The Drowning City: The Necromancer Chronicles Book One (10 page)

Covered plates sat on the kitchen table, and a sweating carafe of ginger beer. Marat arranged more food on a tray as they
came in.

“I know what it means when he locks himself in his study that way,” she said. “I’m amazed any of you sorcerers live so long,
if this is how you take care of yourselves.” She shot a narrow-eyed glance at Isyllt.

Isyllt waved Adam into a chair and served them both. “Where’s Zhirin?” Her voice was steady, but her hands trembled, beer
splashing too loudly into their cups. Now that she wasn’t distracted with spellcraft, she could feel the strain and hunger
stealing over her.

“Sleeping.” Marat snorted. “At least someone in this house lets herself rest.” She lifted the tray, balancing it easily on
one hand; muscles shifted in her forearm as her sleeve fell back. “I’m going to force something down the master’s throat now.
If you need anything later, just ring.”

“Will you be all right by tonight?” Adam asked as Isyllt slid a plate of bread and goat curry in front of him.

The sky outside was orange fading to gray; still hours left before it would be safe to return to Market Street. “Of course.”
She nudged his foot with her toe. “Let me see your leg.”

He stretched out the injured limb and she crouched beside him, laying light hands on his knee. Closing her eyes, she sent
tendrils of power lapping curiously through his skin. Nothing serious, but she felt the strain in the muscle, the tenderness
in the surrounding flesh. The rest of him was healthy, save for the subtle-sweet song of decay that sang in all living flesh.
Her magic rubbed against him like a friendly cat; death always recognized a killer.

“You’re a healer?”

She chuckled at the skepticism in his voice. “Not at all. My magic is the absence of life.” She glanced up at him through
her lashes, smiled to see him blanch. “But you learn to work around the limitations.”

She summoned cold, let it radiate from her hands into his flesh. He shuddered but didn’t jerk away. Then he sighed as the
chill soothed the inflamed tissues in his knee.

“Be careful,” she said, uncoiling from her crouch. “It’s pain I’m easing, not damage. Don’t try any acrobatics for a while.”

“Thanks.” He flexed his leg carefully, shot her a curious glance.

She waved it aside and sat down to eat.

I
syllt and Adam returned to Market Street late that night, after the guards and gawkers had left. The damaged shop had been
hastily reinforced with spells and wooden beams to keep the roof intact. Isyllt lingered in the shadows across the street
and watched the burnt ruin with
otherwise
eyes.

The street was silent, windows shuttered and dark, but she doubted she was the only one watching. Moonlight fell in pale stripes
between buildings, shining on clean cobbles; death still echoed here, in spite of the fresh-scrubbed stones.

Adam crept up beside her, only the warmth of his flesh giving him away. “It’s clear as far as I can see.” His whisper ruffled
the fine hairs above her ear.

“Wait for me,” she whispered back, their faces so close she could taste his salt-musky sweat.

She slipped across the cobbles and into the shadow of the ruined shop. Red ropes were strung across the door and broken wall
to keep intruders out. Isyllt paused when she felt the spell woven into the cord. Subtle magic, well-cast, meant to snare
or mark an intruder. She knelt and twisted through the ropes, careful not to touch them.

The air still stank of charred flesh and seared blood; crusted gore marked where the bodies had lain. Isyllt closed her eyes
and reached, listening to the stones.

The explosion had killed most instantly, leaving only shudders of shock and violence. Someone in the far corner had died slower,
roasted by the flames. Pain resonated there, raising gooseflesh on Isyllt’s limbs and stinging her fire-tender skin. But it
was only the echo of agony blasted into the rock, not a soul left intact.

Even her mage-trained eyes could barely see in the gloom and she couldn’t risk a light. Inching cautiously, she moved closer
to where she’d found the shattered ruby. If the investigators had missed something, any scrap that had belonged to the saboteur—

A hand closed on her shoulder, another slapping over her mouth before she could gasp. She tasted spice-steeped skin and summer
lightning. Isyllt cocked her leg for a backward kick when her assailant spoke.

“I admit,” Asheris’s low voice whispered in her ear, “you aren’t what I expected to catch here, Lady Iskaldur.” The hand left
her mouth and he turned her around. A sliver of moonlight gleamed in amber eyes.

