The sergeant’s body shielded her from the worst of it, from the shock wave, from the blazing chunks of rock that peppered the street and skittered along the asphalt with sharp little hisses. Lila squeezed her eyes closed and turned her face away from the heat. The floodlights on the street had shattered, and shards of glass rained from the sky.
The sergeant moaned behind her and collapsed, finally relieving the pressure on her chest. She stumbled slightly and lurched against the wall for support.
The handcuffs clattered impotently on the pavement once more.
“Shit,” she grumbled, too late in realizing that she had bitten her tongue.
Lila turned and stared at the mushrooming black spire behind her. It climbed higher and higher toward the stars, as if it might swallow them up like it swallowed up the building beside the perfumery. Tendrils of fire lashed out at the businesses next door, threatening the structures, the flames providing the only light for several square blocks.
Even Bullstow had gone dark.
Lila struggled to remember what the business had been only seconds before. A restaurant? A coffee shop? Some sort of office?
Whatever it was, someone had cut it out of New Bristol, right under the nose of Bullstow. She recalled the last attack against the city, the charred and twisted train cars stopped only by a flattened row of houses. The faces of the dead. The faces of the living.
Blood. Bones. The smell.
Lila squeezed her eyes shut. If the Almstakers had become active in America, then she would likely be executed just for standing near the explosion, regardless of whether she had anything to do with it.
It was better to be safe than to be just.
The wind changed, deepening the smell of gasoline, igniting the perfumery’s peppermint-dressed awning. At least all the businesses on the block belonged to highborn families. No one slept above the shops in this neighborhood. The only thing lost would be profits.
A muffled siren caught Lila’s attention as though oil covered the sound. The fire truck inside Bullstow had changed directions. She rubbed at her ears, still aching from the explosion, and tried to judge how long she had left until it reached the gate. All she could see over the wall was a blur of red and white flashing lights near the High Senate Office Building.
The chubby guard stepped out from the guard post, glancing through the gate into Bullstow.
“Orders, sergeant?” he shouted helplessly at his superior. “Can you hear me, sarge? Do I wait here until the truck rolls through? Do you need me? Is everyone all right?”
Lila squinted at the men sprawled on the sidewalk. Several had not stirred since the blast, though she could see their chests rising in the dim light of the fire. The few who could move were sluggish, as though they might have been infants surfacing from a heavy, sweat-filled fever. The blast had disoriented them, and none were in any condition to stand up, much less give chase, should she decide to bolt.
“They’re all still breathing,” Lila shouted back, her voice sounding dim and faraway to her own ears. “Call for medical, then see to the gate. The truck needs to get through.”
“You shut up!” The blackcoat glanced at the approaching fire truck and back again. He pulled his tranq gun from his belt, took aim carefully, and fired.
The heavy dart fell to the ground halfway between them.
“You better stay put.” The man gestured with his gun. “It’ll go worse on you if you run. I swear to the oracle, I’ll track you down myself!”
“Of course you will,” Lila muttered.
She ignored the shouting blackcoat and stepped over the sergeant, kneeling at his side. “At least your temper was good for something, Sergeant Perv.” She rifled through his coat pockets as the man batted weakly at her prying fingers. A dart in the neck would have stopped it, but perhaps his condition was worse than it looked. “I doubt I’d be able to walk away so easily if I didn’t have such a fine officer of Bullstow shielding me from the blast. Imagine how happy Chief Shaw will be when you tell him. He might even give you another one of those pretty little stars you’re so proud of.”
Lila snatched up the DNA pen, which she then dropped and crushed underneath the heel of her boot, stopping it before it could finish its work. The little red light blinked out, and she yanked the brains of the device from the pen. She could only hope that nothing had been transmitted across the network before the blast knocked out the power.
Her thermal hood, tranq gun, and spent darts were strewn on the ground, covered with a thin layer of ash. Lila quickly retrieved them, hoping her gun would work if she needed it.
She stuffed the remains of the DNA pen and the rest of her possessions into her coat pockets, then sprinted into the alley near the charred perfumery. The smoke and fog covered her escape while a strange blizzard of flyers fell around her, offering even more cover. She snatched one of the drifting papers from the air as she ran. American Abolitionist Society had been printed in large black letters, along with a column of red print she hardly had the time, the energy, or the interest to read.
At least it hadn’t been the Almstakers this time. As a citizen of the commonwealth, Lila bore no love for the Holy Roman Empire, but she almost felt sorry that they had to deal with the extremist nutjobs.
She tossed the flyer away as soon as she reached the alley and shielded her eyes, finally following the paper trail up into the sky. Several figures in plainclothes watched the scene from the roof of a three-story apartment building nearby, craning their necks toward the fire. They held radios to their ears and counted down the seconds until militia reinforcements would arrive, their voices far too loud for the thick silence that hovered in the air, a silence free from the hum of electricity and the buzzing of lights. A few children leaned over the side, dwarfed by oversized coats and gloves, tossing fistfuls of the AAS papers from worn satchels slung around their chests. A ginger-headed boy laughed and laughed in their midst, flinging the papers from his grasp like Frisbees.
One man stood apart from the group, perched on the corner of the building. Shaved head. Long brown coat. Black trousers. Black sweater. Purple scarf swinging in the wind. The toes of his blood-red boots hung over the side, so red they were almost black. Dixon would leap from rooftop to rooftop to follow her if Tristan demanded it.
Lila hoped he had not.
She retreated back into the shadows and skirted the perfumery, emerging on Leclerc Street moments later. She passed law office after law office, each geared for a specific sort of client. Highborn, lowborn, workborn. All would find representation on Leclerc.