Dragon's Mage (An Advent Mage Novel), The - Raconteur, Honor (31 page)

“Krys, this is Coordinator Mastan. Sir, this is Haikrysen, a Fire Mage and his familiar, Kaya.”

Mastan stared at Kaya in astonishment for two seconds before he collected himself and gave me a proper greeting. “Ainlie, Magus.”

I touched palms with the man and said, “Ainlie. Thank you for hosting us.”

“Not at all, Magus, not at all. We’re actually quite glad for your help. We don’t have the know-how to catch this man. And we’ve been very curious about your dragon familiar.” He glanced up at Kaya, eyes lingering on her for a long moment. “We’ve had different reports of her, of course, but I never imagined I’d see her myself. She’s incredibly large. Are all dragon’s this size?”

“No, she’s actually on the small side.”

Mastan’s jaw dropped slightly. “Small?”

“She’s a young adult, you see,” I explained with a shrug, trying not to let my amusement show. “She’s still got a little growing left to do. And the females are never as big as the males.”

“Oh.” He didn’t seem to know what else to say.

“I know from experience that finding an inn that will host her is rather difficult,” I continued so that the silence wouldn’t become awkward. “Did you manage to find one?”

“Well, actually, I did but I’m not sure if—”

From the center of the city, a bell rang out. I’ve lived in Sol long enough to distinguish the difference between an alarm bell and the clock’s bell. They have a distinctly deeper tone to them. But the code for their meanings varies slightly from city to city. I knew there was a fire, but I couldn’t decipher the tempo of the rings well enough to know where.

Mari and I whirled on Mastan and demanded in sync, “Where’s the fire?!”

The man looked grey, eyes wide with horror. “The bridge. The bridge is burning. Magus—” he turned to me, pleading. “Go!”

I didn’t need his request. In pure instinct, I was already running for Kaya, scrambling up into her saddle. She had her wings half-unfurled before I even made it on board. Mari was on my heels, calling, “Go, go, go!” even as she latched onto my waist.

Kaya shot up into the sky hard enough to jostle us around but I didn’t chide her for the haste. She twirled in the sky once, changing directions with lightning speed so that she faced the northeast section of town, and then she shot in the direction of the bridge so fast that it nearly stole the air from my lungs. As she flew, Mari snapped the goggles on my head and then the mask before she put her own gear on. I automatically put up my shields as well, preparing for the fire ahead.

Bridge fires were the worst ones to fight for two reasons. One, because they were totally exposed to the air, the wind could encourage the fire to spread and there was nothing to check it. Two, it was hard for anyone to get close enough to the fire to approach it without endangering lives. Often the only clear structure to stand on had already been burned, making it terribly weakened. Either that, or the clearest place to be was totally covered in smoke. It was a little hard to fight a fire you couldn’t properly see while you were struggling to breathe.

I’d only seen one before this point, early on in my training, on the northern coast of Halliburton. I’d been called in because it took mere minutes to get me over there and I was more effective than the veteran fighters, despite my lack of training. I thought that to be the reason why they called me in here. Bridge fires, after all, were hard for a ground crew to contain.

But now I saw that was only half the problem.

People were on the bridge.

I started to mentally swear. I now understood the full depth of Mastan’s panic. Evacuating people off the bridge fast enough to save them from the fire would be nearly impossible.

As we came in at ferocious speed, I saw that a long line of fire along the top of the bridge and several of the support pillars were blazing orange. The wind was strong here, strong enough to turn the river below choppy on the surface, and that wind spread the fire out along the wooden planks at mindboggling speed. The middle section of the bridge was already ablaze and it was spreading fast, leaving whole sections of pedestrians trapped on the top.

“Mari, spot me,” I yelled over the wind.

She squeezed my shoulder in reassurance.

All right, let’s put this out. I focused on the nearest section of the bridge as we came closer to it, magic suppressing it and extinguishing each section as fast I could manage. But Kaya’s speed was such that I could barely get one patch done and then we shot past, out over the river. I pulled at the reins, urging her back around, then stroked both sides of her neck, signally for her to slow down.

