by K. Gorman
“Mieshka, I think we should talk.”
“About what?”
“About what happened.”
“What do you mean? With the sky?”
“Not just the sky. I feel we need to talk more. About everything.”
She stiffened. Something in his voice made her peer up. Dad had stopped looking at his plate. His pale eyes met hers with more clarity than she was used to.
“I saw those men in the hospital,” he said. “Jo told me what happened.”
She froze. “That was an accident.”
“No, it wasn’t,” he corrected. “You did what you had to. Just like your mother did.”
The range hood clicked off behind her. In the quiet, she could hear the subtle ticks as the stove cooled down. The kitchen’s light glinted on the edge of her worn mug, gleamed in the leftover egg on her plate. It brought out the blue in her dad’s eyes.
Fire flashed behind her thoughts. In her mind, she heard the echoes of men screaming.
Her grip tightened on the table as she pushed the memory back.
She had spent a lot of time forgetting what had happened in the cenotaph. She didn’t want to remember it now.
Especially not on the day she began her Elemental training.
“I’m fine,” she said, breaking his gaze. Her plate clattered when she scooped it up. “I need to go. I’ll be late.”
By the time she re-emerged from the shower, the lights were off, and her father had vanished. The orange juice had warmed on the table.
*
Ryarne’s sole Fire Mage owned a building on the north side of Uptown, roughly three blocks away from the nearest transit station. Dwarfed by its taller, more contemporary neighbors, the building’s exterior had a dingy, outdated feel to it.
Its inside wasn’t much better. Ignoring the broken elevator, Mieshka pushed through a fire door to the stairwell and headed up. Her steps echoed in the bare, concrete shaft.
When she opened the door to the second floor, she paused at the hallway’s darkness.
Was she the first one here?
No, the front door had been unlocked. Someone was here. Or, at least, someone had been here. With only four people using the building, they had a somewhat laissez-faire approach to security. Especially when two were hired bodyguards and the rest could burn things with their brain.
She let the stairwell door close behind her, blocking out the light. A small window at the end of the hallway created a dim, drizzly effect on the old off-white paint and scuffed laminate flooring. The place was quiet. Every time she moved, the noise felt exaggerated—like she was in a library. Her shoes squeaked against the floor as she crossed to the main office.
The room had a clear cubicle-farm past. Easily the size of her entire apartment, the office’s open-concept plan made the space seem somewhat vacuous. It doubled as a rec room, housing two long black couches, a flat-screen television, and a small refrigerator. Aiden’s desk, pushed into the far left corner of the room next to the windows, felt small and inconsequential with the size of the place.
It sat empty.
She squinted into the room. It had the same dim, cloud-colored lighting scheme as the hallway, and it took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust.
It took her a bit longer to notice the Mage-shaped lump on the second couch.
“Aiden?”
The bundle didn’t move. She stepped closer, shucking her backpack. Her shoulder was bugging her from yesterday’s firing practice.
As she approached, she began to discern which end of the bundle contained his head. His hair had the same red-orange shade as her own, but the room’s sickly light dulled the color, making it barely discernible from the khaki-brown blanket he’d wrapped himself in. He’d nestled his head in the crook of the couch, using the cushioned arm for a pillow.
She set her backpack on the opposite couch and noticed several packages of tea-lights scattered on the coffee table. Her phone buzzed as it connected to the office’s Wi-Fi.
“Aiden?”
He twitched. The one eye she could see squinted closed.
“Long night?” she asked.
He grunted.
“Working on the engine again?”
Aiden had one of the three engines that generated Ryarne’s shield. It had been three months since Swarzgard, the invading country, had executed a plan to annihilate the three engines and take the energy crystals that powered them. Both the engines and the crystals were Lost Tech—highly advanced technology from Aiden’s old world that could conduct magic. Very rare, here.
Since the attack, he spent most of his time tinkering around in the office’s basement, the obsidian-dark parts of the Lost Tech scattered around him like broken puzzle pieces.
It was a permanent job.
He grunted again. This time, his eye opened.
Progress.
It took another minute before he made any significant movement. She caught a flash of skin when the blanket shifted, and turned away. She wandered to the windows as the leather couch squeaked behind her. On the other side of the glass, snow clouds hung low over the Uptown skyscrapers. Cold seeped in.
As always, she didn’t feel it. No Fire Elemental did.
Aiden’s knee cracked as he stood. She glanced back, seeing him bundle the blanket around his torso.
“Why do you wear that?” she asked.
He glanced down. “Wear what?”
“The blanket. You don’t get cold.”
He shrugged. “I like blankets. Do I need a reason?”
“No.”
“Cool.”
Mieshka turned back to the window. Below her, the sidewalk was pale and cracked with ice, the grass beside it long turned to mud. A mix of sand and snow piled against the curb next to the driveway. The company SUV sat at the curb, its smooth exterior glittering. By the heavy frost on its windshield, she could tell it hadn’t been used in a while.
“Is Buck here?”
“No.”
“Jo?”
Aiden shuffled behind her. The refrigerator door sucked open.
