Cold Fire Read online

  It was her own fault. She had given in to pride. Because she was successful with this stuff, she had thought that she could just wave a hand and get what she wanted with little planning and effort. Had she ever made anything purely of liquid metal? She hadn’t. All of her other pieces had included hard metal like iron, brass, and bronze. Her false hands, arms, and legs were liquid metal fixed to iron skeletons.

  “As well expect quicksilver to walk on its own,” she muttered. Over and over people had warned Tris about pride, but Frostpine had never cautioned Daja against it. Why not?

  Instead of spending her day in glory, finishing off her achievement, she began the tedious labor of replacing each lump that represented a joint with tiny oiled hinges, using her power under tight control to remove the lump and to solder each hinge into place where the lump had been. Her only breaks had come at midday, for lunch and a swift skating practice, then meditation with Nia when the girl returned home. She’d pretended to be her normal, centered self at meditation: had Nia gotten so much as a whiff of Daja’s self-disgust, she would have thought she caused it, not Daja’s own folly. Daja briefly considered telling the younger girl her mistake, but decided against it. She was vain enough to feel that she didn’t want one of her first students to think she was human enough to make a botch of something.

  She felt shriveled and grumpy at supper, poking Anyussa’s good cooking with an indifferent fork. Nia, too, was silent, listening to her parents talk. Jory was still at Potcracker’s. Frostpine joined them, though he added little to the conversation. He looked exhausted. Daja looked at him with a growing sense of betrayal.

  “Why didn’t you warn me about overconfidence?” she finally demanded, silencing Kol’s and Matazi’s conversation about a change in gold prices. “You never lectured me about pride like Niko and Lark always lecture Tris.” She realized she had forgotten her decision not to let Nia realize she was human, but resentment overpowered her. “Why not? You let me walk into a mess, you know. I wasted hard work and I feel like a grub, and it’s your fault.”

  “I’m not the only one who knows how to make a sentence last,” Nia murmured.

  Daja gave her student an I’ll-get-you-later glare and turned back to Frostpine. “Well?” she asked again.

  Frostpine leaned his head on his arm. “I thought you’d find out for yourself,” he informed Daja. “Learning sticks when you get it the hard way.” He yawned. “When I’ve finished my current task, you must tell me what happened. You’ve worked so smoothly I’d begun to think I’d have to mention pride to you after all. Just to be sure I’d taught you properly, you see.”

  Matazi tapped Frostpine’s plate with her fork, making the delicate porcelain ring. “You. Bed. Now,” she ordered. “You’re tired and addled.”

  “Yes.” Frostpine left, waving an idle goodbye over his shoulder. He did not go to the front stairs and the guest rooms, but back to the kitchen.

  “He’s the most annoying man,” Daja announced, still vexed. “Why does he get to be right?”

  “He’s always been that way,” Kol assured her.

  “When he told me I’d be happier with Kol than him, I tried to punch him in the nose,” Matazi added, startling a gasp of surprise from Nia.

  “Worse, he was right.” Kol smiled into his wife’s eyes.

  Matazi blew him a kiss. “Much worse,” she agreed.

  Nia rolled her eyes at Daja.

  “If he gets too smug, tell him a truly perfect person wouldn’t get seasick,” Kol said without looking away from his wife.

  “That’s right, he does,” admitted Daja, feeling better. “I forgot.” Her appetite returned, and she began to eat.

  9

  When Ben’s father had been alive, the Ladradun family worshipped on the first Watersday of the moon at the temple of Vrohain the Judge, the god who had cut off his left hand so he could never dilute the justice he dispersed with his right. On the second Watersday they attended the temple of Qunoc, mother of the earth and its seed; on the third, they paid their respects to Baion, the cold, white god of killing ice. On the fourth moon they worshipped Eilig, goddess of spring and freedom. After his father’s death, Ben and his family still worshipped all four gods each month. It was Morrachane who went less and less to the other temples. When Ben returned from Godsforge’s school, he took his mother to worship Vrohain each Watersday, rather than fight with her. He also made frequent offerings at the temple of Sythuthan, the trickster who ruled the immense lake.

