Ashes and Flame

by Aiden Bates

He still hadn’t told me where the djinn actually came from, how he got tangled up with it or whoever sent it. It seemed like the door was open, though. “So who sent this one?”

  “The same people who always do,” he muttered. “Ivan’s remaining acolytes. They want The Book back.”

  Well, there it was, then. Confirmation of what Mikhail had been most worried about. “He’s still got people.”

  “If you knew him,” Daniel breathed, “you’d understand.”

  I waited, and when he didn’t elaborate, gently pressed for more. “Can you help me understand?”

  He was still quiet for a little while. Long enough that I worried I’d pushed him past what he was comfortable talking about. But then he took a short, shallow breath, held it, and answered. “Ivan was… brilliant. Not just as a mage—he was a brilliant mage, too—but as a person. He always knew exactly what to say, and he seemed to be able to read your soul. I mean, maybe he could; maybe that’s how he did it. But he had this way of finding the weakest part of you and making you feel like he was filling it with confidence and strength. He never talked about the final enlightenment like it was going to be some kind of apocalypse. He sounded like he cared about everyone in the world, and like we were the most special people in it because he noticed us. When he looked at you, you just felt loved on a level I can’t even explain. He told us we were meant to save the world, that we were sacred and special and chosen. And he… he brought people back. From the dead. We knew, of course, that he was a necromancer, it’s not like we didn’t all know that magic could do that. But he knew exactly the person to bring back for each of us. To make us feel certain. To make them tell us that he was right, and that they could see it all from the other side. That they watched over us, and had guided us to him and…”

  My blood chilled somewhat. “Who did he bring back for you?”

  Daniel closed his eyes, and for a moment there was deep, old pain on his face that made him look older, more worn. He bit his lip, and had to clear his throat. I sniffed, hunting for the scent of ozone, but he didn’t seem like he was about to go off again. Maybe it was too soon. “He brought back an old boyfriend of mine. My first one, actually. Well… only one. This guy—this kid. Harry. We were both kids, I mean. Freshmen in high school. Dated for two years. First time I held hands with someone, first kiss, first everything. He… died. When I was sixteen. Ivan brought him back, let me talk to him one last time. It was like he lifted the world off my shoulders and I didn’t even know I’d been carrying it around. I could breathe for the first time in years.”

  My gut twisted. It was the same trick that Ivan had played on Pendrig. “You weren’t the only one,” I said softly. “I mean, even besides his acolytes. Ivan did the same kind of thing to a friend of mine. Pendrig Emberlin. He was supposed to take over for his father, Roland, and run our weyr. His brother, Nix, does now—my best friend. The one that’s mated to a mage—a necromancer, too, if you can believe it. Anyway, Pendrig got tangled up with Ivan and none of us understood why. It got worse and worse, and then he just ran off. We didn’t learn until later that it was because Ivan… took his soul, or something.”

  “Shit,” Daniel whispered.

  I looked to see that he’d gone a bit wide-eyed. “Shit?”

  He swallowed loudly, and fidgeted with the strap of his bag. “I think—I mean, I know—that I met him. Pendrig, your friend. It was just a few months after I got involved. He came to the old compound with Ivan. I… I thought they might be… involved. Because of how Pendrig was kind of all over him, and they—well, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t know that’s what had happened. Gods, I’m sorry. If any of us had known, we—”

  “You didn’t,” I said. Maybe a little forcefully. Daniel’s jaw snapped shut. I steadied myself. “I didn’t mean to snap. Sorry. It’s a sore spot. I just mean, I know that you couldn’t have known. There’s a lot we don’t know about what happened, though. Hearing that Ivan used him like that… I guess we hoped that Ivan had just been lying, trying to rile us up.”

  His heart sped up. Just enough that I noticed the difference. “So you’re with the dragons that went after him.”

  “I wasn’t really old enough at the time,” I said. “His brother, my friend—he was there when it happened. But, yeah. That was Emberwood.”

  At first I wasn’t sure what his reaction would be. Maybe he wasn’t either, because he took a while to think about it, it seemed like, before he said, “Good. Ivan was dangerous.”

