Dragon's Mage (An Advent Mage Novel), The - Raconteur, Honor (24 page)

“Ahh…did you explain that I didn’t catch her but that
she
adopted
me?
”

“Nope.” Mari gave me a wild smile. “Because I could tell they weren’t in the mood to hear ‘no.’ I figured it’d be better if you explained.”

In other words, she hadn’t wanted to deal with it. But all that meant was I would be the one they’d get mad at. “I get breakfast first, right?”

“You mean dinner, don’t you?” she teased. “It’s almost five o’clock.”

I gave her quite the look for that. “
Food
.”

“Yes, grumpy, come along.”

~*~

The city of Mohr had a very logical, grid-like design to it, as most Solian cities did. I got to see quite a bit of it over the next three days as I met with different fire chiefs and firefighters. They all did their level best to convince me that they desperately needed dragons in their units. I tended to agree that firefighting would be easier all around if they had one, but what did they expect me to do about it? Pull a dragon out from my pocket?

The situation got worse for me when Kaya took it upon herself to go babysit all of the children in the city. Everyone in Mohr had heard some version of the story of how Kaya helped the firefighters and knew her to be not only tame but very approachable. The kids fearlessly took her on as a new playmate and every morning, she went straight to the main park in the city to play with them. After seeing
that
the whole city wanted a dragon of their own.

While Kaya played with the kids, we spent our time in the local Hall of Records, looking up every fire that had happened here. Usually, the firefighting records weren’t really available to the public, but Mari easily got us access. But nothing really leaped out at us. It all looked like more or less natural or coincidental fires. So we started looking at the records from nearby areas. These were more sporadic—city-states don’t normally share this sort of information with their neighbors, after all. The only time that it happened was when they had to call in for outside help because the fire had gotten out of control.

We holed up in the dimly lit, basement area of the building, surrounded by stacks of dusty files on all sides, like moles digging for buried treasure. I felt like a mole, too. We barely had room to maneuver because of the close confines of the shelves, dust flew about in the air and covered us if we so much as twitched, and it smelled like something had died down here. Recently. After three days of this, Mari threw down the report in her hands onto the table, making a loud slapping sound that nearly startled me out of my skin.

“This is useless. Let’s go to Merton.”

I looked up from the illegibly written report in my hands, having to blink several times to switch mental tracks. “Merton?”

“They have a better Hall of Records there,” she explained, already picking up files and sorting them so she could put them back on the shelves. “And they’re better at getting copies from the other Coordinators so they have more complete records. Its further east of us, I know, but it’s a relatively short trip with Kaya and it’ll give us more information to pull from.”

I didn’t see why not. We desperately needed information. Besides, Merton offered another very interesting possibility. It was a more cosmopolitan place, as it set right on the sea, and so it hosted a few wizard and witch’s outposts. If we went there, I might be able to get a few necessities custom made.

After three days of hacking up black gunk, I really didn’t want to go the rest of my firefighting career eating smoke. If there was a way around it, I was taking it.

We put all the reports back, climbing the narrow stairs back up toward the land of the living, and stepped out into the Hall’s main foyer. To my surprise, I saw fading light outside of the windows. Had we really been down there for so long? It looked to be near sunset now. Well, no wonder my stomach had been petulantly rumbling, then. 

We went straight back to the inn and the main room there, as we really didn’t know of any other places to eat. I sat across the table from Mari, enjoying a late dinner in the inn’s main room. Or at least trying to. This place had to have a good cook, as everyone and their mother chose to eat here. It seemed every other second, someone would stop by our table and tell me a funny story about what Kaya did or ask some question about Mages.

When the last person left, I leaned closer to Mari and said in a low voice, “Remind me not to eat here at night.”

“It’s a tad busy,” she admitted although her eyes crinkled up in amusement as she shrugged it off.

‘Busy’ was an understatement. Really, you’d think everyone came in here tonight just to talk to me— I snapped around, sheer instinct sending me spinning the other direction, facing north. “Something’s burning.”