“They both quoted section five of the city’s employee rights charter and took off. Something about grocery shopping.”
“Will they be back?”
“They have the day off.”
She turned around. “Just us?”
“Yep.” Aiden hunched over the small refrigerator, the light highlighting the bags under his eyes. After a moment, he reached in and pulled out a can of coffee. It made a popping sound when he opened it.
The clouds thickened outside the office, dragging their bellies against the tallest buildings. By the time he joined her by the window, the first few flakes of snow had already fluttered to the ground.
He sipped his cold coffee in silence. The building’s furnace clunked on, coughing warm air through a vent near the wall. The bags under his eyes were deeper than she remembered.
“How’s the shield doing?” she asked.
“It’s fine. Stop worrying about it.”
“You’re always working on it.”
“Just trying to make it more efficient. Doesn’t stop it from being fine.”
“‘Kay.”
He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a buoy. Up close, his skin looked rough, shadowed with an even layer of unshaven scrub.
They watched a car roll by on the street below. Its red taillights burned bright against the dreary backdrop. It slowed near the next corner, then turned into a building’s underground car park.
He shifted. “I suppose I ought to teach you how to light things on fire.”
“That would be nice. Is that what the candles are for?”
“Yes. How do you feel about it?”
“I dunno. How should I feel about it?”
“Excited? Scared? Trepi—di—tious?” The last word came out as a yawn.
Mieshka lifted an eyebrow.
“I need more coffee,” he grunted. “But let’s start, anyway. Turn on the light.”
They moved back to the couches, where he bundled himself in a begrudged, upright pose, coffee can in hand. Mieshka sat down opposite. An overhead fluorescent hummed in the ceiling above them, outdated by the more-modern pot lights that flanked it.
As she sat, something stirred in her gut. Maybe she was excited, after all.
“This isn’t going to be like last time. You’re starting fresh now, not borrowing off of me or a magical bird.”
She cocked her head. “I thought I’d absorbed the Phoenix?”
“You did, but it’s not the same now. You’re both starting fresh—which is probably a good thing, since you’ll have a full grasp on the basics instead of jumping ahead like last time.”
She nodded. Her prior experience with magic was rife with exceptions. The first half involved the use of a transfer-sigil that allowed her to ‘borrow’ magic from other Elementals, including Aiden and Roger. The latter half happened after she’d absorbed an energy crystal from Aiden’s inter-dimensional ship. Crystals, like those powering the shield engines, had a monstrous amount of energy. The ship’s crystal, whose energy took on the form of the mythical Phoenix, had taken a shining to her.
Well, more than a shining, really. It had taken over. Wrapped her in so much power and protection that walking had been like piloting a tank. A tank with a constant flamethrower.
But those days were done. She couldn’t accept transfer-sigils anymore, and she’d nearly killed the crystal—whatever was left had either survived or, theoretically, re-birthed. They didn’t know for sure. Aiden didn’t have the right equipment to scan her anymore. He’d barely had it before.
“Where do we start?”
The tea lights remained in their packaging. From her vantage point, the overhead light gleamed dully on the plastic.
“With control. It’s kind of important for fire.” Aiden took a swig of his coffee. “You haven’t really seen me do it before, have you?”
“Only three times, I think.”
“Under trying circumstances, if I recall. The kidnapping, right?”
Right. That had been a bit of an inferno, and a source for some of her nightmares, considering the thing he’d been fighting had then eaten him with it. Not exactly a ‘teaching moment.’
“Okay.” He leaned forward and put the coffee on the table. The can clicked onto the glass. “Let’s up that count a bit.”
He grabbed a package of candles, its plastic flashing under the overhead fluorescents. Light flared at his fingertips—a mixture of deep red, orange, yellow, and white, the colors of his Element. The package blackened, burned, and coiled away from his grip. Smoke curled upward.
The smell of burning plastic singed the air.
He wrinkled his nose.
“Has anyone told you the difference between an Elemental and a Mage?”
“They are different power levels?”
“Sort of. The main difference is that Mages can do magic, and Elementals can’t. They can only do Elemental stuff.” He pulled out a couple of candles and put the bag back on the table. His Element had burned several black holes into the plastic, making it look like some kind of industrial, grunge form of Swiss Cheese. “Do you understand?”
“Not really. What’s the difference between Elemental magic and… other magic?”
Aiden fiddled with the tea light, prying the wick from the wax. “Elemental magic is basic. The other stuff is advanced. It’s the difference between me setting something on fire and me using magic to teleport. Back in the old world, most everyone had Elemental powers—it just took a bit of training and a lot of practice to become a Mage. Same as going to college or university, I guess.”
That made sense. Somewhat.
Mieshka leaned forward. “So, I’m an Elemental? Like Kitty and Roger?”
“For now.” He placed the candle on the table. “I think you have the potential to become a Mage. Roger and Kitty, being from this world, are probably locked into being Elementals—we don’t really know, since this is such a new development, and we left most of our diagnostic tools behind in the old world. But you absorbed the power of a crystal. That makes you special.”
“Sure.” She eyed the burnt packaging. “I used that shield spell once…”
“Which is why I think you can be a Mage. But, basics first. Light this.”
