Dragon's Mage (An Advent Mage Novel), The - Raconteur, Honor (30 page)

Smart. I’m glad she’d thought to ask the question of a person who knew the building well. I waved her up and we hit the stairs, climbing two flights as quickly as we could. As we ran, I asked, “Did you see Kaya outside?”

“I did. She’s helping to keep the people back and away from the building.” Mari’s voice carried a timber of amusement as she added dryly, “For some strange reason, no one’s willing to argue with her about getting a better view.”

“Really? How strange,” I responded in the same tone.

“She’s really not happy with you. You know that, right?”

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked in exasperation. Nearly to the fourth floor, now. “She can’t even fit through the doors, much less the hallways!”

“Well, I know that, and you know that, but she doesn’t see a problem with punching a hole through the wall to get to you.”

“Errr…that’d be bad.”

“Try convincing her of that.”

Just as glad I didn’t have to. And I hoped it stayed that way. I paused at the top of the stairs and stretched my senses as much as I could. Nothing. I blew out an exasperated breath. “I’m just not good at sensing heat.”

“So nothing up here?”

“No, there could be, and it’s just too small for me to sense right now.” Curse it.

Mari looked around us for a moment. The owner had been dead on in describing it as just storage as props. Once you got past the glamour of the stairs, the place had nothing but open rooms filled with all sorts of things from scenery to a room filled with wigs. Most of the doors to the rooms stood open, so apparently they didn’t have problems with people coming here when they shouldn’t. Actually, the lax security might be how the arsonist moved so freely through this building.

“You take the left, I take the right?” she offered.

Divide and conquer? “Sounds good.”

We split up and started ducking into the rooms, just far enough to see if any fires had been started. I must have checked six rooms before I heard Mari’s frantic scream, “KRYS!”

Black magic, what now?! I spun on my heels and tore out of the room, racing to get to her. It took a minute, as she had gone down a side hallway, but I found her standing in front of a doorway and frantically pointing inside. “Back corner, back corner!”

I skidded to a stop in front of the doorway. Indeed, in the very back corner, a small arc of fire blazed along the middle of the floor. It barely registered for me even now, the flame was so small, and I put it out with nothing more than a split second of concentration.

“He had to have been here recently, the fire didn’t have a chance to spread.”

Mari growled in agreement. “Is it safe to assume he’s only done this once on every floor? Can we focus on just finding him?”

“I think we have to. Let’s start looking.”

Chapter Twenty-one: Trickett

It was all well and good to say that, but we weren’t that lucky.

In theory, anyone that didn’t have a firefighter’s gear on didn’t belong in the building, so it should have been easy to find him. But we found a few staff members that were inside and frantically rescuing precious belongings. One or two curious newspapermen had snuck in as well. Mari and I were diverted from our chase completely when we got a report that another fire had been started on the third floor of the hotel. But by the time I made it over there, the firemen had managed to put it out with only minimum damage to the room.

We spent several hours checking every inch of that building but didn’t find anything else or anyone else suspicious. Fed up, tired, hungry and more than a little angry at the whole situation, I ended up on the last step of the main floor, and just sat there hunched over for several minutes.

When I caught that arsonist, I was going to strangle him!

Mari dropped down next to me, close enough so that she could gently jostle my shoulder with hers. “Don’t look so depressed. At least our instincts were right.”

“There’s that,” I sighed, still feeling put out at the world in general. “I wish we could have caught him, though.”

“I don’t think it would have been possible here.” Mari looked all around her, eyes absently tracking firefighters carrying equipment out and doing structural examinations, a few members of the staff sneaking back in. “The owner told me this place is a labyrinth. There are more back staircases, shortcuts, and access routes for staff members than you can shake a stick at. It might have been challenging for the arsonist to run around and light these fires without catching him, but it’s even worse for us because we don’t know the building at all.”

Truly. It still bothered me, the speed he used. He hadn’t set the fires with any bottles of oil this time, not like he’d done in the Merton fires. Whatever his earlier experiments, he’d found a faster method to throw burning oil out. The fact that he was using oil to spread a fire didn’t automatically rule him out as a magician, either.  The amateur magicians didn’t really understand how their magic worked. They often tried to blend conventional methods with magical tools.

