Spark the Fire

by Melissa McShane

  “I had no idea humans were so smart,” Lamprophyre said. She took the book from Dharan and, still holding it beneath the glass, turned the pages. The pictures were vividly colored and as enlarged as the letters.

  “If it’s almost noon, I need to get to my lectures,” Dharan said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Lamprophyre. You really are learning astonishingly fast. Rokshan, don’t forget supper tonight.”

  “I won’t.” Rokshan saluted Dharan with that wrist-gripping gesture, then watched him disappear down the street. “So, it was a good morning?” he asked.

  “It was. But I think I’ve had enough reading and writing. On my own, that is. I don’t mind if you want to read to me.” She stepped outside to bring the slates indoors, and stopped. A man stood at the far side of the courtyard, staring at her. She recognized him as one of the beggars from the night before. “Hello,” she said. “Excuse me for one moment.”

  She leaned the slates against the wall opposite the magnifying lens. “That man is here again,” she told Rokshan. “The beggar you didn’t want me to give coin to. Didn’t you say you’d help him?”

  Rokshan looked out the entrance. “I did,” he said. “That’s why he’s here.” He walked across the courtyard to greet the man. Lamprophyre followed. She felt a little foolish. Rokshan had warned her the man might be lazy, and that he would just keep asking for help if she gave him coin, and he was right.

  “I guess you were serious about wanting work,” Rokshan was saying as she approached. “Lamprophyre, this is Depik. He’s a cook and he needs a job. I told him, if he meant what he said about being willing to work, that he should come here today to speak with you.”

  Lamprophyre looked down at the man. In the daylight, he looked even scruffier than he had the previous night. “Don’t I already have a cook?”

  “You’ve had two,” Rokshan said, “but they were both timid, and neither one wanted to stay.”

  Lamprophyre remembered their fearful thoughts. “And Depik—you’re not afraid.” That was clear. Depik looked back at her with no trace of fear, at least not of her. He was afraid, she realized, but his emotions were a confusing tangle, fear mixed with resignation and despair, and all she understood was that he was afraid of failing yet again.

  Depik shook his head. “You didn’t eat me, wonder what you do eat,” he said.

  “I like cow. Actually, I love steak. Akarshan at the palace cooked it different ways, and it was always delicious. Can you cook steak?”

  “I can. What about chicken? Only you might need a mort o’ chickens.” She heard him think feathers and all, no more than a mouthful.

  “I’ve never had chicken,” she said. “They’re a kind of bird, aren’t they? I eat birds as a snack, but if there were enough of them, it could be a meal.”

  Depik nodded. “I can see how much you’d need in a meal, my lady.” To her surprise, his thoughts went from fearful to discouraged. “But you shouldn’t hire me. Can’t depend on me.”

  “I don’t understand. Why not? You sound as if you know what you’re doing, and that’s all I really care about.”

  Depik looked at his feet. “Some days I can’t get out of bed. I try, but it’s like I ache all over, only it’s on the inside. Can’t explain. Other bosses, they say I’m lazy, but it’s not like I want to lie there thinking dark thoughts. I just can’t beat it.”

  Rokshan said, “Well, Lamprophyre? What do you think?”

  His peculiar emphasis on think confused her only for a beat or two. Then she listened to Depik’s thoughts: don’t know why I got my hopes up, dragon could be different but no reason to think so, curse me for a lazy fool.

  “I think you’re honest, Depik,” she said. “I want to hire you. And when you have one of those days, well, if you’re a good enough cook all the rest of the days, I can fend for myself when I have to.”

  Depik raised his head. There was so much hope filling his thoughts Lamprophyre drew in a breath and held it, waiting for his response. “You mean it?” he said. “I told you I’ll disappoint you.”

  “I don’t think you will,” Lamprophyre said. “You’re responsible for buying my food and preparing it. I eat twice a day, morning and evening, so you should get to work immediately. There are little houses behind the embassy—you can choose one for yourself. Rokshan, give him some coin so he can buy food. Also something for his first wages.”

