Not that he wanted to. Though he’d desperately attempted to rein himself in, he held no illusions about what he’d done. He’d blown a pocket of selium at the opening of a firemouth. People died. How many, he was terrified to learn. But his fear was irrelevant in the face of the pain and terror he’d caused. He needed to move. To help. To fix something.
He peeled the arm from his eyes, swung his feet to the bedroom floor, and nearly fainted from the exertion. Rather annoying, having a body that wouldn’t obey him. Not nearly as bad as having a mind that wouldn’t.
Someone had the gall to knock on his door, and he was halfway through reaching back to chuck a pillow at the intruder when his auntie stepped into the room. He froze, mid-swing, and hesitantly brought the pillow down to rest in his lap.
“You’re up,” she said.
“Your powers of observation never cease to impress me.”
She propped a tray against her hip, and sidled awkwardly through the door to keep from rocking its contents. Clay plates rattled as she snatched a guttering candlestick from the tray and set about lighting, one at a time, the candelabra near the door. The warm light made his eyes ache, and he considered asking her to douse the flames, but he’d have to face the day eventually.
He only wished the flames did not remind him of what he had done.
“I would say I taught you to speak better to your elders, but I don’t believe those lessons ever stuck.”
“Your efforts were valiant, but in vain.”
A streak of sadness marred her features, gone as quickly as it came, her stern expression replaced in a flash. He wondered if that ability were a family trait, too. Acquiring a mask for all his various roles had always come easily to him.
She settled herself in a chair alongside his bed and set the tray on his nightstand. Warm tea muddled with cactus fruit steamed beside him, a delicate roll of paper-thin egg wrapped around a huge variety of local vegetables and meats next to it. His stomach grumbled, loud enough to echo in the quiet room. Auntie Honding tipped her head to the plate without comment, and he dug in. When half the food was gone and washed down by tea, he ventured to ask the question he dreaded.
“How bad?”
Her eyes closed, fingers knotting the skirt over her knees. “The fire was contained, but rockfall struck the palace district to the east. We’re still sorting through the remains.”
The food tasted bland and caught in his throat. “I never meant…”
“I know.” She reached out and squeezed his knee. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d touched him. “But the damage is done.”
He brushed her hand away. “Ranalae pushed me to it. Aella would not have dared without her prodding. If you had not invited her into our home–”
His auntie laughed, a soft, bitter sound he’d never heard from her before. “And do you think I have any choice in the matter?”
“You sent for them.”
“They were coming anyway. From the moment Thratia seized Aransa it was only a matter of time before the empire wondered just why it’d let our little family rule this jewel for so long. My invitation was an attempt to save face, to retain some semblance of authority over what happens here.” She cast him a sly look. “Not entirely different from your marriage.”
“Ranalae is a monster.”
“And so are Aella and Thratia and, some would say, you, dear boy.”
“Then we should all of us be turned out.”
She sighed wearily and leaned back in her chair, allowing her eyes to slip shut. She’d never looked so old before. So tired. Fine lines ran the length of her face like spider-webbed glass, just waiting for the final blow before it shatters.
“Maybe,” she agreed. “But we are all this city has, for the moment.”
“We aren’t the only ones working to protect this city.”
Her eyes snapped open and she stared hard at the ceiling their ancestors had built. “You mean your friends. That watch-captain, and the others.”
“I do. You did them a terrible disservice, trying to lock them out of the fight. I sent them to you – sent you Nouli – and you threw away all those opportunities to scrape your knees before the empire.”
“Threw them away? I protected them, you stupid boy. I tried to lock them where even Ranalae’s spies could not find them, and then they went to the wind. Do not think, not even for a moment, that they were not being followed from the moment they stepped off the Larkspur’s decks. Ranalae may have arrived a few weeks ago, but her spies have been here much longer. The ex-watch-captain of Aransa is a target too juicy to miss.”
“And you are doing what, exactly? This city is under siege by disparate forces. You cannot tell me the only thing you’ve done to protect it is to call for the empire and lock some friends of mine away for their own safety. If you want to lose this city, auntie, you’re doing a real good job of it.”
The fine lines of her face smoothed away as she drew her expression taut with bitten-back anger. “I’ve done what I can. I created the forum, to allow our people their voices, in the hopes that they would become their own force if it came to that. I’ve threaded my own people throughout the city – people looking for your friends now, might I add, to make certain they are safe –and flew my little birds to catch any whispers. I have not been idle, as you imply, but I have been hamstrung. How can one secure a city’s future, without its heir?”
He was on his feet in an instant, the dizzy flash of sudden movement fading beneath the storm front of his anger. The Dame moved, a futile attempt to grab his sleeve, but he was already around the bed, reaching for the curtain the servants had drawn against the evening. Drawn to hide what he had done.
The cloth tore as he yanked it back, revealing the hazy light of a late evening choked in dust. Though his room was not angled to the best vantage, the damage was plain enough. Stonefall carved a swathe of destruction through the palace district, the scents of bloody iron and choking dust still hot in the faint breeze swirling ash against his windowsill.
