Cold Fire (22 page)

A column of fire, blasting with pent-up strength, roared through the opening and out over the snow. If Frostpine hadn’t knocked everyone to the side, they would be dead.

Ben and others ran in to help, taking everyone back to the gate. There they turned. The extensions to the house were burning. Smoke rolled from beneath shuttered windows. A moment later the shutters blew off; gouts of fire reached for the open sky.

Frostpine and Daja sat heavily on cold and slushy ground. Ben lifted the baby’s sling from Daja’s back. With its weight removed, she could lie down. The cold, wet stuff under her felt wonderful on her hot skin. All of her hot skin. She opened a smoke-teared eye and looked down. She could see brown arms, a brown side, brown legs. She giggled. Sandry had never expected that Daja might wear her best clothes into a fire, so she hadn’t protected them.

Daja glanced at Frostpine. He sat, knees drawn up, resting his head on them. Like her he was naked, his clothes burned off.

“Frostpine?” she whispered, her voice cracking.

For answer he let the arm nearest her fall, until his hand lay over one of hers. Don’t you ever scare me like that again, he told her through their magic. Especially not for crazy people who build fancy houses all of wood.

She knew what he meant, but that wasn’t what she needed to say. I want to go home, she told him. Her eyes hurt; she wanted to cry, but she was so dried out she couldn’t produce tears. To Summersea. To our family.

On the first caravan out of here in the spring, he promised.

She slept, or passed out, and woke in her bed in Bancanor House. It was dark; a pair of lamps burned at a table near the bed where Matazi and Nia sat. Matazi worked on a tapestry frame as Nia read softly to her mother.

“Cedar is for the protection of the home,” the girl said, “to ward against lightning or the entry of evil from without. It-“

“Babies?” Daja croaked, and coughed. Matazi came to help her to sit. Jory, who Daja hadn’t seen on a stool beside the fire, poured something into a clay cup and brought it over. Nia stood at the foot of the bed, wide-eyed.

Daja sipped from Jory’s cup. Onion and garlic exploded in her mouth and Daja began to cough in earnest, hacking and fighting for breath. A clump of some dreadful mess blew from her chest into her mouth.

Matazi put a bowl under Daja’s chin. “Spit,” she ordered.

Daja spat. Three mouthfuls later, she could breathe without pain. “Your first spell?” she asked Jory.

The girl nodded. “Olennika told me to make her a copy, after I used it on Frostpine,” she said. “Only it’s not all mine. It was in a family book of cures that Aunt Morrachane gave me. I have to tell her how good it works.”

Daja nodded. “Thanks, I think,” she told Jory, onion and garlic still burning her tongue and throat. To Matazi she said, “The babies? The maid Frostpine brought out with… ?” Her voice trailed off as she read the answer in the woman’s dark eyes.

Matazi sat beside Daja in a drift of jasmine scent. “They saved the babies the girl carried,” she told Daja gently. “But she died in the courtyard.”

“And the baby I had?” Daja whispered. She felt tears rise; her mouth trembled. She wouldn’t cry in front of them, she refused to cry.

Matazi shook her head.

“It would’ve lived if I sent it with someone else,” Daja whispered. Tears overflowed for all her refusal to shed them. “I had to stay, to-to hold-” She couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear the thought of that baby suffocating on her back, couldn’t bear the thought of that brave maid, who had saved all those children only to die herself. Daja turned facedown into her pillow, and cried herself to sleep.

When she woke again, she saw that she still had company: Frostpine and Nia meditated in a protective circle on the floor. Daja blinked, her eyes stinging in the brilliance of Frostpine’s power. Beyond him she saw that Nia’s magic was now a steady silver glaze on her skin, still and unmoving.

Quietly she turned onto her side, away from them. The events of Sunsday night returned in all their fear and sorrow. Her own natural clearheadedness came with it. Yes, she ought to have sent the baby with someone else: who would that have been? Every adult had at least two other children in charge, and the handicap of water-soaked covers to manage. If she hadn’t held the fire, slowing her own escape to do so, it would have broken through on the ground floor and killed everyone inside, including the two babies who had lived while the woman who carried them began to die on the stair.

What had started this disaster-a kitchen fire? Overturned candles, a popping log on a hearth? The gods were cruel, to make such a tragedy from a stupid accident.

Real or set? asked that very determined part of her mind.

