by EM Kaplan
Stumbling into the hall, he shook the pain of out of his bruised hand, and then turned back to get his clothes. He remembered to strap on his axe before realizing he needed his boots. Just as he grabbed them, an explosion rocked the building, making the walls shake and a shimmy snake through the second-story flooring. Spurred on by fear, eyes tinging with red now, he lunged out the doorway toward the voices, certain they were under attack from trogs.
He met Rav and Bookman outside their doorway, both disheveled from sleep. Bookman carried the infant in his arms as Rav pulled her clothes straight and draped the child’s sling over her head. “Trogs?” she asked, though her tone was tinged with certainty.
“I think so,” Ott said, images of the tough-skinned beasts filling his mind. He could practically smell their gamey stench. The memory of having been on the wrong end of their fists was strong in his mind. He’d been buried under a pile of them not too long ago—in a smelly cave deep underground. Steeling himself, he prepared to fight them again, feeling the rage build inside of him, but Bookman was frowning and shaking his head.
“I don’t sense any of them,” the quiet man said, his scratchy voice a dark reminder of his close connection with the creatures. He was still one of them, as far as Ott was concerned, in spite of his pink skin and mild manners. The man paused, squinting, and pushed the metal-rimmed glasses onto his face. His ability to sense the trogs was proof of his makeup. But still, Bookman had never given Ott a reason to distrust him, though Ott often found himself watching the man from the corner of his vision. Once a trog, always a trog, no matter the outward appearance. Wasn’t that right?
“Wake up Marget. We need to leave this place and find somewhere safer to go,” Ott said, making for the stairs, but Bookman stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“She’s not in her room. I looked for her already.”
“What do you mean?” Ott spun on his heel again and headed toward the tiny maid’s closet he’d procured for her last night. No bigger than a storage room, but private, which he’d thought she would have appreciated. He’d personally seen her settled in there—so he knew she hadn’t gotten lost. But there was no way he’d allow her to sleep either in the same room as him without Mel—or with Rav and Bookman, because of Bookman being…well, who he was.
Not trusting anyone’s testimony but that of his own eyes, as compromised as they were with his growing rage, Ott burst open the door of the tiny room. To find it empty. Turning back to the couple, he caught the end of what sounded like Bookman giving an exasperated sigh. Ott felt his face flush, his berserker rage dimming somewhat in his embarrassment.
“She’s not here. We should check downstairs.” Without waiting for them to respond, he led the way to the stairs.
“Good idea,” Bookman said, sounding sarcastic to Ott’s ear. “Let’s check downstairs.” As Ott’s booted feet pounded down the stone steps, he thought Rav gave a dry cough. No time to stop and suss out if they were mocking him, which they probably were.
Taking the last four steps in a single bound with his long legs—the increased length had its advantages at times—he found the barroom in a state of panic. Marget was in the corner of the room, thank Lutra, and appeared unharmed, though she was in danger of being crushed by the crowd of bodies around her. A monstrous wooden support beam had fallen from the the ceiling and crashed to the floor in the center of the room, pinning several patrons where they sat, tankards of mead lying where they’d fallen, puddles of foamy ale covered in a shower of wood dust and particles.
A few of the braver people had ventured toward the beam and were attempted to lift it together. Shoving his way through the gawking crowd gave him just enough frustration to work his strength back up. By the time he’d elbowed into a spot at the head of the broken beam, his vision was blood red. His voice must have changed, too. When he said, “Ready on three,” and counted down, he had the attention of all hands around the beam. And when they lifted it off the crushed bodies, his side of the wood lifted faster.
Others rushed in to drag the injured aside. Then they were able to lower the beam back down—and drop it the final few inches with a thud and a cloud of sawdust. When it was done, the lifters stood back and stared at him, as if waiting for further instruction. So he told them, “See to the wounded,” and turned to find Marget before they saw his face flush bright red with embarrassment. He wasn’t cut out for ordering people around. Not at all. He would much rather just swing his axe, take a few heads off monsters, and call it a day. Soak for an hour in a hot bath, have a good dinner, and crawl into bed with the woman he loved. But, no, here he was, shoved to the foreground again. Maybe this was it for him. The future was written, and he was at the head of it. Sighing he took a few steps toward the part of the room in which he’d last seen Marget, and almost bowled her over.
“What are you doing down here?” she asked, breathing a cloud of honey mead in his face. Her flushed face looked up at him with a saucy half-smile that he used to find appealing. Now she just looked young and silly, her dark hair clinging to her sweaty forehead.
“You’re drunk,” he told her.
She shook her head. “Not anymore. Not after that.” Looking at the mess behind him, her face turned pale, and he thought she might sick up. “Are they going to be all right? Is that man’s arm missing?” She moaned, and he feared he would become intimate with the contents of her stomach.
