Call of Fire

by Beth Cato

  Ingrid turned, slowly, in dread that Ambassador Blum would be standing right behind her with a bright smile on her aged face. There were only more crates. She looked past the mountain ranges of parcels destined to cross the ocean, and to the Unified Pacific vessel with an especially prominent rising sun on the side. A figure in black stood at the top of the high mooring mast, skirt rippling in the wind.

  Ambassador Blum had arrived in Seattle.

  Chapter 16

  How had Blum managed to arrive at this very moment? What were the odds of such a thing?

  And if Ingrid could sense her—was the feeling mutual?

  Ingrid shrank into the shadows between the crates as if she could render herself invisible if she were perfectly still.

  Memories of the night she spent in Blum’s custody flooded through her and threatened to drown her—that initial hope that a woman ambassador might be sympathetic to her plight, might listen to her. The way Captain Sutcliff—that arrogant, pompous officer convinced of Mr. Sakaguchi’s complicity with the Chinese—quivered in terror at Blum’s arrival. He’d looked at Ingrid and said, in earnest, “God help you.”

  As the saying goes, God does work in mysterious ways. The earthquake that devastated San Francisco had filtered enough power to Ingrid to enable her escape from the iron cell Blum had secured her in.

  Even if Mr. Roosevelt or his men had betrayed them, the timing of Blum’s arrival was too peculiar, too alarming. Had Blum prodded the Russians to lash out at local geomancers, and now appeared to oversee the results? That seemed beyond the pale, even for Blum, but the ambassador worked on a centuries-long time frame that Ingrid could scarcely comprehend. Nothing could be put past her.

  Ingrid was certain of one thing: she wanted no part in Blum’s game.

  The sylphs were fluttering like contained fog, clearly agitated. Ingrid wondered if they were drawing on her own emotions or if they sensed Blum’s musky power—or both.

  She pressed a hand to the crusty iron bars. “I know your wings are used to make ninja attire invisible. Can you hide me? Not just me physically, but my power, my smell? She can’t find me!” Her voice shook, as did her grip on the bars.

  The sylphs fluttered in place. They showed no sign that they understood anything she said.

  Ingrid glanced through the stacks of freight to the mooring mast. Blum was walking down the long, winding staircase. Ingrid sensed it, somehow, the reverberation of her approach like ripples against her skin. She was utterly baffled. Her connection with Blum couldn’t be through earth magic—the high metal tower would transmit little geomantic energy, even in a major earthquake.

  She whirled around to the sylphs again. She had to communicate with them, and that left one option. Ingrid focused on her power, on the burble of warmth in her veins, and pulled on that heat to reach out to the mobs of sylphs. She drew on the potency of her own emotion, her own abject terror.

  HELP ME, she pleaded. The rapidness of her heart, her escalating fright, poured outward as viscous as motor oil in summer.

  Thousands of sylphs quivered.

  Ingrid repeated her plea. She didn’t try to project her power as a yell, the way she had with the thunderbird—she didn’t dare, knowing that Blum was a fantastic as well.

  The sylphs’ wings thrummed. They were receiving her words, even if they didn’t understand. Ingrid didn’t dare bludgeon them with power; they were delicate air creatures that could easily be hurt by elemental earth magic. A few crumbs of jamu-pan couldn’t undo prolonged starvation in a poisonous iron cage either.

  Blum was coming closer, closer.

  Was Ingrid already surrounded by soldiers? Or did Blum want the full honor of tracking down her prey? Ingrid battled to control her terror, and she sensed how the sylphs were absorbing her emotion. They fanned their wings in synchrony.

  we understand.

  It wasn’t said in English or Japanese or any language Ingrid could identify, but it came across clearly in the sylphs’ collective hum. The sylphs knew empathy, and fear, and despair. They knew something terrible was approaching. They knew what it meant to be prey in the presence of a superior carnivore.

  The image of the jamu-pan flashed back to her mind, this time seen from their eyes. They understood why Ingrid broke the bread as she did. This was a trade, a transaction, one with mutual benefit.

  I understand, she replied, her emotion from the heart.

