Liquid Fire

by Anthony Francis

  “Their fire extended our life,” I said. “No wonder we hunted them to extinction.”

  “We thought that once,” Devenger said. “Now we know dragons were dying out before humans came along. I once hypothesized they needed some trace element—liquid fire contains elements not common on Earth since the Hadean era—but experiments like the one you just saw refuted that. They could have synthesized the elements of liquid fire in their own bodies, like magical versions of breeder reactors. So why dragons died out . . . is a mystery.”

  “Dragons . . . synthesized . . . liquid fire,” I said. “Well, obviously, if it ran in their blood and powered their fire . . . but, somehow, it makes you think, if they could synthesize it—”

  “That’s the point of all those big, sciency, precise words,” Devenger said. “You were a chemist before you were a magician, so I’m certain you realize the universe isn’t made of secret substances available only at mystical times or places.” His voice deepened, sounding like a true wizard. “That which can be made can be unmade—or made another way.”

  “Devenger,” I said. “You can’t be serious. Liquid fire is totally unlike tattoo ink, and I don’t just mean that it’s impractical to ink human skin with stuff that’s on fire. Most inks have a shelf life of years, but you said that liquid fire has a half life of months—”

  “Synthetics have a half-life of months—like the nasty synthetic elements that come out of nuclear reactors,” Devenger said. “But the reactors themselves are powered by uranium. It has a half-life of millions of years. So too with dragon’s blood—”

  “I don’t use dragon’s blood as ink,” I said. “You have to know that. It’s too expensive, even if you buy it in the five-gallon drums to get the wholesale discount—”

  “What?” Devenger looked at me sharply. He squinted. “Are you pulling my leg?”

  “Moi?” I said. “Yes. I’ve never heard of anyone who had a supply of dragon’s blood before today. But you clearly suspect I’ve got another source of the same compounds.”

  “I love talking to you, Ms. Frost. You don’t just keep up, you try to pull ahead.”

  “I’ve had to,” I said. “And I have good science advisors. I should introduce you to Doug Suleiman at Georgia Tech. He’s got an apparatus similar to what you’ve got here—”

  “Suleiman . . . sounds familiar,” Devenger said, cocking his head. “Maybe we met at that manadynamics conference in Hawaii—oh, of course. Your graphomancer’s new husband. He works at that Tech mana facility, yes? I’d love an introduction to Doctor Suleiman.”

  “Mister, currently,” I said. I didn’t like how much Devenger seemed to know about me and my companions. “He’s working on the doctor bit.”

  “Yes, yes,” Devenger said. “Supplies of liquid fire are the most carefully guarded secrets in the wizarding world, but it’s no secret supplies are running out. Unlike dragonsbreath, human uses of liquid fire are not self-regenerating. The spell used by the Warlock, the Commissioner, and I, for example, binds you to the spirit of an age; periodically, it must be renewed.”

  “It’s not just the fountain of youth in a bottle,” I said. “The bottles are running out. And all your efforts to attempt to synthesize it have just taught you it’s effectively impossible—unless you had a source that you could study and replicate, and even then, it would still run out.”

  “Making liquid fire the most valuable substance in the world,” Devenger said. “Almost certainly the real reason behind the assaults on your friend are a fireweaver’s dispute over the use of liquid fire. And the reason for the Archmage’s interest, and ours, are your tattoos.”

  “I am not the only magical tattooist,” I said, and it was true. “There are easily hundreds of us who ink in the open, maybe half a dozen in the Bay Area alone. I even hope to meet some while I’m here. Why can’t you get this information from someone else?”

  “There may be hundreds of magical tattooists, but few known for inking tattoos of such extraordinary color,” Devenger said—and it was true. “That’s the source of interest—or, more precisely, our interest is in your source for the compounds you used to ink your tattoos.”

  I tensed subtly in my chair. That hadn’t precisely been the Archmage’s intent, but I had no intention of correcting Devenger—he knew entirely too much about me. I started to worry that I’d come across a stalker. His next actions seemed to confirm it.