  “He was for a long time after he died,” I said. “He came back. Tried to get revenge. Not long ago, either.”

  “I’m sorry,” Daniel muttered.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” I told him. “People like him… I guess they’re just good at being monsters. No one is to blame. It’s just the job of the people who finally see it to do something about it. You took The Book and ran, right?”

  He shrugged, and pulled the bag a little tighter against him. “That’s really not the same. I didn’t have a choice.”

  “You sure about that?” I asked. “You really couldn’t have stayed?”

  “Not after I what I read,” he said quietly.

  “So you discovered something terrible,” I guessed, “and you realized you had to get away. Get it away from the people who might do something terrible with it, right?”

  “You make it sound like I had some noble purpose,” he muttered. “Believe me, I didn’t. I was just terrified. I acted on instinct, and took off and then just kept running, and running… I didn’t face down some monster.”

  I shook my head slowly, and glanced at him with what I hoped was a reassuring smile. “Daniel—fear is the only reason anyone faces a monster. Courage isn’t not having fear; it’s just doing what you have to even though you’re afraid.”

  “That,” he said, with a weak, forced grin, “is about the most trite, cliched thing anyone’s ever said to me. You are full of firsts, Rez.”

  I laughed, and it must have been catching because he laughed with me. And it was short-lived, sure. But it felt good. And his scent changed, and his heart slowed, and I think that maybe that little bit of a smile was something like satisfaction at having done the right thing.

  And if we hadn’t been driving, I’d have kissed him, I think.

  10

  Daniel

  I guess I didn’t know exactly what to expect when we finally arrived in Clovis and met this elementalist, Amy. I sort of imagined someone in a suit, maybe. A lot of mages dressed up, in my experience. Not that my experience was extensive, but Ivan had been a cabal mage once upon a time and he always looked sharp, like he was about to walk into a board meeting somewhere.

  We got to Clovis early, about six in the morning, and Rez had to make a call and several texts before he got an answer and we were invited to Amy’s place. It wasn’t actually in Clovis proper, but just outside the city limits. There was a cluster of trailers on a wide, fenced patch of mostly dry, barren earth where a handful of weeds managed to make a home among the other inhabitants of the park. Here and there, dogs wandered around, and on the tops of some of the trailers cats lazed about, peering impassively at us as we drove cautiously down the main thoroughfare looking for the number that we’d been given.

  Not that there’s no such thing as a mage who doesn’t make a great living, of course—not every mage is good enough for the cabals or willing to be part of one—but it seemed like a strange place to find one. And to find her in the most rundown-looking antique trailer in the park seemed equally as absurd.

  “Are we in the right place?” I asked, looking through the windshield at the tiny trailer with 726 painted in flaked black paint on the front. It was all metal-sided, with big patches of rust creeping around over the upper portion like someone had spilled coffee on it a long, long time ago.

  “This is the address,” Rez said. He gave me a reassuring smile. “Looks can be deceiving. Mikhail says she’s very skilled, and well-connected. And our choices are her, or the cabals.”r />
  I shivered. I knew the alternative. But the cabals were not kind to glitchers like me. Not that I loved the fact that I occasionally went off like a roman candle, but my magic was mine. It was part of me, even if it was screwed up. The thought of losing it made my blood run cold. “Do we just… knock or something?”

  “I’m gonna say yes,” he chuckled. “Come on.”

  We got out, and approached the side of the trailer where the door was. Rez knocked, and waited.

  And waited.

  Inside, someone shuffled around, ran into something, cussed like they’d been attacked, and finally pushed the door open.

  She was tiny, for a start. Maybe just managing five feet, and younger than I kind of expected. Her stringy jet-black morning hair was swept over one side of a buzzed scalp. Tattoos peeked out from the cuffs of a bathrobe, little curls of light and dark blue dotted with tiny snowflakes that matched the ones tattooed at the outside corners of each icy-blue eye. She looked Rez over, then me. At the sight of me, one thin eyebrow arched. “Well. You’re fucked up, aren’t you? Glitcher?”

