Strange Fire

by Tommy Wallach

  “How exciting!” Irene pulled her arm out from his and set off skipping down the path. Her shiny black hair was pulled back into pigtails, tied at the ends with purple ribbon, and they bounced against her back as she went. “Come on, Clover!”

  He knew he should call her back, but something even stronger than the rigid moral code he’d inherited from his father had glued his top lip to his bottom. If he let her get just a bit farther along, he’d have no choice but to go in after her. Was it the scientist in him, always eager to research a new subject, or just the sinner?

  By the time he caught up with her, the path had narrowed, hemmed in by the last flowers of summer. The smell of them was thick and urgent; the air felt almost humid. When his fingers accidentally brushed up against Irene’s, he jumped, scratching the back of his left hand on a rosebush. Overhead, the boughs of the trees made a patchwork quilt of crimson and saffron leaves, studded with sapphires of sky and pearls of cloud. Small trails snaked away from the main path here and there. If you looked closely, you could see couples through the branches, though never quite clearly enough to know what they were up to.

  “Let’s try this one,” Irene said, choosing one of the paths at random. Clover had lost all sense of restraint or self-command. He could only follow.

  A moment later they found themselves in a glade surrounded by alders and bigleaf maples. Long grasses fluttered in the breeze, thin as eyelashes. Clover laid out the blanket and pinned it down with the picnic basket. Irene sat down and took off her shoes. She wiggled her stockinged toes.

  “Do you bring all the girls here?”

  “It’s my first time,” Clover said, blushing again. He sat down as far away from her as he could, at the other edge of the blanket, opening up the picnic basket just to have something to do.

  “Really? You never brought Gemma?”

  “Why would I bring Gemma?”

  “Because you like her.” She put up a hand even as Clover was opening his mouth to deny it. “Don’t bother. A girl can tell.”

  He was embarrassed and curious in equal measure. “And who does Gemma like?”

  Irene laughed. “I don’t know everything, Clover.”

  “It’s Clive. I know it is. They’re promised to each other. And you saw how jealous she got as soon as you showed up.”

  “Jealousy’s complicated, in my experience. You can be jealous about something you don’t really want.” Irene pulled out the two bottles of apple beer. She handed one to him. “Cheers,” she said, looking into his eyes as they clinked.

  The beer was sweet, if not very cold. Clover felt a drop of sweat run down from his armpit to the waist of his pants. Irene moved the basket out from between them and slid closer.

  “Let’s play Questions,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  It was a game she’d taught him a few days ago, in which the participants traded questions they believed to be unanswerable back and forth, until one person actually knew the answer, which was worth a point.

  “Why does the world seem to keep on spinning when you turn yourself in a circle a bunch of times and then stop?” Clover asked.

  “Why does your heart beat so fast sometimes it feels like it’s trying to jump out of your chest?” Irene replied. Clover actually knew the answer to that one, but he wasn’t interested in scoring points.

  “Why is grass green?”

  “Why is blood red?”

  “Why do you hear a roar when you put a cup over your ear?”

  “Why do your pupils shrink when you get excited?”

  As she asked this, Irene leaned across the blanket, bringing her eyes up close to his. Suddenly he couldn’t think of another question.

  “Oh, look what you’ve done,” she said, noticing the scratch on the back of his hand.

  “A rose did it.”

  “Roses are soft.”

  “The thorn, I mean.”

  “Poor boy.” The wind picked up. Irene had untied the ribbons around her pigtails, and now her hair was whipping wildly around her face. Slow as honey, she lifted his hand to her lips. “Poor, poor boy.”

  Clover hadn’t had romantic thoughts about any girl but Gemma in as long as he could remember. But what was the point of a love that would never be reciprocated, that broke your heart into pieces every time you so much as thought about it?

  Irene kissed the scratch on his hand, still fresh enough that it left a bead of blood clinging to her bottom lip. This didn’t make any sense. She was two whole years older than him, and impossibly beautiful. Besides, Clive wanted her. And didn’t Clive always get what he wanted? Didn’t he always do what he wanted and say what he wanted and get what he wanted?

  “Why are you doing this?” Clover asked.

