Darkborn Part 9

The whole mob crowded down the stairs, the madam and the man who had suggested the bas.e.m.e.nt leading, Ish lagging. Without gloves, and with his shirt dragged up around his face as a shield against smoke, every touch would sear him with someone else's terror. Within a press of half-naked, panicking people, he would lose his wits utterly. As the men began to tear away the paneling over the connecting door between bas.e.m.e.nts, Ish probed the recess beneath the stairwell with his sonn. The houses on the Rivermarch dated from the earliest years of the city, when the main streets used by the Darkborn had run underground. With time and the aging of their infrastructure, underground thoroughfares had become more difficult to keep dry, and the Darkborn had become more trusting of the Lightborn's willingness to contain their light and share the streets. Eventually the tunnels were abandoned and the entrances bricked or boarded up. However, over the years, some of the houses on the Rivermarch had harbored trade less reputable than brothel keeping, and some of those forgotten entryways had been reopened. If Ish were not imagining the draft he felt on his sweating skin, then they might be able to get deeper yet and make their way clear of the fire along the old thoroughfares.

Across the room, men's voices cried in triumph and women's with relief as the panels cracked. Ish, crouching in the recess, sonned them as they pushed through the shattered door. He ducked back out of the recess, meaning to draw breath and call their attention to the other, and perhaps ultimately surer, option-and at that moment, with a great hot thunder, the house above them began its collapse. The ceiling overhead held, for the moment, but a fiery rain of fine debris stung his skin, and something struck him, hard and searing, on the shoulder. Across the room someone screamed, "The door! Bar the door!" In the mad miasma of smoke and dust, he could no longer sonn the other exit. He knew himself committed to one choice or the other now, and made his decision. He ducked back into the recess, strangling on smoke, his head sc.r.a.ping the underside of the stairs. His groping hands met brick, met and measured the cleft; for a moment he thought it could not pa.s.s him, stocky as he was, and then he thrust himself into it, trapped heart beating on brick, brick scouring his burned back and shoulders, and hauled himself through with the power of his arms alone. Air blasted past him, dragged by the furnace overhead. He found himself hanging out of the side of a long tunnel, above the rubble that had once sealed the entryway and before that been the stairs up to it. He managed to lever himself out and get his feet under him before he half fell, half skidded down the tunnel's side into the foot of foul water in its base. Its fetor was kinder to his lungs than the smoke, its filthy cold poisonously soothing on his burns. He struggled up to his knees in it, supporting himself on rubble as he drained soundness from his bones into his lungs and throat. Only as much as he dared and not nearly as much as he needed, but still enough to let him get to his feet. He could hear voices, distorted by the tunnel and by a panic mounting toward madness: the other refugees, trapped, or realizing that they could not break down doors faster than the fire could travel. The fate he now realized he had, without knowing it, feared. He started toward the voices, skidding on the slimy, uneven footing of the drowned flagstones. The voices grew clearer, and by that clarity he found another former doorway in the wall. He tried to call to them, but nothing came from his raw throat but a cough that had him tasting blood. The stairs were nearly intact here, so he started up them, when from the far side of the cleft there came a rumbling roar that built until it almost masked the screams, and a blast of smoke and heat through the cleft. He launched himself from the stairs and sprawled his length in the water, scarcely believing for a time that sunlight had not speared through and burned him. The living sounds from the other side continued for a little while longer, though they had ceased to be recognizable as man or woman, or even as Darkborn. He would hear them in his nightmares for much longer still. Shuddering, Ish pushed himself to his feet once more, and made his way onward.

Five

Telmaine

T elmaine woke to the sound of her daughter, her Flori, crying, and to a certainty of horror. There was smoke in her throat, the roar of fire in her dreams. With pounding heart she sat upright on the bed beside her sleeping husband, sweeping the room with her sonn. "Flori . . ." Olivede stirred in her chair beside their bed. Amerdale did not, where she slept curled up against Balthasar, whom she had refused to leave. elmaine woke to the sound of her daughter, her Flori, crying, and to a certainty of horror. There was smoke in her throat, the roar of fire in her dreams. With pounding heart she sat upright on the bed beside her sleeping husband, sweeping the room with her sonn. "Flori . . ." Olivede stirred in her chair beside their bed. Amerdale did not, where she slept curled up against Balthasar, whom she had refused to leave.