“What?” Mari demanded in astonishment. She popped up and stuck her head out the nearest window, looking for herself. “I don’t see anything….”

“Something’s burning,” I repeated, more firmly. I could feel it. And the fact that I could
feel
it, this far away, scared the light out of me. A fire had to be very hot before I could sense it like this. “Mari, call them in. I have to go.”

I didn’t give her a chance to respond before scrambling to my feet, calling for Kaya as I went. The room became noisy around me, people calling out questions about what was going on, but I ignored them all and didn’t let them deter me. Kaya met me at the door, almost shoving her nose inside to see me.

“Saddle?” she asked me, I think taken aback that I didn’t immediately head for the stables.

“No time, just hold on to me.”

She gently grasped me with one hand, cradling me against her chest, wings unfurling to propel us into the sky. After that first initial lurch off the ground, her rhythm settled out and she gained altitude steadily. The wind caught my hair and clothes, buffeting me with them, and I had to clamp down on my hair again to avoid eating it. Not wearing my jacket, I felt the coolness of the evening, and huddled in closer to Kaya’s warmth to stave off the chillness in the air. Her nostrils flared and contracted as she took in the smell of the wind.

“Burning.”

So, she could smell it? “Yes,” I said encouragingly, pointing to a dense grove of pine trees up ahead. “It’s from over there somewhere.”

Kaya’s eyes narrowed even as she flapped her wings in a strong rhythm, gaining speed. “See it.”

“That orange glow over the trees?” I thought I had imagined that because I was trying so hard to see something.

She didn’t waste any more time on talking, but picked up her pace, sending the wind rushing through my ears and whipping around me. The stand of trees didn’t sit more than a few miles outside of the city, so we reached it within moments, and I could almost see through the gathering fire and smoke that a building sat in the middle of the pines. I caught glimpses of white stone and purple roofing as we came in closer. It didn’t look like many of the trees were burning, just the ones nearest the building, but it was enough smoke to obscure my sight.

“Kaya,” I called over the rush of the wind and the cackle of the fire below, “can you land?”

She darted from one side to the other, head swiveling as she looked. “No room,” she finally responded in aggravation.

I’d been afraid of that. I hadn’t seen any real clearing near the building either. “Then come in as low as you can and drop me!”

My familiar turned her head and gave me a look that I swear she learned from Mari. It boiled down to:
I can’t believe you just suggested such a stupid thing.

“I’ll be fine at this short a distance,” I assured her. I couldn’t help but smile when her look turned even more disgusted. “Honest.”

Her look became suspicious. “No get hurt?”

“Promise,” I responded with a wide grin.

Very gingerly, she started to let go of me, but I could tell that at the first sign of trouble, she’d dive back in and catch me. But she truly didn’t have to worry. I couldn’t use extreme heat to fly with like the Fire Mages of history, but I had controlled falling down to an art form. As soon as Kaya loosened her grip on me, I shot out jets of condensed heat from my palms and the soles of my feet. It didn’t stop me from falling, but it slowed me down considerably so that I came in to land with only a slight jar and trip of the feet.

I’d landed somewhere near the side of the building, next to an open porch. The heat around me was intense, as hot as any forest fire that I’d been in. Most of the trees next to the building weren’t on fire, but some of them were starting to catch ablaze just from the intense heat of the air. I honestly didn’t know which to tackle first, the trees or the building itself. I didn’t want the fire to spread, but it would as long as that building burned.

That last thought decided it for me and I turned resolutely for the building, only pausing to put out a tree that openly blazed.

Just one problem: the building didn’t have anything obviously on fire. Oh, the heat of it was there, I could feel that clearly. But I didn’t
see
anything.

The fire had to be contained inside of the building still. That was the only possible explanation. Swearing, I headed for the door at a flat sprint. As I did so, chunks of the marble stone started cracking and falling off in large pieces to the ground. A few of them actually came close to hitting me. I dodged and weaved through it, feeling like I was under enemy fire as I ran. One piece got close enough to graze my arm, and if not for my personal shields, it would have left quite the scorch mark. Fortunately, the shields repelled it entirely and it bounced away.

