Duel of Fire (Steel and Fire Book 1)

by Jordan Rivet

  They walked down the spiraling tower steps on their way to the kitchens. Lanterns and Firelights glowed across the mountain, visible through the narrow windows. Vertigon was beautiful, with its three peaks and the endless shadows and slopes. The bridges connected everything, and people moved along them like insects far below the castle. Siv rounded the corner to another window. On the far peaks of the Village, he spotted a string of lanterns leading the way along a stairway. That was common outside Fireshops. He wondered if Dara’s home was near there and what she was doing.

  A cur-dragon swept through the sky, reminding Siv that he hadn’t been down to visit little Rumy yet that week. He would do that just as soon as he got Bolden to tell him where every dueling patron on the mountain liked to socialize. With any luck, a few of them would be at the same parlors as Lady Tull, and he could kill two zur-sparrows with one stone.

  Siv decided to share his latest idea with Dara when she came to the castle for their regular practice session a few days later. He stopped the bout with a raised hand and pulled off his mask. Dara lowered her blade.

  “I’ve been thinking about the next tourney,” he began.

  “It won’t be like the Eventide match,” Dara said quickly. Strands of golden hair fell around her face as she removed her mask. Her eyes were bright and fierce, like Firejewels.

  “It’s not that,” Siv said, reminding himself to focus. Damn, she’s pretty. “Your image isn’t your only problem for getting a patron after the Cup.”

  “I’ve been working on the new moves,” Dara said. “And as long as I win—”

  “Patrons turn down winners all the time. The guy who won the Eventide is still a free agent, isn’t he?”

  “For now,” Dara said. “I think Oatin Wont has a decent chance at the Cup. He trains at my school.”

  “Oh. Right.” Siv sometimes forgot that Dara had other dueling partners besides him. He was sure he was her favorite, though. So what if that other guy had won a stupid tournament?

  “Anyway,” Siv continued, “I bet Vine would have ended up just as cozy with Wora Wenden even if she’d lost the final. She networks with influential people. It’s probably as important as playing to the crowd, if not more so. She goes to parlors and drinks with the patrons and makes them like her.”

  “It’s just like politics,” Selivia said, coming over with an armful of gear. She had been poking around in the wardrobe, looking for a black glove. Eager to help with the Nightfall project, she was often there when Dara came to practice. But Siv sometimes wished he could have Dara to himself.

  His little sister came closer. “Sora goes to dinner parties all the time so she can talk to the right people. She loves that kind of thing.”

  “The right people? You sound like my mother,” Dara said.

  “It’s very important,” Selivia said. She handed Dara a black glove with ornate silver stitching to try on. “Kings aren’t the only ones with power. You have to know people with money and influence too.”

  “And know what they want,” Siv said. “People are always trying to get something from each other. It’s part of the game.”

  “Where would I even find these influential people?” Dara asked. “I’m not part of the royal court.”

  “You don’t have to be,” Siv said. “It’s no fun anyway.”

  “Yes, they’d prefer to meet you in a casual setting, I’m sure,” Selivia said.

  “A casual setting?” Dara asked. She looked suspicious. Good. She was in for a surprise.

  “No one wants to feel like they’re at a courtly hearing all the time,” Selivia said. “Those are dreadfully dull.”

  “I’ve decided exactly what you need,” Siv said. He grinned, thoroughly enjoying the worried look Dara gave him. “Dara Nightfall, tomorrow night we’re going drinking.”

  14.

  Lady Atria’s Parlor

  IT was evening, and Firelights already lit the way across Fell Bridge when Dara left the Village and approached King’s Peak. The mists were thick tonight, giving the world an unearthly glow. Crossing the bridge felt like walking over a river of cloud.

  On the King’s Peak side, stone steps led down from the foot of the bridge to the broad expanse of Thunderbird Square. The bridge guard’s house loomed beside the stone steps. Dara didn’t recognize Siv standing in its shadow until she had almost passed him. He wore simple black breeches and an open-necked shirt, but his elegant green coat embroidered in Firegold made him look more regal than he usually did in the castle. An ornate sword was buckled at his waist.

