Cold Fire (14 page)

Daja grinned as she found her own leather apron. “How does anybody have a private life on this island, the way servants gossip?”

Teraud chuckled as he led the way to his forge. “The whole city prob’ly knows you teaching dose girls by now,” he teased. “Our servants are good at da gossip.”

Between stretches when the metal heated to the proper brownish yellow shade for hardening and Teraud checked his apprentices and journeymen, Daja worked on the iron rods she used for so much of her own work. That morning she took extra care, shaping her rods with her power as much as her drawing tongs. These would be the foundation of Ben’s gloves.

The morning flew past. Daja was startled when Teraud’s wife called them to midday. She stowed her tools as the journeymen and apprentices headed for the dining room in a fast-moving herd.

Once inside, apprentices at one long table and journeymen, Teraud, and Daja at another, everyone fell on their loaded plates. Unlike plenty of masters, Teraud made sure his people were well fed. He’d once told Daja it was just self-interest-happy workers meant better work.

The meal was half-over when a maid showed in a boy who carried a sealed sheet of parchment. She pointed Daja out. As he approached, Daja saw he wore the Ladradun insignia on the shoulder of his threadbare gray coat. He was trying not to stare at the laden table. Mutely he offered his message to her.

She took it and signed for him to wait, digging in her pocket for a silver argib as a tip. He looked half-starved. She hoped he’d buy himself something to eat before he returned home.

“Better read dat careful, make sure you don’t need to send back no answer,” Teraud advised her. He speared a thick slice of roast pork with one hand as he scooped up two slabs of bread with the other. He dropped the meat onto one piece of bread, capped it with the other, and thrust the whole at the boy. “My wife cooks too much,” he growled. “Eat before it goes bad.”

The boy didn’t need encouragement. He clutched the offering with both hands and took a huge bite. Daja slowly cracked the seal and read the few lines of Ben’s note. It was his answer to her request for a time to fit him for the gloves. If it wasn’t too late when she finished at Teraud’s, he wrote, she could find him at the Ladradun warehouses on Bazniuz Island, at the joining of Cashbox Street and Covil Way.

She read it three times before the boy finished what he’d been given and accepted a second bread-and-meat slab from Teraud. Then she gave the messenger her argib and said, “Tell Ravvot Ladradun I will see him later this afternoon.”

The boy nodded, still chewing, and trotted away. Teraud’s wife Nushenya came over, shaking her head. “The way that woman stints on food, you’d think every grain of wheat was taken from her own children,” she said to her husband. “She whips them, you know. The servants. The island council fines her-she doesn’t care.” She glared at the journeymen, openly eavesdropping. “Don’t think any of you are too big for a whipping. I saw that vegetable plate! A vegetable plate goes back half-empty at supper and we serve what you turn away instead of meat tomorrow!”

Daja ducked her head to hide a smile as the diners, male and female alike, dug into eggplant and carrots.

“Somet’ing’s not right at dat house,” Teraud commented as he sat back and dug at his teeth with a toothpick. “Morrachane’s half crazy.”

Daja put her fork down. “But what about Ben? He’s all right isn’t he?”

“He’s a hero,” insisted a young journeywoman. “That carriage shop on Rider Street would have burned last winter-

“The hat shop on Stifflace Lane,” someone else put in.

“Emperor Noodles,” called a girl apprentice.

“If you can talk you can work,” Teraud said. Apprentices and journeymen left the tables to wash up and walk around a bit before they returned to their tasks. Only Daja remained with Teraud at the table. His wife joined them with sturdy mugs of honeyed tea. She was from Capchen, where tea was drunk in the way Daja expected it to be drunk. She too sat with her husband, willing to let the maids clear the tables.

“Call me a grumpy old man wit’ a nose full a soot and a copper-coated tongue,” Teraud said over his toothpick. “To hear da world tell it, Ben Ladradun’s de only good dat family ever gave Kugisko.” He shook his blocky head. “Me? If somet’ing like a fire took my joy”-he engulfed his wife’s hand with one of his own-“I wouldn’t go hunting da t’ing dat took my sweetheart and my children.” He sighed and looked into his mug, then drained it.

