The Book of Fire Read online

  At least, Paia notes wearily, he’s left his entourage in the corridor.

  “Mother Paia,” he says formally, then flounders to a halt. His startled eyes seem to be warning her, not just to behave, which he always does, but of some graver danger. He’s had a shock, she decides, and she’s sure she can guess the source of it. “Mother Paia,” he begins again, “I have come to inform you that you are to be graced by the God’s Decree with a Special Presentation of the Suitors in the Hall of Audiences, first thing tomorrow after the morning Call to Prayer. The God himself will honor us with his Presence.”

  Paia is practiced by now at looking delighted when she isn’t. Certainly Luco can’t believe that her bland and welcoming smile, maintained just now with such effort, reflects her true response to this news. But why make him suffer any further for her own transgressions? “The God honors me indeed.” She tries to draw Luco farther into the room, away from listening ears, by offering him the only chair in the room. But of course, in public, he would never sit down in the presence of the High Priestess. “Did he bring this wonderful news himself?”

  “He just now left me.”

  Does she detect a singeing of Luco’s brows, or of his shining locks of hair? Paia lowers her voice as well as her glance. “Poor Luco. Was he in an awful rage?”

  “He was . . . terrifying.”

  “Yes.” She turns away, to the comfort of her window, and twitches the drapes aside to gaze out in the red dusk. The sun goes down so very late at this time of year, she muses. “Well, Luco. Extremely short notice for you to be organizing such an event. I hope it will not prove too taxing for you and your staff.”

  “What the God wills . . .” Luco replies mechanically.

  She is so used to the fear now, she barely registers it. “What the God wills. Thank you, First Son. I will see you, then, in the morning.”

  Because she has already reconsidered the uses to which she can put the right Suitor, Paia goes to bed charged with purpose and resolve. If this is how the God seeks to punish her, so be it. But now she must charm and soothe him sufficiently to preserve some power of choice in the matter. She falls asleep planning how she will dress, so carefully—for him. She doesn’t care what the Suitors see or think. They will want her anyway, no matter how she presents herself. There is probably no higher goal among the Faithful than the High Priestess’s bed. Paia can only pity them.

  At some point later, she comes suddenly awake. She’s sure she has heard someone call out her name. Lying still and listening, she can almost feel the echoes fade away, like receding ripples in the darkness. But she hears nothing.

  She reaches under her pillows for the God’s little gun, then lets it lie there. The call—probably not a call at all, just the tail of a forgotten dream—it seemed to her like a summons. But not the God’s familiar and irresistible command. A softer appeal. Almost an invitation. Paia holds the vanished moment in her memory, probing it carefully. The voice was like a breath of wind, and it came wrapped in blue. In blue.

  In the darkness of her bed, Paia smiles. How absurd dreams often are.

  But the notion of summoning now takes up residence in her brain, and will not be ignored. A True Recipe for Raising Dragons. Fully awake until her adrenaline rush subsides, she stretches out long in her cool and silken sheets and tries to imagine how she would accomplish such a thing.

  When the God calls her, it’s a compulsion. She cannot deny, only answer. She can’t for a moment consider compelling the God in return. But perhaps something else might bring him. If she was in danger, or in need, and if there was no one around to aid her, would he hear her then, as she hears him, like a ringing in her soul? Or would he come if she . . . begged him?

  She contemplates the voice that just woke her, how it vibrated through the air like something physical, not just a sound but a force. Then her own summons should be like that, a line of force reaching out to the God where he lies sleeping in the heated perpetual night of his Sanctum. Let it fasten itself to him, twining like a young vine, up around his shining ivory claw, to pull itself taut, taut with her imperative.

  The darkness around her shudders. Like tinder bursting into flame, he appears in an explosion of light, bellowing as he materializes, as if unable to contain his fury but even less able, within the bounds of this smaller room, to express it satisfactorily.

  “What are you doing?” He is glowing like blown embers. “Are you mad? What are you doing?”

