Cold Fire (7 page)

“My birds!” Gruzha cried.

Daja saw the cage in the corner. “Leave them!” she snapped.

The girl opened her mouth, then shut it, and swallowed hard. Tears ran down her sooty cheeks, leaving pale tracks.

If she had argued, Daja might have abandoned the birds. Instead Gruzha’s mute acceptance twisted Daja’s heart. As Gruzha draped the wet wool over her head, Daja seized the cage by its wire handle and laid her hand flat on top. Her power coursed through thin wire bars, wrapping cage and terrified occupants in her magic, holding air inside, fire outside. Gripping the cage in one hand, Daja took Gruzha’s blanket in the other. “Can you stay right behind me?” Daja shouted at the area where the girl’s ear must be.

The sodden wool cocoon nodded. Gruzha stuck a hand out; Daja pulled Gruzha’s free arm around her own waist.

Carefully she led the way down the hall. The blaze had reached this floor; it mumbled cheerfully in the rooms around the stairwell. Daja thrust it back first, then the flames that began to test the stair itself. In a tunnel of fire they descended to the ground floor.

Daja stretched her power through the kitchen and beyond, seeking a better escape route. There was none: the fire had reached the storeroom at the back of the house. She felt it feed on exploding jars of oil. The rear half of the building was in flames. It was the front door or nothing.

She wrapped Gruzha’s hands around her waist, feeling the sodden blanket soak the back of her shirt and trousers. Daja set the birds’ cage at her feet, then beckoned to streamers of rippling flame. The fire came eagerly, curling around her arms, sniffing at her clothes. Daja gripped its strands firmly before it found the less-protected girl at her back.

The ceiling above them groaned.

Swiftly Daja wove fiery strands, shaping the blaze as a tube made of flame net. When she thrust the tube wide and high between her and the door, it pushed away the flames in walls and ceiling to open a path. Only a handful of fiery tendrils reached through holes in the net to threaten the two girls. Daja picked up the cage in her left hand and walked forward. She used her right hand to weave escaping bits of flame into the net over her head, to make it stronger and tighter.

The ceiling collapsed. The roof of her tunnel sagged. Clumps of plaster dropped through two wide spaces in her net, but the rest of it held the weight of the upper floor.

The front door was still an opening filled with a sheet of fire. That part fought her, strengthened by the wind outside, but Daja was in no mood to be nice. She was willing to let this fire continue because someone had invited it here, but it could not be allowed to delay her.

She gripped cords of fire in the door and began to weave again, pulling flame-threads tight, yanking them ruthlessly into a fiery square. Once done, she thrust it ahead of her like a shield. It bulged out through the doorway, bubblelike.

Daja felt the blaze surge. Under her, the floor sagged.

She turned, bent, then thrust up from her knees, draping Gruzha over her shoulder. With the other girl’s head and feet just inches from the flames, Daja strode outside with her and the birdcage. As they crossed the threshold, the floor where they had stood dropped into the cellar with a roar.

Outside Daja helped Gruzha to stand and released her fire weavings in the house. The flames returned to their meal.

Ben waved some women forward. They wept as they took the wet blanket off Gruzha and wrapped her in a dry one, patting her head, face, and arms as if they couldn’t believe she was real. As they did they backed away from Daja, taking the blind girl with them. Daja sighed and held out the birds’ cage, reclaiming the silvery protective shield she had put on it. The finches began to chatter in tiny voices as a woman carefully took the cage.

Daja looked down. Her shirt and breeches, overcome by more fire than they were spelled against, were crumbling on her body. Firefighters and those in the crowd backed away, just as Gruzha’s friends had.

“Very admirable,” Ben snapped at the onlookers, striding toward the woman who still held Daja’s belongings. He snatched them from her hands; the woman then fled into the crowd. Ben turned to Daja and offered the girl her boots and stockings. Daja pulled on the boots, shaking her head at the stockings: they were too much trouble to put on now. Her clothes fell away in flakes as she straightened. By the time Ben shook out her coat and wrapped it around her, she wore only a breastband and loincloth. The harsh wet air raised goosebumps all over her and made her teeth chatter. She dragged more warmth into herself from the house until her teeth stopped clacking.

“I’d see you home myself, but I’m not done here.” Ben glanced at the burning house, then scanned the crowd. “Is there a hired sleigh about-“

Daja pointed wordlessly at Serg, who had left his place in the line of firefighters to come for her.

