Call of Fire

by Beth Cato

  The Cordilleran Auxiliary used them for fitness training as well. Ingrid had watched plenty of sessions but never formally trained—not that she hadn’t pleaded with Mr. Sakaguchi for private lessons. He had refused, of course. Back then, she had fumed that it was because she was a girl. Now she realized he had rejected such training because of the risk of injury to her.

  It felt good to hold some semblance of a weapon in hand as she took in the strange room. It seemed to be a social space for the boys. A shelf of books held colorful manga. A Marconi radio sat on an end table. The fireplace was dark, wood stacked and ready to one side. The getabako by the door was low to fit beneath the window, the little cubbies lined with shoes.

  A dark hallway gaped ahead. Light shone through an open door to the right. Cy crept that way, pistol ready, and pivoted to look inside. He froze. “God Almighty.”

  Fenris advanced, made a soft gagging sound, and retreated with his knuckles to his mouth. His tortured expression didn’t stop Ingrid from peering through the doorway.

  It was a classroom full of dead boys. Apprentices, all likely six to eleven years of age, about a dozen of them. The ones nearest to the door were draped over their wood-and-metal chairs like slack dolls. One leaned back, the slit in his throat bared and dark. Farther away from the door, the desks were askew, the bodies tangled on the floor. A gray-haired adept sprawled in front of them, a failed barricade, his body like a practice dummy for cuts. The air stank of iron and piss and worse.

  Ingrid choked back a sob, bile rising in her throat. Dead. All of them. Just like the young boys she knew back home.

  Cy crouched down. “The boys were corralled together. There must have been more than one attacker to herd them like this. The cuts are thick, chopped.”

  “As if done with hatchets?” she asked, her voice strangled. “When the tongs used to scrap among themselves in San Francisco, before the war, their fighters had a reputation for using hatchets.” She shook her head. “For it to be used here seems . . . too blatantly Chinese in method.”

  “I agree.” Cy looked troubled. “If the Chinese did try to strike out like this, I’d expect subtlety, misdirection—not an invitation for retaliation.”

  “There was a Chinese laundry truck outside my auxiliary right before the explosion, too, even though it wasn’t laundry day. I think Mr. Thornton was using it to cast blame on the Chinese. The truck really stood out, being there on Easter morning. A lot of people were about.”

  If the Thuggees were attempting that same sort of misdirection again, the method felt heavy-handed.

  Ingrid shook her head. There were more immediate concerns now. “There should be a class of seniors, too. The teenagers.”

  “Should we check these children for a pulse? Is there a point?” Fenris’s voice was unusually soft.

  Ingrid made herself breathe deeply despite the smell, despite her horror at being here. She tore her gaze away from the students to the chalkboard. It contained a list of dates and times, the ones at the top fuzzed by time, the lower chalk lines crisp. She recognized some of the dates: notable tremors in Cascadia. She’d had to transcribe notes on the incidents. The bottom date was Saturday the twenty-first. Two days ago, late night. When she and Cy had been on Theodore Roosevelt’s airship, the earth had slightly shaken throughout Puget Sound. A perfectly natural event. The earth often shifted, even as Hidden Ones slept.

  She glanced at blood-spattered papers on a desk. The boy had been writing a journal of his experiences with hyperthermia. She looked at another desk. They were all working on the same exercise.

  “No. They’re all dead. They should have been holding energy from an earthquake a few days ago. Part of their lesson.” She motioned to the chalkboard, her hand shaking. The apprentices in the Cordilleran had been working on a similar exercise last week. It was one repeated constantly as they trained, as they studied the potential dangers earth magic could create within their young bodies. A lesson Ingrid continued to learn even now. “If they were alive, I’d see a blue fog within them. There’s nothing.” She looked at the bodies again then away, blinking fast.

  Something touched her legs and she barely contained a scream. The cat was twining around her skirts, her mew soft and insistent. Ingrid’s heart rampaged.

  “Should have closed the back door,” Fenris muttered. The cat continued to meow.

  “We can’t let down our guard. The attackers still might be upstairs.” Cy waved them toward the door.

