No Gods For Drowning by Hailey Piper

Author:Hailey Piper [Piper,Hailey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polis Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 31

A

rcadia had lost count of how many sandbags she’d dropped in front of the barricade’s iron gate. The gate was the barricade’s greatest weakness, worse than any chipped or cracked stone. It was meant to open, a way in and out of the city via Oldtown, and the flood fighters were too busy to dig new foundations and block the way with stone and mortar. Had she known better yesterday, Arcadia would have thrown sandbags here before the storm began. Evacuation without them seemed smart when you thought there was time.

This rainy season, there was no time.

Trucks stalled halfway through Oldtown, which forced the slow and laborious work of carrying bags by hand through the water to the gate. Arcadia could only shove one truck onward at a time and plow it toward the gate herself. Anything to slow the flood, even if the bags arrived half-soaked already.

She thought she heard someone calling her name as she hefted another bag from the truck. It splatted onto the dampening mound, and she took a moment to breathe. Oldtown still need evacuating. She hoped the residents saw to that themselves now.

“Captain?” Jason peeped.

Arcadia turned to him. He and Karena were lugging a waterlogged sandbag between them. Other agents darted between gate and truck, but their eyes kept flashing Arcadia’s way, Leander among them, having returned to the barricade against orders for some damn reason. Cassis had returned too. Arcadia didn’t have the heart to send them away when they wanted to help.

She turned to Jason. “What do you need?”

“I didn’t want to interrupt,” Jason said. “We appreciate you with our whole hearts. It’s just—would you mind not whistling like that?”

“Whistling?” Arcadia asked.

Jason hefted his and Karena’s bag onto the pile, breath rushing out, and then turned back to Arcadia. “Or whistle anything else?” Jason asked. “That old river song’s giving us the creeps.” Karena nodded beside him.

Arcadia’s mouth closed and opened. “I didn’t realize I was whistling.”

A sharper whistle shot from atop the barricade, where Cassis clutched the ring of a broad oil lantern in one hand while hunkered against stone. It would burn fast the way she kept the flame bright behind its glass.

She lowered two fingers from her lips. “Someone’s wading through the water, cap.”

Arcadia hefted another sandbag onto the pile. They were nearly spent. “Do you know them?” she asked.

“I can’t tell. It’s a man, I think.”

“Or man-shaped,” Karena said. She sounded afraid.

“You think a glory would swim up to the gate?” Jason asked.

Arcadia scanned the sandbag blockade. They couldn’t open the gate now; its iron door swung inward. No one was getting in or out through the west-facing side of Valentine unless they climbed the barricade or somehow ascended Bay Ridge.

A heavy whump sound echoed across Oldtown. Streetlights stuttered, their bulbs begging someone to stop the downpour before they drowned forever. The whump came again, and the night spilled ink.

The power was out.

Headlights cast golden cones up the block from the iron gate, but they shined frail against the rising water.

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