The Drowning City

Chapter 21

Dark and fast, the river runs, thick with flotsam-jagged stone and bits of iron spinning in the current before they sink into the mud; a girl’s shattered body; a daughter’s soul cradled in her mother’s arms. Water rushes over the banks. Spirits ride the surge, ecstatic in their freedom.

The river rages, decades of anger unleashed, tempered by a daughter’s grief, a daughter’s hope. A daughter’s bargain.

The mountain shakes, heaving the river in her bed, undoing centuries of patient carving. Fish and snakes writhe in upthrust mud; slime glistens on bones and stones hidden for hundreds of years. The water tastes of ash, of hot stone, of blood and brimstone.

Boats snap their moorings and capsize, throwing screaming passengers into the roar and rush. That part of the river that was a girl mourns each snuffed and broken life, but knows she cannot save them all. Mud rushes down the flanks of the shaking mountain, adds its weight to the flood.

In the city, canals burst out of their banks, water sweeping over streets and sidewalks. A bull kheyman washes onto the steps of a house, roaring his outrage. The earth trembles and a bridge shudders and gives way. In the Floating Garden, potted trees break their tethers and bob away, shedding leaves and branches into the hungry current. In Straylight, buildings groan and slide, bricks and mortar raining into the floodwaters. In the harbor, the sea already churns, vexed to tempest by the earth’s upheaval. Caught between wave and flood, docks splinter, ships founder and sink. Bayside windows shatter under the onslaught, doors burst from their hinges. The water snatches people off quays and sidewalks and drowns all their cries and prayers.

But it hears those drowning prayers too.

Throughout the city fires are doused, but rocks and cinder still rain, and wave after wave of ash blots out the sky. Buildings crumble beneath the weight of ejecta, piling stone upon stone over their unlucky occupants. If it cannot burn the city, the mountain means to bury it, to wipe out all trace of those who in their hubris bound it.

And that, the river decides, will not happen. Not to her namesake, this curiosity of men nestled in her delta, the home of the daughter who set her free. The daughter prays; the mother listens.

And as the mountain renews its offense, the river rises and enfolds the city in her arms.

Dawn never came.

From the tower beside the ruined dam, Isyllt and Asheris watched the mountain burn. Ash drifted past the window like gray snow. Eventually she slept, lulled by the roar of the river and the warmth of Asheris’s shoulder. When she woke her head was on his thigh and the darkness hadn’t brightened. The murk hid the mountain, giving only the occasional sullen flash of orange. The sky to the south was the yellowish gray of necrotic flesh.

“What time is it?” Her voice was a croak, throat raw and lips cracking. Her eyelids scraped as she blinked.

“Afternoon,” he said, his own voice rough. “Or it ought to be.”

Golden witchlights blossomed over their heads, driving away the gloom. Dirt smeared Asheris’s face and clothes and itched on Isyllt’s skin. When she scratched her cheek her nails came back black with grime; it dulled her ring, hid the diamond’s fire and clogged the setting.

Her left arm was numb, wedged between her and the floor. Her elbow creaked when she straightened it, and the rush of blood to her ruined hand made her eyes water. But it didn’t hurt as much as it should. Wincing, she eased her tattered sleeve back. The print of Asheris’s hand circled her wrist like a shackle gall, char-black and flaking in the middle, seeping raw flesh beneath. The edges were pink and blistered, hot and painful enough leave a sour taste in her mouth, but she couldn’t feel the worst parts. At least the ashen air had clogged her nose enough that she couldn’t smell the burnt-pork reek of it.

She’d seen burns like this before, knew the infection sure to follow in one as filthy as this. She might have another day before the fever set in. The bandage on her palm was foul with blood and soot, and she didn’t want to imagine the state of that wound.

“Wait here,” Asheris said and left the room, brushing futilely at the dirt on his coat.

Another tremor came while he was gone, rumbling softly through the stones. Isyllt tensed as dust sifted down from the ceiling, but nothing else gave way. He returned a few moments later with a length of linen and a brandy decanter.

“The pipes are broken,” he said as he crouched beside her. “No clean water.”

She picked up the brandy, smearing the glass. “Is this for the burn or for me?”

Asheris frowned, lifting her arm carefully to peer at the burn. “Internal application would be better, I think.”

He took the bottle from her and doused a corner of the cloth, wiped his fingers clean. She sighed as the smell filled the air, caramel-sweet and stinging the back of her nose. The sting was worse when she took a sip, not just in her sinuses but in the tiny cracks and cuts in her lips. The first swallow went down bitter with blood and char; the second numbed her tongue and coated her throat in sweet fire. Reluctantly, she set the bottle down after a third drink. The alcohol and the rush of the waterfall only reminded her how thirsty she was.

