The Drowning City: The Necromancer Chronicles Book One

by Amanda Downum

  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.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  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!

  Extras

  Meet the Author

  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.

  Interview

  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.

  Introducing

  If you enjoyed THE DROWNING CITY,

  look out for

  THE BONE PALACE

  The Necromancer Chronicles Book Two

  by Amanda Downum

  In the Sepulcher, death smelled like roses.

  Sachets of petals and braziers of incense lined the marble halls and scented-oil lamps burned throughout the long vault, twining ribbons of rose and jasmine and myrrh through the chill air. Meant to drown the smell of blood and rot that crept out of the corpse-racks in the walls, but death couldn’t be undone so easily. The raw, coppery scent of recent violence teased past the sweetness, creeping into Isyllt’s sinuses as she studied the dead woman on the slab.

  Blue-tinged lips parted slightly, expressionless in death, but the slash across her throat grinned, baring red meat and pale flashes of bone. Barely enough blood in her to settle—some clotted like rust in brass-blonde hair, pasted damp-frizzed tendrils to her cheeks. Her clothing had already been removed, faint lines down her ribs showing where corset stays had pressed into flesh. Her garments, cut away by competent, uncaring attendants, were likely shelved in an oubliette of an evidence room upstairs.

  Isyllt crossed her arms under her breasts and shivered beneath her long black coat. “Where did you find her?” Her breath trailed away in a shimmering plume; spells of cold etched the stones.

  “In the Garden, in an alley just after dusk.” Khelséa lounged against the frescoed wall between corpse-drawers, her orange uniform coat garish against pale green. Vines and leaves swirled across the vault—the builders had tried to make the room cheery, but no amount of paint or plaster could disguise the death that steeped these stones. “She was cold and stiff when we got there.”

  Isyllt frowned at the dead woman, brushed a finger against a lock of yellow hair. A prostitute, then, most likely. A foreigner too, from the coloring—Vallish like Isyllt, perhaps, or Rosian. Refugees crowded tenements and shantytowns in the inner city, and more and more turned to the Garden for work.

  Isyllt pressed gently on the woman’s jaw, and it opened to reveal nearly a full set of lightly tea-stained teeth. Her elbows were still stiff, and her knees immobile. Rigor had only just
begun to fade. “A day dead?”

  “That’s our guess. It was raining when we found her, and she was soaked, but there were hardly any flies. And the alley is visible from the street—she couldn’t have lain there all day.”

  “So dumped. Why call me?” The Garden was the Vigiles Urbani’s jurisdiction, unless the Crown was somehow involved, or the crime was beyond the city police. And while pride insisted that the Vigiles’ necromancers weren’t as well-trained as the Arcanosti or Crown Investigators, Isyllt knew they were perfectly competent. She bent over the white stone table, examining the wound. The knife had nicked bone. “What can I tell you about this that you don’t already know?”

  “Look at her thighs.”

  The woman’s legs tapered from flaring hips to gently muscled calves and delicate ankles. No spider veins or calluses on her feet—chipped gold paint decorated her toenails. Flesh once soft and supple felt closer to wax under Isyllt’s careful fingers. Death whispered over her hand, lapped catlike at her skin. The cabochon black diamond on her right hand flickered fitfully, ghostlight sparking in its crystalline depths.

  She ran a gentle hand between the woman’s thighs, tracing the same path as a dozen customers, a dozen lovers. But this time there was no response, no passion real or feigned. Only stiffening muscles and cold flesh.

  No wounds, no bruises. No sign of rape. No violation but that of the blade.

  “What am I—” She paused. On the inside of the left leg, near the crease of the groin, she touched a narrow ridge of scar tissue. More than one. She pressed against stiff flesh to get a better look. Old marks, healed and scarred long ago. Teeth marks. She found the same scars on the other leg, some more recent.

  Very sharp teeth. Isyllt shivered; she knew what such bites felt like.

  “Do you think this had anything to do with her death?” She kept looking but found no fresh wounds.

  “Maybe.” Khelséa reached into an inside pocket of her coat and pulled out a folded piece of silk. “But this is why I called you.”

  Isyllt stretched across the dead woman and took the cloth; something small and hard was hidden in its folds. She recognized the shape of a ring before she finished unwrapping it.

  A heavy band of gold, skillfully wrought, set with a sapphire the size of a woman’s thumbnail. A rampant griffin etched the stone, tiny but detailed. A master’s work. A royal work.

  “Where was this?” A knot colder than the room drew tight in her stomach.

  “Sewn inside her camisole, clumsy new stitches. Her purse was missing.”

  A royal signet in a dead whore’s clothes. Isyllt blew a sharp breath through her nose. “How many know?”

  “Only me and my autopsist.” Khelséa snorted. “You think I’d wave something like this in front of the constables?”

  Isyllt stared at the ring. A woman’s ring, but no woman alive had the right to wear it. She looked down at the body. A sliver of blue iris showed beneath half-closed lids, already milky. “What was her name?”

  “Forsythia.”

  Not a real name—at least she hoped it wasn’t. Not many mothers branded their daughters with a prostitute’s name at birth.

  Isyllt dipped a finger into the gaping wound, licked off coagulated blood and fluids. Khelséa grimaced theatrically, but the captain’s nerves and stomach were hard to upset.

  Cold jellied blood, bittersweet and thin with rainwater. No trace of illness or taint, nothing deadly save for the quantity spilled. The taste coated Isyllt’s tongue.

