Cold Fire (23 page)

“I don’t know what ideas I could have,” Daja said. “Ben’s the one who’s studied all this.”

“But you’re a mage, and in his company. You-“

Someone rapped on the door and opened it without waiting. It was a housemaid; behind her was a man in magistrate’s colors. “Viymese Salt, we’ve got a possibility,” he said breathless. “Bought twenty sheets of brass. We tracked him.”

Frostpine levered himself out of his seat as Heluda stood. She frowned at him. “Are you up to this?” she demanded. “You look half dead.”

“Magistrate’s mages, so pessimistic,” Frostpine replied, walking to the door. “I prefer to think I am half alive. And I know the marks of his power. You need me.” Looking at Daja he said, “Rest.”

Daja nodded. “Bundle up,” she replied, thinking the kaq who mucked with money would discover he was no match for Frostpine.

She dragged on a robe, gathered her clean clothes, and doddered down the servants’ stairs to the steam room. Once she washed and rebraided her many braids, she slept again. She woke to the clock’s chime at midnight and got up, feeling stronger. Someone had cleared the fireplace table of the remains of her supper. Downstairs she went to raid the kitchen. The urge to go out caught her as she piled strawberry preserves on bread. Still eating, she went to the slush room and pulled on her winter clothes. Once that was done, she picked up a torch and her skates, and went outside.

She didn’t need a torch: several burned around the basin, though they would be out soon. Daja buckled on her skates, then began to exercise doggedly. She kept one eye on the ice, alert in case her tired muscles decided to give way. Instead, the skating seemed to help both her muscles and her spirits. She speeded up, gliding this way and that across the basin. The icy night air was calm, with no breath of the wicked Syth in it. It was clean and unburdened with soot, ashes, smoke, or smells. It brushed her face like a blessing-a bitterly cold blessing, but a blessing all the same.

Despite her skating session, Daja woke at her usual hour, feeling better physically, though sad yet. She had dreamed about the maid, clutching her figure of Yorgiry as she died.

Once dressed, her Trader staff and the staff she used to train with Jory in hand, Daja went upstairs to the schoolroom. To her surprise and pleasure, Jory was there practicing her forms. It had to be boring, but from what Daja glimpsed before Jory noticed her and stopped, Jory had made progress. Her staff movement and hand and feet placement matched the marks Daja had made for them perfectly.

“We’re ready for the next step,” Daja announced, leaning her staves against the wall. She stepped into an open space and positioned Jory there, then traced the outlines of her feet with a piece of charcoal. That done, she used her Trader staff to draw a protective circle around them both, and raised her barriers to enclose them. She was looking forward to this, she realized. Her protections weren’t as strong as usual-Daja hadn’t recovered from her efforts at Jossaryk House-but they would hold any power Jory might throw off.

“Stand here,” Daja told her. “Eyes forward, your staff in the middle block position. I’ll walk around you; now and then I’ll strike. Keep your eyes straight ahead. No looking at me, no turning your head, until you actually have to move to block me. Block only. No strikes.”

“I don’t understand,” Jory replied. “If I can’t follow you-“

“You have to be ready,” Daja said. “Open your senses, magic and all. Act only when you must. If you start thinking your foot itches, or your hair needs to be washed, if you want your breakfast, I’ll hit you.”

“You’re going to hurt me?” Jory asked, horrified.

Daja sighed. “Now there’s a silly question. No, but I will tap you. You have to know you were wrong.”

“What if you hit my back?” Jory wanted to know. “I can’t stop you then!”

“Trust I won’t do it till you’re good enough to anticipate it. Now take the position.” Daja paced in front of Jory as old Skyfire did with his students. “Stop following me with your eyes. Look straight ahead. Wait. Listen. Relax. Your hands aren’t in the right position. Stop winking; I haven’t hit you yet. Twitching your eyes won’t protect your face.”

Jory instantly threw up a high block, expecting a strike from Daja’s remark about her face. Daja tapped Jory’s ribs. “Don’t listen to what I say,” she told her student again, pacing once more. “Forget the cold, or breakfast, or-” Daja shifted her body. Jory’s head whipped around; she blocked low, and Daja tapped her skull. “Don’t try to outthink me,” ordered Daja. “Maybe you can one day, but not today. I’m in my center, in my empty space, and I go where I like.” Another high strike. Jory’s block glanced off Daja’s staff: she was a breath too late. Daja thumped her head lightly.

