It Ends in Fire

by Andrew Shvarts

  “But why?” Sera asks. “Why do they get to?”

  “Because they hold the power,” my mother replies. “Because they control the government and the trade companies and the schools and the law. Because they hold in their blood the ability to shape the world, to conjure flame and ice, to bring life and death. Because they’re strong, and we’re weak.”

  “But…” I ask, knowing full well I shouldn’t. “I’m a Wiza—” and I never get to finish the question because she squeezes my hand so tight it hurts.

  My father is waiting for us when we get home, and I sprint over to grab him in a hug so hard he almost falls over. While my mother takes a moment to herself, gazing out at the sunset from our patio, my father sits down with me and Sera in the kitchen to do our schoolwork. By the flickering yellow light of a candle, we read a story about a little sheep who had no friends and do a few pages of arithmetic. Sera follows along diligently, doing every step, while I fidget wildly in my seat and stare out the window. But even I pay attention later, when we huddle up against him as he reads a chapter of The Sagas of Naeflein, that heavy, dog-eared book with all the stories about princes and witches and creatures of the deep. I love how he sounds when he reads, so patient and calm, and I love how he wraps an arm around us to hold us close to his chest, and I love how he does silly voices for all the characters.

  We eat dinner, a simple stew with some bread and onions. We sit by the fire and talk about the day. My parents nod patiently as I ramble about how Boneshanks is a magical horse who can fly through time. Then they tuck us in and blow out the lights, and both lean in to kiss my forehead as I drift off. “I love you, girls,” my father says. “More than you’ll ever know.”

  For the rest of my life, I’ll wish I’d stayed awake longer. I’ll wish I’d had another day, another hour, another minute with them. One more story from my father. One more hug from my mother. Even if we’d gotten into a fight, even if they’d had to threaten no treats the next day, even if it had ended with me crying and stomping around. I’ll spend the rest of my life wishing I could give anything, everything, to just have had more time with them.

  But instead, I fall asleep, and I only wake up because all the crystals in our apartment are ringing.

  I shoot up in my bed. It’s the middle of the night, but our apartment is lit up bright because the wards are all going off, those crisscrossed spiderwebs shaking and shivering, the crystals flaring red and green and blue. I’m still groggy, but I know enough to be scared, so I go rushing into the kitchen, where my parents are both up. Sera’s right behind me, crying with fear. “What’s happening?” I yell over the din. “What’s going on?”

  “They found us,” my mother replies, and I don’t know who they are, but I know it’s not a good thing. My father waves a Loci through the air, and the crystals all go silent. His face is pale, paler than usual, and sweat streaks down his brow. “How the hell did they find us?”

  “I don’t know,” my father says. He grabs one of the crystals in his hand, holding it tight, and his expression grows even more grave. “Four of them. Coming fast. And he’s with them.”

  “Oh, Gods,” my mother whispers, and I’m more scared than I think I’ve ever been in my life. “We have to run. Now.”

  “We can’t,” my father replies, unable to meet her gaze. “They’ve got eyes on us. If we move, they’ll strike.” He takes a long, deep breath. “They’ve got us, Kaelyn.”

  My parents share a heavy look, the kind of look that’s an entire conversation, the look where you’re making a decision you can’t even speak. Then my mother nods, rushing forward to tidy the room, while my father hunkers down next to me and Sera. “Listen, girls,” he says, forcing a smile. “We’re in a bit of trouble, but it’s all going to be okay. Some very serious men are coming here, and they want to talk to your mother and me. The most important thing is that they don’t know you’re here. Do you understand?”

  “No!” I cry. “I’m really scared, Papa…”

  “I know, Monkey,” he says, squeezing my shoulders, and his eyes are glistening behind his glasses. “And I’m sorry. Sorry we’ve forced you into this mess. Sorry for the world we brought you into. Sorry for everything. But right now, if we stay calm, it’ll all work out just fine.” He leans down and hooks his fingers through a gap in the floorboards, prying up a plank to reveal a tiny crawl space underneath. “I’m going to need you two to hide in there, understand? Hide in there and don’t make a single sound. I’m just going to tell these men what they want to hear, and then they’ll leave, and we’ll come get you.”

