Chapter 1, p.22
Chapter 1, page 22
"Don't they use proper mugs around here?" she demanded of Daja.
Wary as she felt, Daja had to smile at that. "No more than they must," she told her guest. "It makes their teeth hurt, or something."
Heluda set her glass on the table next to her. "Daja, I have news, and some questions. This concerns the explosion and fire on Airgi Island."
"I saw," Daja said grimly. "They told you Frostpine and I think they used boom-dust?"
"They did. I didn't get to the site until this morning – I was out past midnight over a double murder in Blackfly Bog," Heluda explained, and sighed. "Why the idiots didn't just pick up the husband right away… it's usually the husband, or the lover." She drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. "Never mind. The thing is, I've had a chance to go over the area. Most traces of the crime – of the criminal – are destroyed in explosions and fires, of course. But some traces are too strong to be wiped clean by fire. I found traces of your magic."
Daja felt as if her spirit had stepped back to leave her body as a seated shell. Traces of her power? She and Frostpine hadn't even tried to stop the fires. All they had done was muscle work, not magic.
Heluda finished her tea and poured herself another glass. "Some of my colleagues wanted to look at you and Frostpine. The sheep-brains thought that since black powder comes from the south, and you two are from the south, and the most suspicious fires began after your arrival, well! The matter was solved. They were going to bring you in for questioning."
Daja wasn't that detached from her body: she felt her skin creep. Not even law-abiding citizens heard the phrase "brought in for questioning" comfortably. Unless they had a mage skilled in interrogation spells – such mages were usually expensive to hire – lawkeepers used crude, painful means to question people.
"Don't worry. They'll be good little cow pats for now." Heluda smiled, a flinty look in her eyes. "They don't understand character as I do." She sipped her tea. "I want you to take a mage's look at something, though." She reached into her open bag with both hands and pulled out a heavy object wrapped in silk magically treated to protect its contents. Gently she put the object on the table between her and Daja and opened the silk to reveal a curved, twisted iron bar covered in soot.
Daja did not want to touch it. She already knew she wouldn't like what she learned. It was fire-blistered, its shape warped: everything about it made her twitch.
She looked up to find kindness in Heluda's eyes, "If I had another way to do this, I would," the woman told her quietly.
Daja lifted her right hand and held it over the iron. She was trembling. "Must I touch it?" she asked. Heluda nodded.
Daja laid her plain hand on the iron bar. It was solid – no wonder Heluda had needed both hands to lift it. As she wrapped her fingers around it, Daja was slammed with feelings. She was the bar. Violent force rammed her from behind, blowing her off the vast iron shield she was welded to. Fire raced in her wake. She plunged into cold snow that hissed and shrank from her.
Biting her lower lip, Daja released the iron. Sometimes she felt a thing bearing down on her like a storm just over the horizon. She sensed that now. If she turned the full weight of her power on this piece, curved and twisted half around by an incredible burst of heat, her life would change. She could put it off. She could. She could be safe a day more, a month more. Sooner or later, the accounting demanded in this metal bar would come due and she would have to pay it, but she did not have to do that today.
"Are you done?" Heluda inquired.
Daja shook her head and set her right hand on it. Then she flexed her left hand, feeling the brass that coated it grip her flesh. She reached out, seeing the hand as a stranger might: bright golden metal, dark brown skin, trembling fingers. She laid her metal palm on the twisted bar, and clenched both hands around it.
She was inside the iron and on the inside of her own skin. Somehow her hands were bigger. They had strange bumps in the joints. No, they weren't hers, exactly. There was a man in her skin, a big man. He strained to pull the iron bar, his sweat oiling her skin from the inside.
Didn't he understand about the iron stick, the bent one that men used to open the furnace door at her back? Why didn't he use that instead of hands? The crooked, heavy bar was a quicker, easier way to help her do her job.
