Page 3 of Consort's Glory
The only thing she could sense was a low-level hum of magic in the air. Not so strange with neighbors so close, but—
The blast hit her in a single, percussive wave, throwing her back into the yard. The heavy front door followed, its splintered bulk sailing over her in a wide arc to land with a crash against the iron gate.
Margot landed hard on her side against the smooth brick path that led to her home, her head cracking against it with a teeth-rattling crunch.
Blackness, filmy and terrifying, engulfed her.
Time stretched in a strange way. The seconds pulled long, thin, until they were overstretched in a mind shocked to stillness by both injury and surprise. She wasn’t quite unconscious, but drifting. There was no sound in the darkness, but she could feel heat on her skin, the rasp of acrid air in her lungs — knew that something had gone horribly wrong.
Margot didn’t hear the following explosions as the gas line ruptured, but she could feel them as they punched through her. One after another, two blasts that rolled through tissue and bone like m-lev trains.
Her vision swam back in a haze. The filmy darkness lifted enough to reveal chaos: falling debris, the roar of flames, the twisted wreckage of what was once a pillar of the neighborhood.
Too dazed to do much else, Margot could only raise her arm to cover her eyes as glass and shrapnel pelted down from the upstairs windows. Her coat took most of the damage, but her legs were bare beneath her flirty dress. Her ears rang, but she could hear nothing besides the high whine of injury and her harsh breathing.
Easy repairs,she thought, only distantly recognizing the sounds and crackling heat of a building inferno. Blown eardrum, surface lacerations, bruising to my cheekbone, and possible hairline fracture to my skull. Nothing difficult.
Margot could comprehend injuries. What she couldn’t grasp was the way the Healing House, her responsibility for a paltry six months, was destroyed; flames licking from deep within its belly to make the gaping holes where there were once windows glow with sinister light. The black film swimming across her eyes granted her only a fleeting glimpse of the wreckage before it dragged her under again.
There was an odd sensation of fleeting hands on her throat, skimming down her body, the awareness of strange people around her, but Margot couldn’t open her eyes to look around and see who was touching her. The sensation only lasted a moment, anyway, and when she could finally muster the ability to clear the spots from her eyes, there was no one there.
Blackness again. Her head screamed at her as the bricks rushed up to greet her battered cheek.
Hands on her shoulders — a small, hard shake. Margot tore her gaze away from the burning building to see the shadowed face of a neighbor above her, his lined face covered in a thin layer of perspiration.
“…Goode!Can… move?”
His voice went in and out, but Margot couldn’t tell if it was due to her damaged ears, her head wound, or the shock.
She did a cursory scan to make sure she didn’t have any spinal injuries or unnoticed bleeding before offering her neighbor — Adam, she recalled, father of two boys in middle school, registered arrant with no magical ability, works in m-tech finance — a tight nod.
He was helping her up in a moment, strong hands clasping her elbows to lever her onto her feet. Margot’s head swam as her hearing came back to her in a rush of roaring flames, car alarms, and frantic yelling.
One ear worked, at least. The other was screaming at her, a trickle of warm blood sliding down her cheek and neck to pool in the dip of her collarbones.
Sirens squealed in the distance, and she could hear the frantic chatter of dozens of voices as her neighbors exited their homes wrapped in robes. Adam gently but urgently guided her toward the curb, his voice rising behind her as he yelled out to someone to call for m-vac.
Margot wanted to assure him that she didn’t need a magical lift to an emergency clinic, couldn’t get one, actually, but the words were glass in her throat, her mind stuck in the deep rut of a single question.
How did this happen?
A stone of cold dread settled into the pit of her stomach. Was it me?But why? Why a bomb? If someone knows, wouldn’t they just expose me?
It was premature to assume it was a bomb, magical or mechanical, but Margot couldn’t imagine this sort of devastation was an accident. After all, if it was some sort of gas leak, wouldn’t other homes be blown up too?
When she looked around, Margot saw damage — the homes directly opposite hers had their front windows blown out, their mailboxes toppled, and several appeared to have lost their front doors — but nothing like the devastation that struck the Healing House. It was a relief, however minor, to see no glow of flames in the stately homes.
The screech of tires drew her eye to the street as Adam pushed her down onto the curb a little ways away from her front yard. Another neighbor — Kimmi,early thirties, lawyer, diabetic, married to a woman who owns an Italian restaurant in Lakeside, brightling and hybrid harpy respectively, no children — ran up with a throw blanket. Her fellow witch’s face was starkly white under the streetlights.
“Healer Goode, the fire squad is here,” she rushed out, voice pitched high as she wrapped the blanket around Margot’s shoulders. “And Patrol is coming, too. Annie called.”
Margot could do little more than offer a dazed thank you as she watched a sleek, top of the line fire engine come to a sudden stop in front of her home. People dressed in m-enhanced fire suits leapt out of the back, their bodies weighed down by the heavy-duty foam blasters that would stop the flames before they engulfed the entire neighborhood.
She could feel the heat of those flames at her back. There would be no saving any part of the Healing House.
Margot didn’t cry for the loss. It wasn’t her home, not really, but she’d been entrusted with its safekeeping, and she felt the shame of that failure far more than she felt her injuries.
She squeezed her eyes shut. I’m a Goode, for Glory’s sake, and I failed the first thing I tried on my own.
