The Drowning City: The Necromancer Chronicles Book One (37 page)

The ghost nodded, then looked down at her wound—the bloodstain on her shirt was shrinking.

“Tell my granddaughters…” She shook her head with a rueful smile. “No, never mind. Let them be. Good-bye, necromancer.” And
then she was gone.

The ground shuddered softly and brick dust trickled from the broken walls. Adam stood, Xinai in his arms. “Time to go.”

Vienh started to harangue them when they returned to the dock, but stopped when she saw Xinai and Adam’s grim face.

“Will she live?” he asked Isyllt, easing her down.

She touched the woman’s shoulder carefully. Bruises and scrapes, strained muscles, a broken arm and fractured ribs. But no
damage to the heart, no poison in the blood. “I think so. She needs rest, medicine, but no miracles.” She glanced up. “Are
you going to stay with her?”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “No,” he said after a moment. “She made her choice.” He nodded toward the Tigers. “They can
look after her. And I promised to see you back safe.” He glanced at her sling. “Or as close as I’ve managed.”

She gave him a lopsided smile. “Close enough for government work.”

“I’m not rowing you to Selafai in a storm-cursed longboat,” Vienh shouted across the quay, kicking the boat in question. “Let’s
go.”

Isyllt turned to Asheris. Her arm itched and she’d started to shake; her voice was dying fast and taking her wits with it.
“If you’re ever in Erisín—” she said at last.

“Yes.” He smiled, took her hand and pressed a kiss on her filthy knuckles. “Or come to Assar. I’ll show you the Sea of Glass.”

“If it’s anything like the mountain, please don’t bother.” She grinned, squeezing his hand. He didn’t flinch from her ring
this time.

His smile stretched and he leaned down to kiss her brow. “Go home, necromancer.” It sounded like a benediction.

She couldn’t wish him the same. “Good luck,” she said instead. She turned toward the waiting boat and didn’t look back till
they’d crossed the river’s shining veil.

T
he news beat them home. Only days after the destruction of Symir, Rahal al Seth, Emperor of Assar, was dead. He and several
of his mages had burned when a palace laboratory caught fire. No one knew what had started the fire, but it was assumed to
have been a spell gone wrong. It occurred during the demon days before the start of the new year—always an ill omen.

His half sister, Samar al Seth, would be crowned before the month was up, and already promised aid to devastated Sivahra.

Isyllt smiled when she read it. For a time she considered walking the labyrinth beneath the temple of Erishal and releasing
the rest of the ghosts in her ring. Pragmatism won, however, and she settled for opening a bottle of Chassut red and toasting
the embers falling in her hearth.

The physicians at the Arcanost opened her hand and stitched it up again full of silver pins. The damage was too great for
even their most cunning surgeons, though, and she’d left it too long untreated. She retained the use of thumb and forefinger,
but the two middle fingers curled uselessly and the smallest followed them, muscles already atrophying. She wore a ridge of
scar tissue in the shape of a man’s hand around her left wrist—that would last longer than the payment sitting in her bank
account. She began to wear her ring on her right hand, and learned to wash her hair one-handed.

The pain and guilt in Kiril’s eyes whenever he saw her might have given her a vicious pleasure only a month ago. Now they
were just another little sadness. As Adam had said, what was the use in arguing?

The next courier ship came a month after the first and carried reports of the new Empress’s coronation, as well as news of
an investigation into embezzlement and financial mismanagement in the military. Several generals had hastily retired and the
Empress had not yet replaced them.

The ship also brought a package for Isyllt, delivered by a ruddy-faced dockrat. After cursing and fumbling with the nailed
crate, she finally produced a smaller box. She raised an eyebrow at the seal; not the Imperial stamp, but the crest of the
family al Seth. This box was sealed with a spell and the latch lifted when she touched it. Inside the padded coffer were a
note and a velvet pouch.

I hope this finds you well
, she read.

My situation here has much improved, in light of recent events. The new Empress has offered me a position, and I think I shall
accept it. I cannot return home, but the City of Lions is not so unpleasant when it isn’t my prison. You asked me once if
I could give up our profession—the answer, it seems, is no. We are as we have been made. I’ll be certain to tell Her Majesty
to give me more necromancers on staff.

Enclosed is a token of my gratitude—only a paltry one, for what you’ve done, but more becoming than the scars, I think.

Your friend,

Asheris

Isyllt opened the bag and laughed as a stream of opals poured free, gleaming with iridescent fire.

M
ore people than I can count offered help and support during the course of this book. Just a few include Elizabeth Bear; Leah
Bobet; Jodi Meadows; Jaime Lee Moyer; everyone in the Online Writing Workshop and its Zoo; all my blog readers who endured
my cursing and struggling; the circulation department of Willis Library; my husband, Steven, who survived at ground zero;
my fabulous agent, Jennifer Jackson; and my equally fabulous editor, Dong-Won Song. Thank you!

Amanda Downum was born in Virginia and has since spent time in Indonesia, Micronesia, Missouri, and Arizona. In 1990 she was
sucked into the gravity well of Texas and has not yet escaped. She graduated from the University of North Texas with a degree
in English literature, and has spent the last ten years working in a succession of libraries and bookstores; she is very fond
of alphabetizing. She currently lives near Austin in a house with a spooky attic, which she shares with her long-suffering
husband and fluctuating numbers of animals and half-finished novels. She spends her spare time making jewelry and falling
off perfectly good rocks. To learn more about the author, visit
www.amandadownum.com
.

Prior to becoming a published author, what other professions have you had?

