by A. W. Exley
Francis Hamilton appeared with his Soarers behind him. Two men who had the appearance of salamanders, Trixie, and a fourth who looked out of place. Next to Hamilton walked an elderly man. What little hair he retained was grey and clung to his scalp. His shoulders were stooped, as though the years he carried were heavy upon him.
Hamilton pointed a finger at his niece. “Beatrice, tend to Kruos.”
Elijah rushed to her side, an arm up over his face as the smoke grew thicker in the corridor. “You can’t go in there.”
She turned sad eyes to him. “Yes, I can. I’ve done this before. Help get all the workers out of here and outside to safety.”
He ground his jaw and tried not to breathe in the noxious smoke. While he knew intellectually that she was a salamander and wouldn’t be burned, it created a knot in his chest to watch her walk calmly into the fire.
Getting people clear in case the fire spread was something he could do. He picked up a crying young girl who had been shoved to one side and carried her to the fresh air outside. Workers congregated in groups as they watched smoke billow from windows in one segment of the building.
“You’ll be safe out here,” Elijah said as he set the girl down with another group of youths.
Then he went back in to ensure that everyone else had made their way out. He tried to peer into the carding room, but thick smoke and heat drove him back. He held his arm over his face, waiting for Trixie and the others to emerge, until the high temperature drove him back to the cooling twilight breeze.
His curiosity wanted to know what the slyphs and salamanders did to control the fire. Could the salamanders order it away in the same way he could command earth and rock? Slyphs controlled air, which a fire needed to grow. Although if they removed all the air from the building they could asphyxiate the entire workforce. Perhaps it was a dual assault to extinguish the inferno trying to consume the machinery and floorboards in the carding room.
A soft boom shot through the open doors, accompanied by a blast of cold air. The flickering red light within was extinguished in the space of a heartbeat. Then thick smoke poured through the doors and windows, and people moved further away from the building.
He found Manny among those assembled and stood beside him as they watched the smoke curl skyward in rounded puffs. He decided to pick at how much his friend knew. “What exactly do you think they are doing in there without any water?”
Manny smiled and tapped the side of his nose. “Mr Hamilton and his people have always taken care of any fires. Damned clever they are, like magicians with what they do.”
“They use magic to put out the fire?” That would be an easier way to explain to the villagers how they walked into a burning fire and emerged without a single hair on their heads being singed.
Trixie and the small group emerged from the brick building. The man referred to as Kruos was slung between the two salamanders. They half carried him out into the fresh air. Trixie scanned the assembled workers and smiled when she spotted him. She half raised her hand in a wave and then dropped it back down when her uncle materialised at her side and pulled her back towards the building.
Kruos. The name sparked a long-dormant memory. He turned the word over and over in his mind until it fell into place. It was ancient Greek and meant icy cold, or frozen.
His attention fixated on the old man being helped to a sitting position on the ground. Kruos coughed up the smoke in his lungs and took an offered mug of water.
Elijah had found the Meidh who’d murdered his father.
18
Elijah stalked closer. Like a cat concentrating on its prey, he made each step slow and deliberate as the smoke, noise, and people around him vanished. The man before him became his sole focus.
Kruos appeared elderly—at least seventy years old. The wispy hair on his head was brushed across his skull to cover the bare patches. His face was wrinkled and drawn with black lines from the smoke and soot. His hands shook as he clutched the tin of water, and frost emerged from under his fingers and spread over the metal.
He was mere inches away now. If Elijah stretched out a hand, he could touch the cold killer.
But then what?
Elijah looked up at the people crammed into the courtyard. They stared at the plumes of smoke curling from the windows. Men still ran back and forth, calling out instructions. Whatever had happened within, the salamanders and the Meidh had doused most of the fire, leaving only smouldering remains. The workers waited to be told what to do by the managers and foremen.
It wasn’t like he could wrap his hands around the murderer’s throat in front of all the assembled mill employees. That would take some explaining.
