“You grew up here, huh? Looks … quiet.”

That was, Ram thought, the closest to a nice thing you could say about Urapu hearth. He had missed Mother and Father often and deeply, and already felt a wistful nostalgia for parts of Dul Karagi. But he couldn’t recall missing Urapu at all.

They stood, legs damp from the wade ashore, a quarter-mile north of the fields’ edge. After two days of argument en route, they’d agreed to leave the barge well before it got to the hearth. Ram wasn’t sure why they’d argued—it was only good sense—except that he’d been stuck in a small space with Darun. Two days of close confinement had not improved their relationship; to Ram she seemed as selfish, callous, and dishonest as Ushna had been, only she didn’t bother to hide it. But Ushna’d been old, dirty, and creepy-looking. Pretty girls with ugly souls could still get by just fine.

Now they had a short walk in the morning sun. It felt good to stretch his legs, and he tried to enjoy the walk while he could, and not think of what would come at the end. Not that there was much chance of that with Darun around. “How many fires in there?”

He concentrated. “Ten. We had the tower light, plus six handmaidens.”

“That’s only—“

“Yes, I can count!” He stopped walking to look again. “Three of the little ones aren’t moving. Probably dulspheres, or something.”

“You sure you don’t want—“

“Yes, I’m sure. We won’t need Beshi, he stays in the bedroll. I’ve known these people my whole life. They don’t like me, but they’re not going to kill me.”

“It’s not ‘Beshi,’ it’s a sword. A thing. Not a pet, Ram. You don’t need to name it.”

“It’s indwelt, so it’s got a soul. It’s got a soul, so it’s a person. People have names.” This wasn’t a new subject for them either. He’d chosen “Beshi” to give Kamenrag’s sword a more peaceful role model, but it didn’t seem to be working. It kept asking to kill her, and he wasn’t unsympathetic.

“You know, all this treating a hunk of metal like it’s your special buddy is not filling me with confidence about your decision-making.”

“Look, I have a feeling about this, okay? There’s no danger at Urapu.”

“Ooh, voices in your head. That’s much better.”

They’re not voices, he wanted to say, but didn’t. They’d been over that before, too, and any number of other topics. Ram still wasn’t totally certain he was right about all of them, but if the first eight debates on a subject hadn’t gotten them anywhere useful, a ninth wouldn’t either.

Bal, at least, was consistently silent, to the point where Ram forgot he was there. Ram could appreciate that, even if it frightened him. If the big man had any interests of his own, other than killing things, Ram hadn’t seen them. He was perfectly silent, perfectly obedient, and would murder Ram without hesitation or difficulty if Darun gave the order. Ram wished he knew when, if ever, Darun might give that order. She wasn’t keeping Bal around for a pack mule.

Urapu’s wheat was still young, green tips brushing against their thighs as they trudged towards the hearth. Small gangs of bonded children, tiptoeing through on weed detail, looked up and goggled as they passed. Two blackbands! What could it mean? Ram hoped to be long gone with his family before they or anyone else found out.

It was waning day, so the north, east, and south gates were posted with a single guard, to watch for hearthless trespassers. Ram tried not to break stride, to walk casually through the north gate as though he were returning home after an hour, and not the better part of a bloom. He waved at the man on duty. “Lusingama! How’s it been?”

The man shot him a surprisingly hateful look, and gave no answer, but left the gate open. Ram walked through, then stopped in his tracks. Darun looked around and chuckled. “Your dad’s a mason, right? He’s got some work to do.”

Urapu had never been impressive to look at: a grid of dusty brick and sandstone houses, so small you could stand at one gate and, craning your neck, catch a glimpse out the gate at the far side. Ram remembered grass sprouting among the paving-stones, windows bare of even skin coverings, sagging and cracking facades on the poorer dwellings.

Now, it looked as though it had been hit by an earthquake. Every third building in the hearth had collapsed, and few of the surviving houses were completely undamaged; everywhere Ram looked he saw holes, cracked walls, fallen roofs. Chips of stone and broken brick cluttered the streets. Every man and woman in the pyre looked to be at work cleaning up debris, or else pegging down a cloth over an exposed space to have some shelter for white day.

Darun was saying something else, but he didn’t hear her. His feet carried him forward past long lines of wreckage, where his former neighbors sifted to extract what was left of their wealth. Most were too busy to notice him passing. The few who did—like the three men swathed in bloodstained bandages, variously sitting or lying on the ground outside what remained of Anshibig the surgeon’s house—only stared vacantly at him.

When he was halfway to the tower, he shifted to a fast walk, then a run. Soon he was stumbling over wreckage, then over people, not stopping to look back or apologize. He had left Darun and Bal behind. It didn’t matter.