Door, door, door—there! I saw a glimpse of a handle protruding outwards. I kept track of it as I passed several large, towering columns. This building had to be a temple of some sort, judging from the rectangular layout, the showy columns, and the solid construction of marble. I climbed the short stairs upwards to the porch two at a time, but when I reached the door, it was already ablaze, the handle red hot. I couldn’t touch any of it without burning myself, as anything I touch automatically enters my shields.

Frustrated, and not in the mood to find a creative solution, I just lifted a hand and blasted the door inwards with a roar of flame. It splintered and imploded inside. Almost belatedly, I hoped that no one was actually inside. That would surely have hurt them if they were.

Too late to call out a warning, though. I dodged inside, my eyes taking in everything quickly. Someone had piled a lot of wood randomly inside, all of it ablaze, and the rafters holding up the roof were also burning. No one appeared to be in here, but the stacked wood blocked most of my view of the room. I couldn’t be sure.

Didn’t matter at the moment. I started with the fire at my feet and started putting all of it out, shifting from one side of the room to the other, trying to see everything. But this building didn’t have more than a single room to it, and there were no handy stairs or anything for me to stand on so that I could get a higher view. I could see most of the rafters, and the wood in front of me, so those were easy. But I could hear the sound of fire still crackling, and the breaking of the marble before it thudded to the ground. Not all of it was out yet.

All right, time to get creative. I lifted both hands and sucked out any residual heat of the logs in front of me, channeling it all to go out behind me and up harmlessly into the air. With the wood cool enough to touch, I used it to climb up and get a higher view. I had to be careful doing this, though, as some of the wood at the bottom had become very fragile charcoal and would crumble under my weight. As I climbed up, the wood constantly shifted this way and that in an unpredictable fashion so that I fought for my balance from one moment to the next.

“Krys!”

Mari? How by the guardians did she get here so quickly? I turned my head just enough to call, “Don’t come in here!”

“I’ve got a firewagon coming to help!” she responded in exasperation.

“Then get them working on the trees in back. I didn’t do anything about those.” Wait, did she say they were still coming? So then how did she—it suddenly hit me. Of course. With Kaya unable to land, she had gone right back for Mari, probably dropping her in at the entrance so that Mari could run in to help me. Smart dragon.

Mari grumbled, but I heard her quickly run back outside, boots echoing on the marble.

I climbed the last two feet, enough that I could finally see over the wood, and started on the fire still blazing in the back. At this height, I could see the rest of the room, and it took only a minute to put the rest of it out. Phew. All right, next I needed to channel all of the heat out of here before it could do even more structural damage.

As I worked on that, I could hear the clang of the bell on the wagon and men shouting to each other outside. Trusting them to handle the trees (and for Mari to call for me if they needed any help) I kept going, not allowing myself to be distracted.

Funneling the last trace of heat outside, I took a better look at the room. Whatever decorations had been here before now lay under black soot. The marble had been white once, but now looked mostly grey with streaks of dense black here and there along the walls. The wooden support beams were nothing but black charcoal, really, and it didn’t look strong enough to hold the tile roof overhead. It wouldn’t be wise to stay in here much longer.

Turning, I left the room, exiting through the ruined doorway. As I went down the stairs, I took a look around. The firewagon could barely be seen off to the side, just around the corner, but I saw several men already relaxing so the worst of it must already be put out.

From the main road leading up to the stairs, Kaya came, muscling her way through the pines and sometimes reaching out with one paw to push a tree aside so that she could pass. Her tail thumped in an irritated rhythm against the ground as she moved, mouth formed into an alarming pout. When she spied me on the stairs, the tail slammed hard into the road.

“Krys! No like drop!”

“Sorry, sweetheart,” I apologized in a soothing tone. “It was an emergency. Besides, I’m fine.”