Chapter 1, p.16
Chapter 1, page 16
Daja simply reached into her tunic jacket and drew out her medallion. She held it up so Eoban would clearly see that she wore the insignia of an accredited mage.
As a student, he possessed no such insignia.
"I have things to do just now," she said quietly, "or I would teach you manners. But I'm busy. You'll have to wait. Touch me again, I won't make you wait long." When she saw him gulp, she turned her back on him and looked at Arnen. "We were talking about Nia."
His eyes flicked to her medallion. Daja had shown it to Camoc, not to him, though she thought Camoc would have mentioned it to him. Arnen met Daja's eyes again. "We started on basic tools today, fixing them and putting edges on the cutting ones," he told her. "She knows a lot for a girl of her background – she says the carpenters who worked around Bancanor House explained things to her." He smiled, a glint of warmth in his eyes. "She doesn't complain as much as I did over tools. I mean to start her on basic runes next week. She works hard. She really wants to learn, and I can see she's picking up the meditation skills she needs."
Daja folded her arms over her chest, inspecting Arnen – really inspecting him – for the first time. There was someone here she hadn't seen when Camoc had introduced them. She had noted the young man's artistry, but did not think about what kind of person he was. She'd believed he was like most top mage-students, always running behind the master, with no minds of their own. Now she wondered if she had misjudged those students too. "Will you mind if I check on her now and then?" she asked.
"Master Camoc takes his midday at home and works on papers there for two or three hours," Arnen said. "The shop's at its quietest then."
Daja smiled. Her opinion of Arnen rose another notch. He'd realized her misgivings were with Camoc. "I'll keep that in mind," she promised.
An hour later, Daja saw that Frostpine was struggling to hide yawns. She sent a runner for the sleigh Kol and Matazi had ordered them to take. Their driver was in the kitchens, eating and drinking with other servants who drove those mages who could afford them.
Together she and their driver bundled Frostpine in fur throws and blankets, with hot bricks under his feet, before the driver set the horses forward. Frostpine immediately disappeared under the rug. Daja reached into the earth for warmth, as far as she could, but North Fortress Island was at the Syth's edge. Its icy water made a powerful extra barrier to the heat under the islands. Daja could punch through the water in the canals and even the Upatka River, but here the Syth's size and natural magic was much stronger than she was.
At least the snow had stopped for the moment. Three fresh inches lay on the road that led across North Fortress Island. It hissed under the runners and muffled the horses' hooves.
Daja worked a hand through Frostpine's cocoon until she found his arm. Through their magic she said, I don't see why they built the Mage Society Hall all the way at the western tip of North Fortress.
Kugiskan mages were infamous for experiments once, Frostpine replied. The idea was to get them as far from the city as possible without actually throwing them out.
Maybe these northerners are smarter than I thought, Daja said. She could feel his body shake with laughter through his cocoon.
The wind picked up sharply as the sleigh raced across Schoolman Bridge onto Odaga Island. Most of the artisans and servant families who served the wealthy of Kadasep and Alakut Islands lived here. Their wooden houses were dark, shuttered against the snow and the wind off the Syth. Only the brass-backed lanterns on Mage Road were lit. No one stayed up late on Odaga, not when they rose at servants' dawn, the cold gray hour before sunrise.
Daja saw pinpricks of light on Kadasep Island, across an intersection of canals from Odaga. More winked along the rocky cliff that was the north point of Alakut Island. A bigger light bloomed next to them, one that grew even brighter as the sleigh approached Bolle Bridge.
Daja yanked at Frostpine's wrappings. His head shot up out of his cocoon like an irate turtle from its shell. "Girl, what are you doing to me? We aren't there yet…."
His eyes followed Daja's pointing finger to the fire on Alakut Island. It blazed from a house at the peak of the cliff.
Frostpine lunged forward and tapped their driver's shoulder. "Look!"
The man turned his eyes from his horses to Alakut. "Sythuthan!" he cursed. "That's Olaksan Jossaryk's house!"
