Clandestine circle

Linsha glanced sideways. Lady Knight Karine Thasally stood in the line beside her, her face begrimed with sweat and soot, her pale hair speckled with ash. She exchanged an empty bucket for the full one in Linsha’s hand.

Linsha turned her head so only Karine could hear. “Lord Bight took me to see Sable,” she answered as softly as she could over the uproar of the fire.

Karine nearly dropped her bucket. “What?”

The expression on her leader’s face was worth the trip under the mountains.

“You’d better report this in person. The Circle is starting to question your silence.”

Linsha ignored that. “Are you doing well?”

Karine grimaced. “So far. But we’ve lost two others. Good men. Lynn, be very careful. There are ugly rumors spreading in the outer city that blame Lord Bight for this catastrophe. The citizens here are outraged about the closing of the city gates. They fear the city council is leaving them out here to die.”

“That’s preposterous,” Linsha snapped, passing on a bucket.

“You know that and I know that. But everyone is terrified. They want someone to blame. Rumors are rampant.”

Linsha remembered the man who incited the boys to throw bottles at Lord Bight and the crowd. “Is there a possibility these rumors are linked to one person or a group of persons?”

Karine was surprised by the suggestion. “Not that we know of. Why?”

“Just a thought.” She started to ask Karine to have someone look into it, but an ugly thought stopped her. The three leaders of the Clandestine Circle wanted Lord Bight discredited. What was to stop some of their other operatives from making a few well-chosen comments, opinions, or hearsay rumors in some busy tavern or crowded street? No one would know the source of the rumors. She wondered if Varia had had any luck finding the man with the strange gait. A talk with him could be very interesting.

Another thought, a safer one, occurred to her, and she asked, “Have you heard anything about Elenor? I’m worried about her.”

“Not yet,” Lady Karine said. “If I can, I’ll send someone to check on her.”

They worked in silence side by side, passing buckets until their arms and hacks ached and their eyes and throats stung from the smoke.

“ ’Ware the walls!” someone shouted.

Everyone turned to stare at the first warehouse. Its roof gone and its interior gutted with flame, the warehouse looked like a burning shell, and the outer walls, weakened by heat and a lack of support, began to sag. The danger lay in the fact that no one could be certain which way the walls would fall. Two appeared to be sagging inward, but the other two bulged out over the streets, crowded with volunteers and onlookers.

Linsha felt a strange trembling in the soles of her feet. It reminded her of her passage under Mount Ashkir when the earth shook from the power of the volcano. But she wasn’t near a volcano vent now. The trembling increased dramatically until her legs were shaking. Other people noticed it, too. Voices broke out in cries of fear.

Commander Durne identified it first. “Earthquake!” he shouted. “Earthquake! Everyone away from the buildings.”

Shouting and screaming, people tried to run as the shaking became stronger. The fire fighters staggered away from the burning buildings. The first warehouse shivered violently, its walls swaying, then it collapsed in a blazing heap of timbers and rubble. The fire in the second warehouse abruptly leaped skyward as the structure cracked apart, allowing air to rush into the interior. The fires roared, their ruddy light stark against the night sky. The earth groaned and shook like a thing in pain.

Linsha and Karine threw down their buckets and turned to run. Suddenly Karine grabbed Linsha’s arm and pointed with a shaking finger. “Lynn, look!”

Not more than five paces away from the two women, the paving stones in the street started to shake so hard they vibrated loose from their places. Linsha looked closer and saw the worst of the tremors radiated out from the center of the block containing the two burning warehouses. Everything within the roughly oval area shook as if battered by a giant, while the earth outside the affected area seemed only to tremble in shock. Beset by the unending tremors, the ground became like quicksand, unstable and hungry.

With sudden ferocity, a massive sinkhole yawned open beneath the two warehouses. Rubble, flaming timbers, masonry, wine barrels, oil kegs, and the burning remains of two buildings collapsed into the gaping hole in a rending, sliding crash. Smoke and dust roiled up into the night sky.

Deeper into the hole slid the wreckage. Street pavers, hitching posts, buckets, and a freight wagon trembled on the edge of the monstrous hole, then slipped over into the churning flames and debris.

Karine and Linsha stood awestruck, gazing at the sinkhole so close to their feet, until someone drew them away.

“I’d hate to see you two fall in there,” Commander Durne shouted over the cacophony of the collapsing buildings.