Read The Drowning City: The Necromancer Chronicles Book One for Free Online Page B

house, returned a moment later. “It’s clear.”
    Jabbor sank into a chair by the table and Zhirin sat beside him. Her filthy feet smudged clean tiles and she tucked her heels
     onto a chair-rung like a child. Sweat and tears dried stiff and itchy on her face, and when she scratched her cheek her nails
     came away dark with grime. Her finger was bruised where she’d bitten it.
    “What happened?”
    “We slipped in quietly—a few coins, drugged wine, and a little distraction. It should have been bloodless. But the Dai Tranh
     came right behind us.”
    Zhirin’s stomach chilled. Jabbor’s group, the Jade Tigers, were known for their peaceful—if not always legal—protests. It
     was part of what drew her to them. The Dai Tranh, however, was known only for violence.
    His full lips tightened, carving lines around his mouth. Sweat glistened oily between the neat rows of his hair. “They outnumbered
     us. Killed the guards, looted the stones, and set the fire. We tried to put it out, but they left some of the rubies behind
     for fuel.”
    No wonder the blaze had been so fierce—Haroun’s fire, harnessed into stone. “But how did they know?”
    Kwan’s eyes narrowed to angry black slits. “Shouldn’t we be asking you that question?”
    Zhirin’s mouth opened, but Jabbor raised a hand before she could snap a retort. “No, Kwan.” He caught her eyes and held them.
     “But I’ll ask it anyway. Did you say anything to anyone else?”
    She shook her head, cheeks stinging. He couldn’t afford to trust blindly, she knew that. Not even her. Maybe especially not
     her. “I only told you.”
    “Then they have someone inside us, or a spy of their own in the Kurun Tam.” He wiped a sheen of sweat off his face.
    Kwan snorted softly but held her tongue. She found a pitcher of water and a rag on the counter and began to sponge the blood
     off Temel’s face. True cousins, not just clan-kin, and the resemblance showed in the set of their cheekbones and short, flat
     noses. High forest people, the Lhuns, before the Empire had claimed their lands for the Kurun Tam and sent them to live by
     the river.
    “We looked inside one of the crates,” Jabbor said, “before everything fell apart. One of the boxes marked for flawed stones.
     Do you know what we found?”
    Zhirin shook her head.
    Jabbor pulled something from his pocket and held it out to her. A stone gleamed dully against his palm—the size of her thumbnail,
     uncut, yellowish-white. A chunk of quartz, she thought, until she reached for it and felt the crystal’s sharp pulse.
    “Sweet Mother,” she whispered, snatching her hand back. “Is that—” She swallowed the foolish question; she knew what it was.
     A diamond.
    She’d never seen one in the rough before, only cut and polished and gleaming on the hand or throat of a mage, and very few
     of those. Unlucky, the uninitiated called them, or cursed. For the spirits or ghosts who ended up trapped in them, they must
     be.
    And expensive. No question about that. The stone resting on Jabbor’s palm was worth a dozen rubies in Assar.
    “What’s it doing here?” She caught herself leaning back. Foolish superstition—it was just a stone, without a mage to wield
     it. Her master would chide her for making warding signs against a lump of rock.
    “It came from the Kurun Tam, didn’t it?” Kwan asked, setting aside the bloody ash-smeared rag.
    “No! How could it? We mine rubies, sapphires—”
    “We?” the other woman snapped, but Jabbor waved her silent.
    Zhirin shook her head, pressing her stinging knuckle against her lips again. Diamonds came from Iseth, or lands far to the
     north whose names she could never remember. Places where people bound ghosts into slavery, as well as spirits. She couldn’t
     call it abomination—the Empire accepted such practices and her own master wore a diamond—but it still made her skin crawl.
    “We need to find out where this came from,” Jabbor said, closing his hand