Call of Fire

by Beth Cato

  Mr. Sakaguchi stepped forward. “Take me with you. Allow me to help tend Lee, and I will fill kermanite for your cause.”

  Uncle Moon’s gaze sharpened. He said something to the unburdened highbinders, and they jogged toward Mr. Sakaguchi.

  “Ojisan!” she gasped. He couldn’t do this. Supporting war went against everything he was.

  “Dr. Moon is right. The war has changed. I can no longer play conscientious objector while the remaining Chinese are slaughtered. This mountain I climb may be insurmountable, yet . . .” His eyes took on a dreamy sheen. “Yamaji kite—Naniyara yukashi—Sumire-gusa.”

  Ingrid was taken aback as she recognized the Bashō haiku:

  Coming along the mountain path

  I am somehow mysteriously moved

  by these violets.

  “Continue to bloom, my beloved daughter,” Mr. Sakaguchi whispered. Ingrid wanted to say something, anything, and couldn’t form words. Mr. Sakaguchi’s gaze shifted past her to Cy, to whom he gave a wordless nod. His guards prodded him, and he faced forward as they reached the stairs.

  Ingrid advanced to the edge of the precipice. Lee was being lowered into the last remaining submarine. Uncle Moon stood atop the vessel, a brilliant figure in crimson. Mr. Sakaguchi and the other men ran down, down, their footsteps echoing in a mighty space that was now almost entirely empty.

  Blum approached with reverberating steps. The world seemed quieter otherwise, the bombardment more distant. The airships had likely withdrawn as ground troops moved in with Blum.

  Ingrid was tired of running. Grief made her feet adhere to the bricks, transforming her into a statue.

  “Ingrid.” Cy pulled at her shoulder. “Ingrid! We can’t stand here and gawk.”

  She nodded and willed herself to wakefulness, willed the heat in her veins to stir. She still carried fever. If they could get far enough away, maybe the sylphs would be rested, maybe they could work dog sorcery again, anything to hide her long enough for them to reach the Bug.

  Maybe, maybe, maybe. The word pestered her like a mosquito.

  “Which way’s she approaching from, Ingrid? Stay with me.”

  Ingrid pointed the way they had come. Blum trailed them the way a dog sniffs out a fox; maybe that role reversal was part of Blum’s joy in the pursuit.

  “You’re wearing out like the sylphs were.” He grimaced and pulled filled kermanite from his pouch. “You need this. We have to move, Ingrid.”

  He dragged her forward even as her body absorbed power from the crystals. Magic twined her wrists, coursed through her marrow, filled her lungs. Her fever soared; her exhaustion worsened. She forced away the weakness, binding magic into her muscles to make them stronger, emblazoning new energy into her brain as if she’d guzzled a full pot of Fenris’s foul coffee.

  Ingrid pushed away the ground as she started to run.

  Blum loomed closer, her feral and magical presence exuding foulness worse than the decomposing animals along Chinatown’s walls.

  Ingrid had to run faster, faster. She gripped Cy’s arm and pulled him along, up a staircase, through the broken shell of a building. Fire stretched into the night sky, blinding her for all of a second. She blinked away the eye strain. She clutched Cy’s hand, and together they ran north along a razed street of Seattle.

  Chapter 22

  Brilliant red and black strokes colored the night, as if a painter had upended two pails onto a broad canvas. Cinders and ashes choked the air. Someone screamed nearby, the sound inhuman. A Durendal, maybe more than one, rumbled beyond sight. Ingrid looked to the sky. Smoke and clouds worked together to suffocate the stars.

  The Unified Pacific airships had indeed withdrawn to the far west, over the water. Fear spiked in her chest: What if they spotted the submarines? What if they bombed them?

  Control what we can, control what we can, she told herself with every thud of her feet. The submarines had a better chance than she and Cy. She needed to keep her focus here, not on the horizon.

  Her attuned senses warned her of approaching soldiers. She pushed Cy down as she brought up a shield. Bullets pinged away as she and Cy rolled across the ground. He jumped to his feet and withdrew his gun as he ducked behind the shattered remnants of a brick wall. Ingrid let the bubble drop. Cy fired twice in succession. A yell and a thud came in reply.

