Iron Binds

.6. The Ghast in the Mountain

There is a strange moment in the aftermath of the explosion when time pulls taut and stretches, when Nezetta absorbs a thousand fine details in a frozen moment: ash rising from the crevice in butterfly-wing flight; heat moving in an inexorable rolling wave across the sawdust debris of banquet tables; a still-smouldering line of fire eating away at the skirts of a dead noblewoman.

The ringing in her ears subsides as she blinks and steadies herself, and in its place rise the slow-building screams of human beings in shock and pain. The nobility run for the exits in a disorganized stampede; Astamil stagger from their daises, jolted into a waking nightmare. Not all survived. Perhaps half a dozen on either side of Nezetta did not react in time; pieces of their bodies have smeared the stony debris with red.

Beneath her, Antare groans and twitches. Nezetta quickly checks his hair for blood with her flesh hand, but she seems to have protected him well enough.

Finally, voices rise up: guards and handlers and even Brothers of the Regia shouting commands, attempting to direct the crowd out of the few bottlenecked egresses and to round up the surviving Astamil. Fear clenches Nezetta's belly as she realizes that she will have to heed them, to pretend as though nothing is different about her. Except—

She takes a second look at some of the nearby Astamil. A nearby Ottiudi, his pin-straight hair dyed a deep green, stares at the crevice in the floor. His long ears twitch as he listens for something that Nezetta cannot yet hear. Beyond him, a female Gallida struggles upright, hand pressed to a gash in her cheek; most of her left tusk has been broken clean off. They, and all of the other Astamil in the vicinity, have one thing in common: they have been violently unsteeled, and they appear not to know what to do about it.

She has a little space and a little time, then. She cradles Antare's head in her left hand, tracking the nearby guards and handlers out of the corner of her eye as he muddles his way to consciousness. She has no plan, no idea of what to do; the thirty-foot crack in the floor continues to shed heat and distant orange light.

Antare's eyes strain open and squint, unfocused. He opens his mouth to speak, but only a cough comes out. The green-haired Ottiudi continues to stare, fixated, at the glowing crevice, but one of his ears twitches at the sound.

Antare croaks again, and it is almost a word. Nezetta's attention returns to him; she passes the pad of her thumb over his jaw.

"What happened?" he whispers. "I heard your mind screaming."

"I do not know," she says. Her voice trembles like the earth. "I don't—we have to—the volcano..."

That gets him sitting upright, wincing and blinking against the pain as he moves. Irregular footsteps hurry up behind them, and Nezetta turns, expecting a handler, but again in an unexpected place she finds Corso Valiera, caked with the dust of the explosion and heavily favouring his left ankle. His expression is wild, and he is the only nobleman not allowing himself to be funneled out of the banquet hall.

"How are you alive?" he hisses. "I saw the floor buckle up underneath your feet, are you invulnerable?" Barely a pause for breath and he stops dead, reeling back onto one heel. "Oh, sweet Murat's pants, you are bleeding."

And so she is, somewhat profusely from a red wound to her thigh, where a six-inch shard of obsidian has embedded itself.

She stares at it. "I can barely feel it," she says. "No time for it yet. Do you know what happened?"

"I came to ask you the same, if you were still breathing," says Corso. He rubs his hand on his face, which accomplishes little except to smear dust and ash through his beard. "Never mind. This is an opportunity. We need to leave."