Read Into the Fire (The Mieshka Files, Book One) Online

Authors: K. Gorman

Tags: #teen, #urban, #young adult, #magic, #power, #science fiction, #fire, #elemental, #element, #fantasy, #adventure

Into the Fire (The Mieshka Files, Book One) (2 page)

BOOK: Into the Fire (The Mieshka Files, Book One)
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The two lines met at a month from now.

It meant that his latest energy-saving scheme would not work.

The smell of gun oil made him glance at the other two inhabitants of the room. Both were former soldiers, hired to run errands and act as bodyguards. Buck had the misfortune of looking like his name: a large man, he filled out his clothes, and was tall enough to find some door frames short. He kept the crew-cut the military had given him, and preferred non-descript dark clothes. Abroad, he wore his gun in a shoulder holster; now, reclined in a black leather armchair perpendicular to Aiden, his holster lay on the floor beside him. A book was open on his lap, face down. Instead of turning on the light to continue reading, Buck had simply lain his head back on the chair and closed his eyes.

Zen master, that.

On the couch beside him with her back to Aiden, Jo was the source of the smell. Her black, tightly coiled hair was pulled back from her brown skin in a bun. She, too, preferred dark clothing. She was slighter than her partner, but made up for it in attitude and aggression. Despite—or perhaps
to
spite—the growing dim, she cleaned her gun. Over the couch’s black back, Aiden watched her shoulders work.

Aiden propped an elbow on the arm of his chair, looking back to the graph. He thought of a few nasty words for the system’s algorithms, and a lot more for the Earth Mage, Michael, whose fault this stupid energy crisis was.

The man had disappeared, along with the Earth Crystal that powered his part of the shield. When Aiden and Sophia, the Water Mage, had visited his house, nothing had been out of order. No sign of struggle, no note, nothing. The Earth Mage’s engine had been in perfect condition, albeit dormant without the crystal.

It said something about the man that neither Aiden nor Sophia were entirely concerned about the Earth Mage himself, but more about how they, the remaining two, could make up his absence. He’d left before. Last time it had something to do with family drama. Hadn’t told Aiden or Sophia anything then, either.

Michael was an elitist—had been even before they’d crash-landed into this dimension. Didn’t think much of the rest of society.

They couldn’t assume he’d come back. With ten million living in Lyarne, they could not risk the shield failing. Not even once. Once a shield failed, it was proven vulnerable. Nothing quite fed an enemy’s appetite for invasion more than their bombs suddenly
working
. Lyarne’s shield made a mockery of the bombs, but that did not stop the regular single-plane raids. Once a bomb made it through, Aiden knew several hundred would be quick to follow up.

That’s how it had worked when Terremain’s shield had begun to fail. Aiden felt bad for the Mage there: Roderick used his own energy to feed his shield. He was much more committed than Aiden. Once Aiden’s crystal was near depletion, he would execute a less-than-quiet exit. The world would learn that,
yes
, the Fire Mage’s magic spaceship still worked.

He entertained that thought for a moment, then he went back to the screen.

“Something wrong, boss?” Even in the fading light, Aiden could see the sharpness in Buck’s gaze. The man was a master at reading nuance, and those quiet eyes picked up everything. It was a quality Aiden liked about him, but only when he was not observing Aiden.

Jo, not as quick as Buck, was quite intent when something pointed her in the right direction. She looked over the back of the couch, the whites of her eyes a stark contrast to her dark skin.

Aiden glanced between them. After a moment, he straightened in the chair.

“At this rate, the shield will fail in a month. Technically, I can rewire it to the ship’s crystal, but I’d rather not.”

The former soldiers continued to stare. Aiden’s index finger tapped against his thigh.

“Never mind. I’ll deal with that. Just…” He eyed them now. They’d discussed this next topic before, but it irked him. “It’s time to make contingency plans. I need an apprentice before we leave the city. Find me one.”

Silence. No ‘Yes, sir’ or anything. He heard a click as Jo, without looking away from Aiden, reassembled her gun.

Buck spoke: “With the Beeper-thing?”