  “As my lady commands,” Rokshan said with a grin. She nudged him with her elbow, making him stagger.

  Depik’s eyes widened as Rokshan pressed several silver coins into his palm. “But—I might run off with this, never come back!” he exclaimed.

  “I trust you,” Lamprophyre said. “Also, I can hunt you down if you do. But I don’t think I’ll need to. And I’m sorry if this is rude, but you really need a bath.”

  Depik nodded. His mouth had fallen open and was now as wide as his eyes. “God’s breath,” he said, “I swear I won’t cheat you.”

  “I believe you. I’ll see you at supper.” She was learning all sorts of new words for meals. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Supper. She waved at Depik, who didn’t wave back, just stumbled away down the street. “I hope he takes me seriously about the bath,” she told Rokshan.

  “So do I. You’re taking a real chance on him,” Rokshan said.

  “I know, but you didn’t hear how terrible he feels about himself. No one should be that discouraged.”

  Rokshan was silent. She glanced his way and saw he was looking at her with a strange expression. Well, all his expressions were strange to her, but this one she’d never seen before. “You know,” he said, “for someone who isn’t human, you have an extraordinary capacity for compassion for us.”

  Lamprophyre blushed faint purple. “You think dragons can’t care about humans?”

  “I think it’s a trait of any rational creature to care primarily about its own kind. Hyaloclast certainly doesn’t give a damn what happens to humans. And you already know most humans think you’re a monster. Yet you treat humans the way you would members of your flight. I think that’s extraordinary.”

  She blushed harder. “It’s nothing you wouldn’t do for dragons,” she pointed out. “Maybe that makes us both unique.”

  “Maybe it does.” Rokshan held up the small book. “Ready for some stories? You can tell me what we got wrong.”

  “I don’t know,” Lamprophyre said as she went back into the embassy. “Maybe you got things right, instead.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Lamprophyre crouched as low as she could, coiling her tail around her left flank and furling her wings close along her back. With her eyes closed, she counted aloud, “…forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty! I hope you hid better than last time, because I’m coming for you!” She rose to her full height and stomped out of the embassy’s back door, making plenty of noise so the giggles were drowned out. She already knew where all the children were, but finding them immediately would spoil the game.

  She made a show of scanning the rear of the embassy, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand rather than closing the nictitating membranes. Ohar crouched inside one of the unoccupied servants’ houses; she clearly heard him think she’ll find Rojital first, he’s too little to hide well. Lamprophyre controlled a smile. Ohar was in for a surprise.

  She stomped away from the little houses—let Ohar think his ploy was working—and passed the kitchen where Rojital hid under one of the tables. There really weren’t many hiding places around the embassy, but Lamprophyre had promised the children’s parents they wouldn’t stray far from home. Varnak had gone to ground outside the kitchen, on its far side, and Anamika—she was clever; once Lamprophyre left by the back door, she’d moved from her exposed position by the entrance to hide inside the embassy itself, behind one of the slates propped against the wall. If Lamprophyre hadn’t already decided to let Rojital win, she might have given the honor to Anamika.

  As it was, she decided to worry Anamika some by passing through the embassy slowly
, making a great show of sniffing. The children believed it was how she found them, and she saw no reason to reveal the truth. She went out the back door, still sniffing, and walked slowly along the row of houses, bent over to peer inside.

  “I’ve got you!” she exclaimed, throwing the door open and revealing Ohar.

  Ohar groaned. “No fair,” he said. “I bathed!”

  “And now you smell sweet and clean,” Lamprophyre said. Ohar scowled.

  She “found” Varnak and then Anamika, then made a big show of searching for Rojital. Finally, she said, “I give up. Where are you, Rojital?”

  “I’m here!” Rojital exclaimed, popping up from his hiding place. Lamprophyre laughed.

  “I guess I’m too tall to see down there,” she said. “Though you have a wonderful scent.” She brought her face close to Rojital’s belly and drew in a long breath. Rojital giggled.

