Into The Darkness

He used the club several more times - though never so entertainingly – before emerging on to the Avenue 'of Duchess Matalista, a broad street full of fancy shops, barristers' offices, and the sort of dining establishments the nobility and rich commoners patronized. When he saw light leaking from places like those, he had to be more polite with his warnings. If a baron or a well-connected restaurateur complained about him, he'd end up on permanent night duty in the nasty part of town.

He had just asked - asked it graveled a proud man - a jeweler to close his curtains tighter when a hiss in the air made him look up. He saw moving shadows against the stars. Before he could fill his lungs to shout, the egg he'd heard falling burst a couple of hundred yards behind him. Others crashed down all around Tricarico.

Bursts of light as their protective shells smashed sent shadows leaping crazily and chopped motion into herky-Jerky bits. The bursts were shatteringly loud. Bembo clutched at his ears. Blasts of suddenly released energies knocked him off his feet. The pavement tore his bare kiices.

Howling with pain, he scrambled up again and ran toward the nearest burst. The egg had come to earth on the Avenue of Duchess Matalista in front of an eatery where a supper for two cost about a week of Bembo's pay. It had blown a hole in the cobblestones and had blown in the front of the restaurant; he didn't know how the roof was staying up.

The egg had also blown in the front of the milliner's shop across the street, but Bembo didn't worry about that: the milliner's was closed and empty. Screaming, bleeding people came staggering out of the restaurant.

A woman got down on her hands and knees and vomited an expensive meal into the gutter.

Fire was beginning to lick at the exposed roof timbers. Careless of that,

Bembo dashed into the restaurant to help whoever hadn't managed to escape. Shards of glass crunched under his boots. That glass had been almost as deadly as the raw energy of the egg itself. The first person the flickering flames showed him had had his head almost sliced from his body by a great chunk that still glittered beside the corpse.

Someone farther in groaned. Bembo yanked up the table that pinned an old woman, stooped, got her arm around his shoulder, and half dragged, half carried her out to the street. "You!" he snapped to the woman who'd thrown up. "Bandage this cut on her leg.."

"With what?" she asked.

"Your kerchief, if you've got one. Your scarf there. Or cut cloth off her tunic or yours - you'll have a paring knife in your bag there, won't you?" Bembo turned to a couple of men who didn't look too badly hurt.

"You and you - in there with me. She's not the only one left inside."

"What if the roof caves in?" one man asked.

"What if an egg falls on us?" the other added. More eggs were falling.

Sticks bigger and heavier than a man could carry had been set up along some of Tricarico's ley lines. They blazed spears of light up into the sky at the Jelgavan dragons, but there weren't enough of them, not nearly enough.

That didn't matter, not to Bembo. "We'll be very unhappy," he answered. "Now come on, or I curse you for cowards."

"If you weren't a constable and immune, I'd call you out for that," growled the fellow who'd fretted about eggs.

"If you'd come without arguing, I wouldn't have had to say it," Bembo returned, and plunged back into the eatery without waiting to see whether the two men would follow. They did; he heard them kicking through the broken glass that covered the floor.

They worked manfully, once they got down to it. They and Bembo dragged out customers and servitors and, from the kitchens, a couple of cooks. As the flames began to take hold and the smoke got thicker, Bembo had to make his last trip out crawling and dragging a man after him. He couldn't breathe if he stood upright. He could hardly breathe while he crawled; his lungs felt scorched and filled with soot. The glass sliced the palms of his hands.

A horse-drawn pumper clattered up and began pouring water on the flames. Hacking and spitting up lumps of thick black phlegm, Bembo wished the crew could turn the hoses on the inside of his chest.

They were fighting a losing battle here; the eatery was going to bum.

Before long, the crew realized as much. They began playing water on the buildings to either side, neither of which had yet caught fire. Maybe they wouldn't, now. Even if they didn't, though, the water would damage whatever they held.

"I thank you, sir," the old woman Bembo had first rescued said from the sidewalk.

He reached for his hat, only to discover he wasn't wearing it. It had to be back in the eatery, which meant it was gone for good. Bembo instead, he said, "Milady, it was my duty and" - another coughing spasm cut off his words - "my duty and my honor."

"That's well said." The old woman - a noble, by her manners - inclined her head to Bembo.