Page 24 of Cold Fire (The Circle Opens 3)

Nia said wonderingly, “The garret shutters are open.”

A look up told Daja that Nia was right. From the darkness behind the open shutters, there were no windows to block the wind from coming in.

Daja sent her magic rolling over the big house, and felt the fire in the cellar and kitchen immediately. She grabbed it, trying to hold it, only to sense other blazes, in the cellar on the far side of the house, and in the western extension. Those she seized as well. All of them fought her control.

“Nia! The rest of you!” Daja ordered, inspecting the rear gate, “find the alarm bells around here and start ringing them — ring every one you see. Keep ringing them till a brigade comes! Go!” She and Heluda knew Ben had set the bathhouse fire. Was it possible that another firesetter was loose in Kugisko, one with a grudge against Ben, as she once thought? Because she knew Ben was somewhere between Kugisko and Izmolka. This fire couldn’t be his work.

Those thoughts flashed through her mind in an instant. She found the small door the servants used to admit themselves and persuaded the metal latch to open. Inside the rear courtyard she saw why those fires she gripped fought so hard. Every cellar entryway gaped; the doors under them would be ajar, too. That was why the garret shutters were open. He had turned the entire house into a chimney. This was the work of someone who knew fire. This was Ben’s doing.

Watersday, she thought as she ran onto the covered rear porch. He picked Watersday, when there might not be a brigade anywhere close, because the servants are off. She beat on the door. Was Morrachane or were any of the servants home?

Nearby she heard bright, urgent peals from the fire alarm bells that hung at the nearest street corners. A few moments later she heard another bell ring in the distance.

There was no time to be polite. She released the fire in the western extension and gave that part of her attention to the door. Seizing the nails and the hinges, she yanked. The metal flew out of the wood, dodging her politely.

“Ow!” someone cried behind her. Daja pulled Nia aside as the boards that formed the door fell onto the porch. The girl was nursing a cut along one cheekbone: she had been scored by a nail.

“I told you to summon fire brigades!” Daja told her. “Get out of here!” In the part of her that gripped the biggest fires, under and in the kitchen, she felt an errant flame discover a trail of oil. Strengthened, it raced along to find a storehouse of full oil jars, pulling other flames with it. “Nia, you can’t come in!” Daja gripped the flames hard and tight, holding them from a bounty of oil by less than a foot.

Nia’s face dripped sweat, but her eyes were steady. “You can’t search alone — you’ll never find her in time,” she said. “It’s an awfully big house. I know the inside.”

Daja groped for something Nia would understand. “I don’t think we’ll find her alive. Ben Ladradun did this. He’s as mad as a rabid rat. She’s probably dead.”

“We’re wasting time,” Nia insisted.

Daja drew breath to argue, and felt her hold on the cellar fire tremble. She tightened it. If it reached the oil — she couldn’t let it reach the oil. “Let’s go,” she said. “Hold your scarf over your nose and mouth — wet it, if you get the chance. Feel a door before you open it. If it’s hot, don’t open it.”

The girl nodded, pulled her scarf up over her nose and mouth, and plunged into the house, Daja behind her. They searched room after room, with the exception of the kitchen, where smoke rolled out of the cracks around the doors. Like the cellar fire Daja gripped it with her power; it wasn’t going anyplace, but it was foolish to stick their heads in there.

“Aunt Morrachane!” cried Nia. “Aunt Morrachane!” Her courage made Daja feel small. She knew Nia was terrified, but she had forced herself to come in to save a woman she pitied.

Once they’d checked the ground floor, they ran upstairs. “Her bedroom’s here,” Nia said, running to a closed door. She yanked it open. “Aunt Morra —”

Daja stopped beside her. Morrachane was on the bed, but she would not be leaving with them. She would beat no more servants, torment no more sons.

Nia fainted. Daja barely caught her in time to keep the younger girl from cracking her head. She managed to drag Nia into the hall and to slam the door on that dreadful sight. Then she went to an ornamental jar on a hall table and vomited until nothing came through her raw throat or streaming nose.

Daja’s grip on her concentration wavered: the cellar and kitchen fires surged ahead a handful of inches. For a full minute she trembled on the verge of releasing them to wipe away that room and the body in it. Only the knowledge that a fire might spread to the neighboring homes stopped her.