"Something's happening," Telmaine whispered. "Something bad."

"I know," murmured Olivede. "I sense it, too." The shared awareness shimmered between them, and then Olivede fully awoke and Telmaine remembered where she was and to whom she spoke. "I must have been dreaming," she said, panicked at so near a self-revelation.

The smoke was gone, the roar of fire gone. Only the presentiment of disaster remained, throbbing like a migraine. Olivede rustled to her feet, shaking out her plain skirts. "You weren't."

"But I . . . I couldn't . . ." Telmaine struggled to cover her lapse, shaken.

Olivede shook her head and said sourly, "Don't be so appalled, Telmaine; you don't catch magic like a cold."

Bal, beside her, stirred and reached out with a wavering sonn. "Telmaine? I feel . . . something . . ."

Olivede leaned over him, fingertips brushing his temples. Bal knocked her hand away."Stop that," he complained, younger brother to older sister. that," he complained, younger brother to older sister.

"You rest," she scolded him, older sister to younger brother, and firmly gathered his hands into one of hers, trying with the touch of the other to subdue him.

"What time is it?" he said, struggling against sleep. "Has the bell sounded?"

"Not-" She broke off.

Telmaine felt a sudden, shocking lightness, as though all her bones had evaporated and her flesh gone to steam, as though she were about to be sucked out of the cracks in the walls and whirled upward into the night. She gasped, feeling that little inhalation lift her from the bed, and gripped the bedclothes to anchor herself. Olivede said, "Sweet-" the remainder of the oath unheard beneath a thunderclap that seemed to split the world from firmament to core. Amerdale's waking shriek was like an insect piping. Screaming, the little girl launched herself over her father's body, toward Telmaine. Telmaine scrambled up on her knees to heft her clear before she did Bal injury, almost overbalancing as she did so. Amerdale wrapped arms and legs around her, pulling on her hair and ears. Olivede was standing half doubled over, with a stupefied expression on her face, her hand still on Bal's forehead. Only when Bal tried to roll onto his back, grimacing in pain from his daughter's jarring, did Olivede start to collect herself. "It's a w-weather-working," she said, voice shaky. "The Lightborn mages have called up a storm. Listen to the hail . . ." And from the outside walls came a sound like that of many small stones.

"Amerdale . . ." said Bal.

"She hates the thunder, poor little one, I know," Olivede said, through teeth that chattered.

"Flori-"

"Flori's next door, Bal," his sister said with a strained self-control. "You always t-told me she could sleep through anything."

Bal was too distracted to recognize the lie. "Why are they doing this?" he said.

"What's wrong with him?" Telmaine said, gripping his hand and feeling his pain and inner turbulence, like the one that threatened to liquefy her bones.

"They're doing a weather-working, the Lightborn. Intangible matter is the hardest of all to influence, so they must have a dozen mages involved. That much effort, that much concentration, anyone with any sensitivity to magic whatsoever will feel."

Another thunderclap. Amerdale shrieked in Telmaine's ear, tightening her stranglehold on her mother's neck. Telmaine rocked her, grateful for the crying, clutching burden, else she was sure she would have lifted into the air and been borne away toward the vortex of wind and power that surged in her awareness. Hailstones salvoed against the outer wall, rattled on the gutters.

Olivede rummaged in her supplies bag, coming up with a hand-labeled vial, which she dumped into a plain mug and added some water to. She propped up Bal's head and held it to his mouth. "Drink. My magic's useless until this is done, but this will help some."

"Have to tell Tercelle, the children . . ." Bal said, moving his head away.

"Little brother, it's done. Drink."

"I didn't tell-"

"I believe you." She pushed the lip of the cup between his lips. "Really, you'd think you were an infant of three." He drank, sputtered, drank again, fluid spilling from the side of his mouth. She forced him to drain the cup and carefully wiped his cheeks. "Now, lie still and let that take effect." She turned back to her bag and busied herself returning vial and cloth. Bal continued to shift his legs, restive with the pain in his chest and abdomen, and his own dim perception of the stour of magic around them.