For an hour Daja walked her staff up and down Jory’s body, talking or silent, always in motion. At first it seemed as if she had overestimated Jory as the girl got angry, then sulky, then stubborn. Each time she lost her temper Daja saw Jory’s magic flare away from her in spikes. Once, angry, she struck at Daja’s head. Daja disarmed Jory, sending her staff flying against the barrier. It bounced back, nearly hitting the girl.

Daja nudged the staff with hers. “Pick it up,” she ordered.

“You’re not human,” Jory grumbled as she obeyed.

“More silliness. Come on, let’s go,” Daja urged. They began again.

When the house clock chimed, Daja, in the right-hand corner of the younger girl’s vision, snapped a middle strike at Jory’s ribs. Jory’s power swirled and soaked into her skin as she blocked Daja squarely.

Jory’s jaw dropped. She looked at the staff, and at Daja.

“I did it!” she gasped. “I did it! I-I felt it, it was like, being everything.”

“Good,” Daja said, wiping out part of the circle with her boot and retrieving her power. “But we won’t know if you really have something until you can do it all the time, not just once.”

“Oh, Daja,” moaned Jory, “you sound just like my parents.” She ran from the schoolroom.

“Well, there’s no reason to insult me,” muttered Daja, half offended.

After a hearty breakfast, she returned upstairs to do the physical work of fitting the living metal to the gloves, making sure it was anchored to an iron rod as well as the other pieces. There was just one more thing to do after that, but it had to wait. Simple tasks like protective circles for the twins were easy enough, and she needed no magic to fix the living metal onto the forms. For anything bigger, her magic felt weak and floppy, as her arms might after she lifted something far too heavy for her.

She collected her Trader staff and went down to midday when the bell rang, but she didn’t return to her room when she finished. She had things to do that involved no magic, but she wanted to skate. Staff in hand, Daja headed for the slush room. As she passed the servants, they bowed and got out of her way-they’d done so at breakfast too. Obviously they had heard tales from Jossaryk House.

They’ll get over it, Daja thought as she donned coat and scarves, picked up her staff, and slung her skates over her shoulder. A few quiet weeks and they’ll treat me like a human being again. If only she could hope there would be no more excitement for a few weeks!

Outside, she donned her skates. Gathering her courage, she skated out of the basin, under the bridge, and onto Prospect Canal, balancing the staff in her hands. The canal was as busy as any street with skaters and the large, heavy sleighs that carried supplies, pulled by horses shod for ice walking. Passenger sleighs kept to the dirt streets, owners not liking the expense of ice shoes and the risk to their horses if they were not specially shod.

It was snowing lightly as Daja skated north along Prospect, keeping well to the side. Daredevils raced down the middle of the canals. So did robbers and pickpockets: those good skaters looked to winter as their bounty season. Daja didn’t think she could move in the fast traffic in the center. She envied the speeders and liked to watch how they did it, half crouched, skates flashing, swerving around bumpy or uneven areas in the ice. She envied them, but she wasn’t about to copy them. Sometimes she had to use her Trader staff to keep herself upright.

Still, she had improved. She negotiated the turn into Mite Canal with no accidents, and slid to a halt at the hired sleigh stands a quarter of a mile north of Pozkit Bridge. Her skates hung over her shoulder, staff in hand, she climbed up to the street. Hollyskyt Way met Jossaryk Place, the road Daja and Frostpine had followed across Alakut on their way to the fire. The sleigh stand was probably the one where the firesetter left one pair of boots to burn.

She knew where she was going now, and she didn’t turn back. She had changed in the smoke, and the fear, and the dark. The change wasn’t to her magic. It would recover with meditation and rest, more quickly than her spirit would. If she was to make sense of that night and those deaths, if she was ever going to understand the kind of person who would sentence fifty people to death by burning, she ought to see the final result for herself.

Daja walked down Hollyskyt until she found the rising street that followed the edge of the cliff. The sign read FORTRESS VIEW ROAD. It showed little signs of winter use. Daja huddled deeper inside her coat and scarves-she would rather brave the Syth’s wind than tap her ability to warm herself for now-and hiked up the steep road.

