The Proposal Game Read online

  THE PROPOSAL GAME

  A SCORCHED CONTINENT NOVELLA

  MEGAN E O'KEEFE

  Copyright © 2018 Megan E. O'Keefe

  All rights reserved.

  www.meganokeefe.com

  No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder except for brief passages quoted by reviewers or in connection with critical analysis.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  ALSO BY MEGAN E. O'KEEFE

  The Scorched Continent Trilogy

  Steal the Sky

  Break the Chains

  Inherit the Flame

  PART ONE

  1

  Lady Halva Erst sat on the balcony of her father’s home, and catalogued all the things which were wrong with her lover. At the top of her journal's blank page she scrawled his name: Cranston Wels. Seeing no reasonable spot in which to embellish the letters of his moniker, she drew a scrolling vine of ivy beneath.

  "Where to begin?" she asked.

  "He has a weak chin," Silka offered.

  Halva eyed her dearest companion through the slashed shade of the frondleaf canopy. Silka wore snug leggings beneath her high-slit skirts, in the martial style, and a drab brown top without any sleeves or ornamentation at all. A fashion transgression Halva supposed she got away with due to the popularity of the exiled commodore, Thratia, who had recently taken up residence within the city. One's fashion transgressions often became strokes of genius, when one wielded as much power as Thratia.

  Silka thrust her sewing needle into a stretched silk canvas, thread tangling as she attempted to drag it through the fine, delicate cloth. Halva bit her tongue, nipping back advice. Though Silka’s mother was desperate for her only daughter to be more ladylike, Silka had always appeared allergic to all of the softer arts.

  "His chin is quite scholarly. It alludes to a gentle soul." Halva waved her pen, brushing away Silka’s concern.

  Silka pricked her finger with the needle and hissed at it. "Fine. He’s too quiet when he speaks, I can scarcely hear a word he says."

  "That is the mark of a confident man. A man who knows that his words are worth hearing, and doesn’t need to yell them out to be heard."

  "His height, then. He’s far too short. You wouldn’t be able to wear the latest heels from Valathea while on his arm, you’d tower over him." She held up the hoop. "Does this look like a bird to you?"

  "A bird’s nest, perhaps." Halva slumped into the soft netting of her chair and let her pen lay idle against the pad. "A man of his height saves on cloth, and my feet grow sore in those high shoes anyway."

  Silka stabbed away at the embroidery hoop, looking more like she was attempting to skewer an annoying insect than stitching the delicate petals of a red cactus flower. Halva smiled. Silka was such a delight, even if she was terribly misguided on the dispositions of men.

  "He has a stutter." Silka reposted.

  "I find it charming."

  "His sister is a bore."

  "I wouldn’t be marrying her."

  Silka leaned forward and rested her forearms against her knees, the hoop dangling between loose fingers. "Halva, we both know what’s wrong with him."

  "He has no viable prospects," they said in unison, parodying her father’s gruff voice, and had to stifle giggles least they be overheard.

  Halva shifted to the side, draping her arms over the railing of the balcony. Her family’s home stood on the fourth level of the tiered city of Aransa. A respectable neighborhood, if not as desirable as the second and third levels. From the balcony, the entire city splayed out below, cascading down the mountainside to the blazingly hot sands of the desert. Even at midday, when the sun’s glare was full, the streets teemed with the bustle of life and commerce.

  Aransa may have been a mere outpost of the Valathean Empire, but its proximity to a firemount with a rich selium mine made it a thriving one. Airships slithered through the clear skies, black dots bobbing along near the firemount which produced the selium gas that made flight possible.

  "There must be hundreds of potential suitors in the city," Halva ventured.

  "But you don’t want them."

  "No, I don’t." She leaned back into her chair, folding her hands across her lap. "But I don’t suppose that matters. Now that daddy is back from the southern reaches, I won’t be able to carry on with Cranston. It’s best I cut my losses now."

  Silka narrowed her eyes. "The expedition was unsuccessful, wasn’t it?"

