Askew
The sun is a curious blood-orange as it sinks over the university hospital, staining the towering forest a deep brownish black and the river running through it a dull red. Berend makes his way toward the forest’s shadowed underside, where the Orchard District, he hopes, still lies. It should be a short walk, but something’s wrong with the formerly orderly row houses in which the students and a good number of their teachers live several to a room. The neat grid of north-south avenues and east-west streets is all askew, with one line of houses intersecting another in a way that just barely avoids two buildings ending up on top of one another—the occupants of both houses stand outside, hands on hips or scratching at their heads in confusion. The dark wood frame of the farther house touches the red-brick corner of the nearer, and a fringe of splinters coated in reddish dust mark the point where they collided.
Berend crosses a street twice as wide as it should be, and then another that’s about a third too narrow. They intersect at a point far to the south, farther than he estimates the southern wall should be, shrouded in a strange, brown haze that looks like smoke but smells like nothing.
He’s a few blocks east of where the district boundary should lie when the earthquake hits.
The continent is a fairly stable landmass, as far as these things go, but Berend has felt the earth shake before. Once, a tremor wracked the far eastern mountains while he was on campaign, showering the Sons with stones from the peaks above. They had made it out mostly unscathed, though they lost a pack mule when a rock the size of a fist struck it in the back of the head. The second time wasn’t a real quake; it was artillery, falling in waves around the castle like the gods’ own judgment, but the effect was similar. Stones fell from the walls and clattered on the roof of the gatehouse where Berend was stationed for a week straight, only leaving to use the reeking latrine, and only then when someone else was there to watch the gate. He’d thought the wall was going to come down on top of him at least once a day.
The city shudders. He doesn’t trust any of these houses to stay standing, so he stays in the middle of the street, gets down on his knees, and places his hat gently on the ground before crossing his hands over his head. The feather plume trembles like a dry leaf still clinging to the tree in an autumn wind. A terrible sound, screeching and droning at once, slams into him with an almost physical force.
And then it’s over, and everything is quiet. The feather lies still. Berend picks up his hat and stands up, brushing dust from his clothes and the bundle of old clothing he’s carrying.
“See? Nothing to worry about,” he says aloud, because the silence is almost as loud as the horrible noise that accompanied the quake. Of course, it isn’t true—Mondirra has never had an earthquake before, as far as he’s aware, and it can’t be a sign of anything good. Really, nothing that has happened in the past couple of days has boded well for Berend’s, and the city’s, long-term prospects. But the ground under his feet is solid, and the cobbles feel much like they always have. Even the eerie red light from the west is like an old friend—a friend you can’t trust farther than you can throw him, but familiar, nonetheless.
That is about where the familiarity ends. A bank of heavy clouds, as thick as cotton wool, has settled in overhead, obscuring half the plane of the forest and smothering the entire district in gray darkness. Tendrils of colorless light split the clouds like slow, undulating lightning. If Berend looks harder, he’ll see a thousand eyes in every hue, so he brings his gaze back to ground level.
The row of houses in front of him still stand, though the third-floor balcony on the brownstone two doors to the left hangs downward at a precarious angle, the bolts attaching the iron grating to the exterior badly bent and the potted plants crowded against its outer edge. Behind the houses, a thin layer of fog conceals a dark, empty expanse where the Orchard District should have been. It presses up against the vertical forest, and Berend has the distinct feeling that it’s coming closer. He thinks it’s just the fog, but the darkness looks like it’s bubbling and churning like a pot about to boil. His eyes ache and his head spins.
Where’s the Orchard District? He thought he could just walk around the plane of the forest, cut north to where the huge pile of bones divides the harbor from the rest of the city, and make his way to the Temple of Isra from there. Sure, he might have been overplaying how quick and easy the route was to keep his fragile morale from plummeting, but he hadn’t expected this. And what happened to all the people there?
Isabel was going out that way—to the chapel on the blue field. It’s late enough that Berend expects she might have come back already, and is wondering what’s taking him so long, but he can’t know for sure until he gets there. He takes a step closer, and another, trying to look at the darkness sidelong and stave off the worst of the sick, dizzy feeling it brings.
No. The closer he gets, the worse it is, until he can’t stand anymore and falls to his knees. He puts his head into the bundle of clothing, covering his eyes. A sharp throb pulses in the center of his skull. He won’t be going that way.