No blast of lake wind caught her as she walked. The air was cold and still. “Oh, now you’re as nice as a kitten,” she told it as she toiled upward. “Back when it would have saved lives, you blew your worst.”

Her mother always said it wasn’t polite to mock other people’s gods, and Sythuthan was a notorious trickster. He was not likely to appreciate being scolded. Daja shut up.

Wall after wall showed her blank faces as she passed the homes of the wealthy. As she approached the summit, Daja found the damage left by fire and the people who fought it. The road was churned and frozen into peaks and dips that made the footing tricky. Once more she used her staff to brace herself. Soot marked the walls of Jossaryk’s neighbors. Then she reached Jossaryk House itself. The gate stood open. The wall was intact: the wind had blown so hard that the fire never turned this way. Daja took a breath, resettled her grip on her staff, and walked through the gate.

She had expected to see part of the house-foolish, given the fury of the blaze and the wind. Instead she found no house, its cellars exposed, everything a blackened mess. No wall stood higher than a foot. The ruin stretched before her, complete all the way out to the courtyard where she and Frostpine had collapsed.

How did mages like Heluda do it? How could they tell where this had started, where the evil took root? Daja was a mage, and she couldn’t tell. Looking hard, she noticed that the largest section of wall remaining was the front. It was that hard wind, which had thrust the fire into the rest of the house before it had completely devoured the front wall. Against the base of that fragment she saw a huge, old-fashioned hourglass, its brass parts melted to globs, the sand within turned to blackened glass from the heat. Ten yards to her left she saw three whole burned cow skeletons-the staff really did keep meat here in the winter.

Walking around the outer rim of the house filled her with awe for the power of fire. All that remained were parts of things: charred clothes embedded in frozen mud, melted jewelry, a set of false teeth in enamel over metal, more animal bones. The dead were gone by now.

At last she reached the rear wall and its empty gate. Firefighters had removed the wooden doors from their hinges to give easy passage to the street. There Daja turned to stare at the black ruin, leaning on her Trader staff.

In Sandry’s last letter, she had written Daja that she’d been forced to kill three murderers before they escaped a trap set for them and killed again. Reading, Daja had thought she could never do such a thing. Now, as she looked at Jossaryk House, she wasn’t so sure. Could she kill the one who had done this? Who was she to say what punishment was right? Anyone who used fire this way must be mad beyond question, mad and pitiful. Even if his madness came to evil, he shouldn’t be killed for something he couldn’t help, only locked up forever.

Another part of her disagreed. What if he escaped his keepers and set more fires? More people would die. And why did she think he was mad? Madmen didn’t burn anything mages could use to track them. Madmen wet themselves and talked to the air. They claimed to be gods and rocked in corners. They didn’t come and go unnoticed. They didn’t watch what they’d done.

That was a new idea, one she didn’t like. Did he watch? How could he?

And yet, if she had taken such care on a project, wouldn’t she want to see it through?

That was evil. It was evil of the worst kind. Such evil would show on his face. The mages would find him. There was no way he could escape capture. Then he would get the traditional penalty for firesetters: burning. His evil would be cleansed. Probably right now the magistrate’s mages spoke to people who had seen someone so empty of good it had frightened them.

With that thought to comfort her, Daja hiked back down to Mite Canal. She hoped she would see this firesetter before they burned him, so she would know pure evil if she saw it again.

On the canal she skated faster than she had before, staff tucked into the crook of one arm, trying to leave the bad thoughts in her wake. She drew closer to the canal’s center: slower skaters on the edge eyed her nervously as she passed. She almost came to grief, swooping around the rim of Kadasep into Prospect Canal, but quick shoves of her staff against the ice kept her away from those making the same turn. As Bancanor House drew closer on her right, she saw a familiar person skating toward her. Daja couldn’t see her face at this distance, but she knew Nia’s bright hat and scarves as well as she knew her own. Daja raised two fingers to her lips and blew the earsplitting whistle that Briar had spent an afternoon teaching her, then slid past Bancanor House to meet her waving student. Other skaters grimaced or made rude comments that Daja ignored.

Nia was giggling as Daja reached her. “I see you’re feeling better,” she commented as Daja turned and skated with her. “Only please, don’t let Jory hear you do that, or she’ll want to learn, too.”