  Devenger leaned forward in his chair. “I don’t mean to seem forward, but . . . can I see one of your tattoos? The butterfly—ah, you gave that one to your daughter, didn’t you? Then an asp, or, if you’re comfortable, the tail of the Dragon—”

  Let me out, let me out, whispered a voice, silky as my own skin . . . and I complied. I released the mana that I’d pent up, bent my head forward, and the head of the Dragon slid smoothly out of the back of my collar and over my head. “Will that do you?”

  Devenger looked up and cooed. “Wonderful,” he said. “But actually, what I want to show you is on your skin. May I?” he asked, reaching for my hand.

  I let him take it, and his grip wasn’t soft or grabby like a creepy old uncle; it was firm, gentle, even clinical; like a kindly old doctor. “Many of these pigments,” he said, drawing his finger over the surface of my skin without touching it, “are magically active. But the mana lines—the magically conducting circuits—are too effective for how colorful they are.”

  He glanced at me for permission, then pressed his finger into my skin and drew it along the surface of the asp. Little tingles of mana flickered through the design in his finger’s wake, like a dozen little ants made of light.

  “It’s almost impossible to get that much visible color and that much magical activity in the same ink without using manactive compounds. Even in a mix. The fractions just aren’t there. Almost certainly your inks have trace amounts . . . of true liquid fire.”

  “Every magical tattoo artist in the South does marks this colorful,” I said.

  “Every magical tattoo artist,” Devenger asked, “or just the ones from your clan?”

  “Well,” I began, but most of the really spectacular inkers were in my clan. “Well, it’s a regional specialty,” I said lamely. Devenger raised an eyebrow, but I shook my head. “People make fun of it at tattooing conferences—but no one ever suggested that we use liquid fire!”

  “Maybe the tattoo artists don’t know,” Devenger said quietly. “You don’t do your own graphomancy; the aforementioned blind witch analyzes your designs. I’ll bet you don’t make your own pigments, either.” His eyes gleamed. “Clan inks? Who’s your stonegrinder?”

  “How do you know so much about me?” I asked.

  A crackling growl rippled through the room—from my Dragon, still hovering above me. The tendrils at the tip of its jaw dipped into my view like a glowing moustache . . . and I started to see double, watching through the Dragon’s eyes as Devenger leaned back in his chair.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but that’s your own damn fault. You’re all over the Internets.”

  I stared at him, then noticed his upraised hands. From his perspective, the Dragon had to be one quick lunge away from biting his head off. There was crackling my skin with magic to intimidate people, and then there was crossing the line into actual threats.

  “Excuse me,” I said, withdrawing the dragon slowly back into my body. I rubbed my eyes as the double vision faded. “Technically, that was assault. Sorry.”

  Devenger put his hands slowly on the arms of his chair and let out his breath. “Well,” he said, “that certainly wasn’t the worst reaction anyone’s had to either my little perceptual tricks or my Internet snooping, so shall we say we call ourselves even?”

  “Hardly,” I said, “and I still want an explanation.”

  “Magicians survive by being secretive,” Devenger said, folding his
arms. “To Stanford, I’m just a professor—I don’t advertise my role in the Wizarding Guild. It’s not hard to figure out, but I never confirm anything in public, so it’s hard to push inquiry past speculation. You, on the other hand, can’t keep your mouth shut, so I can find out anything I want on Wikipedia, including pictures of your tattoos good enough to reverse-engineer their logic—”

  “Wait, Wikipedia?” I said. “Last time I checked, it didn’t have anything on me more than a one-paragraph bio, scheduled for deletion for ‘not being notable’—”

  Devenger’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows lifted. “And I thought you were web savvy. Don’t you review your footprint on the web? Don’t you set up Google alerts?”

  “Maybe . . . I should start,” I said.

  But Devenger had already turned to the screen, tapped out my name, and ten seconds later found a Wikipedia page on Dakota Caroline Frost, complete with that same old out-of-date picture everyone scarfed from the Rogue Unicorn website.

  “Damn,” I said, leaning over his shoulder. The page kept scrolling down, and down, and down. “That’s me all right—all of me. Damn. Last time I looked, there wasn’t even a picture.”