Daja bit her lip. She wished the others were here-Sandry, Tris, Briar. She didn’t have them, but she did have Frostpine. She could have lost him: they put themselves in danger when they agreed to enter the house. Their magics wouldn’t have prevented their being crushed by falling timbers.

The clock chimed downstairs; Nia’s eyes popped open. A moment later Frostpine emerged from his trance. “Very good,” he told Nia. “You’ve come a long way.” He rubbed out part of the circle. The protections around them collapsed and flowed into his body like a plume of smoke returning to its chimney. He helped Nia to stand, then dragged himself to his feet, using the bed as a crutch. He was stiff.

“You’re awake!” Nia said happily to Daja. “Hungry, too, yes?”

Daja sat up. “Starved,” she admitted.

“I’ll tell Anyussa,” Nia said, but for a moment she didn’t move, looking at Daja with huge brown eyes. “I could never do what you two did,” she said. “Walk into a burning house… I couldn’t.”

“You don’t know what you can do till you’re tested,” Frostpine said. He leaned down and kissed Nia’s forehead. “Wait until you are, before you judge yourself.”

Nia glanced up at Frostpine and gave him a tiny smile, then left the room, shaking her head.

Frostpine leaned back, hands on hips, stretching. Daja looked at him, worried. His skin was ashy over the brown; his few wrinkles seemed deeper. Did he have more white hairs now, or was it just that she hadn’t noticed how many he had before this? “Are you all right?” she asked.

“Better than when they fetched us back here,” he admitted. He threw several chunks of wood on the fire and poked up the embers so they would catch. “I had it easier,” he said. “Mine were adults. Once I got their attention, they did as they were told. I lost two,” he admitted, his full lips pinched. “Old people, stuck in beds. The others would have left them. You don’t see people at their best, times like this.”

Remembering the women who appeared to stop thinking at all when faced with peril, Daja nodded. “You tried to get them out?” she asked softly.

He went to her wardrobe, opened it, and began to take out clothes. “Smoke got them,” he said. “I think they died as I carried them out. Everybody always worries about burns, not smoke. Usually they’re dead before they know they’re in danger.”

Daja looked at the clothes he laid out for her. “I can’t put those on till I wash,” she pointed out. Someone-Matazi and the girls, she hoped-had cleaned the worst grime from her skin while she slept, since her nightshirt wasn’t too dirty, but she smelled of fire, and there was ash in her hair. “I need the steam room.” East Namorn lived for its huge, steamy bathhouses. Normally Daja hated the things, preferring nice, clean baths, but right now she felt grime in her pores. Steam would scour it out.

“I’ll help you to the steam room after you’ve eaten,” he promised.

“How many died?” she heard herself inquire. She shouldn’t ask-she knew she didn’t want an answer-but she had to know.

“Twelve,” said Frostpine in a dull voice. “Seven dead right away. Five after, including people who fought the fire. Three more-no one’s sure if they’ll make it. It could have been worse. They were having a children’s party and a supper party, with all kinds of extra servants. Fifty in the house. Olaksan Jossaryk is dead. He saved his wife and supper guests first. The last he was seen, he was on his way to the nursery wing.”

“The whole town is exclaiming over the coincidence,” Heluda Salt announced from the open door. Anyussa and Jory, each carrying a loaded tray, filed in past her. They put the dishes on a small round table before the hearth. When they finished, Anyussa towed the obviously curious Jory out by the arm. Heluda closed the door behind them. “I see I visited at just the right time,” the mage remarked coolly. “We must talk.”

“I’m only wearing a nightshirt,” Daja said in apology.

“Oh, of course you should wash and dress and put off eating to save me the sight of you in a nightgown,” retorted Heluda, amused. “Don’t be ridiculous. Once you’ve helped your daughter give birth to your first grandson, believe me, things like proper dinner wear aren’t important.”

Daja threw off her covers and stood with a lurch. If anything, she was stiffer than Frostpine. He helped her to one of the fireside chairs. Daja’s stomach growled as she saw fresh bread, ham, stewed spinach, and custard. It wasn’t Trader cooking or Trader spices, but it smelled just as good right now. “Excuse me,” she said. Grabbing a spoon, she got to work on a pork soup with pearl barley and sour cream.

“What coincidence is the town exclaiming over?” Frostpine asked as he poured tea for each of them. He and Heluda took chairs across from Daja.

“Sunsday, Bennat Ladradun told the Alakut Island council that the confectioner’s shop fire proved he needed more money and more people to train in firefighting. The council said all it proved was that he’d trained those people he had poorly.”

