The Smoke-Scented Girl (4 page)

He dismissed the shield with a word and a
flick of his left hand and felt the chill descend upon him again,
oppressive and distracting. Time to take another look at Piercy’s
project. The map tacked to the wall was the biggest map of Dalanine
and environs that he could find. He’d marked the sites of
the...fires? Events? Explosions? that Home Defense had identified.
Why they didn’t just come out and call it the War Department, given
that Dalanine was actually at war, he had no idea. Then, with some
pride, he’d marked in a different color the sites
he’d
identified. True, he’d had to resort to the dubious help of the
Weekly Gazette
, but when he’d stripped away all the Alvorian
nonsense and talk about people being struck by acts of Gods, he’d
actually found truth hiding away at the core. Three more sites, all
of them matching the specifics of the other explosions. Three more
sites proving that this...this epidemic had been going on much
longer than Home Defense believed.

Someone rapped at his door and opened it
without waiting for an invitation. “Lore, I half expect to find you
frozen to your chair one of these days,” Piercy said. He wore
padded kid gloves and an overcoat with a fur collar turned up to
shroud his ears and hairline and had his walking stick tucked under
his arm. “Doesn’t your Miss Elltis believe in the basic human right
not to freeze to death in one’s place of employ?”

“Miss Elltis believes in the basic human
right not to spend unnecessary money, and she defines what is
unnecessary,” Evon said, rubbing his hands together and blowing on
his fingers. “And I forgot my gloves. Did you bribe the guard
again?”

“The guard is under the impression that I am
Home Defense’s liaison with this cooperative, which is true except
for all the ways in which it is false. For the Twins’ sake put on
your coat, at least. You make me cold just looking at you.”

Evon crossed the room to where he’d left his
frock coat and overcoat and put both on. Piercy went over to the
map and stood with his hands behind his back, gazing at the marks.
“You’ve been a busy boy these last three weeks, dear fellow,” he
mused. “I hope this represents actual progress.”

“You have such little faith in me. It
represents the progress of the Fearsome Firemage through
Dalanine.”

“The ‘Fearsome Firemage’? How very
alliterative of you.”

“A term coined by the
Weekly Gazette
.
I may have to take out a subscription, it’s been so useful. Care to
know the latest act of Gods? Strange creatures emerging from the
magical places where nature’s law no longer applies? Or perhaps
some Wystylth sightings? It’s a full moon, always good—”

“Thank you, no, I encounter enough insanity
at my place of employment every day.” Piercy riffled through one of
the stacks of the pages tacked to the wall beside the map. “I
recognize this name. Lendan Hansaltis. One of the victims.”

“I think not. It’s his wife those clippings
are about. Charra Hansaltis was accused of viciously abusing her
husband and children over a course of several years.”

“Abusing her husband? That seems
unlikely.”

“You’d be surprised at what some women are
capable of, and what some men are incapable of resisting. Don’t you
want to know why it matters?”

“Since you clearly want to tell me, yes.”

Evon tapped another stack of papers. “Only
six victims in four events were ever identified. But four of the
six have criminal histories. Harkel Stantis, who turned out to have
six bodies buried beneath the foundation of his home. The most
recent one, Frandon Toltis, who was accused of poisoning both his
wives. Charra Hansaltis. And Storna Cathelter, whom Joral Donalter
says—”

“Gimpy? How is the old fellow, anyway?
Haven’t seen him in a dog’s age.”

“He’s fine. He’s employed in the constabulary
in Carshan, where Storna Cathelter lived. He says they had
complaints all the time about her from her neighbors, serious
criminal allegations even, but no one ever brought her up on a
charge.” Gimpy had been surprisingly happy to hear from him, and
Evon felt a renewed pang of guilt at having let that old friendship
slip by, a pang intensified by his feeling that he had only looked
Gimpy up because he needed something from him. One more friendship
he’d let fade.

“I’ll wager he still has the fastest legs in
Dalanine. I would hate to be a criminal run down by him. Lore, is
there a point to this?”

“Isn’t it obvious? All four had what I think
Gimpy would call a criminal nature and none of them were brought to
justice for their crimes. I would wager, as long as we’re placing
bets, that if we could identify the rest of the victims, we’d find
similar evidence. In fact, in Alsenth, where the first event
occurred, there was a series of unsolved murders that stopped after
the explosion. I was thinking of contacting Chess Blaketer, see if
he’s heard anything more.”