  “There’s another soldier,” he muttered, stopping her as she was about to shield them again. Ingrid pulled herself into a crouch behind the wall. Sweat soaked her filthy dress, the cloth weighed down as if by mud.

  Cy peered around the top bricks. A bullet sang over his hat. He aimed, ducked again, then popped up to fire. Ingrid waited for a scream, a sign of a hit, but after a moment Cy tugged on her. They continued at a crouch.

  “Death is like that sometimes.” His voice was so low she almost missed the words. “Quiet. A snowflake falling in the dark. You don’t know how the snow has accumulated until you see the drifts in the morning.”

  I’m sorry, she wanted to say. Sorry he was in the place, that she’d brought him here, that he had to kill again. That she knew each death killed part of him.

  But she also knew that those words would have been as insufficient as the shopkeepers’ aprons she had pressed against Lee’s gut wound. Grief and guilt would have their time. For now, they had to survive.

  “If we’re separated, if anything happens, work north to meet Fenris in Edmonds,” Cy said. Sweat and ashes smeared his face like camouflage.

  “We’re not getting separated. I’m not about to leave without you.”

  “Even if that’s in UP custody?”

  “We’re not going to—”

  She sensed the ordnance as soon as it departed the Durendal’s gun. The air quivered in advance, like a pressure wave preceding an earthquake, the ripples striking her before the boom registered in her ears. She grabbed Cy again and pulled him down as the shield ensconced them. The skeletal wooden building to their left exploded. Shards of wood and bricks and belongings rained down on the bubble as the heat of the blast flared and dissipated against the glass-like sheen. Her contrived shield did nothing to mute the sound that dominated her senses for a matter of seconds. Ingrid screamed and scarcely heard it, though she felt her throat turn raw. Pain seared her eardrums then dulled, a fierce ache lingering.

  She studied the firm mud beneath her hands. No reaction from Hidden Ones, no blue miasma. Ingrid’s pulse ticked like an overwound pocket watch. God, if she was hurt here and now, an earthquake wasn’t the only issue. A major seism could cause a tsunami. This whole area would flood, and those submarines out in Puget Sound . . .

  “Ingrid?” Cy sounded distant and muffled, even though he was right beside her.

  “I guess I need to make my bubbles block sound, too.” She felt the movement of the Durendal a block away. The heavy tank created rumbles like a shallow tremblor.

  “You’re not hurt?”

  She shook her head. “Just my ears. Everything sounds funny.”

  Debris flecked the dirt street around them. Bits of wood flamed like torches while jagged shards of glass reflected nearby conflagrations like thin puddles of captured flame.

  Cy helped her up. Her hands and legs quivered, her fingers and toes tingling almost to the point of numbness. Ingrid had power, though. She had to keep going.

  Blum’s presence stretched over her like a long shadow.

  “How many bullets do you have, Cy?”

  “Three more in chambers, more to reload.”

  She let the barrier fall so she could concentrate on safely navigating the debris as they ran forward. She couldn’t use up her power unnecessarily; only a scoop of charged kermanite remained in her pocket. Once they found adequate temporary shelter, she could get more crystals from Cy.

  “If we can’t get away from Blum, you have to shoot me, Cy. It’s a mercy. You know it is.”

  She didn’t need to look at him to know the agony upon his face.

  “Don’t ask me that, Ingrid. Don’t pu
t that on my soul.”

  “How would your soul handle me being captive, a weapon?”

  “Are you willing to shoot me, too? Or use your power to . . . ?”

  It was only fair of him to flip the dilemma around, and she couldn’t answer. The very thought made something in her chest wither.

  She reached for his hand. Their fingers twined together, their holds desperate.

  Blum approached fast, faster than they could run, her essence like the buzz of an angry wasp nest. Ingrid glanced back. A Durendal drove up the street behind them. Downed street poles crunched and shattered beneath its treads. Blum stood on the side rail, her fitted black coat billowing with an elegant flair.

  Ingrid pulled Cy to run faster. They had to find a side street, they had to get away. The firebreak around Chinatown lay ahead, the intact buildings beyond like silhouetted black obelisks.