  “I haven’t heard any noises up there,” whispered Ingrid.

  “Assume nothing until we’ve explored the whole place.”

  Ingrid picked up the cat and awkwardly cradled her against her chest. The cat purred like a happy motor. “I’ll let her out and shut the door.”

  Fenris and Cy escorted Ingrid through the back room again. She gently set the cat on the porch and shut the door again with a soft click. Muffled mews continued.

  They backtracked to the hallway. The next classroom was empty. Beside it was an office, the walls fully shelved and laden with books. A box of record albums had upended, the sleeved contents strewn across the floor in a sinuous arc. A woman lay beneath a shelf, an arm stretched out and a gray feather duster inches away. Her slender neck was almost severed.

  Ingrid stared. Mama had been head housekeeper for the Cordilleran Auxiliary, and Ingrid had assisted in those duties her whole life. This dead woman was a stranger, but her loss felt so damned personal.

  Two more women were dead in the front entrance, more cleaning implements nearby. With no customers in the building on Monday, it must have been the staff’s designated day for deep cleaning.

  The kitchen around the corner still had a sink of crackling suds and a stack of dirty plates. Two women curled against each other on the black-and-white parquet floor. Ingrid’s stomach writhed and clenched.

  Cy led the retreat to the hall. A mahogany staircase started near the front door and coiled to the second story.

  “I haven’t felt anyone else die,” Ingrid whispered.

  “I still haven’t heard any creaks from upstairs either,” said Cy. “Walk slow and easy.”

  The stairs emitted mild gripes as the three of them trod upward and to another hallway. A door drooped from its hinges, splinters and wood chunks all over the floor. Inside were five beds, and five young men.

  Ingrid could envision the scene; the screaming and chaos downstairs. The time to barricade themselves in a dormitory room. To grab weapons. There was a broken hockey stick, a hefty textbook, a bō. Personal books and papers were scattered across the floor along with body parts. These men hadn’t merely had their throats slit. They had been brutally hacked apart.

  “God,” Ingrid whispered as she turned away and retched. She had thought that nothing else could burn itself into her mind as vividly as the destruction of San Francisco, but this, this . . .

  They were silent as they congregated in the hallway. Her senses were numb as they continued down the hall.

  Another dormitory room was empty, the small bunk beds smartly made. She looked around, automatically engaging in the old habit of counting occupants so she would know how many plates to set for meals. She stopped herself, then frowned.

  “How many boys were in the downstairs classroom?” she whispered.

  “Ten,” said Cy. She wasn’t surprised he knew. By the look in his eye, that number, those bodies, had been seared in his memory.

  “There are fourteen occupants here.” Fenris opened his mouth as if to argue and she waved a hand. “Don’t count the beds. There are almost always extra beds in case of guests. Count how many beds have become homes.” She motioned to the shelves and desks to either side, each of them tidy yet personalized with photographs, knickknacks, and books. Several wall hooks hosted colorful scarfs, weighted ends pulling the cloth straight; she shuddered at the thought of these boys playacting the dime-novel depictions of Thuggees with their scarves as weapons.

  “Would youngsters be sent to a place like San
Francisco?” murmured Cy.

  Ingrid shook her head. “Not the juniors. Of course, they could be out on errands . . .”

  Cy pursed his lips, nodding.

  Hope. She had to hope that there were survivors, not just for the sake of their loved ones, but for the well-being of all of Seattle.

  Cy pushed open the door at the end of the hall. The office held three desks, bookshelves, filing cabinets, and everything else a person would expect in such a place. A few feet inside the room, a silver-haired man lay curled on his side, arms protectively tucked to his knees. Cy touched his shoulder and pulled it toward the floor. The man’s body unfolded to reveal an abdomen split into a foul, deep crimson. Ingrid forced her gaze up to his face.

  “Warden Watanabe,” she whispered.

  “Here’s another one,” muttered Fenris.

  Ingrid knew him by his bald spot. “Warden Terrance.”

  A third man sprawled facedown in front of a wardrobe. She took a step forward and stopped. The slit between the wardrobe doors revealed a deep blue sheen. She motioned to Cy.