The damage only seemed to increase as he went further in. He passed by the tower—that, at least, stood tall and pristine—around the crumbled remains of the dining-hall, over a hillock of rubble that used to be the handmaidens’ dormitory, until he stood before the house he had grown up in.

It was perfectly fine. Every house around it was missing a wall at minimum, but even the fig tree in the courtyard hadn’t lost a leaf. There were smudges of soot on the walls (had there been a fire, too?), and one of the curtains was ripped. Otherwise, it was the same house he had left ten and a half months ago. He stood panting in front of the door, staring down at the latch and wondering when he would have the nerve to reach out and open it.

“They’re not in there,” came a hoarse voice from behind him. “The house is empty.”

He turned around; it was Watchmaster Kambuz. The single man most responsible for the hearth’s safety. His left arm was in a sling. “Are they … “

“Alive and well. Man, woman, and child. But they’re not in there.”

“Where?”

“Not yet, Rammash im-Belemel. Come with me.” And he walked off toward the tower.

“What happened?” Ram said, scrambling after.

“I was hoping you could tell us that,” Kambuz said as he clambered painfully over a pile of crushed brick. He wasn’t a young man anymore. “It has only been a day. This way.”

Kambuz led him across the remains of the tower commons, where many of the paving-stones seemed to have briefly melted. Blots of black char and ash pocked the ground. The little shrine to Tegnem had collapsed into a pile of burnt timber and cracked stone; Kuara’s was damaged, but still stood.

The three grandest homes in the hearth, a set of two-story townhouses with extensive wooden trim, had once stood at the far side of the commons. The leftmost house had fallen, and the one in the middle was too badly damaged to use, but the one on the right was mostly intact. Kambuz opened its door, and waved Ram inside. He hesitated; he would never have been allowed in this house before. But that didn’t seem likely to matter now.

The front door opened onto a spacious foyer and sitting room hung with fine textiles. One of the three dulspheres he had sensed lay in an iron cradle on a table here, a masterwork of glass and hardwood with four matching chairs. In one of them sat an elderly man of no great stature, a thin, hunchbacked figure with long silver hair and a perfectly-trimmed beard on his somber, heavily wrinkled face. A cane lay on the tabletop before him, weighing down an open scroll. The old man looked up from it as they entered, and pointed imperiously at the chairs.

“Kambuz, im-Belemel. Sit.”

Ram obeyed, choosing the seat across from the old man. He’d want his space. His pack, with bedroll and sword, went in the chair to his left, while Kambuz sat on his right. The scroll, from what he could read upside down, was something about the holy fire. “What should I call you, sir?”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“I see no reason for you to call me anything at all. I have never wanted any kind of relationship with the likes of you, and recent events have, if anything, only increased my repugnance. You are not welcome, and will never be welcome, in my house, son of Belemel. But we must speak.”

“Fine,” Ram said. “Talk, then. What happened here? A sul of reshki couldn’t have done this. And where is my family?”

“You knew nothing of this?”

“Until I stepped through the gate just now, I thought everything was fine here.”

“Very well.” The old man took a deep breath. “At about this time yesterday morning, a boat from upriver landed at the docks. Not a sunbarque, but a mid-sized galley, of the sort that may be hired on almost anywhere. On landing, it disgorged ten Karagene militiamen and three acolytes, who demanded immediate attention from the Council.”

Acolytes and militia, common boat. Nothing indwelt. Probably the militia had been flamekeepers in disguise. “Go on.”

“Ganteg, Summuru and I went to meet them. As soon as we arrived, the acolytes informed us—by the waterside, without any formalities, without even waiting to be escorted to a proper meeting-place—that one Belemel, together with his entire family, was wanted in the pyre, by order of the Lugal. We were presented with a signed and sealed letter to that effect.”

“Did that include you?”

“Excuse me?”

“You said with his entire family. Did that include you?”

The old man grimaced, as though Ram had just asked him how regularly he cleaned his private parts. “Wife and child only,” he growled. “They made some inquiries, but it soon became clear that they were chiefly interested in the paternal line. I was of no concern to them.”

“Did they say why they wanted Father, or any of them, in the first place?”

“No. We asked, politely, and received no answer. We discussed it amongst ourselves. It was highly unusual, to be sure, but the acolytes did not seem disposed to leave empty-handed, and in the end we decided to comply. This, it turned out, was a grave mistake, though we had no way of anticipating as much.” He sighed, and held his head in his suddenly trembling hands. “Kambuz, if you please?”

The watchmaster took up the story with a dull and weary voice. “I escorted them through the gate, so their militia could take your family into custody. They didn’t all stay together; the acolytes took the lead, and the men were strung out behind them. The whole thing smelled bad, so I, I stayed behind to make sure every man of them made it in. Quarrymaster Ganteg … showed them the way.”

“Naturally.”