That means he’ll have to go back the way he came. He can’t imagine that the quake did anything good for the makeshift bridge, and only the gods know when there will be another one. Well, the gods are all dead or close to it, according to Isabel, so nobody knows. Fantastic.
Berend gets up, tucks the bundle under his arm, checks the angle of his hat and the security of his sword, and sets off again toward the University District cliffside. He told Isabel he would meet her at the Temple of Isra, and that’s what he’s going to do, gods or no gods, Orchard District or no Orchard District. If he has to climb over the yawning abyss on a couple of ladders nailed together, he will, but he hopes he’ll come up with an alternative before then.
If the rest of the city doesn’t disappear. He guesses that about forty percent of Mondirra’s landmass is inaccessible, if not gone completely and forever—not counting the half of the University District on the other side of a makeshift bridge. This morning, it was maybe twenty percent.
Berend walks a little faster, slipping between a pair of brick houses and emerging onto the next street. He doesn’t like how empty the place is, though it’s probably for the best that everyone still living is either taking shelter or gathering at the crevasse to lend a hand. The first soul—living or dead—he sees since he left the dubious engineering project is a young man in an untucked shirt standing in the road, alone, a vacant look on his unshaven face.
“Berend Horst?” he calls out.
Berend had intended to walk right by him, and he feels a little guilty about it. The kid has obviously been having a rough time. His eyes are bloodshot, his complexion gray. He’s younger than Emryn Marner, maybe a first- or second-year student. His trousers are patched at the knees, and his shirt is stained with sweat and dust. The visible cuff of his sleeve trails loose threads over his battered knuckles, and his other arm is stiff at his side.
“Who’s asking?” Berend calls back. Other than Emryn and Herard—and Warder, he supposes—he doesn’t know anyone at the university, and no one knows him. He has his hat back, but it’s not so distinctive that a stranger would recognize him by it.
The young man swallows and scrapes his tongue over his dry lips. He doesn’t answer.
Berend suddenly has several questions about what’s in that other hand.
“Easy now, friend,” he says. “Listen, if you need anything, they’re handing out some food at the Temple of Isra. It’s been relatively safe over there, at least for the time being.” He gives a little wave with his free hand, to show that he’s not reaching for his sword, and takes a diagonal step backward and toward the other side of the street. Whatever’s going on with this kid, he really doesn’t have time to deal with it. He needs to get to the temple himself and find out whether Isabel is still in the world or not, and figure out what he’s going to do from there. The thought that there is something he can do is getting hard to hold on to, given the events of the day, but he’s doing his best.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the young man says, and he raises his stiff right arm. A heavy pistol comes into view, the barrel shaking.
Standing in the road, Berend can only cover his chest with the bundle of clothing and turn his face away.
A gunshot cracks the air.
The sound of the ball hitting brick and ricocheting follows. The stranger missed—a small wonder, given how badly he was shaking. Berend drops his bundle and draws his sword in one fluid motion. He allows himself one second to appreciate how good it feels to have it back before he charges.
The young man drops the pistol—it rings dully against the cobbles—and draws a long knife from behind his back. He came prepared. For what, though?
Berend’s saber collides against the flat of the knife blade with a metallic screech. He’d expected to overpower the kid, who looks undernourished and like he’d faint at the sight of blood. He’s got a strong grip, whoever he is.
Berend pulls back and draws his sword up in a guard. He has reach compared to the knife, more than enough to make up for the young man’s inch or two of extra height, but he really, really doesn’t want to get to exchanging blows. He can’t take another injury, and he would rather not kill anyone today.
“Who sent you?” he asks, stalling for time. He already knows the answer. The previous assassin the Belisias sent was better equipped and better dressed, but the air of desperation is only more tangible in this one. Berend can almost smell it: fear-sweat and a coppery tang of blood on his breath, like he’s bitten the inside of his cheek. His fighting stance isn’t bad, and the knife has a couple of nicks that haven’t quite been sharpened out. Despite his poor performance with the gun, he’s seen a scrap or two before.
“The world is ending, mate,” Berend says. “Aren’t there better things you could be doing right now?”
Another fight scene next time! Also, today I’m working on a new chapter that will take place in Part Two. I’ll talk more about the differences between this version of The Book of the New Moon Door and the upcoming published version soon. Thanks for reading!
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