Page 3 of Requiem of Silence

“Your Majesty, there’s been another attack.”

Growing up in the isolated mountain valley, Jasminda had never been through one of the hurricanes that regularly assaulted thecoast. Storm season was still several months off, but a part of her looked forward to experiencing one of the tempests she’d read so much about. What would it be like to withstand the effects of nature’s fury? The onslaught of rain and wind strong enough to lift a man off his feet and cut a path of destruction through a city? How different would it be from life after the fall of the Mantle?

This morning, in the aftermath of a different kind of squall, the streets of the city were eerily quiet. The barely there hum of her town car’s tires as they glided down the pavement was the only sound. Tinted windows hid her from view as she peered out to the empty sidewalks beyond. Fear hung thick in the air like smoke as her motorcade rolled along, unhindered by the light traffic.

She’d read that being inside the eye of a hurricane was similar. The most severe thunderstorms would pass and you would find yourself in the midst of a hushed landscape, with clear skies. Unnatural lighting from the turgid clouds would give a sickly, xanthous hue to the world. It was a false calm, surrounded on all sides by a towering wall of devastation. And it would pass, all too soon, the gale restarting just as intensely as before. No quarter to be found.

Her motorcade pulled to a stop on a quiet street in Portside, the neighborhood where, until recently, all foreigners had been sequestered. One of her two new assistants, Camm Bosa, stood on the sidewalk waiting for her to alight.

“Your Majesty,” Camm said, bowing his head. He was an extremely capable young man in his early twenties, with dark reddish-brown freckles covering his face and a mop of unruly russet hair always looking ready to escape his head.

The street was hushed, with nothing obvious to cause alarm. Just a working-class neighborhood with well-maintained, midsized buildings. Concrete pavement in good repair; no trash littered the street. “Where was the bombing?” she asked, perplexed.

Camm winced. “This way. And it wasn’t a bombing, not exactly.” He began walking, long legs eating up the sidewalk. Jasminda’s Guard, half a dozen towering men clad in black, fell into formation around them.

Halfway down the block, Camm stopped and pointed to a building, completely intact. The simple stucco facade painted in a faded coral.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Look at the windows, Your Majesty,” Camm said. “The black smudges ringing each of them.”

Now that he pointed it out, there was a sooty sort of smudging around the windows. Several had flower boxes bordering them, and Jasminda noted that all the flowers were dry and brittle. It was mid-autumn, still several weeks from the first frost, and the resilient jack-a-dandies should be doing well, even with the smallest amount of care.

Camm cleared his throat. “The Sisterhood bought this building last year, planning to turn it into a dormitory. They’d begun renovations, so the top two floors were vacant when the Mantle fell. Refugees began moving in a couple of weeks ago. According to the local alderman, there had been a few clashes with Elsirans on the lower levels. The fire inspector just completed his review and says the top two floors were smoke bombed late last night.”

“Smoke bombed?”

“The devices are available in Fremia and Yaly. They produce smoke, but no fire. People who are sleeping never know what hit them. They just inhale the smoke until it smothers them.” Camm looked a little green at the thought, and Jasminda could relate.

“How many dead?”

“Twelve. At least twenty others had lung injuries, but Keepers arrived to heal them.”

The street was perfectly deserted, though movement caught her eye in the surrounding windows. Curtains fell back into place when she looked up.

“Where is everyone?” Her skin had begun to prickle with the feeling of being watched.

“Those in the building were evacuated just around back.”

Camm led the way down a narrow alley. They emerged in an open lot that stretched to the next street. A rusted fence divided two properties, but at some point it had been flattened, leaving a tract of cracked asphalt and weeds that was currently full of people. Two Sisterhood ambulances were parked next to a handful of open-topped wagons holding miserable-looking Elsirans. Standing grouped together on the other side of the lot were the Lagrimari residents.

“That’s not all, Your Majesty,” Camm warned.

Jasminda had been headed toward the victims but stopped short. “What?”

“The bottom four floors were not immune.”

“Do you mean they targeted Elsirans as well?” That hadn’t happened since the initial temple bombing. Since then, the terrorists had been more precise in their execution.

“Well, the smoke bombing of the Lagrimari was partially thwarted. The constables believe those on the bottom floors were victims of a counterattack an hour or so later.”

A gust of cold wind blew along with his words. “What kind of counterattack?”

“The temperature inside was simply… raised. No fire. And no smoke. Just heat, so intense that those who did not get out simply… cooked.”

Nausea threatened, and this time it wasn’t the wind that made her shiver. “Earthsong,” she whispered. “The Sons of Lagrimar?”

A group calling themselves the Sons of Lagrimar had begun a spate of violence recently, answering each of the pro-Elsiran assaults with one of their own, twisting Earthsong to use it as a weapon.

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