Taking her arm, he led her out the door to the street. Rav and Bookman had left already—they’d made a quick exit with the infant, showing more common sense than the other patrons who lingered in the inn’s dining hall. “I don’t know what happened, but it’s not safe here. That beam was holding up our rooms. A few more shakes and—”
The building rocked back and forth, reminding Ott of the riverboat, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up. This was bricks and mortar. On solid ground. Construction that had stood, hearty and stalwart for near a century—and should be standing still. As they hastened away from the front of it, the inn gave a sudden, sharp snap. Lutra on a spit, Ott had never heard a sound like it before. Even when the trogs had overrun Cillary Keep, the explosion rocking the grassy lawn on which he and Mel had stood, he’d never heard anything like this. True, his ears had been blown out by that explosion, but this… He spared a glance over his shoulder and sucked in a breath at the sight. Now, he grabbed Marget’s hand as she tripped along beside him, outward appearances be damned.
At last, the remaining idiots inside the Praesepio began swarming out of the building—apparently having come to their senses. Though to his mind, they stood much too close to the unsteady structure, milling around outside it. He cast a glance backward as he pulled Marget farther away—the girl was craning her neck, walking backward to get a better look as well. Hard to blame her. He was dying of curiosity, too. Except he was pretty sure whatever was disturbing the ground underneath the inn wasn’t going to be good.
A shout went up, and Ott lost his will not to look and turned around just in time to see the rest of the building collapse. The wooden planks and beams crumbled and split apart, and then sank down. The ground beneath the inn gave away, and a massive sinkhole opened up. Right where he’d been dead asleep moments before. Fingers of fear ran up his spine as he realized how close he’d been to being buried underground with trogs. Again.
The ground encircling the inn cracked more, as the building disintegrated before their eyes. The edge of the pit expanded, increasing and crumbling inward, claiming more of the street. Ott’s urge to flee escalated. All he could think about was getting as far away from here as quickly as possible. He was about ready to toss Marget over his shoulder if she didn’t hasten her pace.
Any second now, Ott expected trogs to swarm out of the ruins, just as they had at Cillary Keep two summers ago when he’d met Mel. A mass of gray, thick-hided bodies with their accompanying stench had spilled out of the earth, killing and maiming people until bodies were strewn all over the grounds. And now it was happen
ing here in Navio where he thought they would be safe. He’d figured that there were too many people in a city of this size for the trogs to venture an assault. There had to be safety in numbers.
Regrouping, the four of them ran as great clouds of dust and debris from the thatched roof billowed toward them. Marget had latched onto Ott’s arm now and, as small as she was, gripped it with fingers and nails that dug into his skin. Frankly, he didn’t care as long as she kept her feet in motion. The memory of gnawed human limbs would stay in his thoughts forever, like the bear god Dovey hunkering down over the bones of his enemies. Even now, the images imprinted in his mind made him shiver.
“Keep moving,” he told his group. He planned to take them out of Navio. The more bodies they put between them and the trogs, the greater the chance they wouldn’t be eaten.
“It’s not trogs,” Bookman told him again as they jogged side-by-side down the dark, dusty street. To his credit, the man kept one hand in Rav’s, his focus on his mate the entire span of their run.
“How do you know it’s not them?” Ott said, casting a sidelong look at him. Though Ott’s red-tinged gaze had faded, it still wasn’t normal. He took care not to judge Bookman too harshly, doubting his own ability to be logical and…well, he wished Mel were here to help him. To cool down his temper and keep him grounded. To provide a reasonable point of view when he couldn’t trust his own judgment.
Bookman placed a gentle, restraining hand on his arm, and Ott glared down at it. One more touch, and he was ready to throw a fist in the man’s face—more for his irritating caution than his former trog incarnation. But Bookman wasn’t looking back at him—he was pointing ahead of them down the street, where another building had collapsed in a dusty heap. And to the side, another fell. Far away, they heard more screams and the strange rumble Ott took to be another building going down in pieces.
“What is happening here?” Rav shouted at them, her face tight with suppressed fear as she clutched the child to her chest. The baby’s small, dark head showed just a little above her woven swaddling. Salva, they’d named her—Ott had no idea what it meant. He thought it might be type of healing plant. The dark curls on her tiny skull bobbed as she moved against her mother, and for some reason, that small motion caused a squeezing sensation in Ott’s chest, deep inside.
Connected to them by their hands, Ott guided them through the streets—as fast as Marget could run because she was the smallest of them. Falling would stop their progress, and he knew without a doubt that they needed to leave Navio as soon as they could. A dozen streets to the south and they would be in the forest again, where he was most comfortable. Though he would have preferred going north or west, south was the best option—it was the direction in which he thought they’d encounter Mel. Or so he hoped.
As they took the corner to cross another street, the ground swallowed the market in front of them. A crater opened up, and they had to leap back. Marget gasped and almost pulled Ott into the fissure. If he’d been any smaller of a man, she might have plunged them all into the hole in a chain reaction like beads falling off a necklace string.
“Sinkholes,” Bookman said, confusion drawing his flushed face tight. As if he were well familiar with them.
Ott knew too much about them in his opinion, so he knew Bookman was wrong. Ott had seen the same kind of holes appear in the shanty town of miners on the grounds of the big house up north. The pits had opened up right before trogs attacked.
Chapter 18
Impatience and anxiety coursed through Mel’s body and she was having trouble keeping her hands still. Vern had led her along with Jaine several buildings down the busy street, just as dawn broke. Who are all these people and where are they going?