  I blinked, and had a strong desire to shrink. “Uh… yeah.”

  “You must be Amy,” Rez said, and offered a hand. “Rezzek; we spoke on the phone.”

  She squinted at him. “Obviously. How many people do you think I normally have swinging by at the ass-crack of dawn?” Her eyes settled on me again. “How long ago was your last pop?”

  “Pop?” I frowned.

  “When did you last blow something up, sugar?”

  I flinched a bit at that. “Uh… last night. About six hours ago.”

  She nodded, and took a step back. “Well then, welcome to casa de Ice Queen. Come on in. There’s coffee, but it’s the cheap shit.”

  We ascended the steps, which creaked and groaned under Rez’s weight and gave a plaintive grunt at mine. Her place was as small on the inside as it looked on the outside—a narrow space with a squat, shallow counter on one side and an old dresser on the other, a door that I judged was probably the bathroom at one end and a bed piled with pillows and blankets opposite. There was a table with hinges attached to the wall behind the counter, with three fold-out chairs that reminded me of the Starlight Motel’s single seat arrangement.

  It was chilly inside, too.

  “If the big one is Rezzek,” Amy said as she poured three mugs of coffee from a dirty-looking coffee pot, “that must make you Daniel. Heard you fell in with Ivan Baranov.”

  I glanced at Rez, wondering how much he’d told her.

  “Mikhail caught me up,” Amy said as she pressed a mug into my hand, and held the other out for Rez.

  He took his as I sipped mine and had to admit that she’d been entirely honest about it. But it was fresh, and I was used to much worse. “Did you know Ivan?”

  Amy picked her own mug up and leaned against the counter, holding it with both hands. “Nah. I knew of him. I hear things. Got my ear to the ground, as they say. Plus, I know a lot of folks that are shameless gossips. Nobody knows much about what Ivan was up to outside his little harem but everyone pretty much assumed it was bad. Was it?”

  I stared into the thick black liquid and nodded.

  Amy gave a soft grunt. “Okay. Well… I hear you have a djinn problem on top of your screwy magic. Did you piss off some god of fate or something?”

  “That would certainly explain my life,” I muttered. “There’s a djinn. We’ve probably got some time before it catches up to us, and it tends to leave me alone during the day.”

  “It has a piece of his soul,” Rez explained.

  She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Right. So, it can find you anywhere. How have you stayed ahead of it so long? You’ve been on the road, what, five years or so?”

  Telling Rez about myself had been one thing. I didn’t know Amy at all, and it was unsettling that she knew anything about me. But I gripped the mug tight and gave another nod. “I picked up a few tricks.”

  “Me too,” she said. “When you’re at the dead-ass bottom of mage society, you have to figure shit out yourself, right?”

  Okay, well. She wasn’t so bad. “That’s the truth.”

  She gave a cool smile, and turned her attention to Rez. “I’ve already made arrangements with your boss, Nix Emberlin. My services ain’t free, but you’ve got me for at least a week. I called in a… favor. From an old friend. So here’s the deal. You pay for my food, my lodging, the occasional stiff drink—on top of my fee—and in exchange I’ll take you to someone who can help your boyfriend out.”

  “He’s…” I glanced at Rez. “No, he’s not my boyfriend.”

  Amy cocked her head to one side. “Really? My bad. I’ve generally got a good eye for who’s fucking. Kind of a small community here, and not much to do. You know how it goes. We’re all constantly honing our senses and deduction skills.”

  I didn’t, and I very much wanted to know what she saw between me and Rez that I didn’t. “What exactly is your…?”

  “I can’t read minds,” she said with a wry grin, and gestured at me with her mug, “but it’s telling that you would wonder, ain’t it? I’m an elementalist. Air and water—which for me manifested at a young age as an ice thing. Like Elsa, except not as tall and, you know, dirt poor. Tried making an ice castle once but that shit is just an uncomfortable death trap in real life. Slick floors, structurally unsound, a hot bath is out of the question, all your guests get hypothermia after an hour—not that I have many guests.”

