smaller cities Thratia’s people have been snatching up in her name, well, desperate people are here. They’re hungry and they’re scared and our regular populace just doesn’t know how to deal with it. I’m glad you scared ‘em a bit. Maybe they’ll watch themselves now.”
“You’ve a refugee problem?” she asked, embarrassment buried beneath professional interest. He grinned like a man who’d just snagged a fish on a hook.
“‘Fraid so. I know you did the best you could for Aransa – please don’t think I’m disparaging you for what happened there – but the fact is Thratia’s takeover wasn’t as complete as she thought. People got scared, they ran, and there aren’t a lot of places to run to on the Scorched, you know? Lots of them came here, looking for new lives – or at the very least safety. And the Dame is a kind soul, beneath all that iron she carries around her, so she let them in with open arms, started training programs for them to get jobs in spots we’re lacking here in the city. But there’s just so many, and every day the numbers grow. We could shut ‘em out, it’s been discussed, but the Dame doesn’t want them to die in the desert on their own. And anyway, they’ve got nowhere else to go. They’d likely camp on our doorstep, and just get absorbed into Thratia’s army when it arrives. None of us want to see them turned into cannon fodder, even if they are kicking up a spot of trouble here and there.
“We suspect some of Thratia’s supporters are getting through too, of course, but there’s no real way to tell. Nothing to tie them together, if you know what I mean. But we’ve found a bunch of her trash kicking around the city. Posters, leaflets, things like that. I’ll hand it to the old girl, she knows how to write a piece of propaganda.”
Ripka remembered stacks of crates, loaded with liqueur and weapons. She’d discovered them too late – the weapons had already been distributed throughout the city. Though she doubted Thratia would risk using the liqueur as her cover again, she thought it a safe bet that the method would be more or less the same. And here, in Hond Steading, she had time. They were in the early days of Thratia’s aggression here; she hadn’t come knocking yet. If Ripka was lucky, she could poison the roots of Thratia’s uprising before they ever took hold.
“I don’t mean to be presumptuous,” she said carefully, watching Lakon’s expression with every word. “But I have some experience with Thratia’s techniques. If you’d allow me to consult you on these matters, I think we could puzzle out what keeps her people connected here in your city.”
Lakon grinned and drained his glass. “I was hoping you’d say that. Consider yourself hired, Captain, though the issue of rank might be a tricky one.”
She waved him off. “No. I won’t wear the blues again. But I will help you as best as I can.”
“As some sort of private watcher?”
She shrugged. “Think of it as undercover work. People may know my reputation, but they don’t know my face, and looks are an easy enough thing to alter anyway.”
“Hmm. I like it. Where would you start, though? You’ve hardly been a day in the city. I suppose I’ll have to give you a tour.”
Ripka leaned forward and set her empty cup down, eyes bright and a new intensity burning in her chest. “Tell me, have there been any new food or drink crazes in your city lately?”
Chapter Seven
Pelkaia lay dying. Every bone in her body ached. Every pore of her skin bled hot sweat into the fine linen of her sheets. The steady thrum of her heart was a stutter-stop drumbeat in her chest, marching her to her grave.
She twisted, feeling her back peel away from the sweat-puddle it had left throughout the night, the fresh air a blessed, cool kiss over her heat-tired skin. Movement sapped her strength, made her limbs shaky with exhaustion. Fingers jittery, she reached to the trunk bolted alongside her bed, slumping, fumbling with the catch.
So early. Sunlight slanted like blades across her cabin floor, pressed at her eyes and made her vision milky – no, that wasn’t the light. Old eyes. Old, stupid, failing eyes.
Been alive too long. Been moving and breathing and fucking and fighting longer than she’d had any right to. Even of the long-lived Catari, Pelkaia was an anomaly. Must be. Couldn’t even imagine the whole of her people stumbling through old age like this, wretched as she was.
How many years? Her fingertips brushed familiar bottles, body going through the motions even while her mind wandered down old, dusty hallways of memory. Really – how many years? How many children raised and, halfbreeds that they were, left to the dust? Except Kel. Sweet Kel. He’d died before his youth was through, died to hide Thratia’s plans.
She pulled stoppers with her teeth, drank bitter concoctions she hardly remembered the names of. Every morning, she forgot them. By night they’d be back again, filling up the empty spaces that now echoed in her brain. Full formulas, names, methods of growing the plants to make them. Each one was bitter, acerbic. A healthy throat would have rebelled at their abuse, but hers was long past healthy.
Ritual complete, she dropped the last of the bottles into place and flopped back into bed, arms splayed, feeling the potions that would be poison to any other body course through her. Eyes half-closed, she imagined them filling her veins, replacing her blood, re-inflating her vitality. Stolen time. That was all she had left, now.
But a little bit of stolen time might just be enough to do some good.
Or punish some wrongs.
The cabin door banged open, and she was amused to realize she remembered the sound. Coming back up, now, she thought. Raising herself from the dead. Her skin was growing cooler, almost clammy, the sweat that sheathed her turning into chilly condensation. She cracked an eye, saw her vision clear, then risked cracking the other. Took a breath, and noted her lungs inflated fully.
Functional, then. At least for another day.
“Pell?”
Oh. Right. Coss. She’d been so busy raising herself from near-death she’d forgotten he came in to wake her every morning. Well, ostensibly to wake her. She suspected he insisted on barging in as soon as the sun was up to make sure she was still alive.
“I’m here,” she said, which was a rather stupid thing to say because, really, where else would she be?
“I see that.” His voice was soft, amused. Not long ago that voice had made her knees weak. It still made her head swim, her heart thump, if she were being honest with herself.