  An embarrassed flush crept across Halva’s cheeks. "Of course it was. Daddy hasn’t been able to sense even a whole ship full of selium, let alone a pocket hidden underground, since his brain-fever. I don’t know why he insists on these expeditions—they’re just draining our savings away. He hasn’t found a new mine in years."

  "So Cranston’s true crime is not being a sel-sensitive." Silka stabbed her needle in the air as if spearing her point.

  "Yes." Halva sighed and covered her face with her hands. "I don’t want to marry a miner, Silka. Their lives are so short and dangerous. But diviners are so rare. If only there were another kind of selium-sensitive... If only Cranston were."

  Silka tapped Cranston’s name on the notebook with one scarred finger. "But what about your research? Your family won’t need sensitives if it can transition industries. Your work with fruit-bearing succulents is phenomenal."

  Halva paged back through her notebook, shutting away the name of her lover. She traced her fingers over the delicate blooms her own hand had drawn, the ink bold and sure. Mentally she ran through her notes, a series of successes and failures, in cross-breeding the rapid growth of Valathean vines with the hairy empress, the most drought-resistant of the fruiting cacti. A cacti which, unfortunately for her esteemed highness, bore small dimpled fruits the deep purple of the empress’s formal vestments. And, naturally, were covered in soft, downy spines.

  Halva had found her inspiration in her late mother's old gardening book, the pages filled with plants so strange to her eye that they may as well have been mythic. But one, a thistle vine, proved the spark to her imagination. It could be, the book had claimed, trained to climb up trellises to frame garden pathways with blossoms.

  It had only taken her a single turning of the red moon to train her hairy empress to climb, and as she discouraged and stunted its limbs—withholding sunlight to push it upward—it began to blossom. Doubly beneficial, the plant could be taught to grow along an umbrella-shaped canopy to shelter its roots and keep the water in the soil longer, eliminating the plant’s sense of drought conditions. When the plant bore fruit, they were large and juicy, laden with the nutrients that the plant no longer hoarded.

  But Halva’s family was a sel-divining family, and their concordant with Valathea would be dissolved if they dared branch into other forms of commerce. Without the imperial stipend, they’d be destitute in weeks.

  "Halva?"

  She started, not knowing how long she had been lost in the pages of her passions. "Sorry, it’s just—"

  "I know." Silka patted her knee. "Come on. Let’s get your mind off of things. I heard there was a new ten tiles table down at the Blasted Rock." Silka eyed Halva’s silk skirt and delicately embroidered blouse. "But you’re going to have to change first."

  2

  Detan Honding, sole heir to the Honding family fortune, sprawled in a pile of half-rotten crates and cracked his elbow against an annoyingly hard rock. He gasped, and immediately regretted the effort. The air behind the Scrubwood public house smelled distinctly of the offings of its patrons. His
throat spasmed, forcing a dry-retch that shook him down to the core.

  Unfortunately for his already abused state of being, his dear friend Tibal was not far behind him.

  "I said out!" The owner of the Scrubwood shouted, his reedy little voice echoing in the tight alley. Detan managed to roll to the side just in time to avoid being crushed by the airborne form of poor old Tibs. He crashed among the crates Detan had vacated, and Detan spared him a sour glance. It was just Tibs’s luck that he’d come along and crushed the wood first, making a softer landing.

  "Now, see here," Detan rasped as he hauled himself to his feet.

  "I don’t give a ratshit what you have to say." The owner hawked and spat. "Just clear out before I call the watch, understand?"

  A familiar hand coiled about Detan’s shoulder and hauled him back a half-step he hadn’t known he’d taken. Tibs spoke before Detan could gather a retort. "We’re shoving off now, no need to ring the watch’s bell."

  The proprietor glowered at them, fists clenching and unclenching to some unheard rhythm. Detan didn’t need to know the tune to recognize when he’d been given marching orders. Affecting a calm stroll, he sauntered out of the alley and back into the bustle of the main thoroughfare.