Ben looked at him. “Serg, isn’t it? You’re in one of the Kadasep brigades.”

The footman nodded, gingerly offering his arm to Daja.

“Get her home,” Ben said. “If you’ve any hot, sweet tea, give her some. Forgive me for rushing off.” He strode over to a neighboring house, shouting to those on the roof and pointing to a cluster of shingles that had started to burn.

Daja looked at Serg and at the offered arm: it shook. He gulped and tried a quivering mockery of the smile he’d given so readily that morning. “There are side streets we can follow to Everall Bridge,” he told her.

Daja waved the arm aside and followed him back to the sleigh. Everyone moved away; whispers preceded them. They’ll get over it, she told herself as Serg helped her into the sleigh. They always do. Eventually.

Later, when all the gawkers had scattered to their homes, he returned to inspect the remains of the boardinghouse. He checked them thoroughly, breaking open large clumps in case embers still burned at their hearts, but the true fire had gone. His bones ached, warning of snow on the way. If any hidden fire pockets remained, they would soon be dead, covered with snow and ice.

Sythuthan, but she had been glorious to watch! As much as it burned him to see her go where he could not, it had been wonderful to see her in action. To watch the fire bend and reshape itself to her liking. She had gone up the steps and through the flame-wreathed door as she might walk into her own house. Flames slid from her clothes, her hair, her skin. In that moment alone she was a beauty and a terror, this stocky, brown-skinned girl with her calm, thoughtful eyes and her fistfuls of thin braids.

He and the watchers had waited as the blind girl screamed-how was he supposed to know she was home?-for someone to help her. Then the blind girl turned from her window, and was gone. The crowd had moaned. Had the wench heard Daja? Or had the fire caught her?

The second floor was well and truly burning by then. Flames spurted through the third floor windows at the sides of the house. He’d done such a fine job of shaping this fire, starting on both sides of the basement. It had raced first up the side walls, as he’d wanted. He’d left an escape path clear in case anyone remained inside, because he did try to cover all possibilities. He’d honestly thought he was being overcareful, that no one was there when he’d lit the wicks in their lamps of oil. He’d heard nothing as he’d prowled the cellar and the ground floor. If he’d heard anyone, he would have left the place alone. Nobody was supposed to die, particularly not some blind shopgirl, but the firefighters had to be tested. They had to prove themselves, not on some tame fire, in a building that was scheduled for destruction, but on a real fire with lives and property to worry them.

Somewhere inside the house as it burned, after Daja had gone in, he’d heard the crash of wood and plaster. Ceilings had started to drop.

Then, a miracle. The flames around the front door bulged out, away from the house, like a sail in a strong wind. Suddenly the bubble they formed popped, tearing the sheet of fire into long streamers. At the center of the streamers stood Daja Kisubo, a blanket-muffled body over one shoulder, a cage in her hand.

A cage?

Daja walked out of the building. The body was the blind girl, still very much alive. And Daja carried a cage full of finches, of all things.

The sight of the birds made his heart twist. He hadn’t wanted to kill any animals, especially none so harmless as finches.

Daja put the girl on her feet. Behind her the streamers of fire turned back into the doorway, released to finish their meal of wood and cloth, oils and glass.

The idiots in the crowd shrank away from Daja. They ought to flinch from a goddess like her. They weren’t fit to kiss her bare feet as she stood there in the icy mud, offering the birdcage to anyone who would take it.

Why was she here, in Kugisko, now? Had she come for him, to make him her servant, or her priest?

He would have to see. He would have to find out if she was worth his service. She might not even be a goddess, just another self-satisfied mage. And wasn’t it funny, at his age, to fall in a kind of love with a teenaged girl barefoot in the mud, her clothes blackened and crumbling, her dark skin gleaming with sweat? Whatever she was, he would love her until they died.

Muffled giggles and whispers woke Daja in the morning, when she would have liked more sleep. She sat up in bed: Nia and Jory, halfway across her floor, jumped back a step. They were dressed to go outdoors.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Daja asked in her most forbidding tone. “You’re only supposed to come in when I’m here.” She always put work materials away after an early mishap in which the youngest Bancanor, inspecting her things, had turned his hand bright yellow, but there was always a chance the children could find trouble with items she couldn’t put away.

