The Fire Children (13 page)

“Can you walk?” Yulla asked. “Only a little farther. I have an idea.”

He opened his diamond-chip eyes and nodded. “I think so.” The illusion of him relaxing broke as he staggered to his feet. Now he reminded her more of Old Moll, testing his balance with every movement. He was walking, though. That was the important thing.

They made it, step by shuffling step, to the stable door. Still no sign of the witch-women or the Wind, which worried Yulla more and more. It wasn’t worth bringing it up, though, not yet. Besides, from the nervous looks Ember kept shooting toward the ends of the alley, he was thinking it, too.

When he saw where she was trying to lead him, he balked. “Yulla, it’s dangerous for you in there. Everything will catch.”

“That’s the point.” She grinned. “They’ll see the light from the stable fire and come looking, but you’ll be long gone when they get here.”

“And once they realize I’m not here, they’ll go back to searching and follow the light that’s moving.”

“That’s the other half of the plan.” She picked up the pitchfork. “I need you to give me some fire again.”

“I don’t understand.” He glanced up and down the alley again. “We have to go. Not in there. Just... away.”

“Ember.” She waited until he was looking at her again, and offered him the kind of smile Aunt Mouse said meant she was Up to Something. Which, of course, she was. “You’ve been helping me all day. I can help you now. I can get us both away from them, but I need you to trust me, and I need you to do as I say.” She wished she could lay a hand on his arm, or pat him on the cheek the way Amma did to Abba when he needed convincing. But she couldn’t, not right now, at least, when he was exhausted from controlling his flames. All she had were words. “Please?”

He sighed like a guttering candle and nodded his defeat.

Inside, the smell of horse and hay intensified. They’d come in through a human-sized entrance that was inset in a much larger, horse-sized one. Across the stable, on the street side, were the massive doors that could open to admit a cart drawn by a two-horse team. A half-dozen stalls lined the space to the left and right, their living inhabitants replaced by wooden simulacra. They were saddled and bridled, ready for the Fire Children to swing up into the seat. Yulla even noticed mounting blocks beside a couple of them—in case, she supposed, the riders were too short to reach the stirrups.

Ember stayed toward the middle of the space, keeping as far from the hay bales and wooden beams of the stalls as he could while Yulla hunted around to see what else might have been left behind for the Fire Children. In the tack room she found a pile of horse blankets tucked away in a corner. Whether they’d been forgotten by the stable’s owner, or left out for the Fire Children, she didn’t know. She said a quick prayer of thanks to Mother Sun anyway, asking a blessing for the stablemaster.

When she saw the still-full water trough, she added another prayer of thanks and blessing on top of the first. “They’re not going to see you at all,” she said to Ember.

She told him her idea, like the Brigand Queen laying out a scheme for Red Fennec.

Y
ULLA COULD TELL
from the way the flames around his eyes burned—low and quick, roiling—that Ember didn’t like the plan. He didn’t like it, but neither did he question it.

They’d found a knife in the tack room, and sawed thick strips off one of the extra horse blankets. Wrapping that around the hay-covered tines of the pitchfork gave Yulla a torch so large she felt almost silly holding it, like a child in a game of Let’s Pretend, with props markedly bigger than their real-life counterparts. Except, there was nothing pretend about what they were about to do.

“I can guarantee it for a quarter of an hour,” said Ember, “maybe a half, if we’re lucky. After that, it’ll eat up what’s there fast.”

“That should be all I need.”

If he noticed the tremor in her voice, he ignored it. “If I were stronger, I could surround
you
with my fire, not just a farm tool. You’d be like one of us. Or like Mother Sun.”

Was it sacrilege, if the words came from one of the Fire Children? Yulla wasn’t sure. Amma would
tut
with disapproval, but she couldn’t help but imagine it: running through the darkened streets of the city, throwing not shadows with every step, but light. She’d run so fast bits of flame would follow behind her like the bright ribbons girls wore in their hair when they danced the
versam
on their sixteenth birthday.

Pretty as the scene was, she forced herself back to reality. “Maybe when you’ve rested,” she said. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

With the butt of the pitchfork’s staff, Yulla fished the woolen horse blankets out from where they’d been soaking in the trough for the last few minutes. Now that they were completely saturated, they must have been ten times as heavy. She set the pitchfork-torch aside and spread the sopping blankets out on the ground, layering them so they’d cover as much of Ember’s body as possible.

“When I open the doors, you turn right and run,” she said. Keep going until you’re out of town, go where I told you, and I’ll come find you as soon as I can. Okay?” He didn’t answer her at first. She paused in her work to make sure he heard, but the prompt of “Well?” she’d prepared died on her tongue.

He was looking at her the way she’d seen Abba with one of the blacksmith’s puzzles, trying to suss out how the loops and bends of metal fit together, how they could unlock with just the right twist. “Why are you doing this? You could be the one running out into the desert, and they wouldn’t come after you, not if they had me to chase after first. You could take some food and hide out until we went away, and I wouldn’t blame you. I’m not arguing!” He held up his hands before she could tell him it sounded like he was doing exactly that. “I only want to know why.”

Yulla shrugged. “Because you asked me to help you. And... I like you. You don’t leave someone behind because you’re scared.” The option had never even occurred to her. “I wouldn’t even leave
Kell
to the witch-women, not on her meanest day.”

Precious seconds ticked by as he regarded at her, but Yulla didn’t break away from his gaze. “I don’t know what to say,” he said.

“Aunt Mouse says ‘thank you’ is always good.”

Ember smiled. “Someday I want to meet your Aunt Mouse. For now, I guess I’ll have to settle for taking her advice. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She forced herself back on task before she could get bogged down in staring at him again. What was she, Kell?

No. No, she was not.

