Fire Study - Study 03 - Мария Снайдер

He shook his head. “You wouldn’t have agreed anyway.”

“To what?”

“To letting Leif get caught and using your mental connection to him to find out what’s going on in the Keep. But now you’re mad at him—”

“No. He would be killed. I’m not that angry with him.” Besides, if I used my magic anywhere near the Citadel, all the preparation in the world wouldn’t be able to help me.

“She’s quick and fast, but she can’t get past,” Janco sang as he blocked my rib strikes.

“You need to work on your rhymes. Either that, or I’m getting better.” I faked a temple strike and swept his feet out from under him. Before I could press my advantage, he rolled away and regained his feet.

“You hesitated,” Ari said from the sidelines. “Too busy talking.”

I renewed my attack and Janco countered with ease. We fought in the soldier’s training yard, which had been filled with the sounds of practice until Janco and I started this match. We had attracted quite a crowd.

“Can’t talk and fight. So much for being polite.” Janco spun his bow. His weapon blurred.

I backed up and blocked the flurry of hits, keeping pace with his attack until he changed the rhythm. I missed a connection. The air exploded out of my lungs as Janco landed a solid blow to my solar plexus. I bent over, coughing and gasping for breath.

“Funny,” Janco said. He smoothed his goatee with a hand. “You’re usually not this easy to beat. Have I succeeded in hiding my thoughts?”

Once I regained my composure and straightened, he smiled sweetly at me. The last time we had fought in Sitia, he had found out about my zone of concentration, a semimagical state allowing me to notice my opponent’s intentions when I sparred with them. This time I had tried to fight him without setting my mind into that zone.

“No. You’re still self-centered and overly cocky,” I said.

“They’re fighting words.”

“Do you need more time to rest? Now you’re management, you probably need to expend extra energy moving that paunch.”

He swept his bow toward my legs in response and we engaged in another match. I lost again, but kept challenging him until we were both sweat soaked and exhausted.

“Your fighting improved as the matches went on,” Ari said. “But it wasn’t your best.” He looked at me as if waiting for an explanation.

I shrugged. “I was trying something different.”

“It’s not working. Better go back to your old style.”

“I like her new style.” Janco piped in. “It’s good for my ego.”

Ari frowned and crossed his massive arms over his chest.

“Life or death, Ari, and I’d go back to using all my tricks. Don’t worry.”

He seemed mollified, and I hadn’t lied. When push came to shove, I knew I would fall back on using my magic. Another problem. Magic made me lazy and when I encountered a bad situation, I reached for it without thought. I needed to improve my other skills, because magic wouldn’t help me against the Fire Warper.

I changed the subject and asked my friends about their new jobs. Janco regaled me with the story of their battle against Valek. Every time Ari shook his head, I knew Janco had exaggerated a detail.

“What is it like being second in command of Ixia’s intelligence network?” I asked.

“I don’t like all this sneaking around,” Ari said. “There’s a lot more going on in Ixia than I thought. And there’s so much to do. Valek is the king of delegating.”

“I’m getting to use my lock-picking skills.” Janco grinned. Pure mischievousness danced in his eyes. “And the information we’ve discovered. Did you know General Dinno has—”

“Janco,” Ari warned. “We enjoy the work. It’s just not what we had expected.”

“Nothing is,” I said.

My bones ached with fatigue. I waved goodbye to Ari and Janco and headed toward the baths. Before joining my friends in the training yard, I had retrieved my pack and stashed it in the changing room. After a long soak, I dried and dressed in my adviser’s uniform in preparation for the meeting with Porter. I rationalized I would draw less attention wearing a uniform than my Sitian clothes.

I cut a hole in the pant’s pocket and strapped my switchblade to my right thigh. Not wanting to show up armed with my bow, I felt it prudent to have a knife on me just in case. Braiding my hair into one long braid, I let it hang between my shoulder blades.

Although my stomach grumbled with hunger, Porter had instructed me to come during dinner. His timing made sense, as most of the castle’s inhabitants would be busy either serving dinner or eating it. And Castletown should be relatively quiet.

I stopped beside the pasture on my way out, checking to see if anyone followed me. A few servants hustled between buildings, but no one paid me any attention. The cold hung in the air as if waiting for a breeze. I fed Kiki and the other horses some apples.

Smells? I asked Kiki.

Big snow.

When?

Half moon.

Three days. Valek and I would need to leave sooner than planned.

Kiki come?

Of course, and Garnet, too.

She sighed with contentment as I scratched behind her ears. When I felt certain no one watched me, I headed toward the south gate. I joined in with a group of town residents returning home for dinner. With my Ixian wool cloak covering my adviser’s uniform, I blended right in. My group hurried over the grass field surrounding the walls. The Commander had ordered all buildings within a quarter mile of the castle be destroyed when he had gained power. He also renamed Jewels-town, named in honor of the former Queen Jewel to the rather unoriginal Castletown.