Kaya back flapped twice, braking in mid-air, cutting her speed in half. It jerked me a bit in the saddle, but I tried not to let that disrupt my focus as I concentrated on the bridge. On this northern section, the smoke obscured my sight, and I led Kaya more toward the south so that I had a clearer view.

The bridge had been built so that four wagons abreast could travel down it without crowding and the fire had spread so that it covered the width of it. It took more than a minute for me to deal with all of it. Once I had, we ducked down to the water level so that I could deal with the fire consuming the support beams. I looked every direction, but didn’t see anything else. “Mari?”

“You’re good,” she assured me next to my ear. “It’s all out. South side of the bridge is clear of people, but there’s a few on the far north end that is trapped up there. I don’t think the firefighters here can get to them.”

Uh-oh. I urged Kaya up and around so I could see the situation for myself. Yes, she was right, the group had been caught on a clear spot so they weren’t burned, but the area all around them had been. Worse, the top part looked fairly safe, but the support beams underneath were little better than char. It wouldn’t hold any kind of real weight.

Well. This just got better and better.

“Kaya!” I leaned forward to make sure that she could hear me. “We need to rescue the people. Can you carry them?”

She bobbed her head. “Can. Two.”

Two at a time would do. “Then let’s start. Carry them to the grass where the other people are, all right?”

“Will,” she assured me, already turning around and angling for the people. We came in at a quicker pace than I thought safe, but Kaya scooped two people up in either arm like a pro without missing a beat. As she flew toward the ground, I called down to her scared passengers, “Don’t worry! She won’t drop you!”

One of them, a man, called back in a scared voice, “All right!”

Kaya, no doubt realizing that the people in her arms were scared spitless, made sure to slow down enough to drop them gently to the earth, giving them plenty of time to gauge the distance to the earth and land well. Then she swerved back up toward the sky, wings flapping to gain altitude and go for another pass at the bridge.

The dozen or so people left on the bridge, after seeing the safe rescue of the other two, waved their hands above their heads and called for help. Kaya paused just above them, confused by too many possible targets, I think. I patted her on the neck and instructed, “Start on the right, Kaya, and then work your way over. The right section is the weakest.”

Bobbing her head in agreement, she swooped down again, aiming for a mother and a young boy standing next to her. With her usual finesse, she grabbed them up, making the other people on the bridge duck slightly to avoid being knocked down by her wings. From the front, I heard a high-pitched laugh. The boy? Sounded like it. Well, at least
someone
was having fun.

It took five more trips to get everyone off, and then Kaya, out of the goodness of her heart, went back three more times for the carts and a horse. (The horse didn’t take the aerial trip as well as the humans. I wasn’t sure which made it panic more, the fact that its hooves weren’t touching the ground, or that it was being carried by something that could eat it for dinner.)

With everything off the bridge, she found a clear patch of ground and landed with a gentle bump. Mari and I both slid off, although why, I don’t know. We’d done everything that we could at this point. Maybe it was sheer habit that prodded us into heading toward the firefighters. We didn’t get more than two steps before people swarmed us, all of them saying thanks for us coming so quickly to their aid. Even Kaya got thanked, some people going as far as stroking her nose and praising her. Not used to this sort of attention, my dragon blinked in surprise and then started lapping it up.

Mari and I accepted the thanks as graciously as we could, trying to wade through to the firefighting crew, but it soon became apparent that they didn’t really need our help. So we focused on asking everyone we could if they had seen anyone start the fire or pour oil on the bridge. No one had, but it didn’t surprise me. The arsonist had proven himself to be remarkably good at avoiding people’s eyes.

It took a few hours for the crowd to disperse. As it did, we headed back for Kaya, satisfied at putting the fire out, but frustrated at once again losing our prey. Only one thing made the situation better. To Mari, I said quietly, “It wasn’t magical.”

She perked up, taking a step closer to me. “At all?”

“No, the fire was started quite normally with oil. He still laid it down amazingly fast, though.”

