Chapter 17
The first place we headed was the Enforcers Guild, to see where we might be most needed.
To my relief, the building had weathered the quake with only minor damage.
Captain Skonel was running a tight ship, efficiently dispatching crews to deal with the terrified citizens and prevent any looting.
Two foremen from the smaller crews were helping him organize, and a quick talk with them confirmed they were indeed following Chen and Kardanor’s plan to the letter.
Tents were already being set up outside the city for temporary shelter, as well as improvised hospitals.
The crews were herding homeless citizens to the tents, but there weren’t nearly enough hands available to search through the wreckage for survivors, so Comenius and I were dispatched to Maintown to assist with that.
“By Magorah,” I said, after I’d brought my steambike to a halt just two blocks away from the Maintown border.
We’d cut through Shiftertown to get here, and while there were some collapsed buildings and road damage there, it was nothing like Maintown.
The whole damn place seemed to be on fire, acrid smoke billowing from crumbled buildings.
Screams and sobs carried to us on the wind even from this distance.
It was worse than anything I’d ever seen before—far worse than even the damage the Resistance had done during the Uprising.
“It’s a good thing I brought supplies,” Comenius said, hefting his brown leather bag full of potions and bandages. “I fear they won’t be nearly enough.”
We walked the rest of the two blocks, and Rylan met us at the border.
His usual smirk was nowhere to be found.
In its place was a hard, implacable gaze.
“This is unconscionable,” he growled, his rage barely leashed.
“Those cheap bastards, Mendle and Gorax, should be castrated, then drawn and quartered, for this.”
“That would be a good start,” I agreed, letting my own rage come to the surface. It was better to feel anger than grief right now, I decided. Anger would fuel me, push me to work harder to save the survivors. Grief would only hold me back.
Rylan smiled grimly at that. “I’ve already checked in with Kardanor,” he said. “He and Director Chen are running the show down here, and making quite a good team, too. He said to report to Foreman Chabot—she needs help digging out survivors in the Coldwater Shopping District.”
Comenius and I followed Rylan in the direction he’d mentioned, but we didn’t make it there.
There was catastrophe everywhere—children trapped in burning buildings, women and men lying in the street with broken limbs as they waited for mages to triage and move them to the hospitals, and we ended up helping along the way.
Rylan jumped into one of those burning buildings to save a child, while I used my magic and brawn to help clear rubble away that was trapping another family inside their home.
Comenius was roped into helping at the nearby hospital tent to mix up pain-killing potions.
It wasn’t that there wasn’t anyone helping—in fact, there were hundreds of shifters, humans, and mages working side by side to save the survivors.
But for every one helper, there were fifty citizens who needed saving.
Unfortunately, not everyone I pulled from the wreckage could be saved.
I had to force myself not to get emotional whenever I pulled the bodies of dead children from the rubble, which was far too often.
I nearly broke down when I unearthed the corpse of a pregnant woman who looked to be only a few weeks away from her delivery date.
But I managed to hold it together, to shove my grief and rage into the box that held Fenris’s memories, and keep slogging through.
Eventually, I ended up in the hospital tent too, healing broken limbs and internal bleeding.
The mages running the tents seemed surprised and impressed at the skill and speed with which I healed my patients, but they didn’t question me about it.
Which was good, because how could I tell them that my newfound skill and knowledge was unearned?
That it had been given to me by a mage who wasn’t even my master, a mage who everyone had considered a shifter?
The memory-sharing spell was only supposed to be used if a master was passing away before his student could complete their apprenticeship, and in these times of peace, that was incredibly rare.
Acquiring wholesale knowledge this way when everyone else had to work for it was considered cheating.
I wasn’t sure how long I toiled away in the tents, but eventually I had to stop and refuel.
All the magic I’d used to heal bodies and clear away rubble was taking a heavy toll.
Sitting in a corner of a tent, I wolfed down a stack of ham sandwiches as fast as I could, not wanting to sit around too long.
There was still too much work to be done.
“Miss Baine?” someone asked, and I jerked my head up to see Director Chen staring down at me.
Her silk robes had been replaced with utilitarian brown wool, her long hair was pulled up into a no-nonsense bun, and her ivory skin was smudged with soot and blood.
“Thank the Lady I’ve found you. Lord Iannis has returned. ”
I shot to my feet, my exhaustion forgotten. “He has? How?” In all the commotion, I hadn’t thought to check my serapha charm, and as far as I’d known, there had been no point. He’d been a day away this morning, and I hadn’t thought he would make it in time to assist today.
“He has been experimenting with creating gulayas, using that new method from the diary he found on that deserted island,” Chen said, lowering her voice.
“He took one with him on his trip, and he used it to get back as soon as he got word about the quake. He’s been leading the firefighting for the past hour, and the flames are almost completely subdued now. ”
“That’s great.” Touching my serapha charm, I confirmed that Iannis was indeed back in Solantha, and though he seemed tired and strained, he was healthy. “I’ll go find him. Thanks.”
Using my serapha charm as a guide, I picked my way through the rubble-strewn streets toward Iannis.
He was a couple of blocks west, at the town center, putting out a fire in the town hall.
I leaned against the remnants of a street lamp and watched as he and, to my great surprise, Director Toring, worked together to staunch the flames licking the roof of the building.
The other buildings on either side of the town hall were partially charred and still smoking, but their fires had been put out safely.
“You’ve been busy,” I said, strolling up to the two mages once they’d gotten the fire under control.
