King of Mist (Steel and Fire Book 2) (16 page)

Zage frowned. “I had hoped to learn the identities of all your father’s allies before sharing my findings with the king and preparing for a confrontation. I must admit I expected Rafe to move against me first. I shored up my own defenses instead of protecting Sevren as diligently as I should have. That is a mistake I shall carry on my conscience forevermore.” Zage glanced around the corridor, which was darker now that he had stopped wielding Fire to hold Dara in place. She remembered that he’d been close friends with the old king. It must be why he was concerned about the safety of Sevren’s children. His devotion went beyond that of a subject. Still, she couldn’t forget that it was that same friendship that led the king to pardon him for what happened to Renna in the first place.

“I think my father wanted you to be publicly denounced,” Dara said. “He knew King Sevren wouldn’t do that.”

“Yes,” Zage said, his expression calculating. “But Rafe wants more than vengeance against me. Removing King Sevren was the first step of a far more ambitious scheme, I fear.” Zage considered Dara, and she resisted the urge to look away from his gaze. “Perhaps you can help me, if you are as loyal to the king as you say you are.”

“I don’t want my father to be hurt,” Dara said.

“Doubtless Siv felt the same way.”

Dara felt as if she’d been slapped. She knew. She burning
knew
how Siv would feel about it. But if he sent her away for what her father had done, it would leave him vulnerable.

Perhaps Zage recognized that too, for he said, “Our king needs loyalty. If you can give him that, I will keep your secret for now. But you must help me. Perhaps a reconciliation with your parents is in order, at least temporarily. We must learn how much support they have.”

“I know,” Dara said. She had been putting off this course of action, but she needed to go home eventually. Her mother’s shouts as she left the last time stabbed at her like a Fire Blade. She took a steadying breath. “I need to talk to my father. It’s the only way. But if I’m going to help you gather information on his allies, I want something in return.” She met Zage’s eyes, daring him to say no. “I need you to teach me how to control the Fire. I have to be able to hide it around my father, and I can’t do it alone.”

“I don’t have time for an apprentice.”

“I don’t have any other options, unless you know another Fireworker you can trust absolutely. It sounds like you’re having a problem with trusting them at the moment.”

“I suppose I am,” Zage said. He sighed, the sound as dry as a desert wind. “Very well. I will teach you to mask your power.”

“Good. And I’ll tell Siv the truth. But I’ll do it in my own time.”

“We have an agreement, then. Come to my greathouse tomorrow when you have finished your duties.” Zage wrapped his cloak closer and strode away without another word.

14.

The Fire Warden

WHEN
Dara arrived at the Fire Warden’s grand marble greathouse the following day, she was already tired from practice. Berg had them doing agility training that morning. This involved shuffling side to side as a partner tossed a glass bottle full of wine in random directions for them to catch. They had to change directions at a moment’s notice or risk missing the catch and shattering the bottle on the floor. At the dueling school, they used to do this exercise with soft bags full of sand, but Berg wanted to impress upon them the seriousness of making mistakes.

As a result, they spent half the practice cleaning broken glass off the floor of the dueling hall, and they all left smelling like wine. The other duelists decided this was a sign they should go carousing together to christen the New Guard with wine and song. Dara skipped the team-building activity to show up for her first Fireworking lesson.

She stopped before the grand Fireworked doors of the Fire Warden’s greathouse. She had never been inside. Even before Renna’s accident, Dara’s parents had disliked the Fire Warden for how he doled out the power of the mountain. It was one of the things that had kept Vertigon peaceful for so long, but her parents believed the strongest Workers should have unlimited access to the power.

Dara had already declared her opposition to them when she joined the Castle Guard, but she still hesitated before knocking on their oldest rival’s door. She was driving a wedge further and further between her and her family. Unless she could get them to abandon their ambitions, she would never be able to return home.

But knock she did. Dara had started down this path, and she meant to finish it. Besides, she wanted to know more about how to use this strange and wonderful ability she had discovered. It had been devastating to attempt to draw on the Fire as a child and feel nothing. She still hardly believed she could Work after all, and she couldn’t help feeling excited about the possibilities.

