Guards still flooded through the building, coming in from the door at the other end of the mill. Blue speared the smoke, aiming right at me, but my sylph caught the blast, then shifted around me where fire burned a loom. Heat poured into the sylph, smothering the fire a fraction before the sylph had to guard me again.
“Cris! Sarit!” My foot bumped something soft, and I stumbled over a body, the blackened corpse of a guard. I screamed and scrambled over him, toward the bags piled by the door.
Someone knocked me over as I reached for my backpack. My elbow and shoulder and head hit the floor, and the sudden pain shocked me back into alertness. I turned around and found a giant of a man bearing down on me.
Merton.
My sylph roared up between us, thick and black and burning. At the last second, Merton must have realized the sylph would block his shot. He turned and the blue targeting light beamed across the room, landing on Sam as he stumbled from the wreckage of a torched loom.
Stef shoved Sam aside.
Red and black welled up across her throat. A chunk of her hair seared off. Her eyes grew wide as she and Sam crashed to the floor.
My sylph surged up and wrapped itself around Merton. Three more shadows left their mostly dead targets and pooled over Merton, who screamed as his skin blistered and sloughed and blackened. The stench of burned flesh and hair overpowered the smoke. As Merton’s screams fell into gasps and gurgles, I looked away. I didn’t want to see him die.
Head spinning from the smoke and pain, I groped for my backpack and hauled it over my shoulders.
Bodies littered the floor, most of them burned beyond recognition. But the guards were gone. Either dead or dying. The fire still blazed, roaring across the weaving room and through to the other areas. I had to get out. But first I had to gather my friends.
“Sam.” I coughed out his name as I staggered over corpses. “Stef. Sarit.”
The sylph formed a line against the fire, absorbing what heat and flame they could to keep it from spreading, but it wouldn’t be long before the building collapsed further.
Stef’s eyes were wide and glassy. She wasn’t moving, but she gasped a little. The burn on her throat made a heavy dark line, surrounded by red.
“No.” I stumbled and dropped in front of her as Sam and Sarit approached, too. “Stef, come on. We’ve got to go.”
She blinked, long and slow, and her eyes rolled toward me, though she seemed unfocused. Her mouth worked, but no sound came out.
Sam reached for her, stopped, reached again. Tears dripped down his face. “You’re okay. We’ve got a lot of work to do, and we need you.”
She closed her eyes and mouthed, “No.”
Sarit leaned over and hugged me. Her voice was ragged as she spoke by my ear. “You have to go. Get Sam and go. I’ll release the rest of the sylph and tell them to follow you.”
Fire rushed around us, licking toward the door and the bags there.
“You have to come find us, too.” I took Sarit’s shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “I’m not losing you. Come find us after you set the sylph free.”
She glanced at her arms, speckled with burn marks. Her face, too, had dark bruises blooming, or smoke stains. I couldn’t tell. “Okay.” Her cough was deep and dry, and blood dotted her arm where she tried to cover her mouth. “You have to go. Promise you’ll stop him.”
“I promise.” Tears ached around my eyes as I hugged her again, then touched Stef’s cheek. Her skin was warm, but the heat wasn’t from within her. It was the fire’s. I searched for the words to tell her how much she meant to me, but nothing came. Nothing big or important enough. “I love you.” The roar of the fire crushed my whisper.
Somewhere else in the mill, wood crashed to the floor, and flames rushed through the hall.
Sam was petting Stef’s hair, repeating something that was lost in the cacophony. I wanted to let him stay with her, but Sarit glared at me and I grabbed his arm. “Let’s go.”
He struggled against me. “No.”
Footsteps clomped through the mill. More guards. “Come on!”
Sylph flew through the fire, holding it back from us, but the fire grew and their numbers stayed the same.
Stef wasn’t moving. I couldn’t see her breathing. Sarit bent over her, sobbing, but when she looked at me, her eyes were fierce and demanding.
I hauled Sam to his feet, and we scrambled over burned bodies. His face was dark with rage and smoke as he accepted the backpack I thrust into his arms.
Ten guards emerged from the hallway, air masks over their faces. I leveled my pistol and shot, and one clutched his shoulder as he turned and saw me through the smoke. He aimed back at me, then dropped as blue light flashed from Sarit’s pistol.
“Go.” Below her, Stef was dead. Behind her, a trio of sylph held back the fire. Everywhere lay bodies and sylph eggs.
I dug my free hand into Sam’s coat and yanked him toward the door. Smoke billowed after us as we emerged into the hot light of noon. People gathered, and a medical vehicle came toward the mill.
“Where do we go?” I asked Sam, but he was looking back at the smoke-filled doorway. He coughed and wiped his face, smearing tears and ash over his cheeks. He’d just lost his best friend. He wouldn’t be able to help.
Avoid the people. They’d report us to Deborl.
That was a good first step.
Most of the people were westward, toward the main avenue, so I yanked Sam east, around the building. He ran with me, gasping and coughing. My breath was short and scratchy, and every time I looked over my shoulder, all I could see was the smoke pouring upward, a gray column against the clear sky and the intense light of the temple.
There were people, some pointing, some chasing. Some wore red, like the guards. I ran faster, though my backpack dragged at me and Sam seemed blind with tears and grief.
