New gangs of thieves and scoundrels usually popped up in late winter when food grew scarce, and rain and mud left laborers idle. But this name had been circulating all summer like the smoke and ash from Mount Agguato drifting on the winds from the south. Evil. Out of season.
By the time the bells of the Palazzo Segnori tower rang noontide, I had delivered my work and collected my fees. Relieved of the burdensome load, I debated whether to return home or spend an hour with my friend Vashti, my Chimera partner Dumond’s exceptional wife. But I carried three new documents to copy—urgently needed, as always—and had stacks of completed work at home yet to deliver. I should rid myself of one annoyance or the other.
Halfway down the Via Salita, as I neared the arched gateway into the Asylum Ring, my head began to throb. The pain grew swiftly to a pounding worthy of Dumond’s forge. Instead of returning home, I considered heading down to the Pipes and standing under the spill of diverted river water. Sadly, five thousand other Beggars Ring residents would be there ahead of me.
A sharp jolt made me stumble, and the hammer behind my eyes became a dagger. Someone must have bumped into me—only I couldn’t say where or who.
But then a deep, ominous rumble invaded my body through my ears and feet at the same time, trembling my bones, itching my skin. I staggered as the cobbles began to roll under me. The street … the city … the world undulated and jiddered.
It wasn’t just me. Shouts came from every direction. Men staggered. Women toppled or grabbed hold of the nearest body. Children wailed as parents flailed or clutched them close. Some ran. But there was no escape. Earthquake …
A sharp crack like cannon fire split the rumbling, and a stone pediment plummeted from the gate arch, landing with a thud that set dust and stone shards flying and a man screaming in mortal agony.
A swooshing avalanche just behind spun me around to clattering breakage. A woman stared upward, her mouth a perfect O, as her market stall awning collapsed on her and her display of pots. On the building above, a balcony creaked and swayed.
Dizzy, unable to hold myself upright, I crouched to the ground and covered my head against the rain of bricks and roof tiles.
The earth heaved again and again, then jerked violently as if to shake humans from its pelt. I fell forward and braced myself on my hands, drawing on all my will as if I could force the world to be still. In that same moment a throaty bellow of soul-searing rage welled up through the lesions inside my skull.
I clapped my hands to my ears before my head could shatter.
That did no good at all. The fury surged inside my skin, poured into me like molten bronze twisting my bones and setting my sinews aflame.
More cracks and snaps and noisy crashes. A toppling timber grazed my hand. I shoved it aside … and then everything stopped.
Numb, I took a shaking breath. A taint of such malevolence lingered on my spirit that my stomach emptied itself. My arm blotted bile from my mouth.
A moment of breathless silence. Then voices rose on every side.
“Got to get it off him. Need more hands…”
“Mam, wake up! Mam!”
“Over here, here … there’s folk under this heap.”
“’Tis the sign! He’s coming … Dragonis…”
“Can’t help. I’ve got to get home … the nursling…”
The image of the terrified pottery seller, wide-eyed as the sky fell in on her, was scalded on my vision, a substitute for thought. Shivering as if the quake had inverted the seasons, I scrambled up and ran to the woman’s collapsed stall, now buried under the splintered balcony. I dragged away scraps of wood, razor-edged roof tiles, and the rags of the canvas awning. The debris shifted, releasing a thready moan.
“Stay still,” I said. “I’ll get you out. You’ll be all right. Hold on. Here—”
I grabbed the arm of the first person who passed by. “We’ve got to move this wood. She’s trapped underneath.”
Together we lifted the twisted plank floor of the fallen balcony and found the woman under a tangle of her awning posts. Though blood streaked her face and bare arms, the tented posts had shielded her from worse injury.
“Virtue’s hand,” she croaked, and waved me off. I left her sitting dazed in the ruin of her livelihood.
The tower bells had begun a continuous, demanding clangor. Runners would be out already, dispatched from the City Steward’s office, diverted from daily duties so they could visit every neighborhood to report fire, damaged water pipes, rescues needed, the injured, the dead. They’d need everyone to help.
My feet moved without purpose. Where to go? Memories of rage echoed inside my skull. Dragonis, people would say, the monster trying to escape his prison under the earth. I didn’t believe in myths or monsters, but today … The violence had rattled me.
Shaking, I kneaded my temples, wiping my watering eyes to clear them. Home was the only thought I could cling to—the one-room hovel that had once housed my parents and their ever-expanding brood. Though old and ugly, squatting in a filthy alley, it was built of mortared stone—a rarity in the Beggars Ring. We’d be safe there, Neri and I.…
Neri! Mother Gione’s heart, where was he? Rack my aching head as I tried, I could not remember where my brother was to be today.
My aimless wandering became purposeful. The Via Salita would take me downward. I needed to hurry. To find him. To help. Certain, the Beggars Ring was where the most help would be needed. The dwellings in the Beggars Ring were flimsier than those in the Market Ring … poorly built tenements, mud brick, canvas. Such a violent quake could have half the district in ruins.
“Do you think she’ll be all right?” Someone fell into step beside me. The fellow who’d helped move the wood—the same spiky-chinned youth who had called me prune face.
I glanced over my shoulder. The pottery woman had gotten to her feet and was placing a clay pitcher, miraculously intact, into my abandoned crate. My client’s three rolled documents were nowhere in sight.
“Looks as if,” I whispered.
“Are you all right, damizella?”
“Shaken well and good.” Blinking away the blur, I inspected my hands … the rest of me. Dusty clothes. Scratches and scrapes. My body was numb. Inside, I was a quivering mess. On the other hand, the youth had a gash on his head. Runnels of blood streaked his dirty cheeks. His sleeve was torn at one shoulder and matted to his arm. “Did you know you’re bleeding?”
“Crack on the head’s left me wiggy,” he said. “But I’ve felt worse shakings.”
“Worse? In Cantagna?” This was surely the worst I’d experienced. I’d never felt an earthquake so deep, so harsh and intimate, so violent. And yet …
Most permanent structures along the Via Salita stood intact. Stalls were flimsy, and overhangs like balconies, cornices, and decorative pediments often collapsed when the earth shook. But for the most part, the houses were whole. How was that possible when the shaking had been so dreadful as to leak inside me?
Though people yet dug through the mess, the crowd around the fallen pediment had dispersed. The poor man wasn’t screaming anymore.
Spirits, Neri … please don’t be dead. I’ll find you.
“Fortune’s benefice,” I said to the youth. “I need to go.”