Following her gaze, Viv turned fully to Tandri and leaned down until their foreheads met, shoulders slumping under the weight of loss and terror and exhaustion.
In a low voice, so low she was sure Tandri wouldn’t hear it over the roar of the flames and the rising clamor of people and the ringing of watch bells, she murmured, “That wasn’t what I meant.”
25
Gatewardens appeared soon after the blaze began, lanterns in hand, and bellowed at the growing crowd in the street. Viv only dimly registered their presence until one of them approached, directed to her by some neighbor. She numbly answered his questions and forgot her answers almost immediately. When he disappeared, she returned her attention to the wreckage.
Ignimancers from Ackers—recognizable by their robes and pins and air of scholarly annoyance—were able to contain the spectral flames and prevent the spread to the neighboring structures, but there was nothing they could do that would have changed the outcome for the shop itself, so they let it burn.
The flames raged until nearly dawn, and Viv and Tandri remained in the street, watching the shop reduced to cinders. The walls collapsed and fell in fits and starts, a slow crumbling, and then a sudden rush, as timbers tumbled inward in corkscrew ribbons of sparks.
Tandri huddled by Viv’s side. They were blasted dry, like they’d been scoured by a desert wind. The skin of Viv’s face was raw, the burns on her thighs angry and throbbing. Laney hobbled over to them at some point, bringing blankets to cover up with. It was too hot, and Viv shed hers almost immediately, although Tandri kept one wrapped around her shoulders, held together in front with a fist.
By degrees, Tandri slumped against Viv’s arm, exhausted. The succubus didn’t suggest they leave, but she did murmur at some point, “When you’re ready, we’ll stay at my place.”
Viv couldn’t bring herself to acknowledge the offer.
Despite the heat on her flesh, a coldness drew down from Viv’s skull to the soles of her feet, like every day she’d spent in Thune was leaching away, leaving a growing emptiness, the most physical manifestation of despair she had ever known.
Was this what Tandri had spoken of? What had she called it…Arcane Reciprocity?Was this what thatfeltlike? Or was it just plain old, everyday hopelessness?
She didn’t know. And she supposed it didn’t matter.
Tandri tried once more, still indirect. “Aren’t you tired?” Her voice was hoarse. While the smoke from the spectral flames had been sparse, their throats still burned from it.
“I can’t leave,” said Viv. “Not yet.”
Her eyes stayed fixed on a place in the heart of the ebbing destruction, where the Stone once rested.
She had to know if it was still there.
As dawn glimmered, the green flames sputtered and died, as if they fed on the night as much as on earthly fuel. The heat was still intolerable, though, and the blackened spars and charred and glowing tile could not be approached.
Eventually, Tandri persuaded Viv to sit on Laney’s stoop, and together they watched the dawn bloom fully. Now, the blackened wooddidsmoke in a more natural way, as though the arcane fire had consumed it until then. A black, noxious cloud of soot grew and spiraled skyward, where it was torn apart and scattered by a breeze from the direction of the river.
Laney stood behind them, leaning on her broom. After a while, Viv asked in a ragged voice, “Laney, do you have a bucket or two you’d lend?”
The old woman did, and Viv took one in each hand. Still barefoot and in her undershirt and short linen pants, she strode to the well, filled them both, and grimly tossed water onto the ashes of the space where the big doors had once been. It splashed and hissed now, without the green flames to burn it away before it could fall.
She took the buckets back to the well, refilled them, and did it again. And again. And again, forging slowly inward toward the ruin that had once been the big table.
Viv didn’t count the trips, and her feet left bloody prints on the cobbles. Ashes caked her legs up to her stinging thighs.
Tandri waited on the stoop and didn’t try to dissuade her. It would have been pointless.
The heat was still intense, and sometimes Viv poured a bucket over herself before she returned. The water always wicked away soon after she re-traversed the spattered trail she was blazing. At every splash, the ashes became briefly muddy, until the blackness quickly dried and cracked again.
In the street, the crowds had thinned some, although the murmuring onlookers that remained stayed far away from Viv as she deliberately forged ever inward.
Sometime during this endless, numb repetition, Tandri briefly disappeared and returned with Cal and a small wagon drawn by a sturdy pony. They enlisted the help of some nearby folk and loaded the coffee machine and the lockbox into the wagon, and Cal took it away again.
Viv hardly cared.
At last, she reached the place. Barely any wood remained of the table, and what did was powdery and burnt through in a patchwork. The first bucket of water that struck it made it wither and crumble away like salt.
Viv knelt and pawed away the ruin, her fingers scorched by embers hiding beneath. She stood and kicked at the cinders with her bloody feet until the flagstone beneath was exposed.
She breathed heavily, inhaling smoke and coughing raggedly, staring at it. One more trip with the buckets washed away some of the accumulated ash and cooled the surface of the stone. She took a blackened twist of metal and levered up the edge, flipping it into the crumbled remains of the table in a plume of gray.
