Amanda Downum - The Drowning City

A moment later her mirror-carefully replaced after she’d bathed and changed-shivered in her pocket. She ducked into the hall to respond, but by the time she pulled it out the bronze was empty and silent. She whispered Isyllt’s name, but there was no answer. A second time, and a third, and still nothing. Something was wrong.

“What is it?” Fei Minh asked when she returned to the kitchen.

She swallowed. No use in pretending any longer. “I have to go.”

She ignored her mother’s angry questions and demands as she tugged on her shoes. As she opened the door she paused and risked a backward glance. “I’m sorry. I’ll be back when I can.” If I can.

Isyllt woke to a sharp knock on the door and the jangle of her wards. The bed creaked as Adam leapt up; her skin prickled with the sudden absence of his warmth. She scrubbed gritty eyes, but it only made them ache more. It felt as if she’d only slept a few hours, and from the darkness beyond the shutters that was probably true. Sweat dampened her hair, pasted her undershirt to her skin, and her burned arm itched fiercely.

Adam eased the door open and Vienh slipped in, rain dripping from her oilcloak.

“The Yhan Ti is leaving port,” she said, “bound for Assar. Izzy’s ready to slip dock, and your friend Bashari is waiting on the Dog. Come on.”

Isyllt stumbled up, groping for her still-damp clothes while Adam tugged on his boots. It took her three tries to pick up her shirt and her hands shook as she fastened the buttons. If the saints were merciful, she could sleep on the ship.

The hall was dark, only one lamp by the staircase left burning. Isyllt dropped to the back of the line, pulling out her mirror. Zhirin was probably asleep. She whispered the girl’s name as they started down the stairs. An instant later, she heard a loud crack in the common room, followed by a heavy metallic clang. Adam paused and Isyllt nearly ran into him.

“What was that?”

A thunderclap shook the room, shivering the stairs and throwing them against the wall. She lost the spell and her grip on the mirror. Isyllt grabbed for the rail, gasped as she hit it with her bad hand, and fell. The rush of pain drove away the last fatigue-fog. Smoke billowed, reeking of gunpowder.

“Bombs!” Vienh shouted; her voice was distant and hollow through the ringing in Isyllt’s ears. “Out the back.”

Doors opened along the hall as they scrambled back, wary faces peering out. Another explosion echoed and someone screamed. Down the narrow stairs to the door behind the storerooms, but when Adam unbarred the door and flung it open a bullet shattered the wood inches from his shoulder.

Through the gloom of the rain-soaked alley, Isyllt saw a red handprint on the opposite wall. Vienh swore as they retreated from the door.

“Dai Tranh! It’s an ambush.”

Smoke eddied from the front of the bar, and orange light flickered at the end of the hall. Through the fire, or into the bullets.

“They’ll be waiting in front too,” Adam said, checking his pistol.

A shot cracked before she could answer. Isyllt ducked-in truth more a startled stumble-and saw a masked man crouching on the other side of the door. He fired again and Vienh slammed into her, knocking her down. Isyllt landed on hip and elbow, eyes blurring from the pain. Adam fired back and the man vanished.

They ducked into a storeroom and Isyllt called witchlight. Vienh gasped as she slouched against the wall. Red spooled down her right arm, feathering across her linen sleeve.

“Not bad,” she hissed as Isyllt reached for her. “Just grazed.”

Isyllt touched her arm anyway to be sure and promptly jerked her hand away with a curse.

“Lead bullets. Bastards.” Isyllt shook her head. “They’re not Dai Tranh.”

Adam pulled out his mirror, used it to glance around the doorframe before he leaned out to shoot. “How do you know?”

“The Dai Tranh used copper bullets at the execution, even though they were shooting at mages. And they used rubies to blow up the other buildings, not powder grenades.”

“Can we solve this somewhere else?” Vienh snapped as she pressed a fold of sleeve against her wound.

Another blast shook the front of the bar; a lamp fell from its hook and shattered, splattering the floor with oil. The building would collapse on their heads soon. More shots sounded in the hall and someone screamed. Adam took another look through the mirror.

“They’re shooting anyone who comes down.”

Isyllt crept closer to the door. The air tasted of blood and smoke and approaching death. She risked a glance outside, saw a man’s sandaled foot and a thread of blood leaking across the floor. A bullet splintered the doorframe above her head and she jerked back inside. A moment later her ring chilled as the wounded man died.

“We’re going to make a break for it soon,” she said to Adam and Vienh, “but I’ll be distracted, so cover me.”

She reached into her ring, letting the cold wash away her fatigue and pain. Her magic crept out in icy tendrils, licking toward the corpse, oozing into his cooling flesh. It wasn’t something she liked to do-most people didn’t understand the difference between a demon and a corpse controlled by a necromancer, and didn’t care to learn the particulars before they started screaming. But this might be the best opportunity she had before the building came down.

Magic settled into dead flesh, save for the ruin of his chest and the lead ball lodged there. But she didn’t need his heart. She felt the body like a glove on ghostly hands. And like a glove, it moved when she flexed those hands. The man rose clumsily, driven by memory and will.

“Ancestors,” Vienh whispered.

A shot struck her stumbling shield and she flinched from the ghost of the impact, but the corpse only shuddered.

“Let’s go.”

Adam and Vienh fell in close behind her, in the dubious cover of the dead man. The walking dead discomfited even trained soldiers, and the assassin outside was no stauncher. He stumbled back with a cry as the bloody corpse staggered toward him, and fell with a gurgle as Adam’s bullet caught him in the throat.

Isyllt paused at the doorway, forcing more of her awareness into the body. Through rain and death-blurred eyes, she saw more people crouching on either end of the alley. Also masked, like no Dai Tranh she’d seen. A bullet flew past her puppet’s head; another hit his shoulder, splattering congealing blood.

To their left, the alley led to a narrow canal-to the right, the street. The light had paled from coal to iron. How long would Izzy wait for them, with Siddir already aboard?

“Take the left,” she told Adam. “Kill as many as you can, then get to the docks. Don’t wait for me.”

“What?”

“I’ll distract them. Find the stones and make sure Bashari doesn’t try to double-cross us. Come back and find me and then we can get the hell out of here.”

“And if you’re dead?”

“Then go back to Erisín and tell Kiril what’s happened. It will be his problem then.”

He balked a heartbeat longer than she expected him to. “Can you manage a distraction?”

Isyllt grinned, cold and sharp, and stroked her ring. “I think so.”

“I’ll find you.”

She nodded. “On my mark.” The dead man turned to the right and stumbled down the alley. Her ears still rang, but she heard the assassins’ frightened shouts and smiled. She reached deeper into the diamond, calling the cold till tendrils of mist writhed around her. “Ready-”

And she called the ghosts. They burst free like a whirlwind, faces ghastly and misshapen. Two flew shrieking toward the canal and the others turned right. A scream echoed down the alley.