Circle Opens #03: Cold Fire Page 9

  “Then it is done foolishly, without thought for the student’s good,” Morrachane said flatly. “What order is there when children are not guided by the advice of their parents? Family is sacred. To encourage young people to ignore the family’s needs —”

  “But we aren’t, Aunt Morrachane, really!” Jory laid a placating hand on the older woman’s arm. “It’s just this one thing, and Mama and Papa worked out the list of teachers. They have medallions and things that say they teach as well as work magic. And it’s so much fun to decide something for ourselves.”

  “There!” snapped Morrachane. “You see? Already it begins.”

  Daja’s knuckles were creaking, so tightly were her hands clenched in her coat pockets. The living metal bit into her flesh, squeezed by her working muscles. In the end, she did something she had always sworn she would never try. She could almost hear Dedicate Crane, the most snobbish mage at Winding Circle, talking as she spoke. “Forgive me, Ravvi Ladradun,” she said, gathering an invisible robe of arrogance around herself as she stood straighter, “but we speak of things magical, which may only be understood by adepts. Nia has discovered something within these walls which calls to the source of her power. It cannot be safely ignored. However incredible it seems to those without magic, it is a thing that any mage will know.” She turned to Serg, who was pretending not to eavesdrop. “Let us seek out a teacher for Ravvikki Jorality.” To Morrachane she added, “Will you excuse us? The moment power is revealed, a teacher must be found quickly, or tragedy may result.”

  Morrachane sighed. Her face was briefly wistful as she kissed Jory’s cheek. “Tell your sister I am sorry I did not get to say hello.”

  Jory kissed Morrachane’s cheek in return. “She’ll be sorry, too, Aunt Morrachane.”

  The older woman climbed out of the sleigh. Her nod to Daja was barely polite. “Good day to you.”

  Daja nodded, then climbed into the sleigh. In her normal voice she said, “Little Sugar Street, please, Serg.” As he set the horses forward, Daja looked back. A sleigh with the Ladradun insignia was drawing up before Morrachane.

  Jory, who had remained straight-faced through Daja’s speech, collapsed into giggles. “I’m sorry,” she said when she caught her breath, “but you should have heard yourself. What was that? Is it really so drastic to find us teachers?”

  “That was what Briar calls snooty mage jabber,” Daja replied with a rueful smile. After two months, the Bancanors were all familiar with Daja’s foster-family. “I shouldn’t have done it, really.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” Jory said. “Aunt Morrachane’s sweet to me and Nia, and to Eidart and Peigine when she sees them, but she isn’t very nice to other people.”

  “Is she really your aunt?” Daja asked. She couldn’t imagine the Bancanor family tree sprouting any fruit like Morrachane.

  “No,” Jory replied, flouncing to get comfortable. “But we call her that. I think she misses Ben’s children, so she adopted us. She likes it when we call her Aunt. She says it makes her feel like we’re really family.”

  And that is a good thing? Daja wondered as Serg wove the sleigh through crowded streets. I’d as soon be related to a shark. Sooner.

  Daja had planned to stop for midday at some point, but she had reckoned without the cook-mages they visited. Each offered Daja and Jory tea and refreshments; Namornese hospitality meant that Serg too was fed. By the time the sun dipped below the western roofs, they had visited all of the cooking-mages on Daja’s list. Jory had chosen none of them.

  “What about Inagru?” Daja asked. “Only has two other students, bakes for the governor’s castle, does the Goldsmith’s Guild suppers …”

  Jory shook her head.

  “Viymese Valerian,” Serg suggested wearily. “Nobles’ banquets only. Jars of summer vegetables with magic for strength, health, peace, love. I should eat at his table.”

  Jory shook her head.

  “We’ve met the best cook-mages in Kugisko,” Daja reminded her. “You saw this list. Your mother approved every name on it. I don’t —”

  “There’s one I didn’t mention,” Jory said without meeting Daja’s eyes. “Mother didn’t list her because she’s said not to take students. But we don’t know till we ask, right?”

  Daja labored against a feeling of ill-usage. Jory had arranged things so that by the time she mentioned this person, Daja would be too exhausted to object. Worse, her maneuver worked. Daja just wanted to see this mage and get it over with. “Who?” she demanded.

