Jay Lake - Endurance

The feral aspect of the Dancing Mistress and her cohorts in the Tavernkeep’s place was surely a pathway to a much darker facet of her people, harkening to those older days. I had loved her for years in various ways, but she always held a frightening depth.

Sometimes I preferred a person of simple intentions. Samma, for example. Or me. I grew tired of outguessing the inscrutable motives of those taken up with ancient, invisible agendas. Looking back, I find it amazing how unaware of myself I was in those years.

As I turned onto Calabar Street, the air around me seemed to pop. Strange shadows danced on the walls even in broad daylight. For a moment my mouth filled with the metallic taste of power. Then a sound rumbled by, loud enough that it overwhelmed all the noise of the city. I had in the past been mere handspans away from lightning strikes, thanks to the kind attentions of Federo. This was worse.

Some around me fell, mostly through fear, as the ground did not buckle. Noting the alignment of the new shadows, I turned and sprinted back toward their source. Once I was heading that way, the column of smoke and rising, multicolored sparks was easy enough to spot.

The Temple Quarter? Had Blackblood done himself a mischief? My troubles could surely not be so easily solved.

I raced toward the Street of Horizons, leaping over people huddled by the curb, pushing past the more alert who fled in the opposite direction. This was no explosion of alchemical powders, I was certain. Nothing a man or woman could create would cause such a flash of light. This was magic, the divine, something supernatural.

I approached the Temple Quarter, my sprint converted to the ground-eating lope of a Blade run. I could see that the cloud rose from a block behind the Street of Horizons. That was a smaller road of which I did not know the name. I arrived at the scene to find a few dozen stunned acolytes and priests of several orders staring at a rubble pile out of which the last of the smoke and dust was boiling.

The remaining air was strangely clear, as if wiped of all impurities. Like the garden before time, when the birds and animals had not yet been awoken to breathe it in. The metal-in-mouth taste was strong here. I could see by the expressions of several of the watchers that they shared it.

Puffing, I pulled up to the group. I never breathe hard. Not like this! An argument with the baby, for later. One hand on my belly, trying not to be obvious, I asked, “Whose place was this?”

None of them even looked at me, until I plucked at one young boy’s robed arm. He turned and opened his mouth, popping his lips like a carp in a pond. I realized his ears were bleeding. He must have been deafened by the explosion.

All of them seemed to have been.

I hoped they had a god of hearing to pray to.

Instead of addressing them, I pushed through to the front of the semicircle of onlookers. “Go home!” I shouted, letting the words form large upon my lips. I touched my ears, then pointed to them, then shooed them away.

Even the older priests nodded, somewhat to my surprise. In my experience, men of a certain age simply don’t surrender authority to women or boys. Their willingness to heed me was a mark of how overwhelmed they felt.

I turned around and looked again. Their departure was also a mark of how utterly unlikely I was to find any survivors.

Given the intense nature of the explosion, I knew I would probably have a few minutes to myself. Especially with the smoke plume almost vanished, which would reduce the likelihood of a bucket brigade arriving.

Looking around, I realized that the damage had indeed been contained. While windows were shattered in all directions, only one building had collapsed. Rubble smoldered in front of me, beams shattered, bricks broken and ground to dust, the contents of the inside mixed into the mess-plates, a splintered table, a length of cloth.

I moved closer. The length of cloth enclosed a human leg, protruding from under a still-intact chunk of masonry the size of a large trunk. Now I wished I hadn’t sent the priests away so quickly. Still, the chunk was balanced precariously on a pile of smaller wreckage. And there was no lack of loose wood for levers.

Swiftly I wedged a seven-foot length of milled lumber into place under the high edge of the masonry. Even as I worked to that, I confirmed my impression that this place had been targeted very specifically.

Was this the Temple of Marya? That hand had been played before, after all.

Someone had tried to attack this temple several years ago, not long after the fall of the Duke. I’d heard the story when I was staying with Ilona, twice, about a long night of light and flame, and a horrid creature slain in the street, only to have the body vanish with the sunrise. This had all taken place during the brass-ape races, which were a time of debauchery and general foolishness. While I’d recognized the importance of the story, I’d discounted most of the details.

Mistakenly so, it seemed.

Putting my back into the makeshift lever, I reflected that I had been quite the fool. Working my strength into the effort, I reflected that I was continuing to be quite the fool, but for different reasons.

It took me three tries, and the lever shaking hard with a splintering crack, before the masonry slid away. I leaned into the resulting hollow to pick up a dead woman. There was no reason to believe I knew her, but even if I had, her face was crushed beyond recognition.

Still, I drew her out and laid her in the street with as much respect as I could muster. Doubting terribly, I climbed back into the rubble to look again.

It had been a strange explosion. I was no expert on artillery or the alchemical arts-far from it-but I was fairly certain objects exploded in either one direction or another. From inside to out, as it were. Or the other way around.

This looked as if someone had taken a bowl full of temple and beaten it with a strong spoon. Everything was folded and mixed. Some material had gone inward, some out. Certain objects were pulverized, others nearly whole.

I clambered over the wreckage, searching for more bodies and looking for I knew not what else. If the gods of the Temple Quarter had been roused before, an attack such as this should have them on their feet and erupting from their own rooftops. Or did even gods know fear?

Some of the bricks that appeared grimed enough to have been the old outer wall had chalk marks on them. Sigils. Spells. Random scribblings, perhaps.

As I searched through the piles, the metallic tang in the air faded. The place already had the air of an old rubble pile. Magic, taking the urgency of the moment with it, covering the site over with varnished layers of time. Climbing back down, I looked into the rubble gap from where I’d pulled the dead woman, and realized another woman had lain beneath her.

This one might still be alive.

I cursed myself and leaned back into the gap. When I worked her free, she groaned. Her eyes were rolled back to whites, which did not encourage me, but her ears were not bleeding, and there was no foam bubbling from her mouth.

Perhaps she would survive.

Dragging her out could not be helping whatever was wrong inside her body, but leaving the woman under the bricks seemed even more foolish. I began praying to the Lily Goddess-the closest I knew to Marya, whose protections had so obviously failed here.

I do not know these women, Goddess.

They are not of Your priestesses. They have probably never even heard Your name. They are hardly of blameless virtue, I am certain.

But if their goddess is not able to ease their passing, or bind their souls back to their bodies, I pray You can do this thing for them on her behalf.

If no one claims them, I will wash their bodies and paint the white and the red, in Your name. Better they should rise up and live longer, though.