  He’d meant it as a real question, but Irene interpreted it as part of the game, and countered with one last question of her own.

  “Why does blood taste like metal?” she whispered, and then he tasted it himself: his own blood on her lips, his first kiss.

  7. Paz

  PAZ HAD MET DIRECTOR ZENO only once, four years after her father had moved the family out to Sophia. The woman had shown up unannounced at the schoolhouse to administer a brief examination. She’d been dressed plainly—a gray homespun shift, leather sandals, no jewelry or adornments whatsoever—but her hair was a deep, vivid shade of red that Paz had never seen before.

  “How did you do that?” Paz had asked, awestruck.

  “With henna,” the director said, her voice crisp and slightly condescending. “It’s a natural compound derived from Lawsonia inermis, which we grow in a greenhouse. The colorant is formed by drying and milling the leaves, then mixing the resulting powder into some liquid medium. In this case, I used lemon juice, which seems to work slightly better than water, perhaps because of the acidity.”

  Paz followed this explanation only well enough to understand that the director was terribly clever, and that she’d used that cleverness to do magic.

  The students were then asked to write down answers to a series of seemingly unanswerable questions: the origin of the game Paz would one day teach to Clover. When this was finished, the director had collected their papers and made them wait in silence while she read through them.

  “Nothing definitive, I’m afraid,” she said, once she was finished. “But which of you is Paz Dedios?”

  Paz raised her hand.

  “How old are you, Paz?”

  “Ten, Miss Zeno.”

  “Well, I thought you’d like to know that you were correct about number seven. Snakes shed because their skins don’t grow along with their bodies. Very good. Keep studying.”

  “I will.”

  She’d already been the brightest child in the classroom, but that day, her brilliance and drive finally found a worthy objective: admittance to the academy. She began reading every book she could get her hands on (the scholars of Sophia would occasionally lend a treatise or two to the schoolhouse) and making herself an honorary apprentice to whatever tradesman or hobbyist would have her. Within a year, she could tan a bearskin, hammer a horseshoe, throw a pot on a kick wheel, and construct a sturdy dining table. This obsessive drive to self-improvement may not have won her many friends, but she didn’t care. She had a dream now, born the morning Director Zeno came to visit—and in no small part because ten-year-old Paz Dedios thought she’d look particularly lovely with red hair.

  Unfortunately, when her mother died a few years later, Paz had to give up most of her educational pursuits; there was simply too much to be done on the farm. She still read at least a couple of hours every day, but by that time, she’d already devoured most of what the schoolhouse library had to offer.

  Which was why she had to catch her breath when she first stepped through the doorway of Pettigrew’s Bookshop, tucked away in a quiet corner of the Anchor’s Seventh Quarter. In a space no bigger than that old schoolhouse in which her love of learning had first been kindled, more books than Paz had ever imagined existed in the whole worl
d were arranged willy-nilly—against the walls, on tables, under tables, bursting from the crammed bookshelves, and even piled up above the bookshelves, reaching all the way to the cracked and browning ceiling.

  “Do you like it?” Clover said.

  Paz could only nod. She stepped deeper into the rich funk of it all—paper and leather and cloth and ink and mildew—running her fingers along the smooth spines. There were practical books about farming and cabinetry, compendia of herbal remedies and recipes, biographies of the Descendancy’s so-called “great men”—every Archbishop, Epistem, and Grand Marshal who’d ever lived (with the conspicuous exception of Duncan Leibowitz). There was a tome listing all the games one could play with a deck of cards, a whole bookcase full of Filial commentaries that Paz made sure to pretend to be interested in, and best of all, hidden away in the very back of the shop, as if illicit: shelves upon shelves of stories. She scanned the titles, arranged alphabetically, in search of one volume in particular.

  When she found it, she actually squealed.

  “What is it?” Clover asked. She held it out for him to see. “Fairy tales?”

  “My momma used to read this to me and my brothers every night. But we lost it after we moved.”

  “Moved where?”