  Ingrid pressed her hand against the nearest cage. The iron bars were set scarcely a pinky finger’s width apart to prevent tiny fairy kind from squeezing through. The energy within her body roiled and welled as she called it forth, but she concentrated in order to pour out just a dab, like adding cream to a warden’s coffee.

  The slender iron bars crackled and dimmed to a faint gray. Ingrid provided a physical shove and shattered them completely. Sylphs flooded through a hole almost the size of Ingrid’s hand, their gratitude turning the air fragrant with the scent of lavender.

  Ingrid moved fast, breaking each cage in sequence. Sylphs fluttered around her in a delighted, buzzing cloud. She wished she could feed and free all of them—she had no idea how many were stacked there, ready to be loaded—but there was no more food and certainly no more time.

  Blum was advancing in a swirl of power.

  The sylphs knew, too. The cloud expanded around Ingrid, the moth-like wings beating faster, faster. Ingrid’s hood blew back, but no rain dappled her face. Fanning wings propelled the water away. Her coat billowed at her knees, strands of hair drifting at her cheeks. Air magic stung her exposed skin like rose thorns, the pain in her face sudden and excruciating. The turbulent fog filled her vision.

  Therefore, she didn’t see the flare of blue earth energy even as new warmth caressed her. Her body pulled in power. She feared that the miasma might send the sylphs scattering, but they seemed fine.

  Ingrid needed to stop the pain.

  Tugging on her power, she attempted a peculiar sort of shield: she needed to numb herself. She needed the air magic to shroud her, but maybe she could stop the pain signals from reaching her brain.

  She slowly inhaled and exhaled, and the stinging sensation faded even as the strange air pressure of the fairies’ power increased.

  Ingrid glanced down. She could still see herself, and felt a surge of panic.

  The sylphs laughed like rustling leaves in a breeze. worry not. we have you. magic will hold until . . . They paused. sunset. then, we rest.

  “Here goes nothing,” she muttered beneath her breath as she stepped out from among the crates.

  While she had been focusing on the caged fairies and Blum, activity on the dock had shifted to controlled chaos. Even more soldiers had swarmed the vicinity. She identified the location of the Russians by the knot of guards around them. More soldiers climbed up and down the mooring mast to the Russian ship as well as the UP vessel. Traffic within the port had descended from creeping progress to a total logjam as soldiers moved crates to completely block vehicle movement. Furious autocar horns and loud male voices made it clear what others thought of this inconvenience.

  Ambassador Blum was standing about twenty feet away. Her aura of magic was so thick Ingrid could practically chew it, but she never would have recognized Blum by her physical appearance.

  Blum’s vivid red hair was braided and coiled into an artful bun topped by an asymmetrical, shallow black hat with a broad rim. Her face was young, her expression distorted in a frown as she listened to a soldier. She could easily pass for near Ingrid’s age. She wore black, as she had before, but the fit of her clothes now accentuated a different body. A black peacoat flared back in the wind to show a black corset defining a narrow waist. A high black lace collar pressed against her throat and contrasted with her milky skin. The backside of her coat showed the protrusion of what seemed to be an antiquated bustle, but Ingrid knew that the lump really indicated the presence of at least four large foxtails beneath her clothes.

  This was the Blum that Cy knew and had descr
ibed from the years when he worked on his prototype Durendal. There had been some sort of flirtation between Blum and him back then, but it hadn’t progressed very far. Cy hadn’t known she was a kitsune. Indeed, he hadn’t even known she was an ambassador for months, as she had always worn gloves to hide her signet ring.

  As Blum spoke with the soldier, her gaze flicked all around and she tilted up her head as if sniffing. She looked straight at Ingrid and didn’t react.

  Taking a deep breath to quell her terror, Ingrid moved closer.

  Stories about kitsune said that they were able to take a new body every hundred years as a new tail completed its growth. The emphasis was on take. Kitsune cleaved a soul from its newly chosen body so they could claim it as their own, stacking the body with old forms as a person might stack a deck of cards. The soul of the body’s former inhabitant was set free to be a ghost or to find nirvana or heaven, whatever it willed.

  Ingrid wondered if this body, so attractively Irish or Scottish in origin, was Blum’s most recent acquisition because she worked more often with the Western world. Maybe the name of “Blum” came along with it.