He dragged, and dragged, and dragged, until she did as she was supposed to. She drew on the massive iron door that shielded her from the fire on the other side, pulling it until the shield moved, letting a wash of heat pass her. She felt the heat inside the furnace, steady and calm, as it always was during the coldest hours. The fire didn't fool her. She knew how quickly it could roar up when men tossed wood onto it.
The hands that were her and not her let go, leaving a taste of her brass skin on the iron handle.
Daja plunged into the furnace of her power, drawing strength to reach to that image of her brass hands. One of them held a large round thing. That hand tossed the round thing into the furnace. Then both brass hands gripped Daja-the-furnace-door-handle, pushing her and the iron door at her back slowly into place, between the fire and cold air. Daja's brass hands released her iron self and vanished.
As the iron handle, she didn't have long to wait until her people came to open the door at her back. They never grabbed her with their weak hands: she would have seared them to the bone. Instead they used the crooked pry bar to lever her and her door open.
They threw wood past her, into the heat, then began to close the doors against the rapidly growing blaze. There was a thwap that made her entire world shudder. A very hard thrust knocked her clean off her door and twisted her around on herself. She blasted through a man's body. On she flew, into the open air and cold snow.
Heluda was talking as Daja pulled free of the iron. Daja barely heard. She tried to moisten her lips with her tongue, but it too was dry. She blindly felt for a tea glass.
"Let me," Heluda said. Picking up Daja's glass, she muttered in Namornese. She went to the door and flung it open to reveal the maid who sat there waiting for any request. "Get me some proper mugs, and a cloth soaked in cold water."
Daja heard those words as if they were spoken at a distance. Her face was numb. A chasm had opened in her belly; she swayed on its edge. In her mind she saw Ben as he knelt before his stove, sifting embers in a gloved hand. She saw a black bone hand with a gold ring, and a half-melted figure of a local goddess. "Not – " she croaked.
"Hush," ordered Heluda. "I don't want anyone to overhear." When the maid returned with a tray, the magistrate's mage took it. "Back to the kitchen," she ordered. "Don't come within a week of this room, understand?"
Heluda closed the door and set the tray on a table. With a hand movement she threw a magical barrier over the door. Then she took the wet, folded cloth and laid it across the back of Daja's neck. The coolness made Daja shudder, and straighten. She had been sitting folded over, as if kicked in the stomach.
Heluda poured tea into both mugs. "Here." She thrust Daja's mug into her hands and folded the girl's fingers around it. "It's not sweetened."
Daja sipped carefully. Hot and strong, the tea burned its way down to that chasm in her belly. She took another sip, then a third, and a fourth. At last she put the mug down and shifted the cloth on her neck, holding the ends against the pulse points under her ears. Like the tea it helped to clear her head, but neither cloth nor tea stopped the quiver of her lips or the sting in her eyes.
"I don't understand," she told the woman. "It – it's iron, and metal can't lie to me, but – it makes no sense."
"I saw the gloves here," Heluda explained. "You smith-mages, you'd no more start a fire to destroy than you would beat a dog to make him vicious. Either I am well past my game and I never spotted you as a danger, or something you made left the mark of your magic on the furnace door. If that piece hadn't blown clear, we might never have picked up the trace of your power. Of your gloves, used by the person you made them for."
"No," Daja said woodenly. She refused to believe it.
"I began to wonder at Jossaryk House," Heluda continued, her voice inflexible. "The fire that came after Ladradun was slighted by the island's council. Burning one of their houses – we would have questioned Ladradun at the very least. He was careful. Burning the home of one of their mistresses… tricky thinking. In my work, coincidences are suspicious. And Ladradun said he agreed with you that fires were being set. He had to say that, because you had already told me. Otherwise I doubt he'd have drawn the magistrates' attention to it. Ladradun knows every inch of the city. He had the governor's leave to explore as he trained his brigades. And after a long summer with no big fires, a Ladradun warehouse burns. The Bazniuz mages slipped up there. They should have questioned him, and they didn't."