“This,” he grated, “this is what this city’s heir brings.”
“Aella said–”
“Aella says whatever she damn well pleases to get what she wants. Pitsfucking damnit, auntie, I’m trying to keep it together, damn near making myself mad with all her lessons and experiments upon my ‘control’ but half the fucking time I suspect she’s pushing me to test herself, or to see what she can get away with. I’ve got the Honding fire, but I’ve got the family temper, too, and those two nasty cousins should never mingle. I would have rather choked on my own blood than do… do… this. But look. Fucking look and see how successful I was.”
“Language,” she snapped.
He dragged his fingers through sweat-damp hair. “This ain’t a time that calls for pretty words, auntie. This is something that deserves words so ugly I haven’t even dreamed them up yet.”
“While you busy yourself with your vocabulary,” she said as she pushed to her feet and straightened the robe that trailed her like midnight, “I came to tell you that Gatai is insisting you have your friends returned to you, and I find I agree. Though you will not take me into your confidence–” she held up a hand to forestall an argument, “– it is clear to me that you must have someone. I have done all I can to keep this city safe, and have reached the end of my ability. If you require my assistance, you have it through Gatai. I suspect the less I know of your true motives, the better.”
He swallowed around a dry throat. “And just how will you hide them here, if they even agree to return?”
She flashed him a smile. “Your old auntie isn’t beaten yet, boy. I have a few tricks up my sleeve. And you’d be amazed how easy it is for one to overlook the details of a face when the body is wearing servant blacks.”
He slouched against the wall beside the window, turning away from the destruction he’d wrought. “I want to help…”
She crossed to him, gathered both of his hands in her boneraw fingers. “I know. You can’t
. Not me, anyway. My time here is… short, nephew. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a wedding to prepare for.” Her voice was grim as she squeezed his hands. “Make your mother proud, boy. You’ve already made me so.”
She was gone in a moment, aged legs carrying her with the same speed and grace they always had. Must be nice to not be susceptible to bonewither, he thought, then chased the thought away. His auntie had done her best for a family lineage she was, by lack of a genetic inheritance, kept apart from. Though her actions were flawed, her motives were pure. She’d done what she could. The rest was up to him.
Skies save them all.
Chapter Forty
Hond Steading burned. Ash and screams choked the air, and by the time Ripka arrived at the heart of the terror she and all the others had torn strips of cloth from their clothing to tie around their mouths and noses, lest they breathe in all that had once been stone. And flesh. A certain sweet, meaty smell tinged the air that Ripka tried very, very hard not to think about.
The watchers spread out, using their whistles to coordinate in a pattern so familiar it made Ripka’s heart ache. She wanted nothing more than to join them, to shrug on a blue coat and heave to with the others, to be a human bastion of order and safety for the confused and injured populace.
But she’d lost that place. Given it up for a cause, and now this vague edge life was all she had left.
Not so little of a life that she couldn’t do something with it, though. Sometimes the greatest leverage for change could only be obtained from outside a system.
The eastern edge of the palace district lay broken across the wide road that had once been its major thoroughfare. Stone and wood and bodies lay scattered like chaff across the road, cries of distress, pain, and requests for help merging into one great wail. The belch of the firemount had stopped, but the horror was just getting started.
Halfway toward the rubble, she realized she’d lost the shadow of Tibal at her side. She cast around for him, saw him standing just on the rise where they’d first caught sight of the destruction, his hands trembling at his sides and his face as pale as death. Enard hesitated alongside her, but she waved him on. Wasn’t likely having a crowd around Tibal would do him any good.
She jogged up to him, aware always of the groans and cries in the neighborhood behind her, and turned to stand at his side, looking out across the damage, not at him. She doubted he’d really see her even if she held his eyes open and shoved her face right under them.
She said nothing, kept her presence steady and solid and silent, while he worked up whatever it was he needed to say.
“Detan did this,” he said after a while.
“Didn’t mean to.”
“Who would make him?”
Ripka kept quiet. Wasn’t a real question, anyway. Eventually Tibal rolled his lips round, working up some saliva, and said, “Ain’t seen nothing like this since the war.” Sweat gleamed across his dusty forehead, tracking runnels through the grit that dusted them all.
“Won’t be likely to again, if we can help it.”
“That what we’re doing here, preventing horrors like this?”
“It’s what I’m trying for.”
“Working out well.”
She winced, and he blinked, drawing back into himself. He tugged on his mouth-wrap with those rangy fingers of his, didn’t quite seem to know what to do with his hands so he tugged on his hat, too. A little avalanche of dust and soot rolled off the brim. Ripka decided not to think about what that dust might have been just a few marks ago.
“Don’t know if I can do it,” he said.
“You don’t have to. Could go back, give Honey a hand.”
He pursed his lips like he’d tasted something sour. “They need help.”
“Indeed.”
“Could give it to ‘em. Had training in the Fleet.”