  With an indignant huff, he tugged his sleeves straight and shook detritus from his hair. Terribly rude of him.

  "You did swindle him out of three bottles of his finest wine," Tibs said while plucking wood splinters from his trousers.

  Detan eyed his companion. Standing a good half-head taller than Detan, Tibs's wiry frame appeared to be made of nothing more than the mast posts and thick canvas sails he tended. Tibs’s hair was miraculously clean beneath the droop of a worn, grey leather hat, his already beady brown eyes screwed up tight against the glare of the sun.

  "Well," Detan muttered, "It was rude of him to notice."

  "Sure," Tibs drawled.

  Detan rolled his eyes as he straightened his vest. Without the aid of a mirrored glass, he couldn’t be certain, but he supposed he still looked fresh enough to venture into another establishment. There was only one suspicious stain on his sleeve from his tumble through the rubbish.

  "Wish I had never stopped in this pits-cursed city," Detan said.

  "If only you had remembered Dame Honding’s birthday in any reasonable amount of time."

  Detan cringed. The vision of his Auntie’s slate-stern face rose within his mind, flinty brows cleaved down in disapproval. Sweet sands, but that woman was a war-axe. And also the only remaining blood relative that gave a toss about his sorry hide. Detan sighed.

  Until he acquired an appropriate gift to make up not only for having missed her annual celebration, but for his time away and all the rumors he was sure had flitted back to her on selium-fueled wings, he could not return home. Where his money was.

  And he could really, really use some money.

  "We’ll have to try once more, old chum."

  "You can’t possibly mean the Scrubwood again."

  "No, no." Detan held his hands up in surrender. "I admit that particular excursion was poorly planned. I did, however, glean some small facet of information which might lead us toward a more fortuitous future."

  Tibs eyed him so hard Detan thought the man’s stare would crack his very bones. "Really. And just what might thata’ been?"

  Detan slung an affable arm around Tibs’s shoulders and squeezed. "There’s a new ten tiles table up at the Blasted Rock!"

  Tibs sighed, but his feet started moving and they entered the stream of Aransan foot traffic, winding their way toward the level stairs. They'd found the Scrubwood on the twentieth level, a tumble-down sort of place that Detan had hoped would be perfect for their purposes. Now, he supposed, it was best to look up. And not only because he’d been thrown out on his backside.

  That wine—he admitted to himself in silence—would have been paltry faire by his fine Auntie’s standards. No. He should have gone up-level from the get-go. The proprietor of the Scrubwood had, he was certain, done them a rousing favor.

  As they threaded their way through the thin foot traffic, Detan loosened the ties on his shirt and took to fanning himself with an open palm. He might have spent the vast majority of his life puttering around on the Scorched Continent, but the heat of Aransa was something else.

  The city was founded along the side of an old mountain, its terraced levels reaching up from the desert floor to the peak. Directly across from the city, the great firemount rose, its conical mouth constantly wreathed with selium-lifted airships touring the mines or popping by for a refill.

  But it was the stretch between the two mountains that caused the heat.

  Black obsidian sand, the result of some ancient pyrotechnic dance he didn’t dare imagine, reached between the city’s mountain and its sister firemount. Beautiful by night, the sands were deadly come the day. Their bright, sharp faces caught and held the blaring rays of the sun. He’d even heard that Aransa would on occasion execute their condemned by forcing them to walk across that nightmare.

  He cringed at the thought. At least his habits were more likely to land him in a jail cell than on the executioner’s agenda.

  As they crested the final span of steps to the eighth level, Tibs paused and cocked his head at Detan.

  "You know you’re terrible at ten tiles, don’t you?" he said.

  Detan grinned. "That’s half the fun!"

  He gave Tibs a hearty clap on the shoulder, and then scurried within the broad, welcoming doors of the Blasted Rock before his erstwhile companion could offer up any other protests.

  3

  Halva peered dubiously into the clay cup Silka handed her, trying to decide if the suspicious smudges around the rim were the effect of poor glazing or poorer sanitation. Oh, well. Halva tipped her head back and drank. At least she was quite certain alcohol cleaned most things.