  Paia is too stunned to produce sound, never mind a coherent word. She has done it. She called him, and he came. But he is not happy about it.

  “Ignorant woman! You meddle with forces you know nothing of!”

  If she could ever believe that he slept in his man-form, she’d swear he’s been dragged straight out of a very human bed. His hair is wild and the clothing he’s snatched at for this hasty manifestation is disheveled and minimal. His chest is bare past his navel and glitters with hard, golden scales, as if he couldn’t be bothered to effect a full transformation.

  Nevertheless, she is thrilled by her success. The first words she manages are not an apology. “If I am ignorant, my lord, it is you who have kept me that way.”

  “Yes! For your own good! And mine, which is all that matters!” He is moving faster than any human could, practically spinning in outraged frustration. “How dare you summon me? HOW DARE YOU? I am the God here! What are you thinking? With your clumsiness, they’ll hear you for sure! You’ll give us away entirely!”

  “Hear what?” Paia remembers this implication from before, that she is somehow a danger to him. “Hear my thoughts?”

  “Well, I do!” He whirls past her, and heat settles around her like a toxic cloud. “Do I not?”

  “But . . .” Paia knows she’s meant to cower, but she’s too amazed and curious. “Who are ‘they’?”

  “The enemy, foolish woman! Mine. Yours. Those who wish to bring an end to us and to all we’ve made here. And you, with your childish games, your stupid, clumsy experimenting, are going to help them do it!”

  “But I said nothing! I only thought . . .”

  “Idiot! Thought is the language of my enemies!”

  “How am I supposed to know that?” Suddenly she’s on her feet in the middle of the bed, yelling at him. Yelling at the God. Paia hardly recognizes herself. “First it was the notes, then you suspected my paintings! How can I know what to do if you never tell me anything? How can I learn to help, when you call me a pawn and treat me like one?”

  He halts his wild gyrations as if a switch has been pulled. He stares at her. His hair swirls around him with a restless mind of its own. “What gives you the deluded idea that I need your help?”

  “You do!” Now that he’s still, she sees there is even stubble darkening his jaw. “Look at yourself! What kind of a god are you? You’re a mess!”

  “This? This?” He scoffs, yet flicks a glance at the sliver of window, as if seeking his reflection in it. “This is not me! This is a mere simu . . .”

  “It is your state of mind made manifest! And it tells me you need all the help you can get!” She’s appalled that she’s said it, for appearances mean so much to him, but once she has, she knows it’s true. The shapeless anxiety she’d felt for him just before his tantrum in the tower begins to take on substance. She begins to believe in these enemies. She begins to sense them herself. And having hurled insults at him without immediate repercussion brings a kind of calm. In sudden earnestness, Paia sinks to her knees among the bundled bedclothes, knowing finally what she really needs to say to him. She brings her palms together in a Temple gesture of supplication. “My lord Fire. Why must you insist that fear is the only way to rule? Let me be what I am meant to be to you, what I am destined to be. Let me grow. Let me use the gifts I have to work against these enemies that plague you. Let me love you and serve you in every way I am able to.”

  The God’s hands are in his hair, taming its impatient life, raking it into submission. His eyes are like bright c
ontemptuous suns. “Better if you had stayed a pliant nestling! How weak and tragic to be tied to the progress of years!”

  “Because I am human, yes, but who better to go out into the world and be your voice among humans?”

  “I am my own voice, as you can see. And I have other, more compliant human voices working for me already, here and in places you know nothing of!”

  “Luco. Loyal Son Luco. Who lives in terror of you, like every other human . . . except me. Luco speaks only of duty and obedience. Who will go to the Faithful and speak for you of love?”

  “Love?” He spits it out like an obscenity. “I need their service, their devotion! I have no need of their love!”

  “But you do, my lord! So that when your enemies arrive, the Faithful will rise for you rather than against you.”

  “They wouldn’t dare!”

  “Why not be as sure of their love as you are of their terror?”

