The Fire Children

by Lauren Roy

  If Anur had been drifting toward sleep or shock, she roused at the mention of her husband. “Yulla, no. You can’t, he, they...” She struggled to sit up straighter and grip Yulla’s shoulders. “Promise me you won’t go in the other ritual room. Promise me you won’t even open that door.”

  “But if it would help free you—”

  “Promise me.” In her voice was all the command of a priestess during the highest of holy days. For a moment, her eyes flashed bright (blue, like Ember’s) but it had to be a trick of the mind, Yulla’s brain trying to assign color to the grey gloom that surrounded them. Anur held her pinned as surely as the Wind had. “Promise me.”

  “I... I do. I promise.” Yulla caught Anur as she sagged, her burst of strength over. “My point still stands. If it’s not in the other room, tell me where they’ve drawn their symbols and I’ll find a rag and some water.”

  “It’s not that kind of magic. This is... deeper. Stronger. Older. Those spells are more thought and will than language. They bound me with Ishem’s blood, and used mine to bind the Fire Children.”

  Horror dawned on Yulla, climbing up her spine like a scorpion. Blood, and blood, and blood, so much of it on the witch-women’s hands. “And Vedra said the Children’s will bind Mother Sun. She said the Wind is the witch-women’s mother, that their father was Father Sea.”

  “Proud of that, aren’t they?” It was nearly a full minute before Anur spoke again. Yulla thought she’d fallen asleep, and was contemplating waking her when the priestess said, “They must have more of our blood in their veins than anything else, but they’ll deny it as much as they can. You’d think their children were sired by breath and tears rather than simply by men.” Anur paused and laughed hollowly. “I’m sorry. Those are words unfit for a priestess.”

  Yulla wanted to ask a hundred other questions about that—she’d never considered that there were no witch-men—but she tamped down her curiosity for another time, and instead asked the one that mattered most: “Where are they keeping the Fire Children? Do you know?”

  The silence that followed was palpable, the same kind of heavy disapproval Amma could summon with nothing more than a sharp inhale. But Anur didn’t break it with a scolding. “Hide, Yulla.” The words came slowly. For all that the woman beside her was too weak to sit up on her own, her voice commanded just as clearly as if she’d been standing at the altar in a ray of noonday sun. “Run away and hide in some forgotten corner of the city. Or take some of the food left as offerings and set out for Darat. Mother Sun will forgive you. Get out of here. You have time. They won’t start their ritual until the eclipse ends. I’ve heard them say it.”

  When a priestess proclaimed to you, you bowed your head, gave thanks to Mother Sun, and did as you were told. Yulla’d had that ingrained in her before she could walk. She ducked her head now, but not in obeisance. “And how does that help me help Ember?” she asked softly. The stone walls of the chamber picked up his name and whispered it back to her.

  “Ember?”

  In the hours she’d spent with him, she’d nearly forgotten it was sacrilege to look upon Ember or his siblings. Let alone kiss him. Being around him felt so easy, so natural. “He’s one of the Fire Children. We... we saved each other from the witch-women a few times before they caught him.”

  “You’ve... met one of the...? Oh, Holy Mother shine your light upon us.” Anur blessed them both reflexively.

  I’m definitely leaving out the kissing part.

  Anur’s hand paused at the top of the arc that mimicked Mother Sun’s journey across the sky. “Not just met,” she said, the rest of what Yulla had said seeming to sink in. “You talked. You stayed together. Yulla, he could have killed you. They don’t understand how easy it is to burn us. It’s why—”

  “He could control the burn. And when he couldn’t, when he got tired, I stayed away.”

  The priestess completed her blessing, then added another. Yet, as the second arc descended into the crook of her elbow, Anur’s shocked expression melted into shy curiosity. “What was it—he—like?”

  Minutes were evaporating faster than water spilled on the midday sands. Yulla felt their passing keenly, but the thought that had sent her in here when she thought Anur might be an injured witch-woman was the same thought that made her stay: Mercy. She was loath to leave Ember and his siblings in the witch-women’s possession, but she couldn’t simply abandon the priestess, either.