“Yes. With the Beeper-thing.”

When Buck moved, it was like watching a mountain. He picked up the book, closed it, set it on the table title-side-up, and rose from the chair. Sometimes Aiden wished there was more volcano in the man, but Buck could haul ass when the need arose.

When Buck walked over, Aiden thought he felt the floor move. It was unkind, but Aiden was feeling a bit juvenile right now. He squinted at the room, finding the screen in front of him even more glaring.

“And turn on the damn light.”

Across the city, on the seventh level of a fifteen story building, the same twilight dimmed the small apartment Mieshka shared with her father. The front door closed the hallway light off and she tripped on the carpet.

Her keys dropped to the floor with a jangle.

She smothered a sob with her hand, leaning her forehead against the wall. Closing her eyes, she started to count. The back of her wrist rubbed her face when she got to ten. She peered down through the blur.

Most of the light came from the balcony door, filtered through vertical fabric blinds. It was not much, but it glinted on the metal sitting next to her foot.

She left them there.

Her left hand trailed the wall as she walked down the hall, already shrugging a shoulder from her pack. To her left was the cramped kitchen. To her right, a bisecting hallway led to a washroom, a laundry room, and two bedrooms.

She glanced down it, wiping her nose on her sleeve. The last door had a dim line of light between it and the floor.

Dad was home.

She slumped her backpack onto the couch, missing the junk mail and magazines that had piled on the arm. Unsorted laundry occupied the rest. On the coffee table, old pizza boxes stacked like a bachelor’s Jenga game. Some were starting to smell.

Mieshka reeled the balcony blinds back on their balled cord, slid the door open, and stepped over the sill. Their view was of the next apartment and the narrow alleyway between. Every week, the sanitation department emptied the dumpsters at the end.

A few dead plants welcomed her into the chill. The Balcony Garden Experiment had been short-lived. Plants couldn’t live with neglect.

She hunched on the rail and watched the light fade from the alley. It was a gradual process, and one that made her huddle more and more into her hoodie. Eventually, the alley’s lights switched on, beaming an industrial yellow-orange into the gritty shadows.

Behind her, the shuffle of socked feet announced her father’s arrival. He closed the door behind him and joined her. The railing wobbled as he leaned against it. Mieshka watched the flicker of a television set in the opposite building, one floor up. A car alarm went off, its sound muffled by distance. Eyes wandering to the dumpsters seven floors down, she thought of the pizza boxes. If she threw them, maybe she could get them in.

“Cold out.” Her dad’s breath rose in a mist, backlit by their sidelong neighbours. He wore an old, pale blue work shirt, the top two buttons undone. His sweatpants had food stains. The orange alley light glinted off the thin metal frame of his glasses.

She nodded, jaw tightening. She’d drawn her hood over the beanie long ago, though the chill still seeped in through the neck. Her cheeks had gone numb, and her nose. She did not shiver.

“How was school?”

“Fine.”

“Any homework?”

“Of course.” Her tone was snippy. She gritted her teeth as a lump slipped back into her throat. The cold pricked at new tears. She forced her voice to stay even. “Robin showed me the Fire Mage’s temple.”

“Temple?”

“Yeah. It was a memorial.” Her voice broke raw on the last vowel. She swallowed the lump, felt his eyes on her.

The quiet thickened between them for a moment. The railing trembled under her arm. Bitterness grew in her chest.

“Why did we come here?” Her question hung in the cold. She didn’t look at him, knowing what his answer would be. Bitterness quickly turned to anger, fuelled by an old rage that collected in her stomach like dead blood. Her nerves frayed like a bad firework.

“It’s safer here,” he said.

“I can’t visit Mom,” she said.

“She’s with us—”

“—in our hearts? There’s a lot of things in my heart right now and she ain’t one of them.”

“Mieshka—”

“No! What can you say? What can anyone say?” She was yelling now, not caring how her voice echoed through the alley. Above them, a neighbour closed a balcony door loudly.

“I’m sorry that—”

Rage flashed ahead of her thoughts. “Sorry? Sorry doesn’t help! Fuck!”

