Cold Fire (2 page)

Suddenly people in the stableyard were shouting. Above the adult voices rose the thin screams of children. Daja left Anyussa and raced toward the stable, realizing someone must be caught inside. She gathered her power in case she had to do something in a hurry.

In the stableyard, people stood as close as they dared to the entrance of the burning building, full buckets in hand. Their eyes were wide in soot-streaked faces, glued to that dark opening ringed in flame.

Someone went in, Daja thought. They’re waiting for him to come out. She was reaching with her magic, prepared to hold back the fire, when a bulky, awkward, gray shape came out of the smoke-filled entrance at a dead run. Behind the shape overtaxed roofbeams groaned and collapsed. The stable roof caved in, sending gouts of flame blasting out the doorway to clutch and release the gray shape. Daja saw a clump of burning straw shoot up through the hole in the roof, swirling in the column of hot air released by the fire. The brisk Snow Moon winds seized it and dragged it higher, toward the main house.

Daja raised her right hand and snapped her fingers, calling with her power. The clump of fire came to her, collapsing until it was a tidy globe that rested on her palm. Holding it before her face, she asked, “What am I going to do with you?”

She looked at the gray shape. Firefighters pulled the water-soaked blanket away to reveal a large, sodden white man with two boys no older than eight or ten. He carried one over a shoulder, one under an arm.

Daja’s throat went tight with emotion. There was no glimmer of magic to this fellow who had nearly been buried in the stable. With only a wet blanket for protection he had plunged into flames to save those boys. He’d come close to dying: one breath more and that burning roof would have dropped on his head.

This was a true hero, a non-mage who saved lives because he had to, not because he could protect himself with magic. He was a tall man in his early thirties, coatless; his wool shirt was covered in soot marks and scorches. His russet wool trousers were also fire-marked. He appeared to have forgotten his wriggling burdens as he stared at Daja and her fire seed with deep blue eyes.

The firefighters tugged on the boys. Recalled to himself, the tall man released them and grimaced. He shook his left hand: it was crimson and blistered with a serious burn. The boys were coughing, the result of their exposure to smoke. Their rescuer eyed them with a frown as a firefighter wrapped linen around his burned hand. “Which of you set it?” he demanded.

A woman in a maid’s cap and white apron was offering the boys a ladle of water to drink. She dropped the ladle at the blue-eyed man’s words. “Set?” she cried.

“His fault, Mama,” one croaked, pointing to the other. “He spilt the lamp.”

“You said we could play up there!” cried his companion, before a series of coughs left him wheezing.

The maid grabbed each lad by an ear and towed them into the main house. Daja shook her head over the folly of the young and glanced at the burning stable. The firefighters had given up. They simply kept back and watched for more flying debris. They also edged away from Daja, their eyes on the white-hot fire globe in her hand.

“If you don’t want people to be nervous with you, don’t do things that make them nervous,” Frostpine had advised after they’d been on the road a week. “Or do things they won’t notice. You’ve been spoiled, living at Winding Circle. There everyone’s used to magic. Outside, making things act differently than normal turns people jumpy.”

Daja didn’t like to make people jumpy. She covered her fireball with one hand.

“How did you manage that?” The boys’ rescuer walked over to Daja, cradling his wrapped left hand. “You called it. Viynain”-Namornese for “a male mage”-“Godsforge had that trick, except in ribbons, not balls.” He thrust his right hand at Daja. “Bennat Ladradun,” he said. Even covered with soot and scorch-marks he was a comfortable-looking man, with the soft, big body of a well-broken-in armchair. His broad cheeks were each punctuated with a mole, one high, one low. His nose was fleshy and pointed; his flyaway curls were reddish brown and losing ground on top of his head. Someone came up with a dry blanket to wrap around him: his clothes were soaked by the blanket he’d worn into the stable.

Daja had to uncover her fireball to shake his hand. “Daja Kisubo,” she replied. “You were brave to go in there.”

“No, I just didn’t think,” Bennat replied absently. “If I had, I’d have known better. The roof was about to go.” He turned her offered hand palm up and closed his fingers around it. “Not even hot,” he remarked. “A little warm, that’s all.” He let Daja go. “You’re one of the smith-mages, am I right? The pair staying with Kol and Matazi?”

Daja nodded. “The Bancanors’ cook says you teach Kugisko to fight fires.”