Asheris wrapped the burn loosely and rigged a sling. His eyes glittered in the witchlit gloom. Not the copper-red flash of an animal’s, but a crystalline sparkle like a flame behind amber.

“Who are you, really?” she asked as he tied the last knot.

“I’m Asheris, now.” He rocked back on his heels and raised a hand, palm up. “This is more than just a prison, or a skin. I have his memories, his loves, his life.”

“And before?”

“This tongue couldn’t pronounce my old name, and it’s lost to me anyway.” He chuckled. “We were well matched, Asheris-the-man and the jinn I was. I doubt their trap would have worked as well otherwise. Both so very curious, so incautious. The Emperor’s mages plied the man with wine and the jinn with incense, but it was that curiosity, that desire to know the other, that bespelled us long enough for their chains and stones to bind.” He touched his throat, rubbed the unscarred flesh.

Isyllt didn’t look at her ring, but she felt its weight keenly. “What will you do now?”

His smile sharpened for a moment. “Find some old colleagues. Imran wasn’t the only one who cast that spell. And I worry they may have tried it again.”

An army of bound jinn. Isyllt shuddered at the thought and Asheris nodded. “I won’t let them. After that-” He shrugged. “I don’t know. But first, I think we should leave the tower. The earth hasn’t settled yet-you slept through several tremors before that last, and I suspect more will come.”

He rose, taking her elbow to help her up. “Zhirin’s bargain did something. The river has woken. Whether it was any help to Symir, I don’t know.”

Isyllt stared at the darkness in the west, the sifting ash, the flare and flash of cinders. “Shall we find out?”

They wrapped their faces before they stepped outside, but that couldn’t stop the smell of smoke. Looking back at the tower, she saw how lucky they’d been-the stones at the river’s edge had crumbled and the tower leaned toward the cliff. Cracks spread across the queen’s carven face, bits of hair and cheek fallen away. Another good quake and the whole thing might topple over the falls.

They walked at first, either out of prudence or some unspoken respect for the black-burnt sky. But the closer they grew to the Northern Bank, the harder the way became. The earth had shifted-what had been the reedy banks of the Mir were now cliffs taller than a man, scattered with stones and still-warm ash. The corpses of trees littered the ground, half buried in debris. The once-gentle river thundered below. Nothing green remained.

When the ashfall rose to calf-height, they had to stop. Isyllt’s ring had begun to chill, and she could see only a few yards into the murk, even with their witchlights. Sweat ran down her face and she scrubbed it away with her veil.

“I suppose there aren’t many people around to notice,” Asheris said to himself. An instant later his eyes flashed, and his four wings unfurled, shining gold and cinnabar. Isyllt’s breath caught at the sight.

She stepped in close, hooking her good arm around his neck. It might be easier if he carried her, but she balked at the thought of being cradled like a babe in arms. Instead he tightened his arms around her waist and bore them up. She winced at the strain on her shoulder, then forgot the discomfort as the draft of his wings swirled the ash away and let her see the land below.

The Mir had shifted her bed yards to the south, leaving a swath of sooty mud bare. Gray froth tangled on the current, churned over the now-rocky bank. As they moved south she saw the remains of villages, streets buried under dust and cinders, thatched roofs burned away and beams like bones rising from the slag. Her ring chilled till her right hand was as numb as her left. The ferry landing and the hill above it were gone, washed away by mud and ash-nothing remained of the dock but a few charred splinters.

It was harder to breathe here. The ash fell thicker and the air reeked of alchemy-sulfur and salt spirits and salts of ammonia. Tears ran down her cheeks and she couldn’t stop coughing. Her exposed skin prickled painfully. Asheris didn’t falter, but his eyes reddened and watered and she could see the tightness of his jaw even through the veil.

“We can’t go much farther in this-”

He broke off, eyes widening, and Isyllt turned to look below them. She drew in a wondering breath and quickly regretted it as she began to cough.

They had reached the city. But where she expected to find another smoldering ruin, instead a shimmering dome of water rose.

Asheris sank slowly, landing on a spur of stone outside the wall. “She woke the river,” he whispered.

“She bought a miracle.”

The dome flowed in an unceasing cascade. It washed over their boots, soaked their trousers. Ash slid away in silver streams as soon as it touched the water. Asheris pressed a cautious hand into the wall, drew it back wet to the elbow and somewhat cleaner.

“I think we can go in.”