Her hand had smacked against the railing. The cold numbed the pain.

“Mieshka, calm down,” he whispered, hissing across the two feet that separated them. “We have to get through this. Remember what the doctor said. Count—”

“I’m sick of counting. It doesn’t help. Who are you to tell me what to do? You just hide in your room all fricking day. And order pizza. I can’t live on pizza!”

“Mieshka!” His voice rose. “Keep your voice down. I know it hurts. Believe me, I know. I lost her too.”

She choked, the alleyway blurred around her.

“I lost
both
of you.”

A sob hiccoughed through her as she turned away. She slammed the door back on its tracks. She sped into the dim, dark room, past the couch with its piles of laundry and junk mail. Past the stacked, mouldy pizza boxes on the coffee table.

Into her room.

She slammed the door behind her, breathing hard. Tears slid down, carving raw streaks into the cold of her cheeks. She ripped a Kleenex from her desk, nearly taking the box with it. Sinking onto her bed, she curled into the mess she’d left the quilt in this morning.

It was starting to smell too.

After a few minutes, she heard the balcony door again. Her dad shuffled in, pausing outside her door. She twisted around to stare at it.

He moved on. She listened as his bedroom door opened, closed.

She rested her head back into the quilt, eyes closing against its familiar softness. The cold had followed her in, and it numbed her skin for a long time afterwards.

CHAPTER 2

Meese had missed first period, and wasn’t responding to Robin’s texts.

Robin cradled her forehead in her palm, fingers edging under her beanie. Around her, a steady, hushed conversation filled the room. The classroom’s fluorescents strained her eyes. Robin sat sideways at the too-small desk, feeling the chair’s wooden back jab into her ribs. Her phone rested on her thigh, safely hidden behind the desktop. Staring absently at its screen, Robin overheard a few snippets of gossip:

“—Really? Ben and Jessica? Have they, y’know, done it?”

“—got her wallet stolen.”

“Devil Bitch Murphy is on phone-conquest again.”

She looked up at the last, spotting Mrs. Murphy at the front of class, erasing the chalkboard. Robin's hand curled protectively over her phone. The teacher’s confiscating habit had earned her a few nasty nicknames over the years.

Robin rubbed at her eyes. They felt dry and itchy.

By the front window, Mrs. Murphy’s taxidermic Cooper’s hawk reeled on its wire, dead wings outstretched. It lorded over a shelving unit filled with animal skulls, textbooks, and wilted plants. Robin watched as the bird slowed its spiral, pausing for a second to consider escaping through the window. Drafts pushed it into an opposite spin.

She swiped her phone’s screen before it timed out.

Meese was a lot more fragile than she let on. Robin had learned that yesterday, though she’d long suspected it. Perhaps both of them had been content to pretend that wasn’t the case. Pretending was good. There had been some good times.

But pretending was a thin way to live. Something grated in Robin’s head. She suspected things might not be all right.

How could she have been so stupid? Of course the ‘temple’ was a memorial. How hadn’t she seen that? After Meese had pointed it out, it seemed obvious.

Of course it was a memorial. All those burning words on the wall? Those were names. A lot of names.

Meese had seemed oddly at ease with it. Yesterday, they’d parted ways on good terms, with a promise of eating lunch together today. Meese had even smiled.

Missing class was very un-Meese-like.

Had something happened?

Robin’s eyes wandered away from her phone again, sliding along the projects and posters that crammed the classroom. The periodic table curled away from the wall behind a TV set that was probably older than her dad.

“Oh great,
career day
.”

Robin jerked her attention back to the front.

On Meese’s behalf, she stiffened.

A woman had entered in full military dress uniform, although she had elected for the pencil skirt as opposed to the slacks. Medals glinted on her left breast. Her bright blonde hair was pulled back into a tight bun under the black-rimmed red beret she wore. She carried a large, long bag in one hand, clutching a small purse in the other. As Robin watched, she put both on the front table and, laughing with Mrs. Murphy, began to set up for a presentation.

BOOK: Into the Fire (The Mieshka Files, Book One)
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