The Garden of Stones - By Mark T. Barnes Page 0,67
conversation there were three or four that told a different tale. There was talk of friends who had been taken in the night. Of the vicious melees between the soldiers of the Hundred Families who supported one Great House or another. Of the purge of the Seethe and Humans from Amnon.
Across the road a door opened. An elderly man with a bush of wild gray hair poked his head out. He scanned the street, then ushered out four adolescents and as many figures again: tall, cloaked, too graceful to be anything other than Seethe. The entourage clambered into a covered wagon drawn by four tired-looking deer whose better years were behind them. People in the streets, as well as in the coffeehouse, turned their faces away as the wagon trundled down the road toward the docks, where masts swung back and forth like a forest in the breeze.
What people could not see, they could not tell.
Less than an hour later, as Indris walked the narrow shade of Glassblower’s Lane, he happened across a crowd of people who stood watching while Erebus soldiers, wearing the green sash of the kherife’s office, stood by the smashed door and windows of a sandstone-terraced house. Armal led them, a large iron mace across his shoulder. He wore the black-and-white knot of a kherife investigator on his sash beside his captain’s insignia.
The soldiers dragged a mixture of Seethe and Avān from the building, toward a half-dozen ironclad prison wagons, some of which were already occupied. The Avān prisoners being escorted out of the house were sun-browned, their clothing almost a century out of date, though clean and lovingly repaired. What few had footwear wore frayed sandals made of reeds and braided grass. Their umber-and-orange clothing pronounced them to be retainers of the Family Bey. The captured Seethe wore the gold, red, and royal blue of those who had served Far-ad-din.
Indris’s eyebrows raised involuntarily when he saw one of the Seethe captives was an elder. Most of his fine quills had grown into bright feathers. His straight nose seemed to have hardened to something other than skin, shot through with rainbow hues. The scutes around his eyes, hairline, and jaw were darker, looked harder, than those of his younger counterparts. His cloak got snagged beneath a soldier’s foot. As it fell to the ground, the Seethe’s galleon sail wings opened with a snap, to be hastily pinned down by the soldiers around him. Another, a war-composer from what Indris saw of the bird-bone bracelets around his wrists and the pale feathers of late adulthood among his blood-streaked quills, was carried, unconscious, from the building.
As he sidled through the crowd, Indris saw this was not the only house being ransacked. Five more had yawning holes where windows and doors had once been. Another three had soot marks from the fires that had no doubt gutted them. Glassblower’s Lane was one of a dozen or so streets in the area where Far-ad-din’s favored retainers and allies had lived, along with their families.
The taint of salt-forged steel greased his Disentropic Stain. Half a dozen soldiers stood near the wagons, their crossbows armed with the black salt-forged bolts. Changeling muttered darkly from across his back. Those nearby shot Indris startled looks, though he moved rapidly away before they could ask questions.
There came the sound of breaking glass. An armed man in orange and brown leaped from a first-floor window, to the shouts of those inside, and landed on the roof of one of the prison wagons. With a rapid motion, he struck the locks. The doors flew open, and the captives burst out. The man leaped to another wagon, where he kicked the driver soundly in the head. He disengaged the brake and drove the Spool-driven wagon forward. The driver was dumped from the carriage as it sped away.
Chaos ensued as soldiers tried to give chase. The crowd surged as people shoved, either for a better vantage or to flee. Indris backed away as the Seethe and Avān escapees surged through the crowd. Crossbow bolts whizzed past. Some found their intended targets. Others struck down innocent bystanders. The soldiers seemed to not care. Under Armal’s watchful eyes, the soldiers-turned-kherife flailed at any who stood in their way. Many of the bystanders were rounded up and thrust into the wagons despite their protests. Fists and sheathed swords flailed madly as some semblance of order was restored.