Мария Снайдер - Fire Study - Study 03

“What?”

He looked at me as if deciding whether to tell me something important. “Have you shown your bat to the Commander?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

I hesitated. I had promised the Commander to keep what he called “his mutation” a secret. Would telling Valek about the bat break that confidence? “I know about the Commander, love. How could you believe that I spent the last twenty-one years with him and not know?”

“I…”

“After all.” Valek made a scary face. “I am the anti-magician!”

I laughed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“For the same reason you didn’t.” He wrapped my bat and placed it back into my pack.

“The Commander saw the glow. I think his body contains two souls, but I have no idea how or why it’s magical. And if he does have magic, why didn’t he flame out after puberty?”

“Two? Ambrose’s mother died during his birth and there was some confusion. The midwife insisted a boy had been born, but later his father held a baby girl. They searched for evidence of a second child but found nothing. They chalked it up to the midwife being upset about losing her patient. Ambrose used to blame this invisible twin whenever he was in trouble, which from his stories was quite often. His family indulged him when he began wearing boy’s clothes and calling himself Ambrose. It seemed mild in comparison to a few of his other antics.”

“Was his mother a magician?”

“She was considered to be a healer, but I don’t know if she healed with magic or with mundane remedies.”

Valek drained the tub while I attempted to do something with my ruined hair. Some sections remained long, while others had been burnt to stubble.

“Let me, love.” Valek removed the brush from my hands. He rummaged around the bath area until he found his razor. “Sorry, nothing else will work.”

“How did you get so good with hair?”

“Spent a season working undercover as Queen Jewel’s personal groomer. She had beautiful, thick hair.”

“Wait, I thought all the Queen’s servants had to be women.”

“Good thing no one thought to look up my skirt.” Valek grinned with impish delight as he cut my hair. Large chunks floated to the ground. I stared at them, trying to convince myself losing my hair didn’t matter. Especially not when I considered I wouldn’t need it in the fire world.

After he finished, Valek said, “This will help with your disguise.”

“My disguise?”

“Everyone’s looking for you. If I disguise you as a man, you’ll be much harder to find. Although…” He studied my face. “I’ll use a little makeup. Being a man won’t draw unwanted attention unless they notice you don’t have any eyebrows.”

I touched the ridge above my eyes with my fingertips, feeling smooth skin. I wondered if they would grow back. Again, I dismissed the notion. It wouldn’t matter in the end.

“What should we do first? Try to find the tunnel to the Keep, if it even exists. Or go and rescue the Councilors’ families?” I asked.

“We should—” Valek sniffed the air as if he smelled a dangerous scent. “Someone’s coming.”

HE SIGNALED ME TO WAIT and left without a sound. I grabbed my switchblade and crept through the living room. A murmur of voices filtered in from the kitchen. The door flew open as soon as I reached it. I brandished my knife at the hulking figure in the doorway.

“What happened to your hair?” Ari demanded. “Are you all right?”

Janco followed him in. “Look what happens when you sneak off without us!”

“I’d hardly call being captured and taken to Sitia inside a box sneaking off,” I said.

Janco cocked his head this way and that. “Aha! You look just like a prickle bush in MD-4. If we buried you up to your neck, we could—”

“Janco.” Ari growled.

“If you gentlemen are finished, I’d like to know why you disobeyed my orders,” Valek said.

Janco smiled one of his predatory grins as if he had anticipated this question and already composed an answer. “We did not disobey any of your orders. You said to keep an eye on Yelena’s brother, the scary-looking big guy and the others. So we did.”

Valek crossed his arms and waited.

“But you didn’t specify what we should do if our charges came to Sitia,” Ari said.

“How could they possibly escape the castle and get through the borders?” The expression on Valek’s face showed his extreme annoyance.

Glee lit Janco s eyes. “That’s a very good question. Ari, please tell our industrious leader how the Sitians escaped.”

Ari shot his partner a nasty look, which didn’t affect Janco s mood in the least. “They had some help,” Ari said.

Again, Valek said nothing.

Ari began to fidget, and I covered my mouth to keep from laughing. The big man resembled a ten-year-old boy who knew he was about to get into a lot of trouble. “We helped them.”

“We?” Janco asked.

“I did.” Ari sounded miserable. “Happy now?”

“Yes.” Janco rubbed his hands together. “This is going to be good. Go on, Ari. Tell him why—although, I think they magiked him.” He waggled his fingers.

“They didn’t use magic. They used common sense and logic.”

Valek raised an eyebrow.

“There’re strange things going on here,” Ari said. “If we don’t put it right, then it’ll spread like a disease and kill us all.”

“Who told you this?” I asked.

“Moon Man.”

“Where are they now?” Valek asked.

“Camped about a mile north of here,” Ari said.

The drumming of horses reached us before Valek could comment. Through the window, I saw Kiki followed by Topaz, Garnet and Rusalka.

“How did they find us?” Icy daggers hung from Valek’s voice.

Janco seemed surprised. “They didn’t know where we were going. I told them to wait for us.”

“Isn’t it frustrating when no one obeys your orders?” Valek asked.

We went outside. Tauno rode on Kiki and she came straight to me. She bumped my chest with her nose. I opened my mind to her.

Don’t go into fire again, she said.

I didn’t reply. Instead, I scratched behind her ears as Tauno slid off her back. He greeted me with a cold look and returned to the others. Leif, Moon Man and Marrok lingered near their horses while they talked to Ari and Janco.

From Leif’s various frowns and Tauno’s scorn, I knew they remained angry with me. I couldn’t blame them—I had acted badly. Liveliness lit Marrok’s face and I hoped Moon Man had been able to weave his mind back into a coherent whole.

Everyone went inside, but I stayed behind, taking care of the horses as best as I could with half-burnt brushes and scorched hay. Part of the pasture’s fence had caught fire and collapsed. I stared at the gap, knowing the well-bred Sandseed horses didn’t need a fence and Onyx and Topaz would stay with them. However, I attempted to fix the broken section. And kept at it while the sun set and the night air turned frosty. Kept working even when the horses decided it was too cold in the open and left the pasture to find warmth under a copse of trees nearby.

Valek arrived. I pounded on a post with a heavy rock. He halted my swing and removed the rock from my hand.

“Come inside, love. We have plans to discuss.”

Reluctance pulled at my feet as if I walked through thick, sticky mud.

The living-room conversation died the moment I entered. Moon Man looked at me with sadness in his eyes and I wondered if he knew about my deal with the Fire Warper or if he was disappointed by my actions.

A fire had been lit. I sat down next to it, warming my frozen and bleeding fingers, no longer afraid of the flames. The trapped souls within the fire twisted. Their pain and presence were clear and I wondered how I had been able to ignore them before.