Soldiers of Paradise (44 page)

In the middle of the square, standing in the wreck of broken horses, Aspe shouted again. Above him, the dragon spread its shining tail. For a moment, Thanakar saw it drifting in the wind, saw the sun glinting on its scales as he dropped his boat out of the belly of the boathouse. Mrs. Cassimer hid her face; Jenny pointed, and as the boat hung suspended from its slings, he looked up too, but only for a moment. As the boat dropped to the water, he bent down to fill the engine from a flask of powder. And after that, he had to guide them through the flooded streets, and through all the floating debris and the tops of houses and the spires of sunken shrines, and all the complicated water till they found the river. It wasn’t until they had almost reached the far shore, where the current ran deep and straight into the sea, that he looked back.

For half a mile along the river, the city was on fire. Ash fell like snow above a cluster of dark warehouses. There, on a promontory opposite the boat, flames had reached the roof of a small building, a temple or a dockside shrine. Thanakar watched it burning for a moment and then turned away downstream, just as the steeple collapsed into the water and filled the air with sparks.