  “Let’s do it again,” Anamika said.

  “All right,” Lamprophyre said, “one more time.” She sniffed Rojital to make him laugh again. He did smell like a human that had had a bath recently, of the sweet, crisp scent of the soap his mother used, but also of dirt—Rojital got dirty faster than any human Lamprophyre knew—and, more distantly…but that wasn’t Rojital.

  Lamprophyre lifted her head and scented the air. Wood smoke, dark and bitter and not far away. Something big was on fire nearby.

  “Stay here, children,” she said, and took to the sky.

  She saw it immediately: a column of dark smoke rising into the air about a dozen dragonlengths away. As she flew toward it, the background hum of the city became louder, sharper, more terrified. She saw the building clearly now, one of the tall ones humans lived in as opposed to the ones where they sold each other things they made. Humans clustered around the base of it, and fear tangled their thoughts.

  Lamprophyre landed in the street a dragonlength from the building. She couldn’t approach any closer without trampling humans. The fire consumed the top of the building; she knew from asking Rokshan that buildings like this had levels called floors stacked on each other, and this was the top floor. She risked listening to hear if there were humans still within, but the noise of the flames and the noise of terrified humans on the street made that impossible.

  No one seemed aware of her presence. She reflected briefly that all she needed to be accepted in Tanajital was half a dozen disasters, and leaped into the sky again. From there, she saw a line of humans snaking their way from the community well to the building, and the glint of water in containers they passed from one to another. That was clever, but pointless, because getting through the building to the fire would be fatal. And by the time the fire reached a point where their water could quench it, it would be too large to quench.

  She dropped lower and hovered near the western corner of the roof, where the fire burned brightest. Carefully, she clung to the ragged side of the building, eaten away by fire, and wrapped her wings around the nearest flames.

  Some of them, deprived of the air they desperately needed, flickered and died. But more flames took their place. Lamprophyre ducked her head and soaked in the heat for a few beats. This wasn’t something her body could contain. She needed some way to bring water to the roof. Too bad it wasn’t the rainy season yet, which Rokshan had told her drenched the city and kept most fires from devastating it. Then, people spent all their time trying to stop things getting soaked. The opposite of what she needed now.

  That gave her an idea. She took to the sky again, scanning for what she needed. Surely they’d be in use, if only because they shielded people from the sun as well as the rain. Two streets away, she saw it: a bright pink splotch of heavy fabric Rokshan called a canopy. Big as her arms could encompass, and rigid like an upside down bowl.

  Lamprophyre flew down to the canopy and examined it. It was held up by sticks at its six corners, and she could smell more sticks on its underside. She yanked on the canopy and freed it from two of the sticks, but it stayed rigid. Good. She’d guessed right. The sticks on the underside kept it from sagging and would help it maintain its bowl shape. And if she’d understood correctly, it was watertight.

  Tugging harder, she freed the canopy from the rest of the sticks and flew with it to the well. Amid screams from the people desperately drawing water, she set the canopy down bowl side up and shouted, “Fill that! I’ll be back!”

  A second canopy, this one yellow like a chirping bird, was easier to retrieve. She flew with it to the river, struggling to keep it from catching the wind and knocking her off course. When she reached the river, she dove, inhaling its fresh damp scent, and tipped the canopy so it scooped up water as she skimmed the river’s surface. The full canopy was heavy and awkward, but she gripped it along its sides as far as her arms could reach and flew back to the burning building.

  The fire had spread while she was gone, flames leaping to the next building, and there were humans atop that one, beating at the flames with heavy cloth. “Stand back,” Lamprophyre shouted, and tipped the canopy just enough to let a trickle of water overflow it. The canopy fought her, wanting to upend all at once, and Lamprophyre gritted her teeth and forced it to obey. The fire hissed and spat and sent up great clouds of steam, and then it was out. Lamprophyre turned her attention to the doomed building—well, maybe not so doomed, if the humans at the well had listened to her. With the rest of the water, she extinguished some of the fire, drenching the wood so the flames couldn’t spread further.