The pressure was enough to sting as she stepped through, but not much worse than a strong shower. They emerged drenched and gasping. Isyllt tugged her sodden veil aside and scrubbed her face with it, wrinkling her nose at the stains. She coughed and spat gray phlegm. Her throat ached, lips parched and tongue thick, but she didn’t want to risk the water, however miraculous. At least the air within was cleaner, thank the saints.

Thank Zhirin.

Symir hadn’t escaped entirely. The streets were strewn with rubble and stones-from both collapsing buildings and great porous black boulders that must have come from the volcano. The ground was slick with black mud, and bodies lay broken amid the debris. But the death-chill eased; there were survivors here too.

The streetlamps were out, but the gloom brightened. The water itself glowed, she realized, a subtle witchlit iridescence. Silver-green light and ash-shadows rippled over the ground and broken walls, washed everything unreal, dreamlike.

“Where should we go?” She wasn’t sure why she whispered, except that the shining vault of water reminded her of a cathedral.

“To the Khas, I suppose.”

“Did Faraj know, about you?” Their boots squelched as they walked, cloth slapping against flesh.

“I don’t think so,” he said after a moment. “He knew something, knew that my service was not entirely willing, but I doubt Imran or Rahal would have entrusted him with the truth.”

They passed a few survivors. A woman crouched in the rubble of a house, keening softly. A man kneeling beside an overflowing canal, a child’s body limp in his arms. They didn’t stop; there was nothing either of them could do.

As they neared Jadewater, voices rose over the constant rush of water. Glancing at each other, they turned toward it. The bridge was still intact, though cracked in places. The temple district had flooded knee-deep, nearly swallowed by the black pool that had been the Floating Garden. At the steps of the River Mother’s temple, a crowd gathered, voices raised in grief and wonder. One of the ivy-crowned domes had fallen, but the building was otherwise sound.

The Khas hadn’t fared so well. Its walls stood, gates open, but the Pomegranate Court was a ruin of fallen trees and muddy ash, and the dome on the great hall had caved in. The council dais was buried, and several councillors with it; guards tried to dig the bodies out but seemed too stunned to be effective. A few of them looked at Asheris with eyes wide and hopeful as hungry dogs, but he only shook his head sadly and turned away.

They found Faraj amid the rubble of the west wing, Shamina huddled lifelessly over Murai a few yards away. Isyllt swallowed the taste of char and started to turn, then paused. The chill wasn’t deep enough.

“Help me,” she said, crouching awkwardly beside the Vicereine. The woman’s skin was as cool as the air, her muscles locked in place. The jade-gray light painted everything cold and deathly, but Murai’s flesh was still warm.

Asheris knelt beside her and helped pull the corpse aside. Beneath her mother, Murai lay bruised and unmoving, but her breath rasped faintly and her eyelids twitched as Asheris checked her for broken bones. She didn’t wake as he lifted her.

“There’s nothing left here for any of us,” he said softly.

As they passed the gates, something moved in the flooded water plaza, a long shape twisting into the shallows where the steps had been. Isyllt tensed as a nakh raised its pale upper body, tail lashing. She groped for a knife she didn’t have, but the creature lifted one webbed hand to stay her.

“Your companions are at the docks,” it hissed, needle teeth glinting in the dull light.

“Thank you,” Isyllt said after a moment of surprise. “But why are you telling me?” A fading bruise mottled the creature’s face; she wondered if this was the one she’d met in the canal.

Black eyes flashed pearlescent as the nakh glanced toward the ceiling of water. “The river-daughter asked me to. She’s been waiting for you.”

The river-daughter. “Zhirin.”

The nakh shrugged, a disturbingly liquid ripple of bone and flesh. “She has no need for mortal names now.” It grinned a cold shark grin. “You have her protection here, witch. Come swim with me in the bay.”

Isyllt smiled back and nodded toward her bandaged arm. “Sorry. Not today.”

“I’ll be waiting.” Then the creature flung itself backward and vanished into the deep rushing water.

The destruction in Merrowgate was even worse. No building she saw had escaped damage, and some were in ruins. The Storm God’s Bride was rubble now, and Isyllt shook her head sadly at the sight. Survivors huddled in doorways, watching her and Asheris warily or staring blankly ahead. The docks were gone, nothing but shattered wood and debris. A ship’s mast canted out of the churning gray water, her shredded sails snagged on splintered spars. The rest of the craft was lost under the bay, and under the shining aqueous wall.

Some survivors moved about, searching the ruins for signs of life. She recognized Jabbor and the woman who’d spoken at the Tigers’ council; the weight in her chest eased a fraction.

