The Women's War Page 4

  “The children,” Alys gasped, trying to get to her feet, but the earth was shaking too hard, and she quickly stumbled and went down.

  Alys had never felt anything like this before. A pair of luminants, set into the wall with heavy iron sconces, dropped to the floor, the glass shattering and releasing the trapped elements, snuffing the light. And still the earth shook and bucked beneath them. From all around came the sound of shouts and thuds and bangs. Blind in the darkness, Alys reached for where her maid had fallen and touched a shoulder.

  “We have to get out,” she shouted, fearing the house might collapse. How they would make it down two flights of stairs to the ground floor and an exit, she wasn’t sure, but better to try than to cower uselessly on the floor.

  “Go!” Honor cried. “I’m right behind you.”

  Knowing she could never stay on her feet, Alys crawled on all fours, hampered by the three layers of skirts and long trailing sleeves of her evening gown. She wished she’d dispensed with the formality of dressing for dinner after Sylnin had died, but old habits were hard to break. She looked over her shoulder, checking on Honor, but could see nothing in the oppressive darkness. She just had to hope the maid was following. Under her breath, she prayed that Jinnell and Corlin had fled from their rooms on the floor below and were on their way to the relative safety of the outdoors.

  Groping blindly in the dark, Alys bumped into a wall and felt her way along it until she reached the doorway. She fumbled for the knob, her fingers finding it then slipping off as an especially hard lurch pitched her to the side.

  An earsplitting shriek rent the air, followed by an even louder series of bangs and crashes so strong she could feel them shaking the floor even through the movement of the quake. More frantic screams and shouts from outside the closed door, and behind her Honor cried out, “What was that?”

  Alys had no answer, though she was sure it was the sound of something huge collapsing. She was just glad her own house was still standing, though she had little confidence it could withstand much more shaking. Grimly, gritting her teeth, she reached for the doorknob again, this time getting a firm grip and yanking it open.

  There was no light in the hallway outside, and as Alys crawled, her hands encountered jagged shards of glass from more broken luminants. She called a warning to Honor over her shoulder, but it wasn’t possible to be particularly careful. Alys winced as a sliver of glass cut into her palm. She gathered her long trailing sleeves and wrapped them around her hands, giving herself as much protection as possible as she continued to push forward, sweeping the glass aside to create a path.

  It was hard to stay oriented in the darkness, but Alys kept moving in what she felt certain was the direction of the staircase.

  The earth shuddered to a stop, the sudden stillness almost as unnerving as the shaking. The household was still filled with the sound of shouting voices, with the crunching of broken glass underfoot and the banging of doors. From somewhere down below, a child was wailing at the top of his lungs, but he was too young to be Corlin. The cook’s apprentice, Alys guessed, and while she hoped the boy was unharmed, she was glad the voice wasn’t her son’s.

  She yelled out her children’s names, but doubted they would hear over all the other voices even if they were nearby.

  “Are you all right, Honor?” she called, her whole body tense as she waited for the shaking to start again.

  “Yes, my lady. And you?”

  Alys winced as her cut hand began to throb to the beat of her heart. “I think so.”

  Somewhere below, on the second floor, a luminant was lit, and Alys was almost surprised to find they hadn’t all been destroyed. The light was feeble and far away, but at least it was enough to help orient her. She looked around and found that her long, torturous crawl had taken her little more than a body’s length from her bedroom door and that she’d been crawling straight toward the edge of the hallway, where a banister used to be. All that was left of it were a few nails that had been ripped out when it fell over the edge, no doubt landing in the foyer two stories below.

  The light got brighter, and Alys saw her steward, Mica, rushing toward the stairs, eyes searching the balcony above, holding a brightly glowing luminant as he picked his way through glass and other debris.

  “Lady Alysoon!” he shouted, and Alys realized he couldn’t see her, blinded by the light he held in his hands.

  “I’m here!” she responded. “And I’m all right. Where are the children?”

  He breathed a visible sigh of relief as he started up the stairs, taking them two at a time until he came upon a large painting that had fallen from the wall and blocked the way.

  “They’re outside and safe,” he said, and Alys’s heart rate finally started to calm.

  “Is anyone hurt?” she asked, finally trusting that the quake was over and climbing shakily to her feet.

  Mica worked his way around the fallen painting and made it to the head of the stairs. Alys shook her head in amazement at the damage. There was not a luminant left on the walls or ceiling, and every tall piece of furniture had fallen down. But at least it was all superficial damage, as far as she could see. No ominous cracks in the walls, no dust raining from the ceiling. Something large had collapsed and made that horrible noise, but it wasn’t her house.

  She didn’t have to be told that the people of the Harbor District had not fared so well. The crowded streets and ramshackle buildings, many decades past their prime, could not have withstood the force of that quake. She prayed history would not repeat itself and bring a wave that would swamp the district—and destroy the ragtag flotilla.

  “I haven’t seen anyone seriously injured,” Mica responded, frowning at her bloodstained sleeve. “Except, perhaps, you.”

