The incessant bell had stopped ringing.

  About time.

  The bells of the church and the council I could manage—solemn things, dignified, arranged by hour and by habit. But this one? This one had been shrill as a drowning goat and twice as stubborn. What sort of man rang a bell like that before the sun had even cleared the ridge? A student, no doubt. A foreign one. Or worse—some half-mad liturgist from the river quarter, smitten with divine urgency and no sense of sleep.

  Good thing I was up and awake already. The morning was too fine to be ruined entirely. The bread was warm, the butter stubborn but yielding, and the ink still fresh.

  I dipped my pen, drew a long breath, and leaned back over my folio.

  Chapter Twelve: On the Notable Ladies and Barons of the City.

  A stalling point, perhaps, in an otherwise noble chronicle—but an essential one. The kind of chapter that earns patronage. They love reading about their ancestors. Especially the unpleasant ones. Even the baron who denied them their allowance, or the aunt who imprisoned her sister in a tower—so long as their name is spelled with flourish and printed in gold-leaf headings, they’ll buy copies in crates.

  "The late Baroness Vilha, third of her name, who taxed the river quarter into a decade-long famine, nevertheless ensured the preservation of Hasholm’s western fortifications, and was therefore remembered with conflicted affection."

  I smiled at the thought. One more duchess placed carefully between scandal and tribute, and I'd afford the vellum for the full edition.

  Then—the pen slipped.

  A rumble. Low. Faint. Like someone dragging something massive across a stone floor.

  Another bell? No, a different register. A different weight. Thunder, perhaps—but sharp. Close.

  I stood, begrudging the interruption, and shuffled to the window. I scanned the rooftops, which shimmered gently under the morning sun. Nothing amiss.

  I looked down the streets.

  The usual trickle of morning traffic had stilled into small knots of gawkers and wanderers. People stood on stoops, stepped out of bakeries, squinted from beneath hoods and sun-hats. I saw a butcher wipe his cleaver with slow, deliberate care and lean halfway out his shop door, mouth open, trying to taste the vibration in the air.

  Across the narrow lane, in the tall stonework across from my garden wall, a shuttered window creaked open and a familiar face peered out. Brunhilde. Dyed her hair again—this time an auburn too proud for its own roots. She tilted her head toward the noise with the blank composure of a woman too curious to worry. I raised my hand out of habit. She did not see me.

  Another head appeared above her, a servant perhaps, or a cousin—someone younger. Then another, across the roofline, eyes narrowed behind thick glasses.

  They were all watching.

  And none of them seemed prepared for what they might see.

  Until the streets answered.

  Below, across the garden wall and past the lime-tiled dome of the archives, people began to spill from buildings. A scribe, half-robed, pointing west. A woman clutching her child, staring upward. A clerk with ink still on his hands, wiping it on the front of his robes as he followed the scribe with his eyes.

  Then—

  A blinding flash.

  Sparks, brilliant white. Titanium and gunpowder. A screaming kind of brilliance that did not flicker like lightning, but pulsed—like a nerve, exposed.

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  And then sound.

  A sound that was not thunder. Nor cannon. Nor choir.

  The most horrifying mix of stillness and pure noise I had ever known.

  From the direction of the University.

  I did not move. Not for a long time. Just stood there, butter-knife still in hand, and watched the heavens blanch.

  Something had split the air.

  And the world was calling.

  I peeled myself from the window with a low breath and turned toward the wardrobe. If ever a writer was to bear witness to catastrophe, he would not do it in his bed-shirt. I donned my finest slashed doublet, blue with black velvet trim, matching breeches, brimmed hat, and boots with buckles dulled by ink dust. I paused at the mirror, adjusted the feather, frowned, then let it be.

  Let history judge.

  My graphite case was slung over one shoulder, notes bound in cord under the other. The manuscript stayed—let the baronesses wait. I moved with remarkable speed down the stairs, weaving past a startled neighbour and nearly tripping on her cat.

  I joined the torrent of man.

  Down the avenue and into the rising press of bodies, toward the light, toward the noise, toward the collapse of meaning.

  I asked as I moved:

  "Did you see the flash?"

  "Aye," said a street-sweeper, shielding his eyes. "Bright as the midday sun. Like seeing God, it was!"

  "Soldier," I called, spotting one near a cart, hand on blade. "Was it cannon? Some new bomb device?"

  "Nay," the soldier replied, voice taut. "We’ve no such trickery. Wish we did. Might sleep better."

  I passed a priest near the chapel steps, and called, "Is this the mark of Joseph?"

  The priest did not flinch, but his tone carried iron. "To conjure His name in such triflery is bordering disdain—and thee knows it, writer."

  "Very well," I muttered, moving on. "I shall interview no more priests today."

  Ash. Smoke. Rising now in a thin dark ribbon above the district, pointing straight up like a finger accusing heaven itself.

  "See?" moaned a street urchin nearby, eyes wide. "See the sky?"

  Indeed.

  The smoke was a darker grey than I’d ever seen from the chimneys—oily, slow, and too heavy for so early in the day. And with it, a bitter tang in the air like old brass boiled in bile.

  "Note the colour," I said aloud, mostly to myself, graphite already in hand.

  "Soldier!" I shouted again. But the one I had questioned earlier was gone. Others had come in his place—the city patrol, mounted now, on war-bred horses with haunches like siege towers. Their visors were down, wheel-locks drawn, hooves clattering over cobblestone in sharp cadence.

  They were not looking for answers. They were prepared for war.

  Time to step back. Observe the moment. Hard to document the goings-on with a bullet in my skull.

  That was when I saw Lotte. The Butcher Blemmye.

  He was moving through the crowd with a gait unfamiliar—less of the amiable wobble, more of a driven march. The same Lotte the children in Butcher Street named with affection, for the cow-like sounds he made when happy. His bulk parted the onlookers like a barge through reeds. But something was different.

  He approached the soldier. He marched as if summoned. Purposeful. Eyes forward. Focused. I had never noticed how large a Blemmye’s eyes truly were. I suppose they had never been truly open before.

  The leader of the horse-pack tensed, hand to hilt. His sabre flashed from the sheath as if unbidden, a trained instinct. Lotte was just paces away.

  The sabre lunged.

  Lotte caught it. One hand. Calm. His other hand rose, I thought to strike, but he lifted it as if to parley. A great hush followed.

  Lotte leaned in, a solemn conversation, too far away to be interpreted.

  I stood dumbfounded as they began to converse—low, direct. I could not hear words, but I saw heads nod. Then Lotte turned, and pointed.

  Toward the University.

  The riders looked, then dismounted. One after another. They followed.

  Into the smoke.

  "What have I just witnessed?" I whispered.

  Lotte speaks?

  The bells of the University rang anew, and I did not recognize the tone. Not the tone of the war bell. Not prayer either, not the time. Something older, I am sure.

  "What in God's name is going on?" cried a peddler.

  "Are we safe? Good heavens, are we safe?" another wailed.

  "Where the hell is Lotte going?" lamented the pig-butcher.

  I ran.

  Up the avenue. Up the stairs. Through the door of my own home.

  To the desk.

  "I'm sorry, Baroness Vilha," I gasped. "Another time."

  I lifted the tome. A new page is turning.