The Smoke-Scented Girl (8 page)

“Indescribably well,” Odelia said, smiling
coyly. “It’s a pity they didn’t approach you. We
did
work so
well together, didn’t we?”

Evon nodded, unable to speak as a hundred
infuriating memories surged up. It didn’t matter that he’d
ultimately taken the top prize in their graduating class, he could
only remember how innocently he’d accepted her first friendly
overtures, how pleased he’d been at the thought of finding someone
who matched him intellectually, how furious and humiliated he’d
been when he realized she’d only collaborated with him to make him
look like a fool. Their relationship hadn’t been so much a rivalry
as a hotly contested war.

“I don’t suppose you really
are
here
on holiday?” he said politely, casting his eye over the oncoming
conversation for a way to leave it gracefully and get back to their
task.

“Business,” she said. “
Secret
business.” Her blue eyes twinkled at him. This was the signal for
him to try to drag the secret out of her. He was about to decline
taking the bait when he noticed that Piercy had tensed up, meaning
that something wasn’t right. Piercy might be a terrible liar, but
his instincts about people were excellent. So Evon said,
“
Secret
, is it? Can’t you give an old friend a little
hint?”

“I really shouldn’t.”

“That’s a shame.” Evon paused, then let a sly
smile touch his lips. “Oh, Odelia, you nearly fooled me. There’s no
secret. Really, is your work so pedestrian that you have to pretend
otherwise?”

“My work is far more interesting than
whatever you’ve been doing, holed up in that poky old building for
the last six years,” Odelia said hotly.

“You know where I work? Really, I’m touched
that you cared enough to drop by. Not that they’d let you in, of
course, trade secrets and all that. Oh, that’s true, you wouldn’t
know anything about that.”

“I’m privy to more secrets than you can
possibly imagine, Lorantis,” Odelia said.

“Oh, I believe you,” Evon said as insincerely
as he could manage without giving the game away.

“Really? Watch the newspapers. Speculatus is
on the verge of something big, and I’m the one who’s going to find
it. Magic like no one’s seen before. We’ll see how important your
secrets are then, won’t we?”

“I’ll be watching the papers for your name
with great interest,” Evon assured her. “We should let you get back
to your...
secret
business.”

Odelia sneered at both of them and walked
away, kicking up her skirts to keep them out of the slush. Evon and
Piercy watched her go without speaking. When she was out of sight,
Evon said, “Good instincts.”

“Speculatus
is
going after the
Fearsome Firemage,” Piercy said. “I’d bet on it.”

“She seemed pretty confident. Whatever other
flaws Odelia has, she never acts on impulse. They must have a way
to track the magician. We have to move quickly.”

“I ought to let my superiors know about
this,” Piercy said.

“Now?”

“This could mean bringing Speculatus to
justice. I think some of my superiors would call that more
important than locating the Fearsome Firemage.”

“That’s true.” Evon chewed his lower lip. “I
can continue on my own.”

“Is that safe?”

“I have no idea. But we can’t afford to halt
the search while you send a message. I won’t approach her unless I
think Odelia’s about to attack. Do you have a mirror?”

Piercy patted his front pocket. “I may not be
much of a magician, but I can manage a communication spell.”

“I’ll contact you when I find her. Go back to
the inn when you’re finished.”

“I think this is a terrible idea.”

“So do I. But we’ve run out of good ones.” He
nodded at Piercy and walked rapidly to the park gates.

The park would be beautiful in the summer,
leaves in every shade of green, close-trimmed grass, gravel
crunching underfoot as you strolled the paths, possibly with an
attractive companion. It was still beautiful in the heart of
winter, though in a different way, the bare branches making runes
against the cloudless blue sky, thin drifts of snow over the
winter-yellowed grass. Evon walked as quickly as he dared without
drawing attention to himself. It wasn’t impossible that Odelia had
companions, and that they were watching him; Odelia’s mind was that
suspicious. But it was hard not to break into a run, especially
since the scent was growing stronger. His heart rate picked up, not
from exertion but from excitement. He wanted to see this woman. He
wanted to ask her a million questions. And he was so close he
could, literally, smell victory.