Daja looked her question over a mouthful of barley; Frostpine asked it for her. “Yes, but what’s the coincidence? There are fires all over the city in winter.”

“Yes, but this was Jossaryk House.” The magistrate’s mage looked from Frostpine to Daja. “I keep forgetting you aren’t local,” Heluda said wryly. “Chiora Jossaryk is Romachko Skuretty’s mistress.”

Frostpine and Daja traded baffled looks.

Heluda shook her head. “Romachko Skuretty is the head of Alakut council. The one that turned Ladradun down.”

Frostpine grimaced. “I could happily spend the rest of my life without such coincidences.”

Daja nodded, inspected her bowl. It was empty, but there were bits of meat and barley and sauce. She tore apart a rye-and-wheat roll and mopped up the rest.

“What of our counterfeiter?” Frostpine asked. “I’m able to go out.”

Heluda shook her head. “Our people are sitting on every brass supplier, with spectacles magicked to see through illusion,” she told him. “Sooner or later our friend, or his people, will come for supplies. Once we track them home, we’ll need you. We may not be equal to a truly powerful illusion-mage who tampers with coins, but my trackers can follow quarry through blizzards. We’re fine for now.” She drummed her fingers on her chair for a moment before she said abruptly. “I’m here on another matter, actually.”

She got up, paced to the door and back, then stopped, frowned, and went to Daja’s worktable, where the iron glove forms stood upright. “What in Vrohain’s name are these?” She leaned in to inspect the forms, then took something from her pocket and screwed it into her right eye. It was a lens spelled for magical vision: Daja could see gleaming silver runes on its rim. “It’s been made with magic, but these aren’t magical in and of themselves. Are you building an artificial man?” She wriggled one of the hinged fingers.

Daja had started on a plate of pirozhi stuffed with salmon and sturgeon. She gulped a mouthful, drank some tea, and said, “They’ll be gloves, covered with metal that isn’t much affected by fire.” She absently rubbed the brass mitt over her left hand. “For Ben Ladradun. I thought it would be good to make him gloves so he can push open burning doors and the like. I thought I’d make a whole suit for him, but I need to think about that a while.”

Heluda put her eyepiece back into her pocket. “You craft-mages have the oddest ideas,” she remarked, shaking her head.

Frostpine cleared his throat. “You said you came about something else. I’m going to expire of curiosity.” He picked up one of Daja’s rolls, ripped it in half, and buttered a piece.

Heluda walked back to her chair and flopped into it. “Jossaryk House. My people laid the inspection spells as soon as the remnants cooled. The fire wasn’t accidental. It was set,” she told them.

Daja’s fork slipped from suddenly cold fingers, clattering on her plate.

Frostpine sighed. “Have you suspects?”

“Only at least three for each servant and ten for each guest,” replied the magistrate’s mage. “There’s always that many people who wish someone ill, and they all must be questioned. Tracking the firesetter by his traces was a waste of time,” she growled. “Whoever did it burned all he used, so what we did find, the fire scoured clean. What’s maddening? No one saw him, but he must have done it while guests were arriving for those parties. Look.” Clearing a space on the tablecloth, Heluda sketched the ground floor of the house with a fingertip, her magic turning the lines to inklike streaks. “The front of the house, that looks over the cliff? In winter it’s closed-it takes the brunt of the wind off the Syth. The servants store whole carcasses-pig, cow, sheep-in it, it’s that cold. In summer, of course, it’s lovely. Our firesetter broke in there. He walks up the cliff road, which no one uses for the same reason the house’s front is closed off-he may as well have been invisible.”

“Could you track him on the cliff road?” Frostpine wanted to know.

“He had two pairs of boots,” said Heluda. “Our trackers followed one pair down to a fire the hired sleigh men use to keep warm on the Kadasep side of Akkut. None of them saw anyone throw cloth boots into their fire, of course. Then he walked away in clean boots.” She grimaced and passed her hand over the drawing. It vanished. “Curse him, rot his teeth, may he drop through thin ice,” she growled. “He laid a fuse to a good-sized fire, lit it, and left. By the time anyone knew the front of the house was burning, it was too late to stop it. The winds were like oil on the flames.” She looked at Daja. “If you or Ravvot Ladradun have any ideas about this naliz, let me know. As soon as we’ve bagged our counterfeiter, this one’s mine.”