03] ES) Firestorm (6 page)

“They are trying to bring down our queen. Brand believes it is one of the Enders who is setting this up.”

Rolling the cloth in my hands, I pressed it between my knuckles and scrubbed at the stain I’d seen. The water was hot to the point of turning my skin bright pink, and I dunked the shirt into it several times. The memory I’d seen as we Traveled to the Pit was fresh in my mind. But I couldn’t just spit out I’d seen the traitor in action.

“I think he’s probably right. It would make sense from the angle of getting close to her. Who would benefit from her being killed? Her oldest son?” The answer was obvious to me, Fiametta’s son, Flint, would be the heir, no doubt. With her out of the way, he would rule. Open and shut case, why did they need me?

Smoke shook her head. “While he might try to rule, our family has always been led by a test of strength. Fiametta was an Ender when the old queen died. A series of games and challenges were set up by the old queen, and those who wanted to rule had to survive. Fiametta was the last one standing.” She paused and splashed the shirt she was washing deep into the water, swirling the ash out of it. “Her son is weak in his power, and in his head. He is too caught up in his own vanity to be of any use to anyone. He knows he will never rule.”

She offered me one of the flat rocks and I used it to pound a pair of pants.

There was still something I didn’t understand. “What has happened to make you think there is a traitor, though?”

Smoke’s head lowered. “The lava flows. They are doing strange things, burning people when they shouldn’t. Nothing serious, but you have to understand, Terraling, we
don’t burn.
The lava, fire, it is our element. It is our home. And it is turning on us. Fiametta says she has it under control, but Brand has seen her battle the lava. Seen her buckled under its power and close off whole sections of the Pit because she can’t stem the flow. And again, there are strange burns. Always it happens around the Pit, as though that is the epicenter.”

Peta sat in the now empty basket, her eye peering at me over the edge. “There is more. Something with the night bells has shifted. People are sleeping longer, and are harder to wake up. I have seen that, too.”

I opened my mouth to ask her what she meant by that. What did bells have to do with sleep?

Without warning, the ground under my knees heaved upward, throwing me forward, head first into the steaming river. The water tumbled me like the clothes we’d been cleaning, driving me to the bottom of the river where the water was cooler and I wished I had my hooked earring that allowed me to breathe water as if it were air. But I’d lost that in the Deep.

Slowly I was pushed downstream, the rocks at the bottom seemed to hold me to the streambed. No, that
was
what was happening. The rocks were piling on my legs and torso, keeping me under the water; drowning me even as the water shoved me closer to the intersection where the lava flow met the river.

Worm shit didn’t begin to describe the trouble I was in. I clawed at the river bottom, digging my heels in to stop my forward momentum. Rocks flipped up and crashed onto me, smashing me in the head, chest and stomach, knocking the wind out of me. I fought not to breathe in the water, to hold what was left of my air as my lungs burned.

I flailed, fighting with everything I had, but the more I fought, the more the earth itself tried to kill me.

Wait. The earth wasn’t trying to kill me. A
Terraling
was. Anger snapped through me, allowing me to grab hold of the power of the earth. I pushed it through the rocks, breaking them into sand. With the weight removed, the water slung my body toward the lava flow. Around me, the water heated with each second. I swam hard against the current as I pushed off the bottom.

Breaking through the surface, I gasped in a breath and dared a look behind me. The steady glow of lava and the steaming hiss of the river as it met its brother were far too close.

In the distance, Smoke ran toward me, but she wouldn’t make it in time, and I would burn up in a matter of seconds. Would Fiametta let Ash go when I died? I hoped so.

“Dirt Girl, swim to the edge and don’t dawdle.” Peta snapped me out of my state of near death musing.

I swam toward the shoreline, and was losing more ground to the river, but I knew Peta was right. This was my only chance. She was in her snow leopard form, keeping pace with me on the edge of the riverbank, her round ears pinned back and her eyes narrowed against the steam. The water temperature approached the boiling point. I was slowly cooking, my skin tingling with the near scalding water. I slipped below the water. Peta’s green eyes locked on mine.

“I’m sorry,” she said. I was dying and she felt bad. Bet I was her shortest lived charge. I wanted to tell her it was okay, that I wasn’t really hurting. As a way to die, apparently boiling alive wasn’t all that bad. I might have said something along those lines to her, but I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t feel much of anything.

A fierce, sharp pain sliced into my right hand and a tugging sensation pulled on me. Someone hoisted me out of the water. The pain in my hand eased and then replaced by an even deeper pain in the same place. Like blunted knives driven between the bones in my hand while crunching down on them with a tremendous force.

I screamed then realized Peta had dragged me out of the water at the last second, first with her claws, and then her teeth. I lay on my back staring at the cavern ceiling, noticing all the light tubes pointed at us, making it daylight deep with the mountain.