  She spied a gap in the buildings ahead. They swerved around a fallen, flaming wooden pole only to see a knot of troops blocking the path some twenty feet distant. Ingrid brought up her shield as she spun around. A shattered building fully blocked the avenue toward the water. The Durendal’s heavy shudders made rocks dance and clatter across the earth.

  Blum had herded them right into a trap.

  Hand in hand with Cy, Ingrid sprinted north. It provided a straightaway for the tank, but damn it, the way was mostly clear and they had to—

  “Ingrid Carmichael!” The power embodied in the invocation of her name hooked her like a harpoon. She staggered to a stop, gasping. Cy dragged to a stop as well, his grip on her strong despite her clammy skin.

  Heart skittering, body trembling, Ingrid turned to confront Ambassador Blum.

  Ambassador Blum still wore her young, redheaded form. Against the backdrop of fire and destruction, she looked decidedly perky. Her tumultuous red hair was only partially braided up so that a cascade of curls fell over her shoulders. The ashy smudges across her cheeks somehow managed to look artful. She wore the same black fitted dress as earlier, the mantled peacoat swirling about her hips as she hopped from the side rail of the Durendal to the ground. The tank leveled its gun at Ingrid and Cy as Blum ambled forward to one side. She motioned with a black-gloved hand. Boots pattered as soldiers deployed around them, the sound tinny and muffled.

  “Ingrid Carmichael, Ingrid Carmichael! Fancy meeting you here.”

  Ingrid flinched at the repetition of her name. Blum’s toothy grin made it clear how she relished that reaction.

  Cy’s hand was damp against hers. She felt the rapidness of his pulse, his terror. He had run for a dozen years to avoid this moment.

  Ingrid licked her dry lips and blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Moshi moshi!”

  Blum stared at her in surprise and burst out laughing. It was a joyous, carefree sound, a full-on belly laugh. She clapped her hands together and did a happy little hop. “Aha! You figured me out! However, I hate to disappoint you. That trite test only works on young kitsune with scarcely a nub of a tail and no practice with spoken human language. I can say ‘moshi moshi’ quite well in person and on the telephone, thank you very much. I confess, elocution lessons helped.”

  Within the bubble, a waft of Blum’s musky power somehow thickened the trapped, smoky air. Ingrid’s shoulders heaved as she fought to breathe. It was as if Blum’s very presence could suffocate her.

  The ambassador strolled closer with a playful roll to her gait. “Tell me, Ingrid, how did you hide yourself earlier? I was quite impressed. I thought I’d snared you at the docks, and then it was like you vanished from existence until a short while ago. Have you been doing some research?”

  “You told me before that you think I’m clever. Give me some credit.”

  “Oh, I grant you plenty of credit. You survived San Francisco. That would be quite impressive for any human being, but for a geomancer surrounded by such an intense flow of energy, it’s downright miraculous.” Blum tilted her head to one side. “Then you came here, to Seattle of all places. Let me guess: a rendezvous with your mentor, Mr. Sakaguchi?”

  Ingrid didn’t try to mask her grief at the name. Please let the submarines get away. Please let Mr. Sakaguchi and Lee live. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “Oh, I believe you. He’d be with you now, if at all possible.” Blum sighed and kicked the dirt like a petulant child. “I had reports that he was with a tong here. I imagine he’s still about, somewhere. It’ll likely take a week for soldiers to burrow throughout the underground of this slum, but maybe we’ll find him. It’s much easier to speak with the living than the dead, though. Spirits are always so . . . so . . . fixated on things and people and unresolved life issues and so on. They lose all conversation skills. It’s worse than teatime with the president.”

  “You . . . interrogate ghosts?”

  “If necessary. If possible. Ghosts are a rarity, in all truth. A person has to die with a certain strength of will or an intense emotion that enables them to linger, and often people with magic embody that requisite tenacity. Maybe we’ll get a ghost out of the Cascadian Auxiliary. It’s horrific enough a scene. I should thank you for your assistance there, while I have it in mind.” Blum looked oddly somber. “If you hadn’t stepped in, those boys would be aloft over the Pacific now and forced into a lifetime of eating borscht. Of course, part of the credit for their rescue goes to Mr. Augustus as well. Oh, come now, Cy. No smile or ‘moshi moshi’ from you? No no, dearie. Keep the gun aimed downward. I know you’re a crack shot, but you’re also now aware that a bullet won’t eliminate me.” She waggled her pointer finger. Her black glove hid her ambassadorial ring.