She knelt beside the younger girl. “Nia,” Daja said, patting the girl’s ashen cheeks. “Nia, please, we have to get out.” Was Ben still here or had he fled? Surely he’d escaped.

Nia groaned: she was coming to. Daja wished she had smelling salts to hasten the process. No doubt Morrachane kept —

She stopped that thought where it was. Nothing could make her go back into that room. Instead she slung one of Nia’s arms over her shoulders and stood, dragging the half-conscious girl to her feet. The blaze in the cellar was getting bigger, searching for cracks in her control.

She hauled Nia down the back stair, sweating so hard the drops pattered onto the wooden steps. More tendrils of the cellar fire escaped her grip, straining greedily for those oil jars. She released the fires in the wing opposite them. Her quickest escape would be the way they’d entered, which took them past the kitchen. She would need all her strength to hold that and the fire in the cellar just below it.

Something changed: Nia had control over her feet. She trembled, but she took most of her weight off Daja. Relieved, Daja forgot to watch where she was going. She tripped and went sprawling on the ground floor, yanking her support away from Nia. The other girl dropped to her knees with a yelp.

Daja’s attention broke as she fell. A rope of flame wrapped itself around a jar of oil below. It shattered; the cellar fire roared.

Terrified, Daja shoved it and the rest of the fire into the earth under the house, down through a crack in the underlying rock. Following the crack, the blaze roared into an underground chamber filled with the unfrozen Syth. The water surged up into the crack, turning to steam as it hit the fire and boiling its way to the cellar. All it needed was the slender path the fire had made: the water’s force enlarged it fast.

Daja heard a rumble in the ground. It grew like an onrushing tidal wave.

“Run!” she yelled, scrambling to her feet. She hauled Nia up. Together they raced down the hall to the slush room. They charged out through the ruined door just as the underground part of the lake shot through the crack in the cellar floor. Daja released fires with a gasp of gratitude as the icy Syth sprayed into the cellar, then rammed through its ceiling into the kitchen. Steam from the doused fire blasted with it, smashing the ground floor ceiling, then that on each floor, all the way up through the roof.

In the rear courtyard hands grabbed Daja and Nia as they stumbled into the open. Firefighters had come. Daja sagged: she didn’t need to hold any fires. Now people moved back, taking the girls with them, as water dropped from the fountain jetting into the sky. It would turn to ice, Daja knew, but it would also douse the fires.

Someone grabbed her arm. She looked up into Kol’s face. “What did you hit?” he cried, pointing to the fountain of water.

Daja grinned at him, foolish with relief. “That’s a very strong lake you have out there,” she said.

“Let’s take them home and call a healer,” Kol told someone.

“How did you get here?” Nia asked Matazi as her mother helped her back down the alley.

“We heard the alarm bells,” Matazi said. “We were just leaving your grandmother’s.”

They returned to Bancanor House, where Matazi’s calm gave way. She wrapped her arms around Nia, weeping, telling her never to frighten her mother like that again. Kol went for a healer as Matazi

wrapped Nia and Daja in blankets and installed them on the book room sofa. Both girls began to cough: Matazi fetched Jory’s lung-clearing potion and ruthlessly made them drink it. As they hacked and spat into a matched pair of crystal dishes, Matazi took the youngest Bancanors and the refugee children to raid the kitchen, a reward for their work at ringing the alarms.

As her lungs cleared, Daja retreated into a bubble of muted sounds and sights. Heluda was right. Ben was a monster. Daja hadn’t quite believed; she’d thought there must be an explanation, somehow, until she saw Morrachane. Until she felt that blaze, with enough jars of oil there to turn the district into a firestorm. As soon as she pulled herself together, she had to find a lawkeeper. She must talk with Heluda. Ben had gotten wind of her suspicions, but how? It didn’t matter. He’d worked it out, destroyed his home, and fled. He’d be miles away, free of everything but his fires. He could be found. As long as he had those gloves, Daja would track him. He must return to settle his debts.

Through her numbness she registered that a healer touched her. His power spread through her and through Nia in a gentle examination.

