The Drowning City: The Necromancer Chronicles Book One by Amanda Downum

look, but the vision was set, only one way to play out now—
toward the front of the shop, where the tired-looking shopkeeper glances up and smiles—
    And Isyllt stumbled, even the memory of the explosion enough to rock her on her feet.
    Asheris caught her elbow. “You saw something?”
    She leaned against him for an instant, trying to decide how much to tell him. But he’d led her this far—perhaps he could take
     her further still.
    “Yes.” She feigned a catch in her voice, let him steady her more than she needed. His shoulder was a pleasant warmth in the
     chill room. “I saw the man who did it.”
    “Can you show me?”
    Her hesitation this time was real, but after a heartbeat she nodded. She had been trained by the best, after all.
    Asheris laid a hand on the side of her face. Isyllt closed her eyes and summoned up the image of the shop, locking the rest
     of herself deep away where he couldn’t reach. She expected him to intrude, to search, but his presence in her mind was controlled,
     constrained, as if he feared to touch her.
    A brief contact and a deft one, but as he slipped away she caught a flash of something else—sand and fire and wind, the desert’s
     fury. Her eyes flew open to see him recoil, dark face draining ashen.
    “Forgive me,” he said after a moment, inclining his head. “That was…unexpected.”
    Curiosity defeated tact. “What did you feel?”
    “A great deal of nothing. I don’t envy your magic, my lady.” He straightened his coat, brushing imaginary dust off the embroidered
     sleeves. “But thank you for your assistance. Even though the man responsible is dead, this helps us track down his accomplices.
     Perhaps we can find them before anyone else dies.” His tiny shrug spoke eloquent disbelief.
    Every time Zhirin closed her eyes, she saw bodies crumpled on the street, smelled smoke and blood and fear. Before long she
     gave up and lay staring at the ceiling until night fell and the house grew quiet.
    She should have tried to help Isyllt and her master, but she couldn’t stand to watch them pore over details of the attack.
     As though it were a mathematical equation or a difficult translation to be solved. As though a dozen or more people weren’t
     dead, for nothing more than deciding to buy a lamp today.
    As if that was just something that happened.
    Finally she rose and straightened her clothes. For a moment she contemplated counterfeiting a sleeping form with pillows and
     slipping out the window, like she and her friend Sia had done when they were young. She restrained herself; nineteen was old
     enough to come and go as she pleased. Better to save the sneaking for when she really needed it.
    But she didn’t find her master or Marat and tell them she was going either, only slipped down the stairs to the dim first
     floor and let herself out the back. Crickets chirped in the darkness of the garden and hibiscus bushes whispered in the breeze.
     The house-wards recognized her and stayed quiescent as she left through the garden gate.
    She didn’t know where to go. Not home—her mother would ask too many questions. Would make Zhirin ask herself too many questions.
     A councillor’s daughter, rich and fattened on Khas money while people died, and what did she think she could accomplish by
     playing at revolution with the Tigers? Would she even have joined the Tigers a year ago, when Fei Minh was still a member
     of the Khas?
    Zhirin shook her head, eyes stinging. Jabbor might have reassured her, but he was on the North Bank, and she couldn’t go that
     far for comfort, even if she had remembered shoes tonight. She had few other friends in the city, and none she could trust
     with this. Not for the first time, she wished Sia had remained in Symir instead of attending the university in Ta’ashlan.
     But Sia could no more have stayed than Zhirin could have followed her.
    As Zhirin crossed the soaring Bridge of Sighs, whose lace-carved stone drew voices from the wind, she