  A lanky middle-aged man stood beside him, a pair of long knives in his belt. He had dark hair with a sweep of gray at each temple and a somber face.

  “This is Pool,” Siv said, nodding at the bodyguard. “He’ll back us up if we get into a tavern brawl.”

  “That is inaccurate, my prince,” Pool said. “I shall endeavor to keep you safe should we encounter any unsavory elements during the evening’s excursions, but I can’t condone any untoward brawling.”

  “Isn’t he fun?” Siv grinned. “Now, let me look at you. You went with the black theme. That’s good.”

  Dara adjusted her long black skirt over her hips as Siv studied her. She had rushed home after practice to bathe and hadn’t put much thought into her clothes. She wore a simple blouse with Worked steel buttons. Still warm from hurrying across the bridge, she carried the fine black cloak Selivia had given her over her arm.

  “Can you do something to make your hair not so tight?” Siv gestured to the golden braid slung over her shoulder. Her hair was still damp, and she had pulled it taut against her scalp. “When you’ve been dueling it falls around your face in wisps and looks nice.”

  Pool’s eyes flickered toward the prince, then he went back to scanning the square around them.

  Dara hesitated. She still wasn’t sure whether she bought into this whole scheme. She was nervous that she wouldn’t be able to accomplish whatever the prince thought she would tonight. Siv tapped his foot impatiently. With a sigh, she dug her fingers into her braid to loosen it, pulling a few strands away from her face.

  “Yes, that’s it!” Siv said, looking her over once more. “Onward to the pub!”

  Dara followed him across the broad square and up the street into Lower King’s Peak.

  “In here,” Siv said before they’d gone far, indicating an unassuming establishment called the Bridge Troll Tavern.

  “I thought we were going to a parlor,” she said.

  “It’s still early. We can’t be the first ones there. Let’s have an ale and talk about our plan of attack.”

  Siv swept open the door and led the way inside. Bridge Troll Tavern was quieter than similar establishments on Square Peak around the dueling school—and much cleaner. A trio of well-dressed men leaned close to an open window, puffing on long pipes inlaid with Firegold. The smoke curled out into the evening. A man and a woman with heavy cloaks and tired faces gazed into plates of roasted mountain goat. A few soldiers sitting at the bar glanced twice at the prince as he strode across the polished wooden floor and slid into a back booth, but he didn’t draw as much attention as Dara would have expected. The soldiers merely straightened their uniforms a bit and resumed their conversation.

  Pool collected three mugs of ale from the tavern keeper and sat beside Siv on the outer edge of the booth. He looked like just another drinking companion, but he positioned himself so he could watch the door. Eyes alert and shoulders tense, he didn’t touch his ale after setting it down.

  Dara studied her own drink dubiously. She took a sip, and the taste made her tongue curl. She set the mug back on the table.

  “So, when we get to the parlor,” Siv said after taking a long draught from his own mug, “you can’t be too eager.”

  “But the patrons—”

  “Don’t refer to them as patrons,” Siv said. “No one wants to feel like you’re trying to get something out of them. These are just people, and by the end of the night you’re going to be t
heir friend.”

  Dara frowned, scratching at the rough grain of the table. “I thought everyone is trying to get something out of each other.”

  “Yes, but no one says it.” Siv took another sip of his ale. “There’s a subtlety to it. Like your dueling style, actually. You make tiny adjustments to your hand position, and your opponent basically impales themself on your blade. If you can do it during the bout, you can do it in a parlor.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “Just relax, and try to make friends. People help their friends.” Siv tapped Dara’s hand with a long finger, and she stopped scratching at the wood. For a second she thought he was going to take her hand. Instead he rested his hand beside hers on the table and leaned toward her. “Don’t worry about the patron part right now. This parlor will be an easier crowd because you’ll probably already know a few people who spend time there. It’s Zage’s crew. Fireworkers.”

  “So my parents’ colleagues? Great.” Dara was pretty sure the Fireworkers who kept company with Zage Lorrid would not be the ones she knew through her parents. Hadn’t her mother said they were divided? Dara pushed the ale farther away from her. Siv raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment on it.