Bennat smiled, his thin mouth tucked into ironic corners. “I teach parts of Kugisko, bit by bit, kicking and screaming,” he replied as he inspected the fireball. He held his hand over it and snatched it back. “Well, that’s hot, at least. Viynain Godsforge wore spelled gloves so he wouldn’t get burned when he worked with flame. Why doesn’t the fire bother you?”

“It’s magic,” she told him quietly. “One of the first things we learn.”

He shook his head. “My whole year with Godsforge, only two of our mages learned to hold fire, and they couldn’t manage something that hot. What are you going to do with it?”

Daja shrugged and tossed it back to the stable. It vanished in the flames. “Did the blanket really help in there?” she wanted to know.

The man wandered over to a barrel set beside the far wall and sat on it. Daja followed him. “The trick’s in guessing how long you have before the fire sucks the damp out,” he explained. “I hoped it was wet enough that I could reach the loft, grab our fireflies, and get out. It helped knowing where they were-we saw them, in the window over the door. If I’d had to search, I might be a little charred now.” Looking at the burning stable, he shook his head. “I told the Moykeps six months ago they ought to pull this thing down. It was an accident waiting to happen.”

“This whole city’s an accident waiting to happen,” Daja said with feeling. “All these wooden houses-it’s mad-brained, that’s what.”

Bennat looked at her and smiled. “That’s right-you’re from the south. Somebody told me you were. Wood’s cheap in this part of the country-we’ve got more forests than we know what to do with. And families moving into the city, they want something that reminds them of home.”

“Wood,” Daja said, shaking her head in disgust.

“You get used to it,” Bennat said. “There’s real craftsmanship in the carvings on the roofs and doors and porches. And the builders use different kinds of log, to contrast colors and textures in the wood.”

“Here I thought they just built these places any old way,” Daja admitted. “It never occurred to me they used different woods on purpose.” She realized she was being rude. “I’m sorry. It’s not my place to criticize your home.”

Bennat chuckled, then began to cough. One of the women firefighters came to offer him a flask. Bennat took it and drank, coughing between sips. At last the coughs stilled. He returned the flask. “Thanks,” he told the woman after he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Looking at Daja he asked, “So do you fight fires?”

Daja smiled crookedly. She wasn’t sure that he would term sucking a forest fire through her body to douse it in a glacier as firefighting. “Mostly I just handle it in the forge,” she replied. “I know a trick or two-there’s always the risk of little fires starting in forges or inns-but I almost never use them.”

“I’d like to hear about them sometime,” Bennat told her. “Anyone who balls up fire and holds it probably knows more about how it works than I do.” He lurched to his feet, cleared his throat, and sighed. “I’d better check the outposts, make sure no other wads of debris went flying.” He offered Daja his hand. “Thanks for the help.”

Daja shook hands. As she walked back to Bancanor House, she eyed the firefighters. They kept watch over the stable as it burned low, but they were relaxed and joking. The worst was over. The stable was gone, but two boys were still alive, and nothing else had caught fire, because Bennat Ladradun had trained these people well. That was far more impressive in this firetrap city than her ability to handle flames.

When the staff returned to the Bancanor kitchens, Daja returned Anyussa’s repaired necklace. Then she collected her coat and climbed the servants’ stairs to her room.

Her excitement over the fire and Bennat s rescue of the children vanished, leaving ashes in its wake. Homesickness swept over Daja as she walked into her Namornese room with its ornately carved mantel, its high bed heaped with feather-stuffed comforters, its heavily shuttered windows, and the riot of colors in its thick carpet and drapes.

All these things reminded her that she was not at home in Emelan, at Winding Circle temple with its stucco buildings, simple furniture, and many gardens. She was far from the Pebbled Sea, and she couldn’t expect to meet her three foster-siblings or their teachers around the next corner. There was plenty to see and do as she traveled, plenty of occasions for excitement, activity, even fun. But every time strong emotions faded, she longed for her foster-family. No one else would talk to her of fashions, constellations, diseases, skin creams, staff fighting, or the art of miniature trees. She even missed their dog Little Bear, big, galumphing, drooling animal that he was.

Even if she went back now, the others weren’t there. Sandry lived with her great-uncle, Duke Vedris of Emelan, in Summersea. She had given her room away, she’d written Daja, to a terrified novice thread-mage. The last time Daja had heard from Briar, their lone foster-brother, he and his teacher Rosethorn were on their way east. They might not return for two years. Tris and her teacher Niko had gone so far south that Daja fully expected them to return from the north.