  “But—but—” Sera stammers. “I don’t understand.”

  “I know,” my father says, and pulls us into a hug so tight I almost can’t tell he’s trembling. “Someday you will. I promise.” He pulls back, clears his throat. “Now listen. I think it’s all going to work out. But if it doesn’t… if this goes bad… if those crystals start ringing… I need you two to crawl back out through that little tunnel and run as fast as you can.” He takes out a folded piece of paper and tucks it into my pants pocket. “There’s an address written on that paper. Find your way there. Ask for Whispers, and tell them Petyr Chelrazi sent you. They’ll understand.”

  My mother glances out the window. “I see them coming. We have to get ready. Now.”

  My father brushes a tear off his cheek and collects himself. “Whatever happens, girls… however this goes down… I need you to know that your mother and I love you more than anything. That it was all worth it, all of it, for the time we’ve had together. That you are the absolute best thing that ever happened to us.” He brushes my hair and leans down to give me one last kiss. “Alka… you’re going to have a hard road ahead of you. Fight for those who need it. Be good, my Monkey. Be good. And Sera, my little Sera…” Tears streak down his cheeks, too many to stop now. “Look after your sister. Be strong and brave. Be kind.” He leans down, gently guiding us into the crawl space. “Now hide.”

  It’s dusty down there, and dark, and probably full of spiders, but I don’t say anything because even though I don’t understand, I can tell this is all very serious. Sera crawls in first, sliding to the back, and I go after her. I lie flat on my back in that dark little tunnel, barely wide enough for my seven-year-old body, and my father leans down to replace the board. I can still see, sort of, through the cracks between them, enough to see the kitchen and my mother and father. He wraps an arm around her, and she huddles against him, and they just stand there, holding each other, breathing deeply.

  There’s a knock on the door, a gauntlet pounding on wood. “Petyr Chelrazi! Open up!” a voice booms.

  “Come on in,” my father says, and his voice has changed; it’s lower, more adult and serious, more fake.

  The door swings open, and four people enter. Three are Enforcers, armor clad, faces hidden behind blank silver masks. I recognize one as the woman from the docks earlier, the one with the bone Loci, and the other two are men, one short and lean and the other tall and burly. The Enforcers stomp their way into the kitchen, shaking the floorboards and sending dust billowing into my face, and for one awful moment I think I’m going to sneeze. But I hold it in, thank the Gods, even as my parents back away and the Enforcers take up positions along the edges of the room.

  The third man is clearly the one in charge. He’s a Wizard, and maybe the most impressive one I’ve ever seen. He’s wearing a neatly fitted robe with a plush fur trim that sparkles black and gold in the candlelight. Rings with giant gemstones adorn his pale fingers, and a necklace with a golden moon dangles across his neck. He’s Marovian and looks to be about my father’s age, with a brown beard that descends to a point and curly dark hair that runs down his back in a neat braid. As he walks in, he smiles, even as his gray eyes sparkle with menace. “Petyr,” he says. “It’s been some time.”

  “That it has, old friend,” my father slides a chair out. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “I think you know exactly why I’m here,”
the Wizard says, jerking a head at his Enforcers. “Hand over your Loci. Now.”

  My father glances at my mother with a nod. She reaches onto the counter and hands over my father’s greenblossom wands. The female Enforcer grabs them out of her hands and tucks them into a bag at her hip.

  “A reasonable precaution. I’m sure you understand,” the Wizard says.

  “Of course,” my father replies. “Can I get you something to drink? Some tea or wine, perhaps?”

  “Not at the moment.” The Wizard takes a seat at the table opposite my father, steepling his long, narrow fingers. “I do believe there’s one member of your family unaccounted for. A girl of seven years?”

  Me? He’s looking for me? Why? Why would I matter? And why doesn’t he ask about Sera? But I don’t have time to even think about that because my father immediately lies. “She’s not here. We sent her to stay with a friend, somewhere far away.”

