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“But Tivol! He’s here and he—”
“Jayla took care of Tivol,” Cody interrupted. “She punched him and he fell down, and he’s not getting back up.”
“Good,” said Aussen. “He’s a terrible man.”
“He is,” said Jayla.
“Where’s Madeleine?”
“She’s in the other room. With Reese. Everything’s going to be fine,” Jayla said. She squeezed the little body tighter. “Everything’s going to bebetterthan fine,” she whispered. “Aussen! I found your mother!”
Aussen rolled over in her arms. “She’s here? She’s here? Does she know where to find me?”
“We’ll take you to her as soon as we can get out of here.”
And then Aussen started crying—Aussen, who had gone days and weeks and months without shedding a tear, was now sobbing against Jayla’s chest. Cody climbed onto the bed and put his arms around both of them, Aussen a small shape between them. Jayla thought he might be crying, too, but she couldn’t tell, because her own eyes were so full of tears.
There was too much terror and madness and hope and danger and love. It was impossible to manage it all. Who wouldn’t be weeping?
It didn’t help that the house started juddering around them.
Chapter Thirty-six:
Pietro
He was too old. He didn’t have the stamina to run all the way across Corcannon and then halfway back again. Pietro staggered and paused for breath, bent forward, his hands braced against his knees. The others clustered around him.
“We can stop somewhere—rest,” Stollo suggested.
Pietro shook his head, gasping for air. They had been hurrying through the city for the past half hour, winding through alleys and down side roads that he had never known existed. Everywhere there were fallen poles, tumbled buildings, blocked passages. Everywhere there were people crowding in the streets, putting out fires, crying out for help, trying to find missing loved ones. Maybe he was imagining it, but he sensed a rising tide of alarm and hysteria sweeping through the city. He sensed an insistent menace coiling and uncoiling deep under the surface of the streets.
“There isn’t time,” he said. “Can’t you feel the tremors?”
“There are always tremors.”
“Not like this.” He pushed himself upright again. “Let’s get going.”
Rovyn pointed. “The guard is trying to find us a ride.”
Looking in the direction she indicated, Pietro saw Reese’s captain arguing with an old man who stood beside a small horsedrawn wagon. It was a brilliant notion, Pietro thought, since a horse wasn’t confined to the gridway, which appeared to be increasingly impassable. The old man didn’t look eager to risk his animal on this chancy night, however, and Pietro didn’t feel too hopeful when the guard returned to them.
“He says he’ll take us, but his asking price is ludicrous. And he’ll stop the minute he thinks it’s too dangerous.”
Pietro pulled out a bag of coins. Cordelan himself knew there was no better use for the money. “Will this cover it?”
The guard’s eyes grew big. He shook out a few gold pieces and returned the bag to Pietro. “Yes. Let’s go.”
The cart wasn’t large enough to easily accommodate six people. The guard and Rovyn crammed themselves onto the bench with the old man, while Tezzel and Stollo and Pietro tried to fit themselves into the back. The rough jouncing over broken pavement made the trip even more uncomfortable, but even so, the conveyance was a vast improvement over the desperate half-walk half-run of the last thirty minutes. Pietro closed his eyes, trying to calm his breath and still his soul. When he opened them again, he found Tezzel staring at him fixedly.
“Who are you?” she demanded. “Why does Jayla think you’re going to hurt Aussen?”
How quickly could he make her understand—and believe—this unlikeliest of stories? “I used to be a priest in Cordelan’s temple,” he said. “One of the few privy to the knowledge that the city is built on a terrible secret. The whole continent will be subject to quakes and destruction—” He swept an arm out to indicate the smoldering city. “Unless, every few years, a blood sacrifice is made to the god.”
Tezzel’s face showed a sudden ferocity. “You want to kill my daughter!” He thought she might dive across Stollo and strangle him. Unlike Jayla, she probably wouldn’t let go until he was dead.
He lifted a hand to fend her off. “I don’t. I left the priesthood once I found out the truth. But the victims had to be direct descendants of Cordelan. And those descendants have been in mighty short supply in recent years.” His eyes bored into hers. “But it’s not just Aussen who’s descended from Cordelan.Youare, apparently.”
“Oh, so you want to killme!”
