Inkmistress (Of Fire and Stars 0.5)(11)

But I woke not to a morning breeze, or the soft touch of Ina’s hands and her kiss good-bye, but to smoke that smelled of death.





CHAPTER 5


INA AND I STUMBLED OUT INTO THE FOREST AS QUICKLY as we could, coughing all the while. Though a plume of smoke blotted out the exact location of the sun, the temperature told me that we’d overslept.

“Something feels wrong,” I said. In my Sight the life in the valley ebbed away, a soft counterpoint to the violence of the flames. The absence of life was a wound in the landscape, a dim spot where once there had been brightness.

“No!” Ina took off down the trail toward the vista, sliding though the mud and slush.

I raced after her, coughing, not certain whether smoke or fear stole more of my breath. Ina skidded to a halt at the edge of the cliff. Seconds later, she fell to her knees on the rocky ground, screaming.

Shifting clouds of smoke blew away to reveal the valley in flames. The largest building in Amalska had already been reduced to scorched bones—the hall where the entire town must have gathered this morning for the community meeting. A train of eight large wagons dotted the main road of the village, the first one already trundling out of town.

Bandits.

They must have raided at daybreak. It was already almost over.

I caught the edge of Ina’s cloak as she leaped to her feet and tried to bolt for the trail.

“Stop,” I cried. “There’s nothing we can do!” If we went to the village now, we’d only be targets, whether for the chaos of the flames or the cruelty of the bandits. I didn’t want to make the long climb down before we were certain all of them had left and another wave would not be coming.

She fought me for only a moment, until the last of the meeting hall collapsed, sending a dark cloud of smoke bursting into the sky. No one who had been in that building could have survived. We sank back to the ground and huddled together, our eyes blurring with tears.

If only we had wakened sooner. If only there had been some way to stop the bandits.

The shadow god had surely taken the village.

“I hate him.” She choked out the words. “He could have sent fighters. He could have done something. Anything! Why didn’t he help us?”

I didn’t have to ask to know she spoke of the boar king. She was right. He should have been able to help. What was the point of having a monarch with powerful magic at his disposal if he didn’t use it to protect his people?

I murmured words of comfort to her, knowing they were empty but sure that silence would be worse. She clung to me until the last of the bandits’ carts departed with their spoils, just as the sun hit its height in the sky, glowing an angry red through the haze.

“I have to go back,” she said after the wagons had disappeared into the pass. “Someone must have survived. My parents . . . they knew this could happen. They planned for this. There are places they could have hidden.”

My stomach twisted. I couldn’t tell her the truth: Amalska was a dead place. Normally the valley was bright with life, softly glowing in my Sight, the villagers’ mortal magic and manifests resonating with mine like a distant echo. Now I sensed nothing—only a void.

“I’ll come with you,” I said. Miriel’s rules about me staying away from the villagers were meaningless now.

I followed Ina down the trail, my heart leaping into my throat every time her step faltered near the edge or the wind whipped at our backs. I racked my mind for words of comfort she might need when faced with the destruction below, but what comfort are words to someone who has lost everything? I had lost everything, too. Without the village, I no longer had a purpose. My dreams of ever being part of the community had burned as surely as everything else. All I had left was Ina. I had to protect her, to keep her close.

The flames had already begun to dwindle by the time we reached the valley floor, though a column of smoke still rose from the meeting hall. The houses surrounding it had also burned, leaving little but charred rubble and the reek of blackened flesh behind. The muddy river tumbled through town in a song of sorrow. I shivered in spite of the mild afternoon air. In the face of this destruction, it felt more like a cruelty than a kindness.

Ina ran toward her parents’ house, which still stood intact on the near side of the river. I knew we’d find it empty. I stepped through the door she’d left hanging open. The house still smelled like a home. A place where at any moment smiling people might come through the door, eager to share a meal and their hopes for the coming spring. My throat tightened until I could barely breathe. The most important things in the world—a family and a home—had been taken from Ina.

Though the bandits had left the kitchen untidy in their haste to take anything useful, a kettle of water still stood ready to be heated. Dough sat rising in a warm spot next to the oven, overflowing from its dish and collapsing upon itself. Ina rushed through the four small rooms, even checking the loft, her breathing fast, her hands trembling. I helped her push aside a shelf that covered a trapdoor in the floor, but a lantern shone down into the secret cavern illuminated only shelves of preserves, spices, and dried meat. I retreated to the front door and watched helplessly as she began to come to terms with what I already knew. They were gone. Everyone had been at the meeting hall for the weekly tithe.

After closing the trapdoor, she fell into my arms.

“How could this happen?” She sobbed into my shoulder.