Devadas spoke, only for the third time since they had met. His voice was low.
“Get out of here. Do you not have a task at hand? A burden you inherited?”
Cain was daunted. “What do you mean?”
“I am the last of my order. My own burden is heavy. I know the look on your face. I see it in the mirror every day.” He said this with a grimace, perhaps from the pain of his wound. He made his left hand into a fist and, with a great roar, punched the roof door. It flew off into the night like a bird.
Cain glanced back at Devadas and the stout man before maneuvering his legs out of the wreckage. Once outside, he found the carriage had fallen into a large pit that should not exist in the middle of a city street. Using the protruding rocks on the walls of the pit as handholds, he pulled himself up.
The Capital was on fire. Just in front of him, a shop full of expensive clothes had turned into a raging bonfire. He had heard that fires followed earthquakes, and at night, when lanterns and candles blazed, such fires seemed even more likely. The shouts and screamsof the injured and the afraid mixed with the ringing bells of the fire carriages. The streets had erupted in places, leaving gaping holes that made it impossible for carriages to cross.
Standing at the edge of his own such pit, Cain looked up toward the Senate hill. It was usually brightly lit by Powered lanterns, but now there was only darkness. As if the entire Senate had vanished. Cain was dizzy, and everything felt like a dream. The buildings surrounding the hill were on fire. Violet lights of Power threaded through the thick smoke. Inside the pit, the three whinnying, struggling horses seemed to have broken their legs. The carriage was irretrievably damaged, but the yoke was still intact, strangling the still-alive horses. Cain took in every bit of the horrific scene while emotions he struggled to name raged inside him.
However, his own yoke was broken. No longer was he a puppet of the Ministry. Nor was he a tool for anyone else. The grip he had felt on his heart had loosened.
He’d only taken a single step forward when someone shouted his name from behind.
“Cain!” Septima stood at the other side of the pit, her stola torn and her hair disheveled. “Where do you think you’re going!”
Without answering, he turned and ran. He was sure to get caught again if he hesitated.
The streets were full of people and carriages trying to escape the chaos. They looked impassable, and he did not know how the alleys in the old city were laid out. He started climbing the wall of a stone building that wasn’t on fire.
Septima was approaching fast, her body low and her face ferocious. She looked like a completely different person. There wassomething in her right hand that glinted in the firelight. Cain quickly made his way up the wall onto the roof.
The old city had turned orange with flames. Quickly, he scanned the layout of the streets for a path to the Senate. He couldn’t make out any route that didn’t go through burning buildings and smoke-filled streets. Septima had probably spotted him on this building, and if he dawdled, he would be caught. Breathing deeply, he took a few steps back, and leaped onto the roof of the burning building next to him.
He was thankful his clothes were too soaked with seawater to catch flame, but the heat was already unbearable. The next building was higher up. He leaped to a window covered with wooden bars. A small grunt of pain escaped him as his bruised body collided with the wall of the house, but his hands gripped the bars firmly. The bars weren’t heated enough to really burn his hands, but the air itself felt like it would burn his lungs. Even breathing the smoky night air outside the buildings made his throat and his chest ache. The legs of his spectacles felt like they were searing themselves into his temples. Gritting his teeth and letting go with one hand, he carefully removed them and put them in his pocket. Then, shifting his grip on the bars, he began climbing the wall once more.
When he got to the third building, Septima shouted at him.
“Come back this instant!”
He turned. Septima stood on the roof of the burning building, staring at him with a long dagger in hand.
“You’ll die if you stay there,” he said. “You’re a public servant. Shouldn’t you be helping the public by putting out the fire or something?”
“Are you somehow involved in all of this?”
To anyone else, this would have seemed a natural disaster. But not to Septima. Just like Devadas, she must have harbored a feeling there was something Cain had been withholding from them all this time.
Instead of answering, Cain leaped to the next building. Septima screamed something at him, but he was already flying through the flames, jumping between buildings.
At the last building, Cain slid down the drainpipe into the alley, the pipe so hot that he had to pull his sleeves over his hands to do it. Without a proper grip on the pipe, it was almost like falling. He rolled on the ground when he landed.
Stepping out onto the main road, he found himself surrounded by a sea of fire.
Even with his unaided eyes, Cain could see the slightly different tint to the fire here. In the red-and-yellow flames, and even in the black smoke, was a sheen of violet. Cain avoided the fire as best he could, walking in the center of the street, but still, he could feel his skin burning.
Now he was at the foot of the Senate hill, the Senate itself a building built before the Empire had named itself so. Underneath it, apparently, were 327 Power generators linked together to form a circuit.
A disruption in the Circuit of Destiny must have caused this night of terror, spreading somehow to other Power generators of the city. Cain knew nothing of sorcery or Power, but that cadaver Eldred in Arienne’s mind had said the Circuit was going to explode, or a Star of Mersia would extinguish all life in the Imperial heartland. Which meant this fire was only a preamble of what was to come.
He went up the hill along the road. There were no people about, everyone having died or evacuated. Only the buildings burning in eerie violet, with even the stone buildings billowing fire from their windows, kept him company as he made his way to the Senate. It was so difficult to breathe that he covered his nose and mouth with his coat. His clothes were now almost dry. But as he climbed the hill, there were no buildings to burn. It became less smoky, and he could soon breathe easier.
It was forbidden to erect buildings near the Senate, in order to preserve its grandeur. Instead, there was a garden filled with sculptures of dead senators. He crept through them to the front entrance of the Senate.
It was night and no senators would be about, but there were sure to be guards. There weren’t any he could see. Just when he was about to be glad for it, he found a woman in a guard uniform lying on the ground. Cain approached, sneaking from sculpture to sculpture. There were two more people on the ground.