“They were about halfway up the street to the tower when it all went straight to hell. I don’t know what happened, but it looked like the tower fire noticed the Karagenes all of a sudden, and decided it didn’t like them.” He bit his lip, closed his eyes. “You ever … see someone go after a rat in a cluttered room? Chasing it around, trying to nail it with something heavy while the critter scurries for cover everywhere?”

“I have.”

“Thirteen rats, the room’s everything inside Urapu’s walls, the heavy object’s a goddamn storm of fire, and nobody cares about the clutter so long as they get the rats. I didn’t see too clearly from where I was, but I hear the first hit took out Ganteg and two of the acolytes at once.”

Ram thought back to Lashantu’s dining room. “I can imagine.”

Kambuz stared. “Really? I couldn’t, if I hadn’t been there. Didn’t even know tower fire could do that. The other eleven bolted, but every house they ran for just—“ he waved his good arm helplessly. “The, the fucking things exploded!” he roared. “Like bad pots in a kiln! Sent shit flying every which way. I saw little Mirini slammed up against a wall, broke flat and flopping to the fucking ground like a bag of flour.

“We ran, we all ran, but it was one house after another. Whole rows. Two of them go up, and stove in the one in the middle. Just the noise of it, we got people bleeding out their ears, eyes gouged out from all the crap flying around. Won’t ever see or hear again, and they’re lucky. Lucky! We had five or six choke to death on dust. Old folks, shut-in, burnt to ash inside their own homes. Kids, tiny kids, torn right through the guts by flying bricks. And you can imagine?”

“I’ve seen battle with shabti, Kambuz,” Ram said quietly. “It sounds like you got worse here. And it did all this damage going after thirteen men?”

Kambuz tried to speak, but couldn’t. He buried his face in his shaking hands. “I think the fire did not aim very well,” the old man answered for him, his voice now cold and dead. “Nor could it clearly see its enemies. The result was almost totally indiscriminate destruction. I took cover in an alley, and mercifully was not followed by any of the doomed men. I would say the initial phase—the bulk of the damage—lasted perhaps two minutes.”

“The initial phase?”

“Eventually the … detonations gave way to a more targeted campaign. The handmaidens spread out through the hearth hunting down the poor fools and, I am told … burning them alive.” He swallowed. “This took some time. The last militiaman was cornered by Urapans and battered to death with broken bricks, just to put an end to it.”

After all Ram’s experience with Shennai, this was far from shocking. But the idea of the God’s fire being used on humans was unspeakable to most people. That was the whole reason the Lugal and his men existed, to hold the daughters of Haranduluz aloof from violence against their own kind. “So the handmaidens were helping. What did they tell you about it?”

“Very little. Once it was over, they could say only that they felt compelled to act as they did. In effect, the tower-fire gave them an order they could not disobey.” He shook his head, and added, “They were in considerable distress, and remain so. Their acolyte was among the casualties.”

“How many—“

“We don’t know yet,” Kambuz said, lifting up a shining wet face from his hands. “I’d guess … about a hundred dead. It’ll be higher by and by. Not all the wounded will make it.”

“One person in four,” Ram said, trying to imagine it. He’d had no friends at this hearth, but …

“Just about,” Kambuz confirmed, bowing his head. “Mostly the free families, as far as I can tell. The ones who lived near the tower.”

“There is little more to say,” the old man said. “When all was over, and we found the courage to emerge from hiding, the galley was of course long gone. It departed in such haste that one of its crewmen was left behind. He said that the Karagenes came to Mishlada, just up the river, in a skybarque that very morning, and offered an extravagant sum to be carried to Urapu without delay.”

“Really.” So, they knew better than to take anything indwelt directly to Urapu, but thought they could pretend some other errand and sneak past the Ensi’s notice. Obviously, it hadn’t worked.

“Yes. The galleyman then stole a small boat when nobody was looking, and disappeared. The remains of the Council—myself, your father, and two other men—thought it best to hide your family for the time being. Any future inquirers will be told that they all died in this incident. There are many who wish they had. Including myself. It is only fear of another such catastrophe that preserves their lives.

“Now that you know all that we do, perhaps you could explain to us why a quarter of our community has just perished?”

Ram stared into the dulsphere on the table—the waxing glow didn’t hurt his eyes at all—and said, “A couple of months ago, the Ensi asked me to do something for him. He promised that if I did, he would protect my family. I think this was how he kept his word.”

The old man clasped his hands together on the table. “Rammash im-Belemel. I do not believe there is a single family in this hearth which has not lost a relative on your account. Many of the survivors will be reduced to bondage. Almost every building will need to be rebuilt, and we have no money to do so. Yesterday may well have ruined a hearth which has stood for thrice my lifetime. I think we are entitled to a better and fuller explanation than that.”

Ram looked at the old man, the man he had never called, and now never would call, his grandfather. “I hardly know to tell you, sir. But I’ll try.”