  “You’re not immortal,” Cy growled.

  “No, and thank goodness I’m not! Part of the fun is in the risk. Immortality would be as dull as an imperial coronation. It is good to see you again.”

  “’Fraid I can’t say the same.”

  Blum gazed on him with a fondness that perturbed Ingrid. “Tsk, tsk. You seem to have lost the ability to converse in complex sentences since you deserted. Twelve years is certainly a long time to evade the A-and-A. Lo those many years ago, I personally wrote the notice regarding your death in an airship crash. I arranged your funeral, too. It’s surprising, really, how often deserters will show up at their own interment in order to see their family again, but you didn’t take the bait. Alas. Your mother sang ‘The Sweet By and By’ in such a lovely soprano. You would have found it quite touching.” Blum’s grin was downright vulpine. “I arranged another such memorial for someone you know well.”

  Cy’s rage rattled in his breath. Ingrid gripped his hand, both in support and to remind him to stay calm. He took a moment to regain control before he spoke. “You’re referencing my father, Miss Blum?”

  “Your father? Actually, no, but we can certainly talk about him. He’s missing in San Francisco, did you know? He’s old for a man. He’s had a good life. To think, the two of you were so close to each other in the same city after so many years apart, and you didn’t even know.” She shook her head, her curls bouncing. “I was stunned to find you had been in San Francisco, too. Imagine my delight when I saw your name in Mr. Thornton’s appointment book! The surname was different, but there are only so many engineers named Cy in this world. I had a hunch it was you. What astounding circumstances, to bring you and Ingrid together. I wasn’t sure if you’d made it out of the city with her, Cy, but I’m ever so glad you did.”

  With a start, Ingrid realized that Blum didn’t know they had indeed met with the elder Mr. Augustus. The chaos of the earthquake hours later had acted in their favor, in this small way. Cy seemed to come to the same understanding as he squeezed Ingrid’s fingers.

  “Let Ingrid go and I’ll come with you,” he said.

  “What?” snapped Ingrid.

  Blum burst out with more airy laughter. “Oh, Cy, Cy. How noble. You assume the A-and-A still wants you.”

  “They always need good engineers,” he said.

  “Cy, what the hell are you d
oing?” Ingrid hissed. He maintained a level gaze on Blum.

  “Good loyal engineers. There’s no denying that you’re downright brilliant, but we also have a far better employee at work on our most vital project right now, and with this person we needn’t worry about pesky things like sabotage.”

  Did Blum know about the flaw that Cy built into Durendals, or was she referring to something else?

  “Don’t expect loyalty from me,” snarled Ingrid. She pushed more energy into the protective bubble as she eyed the soldiers around them. They seemed to follow Blum’s orders out of fear more than respect—a marked difference from how soldiers behaved around Mr. Roosevelt.

  Another Durendal rumbled along somewhere close by. Someone wailed. Two gunshots rang out, followed by a distant flash of light. She wondered if it came from a flash grenade. Far, far in the distance, airships continued their low meditative hum.

  Blum grinned and fidgeted with her skirt, the luxurious pleated fabric rippling in the indirect firelight. “My dear Ingrid, the advantage in working with you is that your best work can be done while unconscious. You don’t have to be awake to transfer energy to kermanite, or for your pain to provoke geomantic yokai. It’s really astonishing how medicine has advanced in recent years thanks to the war! Pain can be evoked through efficient and clean methods. We live in an amazing technological age.

  “I would visit you often, though. I could even read to you, if you’re incapable of holding a book on your own. Over the years, I have sought out books from the library of Alexandria, volumes no human has read in centuries. Some make for dull reads, mind you, but others are a delight.” Blum’s smile was bright. Hopeful. “I could bring tea as well. You do prefer tea, don’t you? Not that American travesty that is coffee?”

  Ingrid shuddered at the perversion of friendship Blum was describing. “As fond as I am of old books, I think I’d prefer to freely live my life and read more contemporary works.”