Circle Opens #03: Cold Fire Read online

  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 wa
ter-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.

  For now, she saw no point in telling Jory that as an accredited mage, she knew more about magic than Anyussa. Instead Daja told the girl, “There’s another kind of mage, not as common as the ones who train with the Mages’ Society or at Lightsbridge. We see a lot of them at Winding Circle. They use magic that’s already in things, rather than adding magic to something. It’s called ambient magic. You can make it stronger, or bigger, or more accurate, with book studies, but you still draw on magic that’s already there. Everything has some magic in it.” She looked at Nia. “I suppose you like cooking too? Though I hardly ever see you in the kitchens.”

  Nia shook her head.

  Jory replied, “She won’t go near a hearth. She’s afraid of fire.”

  Nia glared at Jory. “You would be, too, if you had any sense,” she informed her twin.

  The house clock chimed the hour.

  Jory and Nia looked at each other. “Music lessons!” they yelped, and tumbled out the door.

  Daja uncovered her necklace and went back to work.

  After a couple of hours’ labor, Daja realized she was stiff. A walk might clear the cobwebs from her skull. Down the servants’ stair she went, bypassing the kitchen and its enticing smells, following the corridors that connected the buildings until she reached the slush room. Properly clothed, she wandered out into the waning afternoon and the alley. The rear gate to Moykep House was still open, the trampled and sooty ground around it frozen into ruts and holes. Daja looked in. A tall, rumpled figure in a heavy sheepskin coat wandered through the remains of the stable, kicking apart any large clumps of charred matter. Bennat Ladradun was checking for hidden blazes that might find something to burn if the wind picked up.

  Entering the courtyard, Daja threw her power out ahead of her, feeling for heat. “There’s nothing warm left,” she told him. “I just checked.”

  The big man smiled. “Another useful skill, Viymese Daja,” he said, using the Namornese word for a female mage. He walked carefully across the burned-out mess until he reached her. Places where the firefighters had used water were frozen, making the footing treacherous. As he spread his arms for balance, Daja saw a neatly wrapped bandage on his left hand.

  “You got scorched,” she said, pointing to it.

  He made a face. “Not too badly. There was a piece of wood in the way when I went to get those boys. I knocked it aside, but the blanket slipped and I hit it with my bare hand. The healer says when I take this off, day after tomorrow, I won’t even have a scar.” Changing the subject, he remarked, “I’m surprised you’re not studying with Godsforge. I don’t know if you’ve heard of him —” He slipped on the edge of the building.

  Daja instantly steadied him. “I have,” she said, releasing him as he got his footing. “I’m a smith, really — fire for its own sake doesn’t much interest me. All I know about fire comes from my magic. I know you studied with him.”

  Bennat shook his head. “We think we’re such a worldly city, but really, we’re just a collection of villages. Gossip flows quicker than air here. Did they tell you about my birthmarks?”

  Daja grinned up at him. “I don’t know how they missed that,” she replied. She had already discovered that most Kadasep Island residents knew her name and Frostpine’s, why they had come to Kugisko, and where they lived. “If you don’t mind my asking, why study with a fire-mage if you’ve no magic yourself?”

  “Because he knew how fires burn with different materials, and how to fight them,” the man replied. “Things even someone like me could learn. Things like when you’re in a burning building, touch a closed door first. If it’s hot, you won’t like what happens if you open it.”

  Daja raised her eyebrows in a silent question.

  He answered: “Opening the door, you give the fire inside a burst of air. It blasts out and cooks the person in the doorway.”

  Daja whistled softly. “I’ll remember that. And it makes sense. We use a bellows in the forge to pump air into the fire to make it burn hotter. What else did you learn?”

  “How to know if a fire was deliberately set,” he explained. “And wind patterns, the use of sand in winter …” He stared at the ruins, hands stuffed in his coat pockets. “One time there was a barn that had to be destroyed, so he set fire to it. Then he threw a shield over us, so we could stand in the middle of the barn and watch how the fire burned, along the floor, up the walls, into the loft. It was like a carpet of fire blossoms rippling over our heads.” He glanced at Daja. “I’m sorry. People tell me that I just rattle on.”

  “No, no, I’m interested!” Daja protested. “The only time I ever saw anything like that was during this forest fire. Even then, what I saw didn’t ripple or anything. I pulled it through me. All I saw
was streaks.” She realized what she must sound like, and hung her head. “I’m not boasting. It really did happen.”

  “Oh, I believe you,” said Bennat, his eyes blazing with excitement. “What I would give to see that!”

  Daja grinned at him. “At the time I wished I hadn’t, but it wasn’t like I had a choice. I would have died if my foster-brother and -sisters and Frostpine hadn’t helped with their magic. And I didn’t exactly come away unscathed.” She rubbed her thumb against the metal under her left glove. Yes, it was useful. Yes, she now made living metal creations that rich people bought at high prices. She had also seen revulsion on the faces of those who touched her hand and found warm metal, or those who saw her peeling the excess from her flesh. She’d also suffered infections when the metal caught on something and pulled away part of her skin. She shook off those memories. “Did you learn about forest fires from Godsforge?” she asked her companion.

  “Enough that I prefer city fires,” Bennat said with a grimace. “Or at least, I prefer city fires if I have trained people to fight them. Godsforge had us out in the woods digging firebreaks one time, and the fire jumped the break. Without him to protect us …” He shrugged. “He said that once a really big forest fire gets going, it can’t be stopped until it rains or it consumes all the forest it can get.”

  They were moving out through the Moykep gate, into the alley. “It’s true,” Daja said. “At least, Niko — Niklaren Goldeye, he was one of our teachers — he said that about lots of things, storms, forest fires, tidal waves. They reach a point of strength, and even the most powerful mages can’t stop them. The best you can do is shift them.”

  He’d come to a halt, and was staring at her. “You studied with Niklaren Goldeye?”

  It was Daja’s turn to shrug. “He’s the one who saw my magic, and taught us to control what we had. Mostly he was my sister Tris’s teacher, though.” She made a face. “They were well suited — always with their noses in books.”