  “Olennika Potcracker,” Jory whispered. “In Blackfly Bog.”

  “I am doomed,” announced Serg, shoulders drooping. “Ravvot Kolborn will use my blood to strengthen his gold and make my skull into a chalice.”

  “Papa won’t put blood in gold,” said Jory. “It wouldn’t be good for it.”

  Don’t reason with him, Daja thought wearily to herself. You’ll just make the fit last longer.

  “Or I will be killed in Blackfly Bog by dangerous men for my clothes and the pretty horses,” Serg moaned.

  Daja sighed. “Blackfly Bog?” she asked Jory.

  “Not in Blackfly Bog,” Jory said, glaring at Serg. “On the river, across Kyrsty Bridge. Beside the Yorgiry Hospital. It’s patrolled by lawkeepers, Serg. It’s perfectly safe.”

  Serg straightened his shoulders and back. “If we die, I blame you,” he replied with dignity. He set the horses forward.

  Daja turned to Jory. “You could have mentioned this earlier,” she pointed out.

  “I thought maybe I’d want one of the others,” Jory mumbled.

  “Hmpf,” snorted Daja as the sleigh hissed through the few inches of snow on the streets. “In Oti Bookkeeper’s accounts it says that the thing you put off doing is the thing you pay for the most.”

  “Who is Oti Bookkeeper?” asked Serg over one shoulder.

  “The headwoman of the gods, just as Trader Koma is headman,” Daja explained. “At least, they are to my people. In the beyond, after you die, Trader weighs your life in his gold scales, and Bookkeeper writes down what you owe.”

  “I thought you followed the Living Circle, like Frostpine,” remarked Jory.

  Daja shook her head. “I pay alms to Mila of the Grain, goddess of the north, for using metal ores and wood, and to Hakkoi the Smith, god of the south, for the learning I get,” she explained, watching the sky go dark. She felt drowsy and peaceful with the arrival of night. “That’s good manners, to pay what you owe to your adopted family’s gods.”

  Lamplighters now roamed the streets, tending the lamps that the wealthy paid for so there was light at intersections. Indoor lamps cast a foggy glow through windows covered by horn or oiled paper, or scattered rays of light through expensive bull’s-eye glass panes.

  Serg guided the sleigh deftly. The lawkeepers were changing their watch, their white-painted sleighs dropping fresh keepers at their posts and picking up those who were done for the day. People rode in sleighs and on horseback, on their way to homes or entertainments. Once Serg had to move aside as a nobleman’s sleigh shot down the center of the street.

  “Tell me about this Potcracker,” suggested Daja as Serg waited for an intersection to clear. “You’ve mentioned her before.”

  Jory studied her gloved hands. “She was the Empress’s personal cook. They had others that she oversaw, but Potcracker fixed everything for the high table herself. No matter what people used, if someone tried to poison anything that she made? The food would turn green and it would roll to the one who sent the poison. Anybody the Empress sent Potcracker’s food to, enemies, nations she wanted to make alliances with, most times they’d do what she wanted.”

  She fell silent as they turned onto Cashbox Street, the route to Kyrsty Bridge. “I don’t believe the palace is in Blackfly Bog,” Daja said when it seemed as if Jory had forgotten her in her consideration of Potcracker’s achievements.

  “Oh! Oh, no — somebody pushed her into the Syth, so these nobles who meant to poison the Empress
could do it. The Syth, in Wolf Moon! Can you imagine? Except she lived.” Jory sighed with admiration. “She had a vision. She said the goddess Yorgiry came to her, and said there were more important things to do than cook veal with truffles and thyme for people too ignorant to like the taste.”

  “She did?” asked Daja, startled. She supposed that gods could do as they wished, but visiting their worshippers seemed very irregular.

  “She did!” insisted Jory. “Well, she does in that play, The Cook’s Vision. The Skuretty girls told me the story when they visited last. Anyway, Potcracker gave up being the Empress’s cook.”