“But you are here,” Nia replied.

“I was asleep. That’s not here, here.” Even to a tired Daja that didn’t sound rational. “What do you want?”

“There’s the teacher thing today, yes?” asked Jory reasonably. “And meditation after you get back, even if it’s still light. You’ll never learn how to skate this way.”

Daja looked at them with horror. “Skate? Now? Before breakfast?”

“It’s a good time,” Nia assured her. “We’ll have the basin to ourselves. And you have to practice till you’re used to it.”

Daja glowered, though she knew they were right. “Who’s teaching who here?” she demanded. When she saw the twins were about to reply, she hastily put up a hand. “Never mind. I’ll meet you in the slush room. “They stared at her, unmoving; Daja sighed. “I have to clean my teeth and dress, don’t I?”

They walked to the door. Nia was opening it when Jory squeaked and dug into a pocket. “This came for you last night,” she said, depositing a sealed note on Daja’s worktable. “From Ladradun House.” She followed Nia out.

Daja flung off her blankets and got up. She would deal with the note later, when she remembered how to think. “First thing in the morning-no, it’s not even morning,” she grumbled. The water in her pitcher was cold. She set her palms on the pitcher’s sides, calling warmth until the ice on the water melted and she could clean her teeth and rinse her mouth without shrieking from cold.

When they left the house, Daja shook her head with dismay. It was dawn on the rooftops of the city, but on the level of the boat basin and the canals it was still shadowy. “I can’t see what I’m doing,” she complained. Nia ran into a shed for torches.

“Sometime we’ll take you night skating,” Jory promised as she and Daja sat on a bench to don their skates. “On Longnight everyone carries a torch or a lantern and skates around the city, and people have stalls where they sell tea and hot cider and winter cakes. Everyone skates till dawn-that’s how the sun finds its way back to us in the dark. And there’s singing, and baked apples, and hot pies.”

Nia returned with lit torches, set them in sockets around the basin, then put on her own skates. She and Jory stood and glided to the center of the ice.

“Come on,” Nia urged the seated Daja. “Let’s see how much you remember.”

Daja grimaced and tried to stand. Her feet went out from under her; she resumed her seat on the bench, hard.

“Dig in with the end of one skate,” Jory advised. “Or you keep moving.”

Daja accepted this advice and managed to stand. She then yanked the toe of her skate from the ice and shot across the basin, arms windmilling. Nia and Jory slid out of her path. Two-thirds of the way across Daja’s feet kept going, but the rest of her did not. She landed on her back, staring at the pearly dawn sky.

Jory and Nia, stifling giggles, hauled her up.

Bruised and ready for more sleep, Daja sat down to breakfast in the busy kitchen, where no one would try to converse with her. She was nearly done when she remembered the note from Ladradun House: she’d thrust it into her pocket on leaving her room. Opening it, she checked the signature: Bennat Ladradun. She remembered his help the night before, his cool direction of the fire brigade, and smiled. He must have been exhausted, yet he’d made time to send this.

Daja picked her way carefully through his handwriting. Ben’s letters slanted this way and that; the lines staggered across the page like drunken men. The loops of his y’s looked like claws. Weren’t tutors supposed to ensure that the sons of rich families had decent penmanship? Briar’s handwriting was clearer after only six months of study. Of course, Briar’s teacher had threatened him with death if he mislabeled her bottles. Perhaps Ben needed a teacher like Dedicate Rosethorn.

Dear Viymese Daja,

I would like to talk to you about the fire last night, if you would be so kind. I will not take much of your time. I will be at Ladradun House tomorrow until noon if you would visit me there, or I will call on you when you say it is convenient.

My thanks, Ben Ladradun

Daja folded the note. Maybe she would mention her idea for living metal gloves to him. And she would like to see the home of a true hero. How many of those was she likely to meet?

Kugisko’s nobles built their Pearl Coast homes in stone; so did the imperial governor. In the city, all but a very few built their large houses out of wood: it was a point of pride, a willful separation from the nobility. Bancanor House and Ladradun House were both samples of Namornese woodwork. The houses sported enclosed porches that ran around the sides to the rear, ornately carved roofpieces, window, and door frames. Both were three stories tall, their workshops, chicken coops, and stables enclosed and connected to the rear of the main structure so that no one had to go outside during the bitter winter storms.