If he was another insane Fire Mage, I didn’t know what I would do.

Trying to look more on the bright side, I added, “And it could have been worse. Only four rooms were damaged instead of the whole building.”

“See? Besides, you have no time to sulk. You have an impatient dragon outside, remember?”

Oh. Oops. I’d forgotten that.

Almost as if she’d heard Mari, Kaya started calling from outside, “Krys! No like! No like no see!”

Groaning, I shoved myself to my feet and started for the door. “I better get out there before she tears the building down.”

Mari chuckled as she followed me out. “What were you saying earlier? About her maturing and not having to keep you in sight all the time?”

“I take it back.”

~*~

We lingered another four days in Goddard, waiting for the arsonist to strike again. Mari gave it a fifty-fifty chance he would do so. After all, he had struck twice in Mohr. We spent those four days making reports and speaking with the fire chiefs in the area, like we had done in Mohr. Quite a few of them talked to me seriously about going northward and recruiting a few dragons. Kaya hadn’t been able to help as much here as she had in the forest fire earlier, but that didn’t stop anyone from seeing the potential.

But when the fifth morning dawned without anything happening, it became obvious that our arsonist had moved on. The question left was, where?

I met Mari for breakfast in the hotel’s dining room, intending to pose the question, only to find she had anticipated it. A map of Sol already lay spread out over the table, and she nibbled on a muffin as she leaned over it, tracing things with a finger and muttering to herself.

At this early hour of the morning, most guests of the hotel were still abed, leaving the room mostly to us. All of the tables were set up, ready for people, and a buffet table along one wall hosted everything from meats to breads to a variety of fruits. I paused there long enough to fill up a plate, and a large cup of hot tea, before venturing over to the corner table where Mari sat.

“Good morning.”

She glanced up with a quick smile. “Good morning. You’re actually awake this morning.”

“It’s a miracle,” I admitted. I don’t usually wake up easily although I do alright once I get moving. Sitting at the table, I set my breakfast down and started eating. “Any thoughts?”

“Too many, actually.” She made a face like she’d just bitten into a sour lemon before sitting back. “There’s two major bridges in Bellden and Trickett, a temple in northern Teancum and of course there’s a major trading city in northern Warwick that’s just chock full of likely targets. But none of these are really ‘close’ to us. Even by dragon, Trickett is a good five hour flight.”

I vaguely remembered it on the flight down. It sat at the mouth of a major river…I thought. Fine, I admit, I hadn’t been paying a lot of attention to the landscape below. There hadn’t been a need to. Mari had the map, after all.

Frowning, I thought it through, trying to break this down logically. “The arsonist doesn’t have a quick method of travel like we do. He’s either on foot or on horse.”

Mari stopped eating and regarded me steadily. “Right. Where are you going with this?”

“How long would it take for a man on horseback to go from here to Trickett?”

“In fair weather and with good roads? About three days.”

“And from Trickett to Bellden?”

“A day and a half, maybe two.”

“So we could safely go to Trickett and wait to see if he does anything there. Give it a day. If he hasn’t, then we can go to Bellden and still be ahead of him.”

She opened her mouth to respond, stopped, thought about it, and then bent forward to stare at the map again. “Even if we don’t stay ahead of him, it’s only about an hour, two hour flight from Trickett to Bellden. We still might catch up to him.”

“See? Perfect plan.”

“That only works if we can catch him.” Mari popped the last bite of muffin into her mouth, frowning at the map. “I really hope we’re right about this.”

“Me too.” But then, if we were wishing, I still wished we’d managed to catch him last night.

Mari studied my face in silence for a long moment. “You’re thinking dark thoughts. What is it?”

“I’m bothered by how he’s setting fires,” I admitted. Losing my appetite, I put my fork down and sat back in my chair. “It’s too quick, too clean. It smacks of being magical.”

“A Fire Mage?” she asked incredulously. “Would you be able to tell?”