Daja and Frostpine gauged the fire. Neither of them spoke for a moment. Then Frostpine told the driver, "You'd better take us there. We might be able to help."
The man glanced back, as if he had a mind to argue. If he did, he changed it, and turned the horses not down the road to Pozkit Bridge, but onto a steeper one that climbed the heights of Alakut. Daja stared at the blaze as they approached it, a strange, idiot thought repeating itself over and over: real or set? real or set? as if a fire deliberately started were any less deadly than those with natural causes.
Frostpine scrambled free of his blankets; Daja grabbed his wrist and threaded warmth through his veins until they were three houses downhill of the blaze. There the driver halted the sleigh.
"This is as close as I can get," he said, apologetic. Other sleighs blocked the street; a crowd had formed ahead. "I have to stay with the horses," he added, even more apologetic.
"You should go back – " Frostpine began as he clambered out of the sleigh.
"The master and the mistress would kill me," the driver said, his voice flat. "Take some of them lap robes. They'll be needed."
Frostpine and Daja each grabbed an armful of quilts and fur rugs, then headed up the street. People stood in the road watching, coats thrown on over nightclothes, belongings thrust into pillow slips, sheets turned into bundles. Servants ranged around the houses on either side of the Jossaryk home and on the opposite side of the street, watching for deadly, floating embers ushered along by the bitter wind. Others formed rough lines to sand piles in kitchen courtyards, passing full buckets to those who fought the blaze. Sand was safer: it didn't freeze to slippery ice. People helped others – wrapped in sheets or blankets, sobbing, soot-marked – through the tangle of sleighs and gawkers into houses farther down the road.
Onlookers moved away from Frostpine's scarlet habit, hardly noticing Daja in his wake. Once the pair entered the main courtyard of the sprawling Jossaryk House – it was nearly a palace – they stopped, panting, and measured what they saw.
The parts of the house that wrapped around the outer edges of the courtyard were one-story extensions. They led to two-story sections that attached to the three-story main house. These extensions would include servants' quarters, storerooms, coops, stables, dairy, and all the other workaday parts that supported the elegant building. They were not yet on fire. Behind those additions the ornately carved and painted main house was half in flames. The hard wind off the Syth struck the rock cliff on which it sat and raced upward, picking up speed and strength until it blasted over the cliff's edge against the face of the house. The fire that burned along the roof's peak stretched toward courtyard and street, thrust almost horizontal by the wind. There would be no saving the house, only the people.
Firefighters stood on the wall around the place with buckets, ready to shout an alarm if they saw clumps of fire blown toward other homes. Men and women hidden under sodden blankets streamed in and out of the extensions, returning with those who were still inside.
"Get the gawkers out of here!" Daja heard a clear voice order over the roar of wind and fire. "Take the victims inside – they'll freeze in this wind. Tell the neighbors to open their homes – if they balk, come to me!"
Ben stood in the courtyard in the gap between the extensions. The wind whipped the curls that escaped his fur hat; his coat was half-buttoned; one pant-leg hung outside his boot. He directed those who left the buildings with people in their arms. For a moment Daja wondered how he'd known to come, before she realized he probably saw the fire from his house.
Frostpine and Daja went to Ben. "Where can we help?" asked Frostpine. "Tell us what's left to be done."
Ben looked them over. For a moment Daja thought he was angry, or perhaps just vexed. She wondered why, trying to put herself in his shoes. He must be thinking about how to put the most people to the best use. Frostpine and Daja were just two more elements to worry about.
"Do you firewalk like her?" Ben demanded.
Frostpine nodded.
"There's a servants' dormitory on the second floor of this extension," Ben raised his voice over the roar of the flames, "near the main body of the house." He pointed to the upper story of the longest extension, the one to Daja's left. "We're still trying to get them out, but people are afraid to get too close."
"Can't blame them for that," Frostpine shouted. The wind tossed his hair and beard wildly, turning him into some dark, mysterious figure, more a wind spirit than a man.