Training from the same Fleet that’d brought him through so much carnage that he stood here now, one of the bravest men she’d ever known, shaking straight through the ground for the fear this all brought rushing back.
“Could do,” she agreed.
“You could, too.”
“Plan on it.”
“What are you dicking around with me for, then?”
“Saw someone needed my help, and offered it.”
He gave her a sly, sideways glance that she could feel crawl against her cheek, but she kept her gaze straight ahead, stuck on the destruction, mapping out the points of the most hurt, guessing where best she could bend a back and lend a hand as soon as Tibal had himself settled.
“Guess we’d better get to it, then.”
“Suppose so,” she agreed.
He hesitated, his body canting forward while his feet stayed stuck. She couldn’t dream of what kind of demons he was fighting, couldn’t even conjure up a ghost of them, but she had to give him credit. He put one foot in front of the other, grit his teeth, lengthened his stride, and picked up speed. By the time they hit the bottom of the little ridge he was all cool confidence, barking orders to those clearing the rubble just like he’d been trained. Wouldn’t sleep well tonight, that man, but Ripka doubted any one of them would ever sleep well again after this.
Ripka ran toward the pain. What had once been an apartment building lay shattered on the ground, spilling out across the road far enough to block all attempts at bringing carts through. People had thrown their backs into clearing that rubble, whickering donkeys dragging carts over to haul away both broken men and stone.
Hard to tell the screams of men from the complaints of the animals. She let her training take over. Rockfalls were always a worry for the sel-mining cities of the Scorched, firemount eruptions a distant but ever-present threat. And so the watchers trained, and made plans, and grinned at each other and boasted about how prepared they were, how easy it would be to set things to rights. Their plan was iron. Was stone.
But in the desert, all things grow brittle and break, and all that planning was no different. She moved rubble, peeled away sheets of stone and twisted wood and there under the debris was a woman, just as broken as her home. Her arm twisted up above her head, bone poking through the skin like a white flag of surrender. Sallowness suffused her skin, but her heart beat and her breath came slow and easy, so Ripka stabilized the arm as best she could and hauled the woman to the street to line her up with the other injured.
The night went that way. Whether that woman was the first or the last she didn’t know, couldn’t remember through the haze of faces made indistinct by blood, ash, and tears. At the end – which wasn’t the end, couldn’t be, was just a pause because the screams in the rubble had stopped and something has to make you stop, or you end up in the line with the injured – she sat hard on the knoll where Tibal had frozen with fear of the past, and thought about all the future fears that were always coming. Things could always get worse.
Was a time when Ripka thought the worst thing that’d ever happened in her life was her father coming home from the Catari war, mute and with a look in his eye like all he could see were shades of red and charcoal. Then he walked off, into the scrubland, and never came back. She’d carried the guilt of how relieved that’d made her feel her whole life. Right up until this moment, feeling and knowing some shade of what his pain had been, and hoping there was something could be done to heal that pain. Because if there wasn’t, she was a dead woman walking.
Tibal found her soon enough, sat down beside her, those long legs of his crossed in sharp angles that made her distinctly uncomfortable. His fingers were raw, nails ripped back and skin bloodied, probably torn to ribbons. Hers were, too, but she hadn’t really realized until she’d seen the mirror of it on him. Didn’t matter to her, though. Wasn’t the worst thing she was feeling.
Enard came up, looking the same as them all, and that little warmth she got in her chest every time she saw him stayed snuffed. Probably for the best, that. Any hint of happiness she felt now might just make her vomit from the contrast.
Dra
nik found them, and Captain Falston too, and soon they were all sat there, made indistinct from each other by smears of dust and blood, and for a moment they looked with one set of eyes on what they’d done, and what they hadn’t been able to do, and each one of them – each and every fucking one – moved their personal bar for horror up just a little higher.
Sometime during the night Falston turned to her and was himself again, distinct from the group, hints of his blue coat showing like smudges under all the dust. “We need to talk.”
“Been wondering when you’d say as much,” she said.
They stood as one and, the previous events of the night seeming of trifling importance now, headed to Latia’s house. Ripka hoped the woman had strong wine waiting.
Chapter Forty-One
There were a lot of things Detan could have done in the day after he let the firemount roar. The household staff tiptoed around him, and he didn’t see a hair of either Thratia or Aella. Or Ranalae, and his dear old auntie. That one visit, it seemed, was all he was going to get. He was on his own, which he knew, but it was real frustrating waking up with a pounding headache and knowing people were counting on you to get them out of one right tangled mess.
The reason he had that headache, he decided to shove aside. To dwell too long on that particular nightmare might just set off a whole fresh horror. Aella had given him an injection, returning some of his control, but he didn’t trust himself to light a candle with his power now. Not while he could still hear the rescue efforts going on outside.
He could have run. Could have weaseled his way up the towers of the palace and gotten himself onto the Happy Birthday Virra! and broken for the inland, or the sea. He could almost convince himself that fleeing was the best possible route, that what Pelkaia had said was true: the best thing he could do for this world was to run, to find some barren, sel-less place, destroy his flier, and stay there.
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