“The fire doesn’t have a magical glow to it.” Which didn’t make sense. “But if he used just a spark of his magic and a lot of oil, I might not be able to tell. The glow of magic is very close to the look of open flame. It’s hard to discern between the two unless it’s a particularly large fire.” I let out a groan. “And with the temple and the forest, there was so much smoke in the way, I wouldn’t have been able to see the difference.”

“What about the man himself? You said most magicians can see other magicians.”

“Key word there,” I responded with a frustrated growl. “I have to
see
him to be sure. I’m not like some of the others, where I can feel magicians from far away. Even the mages have to be relatively close before I can tell they’re in my area. If he’s a budding Fire Mage, not using much of his magic, then he’s not going to register with me.”

“Fire Mage. Are you so sure he is one?” Mari looked disturbed by the idea.

“No.” I was just very afraid he was. “No, he might have found or fashioned some sort of tool that let him do this. I’m praying that’s the case, actually.”

Blowing out a long breath, she sat back as well. “All right, worst case scenario: he’s a mage or some other magician. What do we do?”

“I fight him into submission, knock him out cold, and take him directly to Del’Hain. They summon up a circle and strip him of his magic.”

Mari looked at me with wide eyes. “Krys, it’s a three day flight to Del’Hain from here!”

“Closer to four, actually. But the only other choice is to take him to Strae, and that’s not any closer. It takes a full circle of magicians to strip a magician of his magic. I can’t do it by myself.” I rubbed my face with both hands, suddenly feeling tired and old beyond my age. “I’m really hoping he’s not a magician.”

“You and me both. If he sets something larger on fire, though, you’ll be able to tell. Right?” she asked uncertainly.

“I should be able to, assuming I’m not completely blinded by smoke this time.” And with the new goggles, I shouldn’t be.

“Then let’s pause this conversation here and pick it back up later?”

Sounded good to me. It was far too depressing to focus on this anyway.

Shoving back from the table, she folded the map back up. “Finish breakfast. I’ll go report to the coordinator here that we’re leaving for Trickett.”

“Fine. Meet you on the roof?”

She nodded and with a pat on my shoulder, left.

I turned in my seat just enough to watch her go. We’d been so busy, so preoccupied trying to catch this arsonist that I hadn’t had a chance to really push our relationship forward. I had Cora’s report on their conversation to encourage me. And I had made strides, since Mari was now officially my partner. But, well, it didn’t completely satisfy me. I wanted more than this.

With a sigh, I went back to breakfast. Now was not the time to try anything romantic. It would have to wait until after we had that madman safely behind bars.

Hopefully, that would happen sooner rather than later.

~*~

Mari, with her usual efficiency, had everything arranged within an hour. Since she knew where we needed to go in Trickett and report, I let her sit in front and guide Kaya. (No, having a valid reason to hold Mari for two hours had nothing to do with that decision.)

We flew around the edge of Trickett, taking in the sight of the city and the very large bridge that lay just beyond it. Aside from the bridge, I saw only minor differences between Trickett and Goddard. Still a trader’s town, still with that very logical pattern to the city’s layout, still crowded with people. I supposed that when you’d seen one city in Sol, you’d pretty much seen them all.

This city didn’t seem nearly as crowded, however, and we found a fairly empty park to land in. Mari hopped down and called up to me, “The Coordinator’s office is just across the street. Stay here.”

I saluted to her with a lazy wave of the hand but still got out of the saddle. After two hours of sitting, I felt the need to move around some and get the blood flowing again. I stretched my back out, then my legs, looking around idly as I did so. After Kaya landed, the locals had more or less spooked and run for cover. But as she just sat there, docilely, some of the braver ones ventured back again for a peek.

Kaya’s tail started thumping, eyes fixated on a large tree ahead of her. “Small Kryses!”

I rolled my eyes to the heavens. I swear there was a child magnet in her somewhere.

Hearing footsteps approaching us, I turned around and found Mari and an unknown man approaching. He looked older, in his sixties perhaps, with heavily greyed hair and darkly tanned skin. He wore the dark grey uniform of this city with a certain inherent dignity. I liked the general impression the man gave off. He looked reassuringly professional.