  Breathing heavily, her arms aching from the weight of the full canopy, she flew back to the well and found the humans had listened, after all. The second canopy was nearly full of water. She decided not to waste time waiting for it to be completely full, set the first canopy down to be refilled, and took off with the second.

  This time, it felt like the water went farther, or maybe the fire had seen the futility of fighting a dragon and was giving up. After the second canopy’s burden was shed, only a few fires burned, here and there, and it took very little of a third load of water to extinguish them. Lamprophyre hovered over the blackened, soaked roof, her arms shaking, and thought about dropping the empty canopy to give herself some relief. Then she remembered it belonged to someone who would likely want it back, and flew slowly to where she’d found it. A male and a female stood gaping at her as she descended. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t have time to ask permission. Should I put it back? I’m not sure how it goes on the sticks.”

  “We’ll do it,” the female said.

  Lamprophyre nodded, too tired to listen to their thoughts. She shook out her arms as she flew away, wishing she could return to the embassy for a nap, but there was the other canopy to deal with, and she should probably check the burned building to see if any of it might fall down. It would be terrible if the falling wood crushed someone.

  Having returned the canopy and examined the building, she finally headed for the embassy. As she descended toward the courtyard, she heard Rokshan calling her name. Dully, she landed and waited for him to run to her.

  “Lamprophyre, what did you do?” he said.

  Fear shot through her. “I put out the fire,” she said. “Was that a mistake? I had to borrow those canopies, and I’m sure the humans were afraid of me—Rokshan, I couldn’t let it burn. It would have taken so many other buildings with it!”

  “Of course you couldn’t,” Rokshan said. He put a hand on her arm. “You’re shaking. Are you all right?”

  “Just tired. Water is heavy—I don’t think people appreciate that.”

  Rokshan nodded. “The streets are full of people arguing about you. Some of them say you caused the fire—”

  “What?”

  He waved her to silence. “Most of them are talking about how you put out the fire, and why would you do that if you’d wanted to burn that building to the ground. And everyone’s listening to them.”

  “Where did you go?” Anamika exclaimed. The four children raced around the corner of the embassy, jumping in their agitation. “W
as there a fire? You can’t breathe water, can you?”

  “No, and I think that would be uncomfortable, fire and water that close together,” Lamprophyre said. “Rokshan, are you saying I’m not being criticized?”

  “Only by a few people, and they’re being shouted down.” Rokshan gripped her arm more tightly. “This is good.”

  “Very good,” Lamprophyre agreed. “And now I need a nap. Children, we can play another day.”

  As the four children ran off toward home, Rokshan said, “I’m not happy about that calamity, but if we can take advantage of it, so much the better for us.”

  “I made sure the building wouldn’t come down on them.” Lamprophyre slouched into the embassy and settled on the comfortable floor. “I wonder if there are any other things I can do to convince people I’m a hero?”

  “I can’t guarantee other convenient fires.” Rokshan settled down beside her and leaned against her flank. “So I don’t think we should look for those opportunities, because we have other things we need to do. Like find the thieves.”

  “I’m discouraged. All our theories seem unprovable. Either it’s Gonjirians who hate your father, or it’s Fanishkorites who want to start a war, or someone else we haven’t even considered. And that’s before we include Khadar and the ecclesiasts, who want me gone for some other reason.”

  “I wouldn’t say they’re unprovable theories. I’ve done some investigating—or, rather, I had some of Tekentriya’s spy corps investigate.”

  “I’ve heard of spies. They sneak around and learn things secretly, right?”

  “Right. Some of them spy on the Fanishkorites in Tanajital, so I asked for the information they already have.”

  Lamprophyre propped her head on her hand. “I’m sorry if this is rude, but Tekentriya doesn’t like or respect you. If they’re her spies, why would they tell you anything?”