It was Frostpine’s idea to travel as well, to show Daja the ways of other smiths. She knew it was in part to take her mind off the absence of Briar and Tris. It was also true that she had learned a great deal in smithies that ranged from tiny crossroad places where the specialty was horseshoes, to elegant goldsmiths’ forges where she learned to put designs composed of tiny gold balls on metal. Here in Kugisko she studied with Teraud Voskajo, who Frostpine called the greatest ironsmith he knew. It seemed unfair that she had to go so far to learn so much. At least they had settled for now in a comfortable place. They were not wander-mages here. They were honored guests of the head of Kugisko’s Goldsmiths’ Guild, which controlled the city’s banks.

She wished she could have this learning and her Emelan family. A break from her foster-siblings had been a fine thing at first. After mingling their powers, they had kept a magical bond that allowed them to know what the others thought and felt. When they’d left Emelan Daja had thought she could go months, perhaps a year, without knowing three other people inside and out, as they knew her. She had lasted two whole weeks, she thought ruefully.

One thought brightened her mood: she’d had a nice talk with Bennat Ladradun. A sensible talk, about useful things. Smiling at this simple pleasure, Daja hung up her indoor coat. Bennat had mentioned something that tweaked her imagination: gloves spelled so the wearer might handle fire. Could she make gloves that someone with no magic might use? If such gloves could be made, what about an entire suit? With a fireproof suit, someone like Bennat wouldn’t have to rely on the scant protection of a water-soaked blanket.

She thought until she realized that she daydreamed with no purpose. She set the ideas for gloves and suit to heat in the back of her mind and turned to her current project: matching jewelry sets for each of the Bancanor women, even eight-year-old Peigi. For Kol and his five-year-old son Eidart she had already created matching gold neck rings and wrist cuffs, jewelry favored by Namornese men. They were her Longnight presents, her thanks to this openhearted family.

Daja labored over her gifts, shaping the women’s jewelry to be as fine and ornate as lace. The cost of the gold was nothing. The strange, unique pieces she made with the excess living metal she took off her hand daily-if she let it go unchecked, she would be coated in it by now-had made Daja wealthy.

She was shaping a sign of health when someone rapped on her door. “It’s open,” she called, twitching a nearby piece of cloth over her work to hide it.

Jory danced in, followed by her twin. Nia sat beside Daja, while Jory wandered the room, chattering. “Anyussa says cook-mages study from books. They put spells on sauces and draw symbols on pots and pans. They shape magic signs in bread, and strengthen herbs and spices to use in spells. They can make people fall in love with a cup of tea, except they’d get caught and arrested for magicking people without permission. She said Olennika Potcracker, who used to be the empress’s personal cook, was so powerful that if someone put poison in the empress’s food? It all turned green.”

Daja crossed her arms and waited for Jory to get to her point. It was a tactic Daja had learned over the last two months.

“And Anyussa says cook-mages are found by magic-sniffers and they all get a license from the Mages’ Society here or a medallion from Lightsbridge University or Winding Circle that says they’re proper mages and have read all the right books, just like Olennika Potcracker.” Jory plumped herself down on a footstool. “So I couldn’t be a mage like that. The magic-sniffers said we weren’t mages. Twice. It’s in Papa’s family, but not in us.”

Daja touched the medallion she wore under her clothes. Frostpine had made one for each of the four at Discipline Cottage eighteen months before, and given them out at a supper attended by them and their teachers. The front of each pendant had the student’s name and that of her or his chief teacher inscribed on the outer edges. A symbol for that student’s magic was at the center; Daja’s was a hammer over flames. On the other side of the medallion was the spiral symbol for Winding Circle, where they had studied.

The medallions were spelled so that usually the wearers forgot them unless someone asked them to prove they were accredited mages. Winding Circle’s mage council had granted the medallions the four had earned only after Frostpine promised to ensure they didn’t brag about a credential that most mages studied for years to get. He didn’t tell the council that the four weren’t likely to brag-the council would not have believed it. Sandry wore her medallion like her nobility: it was so much a part of her that she rarely thought about it. Briar might once have used it to boast, but no longer. Tris wanted the world to forget how powerful her magic was. For Daja the forgetting spell was useless. Not only did her own power tell her what she wore, but the disguising spells on the medallions were Frostpine’s, whose magic she knew as well as her own.