The Drowning City

Epilogue

The news beat them home. Only days after the destruction of Symir, Rahal al Seth, Emperor of Assar, was dead. He and several of his mages had burned when a palace laboratory caught fire. No one knew what had started the fire, but it was assumed to have been a spell gone wrong. It occurred during the demon days before the start of the new year-always an ill omen.

His half sister, Samar al Seth, would be crowned before the month was up, and already promised aid to devastated Sivahra.

Isyllt smiled when she read it. For a time she considered walking the labyrinth beneath the temple of Erishal and releasing the rest of the ghosts in her ring. Pragmatism won, however, and she settled for opening a bottle of Chassut red and toasting the embers falling in her hearth.

The physicians at the Arcanost opened her hand and stitched it up again full of silver pins. The damage was too great for even their most cunning surgeons, though, and she’d left it too long untreated. She retained the use of thumb and forefinger, but the two middle fingers curled uselessly and the smallest followed them, muscles already atrophying. She wore a ridge of scar tissue in the shape of a man’s hand around her left wrist-that would last longer than the payment sitting in her bank account. She began to wear her ring on her right hand, and learned to wash her hair one-handed.

The pain and guilt in Kiril’s eyes whenever he saw her might have given her a vicious pleasure only a month ago. Now they were just another little sadness. As Adam had said, what was the use in arguing?

The next courier ship came a month after the first and carried reports of the new Empress’s coronation, as well as news of an investigation into embezzlement and financial mismanagement in the military. Several generals had hastily retired and the Empress had not yet replaced them.

The ship also brought a package for Isyllt, delivered by a ruddy-faced dockrat. After cursing and fumbling with the nailed crate, she finally produced a smaller box. She raised an eyebrow at the seal; not the Imperial stamp, but the crest of the family al Seth. This box was sealed with a spell and the latch lifted when she touched it. Inside the padded coffer were a note and a velvet pouch.

I hope this finds you well, she read.

My situation here has much improved, in light of recent events. The new Empress has offered me a position, and I think I shall accept it. I cannot return home, but the City of Lions is not so unpleasant when it isn’t my prison. You asked me once if I could give up our profession-the answer, it seems, is no. We are as we have been made. I’ll be certain to tell Her Majesty to give me more necromancers on staff.

Enclosed is a token of my gratitude-only a paltry one, for what you’ve done, but more becoming than the scars, I think.

Your friend,

Asheris

Isyllt opened the bag and laughed as a stream of opals poured free, gleaming with iridescent fire.

More people than I can count offered help and support during the course of this book. Just a few include Elizabeth Bear; Leah Bobet; Jodi Meadows; Jaime Lee Moyer; everyone in the Online Writing Workshop and its Zoo; all my blog readers who endured my cursing and struggling; the circulation department of Willis Library; my husband, Steven, who survived at ground zero; my fabulous agent, Jennifer Jackson; and my equally fabulous editor, Dong-Won Song. Thank you!

Amanda Downum was born in Virginia and has since spent time in Indonesia, Micronesia, Missouri, and Arizona. In 1990 she was sucked into the gravity well of Texas and has not yet escaped. She graduated from the University of North Texas with a degree in English literature, and has spent the last ten years working in a succession of libraries and bookstores; she is very fond of alphabetizing. She currently lives near Austin in a house with a spooky attic, which she shares with her long-suffering husband and fluctuating numbers of animals and half-finished novels. She spends her spare time making jewelry and falling off perfectly good rocks. To learn more about the author, visit www.amandadownum.com.

Prior to becoming a published author, what other professions have you had?

I’ve been a book buyer for a medical bookstore and a library supervisor, and spent years as a retail minion. I’m currently dayjobbing as a bookseller in a used-book store, which isn’t at all a bad way to spend eight hours of a day.

When you aren’t writing, what do you like to do in your spare time?

Besides selling other people’s books, I make jewelry and rock-climb (outside whenever I can, but mostly indoors). I’ve tried gardening, but that turned out to be depressing for me and deadly for the plants. My next hobby may be something involving sharp objects, like knitting or crochet.

Who/what would you consider to be your influences?

My mother read me Tolkien, Lewis, Le Guin, and L’Engle as a child, and they carved permanent channels in my brain. Later on I discovered Lovecraft and binged on horror novels, and now magic and monsters are pretty much my favorite things. My favorite modern writers are Elizabeth Bear, Barbara Hambly, and Caitlín R. Kiernan. Besides the literary influences, I’ve always loved to travel, and I get a lot of inspiration from visiting or reading about other places.

The Drowning City is a novel with an amazingly lush setting and unique world. How did you derive the idea for this novel?

Several different ideas had been floating around in my head for a while: the character Isyllt, a spy novel, and second-world fantasy (I’d been working on several contemporary fantasies previously, and wanted a change of pace). And then in 2005 Hurricane Katrina came, and as I watched all the horror and ugliness and heroism and grief, I thought of the title The Drowning City, and all the disparate ideas started to come together. Which makes me feel a little like a vulture.

In writing the novel, were you particularly influenced by your time living in Southeast Asia?

Having lived in Arizona and Texas since I moved back to the States, I really miss rainy seasons. So as soon as I had a book with monsoons, a South Asian-inspired setting seemed perfect. The most specific influence on TDC, though, was in the scene with the pigs. That was something I heard too often, living up the hill from a pig farm on Yap.

Do you have a favorite character? If so, why?

Definitely Isyllt. She’s one of my oldest characters, and survived an unfortunate juvenilia project that will otherwise never see the light of day. She can always be relied on to run straight into dangerous situations-or crawl into them in the dark-and otherwise get herself in trouble, which I’ve discovered is the most useful thing a character can do when I’m trying to plot a novel.

What can readers expect inThe Bone Palace?

Intrigue, heartbreak, and more forensic necromancy. And vampires, though not the oversexed variety.

As a debut author, what has been your favorite part of the publishing process?

Seeing my cover art! Book covers have fascinated me ever since I started to read, and even the bad ones are often very entertaining. That I really like the preliminary cover art for TDC is just an extra helping of awesome.