Cold Fire (19 page)

Going to bed posed certain problems. He’d planned to be reading in his nightshirt when they came, until he realized he had no urge to freeze as he fought a blaze in nightclothes. He set out his things as if he prepared them to wear the next day. He could stuff them on over his nightshirt, perhaps leave the end of the shirt trailing outside his breeches. That decided, he got into his bed and opened a book, Godsforge’s Types of Burn and Burn Healing. It was nearly impossible to read. Soon they would come. Soon, soon…

But the clock kept striking. No one came. He didn’t dare go to the garret window that would give him a view of Alakut. If they came while he was there, it would be hard to explain why he watched a fire instead of racing to it.

So Ben waited through a sleepless night. Some of his Alakut brigade arrived in the morning, long after it was over.

“We thought we could handle it,” whined the head footman from Lubozny House. “We’ve trained for weeks-“

“Three,” Ben interrupted coldly. “When you bothered to come. You didn’t know enough to put out a brush fire in a park, let alone a shop. “Anyone hurt?”

“A woman who slept in the cellar-she was fried black. And two of us,” said an undercook from the Gemcutters’ Guildhall. The cook was a big woman, one of the few who came to every training session. “The healers said they breathed smoke. We got them at the Alakut Infirmary… .”

Ben yanked on his coat. “Smoke! Were you wearing masks? When I told you smoke is as deadly as fire?” Some glared at him as if it were his fault that they hadn’t remembered about smoke.

Ben flung open his door and strode out into the glare of the morning sun on snow. At least his so-called firefighters had brought a large sleigh. They tumbled into it after him and raced to the infirmary, arriving in time for Ben to hold one smoke-stricken man’s hands as he died. As his last breath escaped the man’s lips, Ben felt a joy so intense that it made him weep. The healers, even the fire brigade, looked properly sober and admiring. They think it’s grief, Ben thought, trembling as he fought laughter.

What he’d felt just now was almost too intense to bear. He’d made the rules. He’d told them, they hadn’t listened, and two people had paid the price, this fellow and the beggar woman. The fire had killed them for him. He had turned it loose as mages commanded the winds to rescue becalmed ships, and the fire had given him its greatest gift-the power over human life.

The destruction of wood and glass and porcelain was nothing to this, Ben thought. Look at them, after their complaints over the drills and schedule. Let one die-let one of them struggle to breathe until the struggle was too much-and suddenly Ben had their attention. Here was why Kugisko had treated him callously. The stakes weren’t high enough.

Gently he freed himself from the man’s grip. “I’ll look at my other firefighter,” he informed the healers. “And then that beggar. What was she doing there? And then I need to see Alakut council. One of you tell them I will meet them in the council hall, by midday.”

Healers and brigade trainees alike, they scrambled to do as he ordered. It was amazing, the way dead people changed things.

The joy was less powerful with the second firefighter: the healers said he would live, though his lungs would never be the same. The beggar woman, though … again he felt that overpowering thrill. He had done this-Bennat Ladradun, his mother’s scapegoat, ignored by the coin counters of the island councils. They would heed him now, wouldn’t they?

He rested a hand on the dead beggar’s charcoaled ankle, knowing the picture he made, solemn-faced, eyes bright with tears. The firefighters watched him with awe as they fought to keep from vomiting at the dreadful smell of burned flesh.

He drew his hand away, pretending not to notice the black flakes that clung to his palm. “Such a price to pay,” he murmured shaking his head. “Maybe we could not have saved this poor creature, but we might have saved our own people.”

They stood back to let him pass, like a noble, like a king. It was the best morning of his life.

By the third hour of the afternoon, his world was bleak again. The Alakut council had argued, expressed regret, and refused him more funds to train a second brigade, though he explained that one was not enough for the whole island. His brigade, they said, had done poorly at this first challenge. They had to wait and see. They would insist that those who were supposed to learn the skills attended training more often.

Ben managed to contain his rage until he reached the warehouse. There, when no one could see or hear, he slammed his hands against the walls. Only fire respected him. The Alakut council, it seemed, required a special lesson. He feared that it would be a frightful one, but they had to learn that fire exacted a frightful price.