  “Moved to—”

  Paz caught herself just in time. As far as Clover knew, Irene Pirez had lived in Eaton her whole life; she’d never moved from Coriander to Sophia. This was the danger of combining real history with invention—sometimes Paz forgot what she’d been honest about and what she’d made up. She’d been in the Anchor more than five weeks now, and in that time, she’d spun a web of truths and half-truths and bald-faced lies so abstruse she couldn’t have re-created it if she’d wanted to. She could only hope that nobody was paying enough attention to spot the inconsistencies.

  “To a new house,” she improvised. “Our old one burned down.”

  “Was it bigger? You said all four of your brothers shared one room before.”

  All four of your brothers—how easy it turned out to be, to bring the dead back to life. Paz had resurrected Anton on a whim, a passing fancy while padding out the shadowy corners of her fabricated history. Since then, she’d managed to create a whole detailed backstory for him: the life he’d been robbed of. In the process, she’d created a fictional version of herself, too—a Paz who’d never been traumatized by her brother’s death, who had never watched her father grieve, who had never moved to Sophia. A simpler, happier Paz.

  “Yeah. Lots more space.”

  “Burns was in a fire too,” Clover said, continuing down the aisle. “His chest is scarred something terrible.”

  “I saw it. You have any idea how it happened?”

  “No. He doesn’t like to talk about that stuff.”

  Clover knelt down to examine a certain title more closely, and Paz kept exploring. She did a full circuit of the shop before returning to the shelves concerned with scientific subjects. Perhaps there was something here that the academy could use.

  “Clover, I need your advice.”

  “What is it?”

  She waited until he was close, then spoke under her breath. “Do you think any of these books might have anathema in them?”

  His eyes went wide. “You can’t say things like that in public,” he whispered. “Besides, it’s illegal to sell that sort of thing.”

  “But there’s at least a thousand books in here! Something could’ve slipped through. Think about it. Use that big brain of yours.” She raked her fingers through his hair until his outrage melted away, replaced with the usual puppyish desire to please.

  “Well . . . I guess I could look.”

  “Thank you.”

  He took his time, pointing at each title and reading it aloud. Cattle Husbandry. The Four-Season Harvest. Root Cellars in Wet Climes. On Wood and Woodworking. On the Laying of Foundations. Paz wished she could’ve sat down and read every single one of them, but she comforted herself with the thought that she would have plenty of time for scholarship when she was accepted into the academy.

  “This might fit the bill,” Clover finally said, a few dozen titles later.

  He pulled out a short volume, bound in red leather: 100 Uses of Fire, by Grand Attendant Garen Zilafra.

  “Really?” Paz said. “Everybody knows about fire.”

  “Sure, but it’s still a dangerous subject. Maybe there’s something in it about Blood of the Father.”

  Paz was disappointed. The scholars of Sophia would already know everything there was to know about Blood of the Father.

  “You sure there isn’t something else?”

  “It’s the best they’ve got. You want it or not?”

  “That’s okay.” She gave him a playful smile. “I’ll be a good girl.”

  Outside the shop, a group of four soldiers were walking down the road shoulder to shoulder. Paz found herself unconsciously seeking out Clive’s face and experiencing an irrational disappointment when she didn’t find it.

  The Protectorate seemed to be everywhere these days, engaged in a comprehensive variety of civic tasks; Clover said it was because Grand Marshal Chang wanted to show the people how useful an expanded military could be. Earlier today, Paz had seen at least a dozen soldiers sweeping up Annunciation Square, where the plebiscite was to be held. The vote was only a few days off now, and if it went Chang’s way, a Protectorate contingent would be sent east soon after. In that case, Paz would have to go back too; someone had to warn Sophia what was coming.

  “Daughter’s love! Is that who I think it is?”

  Just on the other side of the road, a boy around Paz’s age was beaming at her like an idiot.

  “It’s me! Charles. Chuck. From Coriander.”

  Paz’s mind began racing. Though she hadn’t seen him in more than a decade, this was undoubtedly Chuck Barker, eldest son of Coriander’s town drunk. He’d been a nasty little boy—the kind who was always pulling your hair or stepping on your heel—and something in his expression betrayed the fact that he hadn’t changed much since. He looked to be down on his luck; his clothes were dirty and threadbare, and he was in desperate need of a haircut and shave.

  “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else,” she said.