“Shock,” he said when he finished. “You must have been quite frightened.” Nia could only shiver and nod.

Daja stirred. She owed Nia something. “She didn’t show it,” Daja croaked, trying to sit up straight. She gave Nia a tiny smile. “I said that you’d find your courage.”

“B-b-but I d-d-didn’t,” protested Nia. “I w-w-was t-t-terrified.”

“Then you’re wise,” the healer said with approval. “Only a fool isn’t afraid inside a burning house.” To Daja he said, “Your body will be fine, but something burdens your spirit. Whatever haunts you, tell someone about it.” He looked up as Kol came in. “I’ll leave a throat soother for these two, but —”

Nia’s eyes, bloodshot from smoke, popped wide open. She grabbed Daja’s arm. “Jory!” she cried and coughed. The healer laid a hand on her throat; Nia’s voice emerged as a rasp. “Daja, Jory’s in trouble!”

The twins had that bond; Daja knew it. Her numbness vanished. She tossed away her blanket and raced upstairs, knocking the healer, Kol, and even Matazi out of her way. Her scrying mirror lay on her worktable. Daja grabbed it and stared into its depths. She saw nothing.

Slowly she took a breath, counting. She imagined worry, fear, and grief rising from her skin like steam. She had to let them go. They would return, but for now they were in her way. Only when she was steady did she open her eyes and breathe onto the mirror’s surface.

A blurred image rose from its depths and cleared: Olennika Potcracker’s soup kitchen. Every set of double doors that led into the hospital was open; smoke roiled through them and along the ceiling. Jory and the rest of the staff shoved the long tables aside to clear a path for the streams of sick and hurt who escaped the hospital through the kitchen. Olennika Potcracker stood at the door to the cellar storerooms, her face covered with sweat. Daja knew she had to be holding back fire. Now Jory was at the water trough that ran along the rear wall of the kitchen, filling buckets and bowls as people brought them to her.

Ben walked in, a toddler on each hip. He handed them to a kitchen maid, turned, and plunged back through a smoky doorway. He wore the living metal gloves.

Daja thrust her mirror into her belt pouch and left her room. Matazi waited in the hall. “Jory?” she whispered, her eyes wide, her face ashen.

Daja rested a hand on Matazi’s arm. “Get Frostpine. He and Anyussa went to some winter fair. Call the charity ladies together. People with sleighs, blankets, everything. Yorgiry Hospital is on fire.”

Matazi rattled down the stairs in Daja’s wake. Daja explained to no one else, but raced back through the house, to the slush room and her skates. She grabbed two coats and put them on, then added gloves, scarves, and a knitted cap. She would need all her magical strength when she got to Blackfly Bog — she couldn’t afford to warm herself on the way.

“Daja,” Nia croaked from the doorway. She offered a bottle of Jory’s lung-clearing mixture in a hand that shook as if she had palsy.

Daja took the bottle with a nod of thanks and tucked it into a tunic pocket. Then she grabbed her skates and went outside.

She couldn’t reach the fire in time to halt it. Silently she prayed that other mages who could help were already on their way. The hospital and kitchen people had a better chance than the victims of Jossaryk House: the fire protections she had seen gleaming on the kitchen walls and ceiling were strong. They might keep the fire back. That was in the hands of the gods and whatever mages got there soon.

Her concern was Ben. He was playing hero, with no one to know that he was the creator of their misery. She didn’t understand why he’d done this — did he want one last disaster before he moved on? — but she meant to ask when she found him.

Feeling like an overstuffed doll in her layers, she went outside. People stood in the rear courtyard, warming themselves at a fire as others came and went, patrolling the neighborhood to ensure that no other houses burned. The crowd parted silently before Daja as she strode down to the boat basin and sat to buckle on her skates.

She barely noticed them, her mind fixed on the route she must take. If she followed Prospect Canal under Craik Bridge and around the curve of Bazniuz, that would bring her onto Jung Canal. From there it was a straight skate through the frozen intersection of the Whirligig to the hospital. She didn’t know if she had the stamina and strength on skates to make it, but she had to try. Ben owed Kugisko a debt of appalling size. All her life she had believed that everyone paid what was owed, though some required help to balance the books. She had to help Ben pay up.

