Wild Magic

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On the roofs of the solid flat buildings, Ma’teesee helped the wife of her employer light a fire under a cauldron filled with fish oil; on other roofs other women and girls got their own cauldrons ready, filled also with fish oil and melted lard, with water if there was nothing else available. In the kitchens the men bound knives to staves to make crude lances. Farmworkers, shepherds and ex-slaves carried stones for their slings onto the roofs and piled them beside the cauldrons. Farmholders, Edgers, and Naostam porters accustomed to acting as night watchmen strung bows and laid out the arrows they’d been making in their spare time. Dossan and Miugi (who’d dumped the other girl and come back to her) and dozens like them fastened washlines across the wynds, neck high, ankle high, then carted rubble and furniture to make barricades across the wynds. Children old enough to throw stones piled them up through their neighborhoods, small unobtrusive cairns, ready to hand when the need appeared. Throughout the city men and women, youths and girls collected everything that could possibly serve as a weapon.

Then they waited.