“Do you have cups?”
Sindra looked up, confused. “Huh?”
“Cups. Glasses. Bowls will do, if you’ve got nothing else in this dump.” He slid a hand into his satchel and pulled the whiskey out, giving it a come-hither slosh. “You want to pay me back? I just finished my rounds and I hate drinking alone.”
Sindra grinned. “Close the fucking door, then. Snow’s coming.”
He smiled, walked to the door, looked up to the clouds. She was right. Winter was coming early to the Valley, as it always did. Snow fell gently, a layer of cold, black flakes falling softly upon the town’s—
“Wait.” Meret squinted. “Black?”
Somewhere far away, beyond the thick cloying gray of the sky, he heard a sound. Like a voccaphone, he thought, that strange crackling machine warble that couldn’t ever quite sound like a human. A tune, growing louder, one he could have sworn he’d heard before. What were those lyrics? What was that song?
“Is that,” Sindra muttered to herself, glancing out the window, “the Revolutionary anthem?”
And then the sky exploded.
First, sound.
A roar split the sky apart, a wail of breaking wood and shrieking metal fighting to be heard. The gray clouds shuddered and swirled, chased away to reveal a bright red flash, as though someone had jammed a knife into the sky and cut a wound lengthwise.
Then, fire.
In cinders, in embers, in fist-sized chunks and shards as big as Meret, it fell from the sky. A splintered timber crashed in Rodic’s field and lay smoldering like a pyre. A blade of metal as long as a rothac speared through the roof of a house and belched fire through the wound it had just cleaved. All around the town, the fires fell, erupting in gouts of flame, an orchard of laughing red blossoms in the span of a soot-choked breath.
And then, the ship.
Its prow punched through the clouds, the gray parting for the great iron figurehead of a stern-looking man, his hand thrust out in defiant warning. A hull followed, riddled with wounds of black and red as fires burst out of its timbers. Propellers across its deck and prow screamed in metal agony as they came apart under the stress of the flame. For one glorious moment, the sky was alight with the beautiful view of the ship, as magnificent as any he had seen in the richest harbors across the Scar, burning as bright as a tiny sun.
And then it crashed.
Meret had the presence of mind to scream as it plummeted into the earth. If there was a god, they must have heard him, for the ship veered away from the town and smashed itself into the fields nearby, carving a blackened scar into the earth as it tore through the trees there. A cloud of smoke roiled up, sweeping through the town and casting them into blackness.
“Shit.”
He hadn’t even noticed Sindra standing beside him that whole time. She was still staring at the wound in the clouds, mouth agape despite the ash gathering on her lips.
“That was… a ship,” she whispered reverently. “A fucking airship. The Great General’s very own fleet. I remember the propaganda, the paintings they made.” She swallowed hard. “That thing’s a Revolutionary prize. They won’t let it sit here. We have to get everyone and get away from the town before they come.”
That was very good advice, Meret thought.
And had he caught the whole of it, he’d probably have agreed.
As it was, he only managed to catch about half of it before running off toward the wreckage of the site like a fucking idiot.
It was stupid, he knew. But he had been stupid to come to the Valley to help people, stupider still to become an apothecary in the first place, so he saw no reason to stop now. He slowed only to shout warnings to get clear to the curious and horrified onlookers who had gathered outside to see the sky fall. He didn’t stop until he found the first body.
He tripped over it, planting face-first into the burned dirt. He looked back and grimaced at the sight of a blue coat laden with fancy-looking medals. Treating Revolutionaries always came with risks—they tended to “thank” you for your service by conscripting you into their armies.
Fortunately, this guy was dead.
Unfortunately, it had been magic that killed him.
An icicle jutted out of his chest, as long as a man’s arm, still whispering frigid mist even as fires burned around him. Only a mage could do something like that. And there weren’t many mages who weren’t part of the Imperium. Which meant war had brought this ship here.
And this ship had brought war here.
He pulled himself to his feet and beheld the other bodies scattered like ash across the field, half hidden in the cloud of dust and grit. Most were burned to death, smoldering alongside the ship’s rubble. A few had been crushed or broken like toys, tossed when the ship had been struck. A few others were dead of more unusual circumstances. But they were all dead.
More than he’d ever seen in one spot.
“You fucker.”
A hand grabbed him by the shoulder. He whirled, fearing the Revolution had already come to claim their war machine or that the dead had risen due to some magical birdshittery. Seeing Sindra’s angry face made him think that either of those might have been preferable.
“Do you not understand what’s happening here?” she snapped. “Everyone in the Valley must have seen this ship come down. Either the Revolution will come to pick up the pieces or the Imperium will come to finish the job and both of those things end with Littlebarrow and everyone in it dead.”
“But I had to help—” Meret began weakly.
“Help what?”
Good question. There was nothing left for him here. Even if he did find survivors, what could herbs and salves do for people who had been crushed by a giant airship or electrocuted by doomlightning or whatever the fuck those mages did?
But he could still help the people of Littlebarrow. And they’d need help. Whatever else happened after this day, it would not end well.
He sighed, turned, and nodded at Sindra. She nodded back, cuffed him lightly across the head, and together they started walking.
Until the rubble started moving, anyway.
The groan of timber caught his ear. He turned and saw a pile of debris shifting. He walked toward it and, as if in response, something reached out.
A hand. Wrapped in a dirty leather glove stained with blood. Tattoos of blue-and-white cloudscapes and wings stretched from the wrist down to the elbow. It reached out of the rubble, fingers twitching.
Alive.
In need of help.
Or so Meret thought when he started to run toward it. But when he came within ten feet of the pile, it shifted suddenly. A great beam of wood rose, pushed upward by a shape shadowed in the cloud of ash. Two tattooed arms lifted the great beam and, with a grunt of effort, shoved them aside.
The smoke cleared. The fires ebbed. And Meret saw a woman standing there.
Alive.
She was tall, lean, corded with muscle that shuddered with labored breathing, her dirty leathers not making much of an effort to conceal it. Or the numerous old scars and fresh injuries she wore. An empty scabbard hung at her hip. Her hair, Imperial white and cut rudely short, was dusted with ash. Pale blue eyes stared across the field, empty.
He started to move toward her. Sindra seized him.
“No.” No anger in her voice, just quiet, desperate fear. “No, Meret. You can’t help that one.”
“Why not?”