  She waved off his concern. “I’m fine. Just a little cut.” A cut that throbbed uncomfortably. She wondered if it was still bleeding but didn’t want to unwrap her sleeve to see. She’d worry about getting it properly bandaged once she’d had a chance to assess the damage.

  With Mica’s help—and with the light of his single luminant—Alys made her way down the stairs. Honor followed Alys down to the second floor and then veered off, heading for a huddled group of housemaids who looked lost and frightened. One girl held a lit candle, and the others were practically clinging to that small circle of light. Honor technically had no authority over the housemaids—they were under the housekeeper’s purview—but she exuded calm and confidence, and Alys could see the girls start to relax the moment she took charge.

  On the first floor, she found several footmen beginning to clear the debris in the light of a hastily lit candelabra fitted with candles. All looked up when she passed, ready to drop everything if she issued new orders, but she saw no reason to interrupt them.

  She stepped outside to the welcome sight of her children, sitting together on a bench in the garden, a lit luminant at their feet. Corlin was dressed in his nightclothes, his hair tousled. His feet were up on the bench, his arms wrapped around his knees. For once, he and his sister weren’t bickering. Jinnell, still dressed although her hair was down for the night, had one arm draped around her little brother’s shoulders, offering silent comfort though her own eyes were wide and shocked-looking and there were tear tracks on her cheeks.

  Jinnell spotted Alys first, leaping to her feet with a cry of sheer joy and throwing herself into her mother’s arms. Alys hugged her tight, her own eyes now stinging with tears as she wondered how she could ever force herself to let go. Corlin, always more reserved than his boisterous sister, hovered just out of arm’s reach.

  “Are you all right, Mama?” he asked, his eyes locked on her bloodstained sleeve. His lower lip quivered until he bit down on it. A boy was allowed to cry, though only in the direst circumstances. A man was not. And Corlin was anxious to prove himself a man, though the law would consider him a child for four more years.

>   “I’m fine,” she assured him, releasing Jinnell from her embrace. She ached to hug Corlin and tell him everything would be all right, but he was well past allowing such displays of affection. She settled for reaching out and squeezing his shoulder—a gesture he accepted with manly stoicism.

  At this time of night, the third level of the Terrace District would usually be silent, but tonight Alys could hear people shouting in all directions. There were very few lights visible in any of the neighboring manors, but mostly the damage didn’t look too terrible. There were some downed trees and broken windows, and a few small outbuildings looked like they might need to be torn down. Of course, from this secluded back garden, and with so little light, there was a lot Alys couldn’t see. But she kept remembering her mother’s ominous warnings and the teachings of history.

  “I want to go back inside and get a better view,” she told Jinnell and Corlin. “Wait here, and I’ll be right back.”

  Jinnell immediately grabbed her arm. “What if the shaking starts again? Shouldn’t we stay outside?”

  It was a fair question, and though Alys was familiar enough with history to worry about a swell from the sea, she didn’t know how likely the earth was to shake some more. Should she order all the servants out of the house, just in case? She should at least make sure no one was seriously hurt. Mica said he hadn’t seen any serious injuries, but she doubted he’d toured the entire house before coming to find her.

  Her instincts said the water was a greater threat, and standing outside would not protect them from that. They needed to get to higher ground, just in case. Alys regarded her children, trying to judge whether they were aware of the danger. Corlin was an indifferent student of history, at best, and while Jinnell had had the best education Alys and her husband could provide, she was much more concerned with being ladylike and paid much more attention to subjects deemed more “appropriate” for girls—poetry and music and fashion and etiquette.

  Alys’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Falcor and two of his men. The honor guardsmen rarely interacted with the family on the grounds of the manor, keeping themselves as unobtrusive as possible per Alys’s request, but she wasn’t surprised they sought her out in this crisis.

  Falcor was carrying a small bag with him, and after giving her a respectful bow, he opened up the bag to reveal salve and bandages.

  “Mica said you were hurt, my lady,” he said as his men checked on Corlin and Jinnell.

  “It’s nothing,” Alys responded. “We can deal with it later. I need to arrange for a few belongings to be packed. I think we should spend the night at the palace.” She made eye contact with the man and willed him both to understand her implication and to refrain from putting it into words in front of the children. The honor guardsmen were all Citadel-trained and certain to know about the centuries-old disaster.

  “That would be wise, my lady,” he said, holding the eye contact in a meaningful way. “But it will be a long trip and will require a cheval carriage. The risers were destroyed in the quake.”

  Alys drew in a startled breath, remembering that huge crash. The risers were built into the cliffs and ran beside a long metal track, powered by magic. Those who could afford the fare could make it to the top of the cliffs in about ten minutes, whereas the common folk had to use the long, zigzagging paths on either side of the city. The trip was exhausting for those on foot and not much better for those who traveled by horse and cart. A cheval—which would not tire from the climb and was far more sure-footed than a horse—would shorten the trip, but it would still take the better part of an hour.

  “Then we’ll take the carriage,” she said, about to move off to find Mica, but the guardsman had the temerity to step into her path.

  “Let me bandage your wound first,” he said. “It will only take a minute, and you wouldn’t want to get an infection.”