"You do not know how lucky you are not to be able to sense this," Olivede gritted, making Telmaine start. She bit back a madwoman's laughter, gripping Bal's hand with all her strength, not daring to try to ease him consciously with her own wits in such disarray. "Mama, Mama, Mama," whimpered Amerdale, damp against Telmaine's neck. Olivede sank down, put her head into her hands, and rocked slowly back and forward. The rain drummed on the outer walls.

The terrible turbulence of magic had eased, and the rain lightened to a whisper, when the tolling of the sunset bell began. Balthasar seemed more or less asleep, and Amerdale was quiet, sucking her fist against Telmaine's shoulder. Telmaine and Olivede listened as the bell shivered into silence. Olivede pushed herself to her feet and went to the door. "I have to find out if anyone knows why this working was done."

Telmaine nodded, untwining the arms of her reluctant daughter from her neck to let her settle the child in a more comfortable position.

"Mama," Amerdale said, "where's Flori?"

"Shh," she said. "Shh."

"Is Mistress Floria searching for her?" Amerdale persisted. Telmaine could sense her need to have her world in order.

Through Bal's hand, she could feel his drowsy awareness. She put her mouth to her daughter's ear. "Shh," she murmured. "I don't want Papa to know. Not while he's so very ill."

Amerdale's sonn washed over Bal, outlining him with all the vividness of childhood. The child went back to sucking her fist, her thoughts cloudy and unhappy.

Olivede returned. "Mistress Floria has not come into her salle salle, but I've left her a message. Sparling says that he heard fire bells and fire engines, and I can smell the smoke now. There must have been a fire, though it would have been a very large one to require a weather-working to put it out." She pulled her bag toward her and began going through it by touch. "They said the bells came from the Rivermarch. Telmaine, if there has been a fire in the Rivermarch, I'll need to leave as soon as Bal's properly settled again."

"When can he be moved?" Telmaine asked.

"Preferably not for a few more days, unless he has further magical healing."

Telmaine's gorge rose. "Does he need it?" she said evenly.

"Not to recover, no." A small silence. "I want to thank you," she said. "For allowing us to do as we did."

"I would have done worse than that," Telmaine said, not troubling to regret or moderate her sentiment, "rather than lose him."

Then she felt, from Bal, an abrupt wash of pain and despair.

"They took her, didn't they," he said. "Those men took Florilinde."

For a moment, both women were immobilized by dismay at his realization. Amerdale, stricken by remorse and relieved of the need for secrecy, started to howl. Bal fended off Olivede's soothing mage-touch. "Yes," his sister said, resigned. "The men took Flori to force you to tell them where the twins are."

Through Bal's hand, she felt him make a desperate effort at reason. "Has there been any message?"

"No, but the house is being guarded."

"How is anyone supposed to get to us with a message?"

Telmaine had not thought of that; she floundered, caught between the impulse to order all guards away and to embrace their protection.

"If there's a message," Olivede said, "it will find its way to us. And we'll find her. Mistress Floria's people are searching for her; my friends in the Rivermarch are searching for her; and Baron Strumh.e.l.ler, the Shadowhunter, is searching for her. They'll find her."

"I don't understand," Balthasar whispered, with a helplessness that tore Telmaine's heart. Despite all his years working in the demimonde, despite all his dealings with the disturbed and troubled, he had never lost that purity of spirit that had so captivated her at their first meeting. She, the sheltered woman with the mage's touch, was the one who understood cruelty, evil, hate, and l.u.s.t.

From downstairs, the doorbell began to ring. Olivede came to her feet, producing one of the baron's heavy revolvers from amongst the cushions of her chair. Telmaine struggled free of Amerdale, admonishing her, "Stay with Papa, but be gentle with him!" Olivede let her go first down the stairs, and stood back as she went to the door, holding the revolver leveled. Calling through the door produced no response; at Olivede's nod, Telmaine opened the door.

Ishmael di Studier stood swaying on the doorstep, soaked and reeking of smoke and burned meat, his shirt shredded and burned off him. She felt his sonn batter her, but so dreadful was his appearance, and so glad was she to sonn him, that her reaction was to clutch at his arms and pull him inside-at which he gave a hoa.r.s.e cry and began to cough, great lung-wrenching coughs that brought him to his knees on the doorstep. She crouched with him, s.n.a.t.c.hing her hand away from the raw flesh on his shoulder. He gripped her skirts and turned his face into them like a child clinging to his nurse.