“What were you expecting?” She licked her lips, tasted the salt of his hand. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she fought
to keep from trembling in the after-math of shock. She’d felt nothing, heard nothing.

Asheris grinned, a pale flash in the darkness. He wore black and the shadows welcomed him. “A criminal foolish enough to return
to the scene of the crime, perhaps. I hope that isn’t what I’ve found.”

His hand was warm on her shoulder, their bodies only inches apart. Nearly a dance step. He was only an inch or two taller.
“Not a criminal, my lord, only careless.”

He took a step back and Isyllt almost matched him. But this was another sort of dance entirely. “When I offered to take you
sightseeing, this isn’t what I had in mind.”

She was glad she had no need to lie. “I was in the market when this happened. I wanted to have a closer look.” She shrugged
ruefully. “Habit, I’m afraid. I didn’t mean to interfere in the investigation.” She cocked an eyebrow. “Your investigation?”

“Yes. Forgive me, I neglected to mention it earlier—I’m the Imperial Inquisitor for the city.” He stepped back to give her
a shallow bow.

“I hope I’m not impeding you.”

“No, my lady. There’s little here for you to impede. Such attacks are no mystery in Symir. Unless—” Light caressed the curve
of his head as he turned. “Are there any ghosts here for us to question?”

“No. They died suddenly—no time to seal themselves to this place. “

“Ah, well. Better for them, I suppose, if frustrating for us. We know who’s responsible, of course, but without witnesses
it’s difficult to make a proper case.”

“Have you scried the dead?”

“We have no necromancers on staff—they make the locals very uncomfortable. I’ve requested one, but the Emperor has none to
spare.” His eyes flickered toward her. “Unless I could beg your assistance in the matter.”

Isyllt smiled. She trusted him no more than he trusted her, but this dance was far too entertaining to stop now. “I’d be delighted.”

He offered her his arm. “I’m a poor host, to entertain you in a charnel house. Let me take you somewhere more pleasant.” He
helped her over a fall of rubble; the moonlight was bright after the shadowed ruin. “And perhaps you should tell your escort
in the alley that I have no ill intentions. I suspect he’s rather concerned at the moment.”

Somewhere more pleasant, it turned out, was the police station in Lioncourt. Despite the late hour, the lobby was crowded,
every bench full and more people pacing in the corners. Some wept, some cursed and pleaded with the guards at the desk, some
stared at nothing with hollow eyes; the air was thick with the heat of lamps and bodies, and reeked of sweat and dust and
old tea. As Asheris led her through the press, Isyllt caught snatches of conversation.

“Let me see the body, please—”

“I can’t find my daughter—”

“My wife was arrested at the docks on Sabeth, and I’ve had no word since. Where is she being held?”

She glanced up at the last, saw the man’s angry, desperate expression and thought of the disappearances and work-gangs Zhirin
had mentioned. Asheris steered her past the cordons, and she didn’t catch the guard’s weary response.

A haggard-looking sergeant met them near the stairs and saluted Asheris, casting a curious glance at Isyllt. The guards at
the desks were local police, but his rumpled sweat-stained uniform was Imperial poppy red.

“I need the morgue key, please,” Asheris said.

“Of course, Lord al Seth.” The man turned away to fetch it, just in time to miss the startled blink Isyllt couldn’t control.

Al Seth—the royal house of Assar. That was a choice bit of information Vasilios had forgotten to share. Much more than a pretty
distraction.

They left the noise and close heat behind as they climbed the stairs. The morgue was a narrow, windowless room, sealed by
webs of spells to keep out heat and moisture and insects. Lamplight gleamed on metal and tile, everything polished and scrubbed,
but neither the lingering tang of soap nor the sachets of incense could drown the smell of charred meat.

Isyllt rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the itch of gelling sweat, and eyed the bodies. Six of them, mostly intact. Isyllt
recognized the eyeless man she’d nearly tripped over in the shop. Her ring chilled with the presence of death, but not the
biting cold that meant a ghost lingered nearby.

Asheris lounged in the corner, giving her room to work. Still sleek and handsome, but all the lazy grace and charm she’d seen
when they met was more purposeful now. More dangerous.