Daja heard screams inside the roar of fire; her belly clenched. People were dying. She and Frostpine handed their dry throws and quilts to someone, then snatched up water-soaked blankets from a heap on the ground. Ben gave them wet cloth masks from a bucket. Frostpine hesitated, then shrugged. He and Daja suffered less from smoke than most, but they weren't immune. He let Ben tie the mask over his nose and mouth; a woman performed the same service for Daja. Then Frostpine ran through the smoking door with his load of dripping blankets.
Ben looked at Daja. He shouted, "The nursery. We haven't brought any children out." He pointed to a second-story window where the other extension met the main house. A woman in a white nightdress leaned over the ledge, a child in her arms. Their mouths were dark Os in their faces; they were screaming. A handful of firefighters maneuvered under the window with an outstretched blanket, yelling for her to jump. The woman tossed the child down instead, then disappeared from the window.
Ben grabbed a huge axe and ran down the courtyard between the extensions, Daja behind him with her load of soaked wraps. He swerved around the firefighters as they tipped the wailing child off the blanket and approached a door on the ground floor near the nursery. First Ben put his palm against it, making sure no fire waited behind the door to burn anyone who opened it. He then tried the latch: the door was locked. Swinging the axe, Ben chopped until the door fell apart, releasing a billow of smoke.
"Try to come back alive!" he shouted over the roar of wind and fire.
Daja grinned at him and ran into the building, stretching her senses out. Her power was of more use than her eyes; she could see, barely, but the smoke made her eyes stream with tears.
The fire was still deep inside the main house, greedily devouring cheap pine and costly teak columns alike. She heard metal scream as it lost the shapes it had held for years. She had some time, but not much, before the blaze reached this extension.
To her right was a stair: someone lay crumpled on it. Daja hesitated, then dumped her blankets, grabbed the victim – a boy – and dragged him to the open door, tossing him outside. Ben was still there: he gathered the boy up with a nod to Daja. She went back inside with relief. Ben had him. Now the boy had a chance to live.
She raced to the stair, grabbed her blankets, and climbed to the next floor, wondering how all this had started. Not in the kitchen, or the back part of the house would burn first. Not in the extensions. In the front of the house, perhaps? A branch of candles knocked over, a hearth fire that popped burning embers onto a silk rug? They might never know.
Perhaps it was set, whispered a thought. Daja shook her head. Who would be cruel enough to stage such a disaster?
She heard screams as she lunged into a hallway from the stair. Running toward them, she searched for doors on either side of the smoky corridor. Here was the source of the screams, a door on her left.
She felt the press of the oncoming fire; its power flooded her veins. At the end of the hall she saw wisps of smoke curl through a closed pair of double doors that must lead to the rest of the house. How long did she have before the doors blew off their hinges?
No time to think of that. Daja checked the nursery door for heat as Ben had, then thrust it open. Women in nursemaid clothes or nightdresses spun to face her, all but one. She stood at the window across the room, gripping a child by the nightshirt with each hand. She stopped, changed her hold to grab one shrieking youngster by the waist, and hoisted the captive to the open window. A quick shove and he was falling out. The woman seized the next child.
Daja counted heads. There were more than a dozen people here, five servants, the rest children. She thrust blankets at the three nearest women. "Carry one pig-aback, have the other walk right behind you!" she shouted, grabbing a small child and lifting it onto one maid's back. The woman stared. The child – a boy, Daja thought – wrapped arms and legs around her. Taking an older child, Daja thrust her against the maid's legs and made her grab the woman's nightdress. Then Daja took the wet blanket she'd handed the maid and draped it over her and the children like a cloak, wrapping one of the woman's hands around the blanket's edges so it wouldn't fall off. She put another edge in the woman's free hand and tugged until the servant held a wet fold over her own nose and mouth.
Daja looked at the other women, they copied what she had done as Daja helped. Seeing the children might slide off, she yanked sheets from the cots strewn around the room and used them to tie each child to a woman's back.
