Chapter Twenty-Seven–Trimela Ablaze

Djaren crept south through Trimela, keeping to the darkest shadows and stepping carefully heel to toe with his soft leather boots, as he’d been taught, not sacrificing balance for silence. Inside, he wanted to run, but that would be stupid, and he knew it. Kara and everyone else already seemed to think he’d combust if left unattended in a rough place. “It’s your face, dear,” Mother had told him once. “One day you’ll find a way to make their underestimation an advantage.” That was something she was already good at.

Tonight Djaren had smeared his offending face with charcoal, making himself as much as possible like the mottled shadows through which he crept.  He held his bow with an arrow at the ready, carefully tipped with Sister Marta’s paperflower extract. All around him, the city was spiraling so wildly into chaos that most of the people he crept past would not have noted him if he’d run by shrieking. There were people setting buildings afire, people trying to put burning buildings out, and people trying to loot the buildings, all at once. Kaunatoan fighters had reached the city now, too, and they clubbed ferociously at the fruit company men. None of them seemed reasonable or friendly to speak to and they all looked quite busy.

There was a very near thing with a fruit company man who came round a corner suddenly, trying to drag a resisting girl with him. He stumbled right into Djaren, who stabbed him promptly in the leg with his arrow. The man startled and shouted, and the girl kicked her attacker in the back and ran. Djaren leapt back out of the way as the man fell, barely dodging clear of his grasping hands. The man’s curses grew slurred after a moment, too groggy to shout or grasp any longer. Djaren got up shakily and prepared another arrow with a more generous smear of the solution. “That was accidentally heroic of you,” he told himself. “Well done. Keep walking now.”

He hoped his feeling of growing unease was just his own fear. Whatever the case, by the time he could see the water through smoke and the blaze of more fires, he felt uncharacteristically frantic and ready to bolt at every sound. He was very careful around corners, and so he saw the group of fruit company men gathering fresh ammunition down the street to the west, and went east instead. The problem with east was that an even larger group of Kaunatoa were finishing off some fruit company men in that direction. South was a blazing row of buildings, and north was a dark doorway locked from the inside, probably by people holed up with their own weapons.

The rising firelight was rapidly devouring the shadows he hid in. Shots whizzed overhead from the west, eliciting shouts from the east. After pounding at the dark north door without effect, Djaren dived down and rolled away south, toward the fires. No one followed him as he dashed under falling timbers and out through a shower of sparks into an area under attack only by fire.

He ran, letting his fear guide his instincts, and focusing on the feelings that felt least like his own. His boots sizzled, uncomfortably hot over char, as he ducked and wove. He skidded to a stop inside half a building. It looked like a customs house, with a high balcony above a dock where ships would unload their cargo for inspection, only half the building was burned away, and the ship within was on fire. He looked down to see the floor below cracked open under the weight of timbers fallen from the roof. There, half in sea water and half buried in burning rubble, was Kara.

“Kara, hang on, I’m here now,” he called down. He laced a rope over the sturdiest remaining rail of the balcony and rappelled down. He picked his way over smoking, broken floor to step carefully onto one of the beams that wasn’t crushing her. “I’m here.”

“Get out of my head, you idiot,” Kara choked hoarsely, not looking at him. She was gripping a beam white-knuckled to keep her head out of water. “I’m not dying thinking of you.”

“I’m not in your head, though I think you might be just a little in mine. And this is a rescue, so you dying isn’t an option today. You’d spoil the whole thing, and I was doing rather well.” Djaren looked with concern at the tangle of planks, limbs, and nearing flames. “Unless, of course, you still prefer the company of burning buildings to mine. I’d rather hoped we’d moved past that.”

“Oh, you’re really here.” Kara turned, surprised, and blinked at him. “How stupid are you?”

“Those results aren’t in yet,” Djaren said. “I need either the strength of Bearir right now, or some leverage.” Something caught his eye amid the mess. “Or an oar! Just the thing. Hold still, I’m going to try something.”

“Try leaving,” Kara said. “Bits of the ceiling keep coming down.”

“How did you even get in this mess?” Djaren asked, straining to lever up the top beam. It was beginning to blaze alarmingly.

“Not sure. Ellea stopped talking, so I just lit the fuse and ran. Then everything went up, and I was flying. Followed by crashing.” She winced. “Ow. My legs are wrong.”

“Yes, well, let’s worry about that once you’re not buried,” Djaren grunted, standing on the oar to get more leverage.

“And drowning,” Kara pointed out. “It was very awkward of you to come.”

“And really awkward of you to be drowning and buried. You aren’t making this rescue easy.” Djaren got the beam to shift a few inches, and Kara made a hissing noise. “Sorry!”

“If I just let you rescue me, you’d never get over the swelled head. You’d be impossible to live with,” Kara said, voice strained.

Djaren threw all his strength into shifting the beam, and though it wrenched his shoulder painfully, he at last got the top beam to slide away. “You’d be harder to live without,” he said slumping down near her for a moment to cradle his aching shoulder.

Kara’s eyes were very close now, wide and dark, afraid and angry, and very confused. “Don’t you dare say something stupid like that, and then give up.”

Djaren pulled himself up and found the oar with his good arm. “I’m not giving up. I don’t do that, remember?”

Pieces of the ceiling crashed to the ground a few yards away, putting larger cracks in the floor, and showering them with sparks. Djaren began prying at the second beam. It wasn’t burning, which, sadly, seemed to make it heavier. The heat and smoke were oppressive now. Every breath stung.

“Just kick it properly where it’s weakest,” Kara suggested.

“Well, you could do that, if our positions were reversed. I don’t have your unique skills.” Djaren’s oar began to bend and crack.

“Agreed. Next time you be the one pinned under timbers in the burning building. I’ll be doing the rescuing from now on.” Kara’s face was barely above water now.

“I’ll arrange it at the next opportunity,” Djaren said, throwing himself at the task of moving the beam before he lost his oar entirely. It gave way as the ceiling did. Djaren curled instinctively down near Kara, looking out under one arm as burning wood began to rain.