Page 64 of Sullied Saints

We push through back towards the exit. The street is crowded, though some filter off to find a safe place from the blaze now glowing off of Crennick.

“This will get the guard called on Tregam for sure,” I say.

“Why? It’s just a fire, it got out of hand,” Howie returns, and I give him a look.

“He’s right. If Syr comes through, there won’t be anything about arson or rioters in the state news until the ash has settled.”

“You can’t bury something like this,” I point out, grimacing at the flames licking high from an old wooden slum.

“You don’t need to bury it,” Howie tells me. “You just need to delay it long enough that they don’t care about the truth when they do know it.”

Maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m too tired to care anymore. Let the guard come. What more can be done to us?

The street is wide, the heat a sharp glow on the sides of our faces as we walk down the opposite side. If anything, the closest flames seem to be dying, running out of fuel as the fire’s trajectory takes it further into the heart of Crennick

We reach the corner and the one police car still stationed by the two dead bodies that fell from above. There are no police in sight, and the patrol car has smashed windows. Someone tried to set up yellow tape around the bodies, but it’s trampled and rolling in the slight breeze now.

Cassandra’s body is a contorted, blackened figure. Someone set her on fire, and half of her is burned away, the other half easily recognisable. Her eye is open.

For a moment, the four of us just stare at her. She seems so small, so insignificant now. For everything she did.

The wail of the fire engines makes me realise how fast everything happened. It can’t have been much more than an hour since we first pulled up. A whole lifetime can fit into an hour when it needs to.

The heat makes us sweat, and we're all slick with soot. As our backup rolls up, we turn away from Cassandra’s body and try to help pull the onlookers back from the burning side of the road.

“The fire truck can’t get through,” I tell one girl.

“I know.” She tugs away from me. Looking at her, I realise she might only be a teenager. And I see what they’re doing as I glance down the line of the curb. The fire engine hoots vainly. And the people all stay in a line, hands linked.

A dozen or so men in protective gear hop out of the truck, facing the crowd which doesn't want to let them through. More sirens in other directions cut off. I can imagine they’re coming up against similar barriers to this one, all along the edge of Crennick.

Because the people have decided. Crennick is beyond saving.

Tonight, it all burns.

"What do we do?" I murmur.

"It’s time to let it go," Howie says. Dirk’s hand slips into mine, and I see the flames reflected in his eyes.

We all stand back, and do nothing.

***

The flames lick their way from one building to the next, and in places where it doesn't catch well enough, it’s suspected that propellant may have been thrown on. The fire department had to set up a line between Downtown and Crennick in the end, and only there was the blaze stopped. No other suburb caught so much as an ember.

But of Crennick, it has turned to ash and smoke. Few buildings are left. The old gunpowder factory had enough residue to start the blaze over again in the middle, spewing off in every direction.

For two days, Crennick burned, and little else happened in Tregam during that time. Even now, the news reports only on the fire as though it were an accident, conjecturing the squatters may have started it. Indeed, they may have, but the rest of Tregam kept it going.

It’s a tragedy, that’s what the news says, at least until the blaze is dying down, leaving the black ground and nothing else behind. Many of Cassandra's followers who ran into Crennick away from the angry mob are never seen again, and an unfortunate handful of others are lost, presumed burned.

Many walk through the ash on the third day, an empty palette where so much loomed for so long. Embers glow, ruins still smoking.

The station is quiet, nearly empty in the aftermath as most of the detectives are out on burn sites, old remains revealed among the fresh rubble suggesting answers to cold cases.

Dirk and I step together into Tawill’s office. Her forehead is smoother than last time, and while the sight of us seems to tire her, it doesn’t anger her. There’s a weight lifted from her.

A weight has been lifted off all of our shoulders, really. There was no National Guard in the end. It was fire, a natural disaster, as far as those outside Tregam were concerned. We sit down. Howie and Dean have already been through and received the necessary reprimand from the department.

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