  “How argumentative you have become, my priestess!” But the faintest shadow dims his glare, and like the sun setting behind the mountains, he decides to end his tantrum, as if it no longer served his purposes. He comes to stand at the foot of the bed, his arms neatly folded, his garments more decorously draped. “You have some scheme in mind already.”

  Paia smiles. “How clever my lord is.” He drinks in the flattery more from need and habit than from belief. Flirting is a game he’s always played to put her ill at ease, but it can work both ways, she sees that now. “My scheme is simple. I preach your virtues each day in the Temple. Let me go out among the Faithful and preach to them in their villages, on their own ground.” She settles gracefully back on her heels, kneeling like a child before him. “When my father was alive, I loved and feared him both, as I do you now. If your Faithful only fear you, my lord Fire, it is not true devotion. Let me change that. Let me be your ambassador of love.”

  Maybe her preaching skills have improved. Like a merchant counting up potential sales, the God looks intrigued. “When?”

  “Tomorrow. The next day. Whenever Luco can arrange it.”

  “In such a hurry to race out from under my protecting wing, my priestess? A trip outside is a dangerous undertaking. Have you any real idea what it means when I say that the rule of law ends at the Temple Gate?” He regards her with half-lidded eyes. “If I allow it, it will seem that I care little for your safety.”

  “Well, my lord, if I am the thorn in your side that you claim me to be, then you will be glad to be rid of me. And I can be on the lookout for your enemies.” He is so immediately and obviously torn by this suggestion that Paia almost laughs. The Ambivalent God. Perhaps if she does get into trouble out there, he will not come winging to her rescue. She has often expected to die by his hand, but has never for a moment thought he would not protect her from dangers other than himself. A terrifying yet exhilarating possibility, ripe with implications of true freedom. “Then I can go?”

  He nods, the faintest motion of his gilded head.

  “And we can cancel the Suitors for tomorrow?”

  An even fainter nod.

  “Oh, wonderful! You are the wisdom of the ages, my lord! You are the beginning and the end!” Paia stretches out in front of him, as sensuously as a cat, heady with victory and her new sense of power. “Perhaps on my Visitation I will come across a proper Suitor, my lord. One that pleases us both.” She leans forward and murmurs, “You can watch.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Dinner in Blind Rachel’s camp was a disorganized and communal event, held at sunset around the cooking hearths clustered in the center of the big dirt lawn. There was more food in the cook pots than Erde expected, given the lifeless countryside and the lack of visible farmsteads. Provisions were shared, but she could deduce no agreed upon plan to the preparation of them. Everyone—perhaps thirty or forty adults and a few children, surprisingly few—jostled from hearth to hearth with their tin bowls and cups, chatting, tasting, eating what was ready to eat, and encouraging the progress of whatever still had a while to go.

  No formal hospitality was offered to the guests, nothing more than “here’s food, take a seat.” But Stoksie took pains to borrow bowls and implements for them, then urged them into the crowds at the cook fires to claim portions of stewed rabbit and ash-roasted roots and crisp chunks of fresh bread. When he’d found them space to sit, away from the heat of the fires and where no dogs and chickens were prowling, he nodded happily and wandered off, food in hand.

  With the sun at last sinking between the trees, the worst of the heat was easing off. But Erde envied the men their bath. Both of them looked clean and refreshed. Baron Köthen’s hair was still wet, slicked back with his fingers like a young boy’s. She found it hard not to gaze at him stupidly, so instead studied her bowl and its contents, pondering the perilous beauty of men. For a while, they all ate in silence, finally willing to admit how hungry they’d been. She watched N’Doch for clues about the safety of the food, about how to behave. She saw how he sniffed at each edible, when no one was looking, then tasted it cautiously before stuffing it in his mouth. Then he emptied half his bowl before slowing down enough to report on his adventures in the pool.

  “Tinkers?” Erde thought it a curious thing for these people to call themselves, since it seemed obvious that no one here was manufacturing anything.