  Around her the patrons of the Blasted Rock went about their business; laughing and drinking and making under-table deals. Not a one of them let their dust-crusted eyes linger on Halva, which eased her nerves. Despite Silka’s best efforts, she still looked the part of an uppercrust girl. The poorest jute-woven dress in all the Scorched couldn’t hide the shine to her hair or the lack of sun-lines about her eyes.

  So far as she was concerned, they could all keep on minding their own business. Her business, now, was to dull the pain in her heart with the rather sharp contents of her filthy cup.

  "Stuff’s strong." Silka leaned toward her across their little table and raised both brows. "Go slow, eh?"

  Halva rolled her eyes. "Yes, mother."

  Silka grimaced and sat back, her sharp gaze roaming over the denizens for the evening. The Blasted Rock was precisely what Halva had expected from a downcrust bar. Its patrons were dirty in a way that suggested the grime was baked into the fine lines of their skin, yet their clothes were well mended and many wore expressions sharp with ambition. Only a few desolate souls hung their heads over their cups, hair obscuring whatever troubled expressions they wore.

  The tables toward the back of the room were the closest to anything like lively. There the ten tiles players sat, doing their best to make the Blasted Rock’s new board look old and worn as quickly as possible. Cheers and groans lifted in tandem as small fortunes exchanged hands. Halva locked gazes with Silka and pointed her chin toward the players.

  "Isn't that what you wanted to come here for?"

  Silka snorted. "Not now. No one would want to be my match while that idiot is still willing to empty his pockets."

  Halva squinted, looking for the foolish man Silka had marked. He was easy enough to pick out. Though his back was to her, those surrounding him wore wide, pleased grins. She scooted her chair back just a titch, tilting her head to get a better look at the table’s designated loser.

  His shoulders were rolled back, loose and open, and a thick clay cup sat by his elbow with lip-prints smeared all around its rim. The man’s skin was dark as damp sand and roughed by the sun, his coat patched t
oo many times to be of any value. He did not look the type of man capable of weathering such a loss. She frowned. Seedy as the Blasted Rock was, it wasn’t such a rough place that the proprietor would allow a man too drunk to understand what he was doing to drain away all his money.

  Halva shifted closer to Silka and whispered, "Do you think we should alert the Watch? Taking advantage of a feeble man in such a way is certainly a crime."

  A crease marred Silka’s brow. "I suppose he might be feeble-minded. He seems happy enough, and only a simple man could be pleased after having lost so much."

  The man tipped his head back and laughed then, his hands disappearing beneath the table for a moment as he thumped his knees. As he leaned forward, shaking his head, his hair shifted and Halva stifled a sharp gasp. On the back of the man’s neck, where a noble house’s brand was worn, she saw the three stars of the Landed peek above his collar in white scar flesh. The crest above the stars she could not make out—but the stars were enough. Only three families had a right to claim ownership of land on the Scorched continent, the rest were all forced to pay parcel leases, and none of those three lived in Aransa.

  With trembling fingers Halva set her cup down and leaned across the table until her lips were almost pressed right up against Silka’s ears. "That man is Landed."

  Silka let loose an undignified squawk. "Are you sure?"

  "Look yourself," she hissed.

  Silka pretended a casual glance the man’s way, her eyes widening in shock. "Which one do you think he is?" she asked.

  Halva pursed her lips together, considering. There weren’t many Landed men too young for grey hair and yet old enough to be whittling their time away in a tumble-down tavern such as this. She hmmed to herself, tapping her fingers on the scarred tabletop.

  The Rinston family was least likely, she decided. While they had men of the appropriate age amongst their ranks, they were insular and lived the furthest from Aransa—all the way on the northern shores of the Scorched—and spent most of their time vacationing back in Valathea. The Kaliads, perhaps, but they were far too obsessed with appearances for any of their number to turn up in public with grease in their hair and patches on their elbows.