Quickburned

Burn

Five years ago...

The southern half of the town was an inferno.

As discomforting as it was, he was glad he'd not run into anyone still alive. Already it would be smarter to leave than to stay, the place was nearly uninhabitable.

Caleb stayed. No one had ever accused him of being the wisest soul. He couldn't shake the insistence that it was his fault, that he murdered Sainen, led his people here to die, for betraying everyone who ever loved him—Rattlers, lovers, family—he should be dead too.

His partner, wrapped in the first thing Caleb could find, a garishly patterned blanket Sainen would have hated, lay stiff and heavy over his shoulder. He walked with steady, measured steps towards the temple square.

Mezir's corpse was welcome to lie where it had fallen (where he'd put the man down, beat him to a pulp, what kind of man does that?) but damned if he wasn't going to give his partner a decent, respectful sort of end. Sainen deserved it.

The end of the temple square not occupied by the temple itself was dominated by the provost's house; a little finer and a little bigger than most other homes, but still clearly a home. He passed right by it on his way to Sainen's final resting place, and nearly stumbled across another corpse.

Dead. Everyone dead, your fault.

He recognized the coat laid over the body first, lit by the bonfires of the rest of the town. Sarid, nearly as much a belvedere as Caleb had been yesterday, favored a distinctive cut. It was his coat. His coat laid over...

Hana.

He dropped to his knees. Let Sainen down beside him.

Discovering Sainen dead had already smothered him in grief, wrapped him until he was numbed by it. Muffled. Finding his baby sister kicked his feet out from under him.

How many more before you realize? Smoke curled around him in acrid, bitter veils. It slid into his nose, wrapped his throat in self-loathing and guilt until he choked on it. They're all dead. There's no one left for you to help. Might as well follow them into the Abyss.

"Not yet. Work to do. Made a promise, gonna keep it. Hana, darlin'..." He could say nothing for her. There were manacles around her ankles, a slave collar at her throat... and her head lolled at an angle Caleb wished he didn't know meant her neck was broken. A close-range, personal sort of death—whoever'd done it...

Didn't matter who's hands had done it. Likely Caleb was the cause.

"I'll be back in a moment for ya, sweetheart," Caleb murmured. He kissed her cold forehead and brushed her hair from her face, then climbed wearily back to his feet with Sainen once again in his arms. If he didn't know better he would have sworn his boots were lined with lead.

The last twenty feet to the temple seemed to take ages; every bit of him urged him to stay away, to drop everything and flee into the desert. The temple was too holy for the likes of him—can't go in there, betrayer, murderer, coward, don't deserve t'step foot—and the looming portal threatened to devour him.

"Maybe. Maybe not." Now he was talking to himself, another sure sign of his general unsuitableness for polite company. Not that Sainen had been polite company even in life. "Sai, though. Sai. Hana. Sure as hell deserve it more'n me."

He grit his teeth and forced himself inside.

The southern half of the temple blazed with light, and heat. Of course, it was on fire, too, and on the way to being burnt to ash before the night was over. He and Mezir must've had quite the scuffle. It was a mystery, his still being alive. By all rights, no mortal should be able to go against a Son of the Dragons and come out again on the winning side.

There was a blank spot in his memory where that fight ought to be. The whole day was a blank spot; he kept walking through the last thing he remembered, poking at it like a loose tooth. Caleb had never lost so much as a minute of memory in his life, even when he and the Rattlers celebrated a successful raid by drinking enough to kill a horse.

"Almost, buddy," Caleb said. Sainen didn't answer.

Mezir must have been storing his ill-gotten gains in the temple; scattered gold and silver coins turned the stone floor into a maze of glittering scales. The heat washed over him as he got closer to the partially-collapsed nave where the altar stood, stealing his breath and burning away doubt. He lay Sainen down on the wide stone surface and went back for Hana.

It was a little easier, bringing her inside. He laid her out next to his partner and slid down the side of the rock slab. Just a moment. Just a moment to say a prayer, and catch his breath, then he'd leave town. Go... somewhere. Find the gang, if anyone was still alive. They had to be, someone, somewhere—right?

His boot hit something, sent it skittering away away over the stone floor with a peculiar ringing as it rebounded off coins and debris. Caleb tracked the sound until it came to a stop, and felt his breath driven out for the third time in as many hours. He knew that stamped copper bracelet. It had been Anielka's. He'd started a fight over it when one of the other kids had tried to run off with it—childhood taunting, he knew now, but dire insult when he'd been ten.

"Anielka? Anielka!"

He scrambled to his feet. There were no bodies, live or otherwise, on the untouched side of the temple. The fire drove him back from trying to find anyone in its keeping, and the shadows of what might have been people taunted him.

Please let her have got out, Caleb prayed, though to who he didn't know. The uncaring Heavens, Spirits of Sand and Stone, anyone.

Someone had to have got out.

He had to hold on to that.

Caleb, stumbling and choking on more bitter smoke, fled from the temple.