  Talking about the last couple of days wouldn’t heal the priestess’ wounds. It wouldn’t free Ember and his siblings, or even help her figure out where they were being kept. But you gave solace to the sick. When Abba’s father was dying the year before last, their whole household ground to a halt so someone would always be with him. Amma helped carry him to his chair by the window in the morning, and back to bed at night; Abba read until his voice gave out, then Aunt Mouse—who had always quarreled with the old man—took over. Kell and Yulla fetched and carried and carried and fetched, until at last it was over.

  She could no more deny Anur this tale than Aunt Mouse could have denied Grandfather.

  “I’ll tell you,” she said, “but give me a moment.” She retrieved her bundle, unpacked the food and supplies from it, and settled the quilt across Anur’s shoulders. Then Yulla crept back out into the Worship Hall’s main room, swiping a pot of paint from a shelf on her way, and wrote her message on the Sunglass’ smooth face. She printed the words slowly, backwards. From below, they would read:

  HELP US.

  FIRE CHILDREN TAKEN.

  ANUR HURT.

  ISHEM DEAD.

  —YULLA

  Some of the words had to curve with the Sunglass’ edges; other letters were cramped together where she ran out of space. Her name was the smallest, tacked on only in case the priests might see Amma and Abba before they came up above to help, to let them know she was still okay.

  She refilled Abba’s canteen from the font behind the altar, and scrubbed the paint from her fingers with what was left in the basin afterwards. She didn’t want Anur to know about the message—mercy was one thing. False hope was another.

  The priests should come up above when they saw it. Not helping the Fire Children was almost as bad as the witch-women taking them in the first place. Yet, for centuries, maybe even millennia, no one had ventured above during the Darktimes. At least, no one who’d passed down the tale—not on her side, not on Ember’s. At least, not in this world.

  They’ll come. They will.

  Still, she’d hold it back. Just in case.

  Anur had dozed while Yulla was out in the main chamber, but she roused again easily when Yulla sat beside her. She accepted some dried fruit and light crackers when Yulla pressed them into her hands, and took several long swallows from the canteen before passing it back.

  Then she settled in, eager for the story. If Anur weren’t covered in her husband’s blood and dying slowly of the loss of her own, Yulla might have found the image amusing. It was how she imagined she’d looked, all those times during lessons, as she sat at the priestess’ feet on the altar steps.

  Yulla munched on a handful of figs. If Anur realized Yulla had already gone ahead and stolen from the offerings, she didn’t mention it. “When we were down below, I got in a fight with my sister,” Yulla began.

  AT SOME POINT, Anur’s eager questions tapered off, growing more and more infrequent, until the priestess fell asleep. Yulla let her rest, holding her hand and listening to the sounds of the empty Worship Hall. She’d slip away, she thought, when Anur’s breathing grew deep and slow. Time stretched, there in the semi-darkness. It had been the same way down below, too, where hours passed in the span of minutes, and a half-hour could take half a day. She waited, and watched, and eventually her own eyes slipped closed.

  “YULLA? YULLA.”

  She startled awake to find Anur leaning over her. Some time in the night, Yulla had lain down beside the priestess, though she didn’t remember doing it. Now the woman loomed above her,
darting furtive, frantic glances at the door.

  The light had changed. Not drastically, but the same lessened-gloom she’d woken to these last few mornings. Dawn, but not the kind that meant the end of the eclipse.

  “You have to go,” said Anur. “Take your things with you and hide. They’ll be here soon.”

  “The witch-women?” Aunt Mouse’s quilt fell away as Yulla sat up. Anur must have shared it with her while she slept. Now the chilly morning air made gooseflesh break out on her bare arms. “Tell me what’s in this room. Something heavy, something sharp. I’ll keep them out.” She couldn’t, not really, not if they called the Wind or used the same spells Vedra had to freeze her in place. But maybe she could get in a lucky hit, take whoever came through the door by surprise and buy them both some time.

  “No.” Anur climbed shakily to her feet and tugged at Yulla’s arm. Her robes hung loose on her frame, as though she’d put on those of the broad-shouldered priest Tarid instead of her own. “You’ll try no such thing. Get up. Out. You have to go.”

