She was cut off. The loud groan of breaking wood split the air. The floor beneath their feet was shifting, vibrating, as the walls and roof shook. Eunny dropped the tray she was holding, stumbling back a step before Ollas caught her by the arm. He grabbed the countertop for support as horrid sounds of tearing, sliding, and crumpling filled his ears. The whole building shuddered.
Gods all break. He’d heard of such land shakes, but those disasters didn’t occur in the Valley. On the southern coast, perhaps, but not here. He’d seen landslides during his studies in the mountains, and the Valley had some floods. But what did one do when the building threatened to tumble around you?
Get out.
He didn’t think beyond that simple imperative. He slung an arm around Eunny’s middle and heaved them both toward the back door. Their exit was marred by the wall buckling, displacing the furnishings below. Something long and firm struck him. A plank, maybe? A stool? Whatever it was, it had much less give than the back of his legs.
As it knocked him down, pain lanced across his shoulder, his side, above one of his knees, then bloomed into something more as he managed to stagger upright and drag Eunny into the tiny rear courtyard. A rush of air licked their backs as the ceiling caved in, a shower of wood and pieces of cheap shingle raining to the ground.
As abruptly as it had started, the shaking stopped. The noise continued, crashes echoing off the courtyard stones before fading.
The corner of the loft had collapsed near the front door, twisting the roof to let in the rain. Almost neatly down the middle, Song’s Scrap had fallen into a heap. The temporary construction, weakened by the Valley’s unrelenting rain and numerous spots badly in need of repairs, had finally lost its fight to remain standing. Not a land shake at all, then; only time and rot.
Where the café had been attached to the Mighty Leaf, the damaged wall and the stairway to the loft had pulled away, half of it now hanging askew.
“Oh, gods all…Fuck,” Eunny said, one hand going to her mouth.
The beaten metal sign announcing “Song’s Scrap” fell as if in slow motion, one end breaking from its hanger to wobble at a sharp angle. It swung back and forth, the metallic creaking loud in the eerie silence of the collapsed building.
With his adrenaline already retreating beneath the fire spreading across his body, Ollas groaned. “Are you—Are you hurt?”
“I-I don’t know. What just…?” Eunny turned to him, her eyes widening. “Oh, shit, Nev, you’re hurt!”
Her hand twitched, as if the response was automatic even after so much time. She reached toward his wound without thinking, because that’s what menders did, right? If there was pain around, it was their imperative to ease it, no matter the personal cost.
Ollas wouldn’t let her make that mistake again. Wouldn’t encourage it.
“Don’t.” His hand closed over hers, nudging it away. “It’s not?—”
Eunny stared at him, brown eyes wide and intent, yet she seemed to be looking through him rather than at him. Remembering a moment so similar despite the difference in time. She blinked, gaze dropping to where his hand guided her away from his leg.
“Oh.” Eunny recoiled. Just as she had six years ago. “Oh, of course. I… Ollas, gods. I’m sorry. Old habits.”
Ollas bit back a curse and made a half-hearted motion toward her, his fingers hesitating in the air as she flinched away. “Eunny, it’s not?—”
A dark, choked laugh escaped her as she held up her palms. “Don’t worry, I lost it, remember? You’re safe from me.”
“Eunny?” Her aunt’s voice cut through the air, a note of panic turning it shrill.
“Back here! We need help.” Eunny helped Ollas to ease his legs straight along the ground. He chanced a look down and grimaced; a tear along one trouser leg showed pale skin marred with more red. His sleeve was wet, sodden in a way that couldn’t be blamed on the rain. And it hurt, Earthen take him, everything hurt ever more as awareness trickled in.
Eunny’s aunt, Yerina Song-Burl, and several patrons of the Mighty Leaf rushed toward them, alarm on everyone’s faces. As they bustled around him, Eunny faded into the background, and whatever hope Ollas had had at conveying his true intentions was lost.
Someone brushed against the sign for Song’s Scrap as they passed. The motion caught Ollas’s eye as his surroundings took on a fuzzy quality. It swayed back and forth, the hanger sagging downward. With a final snap, the sign broke free and crashed to the ground.
Chapter Three
“Absolutely not,” Eunny said, ignoring the wood samples Gransen Mast tried to show her.
“Just look at them. This is a real opportunity here!” Gransen said, his tone between wheedling and exasperated.
He’d first appeared at Song’s Scrap three years ago, freshly graduated from his Initiate levels and drawn in by a small tool repair demonstration being put on by a local woodworker. He was a Graelynd expatriate like Eunny, but that was where their similarities ended. He was short, stocky, with a mop of mouse-brown hair and a perpetual goofy smile. After that first repair workshop, Gransen had kept coming back, often without anything in need of repair himself. He’d just stayed. Considered himself her unofficial assistant. Self-proclaimed manager of Song’s Scrap.
And he was taking the collapse of the café hard. Most days, Eunny appreciated his enthusiasm, but the day after the self-destruction of her home and business? No. She needed a break from his endless buzzing of ways to rebuild the shop. She hadn’t even managed to get any useful information on Ollas’s condition despite Gransen being his roommate, aside from a blithe, “Who do you think booted me out of the room and refused my budding skills as a nursemaid? Olly’s fine.”
A voice hailed her from the café’s door—what was left of it. She turned to see one of her best friends, Zhenya Lee. The studious inkmaker waded through the rubble, a heap of burlap sacks from the tearoom in her arms.
“Where should I start?” Zhenya asked.