He emerged from the park into a paved
pedestrian zone, a place he guessed in summer would be thronged
with holiday-goers and the kind of street artists who painted poor
reproductions of the scenery for far too much money. The scent
still led directly forward, across the pavement and...stopped. He’d
expected it to cross the street that terminated in the pedestrian
zone, but it ended somewhere in the middle of the vast brick-paved
promenade. She was here. One of these women walking past.... He
went forward slowly, using his eyes as much as his nose. Long
blonde hair, an oval face, not too tall, young. All the women had
their hair bundled up under bonnets or kerchiefs. It was impossible
to tell the shape of their faces. And from this distance, they all
seemed to be the same height and age. He continued moving forward,
narrowing his search. She was in that group of about ten women, but
which one? All looked identical in dark cloaks and bundled hair,
though one of them wore a kerchief while the rest had dark bonnets.
The woman in the kerchief carried a bag over her shoulder and was
moving faster than the others. She was in such a hurry that she
pushed the others aside and proceeded at a near run across the
street, not waiting for the sweeper.

It was her.

Evon broke into a faster pace himself, no
longer afraid of Odelia’s unseen, possibly non-existent watchers.
The woman was moving so quickly that he feared losing her in the
crowd. Though she was frequently obscured by other, taller
pedestrians, her dingy white kerchief stood out and gave him
something to follow. He had to do a little shoving himself to keep
her in sight, but soon he found a pace that matched hers and was
able to stay about fifteen feet behind her, a comfortable distance.
His heart was pounding. Where was she going in such a hurry?
Suppose she’d found a new victim? Would he be able to stop her?
Would he
want
to stop her?

The woman didn’t notice him following her,
didn’t seem concerned that anyone might be following her, just kept
walking rapidly without looking to left or right, out of the
central district. They passed stores with barred windows, tall
houses narrower than Evon’s own, mansions that made Evon nervous,
aware of his scruffiness and afraid the local constabulary might
roust him for a vagrant. He continued to follow her through the
wealthier parts of Inveros and into less prosperous but still
attractive neighborhoods, all the while heading toward the
outskirts of town. The farther they went, the thinner the crowds
became, until Evon was certain she would notice him simply because
they were the only two people on the street. He slowed his pace,
but she still didn’t seem aware of his presence. They passed
through neighborhoods that became plainer and more worn until they
reached a place where wooden houses blasted gray by the airborne
sand and salt leaned against one another, some so visibly canted
that Evon expected to see them tip over at the next gust of wind.
They were close enough to hear the ocean but not see it, and the
air tasted briny and smelled of seagull. The street, which
terminated in scrub grass and sand dunes, was empty except for the
two of them.

The woman dropped her bag in the street and
began to run toward one of the houses near the end of the row.
Without thinking, Evon ran after her. She was almost certainly
going to kill whoever was in that house, and now that the moment
had come, Evon realized that he couldn’t allow someone, even
someone evil, to die in that inferno. “Wait!” he shouted, again
without thinking, and the woman slowed her steps and turned to face
him. Her face was unexpectedly lovely, even twisted with rage as it
was now.

“Go back!” she shouted. “You’re not the one
I’m here for!” She had the slightly broad vowels of a northerner
and sounded as if she were pleading with him rather than commanding
him.

“I can’t let you do this,” Evon said,
stopping some ten feet away. Maybe there was still hope. She’d
stopped to talk; maybe she was willing to listen.

Her face contorted with a choking, mirthless
laugh. “You can’t stop me,” she said, mocking. “Get out now. Stay
away. You don’t deserve to die.” She threw her cloak on the ground
and kicked off her shoes, then whipped the kerchief from her head
and dropped it on the pile. Her blonde hair came loose from where
she’d wrapped it around her head and fell heavily around her
shoulders. She stood facing him in a thin country dress with a
straight skirt, her shoulders heaving as she drew in great, sobbing
breaths.

