It would be a relief to tell him. She could explain everything. She would step into his arms, bury her face into his chest and apologize, beg forgiveness. The vision was so vivid that it made her chest ache.
She licked her lips. “I think you should know,” she tried, but the words were too thick. His eyes no longer looked like ice—they were dark oceans. She swallowed and tried again. “I think you should know that—”
An explosion split the air.
Ellina felt the shockwave judder along the shore, up her legs, into her bones. Her chest trembled with it. There was a surge of hot air and night became day again, bursting brightly behind her eyes. Ellina ducked, flinging up an arm. When she lowered it again, she did not believe what she was seeing.
The ocean was on fire. In the distance, a cloud of flame mushroomed into the sky. Its red belly glowed like the eye of a giant monster.
“The black powder barge,” Venick murmured, face pale. His eyes jumped back to Ellina and he demanded again, darkly, “What are you doing here?”
Ellina was shaking her head. “No,” she managed. Farah had promised. Their bargain… “It cannot be—”
The sky began to fall. Debris from what must have been an exploded ship rained down in huge, burning chunks, arcing over the ocean and into the city like falling stars. In the distance came peeling cries of alarm. A moment later, the city’s war bells began to ring.
Venick cursed and drew his sword.
Ellina barely registered the movement. Her mind had caught, snagging. This could not be happening, Irek could not be under attack.
Venick’s sword went to her neck. “Tell me your plan,” he snarled. Behind him, the smoke continued to balloon towards land. “Tell me what’s happening.”
“I do not know.” Ellina’s voice sounded like it was underwater. She stared at Venick’s blade, the sheen of green glass in the fire’s light. She spoke in elvish. “Venick. You must believe me. This was never supposed to happen, there was never supposed to be an attack.”
Venick gave her a look of such open loathing that she drew back. “But there was supposed to besomething.” Ellina started to reply, but he cut her off. “I should kill you. I should kill you right now.”
It had not occurred to her, before, to be afraid. Now fear struck like a needlepoint in her brain. It closed her throat, turned her thoughts to dust. She froze, and Venick saw her fear, stole it from her eyes, wrapped it up in all the awful things he believed about her. He looked different then. Terrible. He grimaced and lowered his sword. “Iama fool.”
He darted away.
TWENTY-FIVE
Ellina raced after him.
Her mind fuzzed the way she had seen algae scum over marshland ponds. She was desperate to break through the murk. To punch her fist through that green layer. Her heart climbed as she followed Venick into Irek’s streets, then promptly lost sight of him.
The city had devolved into a state of panicked confusion. Overhead, debris from the destroyed barge continued to rain down in huge, fiery chunks. Bits of wood and metal crashed through the streets, smashed into wagons and roofs. Into people, too. Ellina saw a woman with a bloody, ruined arm. A man with a deep gash in his thigh. The air smelled like a million candles burning.
Ellina pushed forward, dodging townspeople, aware of the chaos yet somehow untouched by it, or perhaps simply unable to distinguish the chaos around her from that of her own mind. She scanned the streets, searching for those broad shoulders, those grey eyes. She would find Venick, she would explain everything. This was not what he thought. This was never supposed to happen.
A keening sheet of metal smashed into a woman beside Ellina. The woman’s limbs jerked, her head snapping at an awful angle. Ellina ground to a halt.
The woman’s body lay in ruins. The force of the falling debris had split her scalp in two. Gore splattered the cobblestone. Nearby, someone else saw the fallen women and screamed.
And then, a different sound. One that Ellina did not recognize, could not place. A whip, she thought at first. The sharp snap of leather.
Not a whip. Those wereropes, splitting as a nearby building wobbled on its support beams. Overhead, falling clumps of wood and metal were cutting through the network of ropes that looped between shops and homes. The building beside Ellina strained against its remaining tethers, heaved, and broke free.
For a moment Ellina did nothing. Then it was as if the fear that affected everyone else finally found its way to her. As the building began to fall, her heart screamed,move. It screamed,now. She rushed to dodge out of the way.
Not fast enough.
The building’s shadow expanded: a black maw swinging wide. It roared, and crashed to the ground on top of her.
???
Venick went for the tavern.
He wasn’t thinking. He wasn’t thinking about all the miserable ways he’d failed, how he had been the one to show Rahven where the black powder was kept, how he’d brought destruction upon this city simply by returning to it. He wasn’t thinking about how he’d allowed himself to be tricked, how the mere sight of Ellina had been enough to lure him away while the southerners set fire to the barge. She’d been the siren and he the hapless sailor, and now Venick was drowning, he was taking on water, he was being swept away by all the things he refused to think.
