Jhai finally managed to get a hold of herself as the ceiling fell in. She had blurred, uncertain memories of a snowy plain, other people, a mad goddess, but none of it was clear. There was the taste of blood in her mouth and her spine ached at the base. Coughing, she dodged falling masonry, struggling to find the demon and get clear. There was a searing crunch from the doorway as the lintel began to give way. The front of Shai was subsiding, sinking slowly and gracefully in upon itself. She still had no idea how she had come to be here in the first place. Then the floor heaved and Jhai was knocked to her hands and knees. The lintel cracked with a shotgun report, bringing a shower of dust and plaster down upon her head. Jhai could not see; the chalky dust saturated her nose and throat. She coughed and gagged, knowing that she ought to get up and run. She could feel her devic nature surging back in defense. It occurred to her to wonder where she would end up when she died. She thought she knew.
As the doorframe fell inward, however, she felt herself seized, wrenched free and thrust out onto the steps. Frantically, she rolled clear. Behind her, the front of Shai fell in. Jhai lay on the shaking steps, gasping in long breaths of the dust-smothered air. Then, as swiftly as it had come, the tremor stopped. She remained there for a minute and then, retching, got to her feet and rubbed the dust from her eyes.
The morning sun was a pale coin above Wuan Chih, rising up through the mist, and somewhere a bird was singing, a nightingale in the uprooted trees along Shaopeng. Jhai took a step toward the ruin. All four walls of Shai had come down, along with the dome. The ground still shuddered with the aftershock. Detective Inspector Chen was standing by her side, his round face pasty with dust, like a pie, as he gaped up at the wreckage.
"Well," Zhu Irzh remarked from her other side. "Happy Day of the Dead, eh?"
The Great Meridian had settled uneasily back into its appointed track, but it would be a while before the tremors ceased entirely. Shaopeng Street had been split straight down the center, and the tram rails had been swallowed by the gaping crack. Most of the shops and chophouses were damaged, either reduced to piles of mortar or leaning unsteadily against one another.
Along Step Street, the shacks had collapsed like a row of dominoes and at least one demon lounge was now buried beneath the mass of buildings that had slid down the hill. The wall of Ghenret harbor had been breached and the water level had risen over the sea sluices and flooded back into the Jhenrai canal and over its banks, placing the go-downs and warehouses in several feet of brackish tide.
Shai was a true ruin now.
The outlying suburbs of Orichay and Bharulay had suffered considerably, slipping down the muddy hills on which they had been built. Much of Bharulay—compartment blocks, warehouses and the tram station—had ended up on top of the mining works, sealing the entrance to the hills of Wuan Chih. The rest of the shattered Eregeng Trade House had fallen into the streets beneath, squashing the Second National Bank underneath it.
The roof of the Pellucid Island Opera House had fallen in, and back in Ghenret the foundations of Paugeng had slipped, causing the tower to list. From a distance, it appeared as if the home of the Tserais had put its ear to the ground to listen. Robin's lab was crushed beneath it.
A later estimate put the death toll at nine thousand, and the city was generally considered to have got off lightly. Three thousand or more were missing, among them a well-known and reclusive poet, gone without trace.