I would have volunteered to help, but I was still recovering from the healings I’d done, and the two of them hadn’t seemed to need my help anyway.
Like Chen, Iannis and Garrett were dressed in simple robes rather than their usual finery.
Both their faces were black with soot, but I grabbed Iannis and kissed him anyway.
He tasted like ash and blood, but also himself, and as he wrapped his strong arms about me and crushed me tight against him, an indulgence he rarely allowed in public, the knot of grief and pain inside my chest loosened a bit.
“I’m very glad you’re safe,” he finally said, pulling back.
He pushed a curl out of my face with a blackened finger, no doubt streaking soot across my forehead.
But I didn’t care. After this hellish day, I needed to feel his touch, hear his voice, see those brilliant violet eyes staring down at me as they did now, still so full of vitality despite the grueling, draining work.
“I felt your pain, and I was worried that something had happened to you. Are you all right?”
I swallowed hard against the sudden ball of tears in my throat, eyes stinging again. “Fenris is dead,” I choked out.
Iannis’s face went deathly pale beneath the soot. “What?”
“Dead?” Garrett echoed, scowling. “What do you mean, dead?”
“I mean he’s no longer living in this world, you asshole!
” I took a step toward him, fangs bared, and Garrett recoiled in shock.
He wasn’t used to seeing me this feral. Iannis braced a hand against my forearm, and the only reason I halted was because he was as much leaning on me as he was silently telling me to stop.
“Why don’t you sit down?” I said heavily.
We sank onto the cracked marble steps in front of the town hall, and I relayed the story to Iannis, leaving out only the part about Fenris gifting his knowledge to me.
By the time I was done, my eyes were burning with unshed tears, and my heart felt like it had been repeatedly run over by a steamtruck.
By Magorah, how could he be gone? How could I have let him die?
A long silence settled over the three of us when I finished.
Iannis’s expression was like stone, but I knew that was because we were in public—the anguish coming off him, which I could feel clearly through the serapha charm, was so great that it made mine feel paltry in comparison.
Fenris had been his friend far longer than mine.
“You did not fail him,” I said firmly in mindspeak, sensing what Iannis was thinking. “He left this world knowing how much you loved him.”
“He wouldn’t have left this world at all, had I not convinced him to stay the first time he announced he was leaving.” Iannis’s eyes burned with restrained emotion, and I had to struggle to keep from hugging him again. “He could be a thousand miles away by now, living his own life.”
“Well, that’s very convenient,” Garrett said skeptically, interrupting our silent conversation. “For Fenris to die just as I was preparing my arrest warrant for him. How do I know that you aren’t lying, and that he didn’t escape in the confusion?”
“You bastard—” I snarled, but stopped myself before I lunged for Garrett again.
Fenris wouldn’t want me to get myself into hot water after all he’d done to save my life.
Fuck. Taking a deep breath, I sat back down, then said, “If you doubt me, I will take you to the place where it happened. We need to recover the body anyway.”
“Sunaya,” Iannis said, putting his hand on my arm. He turned to Garrett, his voice full of reproach. “Now is hardly the time to squabble about such a petty—”
“No,” I said, my voice hard. I got to my feet and pinned Garrett with an icy stare that could give Iannis a run for his money.
“If taking time away from helping the sick and the dying is what we need to appease Director Toring’s sense of justice,” I spat the word, and his eyes flickered, “then that’s what we’ll do. ”
“Very well,” Garrett said, his tone chilly. But I could tell I’d thrown him off balance, and that he was no longer so sure about the move he’d just made. “Lead the way.”
Since the roads had been completely torn up by the quake, we were forced to traverse the town on foot.
To prevent ourselves from being constantly accosted, we disguised ourselves as humans, but it was incredibly hard to ignore the pain and suffering going on and continue forward.
There were so many times I wanted to stop and help, to dig out more survivors, to heal more broken limbs.
But Fenris’s body was still buried beneath that school, and I would not leave him there to rot. He deserved better than that.
“Here we are,” I said bitterly as we stopped outside the cracked sidewalk in front of the school.
Someone had put out the fire, but the damage had been done.
I stalked across the once-grassy field, now charred to ash, heading toward the side of the school where I had created that tunnel.
The entire building had been reduced to rubble.
“Miss Baine,” Garrett said, his voice subdued. He hurried to catch up with me, pulling at my sleeve. “Miss Baine, I see now. There is no way anyone in that basement could have survived. I believe you.”
“Don’t touch me, you self-serving prick.” I smacked his hand away, staring straight ahead so that he wouldn’t see my tears. “You wanted to see proof. I’ll get you proof. Fenris’s body is buried down here.”
“Sunaya,” Iannis warned as I sank to the ground in front of the pile of debris blocking the tunnel I’d dragged Rusalia through. The tunnel I’d made using Fenris’s knowledge.
“Fenris’s body is down here,” I repeated, refusing to look at him.
“We can’t leave him there.” Calling up a spell from my dead friend’s memories, I turned toward the tunnel and attempted to excavate it again.
My magic burrowed into the ground as the spell yanked on it and, for a moment, I thought it was going to work.
But something inside me snapped, like a wire stretched too taut, and I gasped as piercing pain sliced through the center of my body.
The spell shut off abruptly, and my inner muscles began to seize up as intense heat radiated throughout my skull.
Suddenly, I couldn’t draw breath; it was as though all the oxygen had been sucked out of the air around me…
“Sunaya,” Iannis shouted, his voice rife with fear. Strong arms came around me as I toppled sideways, and that was the last sensation I felt before the blackness claimed me.