Sunsday night Daja and Frostpine stood on a broad gallery from which two staircases led to the meeting hall of the Mages’ Society of Kugisko. They held glasses of mulled cider as they watched the activity below. Kugisko’s mages, dressed in assorted finery, gathered in clusters and broke apart, greeting colleagues. Daja, too, wore her best, a Trader-style knee-length coat and leggings in gold-brown damask trimmed with black braid. No one put on elegant leather slippers when they had to walk to and from sleighs as snow fell, so Daja wore polished Kugiskan boots with gold spirals stamped around the rim. Frostpine, as always, wore his Fire-red habit over his layers of non-Temple clothes, but no one could ignore Frostpine, even in this gaudy crowd. Light glittered from gems and crystals or shimmered over velvets and brocade. Mages who were not priests or religious dedicates, Daja had found, tended to peacock in dress and ornaments.

Masters were accompanied by those students they deemed worthy. The students, their clothes good but plain, struggled to hide awe. Already Daja had seen Camoc, Arnen, and two more young mages she recognized from Camoc’s shop, as well as the carpentry-and cooking-mages she had met.

“I don’t see Olennika Potcracker,” Daja remarked to Frostpine. “I wanted you to meet her.”

“Potcracker once told me she cooks for parties-she doesn’t go to them,” a harsh female voice said behind them. “She’s also referred publicly to some of our richer members as parasites. I doubt they’d welcome her.”

Daja and Frostpine turned to face the speaker. She was in her early fifties, two inches shorter than Daja, with pale, weathered skin and crows’ feet wrinkles around small, dark eyes. Her no-nonsense lips were thin and wind-chapped, her nose a sharp angle thrust straight down from her forehead. Like many older native Kugiskan women she had dyed her hair blonde so many times that it looked like straw. In contrast to her plain looks, she wore a black silk undergown and a sleeveless maroon velvet overgown, both decorated with gold embroideries. The buttons down the front of the overgown were small gold nuggets. She wore a sheer black veil and a round maroon velvet cap over the ragged twists of her hair.

She continued, “I personally think Potcracker is overgenerous. After all, there are creatures that feed on real parasites, so the real ones do some good. Our wealthier members feed no one but themselves.”

“I bless Shurri and Hakkoi for keeping my nature sunny, unlike yours,” Frostpine told the woman, naming the fire gods to whom he had dedicated his life. To Daja he said, “Anyone connected with magistrates sees too much of the bad side of things.”

“You can hide from it in your pretty temples,” the woman said. She measured Daja with thoughtful eyes. “We don’t.”

“That’s why I prefer the pretty temples,” retorted Frostpine. “Viymese Heluda Salt, this is my student and friend, Viymese Daja Kisubo. Heluda’s the mage I’ve been working with lately.”

“I’m honored, Viymese Salt,” Daja told the older woman politely. “I hope the investigation goes well.”

“We’re close,” said Frostpine.

“Don’t say that until we have the naliz in irons,” Heluda advised him. She offered Daja a hand gloved in black lace. A smile softened her firm mouth, though her eyes remained wary. Daja had a feeling that Heluda Salt remained watchful even in her sleep. “I hear many good things about you,” she told Daja.

“Then you can’t have been talking to him,” Daja said, giving the older woman’s hand a squeeze and letting go. “He only ever gives me a hard time.”

“But it’s for your own good,” Frostpine said, inspecting the room below again. “I force myself, so you will be strong.”

Heluda jerked her head at Frostpine. “Was he always impossible, or has the cold he moans about so often done this to him?”

Daja shrugged: she too could be as wary as a magistrate’s mage. “I wouldn’t know. He likes to keep me confused.”

In the air below, five golden swirls rose, coming together in a whirlwind beneath the huge chandelier. They sparkled as they whirled and spread, until they formed a soaring palace in midair. The watchers applauded. Slowly the illusion faded until only a handful of specks glittered in the air. These vanished, one by one. The last shimmered, faded, then blazed into flaming orange glory as a sun. Then it too winked out.

“It’s a Society tradition,” Heluda explained to the two southerners. “The illusionists compete all winter, and the Society votes a winner at the last meeting, in the spring. A waste of magic, but nobody listens to me.”

“If you earned your living making old men look young and fat women look thin, I should think just doing something pretty would be a relief,” Frostpine commented. “Let them have their fun.”

