The Fire Children (14 page)

Sparks from the collapsing timber rained down on the street, renewed each time a new beam fell within. Among them, Yulla could just make out Ember’s bulky shape moving out and away. The blankets still hadn’t caught, but they smoldered.

Once, one of Old Moll’s great-grandchildren had stolen a piece of the wire wool Old Moll used for smoothing his woodwork before staining. They’d taken it out into the desert at twilight, a gaggle of children clearly up to no good, but no one had stopped them. When the wool pad was stretched out and flattened and its corners held down by rocks, someone had held a match to it. The flame lived only briefly, but after it was out, the fibers themselves kept burning. Orange and red lines traced along the threads, spiderwebbing out from the hottest points to the end of the cloth, dropping ashes off as they went.

Ember’s retreating form looked much the same now, trailing sparks as he hurried toward the edge of town.

Between them, on Yulla’s side of the stables, three figures exited from an alley. The flames lit their faces. There was Vedra and her wide slash of a mouth, smiling triumphantly at the burning building.

At the building. They haven’t seen him yet.

“RUN!” Yulla shouted, and “They’ll see us!” The tremor of fear in her voice was only a little bit contrived. She snatched the pitchfork from its resting place and waved the very tip of it out into the street before pulling it back again. With any luck, they’d think it was Ember taking an ill-advised glance back at them.

She waited a few paces into the alley, eyes closed, trying to hear over the soft rumble of the torch in her hands and the destruction down the street. Footsteps. There they were—furtive and quick and coming her way. Yulla laughed with relief and thanked Mother Sun for letting her plan work.

Then she ran for real.

T
HE ELATION THAT
went with tricking the witch-women into following her swiftly dissipated. It was nearly impossible for Yulla to get lost in the twists and turns of these alleys; she’d been chasing her friends through them since she learned how to walk. Of course, the witch-women were by no means new to the hidden parts of Kaladim. Hard as it was for Yulla to imagine, they’d likely trod these paths as girls themselves.

She couldn’t really lose them, so it was all she could do to stay ahead and keep them believing Ember was with her as long as she could.

Any strategy she’d had quickly fell apart once the hunt began. The witch-women didn’t take long to split up, narrowing her choices to straightaways where they couldn’t get ahead of her and turns that led her farther away. She caught glimpses of them—one at the end of this alley, the swish of another’s skirt behind her around the last bend, the third gods only knew where.

The Wind howled out in the street. Every time Yulla thought she might try darting across one of the wider thoroughfares to a new set of alleys, its mad shrieking warned her back into her maze. More and more, that maze felt like a prison.

She began to be able to tell their shadowed shapes apart. One was taller even than Abba, and skeleton-thin. The second was pale-haired, and glided so calmly in her pursuit Yulla was sure the Wind must be carrying her along.

And then there was Vedra.

The smell of burnt cinnamon preceded her, and whenever Yulla turned aside, away from the scent, Vedra’s low chuckle taunted her. She seemed to always be the same distance away—just around that next corner, or just a second behind the last.

The torch burned merrily away, but it was getting harder to keep the witch-women from seeing it for what it was. They appeared in her path sooner and sooner, now, and she found herself taking the same turns, pelting along the same handful of alleys.

They’re boxing me in.

Abba had taught her how to play
takhteh
when she was ten. You moved your pieces from one side of the board to the other, while trying to block your opponent from letting
their
pieces do the same. Luck was a factor—the dice told you how many slots you could move—but Abba said there was strategy involved, too. “Always look a few moves ahead,” he’d say, when he landed on one of her unguarded pieces and made her move it to no-man’s-land in the middle of the board.

She looked ahead now, thinking of which twists and turns she had coming up and which Vedra and her sisters were likely to cut her off from. No way out; the witch-women would eventually stack up like Abba’s pieces, and Yulla was the lone chip. Only, they wouldn’t send her to no-man’s-land, where she could get back on the board once the way was clear.

They’d take her off the board completely.

Sparks fell on her knuckles, surprising her more than hurting. The flames’ quality at the head of the torch had changed—no longer the slow, steady tongues of flame, these seemed... hungry. Eager. Time was nearly up.

Up.

If luck was with her, maybe she didn’t have to be out of the game just yet.

One more turn, one last evasion (the pale-haired woman, her skirts so long she seemed to float), and Yulla was ready. She held the pitchfork like a javelin and
heaved.
It arced up smoothly, tracing a bright trail across the narrow space. At the apex of its flight, Ember’s influence broke and the hay wrapped within the blanket went up with a
fwoosh.

She didn’t stick around to watch its descent, or to make sure the witch-women followed the light. She hurried to the closest door and tried the knob.

Please please please.

It turned beneath her hand, and opened without even the tiniest squeal of a hinge. Inside, there was a hallway heading into the heart of the house, and a set of stairs leading up. She took them, sure to put her weight as far back on each step as she could to keep them from creaking, like the Brigand Queen in the stories.

Three flights up, then half a fourth, and she saw what she was looking for.
A little more luck. Just a little.
This one, too, was unlocked. Yulla stepped out onto the roof and said a prayer of thanks to Mother Sun.

Luck had been on her side, like a roll of doubles at the end of a close
takhteh
game.

And doubles meant you got to move again.

S
HE WASN’T AS
high up as she’d been on the tower, but Kaladim from above still took Yulla’s breath away. It was like her own secret world up here, a city like the one she knew, yet not. She could point to the main thoroughfares, and see the tops of some of the familiar landmarks, but the rooftops made their own set of twisting streets and alleys just like she’d hoped.