We ducked behind buildings, moving every which way. I tried to be smart about which paths we took, I wanted to be smart, but Stef’s final sacrifice, Sarit’s promise that she’d follow—
No.
Afternoon wore on as we ran along the edge of the industrial quarter, hiding in and behind anything available. Finally I found myself across East Avenue and in the northeastern residential quarter. A white house loomed above us. Evergreens huddled close to it. Dead vines and weeds littered the garden. The grass was long and brown. No one had been through here in a year, at least.
A darksoul home.
I glanced southward, toward the industrial quarter. The smoke had thinned, drifting across the sky like a memory. I couldn’t hear sounds of pursuit. The world around me seemed silent and dead. Even Sam just stared blankly, whispering, “It should have been me. She saved me.”
There was nothing I could do for his grief. Instead, I took his hand and guided him into the darksoul house before anyone came looking for us.
28
EQUINOX
THE DARKSOUL HOUSE was filthy, heavy with dust and neglect and age. I didn’t know who’d lived here before, but only memories occupied this space now.
My lungs still felt choked with smoke as I helped Sam onto a musty sofa. He collapsed over his knees, face buried in his arms. His sobs were quiet, broken, so I pushed down my grief and moved through the house to make sure we were alone. Maybe there was something useful.
The house was laid out a lot like Sam’s house, with a large portion of the first floor dedicated to art. Canvases covered the walls, while statues and wood carvings filled the main floor. Blankets protected the hardwood, though now the wool was tattered and gray.
In the kitchen, I found an old block of cheese. I cut off the mold and put the rest on a plate to take to Sam. There was bread on the counter, but it looked more like a compost pile than food.
I added a slab of dried venison to the plate and poured two cups of water. It wasn’t much of a meal, but it was better than nothing.
“Start eating.” I left the food by Sam and headed upstairs, where I found clean clothes inside cedar chests, and a cabinet full of painkillers and burn ointments. My arm and fingers throbbed where I’d been shot, but I’d been burned worse.
I took a few painkillers and brought some down to Sam, who was slowly cutting the cheese into slices.
“Here.” I handed him a few pills and finished slicing.
We ate without conversation. The food tasted old, sort of dusty, but it was better than starving, and it gave me the energy to check the windows for signs of anyone after us.
“This was Vic’s house,” Sam said after a few minutes. “He built most of the statues around the market field and carved the relief on top of the Councilhouse. Lots of other things, too, but those were the projects everyone talked about.”
“Is he the one who taught you carving?” Outside, the trees were white and motionless. “Like at your cottage and the shelves in your house?” Sam’s graveyard had been filled with beautiful statues of animals and people playing music. Even the benches had been art. And inside, the wall of bookshelves had creatures of Range etched into the edges. Herons, bears, elk, wolves, shrikes.
“Yeah.” Sam finished his water and stood. “He carved some of them, and taught me how to do it myself. I was never as good as him, and I had to be careful of my hands, but we became friends. I wanted you to learn from him, too.”
I moved away from the window and took in Sam’s wrecked appearance. Smoke stains clung to his shirt and trousers, and his hair hung in black mats. We both needed to shower, and there were enough of Vic’s old clothes upstairs we could surely find something to fit.
“Come on.” I motioned toward the stairway. “We’ve got a few hours.”
While he showered, I checked outside again. Nothing. No sylph. No Sarit.
She’d said she would follow.
But she hadn’t believed it. She’d known, then. She’d known she wouldn’t make it.
I slumped to the end of the bed and checked for messages that wouldn’t be there. Nothing from Stef. She was dead. Nothing from Sarit. She was dead, too.
My best friend was dead.
A sob burst from me as I fumbled for the message function on my SED. My thumbs slipped over the letters as I typed.
I miss you. I miss you. I can’t believe you’re gone and never coming back. I hate Janan and I hate Deborl. Even if I stop Janan tonight, how will the world be right without you? I wish you were still with me.
My chest ached as I sent the message she’d never receive.
Her image smiled at me from the screen. Sarit with her bees. Sarit and me, sitting in the market field with cups of coffee. Sarit dressed as an exotic bird for the masquerade last year.
Tears blurred the pictures, and I let my SED drop to my lap.
When Sam finished showering, I hurried to wash the stink off me, but there was no washing away the ache of loss. Sorrow saturated every bit of me like acid.
Dry and dressed, I found Sam sitting on the foot of the bed, listening to music.
“Let me treat your burns.” I sat next to him, but he stopped me before I opened the tube.
“I don’t want—” He touched my cheek and let his fingertips trail down my neck and shoulder, and suddenly I was too conscious of the way my borrowed clothes were too big and hung off my shoulders and hips. “Later,” he said. “The burns aren’t going anywhere.”
The burn cream and other medical supplies dropped to the floor with soft thuds.
“I just want you. I want you forever, and I’m afraid—” His hands closed over mine. “I want a life with you. I’d give anything to go back and start this one over, to be reborn into this lifetime. I wouldn’t waste it. I’d find you sooner. I’d take you somewhere safe. I’d show you music and love and life every day so you were never alone, never afraid. If I could start over knowing what I know now—” He released a desperate laugh. “I know how this sounds.”
“It’s okay.” My words were a breath, a gasp.