  An Army & Airship Corps captain was speaking with Blum. “. . . completely butchered. I have never seen the like in America, Ambassador.”

  “All four boys are unharmed, beyond energy sickness?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Frightened witless, too, but grateful to be saved. We’re still searching for the two men the boys described, and for the woman said to have been at the auxiliary.”

  Blum licked her lips. “Yes. Her.”

  Ingrid stood a mere five feet away. The heady scent of Blum’s magic made her stomach twist at memories she couldn’t linger on, not here, not now. Instead, her fear faded to cold, hard defiance. People moved around her, diverted by the intense magic of the fairy fog. An Imperial Japanese officer even walked by, a Murata-to curved saber at his waist.

  “I want them found. It’s vital to the security of the Unified Pacific. The woman in particular. She’s here. She’s close, I’ve known that for hundreds of miles, and yet . . .” Blum frowned, her naturally pink and pert lips making the expression disturbingly attractive. “She’s not. It’s vexing. But intriguing.”

  Blum wasn’t perturbed by Ingrid’s having vanished while she was so close.

  In fact, Blum looked ecstatic.

  “We’re deploying more soldiers throughout the city, ma’am, and our other ships will arrive within hours.” He hesitated. “Reporters are gathering here at the dock and at the auxiliary. Civilians are starting to panic that what happened in San Francisco might happen here as well.”

  “Good.” Her green eyes narrowed to slits. “Fear can be used. Directed. Honed. Captain, issue a report that describes the butchery at the Cascadian Auxiliary and the miracle of how these boys were recovered here at the dock. Describe our soldiers as the heroes who retrieved the poor children as their Chinese kidnappers tried to smuggle them aboard a Russian vessel.”

  The captain jotted down notes. He seemed to take her revisions to the truth in stride. “Should the Russians be mentioned as complicit in the scheme, ma’am?”

  Blum made a thoughtful hum, her gestures and posture reminding Ingrid of the older woman’s body that the ambassador had worn before. “Yes. Yes. The Chinese used Russian strongmen, mercenaries. That will increase public sentiment against the Russian possession of Baranov as well.

  “Build on the known fact that the Chinese are too physically weak to commit such violence themselves, but don’t encourage civilian violence against the Chinese here in Seattle. If the fool townspeople take it upon themselves to police the vicinity, they’ll likely burn down the whole city again. Assure them that the soldiers have things well in hand without mentioning our timeline, of course. We need to seize Chinatown tonight before Warden Sakaguchi can slip out of its crevices. My sources say his tong plans to move onward immediately. His vanishing act has been inconvenient. I need to get back to Atlanta to ascertain the full scope of fire damage at the project site.”

  Mr. Sakaguchi is here. Ingrid felt a mingled wave of relief and terror rush through her, followed by smoldering rage.

  “You bitch,” she whispered.

  Blum froze. Ingrid scarcely breathed. An officer approached Blum with a smart salute. “Ambassador, we have set up an area for your interrogation of the Russian’s leader, Kozlov.”

  “Hmm?” Blum said distractedly as she sniffed the air again.

  “Ambassador?”

  Blum looked around, expression uncertain, then came to attention again. “Excellent.” She dismissed the first officer with a few words and followed the newcomer with crisp strides. Against all wisdom, Ingrid trailed in their wake. A quick glance at the horizon showed a harsh beam of sunlight cutting through the gray clouds. Ingrid dared not linger long, but she couldn’t let this opportunity escape. She needed to know what Blum knew.

  Soldiers saluted Blum as she passed, their expressions flickering between awe, confusion, and blatant lust. Ingrid doubted many of them even recognized Blum as an ambassador, but they knew she was someone important.

  A group of soldiers stood beneath the cover of a long, wall-less structure that seemed to be designed for loading goods. Low stacks of boxes cluttered one end. Overhead, light rain pinged on the corrugated iron roof. Ingrid edged beneath the cover.

  Kozlov sat on a wooden shipping box, three soldiers around him with hands on their weapons. He was a huge man, thick as a Minotaur. Blood smeared the skin of his forehead and cheeks and left black patches in his thicket of a brown beard. His dark peacoat undoubtedly hid far more stains. His brow furrowed at the sight of Ambassador Blum. He barked out a laugh, followed by a torrent of Russian words.

