before.
“You don’t have to,” Asheris said. Not arguing or pleading, and she was grateful for it.
“No. But this will be best.”
The lake surged and roiled, waves crashing against stone, high enough that their spray slicked her face. The voices of the reed-maidens filled her head.
“I’m ready,” she told them. “Do it.”
Asheris and Isyllt clasped hands, and she felt the magic gathering beneath her. She waved once in farewell, then turned back to the waiting water.
“Mother,” she whispered, and wasn’t sure if she meant Fei Minh or the Mir. Her hands tightened on the railing, rust scraping her palms. No, that wasn’t the way. She inhaled a damp breath, blew out her fear as the lower dam crumbled with a roar.
The causeway shattered.
She raised her arms and opened them to the oncoming wall of water. It hurt for an instant, as the impact broke her limbs, drove shards of rib into her lungs, but the river took the pain.
The river took everything.
Chapter 21
Dark and fast, the river runs, thick with flotsam-jagged stone and bits of iron spinning in the current before they sink into the mud; a girl’s shattered body; a daughter’s soul cradled in her mother’s arms. Water rushes over the banks. Spirits ride the surge, ecstatic in their freedom.
The river rages, decades of anger unleashed, tempered by a daughter’s grief, a daughter’s hope. A daughter’s bargain.
The mountain shakes, heaving the river in her bed, undoing centuries of patient carving. Fish and snakes writhe in upthrust mud; slime glistens on bones and stones hidden for hundreds of years. The water tastes of ash, of hot stone, of blood and brimstone.
Boats snap their moorings and capsize, throwing screaming passengers into the roar and rush. That part of the river that was a girl mourns each snuffed and broken life, but knows she cannot save them all. Mud rushes down the flanks of the shaking mountain, adds its weight to the flood.
In the city, canals burst out of their banks, water sweeping over streets and sidewalks. A bull kheyman washes onto the steps of a house, roaring his outrage. The earth trembles and a bridge shudders and gives way. In the Floating Garden, potted trees break their tethers and bob away, shedding leaves and branches into the hungry current. In Straylight, buildings groan and slide, bricks and mortar raining into the floodwaters. In the harbor, the sea already churns, vexed to tempest by the earth’s upheaval. Caught between wave and flood, docks splinter, ships founder and sink. Bayside windows shatter under the onslaught, doors burst from their hinges. The water snatches people off quays and sidewalks and drowns all their cries and prayers.
But it hears those drowning prayers too.
Throughout the city fires are doused, but rocks and cinder still rain, and wave after wave of ash blots out the sky. Buildings crumble beneath the weight of ejecta, piling stone upon stone over their unlucky occupants. If it cannot burn the city, the mountain means to bury it, to wipe out all trace of those who in their hubris bound it.
And that, the river decides, will not happen. Not to her namesake, this curiosity of men nestled in her delta, the home of the daughter who set her free. The daughter prays; the mother listens.
And as the mountain renews its offense, the river rises and enfolds the city in her arms.
Dawn never came.
From the tower beside the ruined dam, Isyllt and Asheris watched the mountain burn. Ash drifted past the window like gray snow. Eventually she slept, lulled by the roar of the river and the warmth of Asheris’s shoulder. When she woke her head was on his thigh and the darkness hadn’t brightened. The murk hid the mountain, giving only the occasional sullen flash of orange. The sky to the south was the yellowish gray of necrotic flesh.
“What time is it?” Her voice was a croak, throat raw and lips cracking. Her eyelids scraped as she blinked.
“Afternoon,” he said, his own voice rough. “Or it ought to be.”
Golden witchlights blossomed over their heads, driving away the gloom. Dirt smeared Asheris’s face and clothes and itched on Isyllt’s skin. When she scratched her cheek her nails came back black with grime; it dulled her ring, hid the diamond’s fire and clogged the setting.
Her left arm was numb, wedged between her and the floor. Her elbow creaked when she straightened it, and the rush of blood to her ruined hand made her eyes water. But it didn’t hurt as much as it should. Wincing, she eased her tattered sleeve back. The print of Asheris’s hand circled her wrist like a shackle gall, char-black and flaking in the middle, seeping raw flesh beneath. The edges were pink and blistered, hot and painful enough leave a sour taste in her mouth, but she couldn’t feel the worst parts. At least the ashen air had clogged her nose enough that she couldn’t smell the burnt-pork reek of it.
She’d seen burns like this before, knew the infection sure to follow in one as filthy as this. She might have another day before the fever set in. The bandage on her palm was foul with blood and soot, and she didn’t want to imagine the state of that wound.
“Wait here,” Asheris said and left the room, brushing futilely at the dirt on his coat.
Another tremor came while he was gone, rumbling softly through the stones. Isyllt tensed as dust sifted down from the ceiling, but nothing else gave way. He returned a few moments later with a length of linen and a brandy decanter.
“The pipes are broken,” he said as he crouched beside her. “No clean water.”
She picked up the brandy, smearing the glass. “Is this for the burn or for me?”
Asheris frowned, lifting her arm carefully to peer at the burn. “Internal application would be better, I think.”
He took the bottle from her and doused a corner of the cloth, wiped his fingers clean. She sighed as the smell filled the air, caramel-sweet and stinging the back of her nose. The sting was worse when she took a sip, not just in her sinuses but in the tiny cracks and cuts in her lips. The first swallow went down bitter with blood and char; the second numbed her tongue and coated her throat in sweet fire. Reluctantly, she set the bottle down after a third drink. The alcohol and the rush of the waterfall only reminded her how thirsty she was.
Asheris wrapped the burn loosely and rigged a sling. His eyes glittered in the witchlit gloom. Not the copper- red flash of an animal’s, but a crystalline sparkle like a flame behind amber.
“Who are you, really?” she asked as he tied the last knot.
“I’m Asheris, now.” He rocked back on his heels and raised a hand, palm up. “This is more than just a prison, or a skin. I have his memories, his loves, his life.”
“And before?”
“This tongue couldn’t pronounce my old name, and it’s lost to me anyway.” He chuckled. “We were well matched, Asheris-the-man and the jinn I was. I doubt their trap would have worked as well otherwise. Both so very curious, so incautious. The Emperor’s mages plied the man with wine and the jinn with incense, but it was that curiosity, that desire to know the
Isyllt didn’t look at her ring, but she felt its weight keenly. “What will you do now?”
His smile sharpened for a moment. “Find some old colleagues. Imran wasn’t the only one who cast that spell. And I worry they may have tried it again.”
An army of bound jinn. Isyllt shuddered at the thought and Asheris nodded. “I won’t let them. After that-” He shrugged. “I don’t know. But first, I think we should leave the tower. The earth hasn’t settled yet-you slept through several tremors before that last, and I suspect more will come.”
He rose, taking her elbow to help her up. “Zhirin’s bargain did something. The river has woken. Whether it was any help to Symir, I don’t know.”
Isyllt stared at the darkness in the west, the sifting ash, the flare and flash of cinders. “Shall we find out?”