The blankets were as well-arranged as they were going to be. If they’d had more time, she’d have tried sewing them together, but it had been nearly ten minutes since Ember’s flare. Every minute the witch-women
didn’t
come pounding on the door added to Yulla’s certainty they were springing some other kind of trap. It was all right to think that way—smart, even, not to assume they were safe—but she dared not act as though their capture was inevitable.

Yulla might be inclined toward fancy and whim and impulse, but she refused to let herself be ruled by despair.

“All right.” She stood the pitchfork-torch against the trough. “Start lighting things up.”

The timing worked in her head, but she hadn’t thought the barn would go up
quite
so fast. Ember left the spot in the middle where he’d planted himself to keep from spreading the fire too early. Now he headed toward the back, where they’d come in. When he got there, he trailed his hands over the back door, the hay bales, the wide wooden posts, and the slats of the stable doors.

They lit up at the barest touch.

Yulla had heard that the stables hadn’t been burned during the Scorching Days for as long as anyone could remember, not even Old Moll. The structure’s bones were old, then, dry and brittle. They went up so fast it frightened her.
It’s lucky this never happened with the horses inside. They’d never have gotten them out in time.
As the flames raced toward the front of the barn, it was all she could do to hold her own ground while Ember finished his job.

The burning had given him some of his strength back. Even as she watched, his movements became easier, more fluid, back to the way he’d moved when she first saw him by the guard tower.

Smoke filled the air, obscuring her view of the rear of the barn. Ember disappeared into one of the stalls, and a roiling black cloud blotted out even his light. In the back, something creaked and crashed, sending another billow of smoke and sparks and ash.

Yulla ducked to get below the smoke, but not before she’d already sucked in a lungful of it. The coughing fit drove her the rest of the way to her knees. Through smoke-induced tears, she crawled to the edge of the horse trough. Before they’d gotten started, she’d folded Aunt Mouse’s quilt on the diagonal and tied the ends together around her waist like a skirt. Now, she fumbled at the knot, yanked the quilt free, and plunged a corner into the tepid water. She covered her nose and mouth with the wet cloth. It smelled a bit of hay and, she assumed, horse spit, but blessedly she could breathe again. It was good enough.

Where is Ember?

The back half of the stable was ablaze. There might have been an army of Fire Children moving within the flames and she wouldn’t be able to tell.
I can’t stay here much longer.

Yulla dragged the pitchfork and the horse blankets closer to the street-side doors. The blankets left a wet slug trail behind them, but it evaporated rapidly in the heat. Steam rose from the top layer of the blankets themselves. If they dried before Ember came back to her, the plan would be for nothing.

Then the smoke that was threatening to descend on her cleared. She was in the center of a ball of clean air, the grey plumes repelled by Ember. He stood in front of her, and from the way he gaped, she realized how pitiful she must look—soot-covered and disheveled, curled up on the ground with Aunt Mouse’s quilt and clutching the pitchfork handle for dear life.

“Yulla?”

He reached down and grabbed her arm.

She didn’t have time to cringe away, he moved so fast. All she could do was brace for the pain, the awful smell of her own skin burning.

But it didn’t come.

Ember hauled her to her feet. She stared at his hand, still clamped around her upper arm. His touch was warm—any other day, she’d have said it was pleasantly so, but being in a burning barn altered that perspective a bit. Warm, but not searing.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“You’re touching me.” She winced, realizing too late how it sounded.

He let go, but didn’t move away. “I’m feeling better. This is helping me get my control back. Some of it, anyway.” He took the pitchfork from her and held his hand over the top of the torch end. It
whoomphed
to life. “Ready?”

“No.” She gestured at the smoke and flames pushing against his barrier. “Not a lot of choice, though.”

“Me neither.”

They shared terrified grins. It was time to go.

Yulla retied her quilt-skirt and hefted the horse blankets. “Count to twenty after I go, then get out of here. Don’t stop until you’re out of the city. I’ll come find you as soon as I can.”

He held the torch out to one side. “Be careful.”

“You too.” With a grunt, Yulla threw the blankets over Ember’s head. They began hissing and steaming right away, but he’d been right: he had enough control now to keep them from igniting. The burning hair smell was almost worse than the smoke she’d been breathing in, but she couldn’t resist a soft whoop of joy. It was
working
. Yulla took the pitchfork back so he could adjust the way the blankets draped. The handle was warm where he’d held it, but it hadn’t even singed.

Soon enough, only Ember’s eyes peered out from beneath the heavy wool. At his nod, Yulla slid the massive door open wide enough to slip through. She was facing sideways, so she both heard and saw the fire surge. Ember must have extended the area he was keeping safe. The flames roared and clawed and fought to get at the open air, but they hit a barrier and could come no closer. It was like it was pushed up against glass.

“It won’t hold long,” Ember yelled over the din. “GO.”

She scampered through the opening and tore off toward the heart of the city. Frantic glances to either side showed her a street still empty of witch-women. No movement in any windows, not a single shadow out of place with the others around it. Not a lick of wind aside from the rush of air on her face as she flew away from the stable.

This time, quiet didn’t matter. In fact, for Yulla, quiet was
bad.
She slapped her sandals against the stones as hard as she could. Anything that was within the swing of the pitchfork’s handle she hit as she went by: carts, flower boxes, iron railings. She ducked into an alley and set the torch against the wall. It burned cheerily, lighting up the small space and throwing light out into the main street. Yulla peeked out, back the way she’d come.

A gout of flame exploded out from the stable. On its heels came a low
whumph.
The whole street rumbled as beams inside the structure crumbled and its roof caved in. The wave of heat reached Yulla a few seconds later, blowing her hair back off her face and drying the sweat that had broken out on her forehead as she ran.