The Fire Children (12 page)

F
OR A MOMENT
, the air was still. Maybe the Wind was still there, waiting, watching. Or maybe it was gone momentarily, off to report its find to the witch-women. Yulla and Ember didn’t have the time to learn which it was.

“The back door,” Yulla whispered, her lips barely moving. “Into the alley.”

The chair collapsed as Ember stood, sending up a fan of sparks and smoldering bits. One landed on Aunt Mouse’s quilt, but Yulla patted it out before the cotton could catch. Ember darted into the house’s back hallway, heading for the exit Yulla hoped was there; as long as this house was laid out like her own, it would be. She followed along behind him, holding the quilt over her head like a sail to block as much of Ember’s light as she could from anyone who peered down the hall after them.

The hallway was narrow and claustrophobic. Yulla wasn’t very tall, but her outstretched hands nearly brushed the ceiling above and the walls to either side. The space closed in on her in a way the total darkness below never had. Ember’s light should have been a comfort, but instead the juddering shadows that leapt up in his wake made her throat go dry with fear.

If ever Kell spoke of demons again, Yulla could tell her she knew what a
malsheen
would look like. She had to remind herself that there
were
no demon faces peering from the shadows, that their arms weren’t reaching out to snatch at her ankles.

There was a sharp tug on the quilt. Yulla bit back a shriek and
yanked.
She heard the fabric tear, felt it pull free. As she staggered forward, she peeked back, sure she’d see the witch-women close behind, or one of the inky shadows come to life.

A scrap of fabric hung from an exposed nail.
Calmly, now,
she told herself as the ghosts her imagination had conjured loosened their grip. She allowed herself one wild giggle, and pressed on.

Then Ember found the door and they stumbled out into the night. The alley wasn’t terribly wide, though its walls were at least farther apart than the ones they’d just escaped. Even better, above them was open sky, the stars high and bright and blessedly far away.The chill in the air surprised her. Inside, close to Ember, it had felt as hot as midsummer. As Yulla wrapped Aunt Mouse’s quilt around her shoulders once more, she tried to tell whether it had grown cooler in the last few hours. She thought it might have.

“Which way?” asked Ember.

A dozen places came to mind, but Yulla had to discard each and every one: what might have worked for her in a game of hide-and-seek fell apart when she added Ember into the equation. He’d either burn their hiding spot or burn
her,
and the biggest, least flammable spaces she could think of were clear across the town and too close to the witch-women’s tower for her to feel safe.

The crash of breaking pottery echoed down the hallway. Yulla stopped trying to figure out a destination, and thought instead about the maze of alleys that sprawled across Kaladim.
I can keep us moving through here as long as I need to.
They were in the city’s oldest quarter, where their ancestors had built the houses each nearly atop the other. Kell said it was because, when Father Sea still lived, the people rowed skinny-hulled boats through the streets and walked from rooftop to rooftop.

Amma said that was nonsense, but she’d never offered a better story to take its place.

Across the way to the south, two of the buildings split apart enough that they could sidle through. There were a few places where they’d have to cross actual streets, but Yulla thought she could keep it to a minimum. The Wind might be able to move freely wherever it wished to go, but maybe they could lose the witch-women in the twists and turns and narrow places.

“Follow me,” she said, and sprinted for the gap between the houses.

The opening was smaller than she’d thought, though after a few panicked, sideways lunges, she got to where it opened a little wider, enough that she could take a full breath unrestricted. Heat spread along the stone as Ember squeezed along behind her. He was wider than Yulla; for a heart-stopping moment she was sure he’d be trapped and the witch-women would simply have to catch up to them and capture him. It would be all her fault.

Then his glow
deepened.
His fire rolled in on itself, and the dark form beneath the flames shifted from brown to crimson, and crimson to a dark orange. Yulla propelled herself deeper into the passageway as the heat he gave off intensified. Where he touched the walls of the dwellings in front of him and behind, they too began to glow. He pressed his molten hands against the rock, and they sank down into it, as if he were pressing them into wet plaster.

He grew thinner, taller, and flowed through the tight spot.