One by one, the greenish street lamps dimmed as the sun rose. The shine on the streets changed from green to gold. Mel fought the urge to stop and lay her hand on a lamp, to go inward with her mind and follow the agamite and see how it led from one to the next. She suspected some kind of underground pipe system. But was the agamite in gas form? How could the burn of the lamp travel down the street? Would the streets turn dark when the stockpiles of agamite were used up? Did Tooranans moderate their use at all—or did they continue to burn the mineral with no regard to the future? Her mind burned to know more. Yet, she suppressed the urge to investigate. She needed to learn more about the disruption of the river and see if this Academie had any advice for her. Then she could find Charl and take him back to the group.
“We’ll find people at the Academie at this time of the morning?” she asked.
Vern chuckled, his dark eyes sparkling. As they walked, everything about her two companions jangled. Belts, buckles, rings, and chains. She marveled that these two were the opposite of the soft-cloaked, silent Masks, who were wraith-like and anonymous. He told her, “There’s where you’ve made an understandable, but incorrect leap of logic, my girl. Most people might be inclined to do the exact same thing. The Academie isn’t a building. It’s the people themselves. The building…well, it’s just a library.”
He stopped at the front door of an impressive structure with even more floors than the one in which he lived. Pausing with his hand on the mechanism, he turned to Mel. “My dear, I suppose that without too much trouble, you could open this lock? I could ask Jaine—she’s quite the pick-pocket, but I’d prefer to see you do it.”
Jaine cast a sharp, street-wise look in her direction. Mel nodded slowly, adding this new trait to her initial opinion of the girl.
“And how would you endeavor to accomplish that?” Vern studied her, the expression on his face inquisitive, yet mild. She didn’t mistake his question for anything other than what it was—a test.
“Would like like to me to demonstrate?” she asked. And when he stepped aside, she placed her fingers on the knob as she’d seen Jaine do at the house. The dial turned with no resistance when she twisted it. Without having to lean closer, not stoop or even turn her head toward the door to block out the noise of the street and Jaine’s shuffling feet on the stone steps, Mel heard the distinct click of the dial. She focused her hearing a little more, changed the direction of her wrist, twisted the other direction. Then again in the first direction. One more time, until the mechanism clicked.
“That’s how you fixed the velowagon, isn’t it? You did some kind of inner sight,” Jaine said wagging her fingers as if conjuring illusions, neither in awe or disgust, but something in the middle. Maybe a little complacency on her sharp-featured face. She was Vern’s daughter after all.
“Not the same, but a little, I guess,” Mel said, as he pushed the door open for them. “Kind of as if…” But whatever she had been about to say died in her throat as row after row of books came into view.
Row after row, shelf after shelf of leather-books. All shapes and sizes, colors and condition. Mel swallowed hard, thinking of the hours of transcription and compilation of data, research, theories, and hypotheses. The small library in her mother’s home was a drop in a vast ocean here. And with a pang, she wished her mother were still alive so that she could describe to her the sight she beheld at this moment. She’d never seen the likes of this.
This library had her quaking with lust for the written word, the letters and meaning put to page, captured in time. She inhaled a deep breath, smelling the ink and the pages, even the sweat from the hands of scribes long gone. The amount of knowledge, the centuries of data collection, the careful scribing and reproduction of those thoughts into words on pages, struck her dumb with amazement. Inside the main collection room, the walls had been painted a bright, clean white, a stark contrast to the gray and brown street outside. In here, the agamite-powered lamps glowed not green, but brown. Vern caught her looking at the lamps in confusion. “The lamp casings are made with a red and brown oxide-infused glass to counterbalance the green. We found that it preserves the older books better.”
“Come along then,” he said with a small smile. She knew her astonishment was written on her face.
Following behind him, her feet tapping on the polished wood floor, she passed by rows of shelving to a doorway, which led into a smaller classroom, an intimate salon furnished with padded chairs, cushions on the floor, and low tables upon which numerous books lay scattered. Several pairs of eyes looked up as they entered.
“Ah, good. You’re here,” Vern told them. He explained to Mel, “I was hoping a few of my close, particular friends would be in attendance this morning. While I’m sure you would be welcomed at any time—no need to fear—I do, of course, have my favorite individuals who brighten my day. And I am most pleased for you to meet them.”
Mel felt, for all the world, as if she were back at Cillary Keep, her season of etiquette and manners coming back to her in a rush. That innocent, pristine time of few worries, captured in her memory before the violent attacks and bloody destruction. Later, in the Mask settlement, her supposed people had, without feeling or sensitivity, discussed the murder of her friends, which had upset her so much that she’d caused a disruption in the middle of her father’s lecture. She’d exploded. Her emotions had spilled out in a messy and humiliating display. Would the members of the Academie be as undemonstrative and cold?
“Morla, Jeet, and Wells, I would like you to meet Mel. She has news for us of the great disruption of the Uptdon River. In fact, she was there and witnessed it first hand. So prepare your questions for her while she is so kind as to tell us what she saw.”
