Qrink glowered. “And if I choose to do neither?”
“Then your tower burns.”
The former master licked chapped lips and frowned. From what Jame could see through its windows, this was not only the family home but also the guild headquarters. Could Qrink regain his position if he let it be destroyed? On the other hand, would he if he submitted to blackmail? One consideration cancelled out the other, leaving only pride.
“I don’t like bullies,” he said. “We can rebuild.”
The other man scowled. “So be it.”
The ten-command started forward, but the militia leader had already signaled two of his men who ran up the steps with their torches. They could be glimpsed inside setting fire to stacks of paper, scrolls, and books. Some smoldered, others caught quickly, throwing orange light to dance on the whitewashed walls.
Jame had been anxiously looking over Qrink’s huddled family.
“Where is your mother?” she asked Lanek.
The child took his thumb out of his mouth and pointed at the top of the tower.
“Qrink!” Jame pushed through the crowd to his side. “Your sister-in-law . . .”
His quick glance confirmed Kalan’s absence. He grabbed the militiaman by the arm. “Stop them! There’s still someone in the tower!”
The man tore his attention away from the growing blaze, but the gloating light of fire lingered in his eyes. He grinned, wet-lipped. “Too late.”
Jame felt rage kindle in her. She barely noticed that her claws had extended.
“You would burn someone alive?”
He blinked and retreated a step, fire-lust giving way to uncertainty. So one might confront a small creature gone suddenly rabid. Jame stalked him.
“Call them off.”
“No . . .”
“So you like fire.” The fragment of a master rune came into her mind unbidden. “Taste it, then.”
Her nails sparked together under his bulbous nose, setting its nostril hairs alit. He flailed at his face, but every move only spread the flames. They kindled his greasy hair. He backed away, wailing, into a widening void as his men retreated from him in horror. Jame slipped past, up the stairs, into the burning tower.
She was surrounded by fire. It licked at paper on all sides, orange, red, and yellow tipped with blue. Kindling inks sparkled green and gold. Pages turned in the draft, their edges blackening, their wonderful images eaten away. Charred fragments swirled past her up the interior stair as if up a chimney. The very air seemed to burn.
Dance.
She began to move in the fire-leaping and wind-blowing patterns of the Senetha, threading her way between flames. Blades of cool air from the open door gave her paths. Flares of heat warned her away from stacks of paper about to ignite. It was intoxicating. She could have played thus until the very stones exploded around her, but she had come here to do something. Oh yes. The Kothifiran seeker.
The stairs were burning, but she mounted them, barely touching their charred surfaces where paint boiled in the heat. Wind-blowing upheld her. Heat lifted her. She could almost fly.
Behind her a step cracked. Jame looked over her shoulder and saw Brier Iron-thorn at the bottom of the stair, one foot on a tread which had broken under her weight. The rushing air stirred her red hair into a fiery aureole about her face as she looked up. Her sleeve was already on fire. She couldn’t live in this inferno, but she wouldn’t retreat without Jame.
Jame turned back. Weight returned to her with the fading of the enchantment and steps crunched underfoot. Heat caught her by the throat. She grabbed the Southron’s arm and hustled her out of the tower.
Both of them were coughing when they reached the cool evening air.
“What in Perimal’s name were you playing at?” demanded Brier as Rue and Mint beat out her flaming sleeve.
“I might ask you the same.”
Jame saw that the militiamen had departed, taking their singed leader with them. Ha. Cowards, the lot of them, when it came to a dose of their own fiery medicine. Meanwhile, Qrink’s family still huddled together on the other side of the street, staring in dismay as their home was reduced to blackened stone and ash.
“Look!” one of them cried, pointing upward.
Near the tower’s summit, a window had been thrown open. Kalan stood in it framed by fire, holding her baby daughter. She looked back at the burning room, then down at the ninety foot drop before her.
“Jump!” some of her relatives cried.
Others shouted, “Don’t!”
Kalan threw her baby out the window.
Brier caught it.
The next moment flames erupted out of the tower’s roof and Kalan was sucked back into their incandescent grip.
The Southron cradled the infant in her arms, staring down at it. “She said to hold its head just so . . .”
It looked merely asleep, warm and rosy from the heat, tiny hands only just beginning to relax, but it was dead.
Qrink eased the body away from Brier and handed it to his womenfolk.
“Brier?” said Jame.
The Kendar turned away.
“Look after her,” Jame told Rue. “It must be almost midnight by now. All of you, your tour of duty is over. Go back to camp. Have a drink. Sleep.”
Rue hesitated, looking dogged. “And you, Ten?”
“I still have an errand to run.”
Paper Crown’s tower was only three blocks from Gaudaric’s. Had the militia already been there?
Jame was alarmed at first to see it also blazing with lights and people moving in front of it. Then someone emerged from the shadows in full armor, leveling a spear at her chest.
“Stand. Who are you?” Then he relaxed. “Oh, Talisman. I didn’t recognize you in that jacket.”
True, she was dressed as a cadet. It was unclear to Jame how many Kothifirans besides the Kencyr priests knew of her dual identity. She hadn’t made a secret of it in Tai-tastigon nor had she here, but people were still apt to see her either as the Knorth Lordan or as the fabled Tastigon thief.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“The prince’s bully boys have been to call, but we showed them off. Before that . . . Well, you should talk to Ean.”
“Not to Gaudaric?”
“He isn’t here. Come on.”
Following him toward the tower, Jame noted that many of Iron Gauntlet’s apprentices were in evidence standing guard, unlike Paper Crown’s. When she mentioned this to her guide, he shrugged.
“Gaudaric opened the tower to our families when the Change first occurred. We’ve taken shelter here ever since, and carried on with our work. Who wants to sit idle?”
An island of stability in a sea of change. If Gaudaric eventually lost his position as grandmaster, it would be through no fault of his own.
Jame wondered, not for the first time, about Graykin. Was he still, somehow, in charge of his fractious guild or was he on the run? If the latter, why hadn’t he sought her out? When she thought about him, an echo returned of anxiety, underlain by a strong streak of stubbornness.
. . . whatever happens, I’m still your sneak, aren’t I?
What had she done to requite such loyalty? Precious little.
Ean waited for her on the tower steps, his time-ravaged face haggard under gray-threaded hair.
“Have you any news?” he asked anxiously.
“About what?”
“Byrne. My son. He was snatched by Ruso’s agents early this evening. Ruso sent word that Father had to come to his tower, alone, and Father went. Armed.”
Jame felt her heart sink. “When was this?”
“About two hours ago. The rest know that the master is gone, but not where or why, otherwise they would be storming Lord Artifice’s tower and Byrne would be dead. Where are you going?”
“To Ruso, of course, but don’t worry: I’ll be careful.”
“As you were in Langadine?”
“More careful, then.”
When she reached it, the tower of Lord Artifice was dark except for its uppermost floor under the cupola dome. She climbed the stair silently. Voices floated down from above. Ever so slowly, she raised her head. Gaudaric leaned panting against a table at one side of the room and Ruso against one opposite him. The former held a sword, the latter an axe that seemed too heavy for him. Both wore full armor. Gaudaric’s reflected his taste for the simple and efficient; Ruso’s was more elaborate with red-trimmed scales and serrated spikes on his shoulders. Steam rose from the collars of both their gorgets and their hair hung down dank with sweat. From that and the disheveled state of the room, it appeared that they had been going at each other furiously for hours and only now had stopped for a much needed rest.