The Drowning City - Amanda Downum [28]
“Is there another way out?” she asked the shopkeeper. Wide-eyed, he pointed toward a curtained doorway in the back wall. Isyllt ducked through it, heard footsteps following her as she darted past a storeroom and through the back door. It opened onto a narrow stair above a canal; the steps creaked and the railing left splinters in her palm as she rushed down.
She ducked down a narrow alley and emerged into the street across from the burning shop. People lay crumpled on the ground, knocked down by the blast or by their neighbors. The wounded were mostly Assari, but not all. Smoke and dust billowed, eddied to reveal a hole in the wall and the sidewalk littered with shattered stone. The wind shifted and Isyllt choked on the reek of smoke and char and sour magic.
This was no accident. She wrapped a concealment around her, and a ward against the flames, and crossed the street.
Her ring blazed as she entered the shop, pushing back the crackling heat—no survivors inside. Flames consumed the doors and wall hangings, rushed over the ceiling to devour the rafters. Lamps melted on shelves, brass and silver charring wood as they dripped to the floor. Witchlight flickered around her in an opalescent web, holding guttering flames at bay. But it wouldn’t keep the ceiling from crushing her when it came down.
The smell of charred flesh and hot metal seared her nose, and something else. The air was heavy with intent, with sacrifice. The magic that turned the shop into an inferno had been dearly paid for.
A spell so powerful must have left a trace. She nearly stepped in a puddle of brown-burnt blood, nudged a body aside with her toe. The man’s eyes melted down his charred cheeks and Isyllt frowned; intact, he might have shared his dying vision with her. Not that she had time to scry the dead.
There. A red glitter caught her eye, beside a body so mangled it must have been near the center of the explosion. She tugged a handkerchief out of her pocket—the silk insulated whatever magic was left in the crystalline shards as she scooped them up, and spared her hands the heat.
The ceiling groaned, loud even over the roar and rush of the flames. Isyllt uncoiled from her crouch and leapt through the door, gasping as the air outside rushed damp into her lungs.
The ringing in her ears drowned the noise of the crowd, but she caught sight of red uniforms forcing their way through the press. No more time to investigate.
Zhirin waited in the alley-mouth, one hand pressed tight over her mouth like she was trying to keep in hysterics. The man from the fabric shop stood beside her, holding her arm. Isyllt let her spells drop as she ducked off the street and they startled. Sparks crackled in her hair as she moved, stung her skin like wasps as the magic bled away. The humid breeze off the canal made her face tingle.
The man’s eyes narrowed, measuring. He glanced at her hand, and his own twitched in a warding gesture.
“Are you all right?” Zhirin asked, her chin trembling.
“I’m fine, but I wouldn’t mind getting away from the thick of things.” Already she felt death lapping over her, cold threads swirling through warm air. Her limbs crawled with gooseflesh and sweat prickled her scalp. At least a dozen dead, probably more, and one of the wounded wouldn’t survive.
So much senseless death. The kind she was here to encourage.
Excitement hummed in her blood, dizzied her worse than any wine. And that was the true reason she was here, the reason she would go where she was sent, no matter how ugly the mission. Not for king and country, not even for Kiril, but because danger sang to her like a siren, and after the first giddy brush with death, the rush of knowing that she was still alive, she’d known she could never stop.
She ran a hand over her face, smearing ash and sweat. Her fingers came away red; her nose was bleeding. “Excuse us,” she said to the man, taking Zhirin’s arm.
He stepped aside. “Be careful, ladies.”
Isyllt nodded, wondering how many ways he meant it. She led Zhirin down the alley, away