Daja followed him back into the main forge. Ben’s intense focus on fire didn’t seem odd to her. She had seen Tris destroy part of a fleet because those who sailed with it had murdered her cousin. Sandry had battled her terror of the dark to keep her friends alive. Briar had plunged into death rather than let go of his beloved teacher. Dreadful events, in her experience, led people to do extraordinary things. It made sense to her that Ben would devote his life to a war on fire. Maybe Teraud just didn’t know the kind of people she did.

It was mid-afternoon when Daja left Teraud’s forge, staff in hand, a bundle of slender iron rods and her rolled parchment tracings of Ben’s hands in her satchel. Outside it seemed warmer than it had that morning. Despite there being two more hours until sunset, the light was going. Masses of clouds like fat gray moonstones slid by overhead, their edges fuzzy and soft. After weeks in the mountains and months in the north, Daja knew snow clouds. These looked serious.

With her satchel over her shoulder, Daja strode briskly along Kategan Way, testing the ground with her staff where she suspected hard ice lay under the snow, and dodging sleighs and riders. She could risk her life to cross to Bazniuz on foot, or she could risk her life to hire a sleigh: they all seemed to be driven by madmen. I have to practice skating, she thought as a sleigh hurled slush on her boots and coat. I don’t care how much I ache, it will be worth it.

She did take in the vividly painted storefronts and fences along the way. Color was a Namornese obsession. Roofs were trimmed in yellow, scarlet, emerald green. Outside walls were blue, red, pink, and orange. Doors were bright enough to startle. It was hard to believe that Sandry, whose taste in color was perfect, was half-Namornese.

By the time Daja stepped onto Bazniuz Island, the lamplighters were out. As she walked down Sarah Street, shopgirls and boys left their businesses for the walk home. When she turned north on Cashbox Street, fat snowflakes began to drift idly through the air, as if they toured the city.

Reaching Ladradun Furriers, Daja halted. The property included most of the block on which it stood, expensive on the islands that made up half of Kugisko. The sprawling wooden complex of buildings marked with the Ladradun emblem included a large warehouse, a furrier’s shop, a workshop from which men and women dressed like common laborers streamed, a courtyard where men put covers on wagons against the snow, and the charred remains of a second warehouse. For a moment she had the fanciful idea that the fire gods were vexed, to visit a man who dedicated his life to destroying their work. She made a face and shook the idea from her head: that was Tris’s or Sandry’s kind of addled, imaginative thinking, not hers.

The shop that fronted on Cashbox Street was a haunt for the rich. Luxuriant pelts were draped in its many-paned window, an invitation for buyers to come and touch. That polished cedar door, inlaid with ebony and white pine, was not for the likes of Daja. She walked around the corner. Beside the courtyard gate was an ordinary door and a sign: LADRADUN FURS: TRADESMEN ONLY. She entered that way.

Inside was a typical clerks’ office: long, tilted desks and benches for seats. Account books lined a wall. Lamps with brass reflectors supplied light for those who kept the company’s records. A hearth on one wall was the only supply of heat; the amount it gave off was meager. Everyone, even the chief clerks, wore outdoor coats.

The messenger who had come to Teraud’s sat by the door, whittling a stick into kindling. He jumped to his feet when he saw her. “Viymese Daja, Ravvot Ladradun’s expecting you,” he greeted her. “This way.”

“A moment.” Daja bent to tug at her boot, as if it had twisted on her foot. She thrust deep into the ground with her power, passing through stone and watery mush, then granite, until she reached the earth’s hot lifeblood of molten stone.

Straightening her other boot, she called the heat up to her, letting it pass through the wooden floors sheathed in her magic to keep the boards from catching fire. Opening her right hand she spread her fingers. Warmth streamed through her to settle into any metal in the clerks’ office that could hold it: the heavy iron grate, the andirons and pokers of the hearth, the empty metal coal bucket, and the brass lamp reflectors. She gave the metal just enough heat to warm the air without changing the metal’s color. The workers might not realize they were more comfortable, but she knew. It was her slap at Morrachane’s copper-clutching fingers.

She cut the flow of heat and let the rest fall into the molten rock again. One second more she waited, to ensure the metal in the office would not burn the wood around it. She had done something here. Content, she straightened and stamped her feet, as if to make sure her boots were comfortable. “I see you had a building fire outside,” she commented as she followed her guide down the hall to the rear offices.