  “Compiled from police records, interviews, TV appearances, the Rogue Unicorn website—everything about you is here, down to a list of your tattoos,” Devenger said, scrolling down through the page. “Even ones you no longer have, like your original dragon tattoo—”

  “Wait,” I said. “Scroll back up. There, my daughter’s name. Why is that a link?”

  “Maybe she has a Wikipedia page too,” he said.

  Something cold ran up my spine.

  “Click on it,” I said quietly. He did so, and then a page titled Cinnamon Frost appeared, complete with a picture from yesterday, from Berkeley, of Cinnamon holding her tail amidst that clump of graduate students when I’d been right there. My eyes bugged as I read the text:

  Cinnamon Stray Foundling Frost is an American

  weretiger, prodigy, and mathematician, best known for

  her work on Goldbach’s Conjecture and her struggle with

  Tourette’s Syndrome. Frost first attracted the notice of the

  mathematical community with a Note to Ars Numerica in

  which—

  “Tell me this damn thing doesn’t have her schedule on it,” I said.

  “What?” Devenger said. “No, how would—”

  He scowled, turned back to the screen, and clicked savagely on the page, throwing up link after link in new windows, muttering to himself, reading one page while five others loaded. Unsatisfied, he started hitting search engines until he turned up a blog called Zetawatch.

  “Oh, hell,” he said, tilting a monitor toward me. “Look at this—‘Cinnamon Frost at the Battle of Union Square?’ ”

  “Oh, hell, is right,” I said, leaning in. “That’s us, all right—”

  “Look at these older ones,” Devenger said. “ ‘C.S.F. Frost wins Young Investigator Award?’ ‘C.S.F. Frost to appear at Berkeley’? ‘Cinnamon Frost to receive award at Stanford?’ Sounds like your daughter has got an Internet stalker—”

  “It’s not so sinister,” I said, peering at the profile picture. “That blogger is one of the grad students who hosted Cinnamon at Berkeley. That doesn’t worry me.” Apparently, he’d been at Union Square, recognized Cinnamon, and had taken a picture. I pointed. “That does.”

  The reason the blogger had been at Union Square? To see Jewel’s performance. He’d had a front row seat to the whole show, from Jewel’s setup to the police aftermath. The final picture of the blog? Jewel, Cinnamon, and me leaving with the police.

  “I’m not certain what you mean,” Devenger said. “Are you saying someone monitoring these blogs would assume Jewel would be at a Cinnamon event? But why would the people attacking Jewel be looking for math blogs?”

  “If they plastered a three story magical glyph atop Macy’s, they’re egotistical enough to want to know how it was received,” I said. “What if they’re web savvy? What if they’ve got a Google Alert? What if they’d already had seen me and Jewel together—”

  “And now,” Devenger said, pointing at the page, “they have your name.”

  ———

  “Put it all together,” I said, “and Cinnamon’s appearances become Jewel’s hit list.”

  31. Putting Out the Illuminati

  Our golf cart sped through the walkways of Stanford at pedestrian-scattering speed. Devenger had told me to go ahead, and I’d started to run, but fifty paces out, my knee, already abused from the Battle of Union Square and Taido practice, had me limping.

  Then Devenger whizzed up in a golf cart, grabbed my arm, and pulled me onboard.

  “They should be in Dinkenspiel Auditorium, correct?” Devenger asked.

  “The bookstore,” I said. “Cinnamon wanted—”

  “Damn it,” Devenger said, turning the wheel so hard the cart nearly flipped over, sending us careening down a side path. “The auditorium and bookstore are practically on top of each other. If these firespinning hooligans do even the most cursory casing, they’ll find them—”

  Ahead, the path was blocked by a chain, and I started to ready an asp to bite it, but Devenger whipped out his laser pointer, reached around the windscreen and blasted the chain out of the way. Only then did I notice the cart’s starter switch was burnt out.

  “You’re like the Doctor with that thing,” I said.

  “Laser,” Devenger said, adjusting the focus of the device. “Who’d have sonic?”