Jabbor’s skin was dull and gray and he carried himself stiffly, but otherwise seemed unhurt. He blinked when he saw her and brushed a hand across one eye.

“What happened?” His voice was raw and stretched-thin and she knew he wasn’t asking about the mountain.

“She went into the river. To save the city. She chose it.”

He seemed to shrink for an instant, then straightened and raised his chin. “I heard her voice. We were going to die in the mudslides or the river, I was certain, and then I heard Zhir’s voice and the flood carried us here.”

He stared at her and Asheris, and the bitterness was clear in his eyes for a moment. She could hear the unspoken question-why them? Why them and not the woman he loved. He didn’t say it aloud, and she was glad; she had no answer.

“Excuse me,” he said, turning away. “I have to help. There are so many-”

They walked on, leaving the Tigers to their grief.

The nakh hadn’t lied-farther on in the gloom sat three familiar figures. Her stomach chilled with relief as Adam rose and turned toward her. He and Siddir and Vienh all seemed unhurt, if tired and ghastly wan in the watery light.

Adam grinned. “I told them you’d show up.” He raised an eyebrow at Asheris, and she nodded-safe.

Siddir was staring at Asheris as well, and Isyllt remembered the brittle tension between them at the ball, the glossed-over history. But before either man might speak, Vienh stepped between them to look at Murai.

“The Viceroy’s daughter?” She laid a careful hand on the child’s forehead; Murai still didn’t wake.

“Her parents are dead, and I don’t know of any other family. Perhaps in Ta’ashlan…”

Isyllt swallowed as she realized who wasn’t with them. “Your daughter?”

Vienh’s smile chased away the weariness on her face for an instant. “On the Dog, with my sister. I took them over as soon as I found them, but Adam insisted we wait for you.” She followed Isyllt’s glance toward the shrouded bay. “Izzy’s out there. The water’s too rough to come close. Nowhere to dock, anyway.”

“And the diamonds?”

The woman’s humor died and Siddir shook his head angrily. “We caught the ship,” he said, “but they sank the stones before I could get them. All this destruction, and I still don’t have the evidence I need.”

“Don’t worry about that.” Asheris’s smile was slow and predatory. “I anticipate changes in the Court of Lions very soon. My employment with the Emperor is over,” he added to Siddir’s raised brows.

“We should go,” Vienh said. “The mountain isn’t finished. We’ll take you all as far as Khejuan, and you can find your own ways from there.”

Asheris nodded. “Thank you, but I’ll go my own way here. Will you take her, though?” he asked, nodding toward Murai.

The smuggler frowned but extended her arms for the child.

Isyllt looked at Adam and found him scanning the ruined streets, a frown twisting his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly.

He shook his head, snorting sharply. “No. I thought I smelled her. Damn this filthy air.”

“Are you sure?”

In answer, he took a step toward a rubble-strewn alley, then another. Isyllt reached for his arm, but he broke into a loping run before she touched him. Her ring sparked fitfully on her outstretched hand. She exchanged a glance with Asheris, then hurried after Adam.

The diamond burned brighter as she crossed into the shadow of the alley. Not just death-a ghost. She heard the wet rustle of cloth as Asheris followed her. The cold thickened as they turned a corner, scrambling over a fall of brick and beams. The chill, the hunger in the air, reminded her of Par Khan.

On the other side of the collapsed wall she saw Adam, a slender shape beside him. It took her a heartbeat to recognize Xinai-filth crusted her skin and clothes, flattened her hair to her skull. Beneath the mud and blood her face was sickly pale, eyes wide and black. One arm hung limp at her side; the other reached for Adam.

He knew-Isyllt could see it on his stricken face. He knew the woman in front of him wasn’t his partner. Maybe he even knew what she wanted. He clutched his sword-hilt, tendons sharp-etched with tension, but he didn’t draw, didn’t pull away from the touch that would suck out his strength.

“Adam!”

They both turned. Adam shook himself like a dog and staggered back. “Xin-”

“No,” Isyllt said, climbing clumsily over the pile of brick. “It’s not. Who are you?”

“Her mother.” The voice was ghastly, rough and hollow and cold as shattered glass-a wonder it didn’t draw blood.

Isyllt laughed. “Does every ghost in this country want to eat their children?”

Xinai’s lips peeled back from her teeth. “She would have died if not for me. She needs me.”