  The sleigh glided into Kyrsty Bridge, which arched high over the river-canal they called North Upatka. Before them shone the sullen lights of a truly poor district. To their right lay the frozen section that in warmer months was called the Whirligig, where the Upatka River split to surround the islands and feed their canals. A small beacon tower stood on an island of rocks at the Whirligig’s heart, lighting the ice for skaters.

  To the southeast of the Whirligig was the river’s main stem, flowing past the governor’s palace on Dorn Point. On the heights of the river’s southern shore were the nobles’ estates. Their walls, built of pale marble, gave the place its mocking name: the Pearl Coast.

  As they drove off the bridge onto a road that followed the riverbank, Jory continued her story. “Potcracker got the Empress to give her a huge amount of money to set up hospital kitchens that also serve the poor, and the Empress made the nobles give her money, too. Potcracker built kitchens in five cities, but she mostly works … there.” Jory pointed.

  Above the wall that guarded the back of a four-story building ahead of them, lanterns blazed. The building’s shuttered windows were closed tight against the dark and cold. Piers jutted into the frozen river, where ships could unload cargo in summer. Sleighs now stood in a line that led through the gate closest to their road.

  Daja looked at the place and smiled. Runes for health and protection were written around each door and window she could see, glowing magically bright.

  “Yorgiry’s Hospital, and its cookhouse,” Jory said, bouncing with eagerness.

  Daja, about to tell her that slaving to feed the poor would not be as gloriously heroic as she seemed to think, changed her mind. A taste of the real world wouldn’t hurt Jory in the least.

  6

  Together Daja and Jory walked around a line of people carrying fresh loads of supplies into the hospital’s immense cookhouse. Once inside, a billow of mixed scents — fresh bread, steamed barley, stewing meat — enfolded the two girls. Daja could also see that Jory noticed the silver gleam of runes and protective spells against uncontrolled fire, rats, mice, and mold: they were inscribed on the ceiling, every set of doors, the walls, even the floor. Somewhere to their right Daja heard the regular thump of bread being kneaded. Closing her eyes, she thought she could be at Winding Circle’s great kitchen, where a cook-mage named Gorse ruled and no one came away hungry.

  Someone cursed in Namornese. Daja’s illusion evaporated. Gorse also never fixed millet and bacon soup, a Kugisko favorite with a distinctive smell. Even with those differences between kitchens, something edgy inside her relaxed. She was not a cook-mage, but she knew the feel of a kitchen-mage’s realm. This was a good place to be.

  “Don’t stand there steam-struck,” a sharp voice said. A bag of flour came at Daja’s chest; she caught it. “Take it to the cellar.”

  Daja looked into black, snapping eyes. They were set in an olive-skinned white face crowned with masses of carelessly pinned hair as soft and as shadowy as dark wool. The woman’s face was square-jawed and straight-mouthed, divided at the center by a strong nose. Under a full white apron she dressed like a respectable housekeeper in brown wool with a plain band collar. The sleeves were rolled away from forearms nearly as muscular as Daja’s own.

  “If you leave it on the floor down there I’ll put you in a soup!” the woman called as Daja followed the other laden workers through a door at the kitchen’s rear. “I could feed a whole ward on you!”

  Looking behind her as she descended the stairs, Daja saw that Jory had been pressed into service with a bag of onions. Serg, behind her, toted a bag of rice.

  He shrugged when he saw Daja. “They say, they tend horses and sleigh and nobody eats before supplies are brought down. I do not want sick people to starve.”

  They made three more trips to the cellar storeroom, the last with the burden of an entire dead pig, wrapped in canvas. Daja was ready to go home after that. Instead she found herself seated at a long table, a roll in one hand, thick stew in a bowl in front of her, a plate with parsnips in beef broth beside that. Someone passed her a cup of milk. She had believed she was stuffed on cook-mages’ treats, but this food smelled so good. And of course she ought to taste what they’d given her to be polite. By the time she had finished tasting, her bowl and plate were empty, her roll crumbs.

  “At least you know you need to eat with a body like yours,” said that sharp voice. Daja looked at its owner, who now sat across from her. “At court I saw girls with big frames, big muscles, eat like birds, faint, get sick, die. The Duke of Eileag’s youngest daughter starved herself to death. Don’t fight the body the gods send you, I told them, but did they listen?” The woman reached over and grasped Daja’s wrist, thrusting back her coat and shirt sleeves. “Good arms. Blacksmith arms.” She transferred her grip to Daja’s fingers. “Who are you, blacksmith? I am Olennika.”