“A month ago. It wasn’t serious.” He stopped at a closed door and faced Daja, swallowing hard. “Viymese, you gave me too much money.” He held out a silver coin. “You being foreign, maybe you don’t know-the likes of me gets a copper argib, not a silver. If we gets anything.”

Daja smiled. “I bet that honest streak pinches you, doesn’t it?” she asked. She couldn’t imagine Briar correcting anyone about such a mistake. “Don’t be silly,” she added “You had to skate around two islands, both ways. Someday when you have a bit extra, give it to one who needs it.”

The boy shook his head. “And I always heard southerners are tightfisted. Griantein shine on your winter, Viymese,” he said, naming the Namornese god of light and warmth. He rapped on the door, then opened it. “Ravvot Ladradun, Viymese Kisubo is here.” He bowed Daja into the room, then returned to the clerks.

“Daja, welcome,” said Ben. His office was crammed with a large desk, account books in cases, maps on a worktable, and pigeonhole shelves into which rolled pieces of paper were thrust. One wall backed a large cupboard. The wall beside his desk was covered with large slates that looked to be shipping schedules. A corner stove threw off a small amount of heat, enough that he didn’t wear his outer coat. He did wear his indoor coat buttoned all the way up. Somehow she didn’t think he was that much warmer than his clerks.

She reached again for the earth’s heat, letting it spread from her this time in a pool of warmth. She doubted the ability of the stove to hold what she could bring to it. Testing it with her power, she saw the joint weldings were cheap work that only fused the edges of the attached pieces. Moreover, the iron sides were uneven in thickness. It was better to radiate the heat from her own body.

As the air warmed, Daja shed her outer coat, rested her staff against the wall, and opened her satchel on the worktable. She watched Ben from the corner of one eye. In this room, with its inkwells, slates, books, and stacks of patterns on heavy parchment, the hulking Ben seemed like a bear in a pit, resigned to having starved dogs dropped in to harry him. The contrast with his behavior at the boardinghouse fire pinched her heart. He ought to be outside, facing danger head on, not trapped with clerks and furriers.

“You won’t be comfortable,” Ben warned as she doffed her inner coat. Despite his words, he’d begun to fiddle with his own collar buttons. “We get a daily allowance of coal for the stoves, and I’m out.” He tried a smile. “Mother says people get lazy if they’re too warm.”

He took Daja’s inner coat from her hands and folded it neatly before he set it on his desk. “I spoke to the magistrates’ mages about the boardinghouse fire, by the way. They say they’ll look into it, when they have time. Of course, a fire in Shopgirl District isn’t at the top of their list of priorities.”

Daja, remembering the counterfeiting case that was at the top of their list, and its potential for national disaster, nodded.

Ben unbuttoned his coat. “What do you need me to do? It must be about to snow-it’s warmer in here, don’t you think?”

Daja took the metal rods from her satchel. That afternoon she had cut them to fit the lengths shown in her tracings of Ben’s arms. “It is snowing,” she told him. “Could you make a clear spot on your desk?”

He shifted stacks of paper and accounting books. When he finished, Daja had him sit with his arms flat on the desk. “I thought you’d just mold them on me like clay, or maybe sew cloth gloves?” Ben asked.

Daja shook her head. “I need to make a metal form, like a dressmaker would use, only for gloves,” she explained. “And I have to be sure of all the dimensions in your hands and arms. Otherwise you’ll be fighting the gloves to hold things when all your mind should be on the fire.”

Ben commented, “So when I have to push burning material aside, I won’t cook the back of my hand again.”

“Exactly,” Daja replied. She positioned two rods on either side of his forearms, leaving room for him to wear the gloves over his outdoor coat. Taking the elbow and wrist rods, she channeled the earth’s heat up through a sheath of magic to shield the wood around her. She used it to warm her rods to the point where she could handle them like clay. It was tricky work. She had to add enough heat to the elbow and wrist rings both to make them curve around his joints, and to fuse them to the side rods, all without burning the man or his clothes.

“Raise your forearms until they’re straight up, palms facing out,” she said quietly. Ben obeyed, lifting his hands. Now Daja closed the elbow and wrist rings, heating them until the ends merged without a seam.

As Ben sat patiently, she added rod after rod to the forearm model, heating the ends and molding them around the rings. He remained silent and steady, a rare virtue. She’d had to stop using Briar as a model for this kind of thing because his ability to sit still was limited unless he worked his own magic. Then he had a tree’s patience.