  The day after Daja’s first attempt with the gloves failed, the Ladraduns attended Vrohain’s worship. As they left Morrachane was elsewhere, her copy of The Book of Judgment clutched to her chest, her pale-green eyes fixed on some vision of justice and punishment. She looked exalted. The oddest thought wriggled through Ben’s mind: did he look like her when he watched a fire?

  He snorted. He had nothing in common with her. She would be the first to say so; in fact, she’d been telling the world as much for years.

  He did not share her exaltation. Instead he reviewed his plans. Tonight’s test of his firefighters had to go without a hitch. For that to happen, he needed to get rid of his mother and go to work.

  Just the thought of escaping her, even for a day, sent guilt to nip him. He and his brothers had promised their dying father that they would take care of Morrachane. Only Ben had kept his word, though it got harder and harder. Sometimes he thought the best way to do it would be to put her out of her misery. That was a monstrous thought — he knew it was monstrous. Yet he thought it all the same.

  Watching the crowd, he saw the white or silver-trimmed hats and long coats of the magistrate’s lawkeepers. Of course they worshipped Vrohain, both here and at the shrines in the district stations. A glint of gold mixed with silver caught his eye: the mages who served the lawkeepers were here too. Many lawkeepers and mages nodded to him: Ben was well known to the magistrates’ people. He’d trained most in Godsforge’s methods of fighting fires and protecting the crowds who came to watch them.

  He had not told them that the boardinghouse fire was deliberately set. Just as Ben set fires to test his brigades, he thought of them also as a test of Kugisko’s magistrates’ mages. They had to be vigilant. They thought the penalty of burning alive was enough to stop anyone from committing arson; it made them lazy. Once people discovered fires were set without the mages’ discovering it, their office would have to improve their methods of investigation.

  Sooner or later, he knew, someone would realize that his test fires had been set. Sythuthan played tricks on everyone; sooner or later blind accident would make the authorities suspicious. When that happened, Ben would move on, happily, to another city and another set of lessons.

  “Don’t jam your hands into your pockets,” snapped his mother, breaking into his thoughts. “You’ll ruin the line of that coat. Do you want us to freeze to death? Let’s go!”

  Ben fell in beside her, plans tumbling through his head as he rearranged and resorted them.

  At home they sat down to midday in the kitchen, where the heat from the stove warmed them. Ben laid the place settings and poured tea for his mother and himself. Morrachane served a four-cornered meat pie with braised cabbage and mushrooms. There were no servants in the house; Morrachane refused to pay the extra coin that any servant expected when asked to give up his Watersday. Instead she cooked like a common householder.

  They ate in silence. Ben knew better than to draw Morrachane’s attention when her mind was fixed on Vrohain. Afterward, she retired to read her Book of Judgment and nap. He cleared and washed the dishes, then left the house. The business was closed. He would be able to finish his preparations uninterrupted.

  His workroom was in a corner of the main warehouse garret, secured with two locks and hidden behind empty crates. Inside he lit the stove, then took out his fire-setting device.

  He loved working on it. Modeled on a fire-starter designed by Godsforge, it was an intricate layering of materials that would smolder inside for
hours before the surface burned and set its surroundings ablaze. Godsforge had drummed it into his students that fires were unexpected; they should always be prepared. To enforce the lesson, he’d arranged with the locals to use his devices to set fires at all hours, calling his students out to fight them. Ben knew he was simply continuing the great man’s work.

  Working on his present device, Ben longed for the pure study at Godsforge’s school. He had recovered from his family’s deaths there and even found contentment, only to have it shattered on his return. He was in his mother’s house again, for one. For another, he wearied of battles with councils for funds and space to train firefighters, and battles with the men and women who were ordered by their masters to learn from him. It had been worse that summer: the more time between large fires, the harder it was to get the councils’ attention. They were as bad as children, longing to play without thought for the future. All he wanted to do was help; all the rest of the world did was fight him. If it wasn’t some fur-robed guildsman complaining over the loss of his servants’ time, it was his mother squalling about hours taken from the business. Only when he worked on his tests did he feel better. With those he found a way to control his life: the boardinghouse fire had been his second, his own warehouse the first.