  She’ll reopen the cuts. Yulla disengaged from the priestess’ grip—it wasn’t hard—and stood. “They’re coming to hurt you again.”

  “They come to bleed me at dawn.” She folded Yulla into a hug. Some strength still existed in those frail arms. “This Ember, he’s important to you.”

  “He...” They’d known each other only a few days, but again Yulla was struck by how strangely time could pass. A handful of days in all the years she’d had so far and, if they survived the witch-women, all the years she’d have to come. Yet in that short span, she felt like she’d known him for months. Years. “Yes. Very.”

  “Then you have to let them do this.” Yulla recoiled, but Anur held her fast. “Hide in the shadows of the Worship Hall, and whatever you hear, let it happen. When they leave, follow them. They’ll lead you to him. To all of them.”

  All of her arguments—the ones about not leaving her to be harmed, the ones about how Anur’s blood would be used to hurt the Fire Children, the ones where she pretended she had a chance in all the hells of besting the witch-women (With what? An empty honey jar? A ceremonial dagger that barely cuts butter? Aunt Mouse’s quilt?)—died on her tongue. “You don’t think I should head for Darat anymore?”

  Anur smiled and smoothed Yulla’s hair back. “ I still do. But you won’t. You’re as strong-willed as your mother, may she forgive me when next we meet.”

  She realized how wrong she’d been about giving Anur false hope. Maybe that wild, desperate chance would get the older woman through what was to come. “I wrote on the Sunglass,” she said. “If they see it, the Worship Hall’s cellars will be closest, won’t they? They’ll find you. They’ll help.”

  “Clever girl.” She stepped back, her hands fluttering in the arc of the blessing like she had earlier. Her lips settled into a thin line; in the slowly lessening gloom, Yulla could see tears pricking the corners of her eyes. “Hurry, now. We don’t have long.”

  Yulla bowed her head, then scuttled around the room, gathering her supplies back into the folds of Aunt Mouse’s quilt. The bulky parcel presented her with a dilemma. Loath as she was to leave it behind, carrying it would slow her down. If anything shifted in the pack while she followed the witch-women, she’d be discovered. Best to leave it here. A chest carved with sunbeams was shoved up against the wall where she’d found the paint. It was unlocked, half-filled with scrolls. Yulla tucked her pilfered offerings atop them, telling herself that Anur could take them later, that the priestess needed them more. At the last minute, she took the piece of smoked glass Ember had made for her out—that alone was hers.

  She turned back to Anur. The priestess knelt in the center of the room, sitting back on her heels. Her hands were crossed over her heart, discernible from the blood-covered sunburst only because she’d washed them clean with water from Abba’s canteen. When Yulla tapped the chest, she nodded, then freed one hand to shoo her away.

  As Yulla left, she closed the ritual room door behind her. It had been shut when she’d come in. She hated the way the latch clicked into place: it sounded too loud, too final.

  After a long look around the main chamber, the best place to hide seemed to be beneath the stone slab that made up the altar. It was draped with silk cloth woven in all the colors of the sunset sky, but right now all she saw was shades of grey. Were this a game of hide-and-seek, she’d have dismissed it right away—it was the sort of spot younger children would flock towards, but where older children always knew to look first. (Or nearly first, if you wanted to let the little ones think they had a chance.)

  But this wasn’t a game of hide-and-seek, or if it was, the witch-women didn’t know she was playing. Everywhere else in the Worship Hall was too open. A stray glance might find her out. The altar it is, then.

  She’d only just tucked herself away when the witch-women’s voices drifted in from the street.

  YULLA HAD CRAMMED herself into tiny spaces before, when they’d played out the adventures of the Brigand Queen. The alcoves and crannies of Kaladim had become the Companions’ bolt-holes; the gap between Kell’s bed and the wall the perfect place from which the Brigand Queen could spy on the Scourge of the Seven Sands. She’d contorted herself into far less glamorous places and still felt every inch the hero.

  But here, concealed from the witch-women by the thin veneer of the altar cloth, Yulla only felt like a girl scared out of her wits.