  “Really?” the Wizard says. His features are sharp, angular, like he’s been cut from a slab of cold stone, and his voice oozes contempt. “So if I have my Enforcers search this house, they won’t find her?”

  “Afraid not,” my father says, then leans forward, his voice almost a whisper. “Look. My wife has nothing to do with this. I’m the one you want. So why don’t I leave now, with your Enforcers, and if you just let Kaelyn go, I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Everything,” the Wizard repeats. “About what, exactly?”

  “About the Revenants,” my father says, and all the Enforcers stiffen. “Their plans. Their leadership. All of it.”

  For the first time, the Wizard’s cool facade seems to break. “So it’s true. You really have gone rebel.”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Damn it, Petyr,” the Wizard growls. “I’d hoped this was just personal. That you’d fled your duties to be with your family. That you were merely a coward. But no. You sold us all out to a bunch of Humble terrorists. After everything we went through, everything we’ve built, you’ve turned traitor to all the Republic stands for!”

  When my father speaks, his voice is ice. “Everything we went through is a lie. Everything we built is an abomination. And the only thing the Republic stands for is injustice and oppression.”

  The Wizard’s nostrils flare, his brow furrowed deep, and it almost seems like he’s going to throw a punch… but then all at once, his expression changes, his lips twisting into a cruel smile. “Oh, Petyr,” he says, “You almost had me fooled. But it looks like you missed something.”

  Everyone follows his gaze to the floor, to just a few inches away from where I’m hiding. I see it the same time the others do, and my stomach plunges. It’s Boneshanks, my wooden horse. We forgot to hide him.

  The Wizard rises from his seat, pacing methodically toward the horse, toward me. “If your daughter’s not here… then what’s that?” he says, and my mother and father share a worried glance, because if he bends down to pick the horse up he’s going to look through the floorboards and see me, and I don’t know what that’ll mean but I know it’ll be very, very bad, and I’m wondering if I should start crawling but I can’t make my body move and behind me Sera is starting to cry and my heart’s racing and then the Wizard is there, right over me, reaching down…

  But he never actually gets to the horse because my mother grabs a knife off the counter and drives it into the small of his back.

  There’s a pulse through the air, the oppressive wrenching tug of magic, and for the first time in my life, I slip all the way into the Null. The room, the house, the city all vanish, plunging me into that gray, ashy world. There, in the lingering, deafening silence, time moves at a crawl, and I see everyone spring into action. The Enforcers raise their Loci. The Wizard, stabbed and howling, draws his own. My mother jerks back, reaching for another knife. And my father falls back out of his chair, raising his hands, as two hidden Loci, two small jagged blades, slide out of his sleeves.

  The air crackles and hums, tempests of power flickering through the room, as lattices of arcane geometry dance and blaze. The world freezes, trembles, and shakes. Glyphs hit counter-Glyphs. Whips of light slash through the dark. I smell earth and taste blood and feel that horrible surge within me, pressing out, as my parents fight their last fight.

  The whole thing is over in less than a second.

  I’m wrenched back into the Real, trembling, sweating, gasping under the floorboards. Above me, the kitchen is a shattered ruin. The table has been upended, the ceiling scorched, a giant hole knocked through one wall. Leaves of paper, the remains of my father’s beloved books, flutter charred in the air around us, and a layer of crackling ice covers the floor.

  Two of the Enforcers, the woman and the burly man, are dead, their blackened bodies smoldering at the far end of the room. The third, the small man, isn’t in much better shape: he lies out in the street, through that hole, moaning with a lance of rock driven through his chest. Their leader, the Wizard, is still alive, but he’s hunched over, his back to me, coughing and gasping and howling with pain.

  And my parents…

  My mother is already dead. She lies slumped against the far wall, her head down and a gaping hole where her chest should be. A small trickle of blood runs down her lips, and her hands twitch uselessly at her sides. My father lies next to her, not dead but dying; his right arm is missing, slashed off, and spiderwebs of ice push out against the skin of his face, like he’s been frozen from the inside. His breath comes in ragged gasps, each shorter than the last.

