The injured fire victims were being piled into wagons. I let Lorencz talk to the physicians while I walked through the rows of writhing bodies, shaking my head with disapproval. Half of the men, women, and children groaning on the cobblestone street should have had their throats cut. If I were in charge of fighting the fire, I would have ordered my field medics to kill anyone who didn’t have a better-than-average chance of surviving their injuries. Basic triage. Basic self-preservation. There’s no point risking a Line breach for people who are likely to die, anyway.
But I wasn’t in charge, and the medics around me had clearly never worked a disaster scene before. I made a mental note to suggest to Sovereign Lament that he needed more war veterans to help with the city’s emergency planning.
I spotted a man who wasn’t going to make it and didn’t have anyone hovering over him. I knelt beside him, pretended to check his pulse, and let my bulky coat obscure my hand as I pressed down on his windpipe. His agonized breathing subsided.
I do enjoy the act of killing; I always have. But now that I’m retired and find it convenient to stay within the confines of a single city, I try to channel that enjoyment in socially acceptable directions. I wasn’t indulging myself; I was reducing the pressure on the Line. When I’m indulging myself, I take my time.
Lorencz materialized from the smoke. I stood.
“Ready?” she asked. I nodded, leaving the corpse unnoticed behind me.
The skittish horses were almost as bundled up as we were, damp blankets thrown over their backs and blinders limiting their vision. I patted their sweaty necks and fell in step beside Lorencz. She pushed down her hood and pulled off her face-cloth as we left the vicinity of the fire.
“How’s the Line holding up?” I asked, doing the same.
“It’s pretty bad.”
“Bad enough to break?”
“Maybe.”
I stepped closer to the cart and slid my constable’s sword out of its baldric, laying it on top of one of the fire victims. He didn’t protest — maybe he was dead. Then I unfastened Might’s harness, keeping a wary eye around me as I walked. Changing weapons is always a vulnerable moment.
But only Lorencz was watching. Her face looked comical, a black stripe of soot across her eyes like a raccoon’s mask, but her expression wasn’t amused. I slid Might’s scabbard into my hip baldric, adjusting the straps and buckles to compensate for its different length and weight.
“You really think you’re going to need that?” she asked.
“I didn’t think I’d need it the last time you told me the Line was weak, but I did.” I cinched my Watch sword in the crossback harness and refastened its buckles across my chest. “I try not to make the same mistake twice.”
“You gonna kill me if you draw that thing?”
“If you don’t get out of my way fast enough.”
“Swell.” She didn’t sound enthusiastic.
I tucked my firefighting gloves into my coat pockets. Ash fell around us like snow. Maybe some of it was snow. Last week’s half-foot of snowfall was still thick on the ground, blackened and filthy. The clouds were low overhead, their underbellies colored crimson from the fires burning around us.
Lorencz looked away, her eyes narrowing as she discerned a landscape I couldn’t see. I kept my hand on Might’s hilt, feeling its presence nuzzle my brain like lips on a nipple.
When I was a much younger man, I’d often wished I’d Manifested like my cousin Michael. But then I watched every sentinel I knew go mad or get killed. Even Michael had gone baleblind. Now I understood that being a sentinel wasn’t an advantage; it was a vulnerability.
As a Watch sentinel, Lorencz would probably get herself killed by transients long before she went mad. By contrast, as a Vigilance bureaucrat, my cousin would probably go mad long before he gets himself killed.
There wasn’t much I could do to protect my cousin or my partner against madness, but carrying Might increased my chance of protecting them from transients. Of course, it wouldn’t protect them from me, but that was a risk I was willing to take.
Blackstone Hospital is located in the Sepulchres, a tall, dark building about a block away from the cemetery complex that gives the quarter its name. Blackstone had started out as an insane asylum and then grown into a full-scale medical hospital closely affiliated with the university.
“I hate hospitals,” I repeated, regarding the looming building with distaste.
“Scared?” Lorencz asked, her tone mocking. I glanced at her. She’d pulled out one of her foul cigars, and it dangled between her lips, unlit.