  Now he put the final touches on the most complex device he’d made. It was worth all his trouble. He must be nowhere near his target when it began to burn, or suspicion might fall on him. By the time the fire broke out of his creation, he would have been home for hours. The fire would destroy all traces of the device, baffling mages and their tracking spells. He had learned that at Godsforge’s, too.

  Though Watersday was a rest day, the mages in Bancanor House had things to do. After she dressed, Daja went to her lesson with Jory, trading staff blocks and strikes with her, making sure the girl had no time to think, only move. As they practiced, Daja thought that Jory might be working on her own. She was faster, more accurate, her hands and stance surer. Keeping a level head was more of a struggle, but there too she had improved. As they left the classroom, Daja knew that by focusing on movement and not allowing herself to get excited, Jory had already begun to drag her magic inside her skin. The visible flares in the girl’s power had begun to flatten and spread over her to coat her skin. It was nearly time to start Jory on the next step as Dedicate Skyfire taught it: the state of waiting for everything and nothing. That would be when their real work began.

  At breakfast they found that Frostpine was gone, still chasing his counterfeiter. The capture of those who planned to destroy Namorn’s economy was far more important than Watersday rest. The sick needed food, Watersday or not, but Carnoc Oakborn closed his shop. Jory left for Blackfly Bog while Nia and her parents went to the temple of the goddess Qunoc. The Bancanor servants who had the day off were gone. Only a handful rattled around the big house as Daja went back upstairs to her room.

  First she prayed to Trader and Bookkeeper, then to the spirits of her family, lighting incense so they would know she still remembered them. Among Traders, to be forgotten was the one final death: memory lasted when the flesh was gone. Daja would make sure that her children, if she had any, would say the prayers for each member of Fifth Ship Kisubo.

  She worked on tiny hinges through midday as the tray of food brought by a maid went cold. Finally she stopped: her last hinge was gone. She would have to go back to Teraud’s for a day or two, and trade work for iron forge time. It was time to rest: her back and neck were one solid ache. Her eyes twitched madly when she closed them, a sign that she had been doing too much close work. Time to practice skating.

  Daja put on layers of clothes. She didn’t try to warm herself: they were good clothes, and after two days of the sharp control and release of her magic, her head spun. She needed to rest her power.

  She took the servants’ stair down the back of the main house. She could smell supper, all dishes that could be set in covered pots and left to cook through the day. The servants’ area was forlorn without the constant clatter, arguments, thumps, and scrapes of a large household. That was Watersday: upperclass servants had almost a full day to visit and to shop, while the handful that stayed received an extra silver argib and another weekday off to balance the scales.

  Hearing the soft murmur of voices in the kitchen, Daja stopped to look in. Nia and Morrachane Ladradun sat at a worktable, glasses of tea and a plate of cakes before them, looking through a book that appeared to be sheets of cloth backed in parchment.

  “Oh, I like that one,” Nia said, pointing. “Look, you can see vines in it.”

  “That’s called Maiden Blessing,” Morrachane replied softly. She stroked Nia’s hair gently with one knobby hand. “I taught Kofrinna how to make it. She wore an entire veil of that when she married Ben. She was such an adorable girl. I miss her and the children every day.”

  Daja tried to move on: it was not comfortable to watch Morrachane in a tender mode. Nia saw her at just that moment. “Daja, come see these lace patterns,” she called. “Aunt Morrachane brought them for Jory and me. They’re so pretty, and some of them are really old.”

  Daja couldn’t refuse without seeming churlish. She glued a smile onto her mouth and sat on the bench opposite Nia and Morrachane. “Ravvi Ladradun,” she said with a polite nod.

  “Daja,” replied Morrachane. “Have you been at some work of magic?”

  “Tinkering,” Daja said, not wanting to discuss her labors with this woman. Once she had made the mistake of biting a sheet of gold foil. Morrachane had the same effect on her. “Is this the lace pattern book you told me about?”