  My eyes sting. My heart beats so hard it feels like it’s going to smash out of my chest. I want to scream, to sob, to wail, to fight, but my body won’t move, so I’m just stuck there, panting under the floor, paralyzed, trapped. This can’t be happening. It can’t. It can’t it can’t it can’t.

  The Wizard, the one who did all this, moves first, limping over to my father. He kicks him onto his back and kneels down over him, pressing down on his chest with a knee. The Wizard’s hair is wild, singed black. The right half of his face is a scarred, bubbling mess, his eye burned clean out. My mother’s knife still juts out of his lower back. But for all that, he’s still somehow going, like his sheer hate is pumping through his veins.

  “You little bastard,” he hisses, spitting blood into my father’s face. “You really thought you could do this to me? To me?” He jerks my father up by the collar, their faces just inches apart. “You listen here, Petyr, and you listen well. I’m going to find your daughter. I’m going to track her down. And I’m going to make sure she dies the slowest, most painful death you can imagine. I’m going to make her suffer, Petyr. I’m going to make her suffer so much.”

  My blood is ice, my breath frozen in my throat. I’ve never been more scared in my life. But my father just smiles, a hard cracking smile that takes every ounce of strength he has. “No, you won’t,” he tells the Wizard, “because you’re already dead.” Then he glances down at me, just out of the side of his eye, and I look at him, really look at him, one last time, my father, my hero, my world.

  Run, he mouths.

  Then it appears above him, glowing into existence like an ember sparking to life. A Glyph, carved into our ceiling, big enough to cover the whole surface, hidden from sight until now. It’s intricate beyond words, a half dozen intersecting circles, connected like links in a chain, a snake eating its own tail. The Glyph fades into being… and then it glows brighter and hotter than the sun.

  Pure instinct takes over. I still don’t understand anything that’s happened, can barely begin to fathom it, but my body knows to follow my father’s command. I grab Sera by the hand and jerk her forward, and the two of us scramble under the floorboards like a pair of mice, pushing through that narrow dirt tunnel, and I can hear the bells ringing louder and louder, hear the Wizard scream in horror, hear the walls vibrate and whir with the hum of gathering magic. Sera and I burst out through a little opening under the side of the house, onto the dark, cramped street, and then I’m running, dragging Sera behin
d me, my side hurting, my eyes burning, my whole body driven by nothing more than the desperate need to get away from this house.

  I don’t see it explode. I don’t need to. I hear a thunderous blast louder than the loudest thunderclap, feel a scorching wave of heat pass through me, feel the earth shudder beneath my feet. For one moment, the night is as bright as day, as a column of swirling, howling flame shoots up fifteen stories into the sky. Glass shatters. Brick cracks. The city howls with the voices of hundreds crying out in fear.

  I don’t stop running. I can’t. I have to keep moving, even though my little legs are already flaring, even though I’m barefoot and I’m pretty sure I stepped on some glass, even though I have no idea where I’m going. I have to keep running, because if I stop even for a second then what just happened is real, and it can’t be. It can’t be. So I run on, through alleys and streets, past noisy taverns and bustling night bazaars, a seven-year-old girl soaked in blood with singed clothes and wild eyes, a seven-year-old girl suddenly responsible for her sister, a seven-year-old girl who’s just lost her entire world.

  We run out of city. The streets end and we stumble onto a beach, the same beach where we’d sat just hours ago. I sprint to the ocean’s edge, and I collapse there in the wet sand, staring out at that endless vast expanse of cold, unknowing darkness. Sera sits next to me, silent, frozen. She doesn’t speak, doesn’t cry, doesn’t move. It’s like she’s a candle that’s been snuffed out.

  But I’m a fire raging hotter than the sun. I let it all out, a howling, furious scream that’s angry and despondent and lost and scared all at once, a scream that goes on until my voice is gone and my throat is ripped raw. It’s a scream of fury and despair, a scream that would kill everyone in the city if it could, a scream I’ll never forget.

  I die that day, too, alongside my parents. The girl I was, the one who played with a little horse, who felt safe and secure, who thought the worst thing that could happen is her father coming home late, she’s gone, burned up with the house.