Page 22 of Cold Fire (The Circle Opens 3)

In Izmolka, perhaps, he could experiment with the gloves and fire before he came home.

The city’s clocks struck the hour before dawn. He stopped at the second stair that led from Airgi to Kunsel Canal and unbuckled his skates. The staff at Asinding Bathhouse wouldn’t stir until dawn: he had to be on the ice when they began their day. His prize would heat as they began to shovel wood onto the night’s embers, building the fires to heat the huge pools over the furnaces. Once the fires were roaring, his gift would open, its clay outer layer shattered by heat, its thick leather wrappings drying until they burned. When they did, his surprise would explode. The merchant who had sold him five pounds of the new invention called “boom-dust” thought Ben was a farmer, looking for a quick way to clear stubborn tree stumps from his land. In a way Ben had not lied: this boom-dust would clear quite a large piece of land.

The lock on the door through which wood was carried to the cellar was easy to open. He had a set of master keys, granted to him by the governor’s council when they’d agreed to let him start training programs. With them he could enter all public buildings — the bathhouses were run by the city, not the island, council.

Inside the cellar, he closed his lantern and put it down, then waited for his eyes to adjust. Gratings in the huge furnace released dull orange light, enough to see by. He found the main furnace door, two slabs of iron with thick iron handles. Attendants used heavy gloves and iron pry bars levered under the handles to drag the doors open. Even with the fire at its lowest the metal was hot enough to cook on. Ben didn’t use the tools: they were nowhere in sight. The point in any case was to try out his gloves.

He took them from his sack and slid them on. They fit perfectly over his knitted gloves and the heavy sleeves of his coat. Gripping the iron handle that opened one furnace door, Ben pulled. He’d counted on his size and strength to make up for the lack of a pry bar. They did, though he needed both hands and wrenched a muscle in his back. Slowly the iron door, taller than he was, swung open.

A desert of embers lay in the furnace, heat rippling over them. Reaching into his sack, he brought out his device, a globe twice as big as his head. There was no need to make this one so it would take forever to burn, giving him hours to get clear. The furnace would hatch this egg for him soon. He kissed the dry clay surface and pitched the ball deep into the heart of the glowing embers. He tossed the sack and the lantern in after it.

Overhead a door slammed. Voices echoed against the tiled surfaces of the bathhouse proper. Ben thrust the open furnace door shut, hanging onto it desperately at the last until he eased it to. A slam would bring the sleepy attendants down here on the run.

He stuffed the metal gloves down the front of his coat and climbed out of the cellar. The attendants entered at the far side of the building — he had watched their morning routine for two weeks that fall. He doubted they would hear as he used the axe to smash the lock from the outside. If this entrance survived what was to come, the lawkeepers would think someone had broken in to sleep warm.

He ran to the canal and strapped on his skates, fingers trembling as he secured the buckles. The clay was getting harder and drier on the embers. The attendants would be on their way to the wood stores, to stoke the furnace to wakefulness. Time was running out; the eastern sky was showing red.

He lunged onto the ice. Three strokes and he went sprawling, the price of skating with his mind on other things. He took a breath and forced himself to stand carefully. He’d fallen beside a wood pile. Quickly he cut off his boot covers, pulled them out of his skate straps, balled them around his knitted gloves, and thrust them under a few logs. He always carried a vial of oil and flint and steel in his pockets: he poured the oil over the logs that concealed his clothes, then set it to burn. Then he kept his eyes on the ice and skated off slowly.

Near Joice Point he turned to watch the eastern sky. Those who liked to take steam before work would be lining up at the bathhouse doors. Some might already be inside. Ben sighed. It was hard to judge how long each device took to do its job. Black powder boom-dust was particularly unreliable, though effective when it finally worked.

He heard a muffled thump, then a booming roar. A geyser of water, fire, wood, and who knew what else blew into the sky. Ben’s breath caught in his chest as oily black smoke and fountaining water soared above the buildings that stood between him and the bathhouse. It was beautiful. He shook with the need to go back. How much would be left? How many would be alive?

He bit his lower lip until it bled. His eyes stung; he was sweating ferociously. He must not do it. He had to follow his plan. He could not be seen here.

Somehow he forced himself to turn and skate on. He and his escort must be out of the city before word reached Suroth Gate of the disaster on Airgi Island.

On the day Ben left, Daja practiced combat meditation with Jory and puttered about after her bath, repairing jewelry for Matazi’s friends and mulling over the living metal suit. She was inspecting a triple chain like a white gold waterfall when she heard loud voices below. Curious, she went to the servants’ back stair, closest to the noise.

“All those old fur throws, and I mean all. Don’t argue anymore, you put me out of patience.” That was Matazi, sounding unusually crisp. “Tea, kettles. Yanna preserve us, I’ve never seen such a thing, never. Aloe balm, all we can spare. Don’t stint. Muslin and linen for bandages. Make up beds in the cow loft and the storage rooms – we can take twenty people if they don’t mind crowding. Half of Stifflace Street is in flames.”

Daja pelted downstairs. Matazi stood in the hall to the slush room, hands to her temples, as servants hurried to do her bidding. Maids bustled to and fro, building piles on either side of their mistress: the chest of medicines that Matazi kept for emergencies, cheap tin mugs, bowls, and tableware, and bottles of spirits used as stimulants and soothers in open crates. Footmen emerged from a storeroom with rolls of canvas used for shelters over their shoulders; a houseboy followed with a collection of long tent poles.

