“You’d better report this in person. The Circle is starting to question your silence.”
Linsha ignored that. “Are you doing well?”
Karine grimaced. “So far. But we’ve lost two others. Good men. Lynn, be very careful. There are ugly rumors spreading in the outer city that blame Lord Bight for this catastrophe. The citizens here are outraged about the closing of the city gates. They fear the city council is leaving them out here to die.”
“That’s preposterous,” Linsha snapped, passing on a bucket.
“You know that and I know that. But everyone is terrified. They want someone to blame. Rumors are rampant.”
Linsha remembered the man who incited the boys to throw bottles at Lord Bight and the crowd. “Is there a possibility these rumors are linked to one person or a group of persons?”
Karine was surprised by the suggestion. “Not that we know of. Why?”
“Just a thought.” She started to ask Karine to have someone look into it, but an ugly thought stopped her. The three leaders of the Clandestine Circle wanted Lord Bight discredited. What was to stop some of their other operatives from making a few well-chosen comments, opinions, or hearsay rumors in some busy tavern or crowded street? No one would know the source of the rumors. She wondered if Varia had had any luck finding the man with the strange gait. A talk with him could be very interesting.
Another thought, a safer one, occurred to her, and she asked, “Have you heard anything about Elenor? I’m worried about her.”
“Not yet,” Lady Karine said. “If I can, I’ll send someone to check on her.”
They worked in silence side by side, passing buckets until their arms and hacks ached and their eyes and throats stung from the smoke.
“ ’Ware the walls!” someone shouted.
Everyone turned to stare at the first warehouse. Its roof gone and its interior gutted with flame, the warehouse looked like a burning shell, and the outer walls, weakened by heat and a lack of support, began to sag. The danger lay in the fact that no one could be certain which way the walls would fall. Two appeared to be sagging inward, but the other two bulged out over the streets, crowded with volunteers and onlookers.
Linsha felt a strange trembling in the soles of her feet. It reminded her of her passage under Mount Ashkir when the earth shook from the power of the volcano. But she wasn’t near a volcano vent now. The trembling increased dramatically until her legs were shaking. Other people noticed it, too. Voices broke out in cries of fear.
Commander Durne identified it first. “Earthquake!” he shouted. “Earthquake! Everyone away from the buildings.”
Shouting and screaming, people tried to run as the shaking became stronger. The fire fighters staggered away from the burning buildings. The first warehouse shivered violently, its walls swaying, then it collapsed in a blazing heap of timbers and rubble. The fire in the second warehouse abruptly leaped skyward as the structure cracked apart, allowing air to rush into the interior. The fires roared, their ruddy light stark against the night sky. The earth groaned and shook like a thing in pain.
Linsha and Karine threw down their buckets and turned to run. Suddenly Karine grabbed Linsha’s arm and pointed with a shaking finger. “Lynn, look!”
Not more than five paces away from the two women, the paving stones in the street started to shake so hard they vibrated loose from their places. Linsha looked closer and saw the worst of the tremors radiated out from the center of the block containing the two burning warehouses. Everything within the roughly oval area shook as if battered by a giant, while the earth outside the affected area seemed only to tremble in shock. Beset by the unending tremors, the ground became like quicksand, unstable and hungry.
With sudden ferocity, a massive sinkhole yawned open beneath the two warehouses. Rubble, flaming timbers, masonry, wine barrels, oil kegs, and the burning remains of two buildings collapsed into the gaping hole in a rending, sliding crash. Smoke and dust roiled up into the night sky.
Deeper into the hole slid the wreckage. Street pavers, hitching posts, buckets, and a freight wagon trembled on the edge of the monstrous hole, then slipped over into the churning flames and debris.
Karine and Linsha stood awestruck, gazing at the sinkhole so close to their feet, until someone drew them away.
“I’d hate to see you two fall in there,” Commander Durne shouted over the cacophony of the collapsing buildings.
Karine shot Linsha a quick glance, nodded her thanks to the commander, and hurried away.
Durne remained standing by Linsha, his pale eyes glinting in the reflected light of the fire.
By now the wreckage of the two buildings had slid out of the sight of the stunned spectators on the street, and the fires, smothered by earth and rubble, died out. Darkness, hot and steaming, closed down over the block, broken only by a scattering of torches and smaller debris fires.
The shaking slowed, and the tremors finally ceased. The earth settled quietly back to normal.
Into the sudden, shocked silence, one voice said loudly, “Suffering shades of perdition! That’s one way to put out a fire.”
Scattered laughter helped ease the frightened tension.
“Broach the wine casks,” Vanduran Lor shouted. “Let’s drink to that.”
There was a ragged chorus of cheers and a rush to the small pile of salvaged casks. The guild master stood aside and let the fire fighters have their reward.
Chapter
Commander Durne put his men and Linsha back to work smothering the remaining fires before another one went out of control, A small group of people gathered at the rim of the sinkhole to stare down.
Linsha took a minute to snatch a look and saw the hole was not as deep as she imagined. The building debris filled the bottom, and earth had collapsed over and around the pile. Anyone with a little determination could fill in the hole, level the lot, and build another warehouse. There was plenty of determination in Sanction.
Then she overheard a man say, “At least we now have somewhere to put the bodies.” And her heart turned cold. She could hardly bear the thought that the spirit of the city she admired so much had been forced, almost overnight, to shift from looking for possibilities to looking for mass graves.
“I heard someone say this fire was started deliberately to spread into the infected district,” a man said in a cold, penetrating voice that drew people’s attention.
Linsha stiffened, her ears pricked to listen.
“They’re all infected,” a sailor snorted. “All but the inner city.”
The first speaker pointed eloquently at the smoldering remains in the sinkhole. “He wanted to burn out the infection at the hospital. So they start it here, make it look like an accident so no one will know. Maybe burn out the rest of us in the process.”
“Who does?” a third man asked.
“Lord Bight!” the speaker cried angrily. “I’ve heard he’s ordered his guards to set fires in warehouses like this where they won’t be obvious.”
Linsha sidled nearer to the speaker. She crossed her arms over the emblem on her surcoat and hoped the soot, dirt, and darkness would hide the color of her uniform. Although she had not seen the man who caused the boys to pelt the guards with bottles, she had Varia’s description of a man with a strange gait. This man she watched now wais slight, dark-haired, narrow in the face, and had a twisted foot. She didn’t recognize him, but she would wager a steel coin he was the same troublemaker.
So why was he here, agitating the people, now? Linsha dearly wanted to know if he just carried a giant grudge, or if he was in someone’s pay.
A few of the spectators had left once the fires were out, but the guards, the volunteer fire fighters, and many stragglers remained to finish the wine and gawk at the sinkhole. The group by the speaker near the pit was growing into a crowd as more people, drawn by the gathering and the loud voices, pressed around to listen. Linsha could hear other people in the crowd pass on the overheard rumors. The story grew with every telling. Faces already strained with fear turned hard in anger. A few tried to argue for Lord Bight’s sake and were shouted down.