  “Forsythia. Are you there?”

  No answer, not even a shiver. Isyllt listened till her ears rang, but heard nothing. Her power could raise the corpse off its cold table and dance it around the room, but no ghost lingered to answer her questions. She sighed. “A clean crossing. They never stay when you need them to. She might be wherever she was killed, though.” She nibbled the last speck of blood from under her fingernail.

  Gently she pushed back Forsythia’s kohl-smeared eyelids. Rain, she wondered briefly, looking at the ashen streaks, or did you have time for tears? Her reflection stared back from death-pearled eyes. She rested her fingers on the woman’s temples, thumbs on her cheekbones; the black leather glove on her left hand was stark against pale skin. The woman’s soul was gone, lost on the other side of the mirror, but memories still lingered in her eyes.

  Isyllt hoped for the killer’s face, but instead she saw a sunset. Clouds glowed pink and orange as the sun sank behind the ragged skyline of Oldtown, the colors burned into Forsythia’s mind. The last thing she saw was that jeweled sky fading into dusk, then a sudden pressure of hands and blackness. Much too quick for death, even as quick a death as this must have been.

  Isyllt sighed and looked away, the colors of memory fading into the white and green of the mortuary. “She was grabbed off the street, somewhere in Oldtown. Maybe the Garden.” Death must have come not long afterward; she hoped the woman hadn’t suffered much. “What else do you know?”

  “Nothing. There was nothing but rain in the alley, and no one saw anything.” Khelséa rolled her eyes. “No one ever sees anything.” She pushed away from the wall, shaking back her long black braids. “Do you have any magic tricks for me?”

  “Nothing entertaining.” Isyllt turned toward the back of the room, where tables and benches were set up for students and investigators. “Will you bring me gloves and surgical spirits? And a dissection plate.”

  The captain opened a cabinet against the wall and removed thin cotton examiner’s gloves, a bottle, and a well-scrubbed tin tray. “What are you doing?”

  “Testing for contagion. Someone touched this before she did.” She sat down, stripping off her left glove. Her scarred and claw-curled hand, bandaged or gloved for nearly two years, was corpse-white beneath. She tried to ignore it as she scrubbed her hands with cold spirits; she was mostly comfortable with only seven working fingers by now. She wiped down the tray as well, then tugged on the white gloves and set the ring on the tin. Already contaminated, of course, but every little bit helped. It was much easier to test for transference—be it of skin, hair, blood, or energy—with a suspect at hand, but she could also tune the ring to react to the presence of anyone who had handled it recently, and even seek the person out, at close enough range.

  Closing her eyes against the bitter-sharp alcohol fumes, she touched the ring lightly. She could have managed a more sterile space in her own workroom, but this would serve. Tendrils of magic wrapped around the gold, resonated through the stone. Mages used sapphires and other such gems to hold energy—the cut and clarity of this one made it ideal for storing spells.

  The taste of the spirits crept over her tongue, stinging her palate as it sharpened the spell. Alcohol, like her magic, was clean of living things, anathema even to disease and crawling necrophages. Against its stark sterility, any contagion should shine clear.

  Isyllt opened her eyes and leaned back, wrinkling her nose at the mingled stink of spirits and roses and death. Witchlight glimmered in the sapphire’s crystalline depths, then faded into blue. “There. Let’s test it.” She stripped off the cotton gloves and touched the ring with her bare hand. The light flared again briefly at the familiar skin, and the spell shivered in her head. She let the essence of the alcohol erase the contamination, and it stilled again.

  “Now you,” she said, holding the ring out to Khelséa. Another shiver and flare at the captain’s touch, and again she let the memory of it vanish. Now the stone should react only to whoever had held it before Forsythia. She found a spare silver chain in the exorcist’s kit in her pocket, and slid the ring under her shirt. It settled cold between her breasts, warming slowly between cloth and skin.

  “Do you need anything else?” Khelséa asked.

  Isyllt ran a hand over her face. “A night’s sleep. Other than that, no. I’ll tread lightly. More vigils hanging around would only attract attention.”

  Khelséa snorted and tugged her orange coat straight. At least her dark skin let her wear the
Vigiles’ distinctive shade well. “What’s one more death in Oldtown, after all?”

  “Eight for an obol.” Their boots echoed in unison as they started for the stairs, leaving the dead woman on her slab.

  Outside, the night smelled of autumn rain, and wet stone and cobbles glistened under the streetlamps. Inkstone was a quiet neighborhood after midnight, scribes and bureaucrats long safe in bed. Shadows draped the columned facade of the Sepulcher, hiding the faces of the owl-winged gargoyles who crouched on the roof. Isyllt felt their unblinking granite stares as she descended the broad steps. Sentinels of the Otherworld. A carriage waited in the street, the driver half dozing, horses snorting restlessly. Isyllt breathed deep, letting the night wash away the smell of blood and roses.

  “I saw your minstrel friend in the Garden tonight,” Khelséa said with a grin. “Maybe I should take him in for questioning.”

  Isyllt snorted. “Is that the only way you can start a conversation with a man?”

  “Better than calling them from their tombs.” The captain unlatched the carriage door and held it open. “Let me know what you find. I’m sure it will be interesting.”

  Isyllt smiled. “This job always is.” She pulled herself into the carriage and Khelséa shut the door. The horses’ hooves clattered against the cobbles as they carried her across the city.