Of Bone and Thunder (14 page)

“What is it?” Rickets shouted, finally loosing his arm from Jawn's grasp and leaping over several slyts to take the lead.

The sky above them crackled and the skin on the back of Jawn's neck stood up. He risked looking skyward. The belly of a churning storm cloud was descending over the crowd. Lightning flashed from deep within the cloud's interior, casting a sickly blue light on everything.

“It's thaumic!” Jawn shouted, running faster as the crowd grew thinner farther away from the circle.

Rickets turned as he raced along, losing his footing and crashing to the road. “Thaumic? Are you jesting? You're a damn thaum! How did you not see it?”

“Head for the wall!”
Jawn screamed, gripping his leather bags tight to his ribs as he hurdled a kneeling slyt. He reached Rickets and lifted him to his feet without stopping. The crowny snarled at Jawn, but he tore off running and was soon ahead again, slipping between the slyts like a deer through the forest.

The first lightning bolt came down while they were still twenty yards from the wall. It was as if all sound drowned in a sea of white light. Jawn stumbled, falling to the road, his body numbed by the amount of energy. Thaums were trained to safely deal with huge, momentary surges of power—it was the keystone to creating a thaumic process—but only if one was ready for it.

Jawn tasted blood in his mouth and spit. He propped himself up on one elbow and turned to look back at the circle. The slyt was slowly getting back onto his feet. Smoke and sparks flowed from his now-charred green wrap. Even his eyebrows were smoldering. A pair of younger slyts rushed toward him, but he waved them off.

“How is he not dead?” Rickets asked, appearing at Jawn's side and hauling him to his feet. “Or is that something else you don't know?”

Jawn wobbled, unable to get a good feel for the road. He leaned heavily on Rickets and drew in a few breaths to clear his head.

“That supposed to mean something, or are you having a spasm?” Rickets asked.

Jawn looked down and saw that his right hand was shaking. He was pressing his thumb and forefinger together so hard they were turning white.

“There's a saying among thaums,” Jawn said, looking back at the slyt. “ ‘The line between glory and smoldering ash is this thick.' ”

A chorus of wails rose up from the assembled slyts. Several climbed to their feet in obvious panic, but they didn't run. Instead, they began moving toward the circle. Those slyts still on their knees shuffled forward as well, drawing in tighter. This was not the proper reaction to a near-death experience.

“We need to get out of here.” Rickets was already half-dragging, half-carrying him away, making for the wall.

The slyt at the center of the circle spoke in a soothing tone, and the moaning subsided. The slyts threw more flour into the air and dropped back to their knees.

“What's he saying?” Jawn asked.

Rickets didn't bother turning to look back. “Something about ashes and dust.”

Above them, the storm cloud churned harder and more lightning flashed within its murky depths.

Jawn kept staring back. He'd never been this close to such a powerful thaumic process. It was frightening, and yet part of him desperately wanted to run the other way to study what the slyt was doing.

Appearing to take strength from the packed crowd, the slyt raised his shaking hands, firmly planting the blade of his hoe on the stones with one while lifting his pitchfork to the sky with the other.

“He's trying again,” Jawn said, his reaction a mix of terror and admiration. Jawn doubted he would have survived a failed process using a tenth of that much power.

Rickets scooped Jawn up and ran the last few feet to the wall. Without waiting for Jawn to regain his feet, Rickets heaved and sent Jawn upward, where he landed on his stomach on the top of the wall. Rickets grabbed ahold of Jawn's dangling legs and pulled himself up using Jawn as a ladder. Once on top of the wall, Rickets hauled Jawn up the rest of the way.

Jawn pushed himself into an upright position and readjusted the strap of his leather bag, which was now wrapped around his neck. He turned to look back as the second lightning bolt hit.

A towering column of fire reaching from the ground to the storm cloud occupied the space where the thaum had stood. Chunks of burning debris flew everywhere. The lower half of a leg cartwheeled through the air, trailing flame and smoke. Other body parts too mangled to identify tumbled and fell between the gathered slyts. The flames ignited the floating flour dust, setting the very air on fire.