“Hector. Take him home before he passes out. Use one of the horses over there.” Mr Baxter pointed from Elijah to the hunched-up figure of Kruos, and then waved to the front gates and the assortment of horses waiting to be reclaimed by their owners.
And just like that, Gaia provided him with an opportunity.
“Of course, Mr Baxter.” Elijah grasped the old man’s upper arm and was surprised by how thin the bones seemed. How easy it would be to shift forms and snap the arm like a stick. Perhaps he could repay what had been done to his father.
There were two hundred and six bones in the human body. Could he snap every one before the old man expired? That didn’t seem like a big enough number, since his father had been smashed into thousands of tiny shards by the Soarers. He would have to break each bone in at least three places to come anywhere near a thousand.
“I’ll go with you. Nothing to do here until they air out the smoke.” Manny appeared through the haze and took the other side of Kruos and looped a skinny arm over his shoulders.
“Yes. Take me back to my empty cell,” the man muttered.
“He means his cottage,” Manny said over the elderly man’s bent head. “Poor old bugger. They insist on dragging him out to help put out the fires, and it nearly kills him each time.”
Perhaps they need a bigger fire to finish the job? Elijah thought to himself. Although a larger blaze would endanger innocent lives. He wanted the murderer to pay for his crimes, not add to his death toll.
People thinned as they neared the yards and rails where the horses waited.
“Come on, Mr K, up you go.” Manny climbed into the back of a small cart and hauled the Meidh up while Elijah picked up his legs.
Between the two of them they laid the man out in the back. He muttered under his breath, but his eyes were closed, as though he drifted in and out of consciousness. Each breath frosted over his lips in puffs, as though he were out in the snow in the middle of winter.
Manny climbed onto the front seat and unlooped the driving reins from around the brake.
“Given he seems so old and frail, why did they drag him out?” Elijah asked as he sat next to Manny. He glanced at the still figure. If he sat in the back, how easy it would be to smother Kruos while no one was watching. It would be easy to say it was caused by his frail health and overexertion from fighting the fire.
Elijah stared at his hands. Could he snuff out another’s life? He had spent years imagining what he would do when he found the men who’d killed his father. As a youth it was a game he’d played, wielding a stick as a sword and confronting the imaginary murderers before he stabbed them in the heart.
Reality was different to reading words in a book or playacting. Kruos seemed so weak and pathetic. Not for the first time, Elijah found that his desire to know why overrode his need for physical vengeance. What had driven this man to take the life of another? He let out a sigh and leaned his arms on his knees.
By failing to act, he failed his father.
Manny glanced over his shoulder and then clucked his tongue at the horse. The animal leaned into the harness and the cart began to roll. “He’s handy in a fire, even if he is an odd one. Can be a frosty old bugger, but then I guess what he’s gone through would make anyone cold.”
Elijah bit back a scoff. If the man had suf
fered, then good. Sometimes the balance redressed itself in a person’s life and punished wrongdoing, or rewarded patience and virtue. “What’s he been through?”
Manny steered the horse down the wide road and towards the village. “Wife died when they were newly married and just after she had his daughter. He raised the girl on his own, and then she took her own life a few years back. His granddaughter works at the big house, but she’s been terribly sick for a long time now. Must be hard to bury your wife and daughter and now stare at the prospect of adding your granddaughter to their grave as well.”
Elijah turned one hand into a fist. It was hard to only ever know your father as a gravestone. At least Kruos had memories to look back on. Elijah could only stare at the few paintings of his father. He relied on the tales told by his uncle and aunt of their youthful adventures to bring the man to life.
“Millie never had much time for her granddad. What free time she had, she used to spend with us at the old barn. Now we don’t see her at all. I hear the Hamiltons are looking after her.” As Manny spoke, he gestured to the hill that rose up behind the village.
