A rough rustle of fabric as she and Kadra dismounted. Dull shrieks echoing upon their entry into the marketplace. Her hoarse exhale fogging out when his irises seemed to grow impossibly wider, turning his piercing eyes into something unrecognizable,other.
What do you see?Fear sank fangs into her bones, pulling her from the stupor. She stepped in front of him to break his line of sight and pretended not to notice his startled blink.
Bile butted the back of her throat when a larva squirmed out of a man’s ear and fell into a clump of snow. Barely a day ago, she’d told the marketgoers here not to worry. She’d assured that godsdamned agromagus that all would be well. Now, here they were, overrun with beetles.How?
She dimly heard Gaius report that he had confirmed with the magi on the city walls that no one had seen a beetle swarm approach. That left only one other explanation: infectees, like Lucanus, had brought them into the city.
“We’ve a few survivors, but they’re badly infected.” He indicated a cluster at the back of the marketplace that she hadn’t noticed amid the horror of the corpses. “They seem to have taken a few whitesleep rubs too many. Couldn’t get much sense out of them.”
Kadra’s eerily blank gaze drifted over to consider the group.
“I’ll go to them,” she forced out before he spoke. If anyone noticed what she and Gaius already had, then the land would implode.
“There are beetleseverywhere.” Gaius’s voice quaked. “Best to wait for a healer, or this could take you too.”
“I’ll be careful. They could die before a healer arrives, and we’ll have no answers then.” She worriedly sought Kadra’s eyes and loosed a breath upon finding them back to their knife-sharp intensity.
A crease formed in his brow when she strode past him to the infected survivors. She felt the weight of his stare between her shoulder blades and wondered if she should have admitted that she knew of what kept distracting him or asked why he’d said nothing for eight months. But right now, it was a crisis too many.
Ignoring the blood-flecked ground and its miasma of rot, she knelt beside the snow-covered figures, rocking back and forth in the throes of visible agony.
“What happened here?” she whispered.
Only one woman turned to her. Sarai stilled, recognizing the plaintiff from the plague case. Welts patterned Junia’s face, her eyes crusted with remnants of whitesleep powder. “Our hourglass runs low. A reckoning has followed in your wake.” Her pupils engorged to swallow her irises. “The skylaughsat us all.”
Sarai’s hands quivered even worse at the familiar words. Dream-Aelius, the horreum’s dying Guildswoman, and now Junia all saying the same thing. “What sort of reckoning?”
“Alllllllthe lightning. And so manyeyes.” Vessels burst in Junia’s own scleras.
“Gaius, she needs a healer!” Sarai yelled.
Across the marketplace, he spread his hands with a helpless look at the gray-cloaked group retching into the snow and looking in need of medical aid themselves.
“It was just a bit of whitesleep,” Junia whispered in a burst of clarity. “Why did it come to this?” She dissolved into a fit of laughter.
Numb, Sarai tottered upright. Blue robes billowed at the corner of her eye, and her teeth clenched at the Cleric elbowing his way toward the tableau while proselytizing to an ever-growing audience about the need for an exorcism of acertainservant of Ruin.
Realization coalesced into quiet, bitter clarity.Omens.The Order would scream it now, and the public would believe it. A land that had been threatening to collapse under the weight of its infighting could do so tomorrow. And she didn’t know if they were wrong.
Didn’t you bring this on us, northerner? A reckoning has followed in your wake. The gods have spoken and call for our end. The sky itself will laugh.
Why were the afflicted all saying that this was her fault?
Anguish and doubt clawed at her gut. She barely registered Cassandane and Anek’s arrival, or Harion vomiting over his robes and horse. She walked to the edge of the marketplace, seeing the hawk-eyed figure there too late to avoid her.
Plague, riots. Omens.
Inquisitor Verentia gave her a wary glance. “Petitor Sarai.”
So, it’s begun. “I am no servant of Ruin, Inquisitor.”
The woman splayed a hand toward the death around them. “The gods say otherwise.” She indicated someone in a gray-green uniform at her side. “Clanlady Dalvia Am Semni from Komis. She’s been monitoring the spread of the boil beetle plague and just arrived by Bridger. Her Institute has been leading efforts to combat this.”
Clan Am Semni. Along with Clan Kader, they were the last extant Clans from Ur Dinyé’s monarchical days. She hadn’t heard much of them unlike the powerful, infamous, and now-defunct Kaders.
“A pleasure. I’m sorry we’ve had to meet under these circumstances—” Sarai froze mid-recitation. The woman wasstunning. A sheet of white-blond hair fell to her shoulders, contrasting sharply with her dark eyebrows and hair. Light seemed to weave through the strands and reflect around her. The effect was both ethereal and eerie.
Yards away, Anek’s jaw hung by their knees as they darted fascinated glances at her in between nodding at Cassandane and Kadra, whose back faced them.