  She couldn’t make out their murmurings as they shuffled past, didn’t dare shift her position lest she make the cloth move and give herself away. When the door opened, the witch-women’s voices turned mocking and Yulla recognized the husky, bone field voice of Amara.

  Of course she was here for this. Of course. The way she’d so casually handled Ember’s tether, inflicting pain without even a wince of sympathy. The woman was colder than the unfeeling dead. Who better to carve up a priestess like a leg of lamb?

  Yulla couldn’t place the other voice. Whoever it was stopped talking when Amara said, “Hold her.”

  It was quiet for a while, nothing more than the rustle of the women’s skirts and the occasional clatter of steel on stone. Anur didn’t seem to be struggling, but now and then a pained whimper escaped. Yulla clenched her fists and gritted her teeth. Tears of frustration pricked at her eyes—there was nothing she could do. She wanted to rush out from her hiding place, drag Amara and her helper off of the priestess, but she couldn’t defeat them that way and she knew it.

  Then the chanting began. Amara’s voice and her companion’s joined together in a way that made Yulla shudder—now harmonizing, now in discord, their words a jumble of sounds that were also frustratingly familiar.

  When Yulla was four or five, a caravan had come to Kaladim. The travelers spoke a language that Amma said was a distant cousin to their own, but removed enough that it wasn’t possible to learn one another’s speech from cognates, or words born from similar roots. The words for water or girl or camel were nothing alike, but the rhythms of their languages—the way consonants fitted together, how the words were intoned—those were the same. For days, Yulla and her friends had sat with the caravan children in the shade of their wagon, fumbling awkwardly through conversations.

  That was a good memory, though, and all it had in common with the witch-women’s chanting was the sense of almost understanding. Beneath the wagon, it had been pleasantly cool; here under the altar, the cold seeped into her through the stone, nestling into her bones until she shivered. Back then she’d been pressed companionably shoulder-to-shoulder with Kell and the other children. Here she was alone, the people she loved inaccessible.

  Anur never cried out. She whimpered sometimes, audible when there was a pause in the chanting. When she heard it, Yulla buried her face in her knees and covered her ears. It shamed her, blocking out Anur’s pain, but she worried that if she didn’t, she might start screaming herself.

  TIME PERFORMED ITS strange slow-fast-slow crawl while Amara and the other witch worke
d, but at last they finished. The chanting stopped, then came sounds Yulla could only think of as tidying up—it reminded her of Amma and Abba in the kitchen after dinner ended, washing up and putting away while the girls read in the sitting room, only nothing about this made her feel safe or content. The witch-women’s footsteps shuffled out of the ritual room, past Yulla’s hiding place, and down the altar steps. Amara said something that made her companion laugh.

  Yulla counted to twenty before she peeked out from beneath the altar cloth. They were stepping out into the square, Amara striding ahead, the other witch in her wake. Yulla got a sense of someone short and squat, though that might have simply been her proximity to the abnormally tall Amara.

  She waited another few heartbeats. What if they were just pretending to leave, but actually knew she was here? What if they were waiting for her to show herself so they could catch her? If I wait here too long, I might lose them completely. She emerged from beneath the altar, staying crouched in case a witch’s head poked around the front wall. To her right, the ritual room door was open.

  Anur lay face down, the way she’d been when Yulla had first found her. New stains marred her white robes, distinguishable from the older ones only by the way they gleamed wetly in the weak dawn light. Yulla wanted to go to her, to see if she could help... or if she were even alive.

  She bled so I could follow them. Letting Amara and her sister go would be worse than spitting on Anur’s grave. “Thank you,” she whispered, even though the priestess couldn’t have heard. Mother Sun protect her.

  Yulla could see Mother Sun now, risen just above the bottom of the Worship Hall’s roof. Her bright crown waved around the dark disc of Sister Moon’s girth. She didn’t look too long—the Worship Hall’s clear panes wouldn’t protect her sight the way Ember’s smoked glass would. She ran her fingers over its smooth surface for reassurance as much as luck, and set out after Amara.