In the palace guest wing, Kain heard it.
Not felt — heard. The sound traveled through the noble district the way significant sounds traveled through stone cities — diminished by distance, clarified by it, arriving stripped of everything except its essential nature. Three impacts, spaced. Structural. The kind that registered in the chest before the ears caught up.
Then something smaller. Hotter. The acoustic signature of fire applied repeatedly to a specific location.
He went to the window.
The noble district from above, the evening light going. He couldn't see the source — the angle was wrong, the mansion around a corner that the guest wing's window didn't reach. But he could see the street below, where people had stopped moving and were looking in the same direction. And he could see, catching the last of the light at the wrong angle for intact glass, the bright scatter of two broken windows.
He stood at the window for a long moment.