Once we reached the edge of town, the group dispersed as the others headed for their homes. The symmetry of the town with its neat rows of wooden buildings conflicted with the asymmetrical style of the castle complex. The logical array of businesses interspersed among residences made navigating the town easier. Each district had a name matching the merchandise sold there. Peach Alley would be located in the Garden District.

A few townspeople bustled about, all intent on some errand. I walked as if I had a purpose so I didn’t attract unwanted attention from the town’s guards, who watched the streets.

The colors of the buildings thinned toward gray as the sun set. My perceptions shifted, and I felt as if I had entered into a colorless shadow world. The buildings transformed into a watery representation of a town populated with ghosts.

I stumbled over some unseen curb and snapped back to the real world. Dismissing the strange spell, I rationalized hunger as the culprit. I picked up my pace, determined to find the right address before the lamplighters came out. Peach Lane seemed devoid of life, and only when I went around to the back alley did I see signs of habitation.

A glow of firelight came from number forty-three. Keeping to the shadows, I approached the back door. I pulled a thread of magic and scanned the area. Inside the house I felt Porter waiting with two young girls. They were nervous about being found, but I didn’t sense any duplicity.

I paused as the realization of how much I depended on my magic dawned on me. Not only with searching for attackers, but with Kiki, too. Could I completely stop using my magic? It would be much harder than I thought.

The door opened right after my light tap, as if Porter had been hovering near it.

He pulled me into the room and closed it behind me.

“Did anyone see you?” he asked.

“No.” I looked around the room. Small and tidy, the sitting area had a couch, a chair and three dogs getting nervous attention from the girls. The girls perched on the edge of the couch with their backs straight. They wore students’ uniforms, which consisted of a simple jumper made of red linen. White-faced, their gazes jumped between Porter and me.

“You said I could help you?” I asked.

“We’re taking a big chance trusting you.” Porter picked up a half-chewed roll of rawhide from the floor. He clutched the dog’s treat in his hands as he stared at me. “You must promise not to tell Valek or anyone else about all this.”

“I can’t promise until I hear what ‘all this’ is.”

The rawhide popped and cracked in Porter’s hands. He glanced at the girls and sighed. His wide shoulders drooped with the release of his tension, and he gestured to the empty chair. “Have a seat. This is going to take a while.”

As soon as I sat down, one of the dogs came over and put his head in my lap. Peering at me from between his gray shaggy hairs, he pleaded for attention. I stroked his smooth head and scratched behind his ears. The dog’s tail thumped on the floor. The smell of wet dog and wood smoke mixed into a stuffy odor.

Porter tapped the roll on his leg as he talked. “I’ve set up a network of people throughout Ixia to help me in smuggling children out of the country.”

I leaned forward in alarm, thinking about Mogkan’s kidnapping ring and how he had taken children from Sitia to Ixia to abuse them for his own purposes. “Children?”

“They seem like children to me.” Porter gave the two girls a grandfatherly smile. “Adolescents who have just discovered their magical powers.” He pointed to the couch. “Young people like Liv and Kieran. I’ve been helping them to escape to Sitia before their powers are known to others. But I believe something has gone wrong.”

“What?” I prompted when Porter appeared to be lost in his own thoughts.

“I was in MD-7 last month. General Rasmussen has a nice wolfhound I wanted to breed with my bitch. While there, one of my contacts who works in the general’s stables told me the last person I sent through the network never arrived. And two others he had sent on never made it to the border contact. They have all disappeared.”

My stomach twisted around my heart. “Do you think Valek has killed them?”

“I don’t know and I can’t risk asking around. If my network has been compromised then I won’t be able to send Liv and Kieran. Eventually they’ll get reported.”

I hadn’t thought it possible, but the girls’ faces turned whiter. Considering Porter’s story, I said, “Tell me how your network operates.”

“I have four contacts from here to the border. A few people know about my underground efforts and they’ll send their son or daughter to me as an apprentice. The Commander gives me complete management of his kennel and no one pays too much attention to my students. They come and go as part of their animal husbandry training. It’s risky, being this close to Valek, but then I usually know where he is and can send my charges when he’s gone on business.” Porter paced. “It’s too risky to have a guide with them, so I instruct the person how to find the first contact and then he sends them on until they get to the border contact, who takes them into Sitia. They have transfer papers with them if they’re stopped by the guards. If they had gotten caught, I would have been arrested by now.” His erratic movements showed his frustration.

“How can I help?”

He stopped. “I wanted you to go along with Liv, and maybe find out what’s happening to my charges. With that adviser’s uniform you can go anywhere in Ixia without permission.”