So much didn't make sense, Daja thought. That collection of blackened, foul mementoes… "Someone tired of being ignored," he'd said during a very odd conversation. "Are you giving up on me?" he'd asked.
"I won't believe it," she insisted, trying to sound forceful. "He's a hero. He'd never burn a houseful of people because he was angry with someone barely connected to them."
"I'm thinking as he thinks," Heluda replied gently. "You learn how to do that, you've been at this as long as I have. Don't look at him as a friend. Look at him for who he is, Morrachane Ladradun's son. Killers like Bennat, they're sad when they're little, when someone knocks them about like toys, but not when they grow up. The only way we learn how adults act is from the adults who raise us. The children of monsters become monstrous, too."
She leaned forward and held Daja's eyes with her own as she took Daja's hands in her dry ones. "Morrachane was fined ten times by the island council for beating servants. Her younger sons fled the city as soon as they were able; her husband died young, probably shrieked to death. And Bennat? The first time in his life he got kindness and attention was when his family died in an accidental fire. The second time was when people he trained saved lives in another fire. And so it goes, burning after burning. People are saved, houses are saved. Councils hear him with respect. He isn't Morrachane Ladradun's idiot burden of a son – she called him that in front of a room full of people – he isn't that when something burns. Except he does his job too well. He's gotten rid of too many fire hazards. People get accustomed to his work, and the number of big fires drops off. Respect, attention – he only gets those if the fires get worse. If there are no fires, well, if he starts one, and saves everybody, there's no harm done, practically.
"So he sets a fire. Then a bigger fire next time, then a bigger one. People die. And he is given a tool that will let him shape huge fires." Heluda stopped. Fumbling in a pocket, she pulled out a handkerchief and thrust it at Daja.
Only then did Daja realize that tears ran down her face in steady streams. "You don't know," she whispered. Even in her own ears she sounded weak.
"I think I do," Heluda replied quietly. She pointed to the twisted iron handle. "Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me he didn't use your gloves to pitch something loaded with black powder boom-dust into the furnace, something to protect the boom-dust for half an hour or so. When the morning's business started, his creation exploded, taking the entire furnace with it. Thirty-three dead right now, from the bathhouse and the homes around it that burned. Sixty-eight are in hospitals all around the city. Some won't live. It's his handiwork, isn't it?" She leaned back in her chair and laced her hands over her stomach.
"He's my friend," Daja told her.
"He's the fire's friend," was the brutal reply. "It's the only thing he loves."
Daja wiped her face, then ran a warm hand over the linen. When she returned the handkerchief to Heluda, it was dry. "He did it," Daja said. "He used my gloves – gloves I made to help people – he used them to blow people to pieces and burn them alive." A tear rolled down her cheek. She swiped it away with an impatient hand. "I made something good, something bright, and he, he dirtied it. This piece of iron tore through a man's body when the furnace exploded. I lived that." She had to stop, and drink her tea, and eat a cookie, and wipe her eyes on her sleeve again. Through it all Heluda Salt waited, drinking her own tea, her eyes not leaving Daja.
As she poured fresh tea, Daja thought of something she had felt through her gloves. "But he wasn't just doing a job that would yield something he wanted. He liked it. He was all, all giggly inside. Like a nasty little boy putting a nail on his sister's chair."
"They like excitement, criminals of this stripe," replied the magistrate's mage. "Danger, the risk of arrest, all your senses awake – it's like dragonsalt, or bliss leaf, or wake paste. At first a taste is enough. Maybe the second taste is as good, but the third isn't. You need more. And more after that. Excitement's a drug."
"How could I not know?" Daja asked.