"Mother's tears," Olivede murmured, sliding into place at Telmaine's side. She slipped a hand into his shirt, and Telmaine felt the lightness of nearby magic. After a little while Ishmael stopped coughing and the ghastly rasping crackle of his breathing eased.

He said in a hoa.r.s.e voice, "Th'Rivermarch's burned. The dead-so many dead."

Olivede said, very controlled, "Let's get him inside."

Telmaine did not sonn the other woman, much as she wanted to, to know what kind of expression, what kind of face and manner went with such restraint.

Even with their help, the effort of rising started Ishmael coughing again. Olivede shook her head slightly, privately, and did nothing except help him into the parlor and sit him down on the couch. Carefully, with fingers and delicately probing sonn, she inspected his nose and his throat, and bent her stethoscope to his chest. "Baron Strumh.e.l.ler, is this just smoke inhalation? Did you breathe heated air?"

"The smoke was terrible," he said. "It was all terrible." He started to shiver.

Telmaine said in a small voice, "I'll get a blanket," guiltily pleased that she had her gloves.

"Get my bag as well," Olivede ordered.

Balthasar managed to lever himself up on one elbow as she entered the room. Amerdale pushed one of the fat pillows behind his back. "Telmaine," he said, questioning not her ident.i.ty but her presence.

"Baron Strumh.e.l.ler," she said. "He's back." Her voice quavered, but surely Bal must not take it as profound relief for the man, only the strain of the situation-and then she thought angrily that, good as he was, of course he would take it as relief for the man.

"Flori," Bal said.

She felt suddenly, desperately sick. So many dead, the baron had said, and the Rivermarch burned . . . and Flori had been crying in her dreams with the smoke. If she had been held in the Rivermarch . . . She stifled hysteria. "She's not with him," Telmaine blurted, and, heart's mercy, she fled her husband lest he say more.

Ishmael was still talking in hoa.r.s.e, half-whispered sentences of his escape from beneath the inferno, like a man recounting a nightmare. Telmaine stood with hands clenching and unclenching at her sides as Olivede dressed his burns, and his driven recitation halted and stuttered with pain. She listened for any hint that somewhere in this ruin a little girl named Florilinde Hearne might have lived or died. When she could bear no more, she thrust the bag at Olivede and retreated to Balthasar's side, lay down beside him fully dressed, and clung to him around the blankets, sobbing. He stroked her head, silently, and his suffering and helplessness only deepened her despair. She cried for long minutes before she found words. "I can't do it," she said. "I can't do it."

"She'll be all right," he said. "Flori will be all right."

If only she did not know the emotion under those steady words. She raised her head, saying in despair, "Bal, they've burned the Rivermarch. I don't know who they are, but they've burned the Rivermarch. Ish barely escaped with his life. He's terribly burned."

"Not that terribly," said the baron's hoa.r.s.e voice. She twisted around, the movement wringing a shallow gasp from Bal. Amerdale sonned him and started to cry, frightened. Ish was leaning against the doorjamb. At his side, tethered, it seemed, by Ish's broad hand, was Olivede, who was saying, "I have have to go, I to go, I have have to go," in a voice quite unlike her own. to go," in a voice quite unlike her own.

"Hearne, Ishmael di Studier, Baron Strumh.e.l.ler of th'Borders, but th'social niceties can wait. We need t'get out of here, get somewhere much better protected than this."

"Baron," Olivede said, "I'm a doctor. I'm needed in the Rivermarch."

He propped himself carefully on his right shoulder, and rolled his head toward her. "Were I t'believe in miracles, I'd call it one that you weren't there last night. Since I don't believe in miracles, I'll remind y'the reason you weren't there last night is because y'were here, minding your brother, who'd been beaten near t'death. Which they are likely to realize, same as they are likely t'realize my bones are not smoldering in the cellars."

"You've no idea there is any connection!" Olivede said.

Bal stirred. "Excuse me," he said. "Might somebody please explain to me what is going on?"