Daja looked at Matazi. “What happened?” she asked. “Can I help?”

Matazi’s dark eyes were haunted. “I was visiting one of Kol’s aunts. She lives on the other side of Kadasep. We were to go shopping. We …” Matazi’s lips trembled. She put her hand over them, trying to compose herself. Maids arrived with more supplies; the footmen carried them outside. “We heard the fire bells, of course,” Matazi said. “There’s — there’s a bathhouse on Airgi Island, a big one, where Stifflace Street and Barbzan Street come together. They said the furnace exploded — it’s just a crater now. The whole block around it is burning.”

Daja clenched her hands. She didn’t want to do this again, but … surely it would be better than Jossaryk. And maybe she could send the fire somewhere — into what was left of the bathhouse, that might work.

“Daja? Are you all right?” asked Matazi.

Daja rested a hand on Matazi’s shoulder. “If there’s fire, maybe I can help,” she reminded her hostess. “Do we know where Frostpine is?”

“Right here.” He came from the kitchen, tying his crimson habit over breeches and shirt. “Matazi, we need horses.”

By the time Frostpine and Daja reached the fire zone, the blazes were contained inside the streets around the destroyed bathhouse. Most were out, having consumed every house near the center of the destruction. Rather than fight them, now that no one or nothing else could be saved, Daja and Frostpine let them alone. Instead they joined the volunteers who cared for the survivors and moved them as quickly as possible onto sleighs that carried them to hospitals or families who would take them in. Daja and Frostpine labored until mid-afternoon, when the last victims alive were taken away. Now the wagons for the dead arrived. The bodies had been placed in one street under pieces of canvas. The thought of loading them on wagons made Daja’s eyes fill with tears. She tried not to look relieved when the lawkeepers ordered them home. They said others would finish up.

They didn’t leave immediately. Instead

they walked to the deep black gouge in the earth that was all that remained of the bathhouse.

“Shurri defend us,” Frostpine whispered, taking the sight in. “Does this look familiar to you?”

Daja nodded. In her first summer at Winding Circle, pirates had attacked the temple city and neighboring Summersea. They brought with them a new, terrible weapon, a substance packed in baked clay balls and lit with fuses. Wherever the boomstones and the black powder they carried hit, they exploded. Their mark was a distinctive sunburst pattern in blackened ground and scorched wood.

“Maybe the furnace blew up, but it was helped along,” Frostpine said grimly. “This wasn’t an accident.” He went to the nearest lawkeeper and spoke to her. As Daja waited for him, something caught her eye. A freak of the explosion had driven a triangle of glazed tile like an arrowhead into a chunk of wood: it was embedded there. She tried to pry it loose, until a thought intruded: Was she doing as Ben did, taking mementoes of a fire?

She released the tile as if it were a viper, wiping her fingers on her coat. Her skin crawled. How could Ben do that? How could he do it even after a fire where he’d saved lives and homes? It was like hoarding pieces of bad luck.

At least he’s not here for this, she thought dully. It would break his heart.

Frostpine returned. “Let’s go,” he told Daja, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Someplace where fire isn’t the enemy.”

The next day, Firesday, Daja could not stay still: if she did, the image of rows of the covered dead haunted her. She couldn’t even concentrate on the living metal suit. At last she decided to skate to Alakut Island to visit the fancy stores on Hollyskyt Way. She had forgotten the confectioner’s shop, or the hole where it had stood, was there. Seeing the charred gap ruined her desire to look at other smiths’ jewelry. Instead she skated to Bazniuz Island. There she wandered the open air markets on Sarah Street, buying her midday from dumpling and grilled meat carts, washing it down with cider. She bought notepaper to write letters on, then new quill pens to write with, and a packet of roasted chestnuts to eat while she wrote.

She even reached Everall Bridge in time to race Nia home: she lost. When Nia teased her as they glided into the boat basin, Daja replied loftily that Nia had taken unfair advantage of her, because she was laden down with parcels. She would have added more, but the sight of the refugee children housed by the Bancanors stopped her. They had gone still beside a snow fort they built near the alley. Daja looked at the packet of chestnuts, still warm in her hand, then offered it to them. One boy accepted it, never taking his eyes off her, then ran back to his friends. Daja and Nia removed their skates in silence. Once they’d left their outdoor gear in the slush room, they went upstairs to meditate.

After they finished, Daja went to her room. A maid found her there. “Viymese,” she said, bobbing a curtsey, “Viymese Salt has come, and requests a moment of your time. She is in the front parlor.”

“Doesn’t she want Frostpine?” Daja asked, confused. “He’s at Teraud’s.”

The girl shook her head. “Viymese Salt requested you.”

Daja sighed and went downstairs. The front parlor was not a room for a big girl who was most comfortable in a smithy. The delicately carved and painted furnishings were cushioned in bright yellow and white striped silk; porcelain and crystal figures were on tables and shelves everywhere. The windows were paned in costly glass, and protected by gold and white brocade curtains.

Heluda Salt sat in one dainty chair, looking like a market woman in the empress’s sitting room. Her gown was sensible black wool, old-fashioned, with long sleeves. A white blouse with a round collar rose above its neckline. The veil on her strawlike dyed blonde hair was solid, sensible wool like her gown, black, with a tiny white embroidered border. The tea glass in her soot-streaked hands looked simply ridiculous. At her side was a large leather bag that Daja supposed contained her mage kit. It looked just as out of place as Heluda did.

“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.”

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