She stood and glided across the basin with a single push. She tripped at its edge, falling onto her back. From there she could see that the sky overhead was darkening. She had forgotten the early nightfall in this misbegotten country. With a growl she lurched to her feet, then ripped the mitten and glove from her right hand. She would have to use some magic after all. Reaching toward the watchers’ fire, she twitched her fingers. A globe of flame rose from it and came to sit in her palm. Holding it up as a lamp, she skated into Prospect Canal.

Word of the hospital fire was not out. People skated here at a leisurely pace, servants on the way home for the most part. Daja glided into the stream of skaters. Most saw her flame globe and got out of the way. Daja noticed them no more than she had the people in the courtyard. Instead she stroked forward, breathing deeply to calm her rattled nerves. A fall on the ice had not exactly given her confidence for this.

She pushed harder, moving into the center of the canal where people raced. On the raised streets along the canal’s sides, people were lighting outdoor lamps. Inside the open shutters of wealthy homes, candle- and lamp-light glowed. Here on the ice more and more people carried lanterns. This was the proper use of fire, with proper respect and proper fear. Ben had perverted it.

Her pulse speeded up, her breath came faster. No. She couldn’t think about this. If she was to help anyone in Blackfly Bog, she had to skate and only that. She would deal with the rest there. In the meantime, Everall Bridge loomed ahead of her. Lamplighters crossed it, their own globes of light shining in an arch over the canal. Daja raised her fire enough to reveal the ice ahead of her feet, and deepened the stroke of her legs and skates. On she sped, the night air biting the exposed skin around her eyes, the Syth’s mild wind cold and raw with moisture. At least her lamp kept her ungloved hand warm.

Other skaters were blurs as she passed. The ice hissed as skates cut into it; laughter and talk met her swaddled ears as muffled noise. Daja leaned forward slightly and tucked her free arm behind her back as the racers did, shaping her body to slice the air like a well-honed knife. This was wonderful. It was like flying. She could have done it forever — except that just ahead Prospect Canal ended between two bridges and the flat eastern side of Airgi Island. She was good enough on the straightaway, but if she attempted the turn under Craik Bridge as experienced skaters did, she migh

t not live to see Blackfly Bog. Reluctantly she slowed. She didn’t notice when two fast skaters tumbled and went spinning across the canal on their backs, startled by the sight of a big, thickly robed southerner with a globe of fire in her hand.

She passed under Craik Bridge, weaving among skaters who came from three directions. As she eased into Jung Canal the stream of humanity thickened. Moving onto the open ice, Daja looked up and saw why. Ahead, where the Upatka River split to become Kugisko’s canals, the sky was orange. The roof and garret of Yorgiry Hospital were in flames.

Daja thrust hard against the ice, yelling for those ahead to clear the way. Many were sightseers, but others too were skating hard to bring help. On the street that rimmed Bazniuz Island and on Rider Street, the edge of the Pearl Coast, large and small sleighs alike were in motion, racing toward the hospital, their normally musical bells setting up an urgent clatter.

Daja lowered her head and stroked harder. Her thighs, knees, and ankles set up a first, warning throb. Later, she told them. Punish me later.

Even with more people bound for the fire, Jung Canal was so wide that there was plenty of room at the center. Those few skaters coming toward Daja eased away from the girl with the fire in her hand. She locked her free arm behind her and pushed off in long, steady strokes, cold air freezing the hairs in her nose. An icy thread of it wound through a crack in her scarf to sear her vomit-and-smoke-scoured throat. She clenched her lips rather than slow to adjust her scarf and labored to breathe through her nose. When her hat blew away, she let it go.

At the intersection called the Whirligig she struck a ripple in the ice. Before she could fall, hands caught her free arm and supported the outstretched one, lifting her clear of the bumpy stretch. Two skaters, swathed like Daja in scarves, carried her onto smooth ice and set her down easily. They were gone, speeding toward the hospital, before she could gasp her thanks. Now Daja called her fire globe in through her palm, using it at last to warm herself and to ease her throbbing legs. Yorgiry Hospital was all the beacon she needed: the entire top floor was in flames.

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