For a time they watched the crowd, Heluda naming some of Kugisko’s mages and what they did. Daja leaned on the stone rail, listening to her and to bits of conversation that rose from people below.

“-and I said, why not give up doing love potions? If you have to keep moving so jealous husbands and lovers won’t catch you-“

“-undersold me by five gold argibs. Five! I told him, do that again, and I’ll go to the Fair Practices Council-“

A handful of mage-students descended on the tables where food was laid out. Some looked like this was their first solid meal of the week. Daja was grateful that Frostpine was a great believer in the theory that well-fed students worked harder. Many teachers weren’t.

“-now that he’s got a noble protector, he can afford pearls instead of moonstones for his money-drawing spells.”

“His protector’s wife isn’t complaining either, not when her husband’s out making money until all hours!”

The two who discussed that topic laughed in a knowing way. Daja hated them. Was this what the meditation, work, and study were for, to make rich men richer and supply material for smutty jokes?

“I did all I could.” That voice was tearful, female, coming from the stair to Daja’s left. “I tried to call rain to put it out, but I couldn’t fight the snow. It-it froze. It coated everything like glass.” The speaker sniffled. A male voice murmured something. “I told them the dangers, that I couldn’t warm it enough to rain, but they ordered me to do it. Just trying half-killed me. My head still hurts. My landlord wants me out because the district’s angry at me. A man in the crowd broke his leg on the ice.” The woman’s voice quavered. “And this beggar woman, who always blessed me when I gave her a copper? She was sleeping there after the shopkeeper left, and-and-Griantein shrive me, she burned. They brought her out… “The woman began to sob.

Daja swallowed hard. A fire. They were talking about another fire. She wanted to ask, but it would take more courage than she had to face the weeping mage. A hand gloved in black lace rested on her arm. “A confectioners’ shop on Hollyskyt Way, last night. Alakut Island,” Heluda clarified, when Daja frowned, not knowing the street name. “Just on the other side of Pozkit Bridge. Lucky for the confectioner that he wasn’t good enough to live on Alakut, just to sell his sweets there.”

Daja frowned. If she remembered correctly, that was near Ladradun House.

“It could have been worse, then,” Frostpine said. He appeared to be absorbed by the view, but it was like him to have heard everything.

“Was Ben Ladradun there?” Daja asked, trying not to seem worried. Frostpine glanced at her with a brief frown, then returned to his survey of the assembled mages.

“No, or things might have gone better,” replied Heluda. “Two of the firefighters breathed in smoke. One won’t ever have healthy lungs again. The other died this morning. And it was stupidly done, stupidly. They didn’t even think to send for Ladradun, where he lives maybe ten minutes’ run away, on the other side of Pozkit Bridge. He only started training them three weeks ago. They should have known they couldn’t manage yet. He would have reminded them of the danger from smoke, at least.”

Daja’s cider was cold, but it wasn’t the cider that made her sad. Ben wouldn’t blame the novice firefighters-he would blame himself for not being there. There was no convincing someone like him that he couldn’t fix everything. It would be worse because the fire had been nearby.

“No one can be everywhere all of the time,” Frostpine said quietly, as if he knew what she thought. “He’s a grown man; he’ll realize that.”

“Yes, but he takes fires so personally,” Daja pointed out. “He’s got this idea in his head… “

Heluda cleared her throat. “I was talking to the Alakut magistrate’s mages before I got here. They believe this fire may have been set. They’re going to work their investigation spells as soon as the site cools-tomorrow, probably.”

Goosebumps rippled along Daja’s flesh. “Ben and I think the Shopgirl District boardinghouse fire was set too, she said. “Maybe they’re connected.”

Heluda raised her brows. “The Shopgirl fire was set. This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

“But Ben reported it,” Daja said. “Or I thought he did.” She couldn’t remember his exact words. Had he said he’d done it, or that he would do it?

“Then chances are the report’s buried on my desk,” Heluda replied with a shrug. “I get copies of reports from all the city districts to review-it’s hard to keep up, particularly with a major investigation of my own underway.” She turned a large, jeweled ring on her finger. “Have you or Ravvot Ladradun any ideas on who set that fire?”

Daja shook her head. “I don’t know why someone would do such a thing in a city that’s mostly wood.”