Flowed, like the cauldrons of liquid iron they poured into molds at the forge.

Yulla wanted to stop and stare, to both make sense of his impossible metamorphosis and to admire it, but pausing for even a second made her face feel like she’d spent too long in the sun. She hurried along ahead of him, getting a better lead so he could slip along more quickly. His brightness blocked her from seeing the other end of the alley; if they were being followed, she couldn’t tell.

Another gap between buildings opened, perpendicular to the one they fled down. It would lead them closer to the center of town, near the market and the Worship Hall, but she wanted to get out of the witch-women’s line of sight as soon as she could. If she had to lead, it meant she couldn’t block out Ember’s light from behind like she’d done in the house.

This alley was wider than the last, enough for a small cart to travel along, though there wouldn’t be more than a handspan to either side. The houses along here had recessed doorways and tall, deep-set windows on the ground floor. The windows were as high as they were to let in as much feeble light as possible; both they and the doors had been designed to give someone walking along a place to duck into should a cart need to get past.

It served Yulla well, too. She motioned Ember into one. He was back to the way he’d looked before, she noted, his form once more cooled to that dark shape beneath the flames. “Can you... can you dim yourself any more than that?”

“I can’t.” A scowl flickered across his features. “I’m sorry. I’ve been keeping the flames low as I can since I found you. And that last alley, it was more than I ought to have tried.”

“Since you... This whole time?” A glance at the sky didn’t tell her just how much time that was. They’d met just before noon, but she couldn’t see Mother Sun’s position here to get a sense of when it was now: This passage ran north to south, and Mother Sun had already drifted out of sight. It couldn’t have been more than an hour or two.

What did it take out of him, to tamp down his heat? She imagined it might be like holding your breath, but Yulla’d never been able to do that for more than a minute at best. Ember had kept at this for much longer. “All right. We’ll think of something else. Stay here.”

He nodded and sagged against the stone archway.

Yulla darted as quickly as she dared back to the start of the alley. She stayed on the balls of her feet, padding along at a skip-hop to make as little noise as possible. The gap between buildings was shadow-filled, the stars directly above providing only a meager bit of light. If she turned around, she’d see Ember’s glow, but where she was seemed just as dark as where they’d been.
Good.

She couldn’t risk a peek around the corner—weak starlight wasn’t
no
starlight, and the last thing she needed was the witch-women seeing her silhouette.

So she turned to the wall, buried her face in her forearm, and closed her eyes. It wasn’t quite the same as being down below, but it was as near as she could get.

With the dark settling in, she felt the cool, rough bricks against her skin, and the chill of the air clearing sweat from the back of her neck. She could smell herself, too, unwashed but not pungent, the remnants of cheese and plum on her breath. The sounds were what she needed, though, so she focused on them.

Close in was her breathing, rough from the brief exertion, and the thump of her heart as its beat returned to normal. From farther away came the calls of night birds and desert animals who’d decided to venture out into the not-quite-day in search of food. What she needed would be somewhere in between. She hardly dared to breathe, straining to hear even the softest sound.

There.

A footstep, far away. The slap of flesh on stone, as if someone had smacked the wall in frustration. Now that she’d found the witch-women, Yulla heard even more: she couldn’t make out words in the murmured conversation, but they sounded upset, angry. More footsteps, and the
shrr
of fabric against brick, but that last ended in a grunt. Either the woman was stuck or she’d retreated.

There were three of them, she thought, maybe four. If they could have made it past that choke point between buildings, they would have by now.

The rush of triumph faded when the Wind went tearing by.

She was already pressed against the stone, but at the new sound, she tried to meld with it. Yulla waited, one breath, two. The nearest alcove was several feet to her right, but she didn’t dare make a run for it. Fear kept her frozen where she was, flat against the brick, pulling back the tiniest bit to peek out at the alley’s entrance.

Soon enough, the Wind returned. It paused as it drew parallel with the alley. Though she couldn’t see the Wind itself, she could track its hesitation by the whirls of sand and grit it set spinning.