  “Ice,” I muttered, my eyebrows knitting slightly. “So… if I were to blow up, would you be able to, like, stop it or something?”

  She laughed. “Oh, honey. No. But… I’ve worked with a handful of glitchers out here. I might be able to help you get a handle on it. Not the kind of a control a normal mage has, but I’ve had some success coaching kids like you to at least only blow up when you really want to. Never worked with your particular brand, but we’re both elementalists so I’m sure I can impart some aged wisdom.”

  I blinked. “I’m twenty-eight.”

  Amy grinned, and lifted youthful fingers to brush hair behind her ears. “And I’m fifty-seven, sugar.”

  She couldn’t have been out of her twenties. I stared, not sure if she was just fucking with us.

  Those blue eyes glittered with amusement. “I don’t have to moisturize, and my temperature runs about six degrees colder than yours. It’s an ice thing. I’m sort of well-preserved.”

  “Mind my asking why you left the cabals?” Rez asked. “Not that I have an opinion one way or the other but…”

  “But you want transparency and aren’t sure you can trust a mage that went AWOL,” she finished for him, and shrugged her narrows shoulders. “Sure, I get it. It just wasn’t for me, that’s all. All the rules and regulations, who you can talk to, who you can help, third, fifth, tenth circle pecking order bullshit. I’m not really a fan of power structures, so I got my degree, you could say, and then I fucked off. They of course blacklisted me, but there’s a whole world out here that doesn’t give two shits what the cabals or territories or the FDPA think is best for us. We’re the fringe, honey. And since you came to me for help—congratulations; so are you.”

  I don’t know that I expected Amy to do something specific right then and there, but I was a little surprised when she sent us out so that she could shower and pack, and told Rez to pick out a route to Loup City, Nebraska. Another road trip.

  “Ten hours,” Rez reported. I sat on the trunk of his car while he leaned against the corner, slipping his phone back into his pocket. “How are you feeling?”

  “Hunted,” I answered. “A little cramped. My legs and back are stiff, but it’s hard to really worry about that too much under the circumstances. I could be dead.”

  He winced. “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s just all a matter of perspective,” I said with a shrug. “What about you? Need me to take over driving or something? You’ve got to be running close to empty.”

  “I’
ll make it to Nebraska,” he said, and rubbed his eyes. “Not gonna lie, I’m getting a little tired. It would be faster if we could fly there. I could make that distance in four or five hours. But altitude restrictions would mean taking you both up to some pretty thin air.”

  “And there’s no point going if we suffocate,” I agreed. “Well, I can drive, if you need.”

  “You have a license?” he wondered.

  “I didn’t say that.” I grinned at him. “Just that I know how to drive. Harry—uh… Harry taught me. Helped me get my learner’s permit.”

  The barest hint of something passed over Rez’s face. A pained moment that he quickly seemed to smooth out of his expression. He’d done his research, or at least someone he knew had—did they know? It would have been hard to miss.

  Whatever it was, though, he recovered with a smile. “If we get desperate, I’ll see what Amy charges to take the wheel. Probably best if we not get pulled over and dinged for letting you drive. Wrong cop in the wrong place, and you could end up in jail for a night or something. Don’t think we want that.”

  No, we definitely didn’t.

  “Amy sounds pretty confident she can help you get your magic under control,” he said cheerfully in a blatant attempt to change the subject.

  I didn’t mind so much, I supposed, so I let it happen. “I don’t feel like that’s exactly what she promised,” I countered, “but… I mean, even if she can help me just not blow up spontaneously, that would be an improvement.”

  “Has anyone tried before?” he wondered. “Like… Ivan or one of his acolytes?”

  “They’ve tried,” I said. “But Ivan seemed to think that I was made perfect just as I am. That magic was sometimes a wild force, and that I represented what he called the ‘primal state of the mage’—a being of pure emotion, an expression of divine wrath. So, a couple of the others tried to help me learn to meditate, control my emotions, that kind of thing. But Ivan encouraged me to be wild and free.”

  “Mixed messages,” Rez remarked.