THe Grave at Storm's End by Devin Madson

Author:Devin Madson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cloudburst
Published: 2016-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

The bridge exploded and I was falling through fire. Fire and smoke and steam and spray. Then water, roaring in my ears. Kin’s sash tangled about my leg like a slimy hand dragging me down, but whatever its weight I would not abandon it. Not now. Instead I fought with my gloves and sandals, and kicked with aching legs. Up.

I broke the surface and sucked a great lungful of air – furnace hot. Steam billowed around me. Overhead a firestorm was dissipating, swirling tongues of orange flame fading to smoke.

‘Endymion!’

The current was too strong to fight. All I could to was spin, hunting the haze for any sign of life. Only a rebel, clinging to a rock on the opposite bank.

‘Endymion!’

Unwilling to so easily relinquish my life, the swirling Tzitzi sucked me back under. Blood thumped in my ears. Again I thought of discarding the sash and again I could not. Kisia belonged to the Otakos, not the Tzitzi. Its dark water pummelled me like a rag doll, but I pushed for the surface again, lungs bursting.

Emerging into the light, I gulped air and water in equal measure.

‘Endymion!’

Foam and debris washed around me. Endymion could be anywhere. He could be dead. Perhaps it would be for the best, I hardly knew. He had wanted me to leave the city. There was no faster way out of a city in lockdown than this.

Siege gates.

The thought arrived mere moments before the gate itself, the black iron grating rushing toward me out of the swirling water. White pain ripped through my skull as I hit it and was pinned to the metal rungs.

‘Hana!’

Endymion clung to the grating, wet clumps of hair covering the Traitor’s Mark that could never truly be hidden. There was another man too, a rebel – perhaps the one I had seen earlier, perhaps another. A third man butted up against the bars but he was more corpse than soldier, washed against the gate like so much debris.

‘You could have killed us,’ I snapped the moment I had caught my breath.

‘That could have killed us.’ He pulled an arm free of the water and pointed back toward the distant bridge. The remanent heat hung above the city like a dense red cloud. Up there men were fighting my battle. If they still lived.

I blinked away tears, refusing to add to the swell of the river. ‘I need to get back.’

‘Hey!’

The rebel was edging closer, pulling himself hand over hand along the grating.

‘Keep your distance, traitor,’ I warned.

He lifted a hand in surrender. ‘I mean no harm,’ he said. ‘Are you Lady Hana Otako?’

I eyed him. ‘Yes.’

‘My name is Captain Terran, my lady,’ he said, making a pitiful attempt to bow amid the storm water. ‘I fight for General Manshin.’

‘A traitor then, like I said.’

‘I follow my general wherever he takes me.’

‘Then you can go to the hells, Captain.’ I turned to find Endymion watching, his gaze intent. ‘Move,’ I said. ‘Let’s get out of this river.’

He needed no more prompting and made his way, hand over hand, toward the edge of the siege gate.

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