“If you aren’t, you should be.” I returned my gaze to the hospital’s impassive black walls. “Hospitals are deathtraps.”
Somewhere at the top of Blackstone was an old acquaintance of mine, Ban Jaspin. He hadn’t been a friend, but I’d respected him, anyway. His mind had been stolen by drugs a few months ago. Since today seemed to be the day for mercy killings, I wondered if I should pay Jaspin a visit before I left.
“You worry a lot for a psychopath.” Lorencz led the wagon through the hospital gates. Orderlies stood in the courtyard, waiting to carry the wounded into the hospital. Strangers pushed past us: constables, physicians, firefighters, patients.
“Just keep your eyes on the Line and warn me if anything’s coming through.” I turned and squinted through the drifting ash. It was so thick, I probably wouldn’t notice Aidan Miller of Red Banks if he were standing in front of me with his sword drawn.
Lorencz lit her cigar with a beck of balefire. Just what we needed; more smoke. I moved out of the way and started to say something when I saw that her eyes had that distant look they got whenever she discerned the Line.
“Oh,” she said, faintly.
“Oh?” I touched Might’s hilt.
“Oh.” She sounded worried. “The Line’s stretched even tighter here than it was by the fire.”
“That’s because hospitals concentrate too much pain in too small an area. I told you they were dangerous.”
“Kills me to say it, but you may be right.” She blew out a stream of smoke. “We better go warn someone.”
“I’m not entering the epicenter of a breach, Lorencz. Not voluntarily.”
“Hey, pal, the Watch ain’t all fun and games and beating up suspects, you know.”
I gave Lorencz a hard smile and reached down, unlatching the steel chain that kept Might secure inside its scabbard.
“All right,” I said evenly. “But it’s more likely to be your funeral than mine.”
She made a face, flicked her cigar onto the cobblestones, and headed inside. I stepped on the smoldering butt before I followed. Lorencz was an idiot.
The hospital was a filthy, unwholesome sty of braying humanity. The hallways had been turned into temporary clinics, with wounded laying on pallets haphazardly strewn across the floor. Oil lanterns filled the corridor with smoke and cast an unsteady light over the scene. The air stank of burnt flesh and rang with sobs, shouts, and screams. I looked at Lorencz. The half of her face that wasn’t smeared with ash looked paler than usual, and her eyes flickered from side to side, registering things beyond my perception.
I drew in a deep breath, then coughed and hawked ash-grey phlegm onto the mud-covered floor. The thought of black soot coating my lungs made me sick. Might wriggled against my mind, promising health and comfort. I caught myself fondling its hilt and pulled my hand away.
“Yeah, this is pretty bad,” my partner said, swallowing hard. “Let’s go find someone in charge.”
We stepped over bodies and edged past physicians and orderlies.
“Captain Lorencz?”
My partner stopped as the man kneeling on the ground looked up. It took me a heartbeat to recognize him — Cardinal Palster Croix, leader of the Cislunar branch of the Imperial Reverence. His salt-and-pepper hair and beard were streaked with soot, and he’d rolled up his red sleeves and cinched up his red robe. Blood and oil smeared his hands.
“Cardinal,” Lorencz replied, neutrally. Croix’s brown eyes flickered to me, dropped to Might, and moved back to my partner.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
“The fire’s still spreading, but we’ll get it boxed in.” Lorencz looked down at the young woman in front of Croix. As far as I could tell, she was dead. “We just brought in another wagon of wounded. There’s a lot more victims out there, though.”
“Kyrchye help us,” Croix murmured. “Do you know how it started?”
“Probably some gink got careless with a lantern or built a fire in the middle of his room or set off a Winterfaire firework inside a hallway. Those tenements go up like tinder, you know,” Lorencz said, disingenuously.
“Some people say they heard an explosion before the fire started,” Croix ventured.
“It’ll take us a few days to get the whole story.” She shrugged. “Hey, you know the boss here? I think we might be in trouble.”
“The director.” Croix pointed, his blood- and oil-slicked hand glistening in the lamplight. “By trouble, do you mean another breach?”