“Dirt Girl. If you decide to go swimming, perhaps a less dangerous place would be good, eh?” Peta snapped at me as she paced by my head. “Is it not enough everyone thinks I’m bad luck? To lose you on the first day I’m assigned to you would be the end of my reputation completely. How could I ever show my face again?”

I reached to her with my good hand. “Thanks for saving me. That’s three times now. You must like me.”

She snorted. “Why did you dive in?”

Easing myself into a sitting position, I put a hand to my head. “I didn’t. Someone pushed me.”

“No one pushed you. I was right there,” she snapped at me again with her words and her teeth.

“A Terraling pushed me, using the ground to unbalance me.” I backed away from the river, not wanting a repeat. “And they tried to hold me to the bottom of the river.”

Peta stopped pacing. “One of your own?”

I nodded. “You aren’t the only bad luck around here, Peta. I’m not well liked within my own family or the Pit.”

“Wonderful,” she muttered, her body shimmering lightly as she shifted to her housecat form.

My whole body tingled from the heated water, but slowly the discomfort faded, and my skin went from a brilliant shade of pink to its natural tones. Healing as an elemental was usually fast, but I didn’t think this was all on me, not when my hand that Peta had bitten was stitching itself back together.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m letting you draw on me. That is what elementals do; they allow their charges to be stronger, faster, and heal at a speed that keeps them alive. Or is supposed to, anyway.”

I frowned. “Well, stop it. I don’t want to draw from you.”

She frowned at me. “Too good to draw from a cat?”

There wasn’t a chance to answer her as Smoke reached us, out of breath. “Why in the world did you jump into the river?”

Peta shook her head slightly and I lowered mine as I cradled my clawed and bitten hand. “I didn’t mean to, I stood and then stumbled forward. I’m a klutz, always tripping on things.”

I dared a look up. Smoke wasn’t buying it, as she placed her hands on her hips. “Did you make eye contact with her?”

I blinked several times as I tried to process who she meant. “Her?”

“The smaller specter. Did you make eye contact with her?”

Shivering, my body cold after being in the superheated water, I nodded. “I did.”

“Well, that explains it, then.” Smoke held a hand out to me as if the conversation and what had happened was all over. And maybe for her it was.

For me though, her words started a chain reaction in my head. The specter seemed familiar to me, and then a Terraling tried to kill me. Cassava was still in hiding after her failed attempt at taking the throne at the Rim, but could she be here, looking for revenge? Or maybe looking for a way to convince Fiametta to help her? They
were
friends, I knew that, so Cassava being in the Pit in hiding was more than plausible.

Standing, I followed Smoke to the laundry and helped her pile it into the basket.

“That is enough excitement for one day,” Smoke said.

Peta snorted. “It’s not over yet.”

Smoke’s body stiffened. “Ah, mother goddess, this is not good.”

I looked over her to several women who strode toward us. The one in the lead was very pregnant and had dried tear tracks streaking her cheeks.

My familiar leapt to my shoulder. “That is the wife of one of the Enders you killed.”

Heart sinking to my feet, I lowered the basket. I’d caused this pain, no matter the reason behind it.

I let out a slow breath. “Whatever comes of this, I will take.”

moke tried to stop them, but was pushed aside by the woman in front. “Out of our way, half-breed freak.” Smoke stumbled, going to her knees in the soft ash at the edge of the bank, but she wasn’t hurt.

I held my ground as the pregnant woman reached me. Her eyes were bloodshot with tears, the pale yellow irises that of a weak flame. It looked as though she’d shorn her hair herself, and I vaguely recalled something Salamanders did when they were grieving.

“You are the Terraling who stabbed my mate?” The words bubbled out of her alongside more tears.

I nodded. “I am.”

Her slap was hard, and snapped my head to the side. A second and third slap followed close on its heels, my still aching skin screaming to back away. But I didn’t move. She collapsed forward, surprising me. I caught her and lowered her to the ground as her sobs shook her unwieldy frame. Her hands dug into my arms as she clung to me, her grief overtaking her.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, the memory of my own losses allowing me to understand how deep the pain would go. How it burrowed into your bones and stole a piece of you that you didn’t even know existed. A piece that once gone could never be replaced, but only seen from a distance as other people lived their lives without fear of loss because they’d never experienced it.

“I hate you,” she whispered, an echo of my words so many years ago to Cassava.

“I know,” I said. Her eyes lifted to mine, spilling with tears and her friends drew her away, their eyes as condemning as any executioners. They helped her stand as she babbled, her words sounding as if she’d said them hundreds of times.

“I saw him in the healer’s rooms, I saw him, and he smiled at me and he was fine. They stitched him up, the wound in his side wasn’t all that bad. They said he’d be fine, out in the morning. Ready to come home.” Her breath hitched and her friends cooed that it was all right. They knew all she said was true. “But they were wrong, the healers were wrong. He wasn’t all right. In the morning, he was dead, his wound open as if he’d been stabbed again, the stitches ripped, blood everywhere. Goddess, the blood!” She would have fallen if her friends hadn’t had their hands on her.