The gathered slyts did not run. Boiling sheets of orange-red flame washed over them like successive waves crashing on shore. If any of them screamed, Jawn couldn't tell. His ears were filled with a crackling roar that suffocated all other sound. Every slyt in the road was on fire. The smell of burning hair and roasting meat drove its way into his nose and down his throat.

“Sweet fucking High Druid!” Rickets exclaimed.

Some slyts stood, teetering on their feet even as the flames burned hotter. Like wooden marionettes, they jerked and staggered before collapsing back to the ground. Others remained motionless, kneeling in eternal prayer as the conflagration ravaged their bodies and burned them alive.

The air seared Jawn's face. He raised an arm to protect his eyes and saw that his uniform was smoldering. He launched himself backward over the wall and into a cemetery. Rickets jumped after him. They crouched by the wall, saying nothing. Shadows flickered and danced among the headstones as night turned to day. The roar of the flames now took on an eerie whistle. Jawn looked up. The storm cloud was beginning to rotate, slowly gaining speed. The column of flame looked more like a vortex, swirling in a tight spiral.

“What went wrong?” Rickets asked.

Jawn took in a breath to center himself and began coughing. It was like breathing flame itself.

“I don't know, but whatever it was, he fixed it the second time,” Jawn said, ripping off a strip of his undershirt and wrapping it around his face to cover his nose and mouth. He knew he was staring, but he couldn't bring himself to blink. The image of what he'd seen wouldn't let him. “He meant to do this.”

Rickets stared at him. “This? He's killed everyone, including himself. He's set the damn sky on fire.”

Jawn looked up again, but not at the spinning cloud of flame above them. A similar cloud had appeared a mile farther east on the other side of the city.

Ignoring the heat raging down from the cloud above, Rickets stood up. “That's the old part of the city. Mostly government buildings and loyalists.” A third column of fire erupted still farther in the distance. “Druid's balls, that's Galmorden.” Rickets turned and looked down at Jawn. “Home of the ruling family.”

Jawn shook his head, wishing the crackling, spitting sound of burning flesh would get out of his ears.

“Brilliant.” Rickets sat down, resting his back against the wall. He quickly moved away from it though. “Hotter than a damn oven.”

It took a moment for Rickets's words to register. “Brilliant? They're burning to death! All of them.”

Rickets turned and looked at Jawn. The expression on his face made Jawn back away. The man's smile was demonic.

“Absolutely fucking brilliant. You were right. This is deliberate. Don't you see? In one glorious orgy of suicide, they've brought the plight of the peasantry front and center in a way nothing else could.”

“They sent their sons to die! To be burned alive!”

Rickets held up his hand, his finger and thumb squeezed together. “This time, the ashes are the glory. If the slyt peasants are prepared to do this, what the hell chance do we have? Look at what one single thaum did,” Rickets said, his eyes fixing on Jawn.

Jawn couldn't think. He could barely talk. The heat was cooking him.

“We . . . we can't stay here,” he finally managed to say.

Rickets looked up at the cloud of swirling fire. The wind was gaining speed, howling like a demented beast as it drew up detritus to feed the flames. “So are we dead?”

Jawn tilted his head skyward. He began to mouth the word
yes
when a shadow raced overhead. There was a roar and then more flame erupted in the sky, but this time from outside the fire cloud. Unlike the ragged flames of the vortex, this was thick and solid, like a beam of pure fire, mostly white with just a tinge of red and orange. It punched through the fire cloud like a spear.

Jawn folded over as he sought to bury himself into the ground. The fire cloud burst apart in a rumbling blast. Sheets of flame twisted through the air, growing thinner as they blew apart. Jawn screamed, but he couldn't hear himself over the roar.

After what seemed like an eternity, Jawn lifted his head. At first, he couldn't see anything. He blinked once, then again. Multicolored lights flashed from somewhere deep in his skull.

“Rickets?”

There was the sound of coughing, and then Jawn felt a hand on his shoulder. “I can't see for shit.”

“What happened?”

“ASK,” Rickets said. “Aero Service of the Kingdom. Must have
launched some rags to check out what was going on. Those flyboys earned their pay tonight.”

Jawn closed his eyes and focused on his ears. There, off to his left, the sound of heavy wings. After the last day on the back of a rag, Jawn doubted he'd ever forget that sound. “Like the one we flew in on?”