  “Some of the Fireworkers support duelists,” he said. “The sword smiths, obviously, and a few of the distributors. Zage has powerful contacts.”

  “Isn’t Zage Lorrid sort of . . . sinister?” Dara said.

  Siv chuckled. “He’s a little strange, but the man is a genius. He’s been teaching me ever since I learned to read. I’m sure you’d like him if you got to know him.”

  “If you say so,” Dara said, remembering the shadowy figure who had emerged in her path the day she decided to run through the castle. She couldn’t reconcile the image of a beloved teacher with the Fire Warden her parents had despised for as long as she could remember. She wondered if Siv knew about the Surge.

  She glanced at Pool, who was still surveying the tavern. He obviously took his bodyguard duties seriously, and the castle had plenty of guards. She shouldn’t worry about Siv. But if the greatest threat came from one of the prince’s teachers, a confidante with the run of the palace, there wasn’t much Pool—or all the dueling training in the world—could do about it.

  Dara considered telling Siv what had happened to Renna, but she feared he would have the same response the king had: pardoning Zage on the grounds that it must have been an accident.

  Instead, they talked about dueling strategies as darkness wrapped around the mountain. Siv gave her a few pointers on what she should and shouldn’t say to the patrons, but he seemed to think she would know what to do when she got there. Nerves worse than any pre-competition jitters warmed her skin.

  She also couldn’t help noticing the way Siv leaned in to talk to her, and the way he kept moving his hand closer to hers on the table. Did she want him to take it? She shifted her hand a little closer to his, just to see what would happen. She scanned the tavern briefly, hoping none of her parents’ friends would see her.

  “We can probably go out now,” Siv said abruptly. “You going to finish that?”

  Dara snatched back her hand and pushed her ale, still more than half full, across the table. Siv downed it in one long gulp.

  The streets of Lower King’s glowed with the Firelight pouring from the windows. The dinner hour was long past, and the residents of King’s Peak were either making their way home or heading into the taverns and parlors along the steep street. Servants carried loaves of bread and bundles of cured meats home for their employers. Members of the noble court sauntered along with attendants in tow. Vertigon was all steep streets and staircases, so nearly everyone was on foot. The only horses, small, tough mountain ponies, were nothing like the elegant steeds ridden by noblemen in the Lands Below.

  Siv made no effort to hide his face. A few passersby noticed him and bowed or dropped brief curtsies. Dara stayed half a step back, closer to Pool, who blended into the crowd despite his stiff mannerisms. Siv sauntered with his head high, sword swinging at his low-slung belt, and Dara remembered that he literally owned these streets.

  The higher they climbed, the more the crowds of tavern-goers thinned. The streets, wider and quieter here, wound between fine greathouses, many built directly into the mountainside.

  The dwellings closer to the castle were made of polished marble, which had to be quarried near the foot of the mountain and hauled all the way up the Fissure. The houses shone faintly. Fire-infused tiles topped the richest ones. As the moon rose, its light caught the Fire veins and reflected across Lower King’s Peak. Dara slowed and looked back. Deep shadows stretched across the mountain. The mists had thickened, but she could still see the Village on the opposite peak, a jumbled warren of terraces and rooftops. Her family’s house stood out even at this distance because of the lanterns leading the way.

  Siv stopped when they reached a walled greathouse with an elaborate Fire-formed gate. He turned to Dara, shadows cutting across his high cheekbones.

  “Zage told me the story of these doors when I was a little boy,” he said. “Forged by my great-grandfather.”

  “The First Good King?”

  “One and the same,” he said. “The last Amintelle to have even a hint of the Firespark. When he realized his son didn’t have the Spark, he appointed the first Fire Warden to control the mountain source and keep the peace amongst the Firewielders of old.”