An elderly butler answered the door and led her into the Fire Warden’s greathouse. It was an austere place, as cold and severe as the Warden himself. Everything was made of marble and ebony and edges. There wasn’t a soft line in sight as they crossed the high-ceilinged entryway. The butler led Dara to an iron door on the far side and unlocked it for her.

“He’s at the bottom,” the man said. Then he ushered Dara through the iron door and locked it behind her.

Dara swallowed her nerves and descended deep into the realm of the Fire Warden.

The stairs were slick marble, eventually giving way to simple stone. It took quite some time to get to the bottom, and Dara grew warmer with every step. She was getting closer and closer to the Well, the burning core of Vertigon Mountain. This was the source of the mountain’s power and industry, the very reason their founders had built their city atop the sheer peaks. And Dara was about to touch it.

She reached another iron door at last. She rapped on it, but there was no answer. Dara pushed open the door, and a wall of heat swept out around her. She had been less affected by heat since the appearance of her ability, but sweat still broke out on her forehead as the door clanged shut behind her. She entered a vast cavern, not unlike the one where she and Siv had seen the mysterious duelists. Instead of stalactites, a smooth arch adorned the high ceiling. Elegantly formed columns were visible around the far walls. This cave was clearly Fireworked, perhaps in the days of the First Good King. Working stone was far more difficult than forging metal, and it used immense amounts of Fire. No individual Fireworker could mold a space on this scale, but the days were long over when enough of them were willing to collaborate on Works like this.

She stopped on a stone platform just inside the doorway. A raised path led to a narrow stone bridge arching through the center of the cavern. Beneath it, the Fire welled and flowed.

Dara stared down at the Well, the source of the molten power, for the first time. The Fire came from deep within the core of the mountain, like water welling up from a spring. It formed a lake in the center of the cavern, seeping up from the source in a steady flow. Hundreds of channels led off from the lake of Fire, disappearing into tubes and tunnels all the way around the cave. As the Fire bubbled upward from whatever magical source produced it deep within the earth, it was immediately distributed, parsed out through the intricate system originally designed by the First Good King a hundred years ago.

A solitary figure stood in the center of the bridge. Zage. Hands outstretched, he molded and redirected the flows of Fire and sent them into the arteries that would deliver them to dozens of Fireworking shops around Vertigon. Some Fire still seeped and oozed through the stones of the mountain, and strong Workers could draw on this residual power, but for the most part the Fireworkers relied on the flow of Fire they received directly from the Well.

The bigger tunnels had been divided in places, so the Fire now flowed in smaller and smaller quantities to each shop. It spidered out from the source, never enough to make any individual Fireworker a true danger to the ruler of the city.

Dara wondered what would happen if a Fireworker figured out how to meld multiple flows together without the Fire Warden realizing what they were doing. It would require cooperation between Workers willing to give up their shares for a time, but it was possible. It may seem as if the Fire Warden had all the power by controlling the Well, but he was vulnerable too.

Dara remembered the intensity of the channel of Fire she had sensed in the secret dueling cavern. If her father or some other Fireworker was gathering power, there might be no limit to what he could do. That was exactly the sort of thing the First Good King had been worried about when he first created this system.

Zage turned to face her, a narrow silhouette against the intense light of the Well. He wasn’t wearing his usual cloak, and Dara was surprised at how skinny he was without it. He wore simple black clothing, with a silver buckle on his belt. He was actually a little younger than Dara’s father, but he looked shriveled and ancient before the vastness of the Fire.

“Come,” he said.

Dara dropped her own cloak, leaving her Savven blade buckled around her waist, and started onto the bridge. The weapon would be no match for Zage, but she had so far struggled to manipulate the Fire without touching steel at the same time.

Zage glanced at the blade but didn’t tell her to remove it.

“You must be alert at all times,” he said. “Loss of concentration means death, especially this close to the Well.”