The witch-women hadn’t followed her. Worry tinged her relief: had this been
too
easy? Why hadn’t they cast spells at her and made her dance puppet-like back to them? They’d nearly had her. Had she truly lost them, or had they let her go intentionally?

She got down on her belly, crept to the edge of the roof, and peered over in time to see the three of them converge on where the pitchfork lay guttering.

Three, then two, then one. Yulla clapped her hand over her mouth as Vedra and the tall one walked up to the pale-haired witch and melted into her, their forms collapsing and settling atop hers like lengths of silk draped over her. Alone now, the pale-haired witch bent over the torch and pulled something from it, perhaps a length of straw or a small strip of cloth that had yet to catch. She touched it to the fire until it did—a single flame, independent of the rest.

It wavered a moment, and Yulla felt sick as she realized what the witch-woman was doing. She remembered the candle flames as the Darktimes started, how they bent toward the doors and left their wicks to join the Fire Children up above.

The pale-haired witch was waiting for this one to chase after Ember. It would lead her straight to him.

Their desperate plan, foiled by the smallest flame.

They hadn’t needed to cast spells at Yulla because they’d never really needed
her.

I should have held out longer. I should have waited until it went out, even if it meant they’d caught me.

Then the flame and the torch both went out,
fwump,
as if doused with a bucket of water.

The witch-woman shrieked in anger, her voice echoing along the alleys. Yulla couldn’t help but grin at her frustration.
You lose,
she thought.
You lose, you lose, you lose.

Her triumph choked off when the pale-haired witch raised her arms, the dagged arms of her dress like spreading wings. At first, Yulla thought the birds were flying out from beneath the cloth. But no, they were breaking off
from
it, taking chunks of the dress and, she realized, the pale-haired witch with them. Soon the woman was one great flock of starlings, their wingbeats drumming a mad tattoo along the darkened alleys.

Along, but not up.
She still thinks I’m somewhere below.

Yulla waited, straining her eyes until her head hurt, making sure she couldn’t see a single bird before she moved. She picked herself up carefully and backed away from the edge. It was an easy path from here to the outskirts of the city, but where before she’d thought she could run, now she knew she’d have to creep along mouse-quiet until she was far enough away.

And creep she did, over the rooftops of Kaladim. The buildings were so close together here that she could simply step across most of them, needing only to lift her knees a little higher to clear the edges. Sometimes she had to hop—quickly, quietly, her heart in her throat for fear of being spotted. Only once did she have to get a running start, over an alley much like the one where Ember had grown tall and thin to squeeze through the space. It was a jump that, on the ground, she’d have made without thinking. If she misjudged up here, the drop would leave her either broken or dead. She took a good look below first. No starlings, no witch-women, no Wind.

She backed up as much as she could, to the far edge of the roof she was on. There was no way to do it silently—even if she ran on the balls of her feet, she couldn’t control the noise of her landing.
I’ll have to move fast, then.
Be gone before they came looking, it was all she could—

From somewhere closer to the market came the unmistakable, ear-splitting screech of cats fighting. Like any city, Kaladim had its share of feral animals that couldn’t be ushered down into the cellars. They seemed to know enough to hide when the Fire Children came, according to Abba. Feral survival required a certain amount of cunning. Yulla had figured, like the birds she’d seen that morning, the cats and wild dogs must have been holed up somewhere, confused by the darkness.

Apparently now at least a couple had ventured out and decided to tangle.

Yulla wasted no time. Taking advantage of the commotion, she propelled herself across the roof and over to the next one, skidding to a stop in a spray of pebbles and grit. The cats carried on a while longer, well after she was several houses away.

When she came to the farthest house out, Yulla let herself in and snuck downstairs. As she passed through their kitchen, she tied Aunt Mouse’s quilt into a sack and filled it with fruit and bread and cheese. Ember hadn’t said his permission to partake of the offerings extended past Sera’s house, but she didn’t think he’d mind. It was easier, this time; it didn’t feel quite so blasphemous.

The family who lived here had also left a pitcher of water for the Fire Children. Yulla filled Abba’s canteen from it, then found a cup and poured. It was tepid and flat after being out for three days, but she barely noticed. It took three more refills before her thirst was slaked.

Then she gathered up her bundle, slipped out into the empty street, and passed beneath Kaladim’s southern gate. The desert opened out before her, the sands a flat grey in the late afternoon twilight. Ember must have stuck to the road at first, like she’d told him he should. She didn’t know how good the witch-women might be at tracking, but Yulla had spent plenty of days following footprints left behind by lizards and foxes and jackals and sand cats. She had to assume they knew how to do the same.

His feet hadn’t scorched the road, and any ashes that fell from the horse blankets had long since scattered. At first, when Yulla came upon the twisted acacia tree she’d given him as a landmark, she saw no tracks striking out across the dunes. Had he missed it? Had he been taken before he left the city after all? Had something caused him to keep going, or turn away sooner?

Then two things became apparent: in some places, the sand had melted and clumped together, not quite footprints, but evidence of something extremely hot passing by; and, masking those, the sweep marks made by dragging the edge of the horse blanket over the tracks. She looked at those lumps of glass and realized just how much he had to be cooling himself to be near her. The thought both thrilled and frightened her.

He’d done well hiding the tracks, really, enough to nearly fool Yulla. She had to hope that the witch-women would miss them if they came looking—Yulla herself had only spotted them because she knew this was where Ember should have left the road.

Aunt Mouse’s quilt was too heavily-laden for Yulla to cover her own tracks in the same way, but she found a fallen branch from the acacia tree that could serve the same purpose. Dragging it behind her, swishing it from side to side across the indents her steps left in the sands, Yulla left the road and followed Ember’s tracks.