“Whoever that person is doesn’t deserve to
die either,” Evon said, pointing at the house, wondering if it was
true.

She laughed again. “You think I don’t know
that?” She turned and sprinted toward the house. She moved so
quickly that Evon was caught off guard. “
Desini cucurri
!” he
shouted, flicking both his hands up and out like a conductor
raising his baton, wincing against the jaw-numbing chill of the
spell, like biting a chunk of ice, but she was inside the house
before the spell could affect her. Evon cursed and ran full-out,
yanked the door open so hard it nearly tore free from its leather
hinges, and pulled up short.

The door led directly into a single small
room with a stone fireplace that seemed more sturdy than the house
it warmed. The magician stood in the middle of the room, her whole
body clenched as if she were fighting some strong impulse. “You can
get away if you run now,” she said through clenched teeth, and Evon
realized she wasn’t speaking to him. A short, fat woman rose from a
rocking chair near the fireplace, staring at both of the intruders
as if she couldn’t believe their presence.

“Who are you? Get out of my house!
Jontis
!”

“Just
go
,” the magician said. Her skin
looked rosy in the firelight. “Don’t call him. Get out.”

“
Jontis
!” the woman screamed. She
limped over to the magician and raised both her hands as if to
strike her. The magician’s skin went from rosy to bright red. Fiery
yellow lines, irregular and jagged, roiled beneath her skin. “It’s
too late,” she said through her clenched teeth. “I’m sorry, I’m
sorry, I’m—”

Pure instinct threw Evon to the floor. He
pressed the tips of his index and pinky fingers together and
shouted “
Presadi!”
just as the world went white around
him.

Heat battered at him, dried his nostrils and
his eyes and lips and pulled his skin tight across his cheekbones.
Sweat sprang up and instantly evaporated. He squeezed his eyes shut
and covered them with his arms, terrified that he’d already gone
blind in that first exposure to the magician’s fire. His ears rang
with a high, keening sound that was probably the blood singing
through them, propelled by his too-rapidly beating heart. He panted
like a dog in the heat, then tried to calm himself. He only had so
much air in this bubble and he was using it up too fast. He could
already feel himself becoming dizzy—or was that the heat?

He risked a peek at his surroundings and
found the air had gone from blinding white to a flickering
yellow-orange. It was still brutally hot inside his shield, and he
could feel himself becoming increasingly light-headed. Either he
was going to die of suffocation in here, or he could die by fire
out there. He decided to take his chances with the fire. As he
dismissed the shield, he sucked in one last breath, just in case;
it burned all the way down.

Thick smoke that smelled of salt-dried wood
filled the air, rendering everything in the room dim and wavery. He
was just outside the edge of a black-burned, glassy circle of
earth, the foundation that lay beneath the floorboards. The
fireplace stones had melted and flowed like mud over the hearth.
Half the roof had collapsed and all of it, the entire house, was on
fire. Evon stood and staggered a little at the heat, which was
nothing close to what he’d experienced inside the shield, but was
still hot enough to remind him that he needed to get out, fast.

He looked down and saw the grotesque outline
of a human skeleton at his feet, and behind it, the magician. She
was on her knees, shaking hard, her hair obscuring her face and her
arms around her chest. She was also naked. Without thinking, Evon
removed his coat and put it around her shoulders, then half-lifted
her to her feet. She turned to look at him, her eyes dull and
confused, and said, “You didn’t burn.”

“I will if we don’t get out of here,” he
said, and urged her toward the door. It was entirely aflame, and
Evon had to cast another spell to open it without setting himself
on fire, all the time listening to the creaks and moans of the
house under siege by the flames and thinking
hurry hurry
hurry
until they were both safely outside and in the street,
well away from the burning building. A few people had gathered to
watch the house burn, but made no effort to rescue anyone who might
be inside and paid no attention to Evon and the magician. She
didn’t try to get away from him, only leaned heavily on his arm as
if she were exhausted. Evon stopped to pick up her belongings and
overheard a man say, “Probably just as well, her going like
that.”