Ishmael di Studier laughed, though the laugh ended in a brief coughing spasm. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. "Wish I could oblige, Hearne, but my gut's not good on logic. Tercelle Amberley's dead-strangled-and it's only my low, suspicious nature that stopped me from being shot down as her murderer. Nine city blocks are gone, centered on your your clinic, Dr. Olivede, I can tell you that much. Take it from an old Shadowhunter-and there clinic, Dr. Olivede, I can tell you that much. Take it from an old Shadowhunter-and there are are no other old Shadowhunters-if there's no other old Shadowhunters-if there's any any connection between all of this, we're all dead if we stay here. I've been wrong before, mind, but not so I've died of it. Embarra.s.sment's not mortal, whatever they say." connection between all of this, we're all dead if we stay here. I've been wrong before, mind, but not so I've died of it. Embarra.s.sment's not mortal, whatever they say."

"Tercelle . . . dead?" said Bal.

"What are you trying to do to him!" Telmaine accused the baron.

"Find m'self a sensible ally," Ish rasped. "We need to get out of here, all of us, now."

"This isn't sensible!" Olivede pointed out. "You said you're running on instinct."

"He's not strong enough to be moved," Telmaine protested.

Bal's hand wandered across her bodice, seeking something to grip. "Telmaine, Olivede, I won't risk staying if there's a chance he's right. If we are to save Flori, then we must first save ourselves, and we have Amerdale to think of. I'm sorry"-his voice quavered-"sorry I have brought all this trouble on you-"

"Yes, yes," Ishmael said, "you be sorry, as though I or your sister or your lady would have done otherwise. Get yourselves ready-I need to speak to th'lady next door." He rolled off the doorjamb and lurched down the corridor. Bal held out a hand to his sister, who sat down on the bed on his other side.

"Bal, do you really believe him?"

"I won't take the chance he's wrong. We must be strong and we must be cunning. Whatever or whoever has taken our little Flori, and whatever murdered Tercelle Amberley and may have murdered her little boys-and I don't know how many other people-"

"Baron Strumh.e.l.ler thinks there could be hundreds dead," Olivede said faintly.

His mouth worked for a moment around words that could not come. When they did, his voice shook, for all its resolution. "Whoever or whatever is responsible is an evil that must be fought, and healthy or not, ready or not, we may be the ones appointed. Telmaine, Olivede, quick as you can, collect the essentials for all of us."

He lay on his pillows, directing the flurry of wife, sister, and daughter as they piled carpetbags, clothes, coats, toys, jewelry, books beside him on the bed. He culled their luxuries and even necessities quite ruthlessly, but all the time with one hand on a stuffed bear that Florilinde took to bed with her, and Telmaine knew that nothing was going to shake his conviction that, sun, fire, or murderers, his daughter was coming back to him.

"Imogene's ti-" said Ishmael di Studier, coming through the door with startling energy for a scorched tatterdemalion, and stalling in midprofanity at the sight of the bustle. He rummaged in the pile of clothes, speaking almost too quickly to be understood, his Borders accent even more p.r.o.nounced. "I need t'borrow a change of clothes so I don't seem as if I've been dug out of th'smoldering ruins." Telmaine wordlessly pa.s.sed him a jacket and shirt from the back of the wardrobe that had been bought too large for Bal, and that he kept promising to get around to sending to the charity shops. "I need a hat. . . . Magistra, best you go into men's clothing; you'll pa.s.s better than her ladyship. Pity you've nothing for th'girl. Hearne, nothing for you t'be but an invalid."

Bal was frowning. "What did Floria give you?"

"Don't worry. When it wears off, I mean t'be near a bed and a large bottle o'consolation."

"You'll need to be," Bal warned.

The baron vanished again, but they heard him pacing up and down the halls, roaming up the stairs. Olivede leaned around the doorjamb and murmured, "He's got his revolvers drawn."

"Just pack," said Bal, sounding worried. At Telmaine's questioning sonn, he said in a low voice, "If she's given him what I think she has, he's ready to fight a Shadowborn army. Don't startle him."

Telmaine packed; Olivede disappeared into the dressing room with an armful of Bal's clothes, and emerged with her hair wound up under a cap and so creditably like an effeminate young man that Telmaine had to wonder if this was the first time she'd donned men's garb. Ish loomed again in the doorway as she and Amerdale were fastening the straps on the bag. His sonn shimmered around them, unstable as the man himself. "Fine, fine," he approved. He handed the revolvers off to Olivede. "Get th'bags to the door, but don't open it until I'm there. Hearne, are you ready for this?"