Something pricked in the back of his mind on hearing that the Soarers cared for the man’s granddaughter. They weren’t known for being altruistic. “Sick staff can’t work. Why do they look after her and not send her back to stay with him?”
Manny shrugged. “Not all rich folk are bastards. Millie is a maid for Miss Hamilton, and she insisted they pay for her medicine.”
There was Trixie pushing herself to the forefront of his mind again and refusing to be shoved out of the way. She was either insisting he follow her instructions or doing things out of character for a Soarer. Like helping a maid. Or kissing a Warder under a full moon and sharing her dreams.
“Here we are.” Horse and cart halted, and Manny pulled on the brake.
The two men carried Kruos into the cold cottage. The door was unlocked, and from a look around, there was little worth stealing anyway. The layout echoed the cottage Elijah shared with Hector and Marjory. A main living area ran into a kitchen, and there appeared to be a bedroom on either side of the larger room.
They propped Kruos in a chair, and Manny dragged a footstool close and lifted his boots up onto it. Then, he lit a lantern and turned up the wick.
Elijah stared at the Meidh, who stirred and opened pale blue eyes. He reached out and wrapped long fingers around Elijah’s wrist. Cold bit into his skin.
“Did he let Millie go?” The man’s speech was slurred, as though he had drunk one too many beers.
“He gets confused,” Manny said. He knelt down in front of the old man. “Millie still has her job at the big house. Remember? She hasn’t been fired, but she’s been sick. I’m sure she’ll come visit when she feels better.”
Elijah rubbed his wrist, but the cold slithered along under his skin, up over his shoulder, and then dropped down his spine. He didn’t think that was what Kruos had meant.
“No. One more and he’ll let her go. He promised.” Kruos raised a thin hand and pointed to something behind Elijah.
He turned to the fireplace. There, lined up on the mantel, was a series of photographs in dull frames, as though hands had rubbed the shine from the metal. One was a faded formal photo of a beautiful young woman and a grim-looking man. The woman held a bouquet of flowers, and Elijah assumed it was a wedding photo. In another, the same smiling woman had a rounded belly. Her hands were clasped around it as she stared straight at the camera.
A third photo was of a young girl with serious eyes and long plaits who peered at the camera with a scowl. A fourth photo was of the serious girl, now a striking woman with a dark-haired child in her arms.
Manny tapped the face of the woman, and his short nail rapped on the glass. “The baby will be Millie. That’s her mother, Tristi.”
“Tristi? That’s an odd name.” Elijah closed his eyes and rolled the name around in his mind. When the child of a Meidh had an unusual name, there was probably a deeper meaning. Hidden in plain view of humans.
“Tristitia,” Kruos whispered, drawing out each syllable of the unusual name. “My sorrow.”
Elijah opened his eyes and looked afresh at the solemn woman who stared back at him. Her name was Latin for sorrow or sadness. Did the daughter bear the weight of the sins committed by her father?
Manny took a blanket from over the back of an armchair and draped it over the old man. “See if you can get the fire going, Eli. It’s bloody freezing in here.”
Elijah glanced along the mantel and found a pack of matches tucked behind a photograph. He knelt on the hearth and lit the tinder. The spark leapt upon a twig and devoured it, growing bigger with each slice of wood it consumed. Soon, he fed kindling and then slender pieces of pine to the ravenous fire.
He stood to find Kruos staring at him.
“I know you,” the old man whispered.
Elijah shook his head. “We’ve never met before today.”
“Told you he gets confused,” Manny said, and then he slapped Elijah. “Come on. Let’s get the horse and cart back before Hamilton docks our pay for taking too long.”
When Manny and Elijah returned the horse and cart to the mill, they discovered that most of the workers had been dismissed early. There were only so many who could labour to clean out the carding room, and smoke had filled many of the other floors. Sylphs were moving the clouds along and directing them out of windows, like women shaking out rugs.
Elijah used the walk home in the descending dark to sort through his emotions. He had to tell someone what he had learned, but he couldn’t risk signalling the watcher until full dark.