  Alys considered arguing, but quickly determined it would only delay her more. Falcor and his men took their orders from the Lord Commander of the Citadel, not Alys. Ordinarily, they would obey her, but not when they thought her safety might be at risk. The cut on her hand wasn’t much of a threat in Alys’s mind, but thanks to her father’s “gift” of an honor guard, it wasn’t her choice to make. Gritting her teeth against the injustice of not being allowed to make her own decisions, Alys held out her hand.

  Falcor smoothed some salve on the cut, then wrapped it neatly in a clean white bandage. He moved at a gratifyingly brisk pace, but the process felt like it took an eternity. When he was finally satisfied, Alys hurried the children into the house, urging them to change quickly into traveling clothes. She found Honor on her way up to her own room on the third floor and bade the maid follow and help her change.

  Servants had lit candles in all the hallways and were busily cleaning up the worst of the mess. Honor grabbed a candle from the hall to light Alys’s room, and Alys began stripping off her soiled dress before the door was closed behind her. Honor headed for the wardrobe, but Alys stopped when she passed in front of the window.

  In the dark of night, she should have seen nothing more than the occasional flicker of lighted windows in the distance, but her window glowed with flickering orange light. When she looked out, she saw that the Harbor District was on fire. She gripped the cold stone of the windowsill and stared with horror.

  It shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise. Very few people who lived in the Harbor District could afford luminants, so their lighting was provided almost entirely by fire. How many candles and lanterns had been knocked over as the earth shook? Alys covered her mouth to stifle a sob. From her window at the highest level of the Terrace District, she could see the streets filled with frantic people, small silhouetted figures trying to organize bucket brigades in what was surely a lost cause.

  As if that weren’t bad enough, the blazing fires illuminated the harbor front, where Alys could see numerous boats mired in land that had been covered in water. Residents of the flotilla were picking their way through the muddy bottom, trying to find paths between the listing, grounded boats that were nearly on top of one another, sometimes being forced to climb over or duck under. And many of those boats were on fire, too.

  But the worst news was what that suddenly dry land portended. The surge was coming, and Alys had no idea how long it would take to arrive or how high it would reach. The vast majority of people in the Harbor District had no way of knowing what was coming, having no education in history whatsoever. They should all be running to higher ground, not wasting their time in a futile battle with fires that were beyond controlling.

  Honor brought a traveling dress, and Alys almost decided against changing, but the last thing she needed was to be tripped up by her layers of skirts and trailing sleeves, so she allowed Honor to help her out of her evening dress, ripping stitches in her hurry to change.

  “Shall I pack a bag for you, my lady?” Honor asked, but Alys shook her head.

  “Never mind that. Let’s get the children to the carriage.”

  Just before she left her room, Alys grabbed the little red book her mother had given her and tucked it into a pocket of her traveling dress. She didn’t have time to look at it now, but the moment she had some peace and privacy, she intended to feed some Rho into it as the abbess had instructed. She wondered briefly if her mother and the rest of the abigails were safe. The Abbey was right at the harbor’s edge and would most definitely suffer if the sea surged. But there was nothing she could do for them right now, and Alys tried to take comfort in the conviction that her mother had known full well what was coming. Surely she would have taken precautions to protect the women in her care.

  Jinnell and Corlin both dragged their feet and complained bitterly about their mother’s decision to go to the palace.

  “It will take forever to get there with the risers out,” Jinnell said. “And I don’t care if the house is a mess. I’d rather sleep in my
own bed.”

  “And I’d just rather sleep,” Corlin added with a dramatic yawn.

  Alys didn’t want to scare them by explaining her own fears, and she didn’t have time for an argument. “We’re going, and that’s final,” she snapped at them, using her fear to create a façade of anger. She’d rather they think her ill-tempered than frightened. “The sooner we get moving, the sooner we’ll arrive.”

  The complaining didn’t stop, but at least the children followed when she made her way to the coach-house. Falcor and his two guardsmen were already mounted on sturdy chevals by the front of the building, ready to escort their charges to the safety of the palace. Alys wondered if Falcor’s men had balked at riding chevals, which was considered unmanly except in the case of dire need. She was glad her master of the guard wasn’t so proud as to insist on riding horses and making the trip four times as long. Alys nodded to them as she bustled Jinnell and Corlin into the coach-house and well-nigh shoved them into the waiting carriage.

  “I’ll join you in a moment,” she told her children, then shut the carriage door on their protests.

  Alys could get her children to the guaranteed safety of the cliffs, but when she thought of all the helpless men, women, and children of the Harbor District, none of whom knew what was coming, she realized she couldn’t just leave. No doubt there were others—especially soldiers of the Citadel—who would do their best to get people to higher ground, but they would need all the help they could get.

  Noble was standing by the cheval’s flank, waiting for her to get into the carriage before feeding Rho into the cheval. Alys walked briskly to his side and lowered her voice to just above a whisper.

  “I want you to take the children to the palace as fast as you can,” she told him.

  His brows creased in puzzlement. “What about you, my lady?”

  “I’m not going,” she said, offering no explanation. “That’s why you have to go fast—so that Falcor and his men won’t realize I’m not in the carriage.”