Page 51 of City of Stone and Silence

I swallow again. “I don’t think I can make it back. We need help. I’m going to send Aifin to get a rescue party.”

“A deaf-mute makes a strange choice of messenger,” Zarun says.

“He’s fast. And Meroe understands him. The rest of us will make for the obelisk.”

“And Thora?”

“We carry her. As far as we can.”

Aifin gives a curt nod when I hand-sign what I want him to do, and he takes off in a golden blur into the trees. The rest of us pick ourselves up and stagger on toward the obelisk, Zarun and Jack supporting the semi-conscious Thora between them. The raucous cries of animals accompany us on all sides, but now they sound more like jeers. The sun is going down, and the shadows between the trees grow long and twisted.

I’m sweating heavily by the time we’re halfway to the obelisk, and not just from the walk. Fever and nausea are the next stages in powerburn. Sister Cadua, on Soliton, had used fungus-derived herbs to keep some of the symptoms away, but she was back at the ziggurat and in any case she’d had to leave her apothecary behind. I force myself to keep walking, step by weary step, when I want nothing more than to lie down among the cool ferns of the forest floor.

My mind feels numb. Eleven of us left. Counting Thora. Nine people had followed me, trusted me, depended on my word, and now they were dead. For nothing.

Dead, dead, dead. Dead is dead. That’s what I’d always said, back in Kahnzoka, but it wasn’t true. Here in the Harbor, the dead rose and tore you to pieces.

My dead. My fault.

Monkeys in the trees, staring at me.

Why are they always looking at me?

Tori’s waiting for me, and I’m not going to make it. She’ll be waiting for me when they break into her perfect house, her perfect little world, and drag her away. I wonder if she’ll be smart enough to kill herself.

Dead. Tori, her fingers wrapped around a knife buried to the hilt in her breast, lying cold and still on her sleeping mat. Dead, dead, dead, everyone’s dead and it’s my fault—

“Isoka!” Zarun’s voice.

I blink, and look up. The obelisk rises above us, a cracked and broken spire, relic of glories long gone. Aifin is standing by the base, with a crowd of people behind him carrying spears and torches.

“Oh.” I swallow, suddenly desperately thirsty. “Good.” Something in my brain seems to sizzle. “I’m going to. Pass out. Now.”

I don’t have any memory of hitting the ground. When I open my eyes, we’re climbing the ramp up the side of a ziggurat. For a terrible moment I think we’ve gone the wrong way, that we’re going back into Prime’s labyrinth of monsters and corpses, but it’s only our own smaller building. I’m lying on a makeshift stretcher, made from a blanket and a pair of sticks, with two crew bearing my weight. I raise my head as we pass under the archway.

“Deepwalker?” Sister Cadua bustles up to me, all business. “It’s powerburn, I take it.”

I give a weary nod. “What about the others?”

“Nothing I can’t handle, although I wish we had more supplies.” Her face falls slightly. “Except—”

“Thora,” I say. “Is she alive?”

“For the moment. I’m not sure how. Jack won’t leave her side.”

“Take her upstairs, to my room.”

Her lips press into a thin line. “As you say.”

My bearers carry me up the sloping passages of the ziggurat, until they reach the chamber I’ve been sharing with Meroe. She’s there, pacing back and forth, one hand playing nervously with the silver bangle on her arm. When she sees me, she rushes forward.

“Isoka!” Her face is several shades paler than normal. “Are you—”

“I’ll be all right. Help me up.”

She takes my hand, and I stumble out of the stretcher. I wave the two crew away with a mumbled thanks, then collapse into Meroe’s arms.

“You’re feverish,” Meroe says, pressing her forehead against mine.