  “Daja Kisubo,” she replied, returning the friendly squeeze of the fingers before the cook-mage released her. “From Emelan. I’m here with my teacher, Viynain Frostpine. This is Jorality Bancanor. He’s Serg.”

  “Bancanor?” Olennika raised straight black eyebrows. “You are a long way from Kadasep, Bancanor’s daughter.”

  Jory was so overwhelmed by awe for this great mage that she was speechless. The girl stared at Olennika, transfixed.

  “See that door?” Olennika flapped a hand toward a door set in the wall across from their table. “Bring to me an ounce of truffles, three saffron threads, a tablespoon of dill chopped coarse, a ginger root, a tablespoon of parsley, and a tablespoon of tarragon. There are trays and bowls there, and any tools you need.” She handed Jory a large, iron key. “Go,” she ordered.

  Jory went.

  Daja said, “We are looking for a teacher for her.” Somehow she knew that she didn’t have to tell this woman about Jory’s power.

  “There are plenty of cook-mages closer to Kadasep,” Olennika commented. She beckoned to a girl who carried a teapot and a tray of handleless cups.

  No glasses here, Daja thought with satisfaction as the girl served them. “I know. We’ve seen them today.” Daja held the filled cup under her nose and inhaled. Even the steam was refreshing. “Jory wanted to come here. She wasn’t sure you take students.”

  “Almost never,” Olennika said. “That is my personal workroom, where I have sent her. No labels. If she is serious, she will know the things I have requested. I do not think the master of the Goldsmiths’ Guild will let his daughter study in Blackfly Bog. We do fine cooking maybe four times a year, when the hospital feeds the rich to get money from them. The rest of the time we cook for the sick and the poor. Quantity, no fancy spices or elaborate creations. She ought to study with Valerian.”

  “Ravvikki Jory doesn’t want him,” Serg said gloomily.

  Olennika looked Daja over. “What is your interest, Kisubo?” she asked. “How is it a southern mage takes Bancanor’s daughter to see teachers?”

  “You know I’m a mage?” Daja asked. Then she winced at the folly of her question. Olennika had already shown that she recognized Jory’s power.

  Olennika smiled one-sidedly. “I have a nose, girl,” she replied. “The ravvikki is a spearmint plant, crushed in the hand. You — you are a bed of it, half an acre at least, rolled on by a herd of horses. Why are you here?”

  Daja explained. By the time she finished, Jory had returned with a tra
y full of tiny dishes and plates. Each had something in them. She set the tray down, wiped her hands on her skirts, grimaced, and brushed the places where she’d wiped her hands.

  “Don’t fidget,” Olennika ordered, poking a finger through the contents of the dishes. Jory froze.

  “Put everything back as you found it.” As Jory left, Olennika faced Daja. “I suppose she is not to be all day with one teacher. I suppose she studies music, and dancing, and books.”

  Daja nodded. She was impressed by Olennika’s brisk handling of Jory. It would be good for the girl to study here. The soft-spoken Inagru hadn’t seemed up to Jory’s bouts of enthusiasm. “She can stay as long as you wish for a week,” Daja explained. “But then it’s mornings. As she advances, I think her family can be persuaded to let her stay longer. They’re sensible people.”

  “If you say so.” Olennika got to her feet. “Time to start cooking for the morning,” she said. She looked tired. When Jory returned Olennika told her, “We will have a trial. Come tomorrow ready to work.”

  Jory squeaked and flung her arms around Olennika’s neck. She gulped, released the woman, then spun giddily for a moment. Taking a deep breath to get herself under control, she ran to fetch their coats.

  Olennika watched her. “She will be my student in a week, or she will be happy to study with Inagru or Valerian,” she said with a firm nod. “We shall see.” She turned to Daja and smiled ruefully. “There is one thing,” she began.

  Someone dropped several pots on the floor. Everyone flinched at the clatter.

  Daja’s heart sank, but she could see the problem. “Meditation?” she asked.