A sound like a gunshot cut off Baffin’s speech and a flare arced into the sky. Fizzling red and orange rained down.
Chaos broke loose. Shouts and screams tore through the air as more flares went off, blinding and deafening. It was soloud, so overpowering, that when the bomb exploded, it was almost obscured.
Someone crashed into me. I slammed into the wall and muffled an exclamation as a stampede broke out, men and women shoving past one another with confused abandon. A man fell, bellowing, and rolled to avoid thundering feet. The newspaper boy I had ignored hit the wall next to me, eyes wide and terrified as his newspapers scattered, ground, and slid under the feet of the mob.
The terror in his eyes cut through my shock. I grabbed him by the arm and, sheltering him with my body, dragged him through the door of the café as the patio was overrun, tables and chairs toppling and porcelain shattering.
“You can’t come in here!” an aproned man protested, already trying to shove us back out the door. The café’s staff and a handful of patrons pressed towards the back of the establishment, as distraught as the crowd outside.
“Oh, shut up!” I shot back, shoving the newsboy further inside. I turned on the door and slammed it closed. “Help me!”
He braced the door next to me as more panicked pedestrians tried to get in. The door half opened, slammed again, and shuddered. A panicked woman met my eyes through the glass, but just behind her, I saw another woman, her face hidden beneath a hood, pull something from her pocket.
A grenade.
There was a crack and flash. The front window of the café shattered in a hail of glass and I dropped, covering my head.
Bitter smoke filled the room, searing and thick. A second blast went off, this time close enough that I felt a flush of heat. More smoke came then, carrying the more natural scent of burning wood and cloth. And hair.
From there, my memory skews. The café burned, that much I recall. I fled through the kitchens with other figures and stumbled into a shockingly empty street. Only the prone forms of a few wounded remained amid shattered glass, toppled tables, and fluttering, charred bunting. I did not see the newsboy again.
Ears ringing and mind numb with shock, I did not flinchas a hand took my arm. I had the vague impression of a man in a long coat, guiding me out of the way as a fire engine clattered past, its half dozen horses prancing and shaking their manes amid wafts of smoke.
“What is happening?” I asked him, my voice sounding terribly far away.
“Stay out of the street,” Harden replied, his voice equally distant, and distorted by the ringing in my ears. I felt a hand slap my cheek, firm but gentle. “You hear me? Are you hurt?”
“You.” I recoiled, some of my sense returning. “You’re a Separatist!”
“Aye.” He frowned and searched my eyes as if he suspected I had hit my head. “No Guild, no government, all of it. You look like you need a drink.”
“You are a terrorist,” I accused, anger sparking. “How will this help us, you fool? You attacked the Grand General! You attacked innocent people!”
“Us?” he repeated. His gaze dropped to my collar, then lifted back to my eyes and narrowed. “Ah, well, I was right. What are you, then? Not a Glim, I see, and certainly nothing so lowly as a Silver.”
“Get away from me,” I hissed, jerking from his grasp.
“Oi, you!” a voice bellowed. “Leave that woman alone!”
Harden backed away, already half running, and shook a finger at my face. “They’ll find you out, secretary. Join or run, you hear me?”
With that he was gone, streaking away down the street with three policemen on his heels.
I stared after them, the shock of the attack now merging with the horrible understanding that I had given myself away. After years of keeping my sorcery a secret, I had revealed myself to the worst class of my brethren. A Separatist.
There was no help for that now, though, and I had to get off the street. I moved, glass crunching beneath my boots. I walked. And, eventually, I sank down on my bed in my apartment, wiping blood and soot from my face, and pulled Hieronymus into my lap.
***
It was not until the twilight of dawn awoke my threads, drawing me from an exhausted slumber, that I remembered Lewis’s letter.
I fumbled blearily in my pile of cast-off clothing. The cat watched me archly through one narrow eye, then returned to sleep.
I found the letter and leaned towards the balcony doors to catch the growing light. Beyond the glass, wisteria pods rustled and one of the neighbors began their habitual morning concert, the low strains of a cello drifting through the courtyard.
I squinted. The paper was gritty, warped, and smudged, but I had received letters in worse condition. The words mattered less than Lewis’s magic within them, and my own magic, ready to amplify it. There was a reason the Guild had paired Lewis and me.
I brushed my fingers across the paper. My skin began to prickle with gooseflesh and my threads, already standing out smoky grey against my skin in the twilight, grew cool.