“It’s true, I didn’t see much of a variance in the burn pattern.” She frowned in thought, idly tugging at the mask’s strap. “I wonder how he’s doing it? Can a person buy a magical devise and use it without having any magical talent of their own?”

“Well, there’s some things that can do that, sure.” I rubbed at my chin as I thought about it. “I can’t think of anything fire oriented, but I’m not an authority on all of the products that wizards and witches can make, either.” I turned and walked backwards for a few feet, studying the bridge and doing some quick mental calculations. “I can say this. Magical device or no, it would take a
lot
of oil to pull off what he just did.”

“Then maybe we should ask around town and see if anyone remembers him.” Mari hummed to herself, brows furrowed. “Although in a city of this size, that might take a while.”

“You think Mastan will help us?”

“I bet he will if we ask.”

“Then let’s ask.” Blowing off my frustration, I ran a rough hand through my hair. “Let’s go find that inn Mastan booked for us.”

Chapter Twenty-two: Bridges and Promises

I wasn’t usually an active thinker but that evening, I felt restless. I couldn’t stay in my room at the inn, as nice as it was. Mind whirling, feeling a little out of sorts, I finally pulled on my boots and a jacket and headed outside.

Fall had started encroaching on the late summer season, and this far north it had already started getting cold in the evenings. The cool air actually felt good to me, so I kept walking, looking for a quiet place to think. One block down, I found it: a small little park with a few benches, sculpted trees, and walkways all lit by nearby street lamps.

Mari and Kaya had likely started preparing for bed at this time, like most sensible people. I didn’t know why my brain wouldn’t settle. I just felt like I needed to think about something, as if I were poised on the edge of a great epiphany.

I settled on a cold metal bench underneath one of the street lamps, gazing out in a northward angle. I could faintly hear people talking from further away, the soft sounds of doors opening and closing, basically the noises associated with a city getting ready to retire for the night. From here, I could just see the tip of the bridge in between the buildings. If Kaya hadn’t gotten us here so quickly this morning, I likely wouldn’t have been able to see the bridge at all.

The arsonist had done more damage than Remcarparoden had ever managed despite being non-magical. It truly made me think. I’d been confronted by so many people over the years about fire only being good for destruction, with those same people treating me like a harbinger of evil for being a Fire Mage. I’d felt shackled by Remcarparoden’s reputation since before I even started my training. And yet…and yet here was another man that went around torching things and he didn’t have a trace of magic to his name.

“The magic is not to blame,” I said aloud, almost startling myself by speaking the words. But it felt cleansing to say it. Madness was madness. A madman intent on destroying would find a way to do it, using any tools that he could lay hands on. Remcarparoden had been just as mad as the arsonist I now pursued. The only difference between the two men was that one had easier access to starting a fire than the other.

Garth once told me that magic was a gift, a talent like any other. I’d agreed with him, but until now, I wasn’t sure if I’d actually believed him. Why, I didn’t know. I’d found many useful, beneficial ways to use my fire magic. The only thing I’d ever destroyed I’d done to save a city from being flooded!

Why had I believed those fools and thought my own magic inherently evil?

“There you are.” Mari melted out of the shadows, coming into the pool of light cast by a nearby street lamp.

I’d been in this woman’s company for weeks now, but I never got tired of looking at her. In this mellow lighting of streetlamps and evening shadows, she seemed almost mysterious to me. A half-smile curved the corners of her lips just enough to make her expression completely enigmatic. She looked more feminine than usual, strangely so, considering she still had her uniform on. As she passed under the yellow lighting of a nearby lamp, it touched her hair, and for a moment she seemed to glow with a light all of her own.

In that moment, I forgot how to breathe.

I didn’t even try to get up, just watched her approach and settle in right next to me. Strange, how natural that seemed. Chahirans usually preferred a good hand’s worth of distance between, not wanting anyone in their personal space. But Mari had been so close to me, so many times, that
not
being in direct contact with her seemed stranger.

She slid an arm through mine, resting her head comfortably against my shoulder without a by-your-leave. I enjoyed the cuddling, and not just because her warmth felt nice in this chilly autumn air.