  “Blue,” she whispered, almost giddy. It had to be one of the missing children. She needed it to be one of the missing children.

  He leaned close to her. “Don’t assume the person in there is innocent,” he murmured.

  Her cheeks flushed. “You can’t think . . .”

  “A warden killed everyone in your auxiliary. It could happen again.” Sympathy shone in his eyes. He angled his gun toward the wardrobe. “Hello! Whoever’s in there, we mean no harm, but we’re not sure if you’re so kindly inclined. Please come out with your hands up.”

  Something thudded in the wooden enclosure. “I can’t!” cried a small voice. “Mr. Springer’s dead, and he’s right there.”

  Ingrid’s heart broke. “Hello! My name’s Ingrid. What’s your name?” She heard Cy take in a sharp breath as she said her name, and realized she should have lied. Damn it. She had no brain for a life of subterfuge.

  “Kenji Morimoto.” American born or well Americanized, since he automatically said his surname last.

  Ingrid set aside the quarterstaff and grabbed a worn blanket from a nearby chair. She fluffed it out to cover the dead man. “How old are you, Kenji?”

  “Eleven. Is everyone else in the building dead?” he asked in a small voice.

  Ingrid glanced back at Cy and Fenris, unsure how best to answer. “I covered up Mr. Springer. Can you come out?”

  The door popped open a crack, slender fingers on the beveled edge. A boy leaned out; earth energy misted him in blue. His shiny black hair was cropped short, his pale face streaked with tears. He reminded Ingrid a great deal of how Lee looked when he first came to live in Mr. Sakaguchi’s household. Kenji wore a green button-up shirt partially tucked into pleated tan trousers. His white-socked feet edged out as he stared at the floor as if it were deep water infested by sharks.

  Ingrid walked around the corpse on the floor and reached out to the boy. His slick hands grasped hers like a lifeline and she pulled him free, coats and hanging clothes left swaying in his wake. Tucking his head against her arm, she walked him past the other desk and near a shuttered window. From here he wouldn’t be able to see the bodies. She pressed him into a chair, his body limp and pliable as clay, and pivoted the seat to face her and the wall.

  “We need more kermanite. He’s energy-sick.” Ingrid had empty pieces on her, but she also knew that she needed to be selfish for her own health’s sake. “Kenji, who has the ready vault keys for this office?”

  He blinked at her, swaying. “Mr. Springer. He’s an adept and clerk. He promised us ice cream after we vented out the energy. We’re supposed to hold it for one more day to make three days total, which is the longest we’ve ever made it.”

  Oh God. Ingrid bit her lip to contain her emotions. “Well, I think you should still get ice cream after two days.”

  Cy deftly searched Mr. Springer’s body. After a moment, he held up a ring of jingling keys. Ingrid motioned with her head to the far wall, which contained an inlaid safe. If the kermanite there was inadequate, they could search the wardens; their cuff links or pockets should contain empty chunks. She certainly had no desire to return to the downstairs classroom to check that vault.

  The boy started to turn around and Ingrid tugged on the chair arm so that he looked at her again. Across the room, Cy rustled in the vault. Fenris stared at a bookshelf, his arms crossed as if he was casually browsing for reading material.

  “Kenji, can you tell us what happened?”

  He shivered. Sweat sheened his skin. “There were screams. Lots of screams. Mr. Watanabe tried to use the telephone but the line didn’t work. The other boys wanted to run but Mr. Springer shoved me in the wardrobe and told me to be quiet as a kirin. So I was.”

  Ingrid accepted a pouch from Cy as well as a full water glass he grabbed from a far desk. “Here, Kenji. Let’s pull the energy out. Things are bad enough without you feeling like you have influenza, too, right?”

  His nod was weak. The poor child had to be running a 102- or 103-degree fever, and had for two days. This would have been a miserable day even without a massacre taking place around him.

  She shook the bag until two kermanite pieces fell into her hand. Each was the size of a shelled peanut. “I bet you can fill one of these and you might need the other one, too.”

  His brow furrowed. “How do you know? You’re a woman, and . . .”