  “You mean this is the Fire Warden’s greathouse?” Dara examined the intricate swirls on the gate. There was no discernible picture, but the abstract designs suggested Fireworks far grander than the ones performed these days. This house sat atop the Well deep in the heart of the mountain, the mysterious source of the Fire itself. This house was where the Fire Warden parsed out the flows of Fire, disbursing it to all the Fireshops across the three peaks. She could almost feel the heat of old Vertigon in her blood as she thought about the raw power the Fire Warden controlled from here, the kind of power she had never been able to touch.

  “I’d expect the daughter of Rafe Ruminor to have been here before,” Siv said, turning to walk alongside the Fire Warden’s high-walled home. Dara fell in beside him.

  “My parents don’t get along very well with Zage Lorrid,” she said quietly, wondering again if she should tell him about Renna.

  “And you don’t get along with them.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Call it a hunch.” Siv nudged her arm with his elbow then didn’t pull away, keeping contact as they walked. Pool blinked.

  “They’re pressuring me to get more involved with their business,” Dara said. “They think dueling is a waste of time. But it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. When I was a little girl and discovered I couldn’t—” Dara stopped. Some hurts didn’t need to be aired. She remembered the hours she had spent trying to draw on the Fire all too well, sometimes sneaking to her father’s workshop in the middle of the night. She had cried on her knees in front of the access point, unable to understand why the Fire wouldn’t come to her. She hated letting on how much it bothered her that she couldn’t Work the Fire, and she didn’t want to get into all that with Siv. “Never mind.”

  The prince didn’t press her further. He led the way past an elaborate pillar at the corner of the Fire Warden’s wall to a smaller greathouse beside it. It was bigger than her parents’ dwelling and shop combined. Marble columns rose beside the door, and light and laughter tumbled through the window.

  Parlors had a long and venerated history in Vertigon. Those who deemed themselves too important to be seen in simple taverns congregated in the front rooms of the greathouses on King’s Peak. They’d engage in the same drinking, gambling, and socializing activities as in any other tavern, but around a more affluent set. The hosts would be repaid many times over through the business contacts and goodwill they cultivated in their parlors.

  “Here we are!” Siv rapped on the door. It flew open immediately, and a voluptuous woman in a pink silk gown stood before
them.

  “Prince Sivarrion!” she crowed, her rich voice seeming to issue from the depths of her body.

  “My Lady Atria.” Siv kissed her hand gallantly. “Always a pleasure. May I introduce Dara Ruminor, my dueling partner, and you know Pool.”

  “My lady.” Pool bowed stiffly, his ears going red.

  “Come in, come in!” Atria cried. She squeezed Dara’s hand. “A dueling partner, eh? Glorious. And Pool, you must call me Atria.”

  “Of course, my lady,” Pool said.

  A servant whisked away Dara’s cloak, and they followed Lady Atria through a brightly lit entryway. Dara glimpsed people in the front room, laughing and drinking in tight groups of three and four. Servants bearing trays with goblets of wine, delicate cakes, and fruit tarts wound among them. A grand suit of armor decorated one corner of the room, and finely dressed ladies draped themselves over puffy couches—and over finely dressed gentlemen. It was a warm, colorful scene, enriched with the smell of perfume and spices.

  But they didn’t go into the main parlor. Atria led them toward the back of the house, chatting to Siv and rattling off the names of those who had already arrived. Dara walked beside Pool, who ducked his head into rooms as they passed, always keeping an eye on Siv and Atria.

  “Are you looking for someone?” Dara asked.

  “It’s wise to assess the landscape for potential threats,” Pool said. “It is a Castle Guard’s primary imperative.”

  “Do you think someone here would harm the prince?”

  “What I think is irrelevant,” Pool said. “We must be alert for every eventuality. You would do well to remain ever vigilant.”

  This man is as paranoid as Berg, Dara thought. She didn’t think they’d find any threats in Lady Atria’s parlor, but she kept her eyes open just in case. She didn’t want to lose her “dueling partner,” as Siv had described her.

  At the back of the greathouse, Lady Atria led them down a short flight of stone steps to a door set into the rock of the mountain. Inside was a low-ceilinged, musky space lined with couches and clusters of tables. People lounged about, engaged in more staid conversations than the revelers in the rooms above.