  “Meant ‘gypsies’ more, in my time. The crews each claim a basic territory, but they move around a lot, in and out of each other’s turf, making trade. That’s why Stoksie didn’t put an arrow through us first thing. That and the fact that we look like we got something to offer. Like he says, healthy.” N’Doch tore off a fist-sized hunk of bread. “Good food.”

  “Camp food,” said Köthen.

  “Hey, you didn’t have to kill it, and you didn’t have to cook it. Don’t complain.” N’Doch mopped up pink juice, then waved the dripping bread in an airy circle. “This here’s Blind Rachel’s base, the only place they got anything permanent. They keep it secret from everyone but the other Tinker crews. When I got down to trade right off, it was sorta like giving the Tinker password. Pretty good, huh?”

  “Lucky,” Köthen muttered.

  “Nah.” N’Doch grinned. “Good instincts, man. See why you gotta keep me around? Anyway, these folk aren’t fighters, they’re businessmen.” He circled the bread once more around the clearing. “But this . . . this they’d fight to keep.”

  “Who would try to take it from them?” Erde asked.

  “Look around you, girl! Anyone would take it who could, ’cept another Tinker. They got an agreement.”

  “For the water, milady, for the water.” Köthen was now only picking at his stew.

  N’Doch nodded, his mouth full of bread. “They say there’s not as much of it as there used to be, but it’s still enough to fight over, when there’s no other water around.” He gestured at Köthen’s bowl. “You better eat up, man, or somebody else’ll eat it for you.”

  “Yourself, for instance?”

  “Mebbe.”

  Erde saw that a further adjustment had occurred between them. The baron now seemed to find sour amusement in N’Doch’s needling. “But why haven’t we seen farms? Are there towns or villages left anywhere?”

  N’Doch swallowed so that he wouldn’t choke. “In the valleys, or down on the flats. Wherever there’s still some bit of drinkable water.”

  “None of it to compare with the purity of Blind Rachel. Or so we are told.” Köthen rested his bowl on one knee, with what seemed like genuine interest. “Nonetheless, the food staples are grown in the villages. The Tinkers keep livestock and limited kitchen gardens, but they are too nomadic to be reliable farmers. The craftsmen as well live in the villages.”

  “Yeah, and the Tinker crews move all the food and goods up and down between all these strung-out villages. The villages don’t travel: too busy defending what they got. So the Tinkers are the transport system.” N’Doch eyed Köthen’s food. “So, you gonna eat it or not?”

  “Off me, whelp!
I’ll eat in my own time!”

  Erde blotted her lips delicately with the hem of her sleeve. “You discovered all this information while bathing?”

  N’Doch swiveled a huge grin on her, his eyes and teeth bright in the growing darkness. “You’d be amazed how friendly people can be when you get yourselves naked together!”

  Were it not for the baron’s quiet snort, Erde might have been able to fight down her blush. Not that they would notice in the dim light, but she felt it herself, as a brand of her increasingly tiresome innocence. It really was time, she decided, to learn how to conceal her feelings, rather than perpetually wearing them on her sleeve for all to see and mock at. Or to learn to make a performance of them, as N’Doch did. She thought the former more likely, in her case.

  “No love lost between these people and the villages,” Köthen observed as solemnly as if he’d never cracked a smile.

  “Yeah. Those flatlanders sound like a nasty bunch. ’Course, they got a hard life, but that’s no excuse. Like, a Tinker’d never marry out. Well, I’m not sure they get married at all, but you know what I mean. Anyway, we were talking to this guy Luther Somebody. He says there’s some villages they won’t even go to. Some sort of religious fanatics who think everybody’s got to agree with them.”

  “Another holy war?” Erde had hoped the Future would be done with such things.

  “We were just getting into that when Bulldog Brenda decided we were taking up too much pool time.”

  Köthen speared a bit of rabbit meat out of a puddle of gravy. “There are factions within the camp as well as outside of it.”