Detan was in the city now, but she very much doubted he’d be of any help to her this time around.
She grit her teeth and glared at her feet, struggling to work up a plan.
For the second time that night, the ground shook. She blinked at her feet, wondering for just a moment if she were going mad or about to faint. Little plumes of dust swirled around her toes, and gravel jittered against her boots.
Slowly, reluctantly, she lifted her head and looked around. Everyone was scanning the buildings, the sky, looking for the reason why the ground had shrugged and shuddered, then fallen still.
A crack broke the night, louder than anything she’d ever heard – ever felt – in her life. It slammed her ears and vibrated her teeth, made her heart jump with fear. The watchers spun in uneasy circles, seeking the threat, eyeing the fleet of ships which blotted the sky with wary eyes.
Enard said, “There.”
They all turned to his voice, followed the line of his sight.
An orange smear bled across the underside of the clouds, seeping out from the eastern ridge of the largest firemount’s puckered mouth. Ripka went cold, straight to the bones, her stomach dropping out from under her.
She’d never seen anything like it before, but she knew what it was instinctively. Had been told scary stories of such a thing as a child.
The ground shakes. The firemounts crack open their mouths. And then, the fire. The soot and the smoke and the boiling, pooling ash.
People screamed, ran from homes, watched horror-eyed through their windows, knowing that if the flow was coming their way they were already dead. The stories were pretty strict about that: once you’d seen it, it was already over.
“How…” Lakon trailed off, leaving his mouth half-open on the aborted sentence.
The largest firemount of Hond Steading had been dormant as long as there had been a city here. This should not be happening. But, of course, the records were imprecise, and firemounts unpredictable.
Pearlescent wisps drifted in the orange glow of the lava, flickering out as they dissipated, consumed by some internal fire. Selium. Burning.
Tibal hissed through his teeth. Ripka went stiff all over.
Not a natural event, then, if the talents a man were born with could be disconnected from nature. Detan had done that. Someone had pushed Detan to do that. Which was, in a way, a good thing. This was not a complete eruption event. He must have blown a pocket near the surface of the firemount’s mouth, and that glow… It could be lava. It could be fire from Detan’s handiwork. There was no way to tell for sure.
What she was sure of, however, was the drumbeat rumble of stone cascading down the side of the firemount, toward the eastern edge of the palace and its connected residential quarter.
“Those people will need help,” she said, struggling to keep from sprinting toward the destruction with every crash that echoed through the night. Screams rose up to meet those breaking noises, and they jarred her all the way through. They could not just stand there.
Lakon frowned. He lowered the crossbow and tugged at his mustache, gaze stuck on the cloud of dust rising from the falling rocks.
“Protocol says we wait for the dust to settle. Could walk into a pyroclastic flow.”
“This is not an eruption event,” Ripka snapped. “And those people can’t wait.”
“What in the pits else could it be?”
Tibal threw her a sharp look that she ignored. “I know Thratia, and I know her weapons. That was not an eruption.”
Lakon chewed his lip while his watchers shifted uneasily, eyeing the destruction.
“Those people need help…” a young female watcher said.
Lakon closed his eyes and leaned his crossbow against his leg so that he could rub the heels of his palms against his eyelids. He blew air through his nose so hard his mustache puffed outward.
“I know you, Captain, or of you, anyway. I don’t know what was happening here tonight, but, no one appears hurt–” Sasalai opened her mouth to protest and he shot her a glare. “And those people definitely are hurt.” He locked his gaze on Ripka. “You are sure? You stake your life and your reputation on this not being an eruption?”
“I know what caused that. I swear it.”
“Very well. Remove their bonds, men. We’ll need the hands. I suspect we’re going to have a lot of digging to do.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Detan did not know how long he slept, but when he woke the world was dark and still. The faint light trickling in under the curtain barring his window was enough to give him a pounding headache. He groaned and rested his forearm across his eyes. His arm was enclosed in a silken sleeve – someone had gone to the trouble of changing him. He felt a pang of sympathy for whoever had suffered that nasty little chore. He was pretty certain he’d fouled himself in those final moments. So very much of his bodily control had fled.
And he didn’t have it all back. Parts of him radiated numbness like a nimbus, the center of a spot perfectly deadened while the area around it grew steadily in feeling. With care, he began flexing every toe to its max extension, letting them relax, and repeating the motion with every muscle all the way up his body until he was pretty sure he still had all his parts intact.
Not that he deserved them.
Memory of that terrible flailing of his power filled his mind, insisted to be recognized lest he bury it completely. In a rueful way he welcomed the change. After he’d blown up the mines by accident here, that first time, he’d buried the guilt and the memory beneath layers of pain.
His new mental exercises would not allow him that luxury of self-deception. He needed to know everything he possibly could about his ability, and though the pain had been immense he had learned a great deal during those terrible moments.
He tried to catalog them with remote interest, to remove himself from the memory of his agony and the outlet that agony had eventually found.
One: the injection did not affect Aella. He was not yet sure how he could use that, but it felt significant to him. Some tiny sliver of weakness he could pry at.
Two: His sphere of influence was much larger than expected. Large enough that it dwarfed Aella’s, and she could not keep him fully contained if he decided to reach outside of her range.
Not that he wanted to. Though he’d desperately attempted to rein himself in, he held no illusions about what he’d done. He’d blown a pocket of selium at the opening of a firemouth. People died. How many, he was terrified to learn. But his fear was irrelevant in the face of the pain and terror he’d caused. He needed to move. To help. To fix something.
He peeled the arm from his eyes, swung his feet to the bedroom floor, and nearly fainted from the exertion. Rather annoying, having a body that wouldn’t obey him. Not nearly as bad as having a mind that wouldn’t.
Someone had the gall to knock on his door, and he was halfway through reaching back to chuck a pillow at the intruder when his auntie stepped into the room. He froze, mid-swing, and hesitantly brought the pillow down to rest in his lap.
“You’re up,” she said.
“Your powers of observation never cease to impress me.”
She propped a tray against her hip, and sidled awkwardly through the door to keep from rocking its contents. Clay plates rattled as she snatched a guttering candlestick from the tray and set about lighting, one at a time, the candelabra near the door. The warm light made his eyes ache, and he considered asking her to douse the flames, but he’d have to face the day eventually.