  He blasted another chain out of the way, the cart burst through the low-hanging branches of a magnolia tree, and we emerged into a wide lane leading toward a building with a sloping red tile roof and low gold walls that I recognized as the Stanford Bookstore.

  Ahead of us was a familiar scene: screams, chaos, scattering pedestrians, a glowing bubble of flame, and dark-suited figures blasting away at Jewel’s diminishing shield. Only this time, Jewel was stuck—because the shield that protected her surrounded a pool and fountain.

  And this time my daughter was in the bubble with Jewel—and a fire ninja.

  Cinnamon’s outline rippled like a reflection on water, only standing up above the pool, rather than contained within it. She must have tried to turn invisible—but splashes at her feet gave her away, and the black-garbed fire ninja advanced upon her with a lit poi staff. My heart seized—weretigers were vulnerable to fire, and besides, her foe was more than twice her size. In lycanthropy studies, I’d learned that werekin in human form weren’t as strong as vampires. Where a vampire might have the strength of ten men, a werekin might be only as strong as two. But then my heart started again, because that equation apparently didn’t apply to lifer weres who couldn’t completely change back to human—for Cinnamon was now beating the shit out of the fire ninja.

  Fully visible now, Cinnamon was using fists, not claws—she told me once she’d rather die than give someone lycanthropy—but even with her holding back, with each blow, the hulking man was buffeted around like a rag doll. The black-garbed figure was tough—he didn’t fall—but he was losing ground, the poi staff falling from his hands, fists swinging wide, flying back as Cinnamon kicked him in the belly. He bounced off the inside of Jewel’s bubble of flame and yelled, stumbling forward, pitching inside the rim of the fountain inside the shield.

  Outside Jewel’s shield, things were going much worse. Figures screamed, stumbling and afire—the fire ninjas weren’t being gentle this time. I recognized a prone figure in a leather jacket as Ferguson, lying flat in a spray of cinders next to a cowering security guard behind a bench.

  But that was it—no cops, no vampires, no security guards, no other help. With fewer bystanders to disperse, and fewer defenders to resist, the fire ninjas were already turning from the crowd to focus on Jewel’s shie
ld.

  “Use your Dragon,” Devenger urged. “Build on her spell—”

  “They’ve seen that trick,” I said, shimmying my arms. “But I have an idea.”

  “Take the right, then,” Devenger said, rising out of his seat, leaning, one hand on the wheel. I rose as well, intuiting what he was going to do. “And cover your head!”

  He gunned it, and we leapt out—and rolled. The pavement struck me with a slap I didn’t expect, and I felt the bright sting of road rash, heard the scuff as my jacket scraped the ground. Damn it, I was going to have to have one commissioned from a leathercrafter, at triple the price. But half of Taido is tumbling, and I followed the first forward roll with a second shoulder roll, coming up at a forty-five degree angle and whipping my arm out at the rightmost ninja to fling a tattoo just as the golf cart barreled into the fire ninja in the middle.

  Screaming, the ninja was hurled into Jewel’s shield, which popped when the cart and ninja slammed into it. Jewel’s shield dissipated in prismatic fireworks, but the cart had done its job—focusing the attention of the ninjas on Devenger . . . and me.

  My dragon tattoo surged for release. Let me at them! But I didn’t want to just yet; the fire ninjas might have prepared counters for the spells they’d seen me use. Amazingly, my Dragon got that, like an intelligent thing, releasing its power into my vines, making them glow.

  The one to the right snarled, whipping a bolt of fire at me. I deflected it with a coil of an extended vine, but as I’d expected, his fire was now more tenacious, more grabby, like they’d tuned their spells to work against me. As I flicked the fire off the vine with difficulty, the fire ninja pointed at me, raising his hand with a swagger, calling me out. I’ll get you.

  Well, fine. I’d already gotten him.

  The fire ninja jerked wildly as the asp I’d flung out at the start made contact with his leg and slid up his pants. He jerked harder, trying to kick it off; I was nowhere near as gentle as I had been the last time I’d sicced one of these on someone. He took a hesitant step toward me, raising his fire sword; then he doubled over and collapsed, as if kicked in the gut.