"Because for all you're an accredited mage at fourteen, with the kind of power that most mages whistle for, you're still human," Heluda informed her. "I didn't suspect till Jossaryk House, and I've been at this game forty years. Blaming yourself is natural enough, but silly. Blame Morrachane. She made him what he is. And blame him. He knows what he does is wrong, or he'd just burn the first thing he sees. He picks, he works out a plan, and he goes to a lot of trouble not to get caught. He could stop. He doesn't want to." She watched Daja think about this, then asked, "Will you testify against him at the magistrate's court? Will you tell the judges what your power has just told you – " she pointed to the twisted iron – "and what you have observed?"
Daja got up and went over to the window, leaning her face against its icy panes. People passed by on Blyth Street outside the open gates, laughing and talking. "He keeps mementoes," she said, hating herself for the betrayal. "In his study, at home, behind his desk. He said he took them from fires where he accomplished something. I believed him, except… " Daja hesitated.
"Except?" Heluda prodded.
"I'm almost positive three are from the fires I know of," Daja said. The pane on which she leaned had gone warm. She shifted to another, taking comfort from the chill of the glass on her skin.
Heluda got up and began to pace, dodging furniture and knickknacks. "I didn't know that. We have him. We have him. We'll need time to work the proper spells – "
"He's gone for two weeks," Daja told her. "More, he said, if the weather isn't good."
"I know he's gone," Heluda said. "I'm using the time to build the case against him." She rewrapped the iron bar and placed it in her leather satchel, then straightened and looked at Daja. "You may discuss this with Frostpine, if you like, but please, no one else. You know how gossip spreads."
Daja nodded.
"Should I have you swear –?" Heluda asked, then shook her head. "You'll hold your tongue. I've left messages at the southern gates and Ladradun House, that I would like a word when he comes back. All very ordinary, nothing to worry about. If you see him beforehand, don't say anything. His mother is a powerful and wealthy woman. I wouldn't put it past her to help him escape, if only to preserve the family name. We must be very careful."
"I will," Daja whispered.
Heluda came over to rest a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said. "Talk it out with Frostpine, but make sure no one else hears." She lifted her satchel with a grimace. "I'll get you word as I can." She left without saying goodbye.
It was the most ridiculous thing. Ben and his escort reached the first inn on the imperial road shortly after dusk. They set out at dawn the next day, only to encounter their caravan an hour's ride from the waystation.
"You wouldn't believe it," the foreman told Ben as they all headed back to Kugisko. "The roads to the west are nearly wide open – the mildest winter anyone can remember. We only had to dig ourselves out once, at that turn near Thistledown, where the wind's so bad."
"I can't say I'm heartbroken," Ben forced himself to reply casually. "You saved me a trip." And the chance to experiment in Izmolka, where he didn't need to be so careful. He fumed about that, but he also considered his next Kugisko lesson. Shipquarter Island appealed to him, but there were other places as good, if not better.
He wondered how many had died in the bathhouse fire. Without him to direct the firefighters, he knew they would have lost plenty of the surrounding buildings and their residents as well. The excitement of that spout of flame and smoke had faded so quickly, and he hadn't seen any of the results up close. He'd stop by the remains in a day or so, but it wouldn't be the same. He needed something else. Something where he could show them all what he was made of.
They spent the night in the waystation outside Kugisko's walls. None of the Ladradun riders mentioned it, but all of them looked forward to a last night of quiet before they dealt with Morrachane. At Suroth Gate the next morning they waved to the guards and would have ridden on through – there was no line, today being Watersday – but for the sergeant who ran up to Ben waving a paper. "Viymese Heluda Salt asked me to give you this when you returned," she said, offering it to Ben. "It was left just yesterday. If she'd waited a day, she could have spoken to you herself!" She waved them on cheerfully.
Heluda Salt. Something cold blew across the back of Ben's neck as he opened the unsealed note. Its contents were innocent enough:
Ravvot Ladradun, I have one or two questions with regard to your observations of the boarding-house fire and the fire at Jossaryk House. I would appreciate it if you would contact me upon your return, when it is convenient. The governor has asked me to attend to these matters, and I will be your eternal servant if you could help me handle the governor. – Heluda Salt
