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By the time we reach the street at the top of the little hill, we’re pushing our way through a crowd. Some people are passing buckets of water, and some are just watching the building go up in flames as though it were a feast day fireworks show. The siren is almost deafening this close, an incessant screaming cry that must be waking every dog in the city of Cairncliff. Doshir shoves his way through the mess of people, his face pale, his eyes frantic.
In the center of the crowd is a building. It’s on fire. And it is Doshir’s shop.
The shop’s sign hangs drunkenly from its post as sparks rain down around it. Geredan’s Antiquities, with its charred list of specialties dangling below. As I watch, the sign reading Healer snaps and falls to the stones. Fire dances in the windows, hypnotic twists of gold and crimson licking frames that once held glass. I turn to Doshir, trying to think of something to say.
And Doshir runs toward the fire. The crowd gasps, a jumble of incoherent voices rising in protest. Doshir ignores them, pushes his way past the line of people throwing buckets of water into the flames, sprints up the steps, and slams his shoulder into the closed door. The entire building shudders. Someone screams. Doshir steps back, then slams into the door again. When he pulls back this time, his shirt is on fire, the red flames licking his dark hair.
He hits the door a third time, using his body as a battering ram, and the door collapses inward. Flames surge forward, exploding toward the sky with a roar. The crowd draws back, and for a moment I want to go with them, pulled by the human instinct to shy away from hungry flames.
But I’m not human. I take a deep breath of the smoke-filled air and then walk toward the steps. One of the men drops his empty bucket and reaches for me, trying to stop me, but I pull past him. My bare feet brush the sparks and embers lining the stairway. I’m aware of heat, of the smell of smoke and the rush of air ruffling my dress, but not of pain.
I closed my eyes when my mother’s dragonfire engulfed me. This time, I leave them open. The heat of the fire bends and warps the air inside Doshir’s shop. I step over something smoldering in the entryway, and the hem of my dress begins to smoke. Flames lick the walls, there’s a popping, snapping sound in the ceiling above me, and something in the back is burning like the midday sun.
Doshir stands in the middle of the room with both his hands in his hair, turning in a slow circle. I walk to him as something above us groans. Fear prickles the back of my neck; that sound is not a good sign.
“Doshir,” I say.
I have to shout to be heard over the roar of the flames. He turns to me with wide, wild eyes, and for a heartbeat he looks like he doesn’t even recognize me. Then he turns back to the smoldering inferno all around us. Even the rugs at our feet are beginning to smoke.
“Have to… to save what I can,” he mutters.
His words feel thin and insubstantial, like ashes. Another deep groan drifts down from the ceiling, followed by a series of loud pops. Sparks rain down between us.
“No,” I say, in a voice that’s almost a scream. “We have to get out!”
He stares at me, his face streaked with soot, embers raining down on his shoulders. There’s a low hiss, then the sound of breaking glass as something behind him explodes. He winces at the delicate patter of broken glass hitting the smoldering carpet; I reach forward, take both his hands in mine, and start to pull.
Sure, he’s a dragon. He’s fireproof. But this building feels like it’s about to collapse, to rain flaming rafters and the kings only know what else down on his head. I step backward, tugging on his hands, and then hiss as my heel comes down on something sharp. Doshir pulls back, a dead weight anchored in the midst of an inferno. I glare at him.
His shoulders curl forward, and Doshir finally follows me. I pull him toward the front door, almost tripping over a strange slab of wood that’s spitting fire through the opening, and then we’re both over the threshold. I take a deep breath; the air out here is so much cooler.
And the roof collapses behind us.
Superheated air, sparks, and shrapnel fly out of the open door, knocking me to my back on the stone steps. Fire leaps out above me, spiraling toward the stars, and for a moment I’m back in the Knife’s Edge Mountains, watching the dragonfire I was so certain would kill me.
Then the flames contract, and the world rushes back in. Screaming voices, the shrill cry of the siren, the splash of water as the crowd attempts to keep the blaze from devouring anything else. There’s a distant ringing sound too, but that’s probably coming from inside my own head.
I turn, groaning as my body voices its numerous protests, and see Doshir flat on his back. He gasps, his chest rising and falling, his shirt still smoldering in a dozen places. Someone runs past us with a bucket, spraying droplets of water on the ashy cobblestones. Doshir meets my eyes; he looks empty, like he’s been hollowed out.
“Why?” he gasps.
I pull myself up to sitting, then scoot across the stones to be closer to him. His eyes close; tears trace thin lines through the soot covering his face. I swat absentmindedly at a burning patch on the dress Doshir handed me, which was once a light blue and is now almost entirely black.
Doshir exhales sharply, then winces as if he’s in pain. After another long moment, broken by the scream of the alarm and the shouts of the crowd tossing water onto the flames, his eyes open. He pulls himself up to sitting. I reach forward and let my hand rest on his knee. He covers my hand with his own, and together we stare at the fire as it consumes what little is left of Geredan’s Antiquities.
Chapter16
Doshir
Slowly, the many screaming voices inside my mind fall silent. The part of me that argues I should go back into my store, or I should have stayed longer, I would have been able to at least grab the daggers from their display case, or the golden teacups, those would have survived the flames—
Silent.
The voice howling with disbelief, that this can’t possibly be happening, that this little shop is my entire life, everything I’ve ever loved or wanted or valued is inside those four flaming walls and so this has to be a nightmare, this must be a bad dream, stars help me, it’s time to wake up—
Silent.
And the cold, calm part of me that’s demanding an explanation, that snaps there’s no way this was an accident, I’m far too careful, and that wants to know why the streetlight went out and who in the stars’ many names would have access to the shop, who lit the fire in such a way that it would burn so hot and so fast, and why, for the love of the Mothers, why, why, why?