  Blum clapped her hands and responded in turn. Her Russian was Gatling-gun fast, poetic to the ears. The Russian’s jaw fell slack.

  “Now that your rather intimate proposal has been rejected, I will speak in my preferred tongue.” Blum spoke in Japanese. “As a sailor, you know the language, I assume?”

  “I know it.” His accent was thick, almost incomprehensible. He blinked, clearly baffled by the woman before him.

  “Good!” Blum tugged off her gloves in a graceful move and extended her right hand. The ambassadorial ring looked an unnatural shade of green. “I assume you know what this means?”

  Ingrid shot another worried glance at the western horizon. Damn Blum and her posturing. This was taking too long.

  Kozlov’s expression shifted from bewilderment to terror. “You’re an ambassador. You’re that one, the fox?”

  “Ah, wonderful. My reputation precedes me.” She flicked her fingers. The guards around Kozlov stepped back. His wrists were shackled but his ankles were not. He glanced down, taking this in, telegraphing his intent to escape to everyone around.

  “Hope. It’s beautiful, yet so ephemeral.” Blum spun in place, granting Ingrid a quick glance of her smiling face, and then she pounced on Kozlov, agile as a true fox. Her arms were a black blur as she pounded him in the head. His body recoiled left, right, left again, the smacks of flesh on flesh sounding more liquid with each impact. Blum retreated again, as light on her feet as a dancer, her pleated coat elegantly twirling at her hips. Kozlov groaned, the sound prolonged and agonized.

  “Who ordered you to attack the Cascadian Auxiliary?” Blum’s words were a snarl.

  Kozlov’s face was blocked from Ingrid’s view by Blum’s body, but she heard him gurgle as he sat upright again. He started to speak in Russian, and after a pause to spit, switched to Japanese. “No one. No one over me. It was my idea. To try to slow the American invasion of Baranov. This gold rush, it will cause many Russian deaths, much suffering among soldiers.”

  Ambassador Blum began to pace. The strength of her power buffeted against Ingrid. “Two auxiliaries obliterated in the past week. The Cordilleran branch destroyed by those newfangled Thuggees—in league with the Chinese, of course,” she added as an afterthought. “And then there is your gallant plot. You and
your comrades may have annihilated the Cascadian Auxiliary’s geomancers, but Seattle won’t suffer as San Francisco has. I’ll make sure of it.” She shook her head, her black hat’s wide brim bobbing. “You men with your petty plans. I am the divine wind!” Her voice grew louder with each word. “You are nothing. You have the life span of a gnat. I will not tolerate further distractions!”

  Blum’s power flared, the stench of it almost overwhelming. Even the soldiers seemed to sense something, their eyes widening as they shot nervous glances at each other. Blum’s form flickered. Her hair darkened, the outline of her figure blurring.

  A second later, Blum relaxed and adjusted her hat. Her form stilled. The cloying thickness in the air dissipated enough to allow for easier breathing, but didn’t completely leave.

  Ingrid’s heart clamored in her chest. Around her, the sylphs quivered. go?

  Soon, Ingrid thought back at them, picturing slight movement of the sun. They accepted this with a reaction she could only describe as grudging.

  It’s not as though Ingrid had any true desire to stay. Terror had left her mouth parched, her tongue heavy. Her horror was reflected in the face of the brawny Kozlov, which she could now see clearly. He looked as if he had met with a threshing machine. Claw marks carved crimson trails from his cheeks to his jaw, where tufts of his beard were gone. His eyes were swelling up, reduced to mere slits. A knot the size of the ambassadorial ring grew on his blood-streaked forehead.

  “We’ll get more geomancers here. The Brits owe me,” Blum murmured in Japanese as she began pacing again. “I will make them send more adepts from Vancouver. We’ll get Sakaguchi in Chinatown tonight, squelch his little insurrection. Perhaps soldiers will finally find my kermanite now that Captain Sutcliff is no longer in command. The crystal isn’t quite so vital now, but it will still be useful.” She paused in reciting her to-do list to smile. “I’ll retrieve my friend Ingrid somewhere around here, too. That might be the only fun to come from all this mess.” She giggled, the sound sending a violent chill through Ingrid.