Piercy shook his head. “Not a good idea. He
joined Speculatus after two years at university. He and Odelia were
both recruited pretty heavily. I’m surprised you didn’t at least
know about Odelia. I was under the impression that you kept a
careful eye on her so you would never again have to share the same
breathing space.”

Evon scowled. “I really have no interest in
what she does with her life. And I don’t see how Chesley being
employed by Speculatus means I shouldn’t reach out to him for
information. In fact, that might make him more likely to know
something.”

“Their unsavory reputation, according to my
inside sources, is more than a little deserved,” Piercy said. “I
realize none of their members has ever been convicted of shady
dealings, but there are people employed by my department who watch
them like a starving man watches someone else’s meal, waiting for
them to misstep.”

“I can’t imagine Chess being involved in
anything like that.”

Piercy shrugged. “Maybe not, but it’s still
better not to bring him in on this. For all we know, Speculatus
might have an interest in finding our mystery magician
themselves.”

“That’s an excellent point. Well, I would
like to have more evidence about Alsenth, because I realize it’s a
stretch, but it fits the evidence. I think the Fearsome Firemage is
targeting evildoers whom the law has no hold over.”

“But Storna Cathelter—”

“Was killed with her child, yes. It’s likely
some of these victims were innocent bystanders. The spell isn’t
exactly discriminatory.”

“Then you know how it works.”

Evon shook his head and shoved his hands into
his overcoat pockets. “I wish I did. I’ve been able to duplicate
the ten-foot diameter, but nothing I’ve tried has come close to
being hot enough. Either the Fearsome Firemage—”

“You really do enjoy saying that, don’t you,
dear fellow?”

“It has a certain appeal. She’s either using
a combination of runes and gestures I’ve never heard of, or she’s
found some material component that is far more potent than anything
we have access to.”

“Then you believe your Fearsome Firemage is a
woman.” Piercy riffled through the clippings again, as if looking
for her identity among them.

“It can’t be coincidence that witnesses at
every location have reported seeing a woman either fleeing the
place, or watching the fire, or standing out in some other way.
There’s too much consistency—a woman with long blonde hair, of
average height, young or at least not yet middle-aged. That’s
discounting the witnesses who saw a
naked
woman leaving the
site, which simply proves that some people have very low minds.”
Evon grinned. “I think we’re looking for a woman.”

“That’s—what do you mean,
we’re
looking for a woman?”

Evon grinned more broadly. This was how he
used to feel all the time, everything knife-edged and clear in his
mind, all the steps laid out before him and all he had to do was
leap from one to the next, towing Piercy with him, or occasionally
pushing him out ahead. Piercy needed danger in his life, and Evon
needed a challenge; their friendship was based on that symbiosis.
“You and I,” he said, savoring the words, “are going to make a
journey. South.”

Piercy shook his head, slowly but
emphatically, and held up his stick as if to ward Evon off. “No.
No. You have that look in your eye, Evon, and besides, I can’t
exactly leave my work and go haring off with you on whatever mad
quest you have in mind.”

“You won’t have to leave your work, Piercy.
Your employers are going to pack you a box lunch and kiss you
farewell, metaphorically speaking, because you are going to tell
them that you know how to track down the Fearsome Firemage. Though
you might not want to call her that in front of them. They’ll think
you read the
Weekly Gazette
and the Twins only know what
kind of mental instability that might mean.”

“I, track down the Fearsome Firemage? Evon,
if anyone is displaying mental instability right now, it’s
you.”

Evon rapped on the map with his knuckles,
then blew on them to warm them. “Would I lead you astray?”

Piercy covered his face with one gloved hand.
“I am experiencing a vivid memory. Would you like me to tell you
what it is?”

“I already know it’s a memory of our fifth
year at Houndston, winter term, when we rearranged Mistress
Goulter’s personal spell components so she mistook her hair growth
tonic for her skin cleanser and grew what I recall to be a very
fine beard.”

“Yes, and because you made me handle the
jars, I spilled some of the tonic and grew hair on my palms. As if
my in-house suspension wasn’t enough of a trial.”

“To be fair, I confessed my part in the
adventure and stood suspension by your side, as a true friend
would.”