This is it,
she thought.
Even if it doesn’t see me, it will see Ember’s light. We’re spotted.
Could the Wind see at all? She had no idea how it had sensed her the first time around. She held still, expecting any second to feel it rip Aunt Mouse’s quilt from her shoulders and buffet her with blows; to hear its mad wailing in her ears as it called to the witch-women.

She didn’t know how long she stood braced for discovery. It felt like hours, but she remembered how no one could agree on the time down below, either, and Aunt Mouse’s warning that time and distance could get distorted when you had no way to get your bearings. So she stood as still as she could, her breath coming in slow shallow gasps. Counting her heartbeats did her no good; she kept losing the tally. The Wind didn’t leave, and Yulla didn’t move.

Finally, after what might have been a year or what might have been an eyeblink, one of the witch-women uttered a sharp phrase. Yulla couldn’t understand the words, but the tone of command in them was unmistakable. The Wind gusted one last time, then went whistling toward its mistresses.

She counted to a hundred, or maybe closer to a hundred and fifty, since at every tiny sound she stopped, strained to identify it, and had to find her place all over again. It wasn’t until she was running through the thirties again that she thought to tap a finger against the wall at each set of ten. When at last the little finger of her left hand struck one hundred, she dared a glance down the alley where she’d left Ember.

It was dark—not the pitch-black of down below, but the dark of a starlit alley on a moonless night, with no Fire Child lurking in an alcove.

He couldn’t have fled; she’d have heard. Or could he be quieter than she knew, and have slipped away down the street, or into the house whose door she’d left him scorching?

Yulla went back that way, doing the same skip-hop again. Softly, barely above a whisper, she called his name.

His answer didn’t come in words. White-hot light flared out from the doorway, so bright she had to shield her eyes. It blazed that way a moment, then—as Yulla abandoned all attempts at quiet and raced towards the source—gradually dimmed back to the golden hearthside glow she’d grown accustomed to in the last few hours.

It was hot and dry as an early summer day around Ember’s alcove, but that heat was dissipating quickly. He was bent double on the step, hands on his knees, breath coming in ragged gasps. He didn’t look up as she skidded to a stop.

“I heard the Wind,” he rasped. “I was afraid it would see me.”

“You said you couldn’t go any dimmer. You’d already overtaxed yourself.”

“Guess I had one last try in me. But when I let it go...” He balled his hands and spread them apart, imitating the flare.

“They’ll have seen that. We have to leave.” It worried her that the Wind hadn’t come rushing back yet, wasn’t whirling around them screaming their location to its mistresses.

Ember nodded, but he didn’t move. “I need a minute.”

“We don’t have one. They could be coming. They have to be.” If this had been Kell, Yulla would have grabbed her by the wrist and started dragging her. But she had no way to do that with Ember, and had to make do with impatient, fearful glances up and down the alley.

If he collapsed now, she wouldn’t be able to carry him. She looked around for anything she could use—an abandoned cart, a forgotten wheelbarrow—but even if she had one, it would get too hot too fast.
If we can’t run, then we’ll have to defend.

A shovel and a pitchfork leaned against the wall deeper into the alley.
What good will they do? I can’t hit the Wind, and I can’t imagine they’ll turn aside spells.
The idea of actually hitting another human being with either made her queasy. “They don’t have to know that,” she muttered.

“Know what?”

“Nothing. Wait here.”

Hay clung to the pitchfork’s tines. As she leaned down to heft it, Yulla caught a strong whiff of manure, and on top of it, the unmistakable scent of horses. She realized then they were behind the stables only a few streets over from her house. She and Kell had come here countless times to pet the horses and offer them oats and carrots and bits of apple from the flats of their palms.

She found the stable’s back door, tried the latch and found it open. Maybe she wouldn’t need to stab anyone with the pitchfork after all.

Ember looked a little better when she returned to him. No longer breathing rapidly, he’d sat down, rested his head against the door and closed his eyes. He might have been a worker taking a break in the waning of the day from his position: one knee up, his arm draped casually over it, the other leg stretched out, other hand idle at his side. He could have been any teenager laying back and listening to music in the market, except for the part where he was made of living flame.