“High Druid's balls, no! That old cow we flew would have coughed her ass through her mouth if she tried breathing a flame like that. No, that was probably a bull . . . not too old either.”

“She did us right,” Jawn said, coming to the defense of their recent transport. He could still see the tears in the driver's eyes as he looked at his beast in distress. The man loved that thing, and she, in turn, had delivered them safely. He willfully blocked out the image of a crowny's nearly severed head.

“True enough,” Rickets said, though he didn't sound remorseful enough for Jawn's liking.

Jawn shook his head and opened his eyes again. The flashing colors were still there, but he could dimly make out the headstones of the cemetery. “I'm getting my sight back,” he said, easing himself up onto his knees.

“Guess mine is coming back, too, because I'm staring at a half-burned scarecrow,” Rickets said.

Jawn turned and saw Rickets. His face was filthy with soot and heat shimmered in waves from the top of his head. His pate looked medium-rare. The smile on his face, however, didn't seem to be affected.

“You're missing an eyebrow,” Jawn said, reaching up and running a hand through his hair. What he found was a frizzled stubble in place of his once-flowing mane.

“It'll probably grow back,” Rickets said.

Jawn didn't know if he meant his eyebrow or Jawn's hair. “Probably.” He drew up his right thigh and, placing a hand on his knee, pushed himself up until he was standing. He reached out a hand and offered it to Rickets. The crowny took it and lifted himself up. Jawn started to tip over, but Rickets caught him by the elbow. The two men wobbled back and forth a couple of times before finding equilibrium.

“We should make ourselves scarce. This,” Rickets said, waving his hand around, “is going to attract a lot of attention.”

“Lead the way,” Jawn said, his body and mind long past the point of meaningful action.

Rickets shuffled forward with Jawn's arm firmly draped over his shoulder. They staggered along the wall, avoiding walking through the cemetery proper. It went unspoken between them, but neither wanted to go anywhere near the graves.

Ash began to fall like snow as they traveled, coloring them gray from head to foot. Neither man made an effort to brush the ash away. It damped all sound, giving the night a new kind of silence.

“A fellow could learn to hate this war,” Rickets said, his voice barely reaching Jawn's ear though they walked together.

Jawn said nothing.

They came to an opening at the end of the wall and passed through, stopping when they set foot on the road again. The intersection was a hundred yards up the road to the right. Somewhere past that was Rickets's bar.

Jawn started to remove his arm from Rickets's shoulder, but Rickets grabbed his wrist a little tighter and kept it in place. He slowly turned and faced them away from the intersection.

“I know this other bar, not quite as sophisticated, but with its own certain charm,” Rickets said as they began to walk again.

Jawn didn't tell him to shut up. Just as Rickets needed to talk, Jawn needed to hear a voice that gave his mind something else to fix on. They trudged on, neither one looking back.

CROSSBOWMAN YUSTACE VOOFORD WALKED
down the path toward the ocean. Visibility was made better by the wall of jungle plants lining both sides of the path. It provided a clear lane, even in the dark. He walked slowly, his head slightly turned to the left. Any moment he expected to hear Sinte yelling at him, asking him what the hell he was doing. He was ready for that. If anyone found him out here, he'd tell them he was going for a piss.

He paused beside the trunk of a large tree after he'd gone ten yards. The farther he walked, the less believable his excuse became.
Am I really going to do this?

“Fuck the Lux,” he said, spitting on the ground. “Fuck Sinte, fuck Red Shield, fuck all of them.” He gripped his crossbow hard. Not one of the soldiers in Red Shield had the guts to challenge authority the way he did, even though they all knew he was right. “Stupid fucking sheep is what they are.”

He didn't have a plan; he just knew he was done. Done with the Lux, the army, all of it. There were many kinds of ships down there. All he had to do was sneak onto one and sail away.

He walked a few more steps down the path, then stopped by another tree. Who was he kidding? They'd catch him and have him strung up before lunch. Sneering at the dark, he spun around in his fury, wanting to scream. Dizzy and exasperated, he pointed his crossbow into the jungle and squeezed the trigger.