The Drowning City - Amanda Downum [15]
No wonder the blaze had been so fierce—Haroun’s fire, harnessed into stone. “But how did they know?”
Kwan’s eyes narrowed to angry black slits. “Shouldn’t we be asking you that question?”
Zhirin’s mouth opened, but Jabbor raised a hand before she could snap a retort. “No, Kwan.” He caught her eyes and held them. “But I’ll ask it anyway. Did you say anything to anyone else?”
She shook her head, cheeks stinging. He couldn’t afford to trust blindly, she knew that. Not even her. Maybe especially not her. “I only told you.”
“Then they have someone inside us, or a spy of their own in the Kurun Tam.” He wiped a sheen of sweat off his face.
Kwan snorted softly but held her tongue. She found a pitcher of water and a rag on the counter and began to sponge the blood off Temel’s face. True cousins, not just clan-kin, and the resemblance showed in the set of their cheekbones and short, flat noses. High forest people, the Lhuns, before the Empire had claimed their lands for the Kurun Tam and sent them to live by the river.
“We looked inside one of the crates,” Jabbor said, “before everything fell apart. One of the boxes marked for flawed stones. Do you know what we found?”
Zhirin shook her head.
Jabbor pulled something from his pocket and held it out to her. A stone gleamed dully against his palm—the size of her thumbnail, uncut, yellowish-white. A chunk of quartz, she thought, until she reached for it and felt the crystal’s sharp pulse.
“Sweet Mother,” she whispered, snatching her hand back. “Is that—” She swallowed the foolish question; she knew what it was. A diamond.
She’d never seen one in the rough before, only cut and polished and gleaming on the hand or throat of a mage, and very few of those. Unlucky, the uninitiated called them, or cursed. For the spirits or ghosts who ended up trapped in them, they must be.
And expensive. No question about that. The stone resting on Jabbor’s palm was worth a dozen rubies in Assar.
“What’s it doing here?” She caught herself leaning back. Foolish superstition—it was just a stone, without a mage to wield it. Her master would chide her for making warding signs against a lump of rock.
“It came from the Kurun Tam, didn’t it?” Kwan asked, setting aside the bloody ash-smeared rag.
“No! How could it? We mine rubies, sapphires—”
“We?” the other woman snapped, but Jabbor waved her silent.
Zhirin shook her head, pressing her stinging knuckle against her lips again. Diamonds came from Iseth, or lands far to the north whose names she could never remember. Places where people bound ghosts into slavery, as well as spirits. She couldn’t call it abomination—the Empire accepted such practices and her own master wore a diamond—but it still made her skin crawl.
“We need to find out where this came from,” Jabbor said, closing his hand over the stone. “I need you to investigate.”
Zhirin nodded. All the energy had drained from her, leaving fatigue and aches in its place. She wanted to lean into Jabbor, to breathe in the smell of his skin and let him hold her till the world felt right again. But weakness wasn’t what he needed from her. Her eyes stung.
“I should go,” she said, wincing as she put weight on her bruised and torn feet. Who would clean up the mess they’d made? Perhaps whoever lived here was used to rebels tracking mud and blood across their floor. “I’ll find you when I learn something.”
Jabbor rose with her and took her hand, tracing a gentle thumb across her knuckles. “Thank you.” And she would have run twice as far barefoot for that smile.
The crowd had thinned when she limped past the ruined warehouse, and guards roped off the shell. She didn’t see Asheris. Smoke trailed a gray veil across the city and ashes drifted softly on the breeze.
Chapter 3
Isyllt and Adam found a tavern in Saltlace that night, an expensive one overlooking a broad canal. The sort of place where a bored traveler might come to waste time and money—Isyllt thought she could manage that ruse. She lifted her chin as she crossed