What was he doing here, she wondered, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye as she circled the tables. But she could
worry about that later. The bodies in the room were of more immediate interest than the fit of his jacket over broad shoulders.

She turned her eyes back to the grisly corpses. The smell of roast pork filled her nose, with the sharper reek of burnt hair
and clothing beneath it. “Were these the only dead?”

“Less than half. Some were too mangled to keep and some have already been claimed by their families.”

“You let them take the bodies so soon?”

“Wealth has ever sped certain processes along.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Wealth enough to demand retribution?”

“Oh, yes. There will be arrests.”

“Appropriate ones?”

Asheris smiled with the not-quite-cruelty of a cat cornering a bird. “As appropriate as we can make them.”

“Of course.” Isyllt leaned against a cold metal tabletop, tracing the scratches where gore or rust had been scoured away.
The corpse stared up at her, face eerily whole, though his body was a shriveled crisp. She touched his stiffened arm; skin
cracked, char-black flesh flaking away to reveal seeping red tissue. But his eyes, milk-clouded and sunken, were still intact,
and that was all she needed.

She leaned over the dead man, laying a careful hand on his face to steady herself. The heat had singed his receding hair.

“What did you see?” she whispered.

His dying vision unfolded in his eyes, wrapped around her.

A crowded shop, polished metal gleaming in the warm afternoon sun. Dust motes spark in front of the windows, swirled by the
passage of customers. Outside the market’s din blurs to a noise like squalling birds. She glances down at the lovely enameled
lamp in her hands, then toward the counter. A man with long beaded braids brushes her shoulder. Muffled grunt of apology and
a crystalline red gleam out of the corner of her eye as she keeps moving
—no, no, turn back, look, but the vision was set, only one way to play out now—
toward the front of the shop, where the tired-looking shopkeeper glances up and smiles—

And Isyllt stumbled, even the memory of the explosion enough to rock her on her feet.

Asheris caught her elbow. “You saw something?”

She leaned against him for an instant, trying to decide how much to tell him. But he’d led her this far—perhaps he could take
her further still.

“Yes.” She feigned a catch in her voice, let him steady her more than she needed. His shoulder was a pleasant warmth in the
chill room. “I saw the man who did it.”

“Can you show me?”

Her hesitation this time was real, but after a heartbeat she nodded. She had been trained by the best, after all.

Asheris laid a hand on the side of her face. Isyllt closed her eyes and summoned up the image of the shop, locking the rest
of herself deep away where he couldn’t reach. She expected him to intrude, to search, but his presence in her mind was controlled,
constrained, as if he feared to touch her.

A brief contact and a deft one, but as he slipped away she caught a flash of something else—sand and fire and wind, the desert’s
fury. Her eyes flew open to see him recoil, dark face draining ashen.

“Forgive me,” he said after a moment, inclining his head. “That was…unexpected.”

Curiosity defeated tact. “What did you feel?”

“A great deal of nothing. I don’t envy your magic, my lady.” He straightened his coat, brushing imaginary dust off the embroidered
sleeves. “But thank you for your assistance. Even though the man responsible is dead, this helps us track down his accomplices.
Perhaps we can find them before anyone else dies.” His tiny shrug spoke eloquent disbelief.

Every time Zhirin closed her eyes, she saw bodies crumpled on the street, smelled smoke and blood and fear. Before long she
gave up and lay staring at the ceiling until night fell and the house grew quiet.

She should have tried to help Isyllt and her master, but she couldn’t stand to watch them pore over details of the attack.
As though it were a mathematical equation or a difficult translation to be solved. As though a dozen or more people weren’t
dead, for nothing more than deciding to buy a lamp today.

As if that was just something that happened.

Finally she rose and straightened her clothes. For a moment she contemplated counterfeiting a sleeping form with pillows and
slipping out the window, like she and her friend Sia had done when they were young. She restrained herself; nineteen was old
enough to come and go as she pleased. Better to save the sneaking for when she really needed it.

But she didn’t find her master or Marat and tell them she was going either, only slipped down the stairs to the dim first
floor and let herself out the back. Crickets chirped in the darkness of the garden and hibiscus bushes whispered in the breeze.
The house-wards recognized her and stayed quiescent as she left through the garden gate.