  “This one’s Maiden Blessing,” Nia said, turning the book so Daja could see that the cloth pages anchored samples of lacework, while faded writing on the paper pages described how to make the particular pattern. “This one’s Herb Garden, and here’s the King’s Treasure.”

  To Daja they looked similar, but she nodded gravely, as if she understood the niceties. Sandry would have been able to identify each piece separately, she knew. “The book seems old,” she commented as Nia turned other pages.

  “It was in my husband’s family for ten generations,” Morrachane said with pride. “Our families come from the old empire, the western side. Books of lace patterns are passed from the bride of each son to the brides of their oldest sons. This was to go to Kofrinna, until the tragedy.” She stroked a piece of lace with fingers that trembled. “I’ll have to ship it to one of the other boys’ wives before I die. It is hard to think of it going to someone I do not even know.”

  “Please don’t be sad, Aunt Morrachane,” begged Nia. “Why don’t you visit your sons this summer? You could meet your grandchildren.”

  Morrachane shook her head. “I could not leave the business for so long.”

  “But Ben’s here,” Nia pointed out. “And even if you don’t visit them, he can still marry again. He’s not that old.”

  Morrachane smiled and cupped Nia’s cheek in one hand. “You are a good girl, Niamara Bancanor, and you know your family duty. Vrohain knows I have presented that son of mine with perfectly eligible females, but will he do as he ought?” She folded her lips, her pale-green eyes flashing. “I don’t understand how I could have failed with him, but I did.”

  Daja clenched her hands under the table. She was determined not to say that it was hardly a surprise if Ben didn’t follow his mother’s wishes, not when Morrachane had yet to speak well of him. “I imagine he’ll remarry when he gets to it,” she said when she got her temper under control. “He seems rather busy keeping the city from burning up.”

  “That is his excuse,” Morrachane said. “He has a gift for making others think well of him. The truth is that he would rather idle with the city’s riffraff than serve his family.” She looked at Nia, who read the old-style writing on one page, her lips moving silently. Her face, as hard as iron when she discussed her son, relaxed. “Would you like me to have copies of this made for you and Jory?” she asked Nia. “It’s no trouble, and I’d lik
e you to have them. Though chances are your hands will be so rough from hammering and sawing that you won’t be able to make lace!”

  Nia smiled; Daja bristled at the hint of criticism. “I’ll just do like Mama does, to keep her work neat,” Nia assured the old woman. “I’ll make a pair of thin linen gloves.”

  “Now there’s an idea,” Morrachane said with approval. “Your mother does have lovely hands.”

  “She puts lotion on them and wears the gloves to keep the lotion on her skin longer,” explained Nia. “I’ve been thinking about trying that anyway. And then I could make lace without damaging the threads.”

  “So clever!” Morrachane said with approval. She hugged Nia gently around the shoulders. “I’m glad to see that banging away with rough tools hasn’t made you forget womanly interests.”

  “Oh, look at this one!” Nia said, her eyes wide. “Aunt Morrachane, what is this?” She traced a pattern in old lace, her finger not quite touching it.

  So her rough mage’s fingers didn’t touch Morrachane’s precious legacy, thought Daja, cross.

  “Well, those are flames or waves, depending on how you look at them,” Morrachane answered Nia. “My mother-in-law thought they were supposed to show both sides of womanhood, passion and the ability to flow around obstacles.”

  Daja had heard enough — did the woman do anything but carp? She got to her feet. “I hope you’ll forgive me,” she told Morrachane. “There isn’t much light, and I need to practice my skating.”

  Morrachane nodded. Her pale-green eyes did not move from Nia’s face.

  “Remember, slow is better,” Nia said absently, turning another page.

  Daja grinned despite her anger with Morrachane. “I have three friends who would tell you I have slowness down to an art,” she assured Nia and left the kitchen.

  In the slush room she donned coat, scarves, gloves, and even a wool cap so she wouldn’t be tempted to use her magic to warm herself. Picking up her skates, she went down to the basin.