There were two more adults, but she was out of blankets. Looking around frantically, Daja saw water pitchers beside two beds. She dumped them on several covers, giving one to a servant woman and wrapping two small boys in another.
"The babies!" cried the woman at the window. "They sleep together and I can't drop them!" She pointed to a small side chamber near her.
Daja shoved the first woman that she had wrapped in blankets at the door. "Go!" she ordered, pointing. "Get them out of here!"
She grabbed a third pitcher of water, dumped it onto a tumble of sheets, and carried the wet linens to the nursery door. She could feel the blaze in the main house advance. She had to slow it down. Freezing for a moment, Daja closed her eyes and threw up the biggest shield she had ever created in her life, a solid barrier the width of the nursery, stretching from the ground floor to the roof overhead, to prevent the fire from going under or jumping over her floor. She placed her shield ten yards into the main house and made it as hard as she could, knowing her real fight would come when the fire reached it.
The cool-headed servant was already in the babies' nursery, bundling up three infants there. Daja followed her inside. "Why so many children here? So many babies?" she shouted as she folded a sheet into a sling.
"Two of us are nursing our own – we've permission to keep them with the Ravvi's newest," the woman yelled over the roar of the burning house. She was streaked with soot: working in the open window, she had been in the path of any smoke that entered the room and passed outside. She coughed for a moment desperately, gasping for air as she clutched a small gilt figure of Yorgiry that hung on a ribbon around her throat. "And Ravvikki Lisyl had her tenth name-day, with her friends to stay the night."
Using sheet slings, Daja hung one baby off each of the young woman's shoulders. The fire approached her barrier. Once it touched her defenses, Daja's war would begin. She would have to hold it in place or no one would get out alive. If it reached the nursery, the open windows and the corridor leading to the door outside would act as chimneys, pulling fire and smoke down the only exit.
She draped the young woman in wet sheets. "Cover your nose and mouth; keep the babies covered," she ordered, picking up the last child. They went into the main nursery. The women Daja had ordered to get out still waited by the door, too frightened to move.
There was no time to waste breath on curses. Daja gripped her companion's arm. "You're the only one with sense. Lead them out of here – down the hall to the first stair, and outside. Hurry them. Go!"
"But you – " The woman reached for Daja. "You must lead!"
Daja shook her head. "I've got to hold the fire. Get them moving!"
She shoved the woman toward the rest. The servant hesitated, then ran to her fellows, yelling. When they balked she thrust them and the children around them through the open door, harrying them like an overworked sheepdog.
Daja slung the infant she carried on her back, draped a final wet sheet over her as a cloak, then stood at the center of the main nursery as the others left. She faced the wall between her and the main house, listening to her power. The topmost part of it was weak. There wasn't enough to keep the third floor blaze from its hungry advance. She retracted her power there before the fire ate it. A moment after she did so, she heard the third floor shutters overhead smash open under the fire's pressure. Now the roof on that part of the building would burn. On the other side of the wall before her the huge blaze pressed her barrier, leaning on her. She felt her power forced back, inch by inch, until the wall started to smoke. Tiny gray threads worked through cracks in the plaster.
She had kept back some of her strength in case she needed it. That time was now. Daja fell deep into her power and freed it of all boundaries. She dragged her shield to her side of the wall and filled it with everything she had, on that floor and the ground floor. If she held the blaze on the other side of her barrier, the women and children had a chance to reach the outside door below.
Some would die. The air was very hot: water-soaked blankets and sheets would dry fast. As protection against suffocation they were half-measures at best. All she could do was pray to the Bookkeeper that their accounts weren't due. Her task was to pit her strength against that of a blaze that was dining well on a wooden house rich with paints and oils, whipped to white heat by a hard wind streaming off miles of icy lake. She needed her friends for this; she needed Tris, who could help her shove the fire into the icy canals and the cold water death of the Syth. She needed Sandry to weave the blaze into a net that would imprison it. All she had was herself. It would have to do.