At the cottage, he flung open the door and fixed his sight on Hector. “I found the Meidh who murdered my father.”
Hector’s eyes widened and his mouth made an O. With one foot, he pushed out the chair opposite him at the table.
Elijah grabbed the back of the chair and pulled it out further before he dropped his tired form onto it. “His name is Kruos, and he doused a fire at the mill this afternoon. Salamanders surrounded him. He walked in, and then there was a blast of cold air. There can’t be too many Meidh in the world who can freeze things and who work for Francis Hamilton.”
Hector tried to whistle, which was unsuccessful because he was missing his two front teeth. “What do we do now?”
Elijah had used the walk to tackle that very question. His initial reaction had been to grab the man by the throat, ask if he knew what it felt like to lose something precious and important to him, and then rip an arm off. There would be immense pleasure in a short, sharp dose of revenge.
Then he had taken the Meidh to his cold and empty cottage and seen the photographs above the fireplace. The man had lost his wife and his daughter. Tristitia. His sorrow.
Pieces moved within him. Things that had seemed so important were spun to the side or backwards while other ideas moved forward. Once he had thought only of revenge and harming those who’d hunted his family. Addressing the imbalance and watching the Hamiltons fall had driven each waking moment.
Then he touched a woman who stirred the Cor-vitis into life within him.
As his eyes opened, his focus widened. Finding the answer to one question now drove him onwards.
Why?
He suspected the Esmeralda rested in the basement rooms of the mill, but for some odd reason, he couldn’t find the corridor that led there from inside. A voice whispered from the back of his mind: find the Esmeralda, and you will find your answer.
He let out a sigh and ran a hand through his hair. “I will tell Uncle, but we do nothing for now. Working for Trixie in the weaving room gives me the freedom to nose around the mill, and it is only a matter of time until I find the boiler room and, I hope, the Esmeralda.”
“Trixie is it now?” Marjory asked as she cooked dinner on the range.
“Yes,” Elijah said, and he refused to elaborate. “But now, I need a drink. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll join the lads at the pub.”
Hector glanced to Marjory and then back to him. “Of course, lad. Just be home by midnight. You know we worry, and you have work in the morning.”
He grabbed his jacket and headed back out into the night. He found the pub in a sombre mood. Conversations were muted, and people sat closer together. Elijah ordered a pint and then headed for the corner where Manny and John were huddled with three others.
“Why’s everyone so quiet?” he asked as he sat on the hard bench. “No one died in the fire, thankfully.”
“Fires make everyone twitchy, not to mention some will be out of work until the room is repaired. No work means no money coming in,” John said into his glass.
Elijah took a long drink and licked malty froth from his lips. He tried to read the mood of his temporary friends. Glances were cast back and forth. Shoulders were tense, and everyone clutched their drink just a little too tight. He had an idea and gave it a prod.
“I still can’t fathom how they put the fire out. Miss Hamilton and those others walked into that room without a bucket of water or a hose, but I felt the cold air blast out of the carding room. Manny said it was magic.” He used his thumb to wipe up a moisture trail on the side of the glass. He wondered how they kept the beer cold. Most pubs served warm beer, or perhaps Kruos served his master by chilling the ale.
Manny made a noise in the back of his throat that turned into a cough.
Elijah thumped him on the back. “You all right?”
Manny waved him away and drank a gulp of beer. “I told you already, pays not to ask what the family does. They get together and put out fires. That’s all any of us need to know.”
Elijah leaned forward over the table. “Aren’t you curious, though? There don’t seem to be any of the sprinklers or water towers that mills usually have, so how do they do it?”
Other patrons cast glances at their table. Scowls were carved deep into dirty faces.
“You don’t ask,” Manny said again. “Let it go, and drink your beer.”
Elijah glanced over his shoulder and pitched his voice lower. “That still doesn’t explain why everyone in here is so quiet.”