Scorched by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #7)(46)

He took me into his arms, and I buried my face against his chest, still tearstained from Rusalia. He rubbed my back in slow circles as I gulped in shuddering breaths, trying to get myself under control. His woodsy, herbal scent soothed me, and after a few long moments, the tears finally stopped.

“I know this is hard,” Comenius said, his words gentle but firm as he lifted my head. “But we don’t have time to grieve now. The city needs every able-bodied mage, and the only reason I stayed here was in case you and Rusalia returned. Now that she is home, you and I must go out and assist in whatever way we can.”

I nodded, letting Comenius help me to my feet. He was right. Fenris might be dead, but there were plenty of others still alive who needed our help to stay that way. Squaring my shoulders, I shoved all my pain into the vault filled with Fenris’s memories, then slammed it shut. There would be time to grieve later. Right now, it was time for action.





17





The first place we headed was the Enforcers Guild, to see where we might be most needed. To my relief, the building had weathered the quake with only minor damage. Captain Skonel was running a tight ship, efficiently dispatching crews to deal with the terrified citizens and prevent any looting. Two foremen from the smaller crews were helping him organize, and a quick talk with them confirmed they were indeed following Chen and Kardanor’s plan to the letter. Tents were already being set up outside the city for temporary shelter, as well as improvised hospitals. The crews were herding homeless citizens to the tents, but there weren’t nearly enough hands available to search through the wreckage for survivors, so Comenius and I were dispatched to Maintown to assist with that.

“By Magorah,” I said, after I’d brought my steambike to a halt just two blocks away from the Maintown border. We’d cut through Shiftertown to get here, and while there were some collapsed buildings and road damage there, it was nothing like Maintown. The whole damn place seemed to be on fire, acrid smoke billowing from crumbled buildings. Screams and sobs carried to us on the wind even from this distance. It was worse than anything I’d ever seen before—far worse than even the damage the Resistance had done during the Uprising.

“It’s a good thing I brought supplies,” Comenius said, hefting his brown leather bag full of potions and bandages. “I fear they won’t be nearly enough.”

We walked the rest of the two blocks, and Rylan met us at the border. His usual smirk was nowhere to be found. In its place was a hard, implacable gaze. “This is unconscionable,” he growled, his rage barely leashed. “Those cheap bastards, Mendle and Gorax, should be castrated, then drawn and quartered, for this.”

“That would be a good start,” I agreed, letting my own rage come to the surface. It was better to feel anger than grief right now, I decided. Anger would fuel me, push me to work harder to save the survivors. Grief would only hold me back.

Rylan smiled grimly at that. “I’ve already checked in with Kardanor,” he said. “He and Director Chen are running the show down here, and making quite a good team, too. He said to report to Foreman Chabot—she needs help digging out survivors in the Coldwater Shopping District.”

Comenius and I followed Rylan in the direction he’d mentioned, but we didn’t make it there. There was catastrophe everywhere—children trapped in burning buildings, women and men lying in the street with broken limbs as they waited for mages to triage and move them to the hospitals, and we ended up helping along the way. Rylan jumped into one of those burning buildings to save a child, while I used my magic and brawn to help clear rubble away that was trapping another family inside their home. Comenius was roped into helping at the nearby hospital tent to mix up pain-killing potions. It wasn’t that there wasn’t anyone helping—in fact, there were hundreds of shifters, humans, and mages working side by side to save the survivors. But for every one helper, there were fifty citizens who needed saving.

Unfortunately, not everyone I pulled from the wreckage could be saved. I had to force myself not to get emotional whenever I pulled the bodies of dead children from the rubble, which was far too often. I nearly broke down when I unearthed the corpse of a pregnant woman who looked to be only a few weeks away from her delivery date. But I managed to hold it together, to shove my grief and rage into the box that held Fenris’s memories, and keep slogging through.

Eventually, I ended up in the hospital tent too, healing broken limbs and internal bleeding. The mages running the tents seemed surprised and impressed at the skill and speed with which I healed my patients, but they didn’t question me about it. Which was good, because how could I tell them that my newfound skill and knowledge was unearned? That it had been given to me by a mage who wasn’t even my master, a mage who everyone had considered a shifter? The memory-sharing spell was only supposed to be used if a master was passing away before his student could complete their apprenticeship, and in these times of peace, that was incredibly rare. Acquiring wholesale knowledge this way when everyone else had to work for it was considered cheating.

I wasn’t sure how long I toiled away in the tents, but eventually I had to stop and refuel. All the magic I’d used to heal bodies and clear away rubble was taking a heavy toll. Sitting in a corner of a tent, I wolfed down a stack of ham sandwiches as fast as I could, not wanting to sit around too long. There was still too much work to be done.