  “I’m equipped with a functional brain and I know how to use it.” She kept her tone gentle and chiding as she pressed kermanite into his palm. Kenji gasped, his back arching and eyes rolling back. Blue roiled and swirled into the kermanite, filling it within seconds. He sagged. She pushed the second piece into his limp hand. As she suspected, his energy cast a permanent smoky swirl into about half of the crystal. She dropped the pieces into her coat pocket.

  “We can’t stay here much longer,” said Cy.

  She nodded as she held the water to the boy’s lips and helped him drink. “Kenji, can you tell us more about what happened? What did the attackers say?” Maybe, maybe they mentioned something about the large kermanite or their plans. Some information they could pass along to Mr. Roosevelt.

  Kenji sagged in the chair, fatigued, as he likely would be for a few more days. However, some clarity had returned to his eyes. “The attackers. Mr. Watanabe locked them out. He tried to reason with them, but they were huge. Strong. The men yelled about San Francisco and the wardens dying there. They said Seattle deserved the same thing because of Baranov.”

  “They said Baranov? Are you sure?” asked Cy.

  “Yes, sir.” He glanced back at Cy. “The men, they were Russians. They were mad because of the gold rush. They said foreigners were going to steal all the gold.”

  “They’ll try,” Ingrid softly said. That was exactly what Blum intended.

  “The Russians said that other Russians were going to die in fights in Baranov, and that if they survived that and went to Russia, they’d still die, because the czar would blame them for not doing their jobs.” He stared into space for a long moment.

  “Kenji.” Cy got his attention. “Did the Russians say why they came to the auxiliary in particular?”

  “To try to destroy Seattle.” He said it dully. “The miners going north have to travel through here. They said it’d be a great triumph if an earthquake happened to stop all the travelers. They wanted . . . they wanted everyone here to know why they were being killed.”

  The facts sank in. Russians had done this, not Thuggees. Maybe they were directed by their government, maybe they acted of their own volition. Whatever their motivation was, the root cause was still Ambassador Blum.

  Ingrid rocked in her shoes, her grief striking her anew. The dead boys, the men who died in their defense, the housekeepers and cooks who never had a chance, the cat that kept crying and crying for the people she loved and not understanding why no one came.

  Cy’s expression was hard. “Kenji, you said the
re were other boys in here with you. Where’d they go?”

  The boy shrank back in the chair. “The Russians took them. Grant, Daisuke, and Tetsu. They took my friends and I didn’t do anything. I didn’t say anything.” He began to shake. “I did what Mr. Springer said. I stayed quiet and still.”

  “Mr. Springer told you the right thing. You couldn’t have stopped those men, Kenji.” Ingrid cupped her hand to his jaw. He began to sob.

  “They . . . they were going back to their airship to leave. They wanted young geomancers to take home, that they might be worth something. That . . . that . . . we were old enough to not cry, young enough to learn true obedience.”

  The presence of three young geomancers could make a major difference in stabilizing Seattle. Ingrid and Cy shared a look.

  “They’d need a Behemoth-class airship for a direct flight to Russia,” said Cy. “That means the main port in Seattle.”

  “We better hurry,” said Ingrid as she stood.

  “You . . . you’re going after them?” Kenji asked, his voice soft with awe.

  “Yes,” said Ingrid.

  “I saw from upstairs when they pulled up. The Russians had a produce truck with a white canvas back. That’s why Trisha let them in. She thought . . . She said . . .” His face crumpled up again.

  “You don’t have to tell us anything else,” said Ingrid. “You’ve been so brave, Kenji—”

  “No, I haven’t,” he blurted. “I’ve been cowardly and I dishonored—”

  “Don’t you dare say you dishonored your family,” Fenris snapped. He advanced several steps to lean on the desk beside Kenji. “That old cliché is ground into people like a bootheel crunching a beetle into pavement. You’re alive, child. You did exactly what was asked of you under horrible, dangerous circumstances. Disobeying your adept would have gotten you killed or kidnapped, which would’ve left us with no way to find your friends.”

  The words shocked Kenji as effectively as a slap to the face.