he'd had in the world. He knew the sound of the great sun chime. He had
not known that the deep, throbbing tone would also come when the palace
below it burned.
There were other fires as well: pillars of black, rolling smoke that
rose into the air like filthy clouds. The doors he passed as he walked
down to the seafront were broken and splintered. The shutters at the
windows clacked open and closed in the breeze. Often they passed wide
swaths of half-dry blood on the ground or smeared on the rough white walls.
The city had been home to over a hundred thousand people. It had fallen
in a morning.
l3alasar had sent three forces in through the wide streets to the Khai's
palace, the poet's house, the libraries. When those three things were
destroyed, the signal went out-brass horns blaring the sack. When the
signal reached the remaining forces, it was a storm of chaos. Some men
ran for the inner parts of the city, hoping to find richer pickings.
Others grabbed the first mercantile house they saw and took whatever was
there to find-goods, gold, women. For the time it took the sun to travel
the width of a man's hand, Nantani was a scene from the old stories of
hell as the soldiery took what they could for themselves.
And then the second call came, and the looting stopped. Those few who
were so maddened by greed or lust that they ignored the call were taken
to their captains, relieved of what wealth they had grabbed, and then a
fifth of them killed as an example to others. This was an army of
discipline, and the free-for-all was over. Now the studied, considered
dismantling of the city began.
Quarter by quarter, street by street, the armies of Galt stripped the
houses and basements, outbuildings and kitchens and coal stores. Sinja's
own men led each force, calling out in breaking voices that Nantani had
fallen, that her people were permanently indentured to Galt, their
belongings forfeit. And all the wealth of the city was stripped down,
put on carts and wagons, and pulled to a great pile at the seafront.
Some men fought and were killed. Some fled and were hunted down or
ignored, at the whim of the soldiers who found them. And the great
blackening dome of jade sang out its grief and mourning.
Sinja caught sight of the pavilion erected by the growing pile of
treasure. The banners of Galt and Gice hung from the bar that topped the
fluttering canvas. Sinja and the soldiers Balasar Gice had sent to
collect him strode to it. At the seafront, ships stood ready to receive
what had once been Nantani, and was now the fortune of Galt. Balasar
stood at a writing desk, consulting with a clerk over a ledger. The
general still wore his armor-embroidered silk as thick as three fingers
together. Sinja had seen its like before. Armor that would stop a spear
or a sword cut, but weighed likely half as much as the man who wore it.
And still when Balasar caught sight of them and walked forward, hand
outstretched to Sinja, there was no weariness in him.
"Captain Ajutani," Balasar said, his hand clasping Sinja's, "come sit
with me."
Sinja took a pose appropriate for a guard to his commander. It wasn't
quite the appropriate thing, but it came near enough for the general to