Nights of Villjamur - Mark Charan Newton [191]
The younger rumel was right. The Freeze itself would most likely kill them sooner or later. Now they were merely refugees once again outside the gates of Villjamur, and what could they do now?
“Do you want to get back to your house?” Fulcrom suggested.
“I should.” Jeryd shuddered. “There’s a danger that Tryst might have been telling the truth for once in his miserable life.”
“I’ll go with you, in case I’m needed.”
What a strange feeling it was to have a colleague thinking after his safety.
As the street wound its way upward in a gentle arc, they trudged the cobbles doggedly feeling their thighs ache. Jeryd contemplated how old he was getting.
Fulcrom suddenly pointed out a black trail of smoke wafting across the wind-tossed sky.
Jeryd began to run up the hill, leaving Fulcrom pointing behind him, fearing the worst.
Toward the smoke.
Toward his house.
Passersby in the street stared at him because so few people ever ran these days, what with the constant snow on the streets. Even a dog barked in surprise. Then he fell on the ice, struck his knee on a cobble. Cursing, he pushed himself up and limped on.
Fulcrom arrived a moment later to find the old rumel on his knees in the snow, in front of the debris of his home. Fragments of wood were strewn across the entire street in countless splinters, broken bits of furniture were smoldering, roof tiles and shattered glass lay everywhere, and where Jeryd’s house once stood, there was now merely a ragged hole.
Fulcrom walked over and placed his hand on Jeryd’s shoulder. The old rumel was gently pawing at some fleshy remains.
Fulcrom cringed. It could once have been a foot.
A young investigator approached, a gray-skinned rumel not long signed up.
Jeryd tilted his head toward him as if he could offer him his life back.
“Were you first on the scene?” Fulcrom inquired.
“Yes, sir. My name’s Taldon, and I’ve been here a quarter of an hour. We’ve searched the remains and we’ve found one body so far, but no one could have survived this. The damage is immense.”
Jeryd began to shake violently. Fulcrom released his shoulder, gestured for Taldon to go.
“I’m … I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry.”
The old rumel merely sobbed, clutching at the snow like a child. Fulcrom couldn’t believe this. After all Jeryd had done for the city over the years, to receive such recompense. Because of Tryst. Or Urtica?
“If the chancellor wanted you dead, Jeryd,” Fulcrom advised, “it’s probably not too safe to hang around here long. He might still be out to get you.”
“A moment,” Jeryd sobbed. “Just give me a moment.”
“I’ll take you home with me. Then I’ll look after it all, okay?”
A scream, a female voice calling. Marysa came running through the snow.
Jeryd looked up as she ran toward him, her hair bouncing.
The two of them hugged each other so tight they might have become one entity, and still Jeryd would not let her go.
At last, through his tears, he asked her, “How did you … survive?”
“It was those kids with the snowballs. They smashed a window and I went out to chase them away down the street.” She began to cry too, perhaps imagining for the first time what could have happened to her. And Fulcrom loved this irony, that Jeryd’s tormentors, the Gamall Gata kids, were responsible for saving his Marysa.
There were about eight of the same kids hovering nearby, though empty-handed now. And Jeryd smiled at them, waved, then he laughed through his tears.
The kids shrugged, a little confused, and a blond one shouted, “Sorry about your window, Jeryd. We didn’t do the rest though, we swear.”
“I know,” Jeryd said, a peaceful smile on his face. He began to chuckle, tears in his eyes. “Don’t worry, I know.”
Fulcrom wondered about the woman, Tuya, who was presumably dead—no one could have survived an explosion like this. From what Jeryd had told him, she’d led a lonely life, and he felt sorry that there was no one to mourn her, no one to even know she’d been killed. How many faces must she have seen in the night? There were hundreds of thousands of people