I’ve been a book buyer for a medical bookstore and a library supervisor, and spent years as a retail minion. I’m currently
dayjobbing as a bookseller in a used-book store, which isn’t at all a bad way to spend eight hours of a day.

When you aren’t writing, what do you like to do in your spare time?

Besides selling other people’s books, I make jewelry and rock-climb (outside whenever I can, but mostly indoors). I’ve tried
gardening, but that turned out to be depressing for me and deadly for the plants. My next hobby may be something involving
sharp objects, like knitting or crochet.

Who/what would you consider to be your influences?

My mother read me Tolkien, Lewis, Le Guin, and L’Engle as a child, and they carved permanent channels in my brain. Later on
I discovered Lovecraft and binged on horror novels, and now magic and monsters are pretty much my favorite things. My favorite
modern writers are Elizabeth Bear, Barbara Hambly, and Caitlín R. Kiernan. Besides the literary influences, I’ve always loved
to travel, and I get a lot of inspiration from visiting or reading about other places.

The Drowning City
is a novel with an amazingly lush setting and unique world. How did you derive the idea for this novel?

Several different ideas had been floating around in my head for a while: the character Isyllt, a spy novel, and second-world
fantasy (I’d been working on several contemporary fantasies previously, and wanted a change of pace). And then in 2005 Hurricane
Katrina came, and as I watched all the horror and ugliness and heroism and grief, I thought of the title
The Drowning City
, and all the disparate ideas started to come together. Which makes me feel a little like a vulture.

In writing the novel, were you particularly influenced by your time living in Southeast Asia?

Having lived in Arizona and Texas since I moved back to the States, I really miss rainy seasons. So as soon as I had a book
with monsoons, a South Asian–inspired setting seemed perfect. The most specific influence on
TDC
, though, was in the scene with the pigs. That was something I heard too often, living up the hill from a pig farm on Yap.

Do you have a favorite character? If so, why?

Definitely Isyllt. She’s one of my oldest characters, and survived an unfortunate juvenilia project that will otherwise never
see the light of day. She can always be relied on to run straight into dangerous situations—or crawl into them in the dark—and
otherwise get herself in trouble, which I’ve discovered is the most useful thing a character can do when I’m trying to plot
a novel.

What can readers expect in
The Bone Palace?

Intrigue, heartbreak, and more forensic necromancy. And vampires, though not the oversexed variety.

As a debut author, what has been your favorite part of the publishing process?

Seeing my cover art! Book covers have fascinated me ever since I started to read, and even the bad ones are often very entertaining.
That I really like the preliminary cover art for
TDC
is just an extra helping of awesome. 

Introducing

If you enjoyed THE DROWNING CITY,
look out for

The Necromancer Chronicles Book Two

by Amanda Downum

I
n the Sepulcher, death smelled like roses.

Sachets of petals and braziers of incense lined the marble halls and scented-oil lamps burned throughout the long vault, twining
ribbons of rose and jasmine and myrrh through the chill air. Meant to drown the smell of blood and rot that crept out of the
corpse-racks in the walls, but death couldn’t be undone so easily. The raw, coppery scent of recent violence teased past the
sweetness, creeping into Isyllt’s sinuses as she studied the dead woman on the slab.

Blue-tinged lips parted slightly, expressionless in death, but the slash across her throat grinned, baring red meat and pale
flashes of bone. Barely enough blood in her to settle—some clotted like rust in brass-blonde hair, pasted damp-frizzed tendrils
to her cheeks. Her clothing had already been removed, faint lines down her ribs showing where corset stays had pressed into
flesh. Her garments, cut away by competent, uncaring attendants, were likely shelved in an oubliette of an evidence room upstairs.

Isyllt crossed her arms under her breasts and shivered beneath her long black coat. “Where did you find her?” Her breath trailed
away in a shimmering plume; spells of cold etched the stones.

“In the Garden, in an alley just after dusk.” Khelséa lounged against the frescoed wall between corpse-drawers, her orange
uniform coat garish against pale green. Vines and leaves swirled across the vault—the builders had tried to make the room
cheery, but no amount of paint or plaster could disguise the death that steeped these stones. “She was cold and stiff when
we got there.”

Isyllt frowned at the dead woman, brushed a finger against a lock of yellow hair. A prostitute, then, most likely. A foreigner
too, from the coloring—Vallish like Isyllt, perhaps, or Rosian. Refugees crowded tenements and shantytowns in the inner city,
and more and more turned to the Garden for work.

Isyllt pressed gently on the woman’s jaw, and it opened to reveal nearly a full set of lightly tea-stained teeth. Her elbows
were still stiff, and her knees immobile. Rigor had only just begun to fade. “A day dead?”

“That’s our guess. It was raining when we found her, and she was soaked, but there were hardly any flies. And the alley is
visible from the street—she couldn’t have lain there all day.”

“So dumped. Why call me?” The Garden was the Vigiles Urbani’s jurisdiction, unless the Crown was somehow involved, or the
crime was beyond the city police. And while pride insisted that the Vigiles’ necromancers weren’t as well-trained as the Arcanosti
or Crown Investigators, Isyllt knew they were perfectly competent. She bent over the white stone table, examining the wound.
The knife had nicked bone. “What can I tell you about this that you don’t already know?”

“Look at her thighs.”

The woman’s legs tapered from flaring hips to gently muscled calves and delicate ankles. No spider veins or calluses on her
feet—chipped gold paint decorated her toenails. Flesh once soft and supple felt closer to wax under Isyllt’s careful fingers.
Death whispered over her hand, lapped catlike at her skin. The cabochon black diamond on her right hand flickered fitfully,
ghostlight sparking in its crystalline depths.