“She needs rest and a surgeon. Not a leech.” She un-focused her eyes, looked otherwise. Xinai’s life was faint, nearly overshadowed by the darkness. If she died possessed, the demon would have her. Something pulsed an ugly red against her chest-one of her charm bags, its colors woven into woman and ghost.

“You don’t know what she needs, necromancer.”

Isyllt drew a deep breath and stepped closer. “Maybe not, but I know what you need. Adam.”

And thank the saints, he understood. The ghost turned, still clumsy in her meat-puppet, but he was already on her, pinning her arms and holding her while she shrieked like a scalded cat. He gasped, blanching as she began to suck the heat from his flesh.

Isyllt lunged toward them, off-balance with only one arm. She stumbled, scraped her palm on the wall as she caught herself. Clumsy and cursing, she fumbled through the charms around Xinai’s neck till she found the one that stung like ice. The ghost screamed and writhed as she ripped it free; for an instant Isyllt saw the shadow of a knife-gash bleeding down her throat.

She couldn’t bind the ghost, not without her name, but she could break the connection to Xinai. Her diamond blazed, a cold light that sliced through the shadows but didn’t lessen them. Her bones ached as she called on the abyss again. Her fingers cramped around the pouch.

This spell was nothing compared to the diamond collar. Leather stiffened and cracked. Thread rotted. A lump of rust-stained wood splintered, till nothing was left but a pile of silver dust on her palm. She tilted her hand and that too was gone.

Xinai slumped in Adam’s arms and he staggered, both of them sinking to the ground. The ghost remained, bloody and wild-eyed, flinching away from the nothing that Isyllt wielded, the darkness that swallowed even the dead.

For a moment she contemplated it, reaching out for the ghost, unraveling all the skeins of memory and madness and desire that held wraiths to the living world.

Instead she lowered her hand with a sigh. “What you need is to move on,” Isyllt told the woman. “Go.”

And like a gust of wind, she was gone.

“What did you do?” Asheris asked. His warmth lined her side as he leaned in. Cold sweat beaded on her back; the fever was coming on.

“Just a banishment. It’s not permanent, but maybe she’ll have time to think.”

Xinai stirred, tears tracking through the mud on her cheeks. “Mira,” she whispered, one hand groping at her neck.

Isyllt turned away. “Deilin.”

The ghost appeared beside her. Her lips parted as she looked up at the dome of water. “What’s happened?”

“Everything the Dai Tranh wanted, mostly.”

Black eyes turned back to Isyllt. “What now, then?”

“I’m going home. You spoke of going east, of the Ashen Wind.” She gestured to the gray ceiling. “The wind is nothing but ashes now. Will you try it?”

Deilin cocked her head. “Does that mean-”

Isyllt nodded. The words were only ritual, but she spoke them anyway. “I release you. But for the love of heaven, leave the children alone.”

The ghost nodded, then looked down at her wound-the bloodstain on her shirt was shrinking.

“Tell my granddaughters…” She shook her head with a rueful smile. “No, never mind. Let them be. Good-bye, necromancer.” And then she was gone.

The ground shuddered softly and brick dust trickled from the broken walls. Adam stood, Xinai in his arms. “Time to go.”

Vienh started to harangue them when they returned to the dock, but stopped when she saw Xinai and Adam’s grim face.

“Will she live?” he asked Isyllt, easing her down.

She touched the woman’s shoulder carefully. Bruises and scrapes, strained muscles, a broken arm and fractured ribs. But no damage to the heart, no poison in the blood. “I think so. She needs rest, medicine, but no miracles.” She glanced up. “Are you going to stay with her?”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “No,” he said after a moment. “She made her choice.” He nodded toward the Tigers. “They can look after her. And I promised to see you back safe.” He glanced at her sling. “Or as close as I’ve managed.”

She gave him a lopsided smile. “Close enough for government work.”

“I’m not rowing you to Selafai in a storm-cursed longboat,” Vienh shouted across the quay, kicking the boat in question. “Let’s go.”

Isyllt turned to Asheris. Her arm itched and she’d started to shake; her voice was dying fast and taking her wits with it. “If you’re ever in Erisín-” she said at last.

“Yes.” He smiled, took her hand and pressed a kiss on her filthy knuckles. “Or come to Assar. I’ll show you the Sea of Glass.”

“If it’s anything like the mountain, please don’t bother.” She grinned, squeezing his hand. He didn’t flinch from her ring this time.

His smile stretched and he leaned down to kiss her brow. “Go home, necromancer.” It sounded like a benediction.

She couldn’t wish him the same. “Good luck,” she said instead. She turned toward the waiting boat and didn’t look back till they’d crossed the river’s shining veil.