“I’m ready,” Dara said.

“You are both ahead and behind,” Zage said. “Most people learn to Work the Fire from childhood. It becomes as instinctual to them as walking or speaking their native tongue. You will have to work harder.” Zage nodded at her blade. “On the other hand, you have proved yourself capable of discipline. And you have urgency on your side. You must seize control of your power and master it. There is no time for coddling.”

“Understood,” Dara said. “May I ask a question?”’

Zage waited.

“Will it be possible for me to learn everything a Fireworker can do at my age? My father says—”

“I know your father’s views,” Zage said. “It will be more difficult for you, but not impossible. If you have the potential, you can learn to Work at the same level of proficiency as any other Vertigonian Fireworker. Not everyone recognizes their Spark for what it is from childhood. I myself did not train in the Work in earnest until the age of twenty-two.”

“Really? You didn’t learn as a child? Is that why my father—?”

“That is irrelevant to our lesson.”

Dara swallowed her additional questions. She had assumed she could never become a truly great Fireworker. She had long been taught that Fireworkers who didn’t start young would never achieve mastery. She thought she would only be learning to control and hide her ability, nothing more. But hope bloomed in her at the Fire Warden’s words. What if she could learn to be a true Wielder, like the sorcerers of old? How far could she go with her gift?

She looked down at the molten Well, imagining what it would be like to draw on that much Fire and mold it into great and terrible Works the likes of which the mountain hadn’t seen in a generation.

“Miss Ruminor,” Zage snapped.

Dara jumped. She peeled her eyes away from the Fire and focused on him. She was not here for the power. She was here to learn, so that she could do her duty. She would not be like her father.

“I’m ready.”

“Close your eyes. Working the Fire is about sensation. You must feel the Fire with your mind before you can touch and shape it.” Zage’s voice whispered across Dara’s skin, and she shivered. “When you begin to combine the Fire with metal and other materials, you must be able to tell exactly what is the Fire and what is the substance it is shaping. This will allow you to control the strength of the item you are Working.”

Dara nodded, filing the information in her head just as she filed away Berg’s dueling instructions.

“I don’t want you to pull on anything yet. Just feel the flow of the power beneath your feet. Sense how it moves. It’s like water, but thicker. It is like blood, but smoother. It will shape itself to your needs and will feel different depending on how you focus. Many Workers experience the flow like blood pumped by a heartbeat, but it does not pulse unless you let it.”

“How do you experience it?” Dara asked.

The Fire Warden didn’t answer, and Dara opened one eye. He was looking away from her, into the Well beneath their feet. The thick light of the Fire swirled in his eyes, which were not black as she had thought but rich brown, like an ancient oak.

“I am a vessel,” Zage said softly. “I am a servant of the mountain. I don’t seek to impose my own will on it. This power is far too much for one man to hold, and so I make sure it flows to many.”

Dara closed her eyes again, feeling the power churning and oozing beneath her feet. The Savven blade grew warm at her hip, and she resisted the urge to touch it and pull a bit of Fire toward her. It was warm, inviting. But this wasn’t about her.

“Okay,” Zage said. “Let us begin.”

15.

Harvest Festival

SIV
leapt out of bed earlier than usual the day of the big harvest festival. He’d been looking forward to it for weeks. His people had worked hard to prepare for winter. The fruits and berries had been harvested and preserved; the bridges had been repaired; the meats had been dried. The workers had done their jobs well, and Siv wanted to reward them. He’d invited guests from all across the three peaks to a grand carnival in the castle courtyard. Too much gloom had filled the kingdom since his father’s death, and he wouldn’t allow it to carry on through the depths of winter.

Selivia had helped him with the planning, finally back to her usual bubbly self. She enlisted their mother’s help with the arrangements. The queen might even stop by the carnival, which would mark the first time she’d been outdoors since her husband’s death. Sora tried to take charge of the guest list, and Siv had to remind her not to only focus on her favorite nobles and dignitaries, but to invite tradesmen and miners and orchard workers and artists as well.