“Yeah. We gotta move some of the injured outta here.”
“On the field,” I said, “we permitted no more than twenty wounded every twenty yards. Every half-mile if possible. Anybody’s who’s in great pain should be sedated or killed. Killed is safer.”
Lorencz cast me a dark look, but Croix stood.
“I’ll have our sanctums and sanctuaries serve as temporary hospitals,” he said. “That should help reduce the stress.”
“Thanks,” Lorencz said, giving him a nod and starting to walk again. I was disappointed. I’d expected at least a little sputtering and condemnation. Years ago the Reverence had damned me from every pulpit. Now I wondered how many people in Cislunar still recognized me.
We found the hospital director in his office. A blind man sat in front of him, a silver Vigilance pin fastened to the lapel of his well-tailored cashmere coat.
“Michael,” I said.
“Nobilis Aronson,” Lorencz chimed in.
“Captain Lorencz and General Droit have arrived, my liege,” a familiar voice murmured. A small, slight man sat against the wall, bundled up in an oversized, stained black coat and holding a battered novel open with one hand.
“Axton.” I gave him a curt nod. Might stirred again, making a low murmur.
Axton closed the book and slid it into his pocket.
“They’ve been fighting the fire,” he observed.
“Is it contained yet?” Michael asked, turning his face in our direction.
“Nope, and we’ve got a problem,” Lorencz said. The director stood.
“What kind of problem?” he asked.
“You’re risking a breach.” Lorencz pulled out a fresh cigar. “I assume you’ve heard the phrase ‘pain summons’?”
I leaned against the wall and crossed my arms. My partner likes to bluster, and I don’t mind letting her start our fights for us. The fact that she does so on a regular basis is one of her few redeeming qualities.
“I was just warning him about the danger,” Michael said, looking toward Lorencz. He got the general direction right, but his blind eyes missed the mark. “He doesn’t seem to take a blind man seriously.”
Lorencz raised an eyebrow.
“You can still discern the Line?”
“Yes. But that’s all.”
“Hey, still … it’s gotta mean you’re getting better, right?”
Michael had lost his sight in the same fight that had prompted me to pull Might off my wall. Lorencz considered herself responsible because she’d been the one who’d brought Michael in on the case. But he should have known better than to stare straight into a breach. He was supposed to be the family’s great success story. Instead he’d turned himself into a useless cripple.
My cousin wasn’t a terrible candidate for a mercy killing, either, but I figured I’d give him a little more time. He could still heal. And besides, Michael had always been weak. Picking him off now wouldn’t offer any satisfaction at all.
“As I was already telling Nobilis Aronson,” the director said with strained patience, “we don’t have the facilities or the staff to set up temporary clinics across the city. Blackstone was already close to capacity before the fires started. It’s Winterfaire. If we’re not dealing with frostbite or pneumonia, we’re dealing with injuries from a misfiring firecracker or a drunken brawl. A fight on the Hill last night ended with three people dead and fourteen seriously wounded. Blackstone isn’t built to handle this many patients at once.”
“Triage,” I repeated. Everyone ignored me except Axton, who nodded.
“Look, a hell of a lot more people than that are gonna die if the Line breaks,” Lorencz snapped. “You got two whistleups telling you you’re in danger, and one of ’em on the Vigilance’s damn board of directors. What more do you need?”
“I’ll send a message to Magister Carel,” the director said, deflating. “She’s in charge of hospital security.”
“Yeah? Since when?”
The director pursed his lips.
“I’m afraid that’s confidential.”
I looked up. My three companions grew more attentive, too.
“What kind of security?” Lorencz asked, at the same time that Michael said, “That explains the balewards.”
The director shifted, looking uneasy. I pushed away from the wall and strolled across the room until I stood across the desk from him. He flinched.
“My associates and I would like to know more,” I said softly, feeling an anticipatory tingle in my groin. The director took a step backward, eyes flickering back and forth.
“Our contract prohibits me—”
My lunge was checked not so much by Lorencz yelping my name as by Michael’s sudden warning: “Incoming!”