Piercy raised his head. “My
point
,
Evon, is that our mutual history could be construed to be a long,
long line of events in which you led me astray.”

“Well, I promise I’m not leading you astray
now.” Evon pointed at the map again, then covered his nose with his
cupped hands and breathed heavily to warm his face. “There’s a
pattern there,” he said, his voice muffled, “or rather a trend,
since there’s no consistency in the timing of the events or the
distance between them. The trend is southward. The Fearsome
Firemage is seeking out criminals who can’t be or haven’t been
apprehended by the law. We just have to find those criminals
first.”

“Evon, did I mention that you are out of your
mind?”

“I’ve already received a leave of absence
from Miss Elltis. You tell your superiors that you are accompanying
your, whatever you called me, civilian expert as the government’s
representative because said expert needs to examine the evidence
personally. Tell them I’m close to discovering the secret. It’s
true, I am. I’ll wager they won’t have any problem letting you
go.”

Piercy took a deep breath and let it out,
slowly. He smiled, brown eyes twinkling. “I have to say, it
is
good to see your old self is still in there somewhere,
dear fellow.”

“I feel the same.” Evon looked around the
dismal workroom and wondered if he even wanted to come back to it.
Lorantis & Company. Right. He could endure a little dullness
for the sake of his dream, be satisfied with mere contentment, but
Piercy was right: his old self had been locked away too long. Time
to see what that self could accomplish.

***

It was the most tedious and most anxious two
weeks of Evon’s life. He and Piercy took the coach from Matra to
Chaneston, site of the most recent event, and searched outward from
there, looking through newspapers for reports of unsolved violent
crimes in the larger cities, asking after female strangers in the
smaller ones. They took coaches down narrow roads that were more
like game trails, bare tree limbs and spiny brambles almost
scraping along the sides of the vehicle. They spent nights in
villages so tiny they weren’t even marked on Evon’s map, sometimes
bedding down on the floor of a willing cottager’s home because
there was neither inn nor tavern with rooms to let. After the first
week, Evon began to fear that his plan wasn’t as brilliant as he’d
thought. He found it hard to meet Piercy’s eye, though his friend
never complained or criticized. It was that lack of complaint that
worried Evon; if Piercy’s flow of pointed witticisms dried up, it
meant Piercy was as frustrated as Evon, and that made Evon feel
guilty at having dragged Piercy into this.

Ten days and sixteen villages after Chaneston
they rode through the streets of Rainoth, which was a fairly large
city only three days’ journey south from the capital. New
construction on every corner proclaimed its prosperity, though Evon
observed that the builders hadn’t taken advantage of the
opportunity to upgrade the existing properties. The mix of styles
gave the city a lopsided look, older wooden houses with upper
stories jutting out over lower ones pressed cheek to cheek with the
flat brick façades of the newcomers. It had snowed the previous
night, and the streets were already churned into a dirty slush the
horses kicked up with every step. Evon stepped down from the coach
at the way station and stretched to get the kinks out of his back.
They’d slept cold on some farmer’s hearth the night before, and
Evon had wakened several times imagining the unknown magician had
passed and was far ahead of them preparing to strike down some new
victim. His eyes felt dry and itchy and his shoulders ached. The
Fearsome Firemage would have had to backtrack to strike in Rainoth,
but it was the last large city between Chaneston and Matra and he
was running out of ideas.

“Did you want to begin searching immediately,
or find a bed? Or send your Miss Elltis an update?” Piercy asked.
He, damn him, looked as fresh and impeccably turned out as
ever.

“An inn,” Evon said, “to drop our gear. I’d
rather not haul it all over town.”
And
, he thought,
I
want to delay the moment where I have to tell Miss Elltis I’ve
still had no success as long as possible.
At first he’d
communicated with her by mirror every evening, then every other
day, and now his contacts with her were sporadic as he convinced
himself he shouldn’t waste her time by telling her he had no news.
He dreaded seeing her severe visage in his mirror, hearing her
precise voice, tinny with distance, dressing up her message in
formal words but always saying the same thing: come home successful
or don’t come home at all. He thought the last part might be a
little extreme; Miss Elltis couldn’t afford to lose him. Even so,
every time he felt the palm-sized round mirror in his inner pocket
press against his chest, he cringed.