They floated as close together as they could, though Kip knew it was unwise. Two bodies floating separately might not be remarkable, but two floating side by side? Still, he didn’t move away. Silence settled over the boys as they came closer and closer to the bridge where their friends had died that morning. It seemed so long ago now.
And then Kip saw her, lying on the riverbank. The soldiers who’d murdered Isa had pulled their arrows out of her body. But aside from turning her over, they hadn’t moved her corpse. She lay on her back, eyes open, head turned left toward Kip, dark hair waving in the river. One arm was raised over her head, not drifting in the current but instead stiff as a felled tree. The underside of her arm and even her face was a horrific dark purple with pooled blood.
Kip put his feet down on the slick rocks of the riverbed to go to her. He was about to stand when some sixth sense stopped him. He hesitated and, still lying in the water, looked around as much as he could.
There! Standing on the bridge, with only his head visible, the soldier kept watch. So they weren’t stupid. They’d figured that whoever this drafter was that they’d run into earlier, he’d have the decency to come back and bury his friends.
The current was carrying Kip downstream. No decision was a decision.
But what could he do? Face soldiers? If there was one, there might be ten, and if ten, maybe a hundred. Kip was no fighter, he was a child. He was fat, weak. One man would be one man too many.
Kip turned away from Isa’s corpse and lay back in the water once more. He didn’t want to remember her like this anyway. A knot formed in his throat, so hard and so tight it threatened to strangle him. Only his fear of the soldier above kept him from crying as he floated under Green Bridge.
He didn’t even think of the dagger in its ornate case strapped to his back until they were far downstream. He could’ve tried; he could’ve at least gotten out of the water and taken a look. Isa deserved more.
Soon they were drifting into town, where the river flowed in a narrower, deeper channel, lined on each side with great rocks and crossed at intervals by sturdy wood bridges.
Parts of the town were still on fire, though Kip didn’t know whether that was because they were built of materials that were less flammable or because the fire had spread more slowly through some areas and was only reaching some buildings now. Soon they encountered their first corpse. A horse. Still harnessed to a wagon full of late-season oranges, it had been trapped in a section of the town that was now smoldering. Maddened by the fire, the mare had leapt into the river. The wagon had followed and either crushed or drowned it, spilling oranges everywhere.
Kip thought it might be the Sendina family’s horse and wagon. Sanson, never overly sentimental, grabbed a few oranges from the wreckage of the wagon and stuffed them in his pockets.
Sanson was probably right. Kip hadn’t eaten all day, not that he’d noticed until now, but he was starving. Despite feeling like he might throw up, he reached over the half-submerged horse and grabbed a few oranges too.
They came closer to the water market, and it kept getting hotter. Kip heard strange screams. There were fires still burning ahead. The water market was a small, circular lake that was dredged regularly to keep a uniform depth. It was said that once both river and town had been much larger. The river, supposedly, had been navigable from below the falls all the way to the Cerulean Sea, and then from Rekton all the way to the mountains, bringing traders from all of the Seven Satrapies, hungry for Tyrea’s famous oranges and other citrus fruits. Now, only the smallest flat-bottomed boats could make the trip downstream and the number of robbers happy to relieve traders of anything valuable convinced most farmers to send their oranges on the slower, heavily armed, and much less profitable caravans. Even the smallest, hardest, and thickest-skinned oranges sent by caravans over land would rot long before they could reach the distant courts where nobles and satraps would pay a fortune for such a delicacy. So almost every year some young farmer tried the river, and a few times they got through, all the way to Garriston, and came home with a fortune—if they managed to avoid the robbers again on the way back.
But for the most part, the trade for which the water market had been built was long dead. The townsfolk kept it for pride and for their own use. All the roads were already built around the water market, all their storehouses surrounded, so they maintained the barges and floated around the circle every market day according to rules and an etiquette that no outsider could hope to understand. In the middle of the water market was an island, connected by a drawbridge to the north shore.
As they came fully in sight of the island, Kip saw where the screams had come from. The drawbridge was down, and the island was filled with hundreds of animals trapped by the fires closing in around them. Even the drawbridge, straining with the weight of dozens of horses, sheep, pigs, and a grotesque carpet of rats, was smoking at one end. Eyes rolling in fear, the brick-maker’s draft horse looked like it was on the verge of bolting, though where it would go was impossible to say. The animals filled the island to overflowing; they were packed shoulder to flank over the entire little circle and the bridge.
Kip was so absorbed in the spectacle that he began floating right into the middle of the river between the docks and the island.
“Master, it’s so hot,” a young voice said behind and above Kip.
Kip thrashed and turned. On the raised bank of the market circle stood a young man a little older than Kip. The young man wore only a red loincloth. His curly black hair and bare chest glistened with sweat. He was looking over his shoulder, apparently to a man behind him. Kip could see nothing of that man, but he didn’t wait. Kip thought they must have heard him when he thrashed, but apparently the roar of the fires drowned out the sound.
Motioning to Sanson, Kip swam toward the wall. Sanson followed. The young man’s master said something, but it was lost in the noise. Kip and Sanson clung to the wall with their bodies pressed as close to it as they could, looking up.
“Watch this,” they heard the man say. A whirling lasso of fire spun into view over their heads and then flicked forward. It wrapped around one post of the drawbridge and stuck there. The rest of the rope flared out of existence, but that length stayed, smoldering, little wisps of flame escaping against the wood, splinters turning black and curling back, smoking.
Kip was at once horrified and captivated. In all the years he’d spent helping Master Danavis, the drafter had never done anything like this.
“Now you try,” the man said.
For a moment, nothing happened. Kip looked over at Sanson. Both of them were stuck to the wall, arms spread wide to get good holds on the stone so they wouldn’t have to tread water. Kip had the sudden feeling that they’d been set up. The drafter knew they were here; he’d just told his apprentice that so Kip and Sanson would stay in place. They were going around. He should swim, right now, as fast as he could.
He tried to breathe deeply, swallowing on his fear. Sanson returned his gaze, his own eyes worried, but not understanding what Kip was thinking.
Then a wheel of flame spun out above them. The animals on the bridge and the island shrieked in a hundred different ways. The wheel drew back and unraveled, becoming a whip, somewhat like what the master drafter had sent out just a minute before—but much, much larger. This was the youth’s work?