Antiagon Fire

67

The first thing Quaeryt saw when his eyes opened was white … white everywhere. He was covered in blankets and shivering, so much so that he couldn’t focus his eyes on anything.

“Sir…?”

“I’m … alive … I think.” His entire body ached, and he couldn’t stop shivering. “What happened?”

“Submarshal Skarpa says the city is ours. The part of it that’s left after all the shaking.”

“Left?” Quaeryt shivered so violently he couldn’t say more.

“You need to drink some watered lager, sir … anything.” Khalis rose from the chair beside the bed and guided a mug to Quaeryt’s lips, holding it steady against his shivering.

Quaeryt could only take small sips, but after a time the worst of the shivering stopped, as did most of the twitching in his eyes. The throbbing in his head did not subside.

Despite the white walls of the bedchamber where he lay, the light coming through the windows was muted and gloomy. “What glass…?”

“It’s just past the third glass of the afternoon, sir. It’s darker than you’d expect. Most of the city was covered in fog, yesterday and most of today. The sun’s finally burning it off. That’s because of all the ice that coated the ruins and the square.”

“What day is it?”

“Jeudi afternoon, sir.”

Two days … better than the last time … you hope.

“You need to drink more, sir.”

Quaeryt didn’t object, and he wasn’t shaking so much when he finished another series of swallows rather than sips.

“Don’t try to get up, sir,” said Khalis as he set the mug on the table beside the wide bed. “I’ll be right back. Commander Skarpa wanted to know when you were awake.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Quaeryt dryly. He had the feeling that his head might fall off if he even tried to stand … if his legs didn’t collapse first.

As Khalis left, Quaeryt turned his head and looked toward the window. Ruins and shaking? Beyond was a garden, although he could see that beyond an ornamental tree he did not recognize there was a wall … and there were cracks and gaps in the mortar between the stones. There were also cracks in the plaster finish of the outside wall of the bedchamber.

But why would imaging a pit beneath the palace cause ruins elsewhere? He frowned, before recalling that the paving stones of the Autarch’s Square had been shaking so hard that the mare had struggled to keep her footing. But why?

He turned his head and closed his eyes, but the flashes of light that interrupted his vision were even more disconcerting against the closed lids, and he opened them again, just as Khalis returned to the bedchamber.

“The submarshal will be here shortly, sir.”

“What about first company? All the undercaptains?”

“We’re all fine … well, except for bruises and cuts, little things like that.”

“From all the shaking?”

“And the falling buildings everywhere.”

Falling buildings? Why … Quaeryt didn’t question what Khalis had clearly experienced, but why would the impact of the palace on whatever lay below the hole he’d imaged have caused so much shaking that it toppled buildings farther away than around the square?

Behind Khalis, the door opened, and Skarpa stepped through.

Khalis inclined his head and departed, closing the chamber door behind himself.

Skarpa walked over to the bed and looked down at Quaeryt. “You look like hogshit, Quaeryt.”

“I don’t think I feel quite that bad.” Almost, but not quite.

“Good. I’d tell you that you need to stop doing this, but I don’t think there’s any place left in Lydar that will need your way of dealing with things.” Skarpa snorted. “There’s not even much left of the north side of the city. It’s a good thing that most of our forces were on or near the square. Whatever you did brought down most of the buildings. Good thing most of the locals had fled, too. The problem was that not enough of them left.” He paused. “What exactly did you do besides create a big hole and drop the palace into it?”

“That’s all…” Quaeryt coughed, and the paroxysm sent waves of pain through his entire body. For several moments he couldn’t move or see.

The submarshal waited.

Finally, Quaeryt could speak and see again, if in flashes. “I … just imaged a hole under the palace and all the rocks and sand and gravel and stone up above it, and … let it all fall.”

“The entire city was shaking for a time, might have been a good half glass, give or take a quint. No one was keeping track.”

“Casualties…?” Quaeryt ventured.

“We lost over a thousand to stray Antiagon Fire, flying rubble and falling houses … most of them were in Fhaasn’s Twenty-sixth Foot. They weren’t even on the boulevard around the Autarch’s Square when everything came apart. They got hit hard when the big dwellings on the south end of the square came down.” Skarpa looked at Quaeryt. “As for the Antiagons … maybe two hundred of the troopers near the mid-square wall survived. No one in the palace complex … no imagers, so far as we can tell.”

“The rest of the city?”

“Who knows? At least three or four hundred people were killed, maybe more than a thousand. Could have been more. Several thousand were likely hurt.”

“You declare yourself regional governor?”

“Acting regional governor. Even Kharllon agreed to that. He’s been pretty quiet. I’ve already gotten a handful of letters from some Shahibs, pledging allegiance to Bhayar. Appears that you scared them a bit.”

“More … than I intended,” Quaeryt admitted. “I still don’t understand why the whole city shook.”

“I wouldn’t pretend to know. But in some places closer to the square it was pretty bad. There was a school … children of factors and Shahibs … the whole thing came apart…” Skarpa shook his head. “One of your undercaptains broke down and sobbed … something about one of the little girls being like his own daughter…”

“Do you know who that was?”

“I didn’t see it. Zhelan told me. He didn’t say who. I was a little occupied.”

Baelthm, Horan, or maybe Threkhyl. The others can’t have had children. Not yet, anyway. “What else should I know?”

Skarpa offered a shrug. “We’re still getting control of the city.”

Quaeryt wanted to frown, but he felt tired … so tired. Skarpa was hiding something from him, he was certain. “The imagers … are they…”

“They’re all fine … except for bruises and the like.” Skarpa’s tone was firm and assured. “You need more rest. We’ll talk later.”

Quaeryt wanted to say more, to ask what Skarpa was hiding, but the flashes across his eyes were coming more often, and they hurt more … and then the white darkness rose around him again.