The candle sat on the table, wick up, well away from the rest of the bag. She straightened up, excitement fluttering in her gut again.
“Just like last time?” she asked. “Just… with thought?”
“It’ll be harder than last time. Last time, you had help. Last time, the Phoenix skipped some steps in connecting with your thoughts.” Aiden picked his coffee back up and took a sip. “You have to rebuild that neural network from scratch.”
That sounded… difficult. Her fingers tightened around her knee.
Elements, in her experience, existed as some sort of extra sense. Maybe a sixth sense, since it felt so abstract. Back when she’d absorbed the Phoenix, the power had draped over her like a cloak, settled in her bones, and stuck to every cell. Hard to ignore.
Now? It was like reaching into a void.
She focused on the candle, turning her mind inward to that place where her Element hid. Then, like she’d done before, she pulled.
A slip of fire shivered into her mind, resembling the pilot flame on her dad’s old stove.
Hardly the inferno she remembered. She strained, focusing the fire on the candle.
The wick blackened. A wisp of smoke slipped into the air.
Mieshka held her breath. A tiny ember shivered at the tip. It reminded her of the crystal.
She pulled harder.
“Think warm thoughts,” Aiden suggested. “Like a volcano.”
An image of lava—bright, searing, and hot—slipped into her mind, and something clicked. Her Element flared inside her and replaced that tiny pilot light of a flame with something larger.
The candle hissed. The wick curled, smoked.
Then, it caught.
She relaxed. The candle burned, casting a shifting glow on the table. She caught a whiff of jasmine from the scented wax.
Aiden took another sip of his coffee.
“Good job,” he said.
Then, he leaned forward. He dumped the bag onto the table and began arranging the candles into a circle. Her mind buzzed, watching as he straightened all the wicks.
“Now, light the rest of them.”
Chapter 6
By the time lunch rolled around, Aiden had regressed back into a bundle on the couch, and Mieshka’s head spun. They’d moved from lighting the candles to putting them out, as well, playing a game of candle flame Simon Says until she had proven sufficiently capable of practicing on her own. She’d gone around the circle at random, lighting and snuffing, lighting and snuffing.
The air smelled of smoke and jasmine. Heat rippled above the flames. Melted wax shivered in the hollows of each candle and dripped down the aluminum sides, their wicks sitting black and low.
She’d almost burned them out.
It grew easier with practice, but she could feel the fatigue kick in. It was getting harder and harder to focus. Her head whirred. Her muscles shook like they used to when she ran track at school.
She took a steadying breath to try and clear the heaviness from her head. Four candles glowed in front of her. She focused on a fifth. Its wick sat so low, it nearly drowned in the liquid wax. When it didn’t catch right away, she pushed more energy into it.
Phwoom!
The candle erupted. She lunged forward as fire took over, fluttering higher into the air, spreading over the table. The glass heated. Wax bubbled, sizzled.
“Fuck!” She smothered the mess with her hand, forcing the fire back down. It shied from her touch, retreating.
Aiden opened an eye as she captured the last errant flame. Fresh smoke filled the air, mingling with the jasmine scent of the candle. The tea light cooled in a pool of its own wax, its aluminum canist
er black and dull.
She brushed soot from her hands, avoiding his stare. The Fire Mage yawned, then straightened.
“You know,” he started. “I think it’s time for lunch.”
They left the office shortly afterward, the keys to the SUV dangling from his fingers.
*
“It’s been a long time since I’ve driven anywhere,” Aiden admitted, fiddling with the climate control as the engine warmed up. “Buck usually does it.”
She gave him a concerned look. “How come?”
“He’s an ex-military evasion driver. Have you seen the shit he can pull with a car? I cede to his authority on the subject.” He shifted the gear-stick, checking the empty street before he merged. The car lurched forward. “Besides, I feel self-conscious with him in the car. Like he’s silently judging my driving or something.”
“I see.”
Aiden hadn’t bothered to scrape the windshield—his Element had taken care of that for him. They left a puddle of slushy water by the curb as they pulled out. The engine purred, tires crunching on the frozen asphalt. The radio played on the lowest volume.
He paused at the end of the street, watching the stream of cars, ready to turn.
“So, since I don’t know how to drive at all, I make a good passenger?” Mieshka asked.
“Precisely.”
He gunned it into a gap in the cars, swerving into a lane. She gripped the door as the SUV steadied out. Ryarne’s Uptown skyscrapers crowded each side of the four-lane street. Occasional flakes of snow blew against the windshield.
“Where are we going?”
“I have no idea. You know anyplace good?”
She shook her head. “You’ve been here longer than me.”
He tsked. “Don’t call me old.”
They drove through lunchtime traffic. Business people in smart-looking pants and warm-looking parkas picked their way along the icy sidewalks. The smarter ones crammed into the covered, insulated pedway system that bridged the smaller streets and tunneled below the bigger ones. When they paused at a light, she watched people queue inside a bustling coffee shop.
The cars on their side of the street were turning off as the approaching road sloped down. He drove on. The SUV roared past the intersection.