  Chuck laughed, then realized Paz was being serious. “Are you joking? I’d know you anywhere. You’re as pretty now as you were back then.”

  “Sir, my name is Irene Pirez. And I’m from Eaton, not Coriander.”

  Chuck’s smile was giving way to a grimace now, angry and confused. “You say you’re from Eaton?”

  “I do.”

  “Then I say you’re lying.”

  Clover stepped up to within a few inches of Chuck. “Her name’s Irene, and she said she doesn’t know you.”

  Chuck’s eyes narrowed, and for a second, Paz worried he was going to take a swing at Clover. But then he let out a sharp bark of a laugh. “All right,” he said. “Then I guess I’ll go. Irene.” He said her name as if it were the punch line to a terrible joke, then turned and continued walking along the Ring Road.

  “That was strange,” Clover said.

  Paz watched Chuck go, heart hammering in her chest. Then she looked back at Clover and gave him what she hoped was a carefree sort of smile.

  “I sure hope he finds whoever he’s looking for,” she said.

  8. Clive

  CLIVE WAS ONE OF MORE than fifty soldiers stationed around the edge of Annunciation Square, there to ensure a safe and orderly polling process. At the center of the plaza, registrars sat at wide wooden tables, preparing the logbooks inside of which were written the names of every citizen of the Anchor and the twenty-five largest surrounding towns. The names would be crossed off as each citizen voted, and if all went well, the results would be known before midnight.

  It was Clive’s first time wearing his uniform outside the Bastion, and he was enjoying the sensation. People were looking at him with that familiar combination of respect and fear he himself had shown to
ward soldiers all his life. Last night he’d spent an hour sharpening the blade of the slim sword that now hung at his waist. Though he had six weeks of swordsmanship drills under his belt, he still wasn’t particularly good with it, but he figured he knew enough to do what had to be done: chop like this, skewer like that.

  The bells of Notre Fille began to toll—nine chimes echoing loudly across the hard red tiles of the plaza. Soon after, the voters began to arrive in numbers, arranging themselves into twenty-six uneven lines, one for each letter of the alphabet. Eventually these lines extended from one end of the square to the other. There was an excitement in the air, a restless tension Clive hadn’t expected. Though the Protectorate had sponsored a number of similar plebiscites in the past, this was the first time it had a real shot at winning. Clive was proud to think his speech might have helped the cause; all over the city, people were talking about what had happened to Honor Hamill and his family. If one of the Church’s most senior members could be murdered without repercussions, what would stop their enemies from striking again?

  Around noon, the Archbishop appeared with his usual retinue of novices and retainers. His innocent took a tomato to the face from some Protectorate sympathizer in the crowd, but otherwise the first few hours of voting remained peaceable enough. Clive had nothing to do but stand at attention and look serious.

  “Dull as a prude, isn’t it?”

  The boy who’d spoken was dressed in the same red-and-gold uniform as Clive, but for one important difference: a laurel pin on his lapel, marking him out as a third-year soldier. He had frizzy black hair and ears so incongruously big they looked like they’d been taken off someone else’s head and stuck on his. Clive had seen him around the mess hall a few times, but they’d never interacted.

  “Garrick Schwid,” he said, offering a hand.

  “Clive Hamill.”

  “I know. You’re the Honor’s kid. Talk of the town.”

  “I guess.”

  “So how are you finding the soldierly life?”

  Clive wasn’t sure how to respond—in part because he couldn’t tell yet if Garrick was making fun of him, but also because the answer was complicated. It wasn’t that he regretted joining the Protectorate, exactly, but the experience hadn’t been at all like he’d expected. It seemed stupid now, but he’d really believed the other soldiers would be grateful for what he’d done at his father’s memorial service. He’d imagined being welcomed into the fold like a hero. But as far as he could tell, the other soldiers weren’t appreciative at all. In fact, they seemed downright resentful of him. And the truth was, he really didn’t have much to recommend him as a soldier. Though he could shoot a bow and arrow well enough, only second-year recruits were allowed to train as archers. He was by far the slowest around the obstacle course and the weakest with the weights, and the first time he’d crossed swords with another recruit, he’d lost his grip on the hilt, earning himself the unfortunate nickname Dropsy.