Inherit the Flame

Chapter Forty

Hond Steading burned. Ash and screams choked the air, and by the time Ripka arrived at the heart of the terror she and all the others had torn strips of cloth from their clothing to tie around their mouths and noses, lest they breathe in all that had once been stone. And flesh. A certain sweet, meaty smell tinged the air that Ripka tried very, very hard not to think about.

The watchers spread out, using their whistles to coordinate in a pattern so familiar it made Ripka’s heart ache. She wanted nothing more than to join them, to shrug on a blue coat and heave to with the others, to be a human bastion of order and safety for the confused and injured populace.

But she’d lost that place. Given it up for a cause, and now this vague edge life was all she had left.

Not so little of a life that she couldn’t do something with it, though. Sometimes the greatest leverage for change could only be obtained from outside a system.

The eastern edge of the palace district lay broken across the wide road that had once been its major thoroughfare. Stone and wood and bodies lay scattered like chaff across the road, cries of distress, pain, and requests for help merging into one great wail. The belch of the firemount had stopped, but the horror was just getting started.

Halfway toward the rubble, she realized she’d lost the shadow of Tibal at her side. She cast around for him, saw him standing just on the rise where they’d first caught sight of the destruction, his hands trembling at his sides and his face as pale as death. Enard hesitated alongside her, but she waved him on. Wasn’t likely having a crowd around Tibal would do him any good.

She jogged up to him, aware always of the groans and cries in the neighborhood behind her, and turned to stand at his side, looking out across the damage, not at him. She doubted he’d really see her even if she held his eyes open and shoved her face right under them.

She said nothing, kept her presence steady and solid and silent, while he worked up whatever it was he needed to say.

“Detan did this,” he said after a while.

“Didn’t mean to.”

“Who would make him?”

Ripka kept quiet. Wasn’t a real question, anyway. Eventually Tibal rolled his lips round, working up some saliva, and said, “Ain’t seen nothing like this since the war.” Sweat gleamed across his dusty forehead, tracking runnels through the grit that dusted them all.

“Won’t be likely to again, if we can help it.”

“That what we’re doing here, preventing horrors like this?”

“It’s what I’m trying for.”

“Working out well.”

She winced, and he blinked, drawing back into himself. He tugged on his mouth-wrap with those rangy fingers of his, didn’t quite seem to know what to do with his hands so he tugged on his hat, too. A little avalanche of dust and soot rolled off the brim. Ripka decided not to think about what that dust might have been just a few marks ago.

“Don’t know if I can do it,” he said.

“You don’t have to. Could go back, give Honey a hand.”

He pursed his lips like he’d tasted something sour. “They need help.”

“Indeed.”

“Could give it to ‘em. Had training in the Fleet.”

Training from the same Fleet that’d brought him through so much carnage that he stood here now, one of the bravest men she’d ever known, shaking straight through the ground for the fear this all brought rushing back.

“Could do,” she agreed.

“You could, too.”

“Plan on it.”

“What are you dicking around with me for, then?”

“Saw someone needed my help, and offered it.”

He gave her a sly, sideways glance that she could feel crawl against her cheek, but she kept her gaze straight ahead, stuck on the destruction, mapping out the points of the most hurt, guessing where best she could bend a back and lend a hand as soon as Tibal had himself settled.

“Guess we’d better get to it, then.”

“Suppose so,” she agreed.

He hesitated, his body canting forward while his feet stayed stuck. She couldn’t dream of what kind of demons he was fighting, couldn’t even conjure up a ghost of them, but she had to give him credit. He put one foot in front of the other, grit his teeth, lengthened his stride, and picked up speed. By the time they hit the bottom of the little ridge he was all cool confidence, barking orders to those clearing the rubble just like he’d been trained. Wouldn’t sleep well tonight, that man, but Ripka doubted any one of them would ever sleep well again after this.

Ripka ran toward the pain. What had once been an apartment building lay shattered on the ground, spilling out across the road far enough to block all attempts at bringing carts through. People had thrown their backs into clearing that rubble, whickering donkeys dragging carts over to haul away both broken men and stone.

Hard to tell the screams of men from the complaints of the animals. She let her training take over. Rockfalls were always a worry for the sel-mining cities of the Scorched, firemount eruptions a distant but ever-present threat. And so the watchers trained, and made plans, and grinned at each other and boasted about how prepared they were, how easy it would be to set things to rights. Their plan was iron. Was stone.

But in the desert, all things grow brittle and break, and all that planning was no different. She moved rubble, peeled away sheets of stone and twisted wood and there under the debris was a woman, just as broken as her home. Her arm twisted up above her head, bone poking through the skin like a white flag of surrender. Sallowness suffused her skin, but her heart beat and her breath came slow and easy, so Ripka stabilized the arm as best she could and hauled the woman to the street to line her up with the other injured.

The night went that way. Whether that woman was the first or the last she didn’t know, couldn’t remember through the haze of faces made indistinct by blood, ash, and tears. At the end – which wasn’t the end, couldn’t be, was just a pause because the screams in the rubble had stopped and something has to make you stop, or you end up in the line with the injured – she sat hard on the knoll where Tibal had frozen with fear of the past, and thought about all the future fears that were always coming. Things could always get worse.

Was a time when Ripka thought the worst thing that’d ever happened in her life was her father coming home from the Catari war, mute and with a look in his eye like all he could see were shades of red and charcoal. Then he walked off, into the scrubland, and never came back. She’d carried the guilt of how relieved that’d made her feel her whole life. Right up until this moment, feeling and knowing some shade of what his pain had been, and hoping there was something could be done to heal that pain. Because if there wasn’t, she was a dead woman walking.

Tibal found her soon enough, sat down beside her, those long legs of his crossed in sharp angles that made her distinctly uncomfortable. His fingers were raw, nails ripped back and skin bloodied, probably torn to ribbons. Hers were, too, but she hadn’t really realized until she’d seen the mirror of it on him. Didn’t matter to her, though. Wasn’t the worst thing she was feeling.

Enard came up, looking the same as them all, and that little warmth she got in her chest every time she saw him stayed snuffed. Probably for the best, that. Any hint of happiness she felt now might just make her vomit from the contrast.

Dranik found them, and Captain Falston too, and soon they were all sat there, made indistinct from each other by smears of dust and blood, and for a moment they looked with one set of eyes on what they’d done, and what they hadn’t been able to do, and each one of them – each and every fucking one – moved their personal bar for horror up just a little higher.

Sometime during the night Falston turned to her and was himself again, distinct from the group, hints of his blue coat showing like smudges under all the dust. “We need to talk.”

“Been wondering when you’d say as much,” she said.

They stood as one and, the previous events of the night seeming of trifling importance now, headed to Latia’s house. Ripka hoped the woman had strong wine waiting.