The Last Smile in Sunder City (The Fetch Phillips Archives #1) - Luke Arnold Page 0,73

to the wax seal on one of the flyers so I’d missed it when I’d first flipped through. I pulled it off and turned it over.

Edmund,

He is here. Just like I warned you. Dante has tracked him all the way to Sunder and we must act now before he does any more damage. My place. As soon as possible. We have a plan.

Grimes

Sydney Grimes was the owner of the teahouse, and Samuel Dante was his friend from out of town. Rye had been invited to be part of the planned attack. Was he there? Did he escape? Most likely, he missed it all together. I wonder if a third League member would have made a difference and kept Samuel and Sydney alive.

“Eileen?” She held up a hand. The old fellow was in the middle of some long-winded, unending story but she was listening like he might be about to reveal the secrets of the universe.

The sky cracked violently overhead and as I looked up at the clouds, I realized that I could hear water, rushing beneath me, splashing through the gutters and sewers. A lot of water, by the sound of it. I got up from my stool and stepped out into the street.

Squinting through the storm, I looked north, to the mountains, and saw that the storm clouds over my head were nothing compared to the deadly shadows hanging over those hills. I turned towards the slums and started running.

It wasn’t the first time I’d freaked out after a bit of heavy rainfall. Amari had put the fear of it into me the first time we met and when an Elemental Faery warns you about the weather, you’d be a damn fool not to listen.

I came out on to Main Street with the note from Sydney Grimes still in my hand. The questions about who they were trying to trap and how Rye was mixed up in it were stabbing the back of my brain like hot needles, but…

I could hear screams. From the southern end of the city. It was just like she’d said.

I let the Vampires vanish from my mind. I needed to find the fire brigade or the police force and I needed rope and rigging equipment but all I wanted to do was bring her back from the dead so I could tell her she was right.

21

Amari had been worried about the size of the slums before the Coda. That seems almost cute now. When the magic died, so did the crops and doctors and elders and the means of survival for many families. The fires under Sunder City had burned out but people around the continent still believed their salvation could be found in the community we’d created here. There was plenty of cheap scrap for making shelters and small pieces of land between run-off and rubble where you could put it up.

The mills and factories had mostly fallen to pieces but the recycling plants and mending-houses soon replaced them. There were opportunities in hospitality, or entry-level jobs down The Rose Quarter. The refugees kept coming and the city expanded but the newest arrivals had to make their homes farther down the hill.

The water was an inch-deep on Grove Street, still a block inside the walls. A manhole cover popped open beside me and the street coughed a geyser of brown water on to the sidewalk. That meant the sewer running beneath Main Street was full. Shit. I’d run through those pipes more than once chasing lost belongings or pickpockets. It would take a hell of a lot of water to fill them to the limit.

I passed the entrance to The Rose Quarter and watched the Kirra Canal kiss the ankles of the ladies and gentlemen of the night who stood on every doorstep. They were laying down curtains and cushions in a desperate attempt to keep water off the carpet. Half-dressed johns, caught by surprise in the middle of their session, joined the effort; building up barricades in nothing but their briefs.

The sound of rushing water was drowned out by shouting as I came around the corner and into a crowd. On both heaving riverbanks, wet and desperate hands pulled neighbors and pets from the rising water. Families formed living chains and dropped themselves back into the torrent to rescue friends from floating rooftops.

An excited group stood on the bridge and called out to an Ogre in many languages. He was running from the opposite end with a rope, pulled from the flagpole