Chapter 333: Before the Fire

For three days, we did not attack anything.

Thor considered this an improvement over attacking the wrong thing.

Tovan considered it excessive.

Evelyn considered his opinion medically irrelevant.

The argument ended when she asked him to walk down the infirmary passage without favoring his injured leg.

He reached the third doorway.

Then sat down.

“Three days,” he muttered.

“You may complain for all of them,” my wife told him.

He did.

Elsewhere, the work continued.

The mill families settled into the eastern residences. Two chose to join relatives in Westmere. Another waited for word from Concordia before deciding where to go.

King Edric returned to the practice yard with his arm bandaged and his children watching from the shade.

His soldiers no longer laughed when Merova ordered them to rehearse a withdrawal.

They had used it.

That changed the lesson.

The scouts went farther afield, carrying questions instead of orders to find us a battle.

Where did the occupied roads lead?

Where were the fire engines repaired?

Who brought the soldiers food?

The answers began arriving on separate sheets.

By the third evening, they pointed to the same place.

Ordel spread the drawings across our table.

A disused limeworks.

Two kilns.

A sunken yard large enough to turn freight wagons.

An old quarry road joining three routes toward settlements that had not yet fallen.

Surtr’s soldiers had repaired the road before they repaired the roof.

That interested Ordel more than the number of guards.

“They intend to move heavy loads,” he said.

“Engines?” Thor asked.

“The scouts saw frames. A wheelwright from the rescued mill families described the same fittings on wagons he was forced to repair last week.”

Istren placed another sketch beside the first.

“Two watched departures. Neither convoy carried passengers. Both carried covered metal vessels with separate escorts.”

“Fuel,” King Edric said.

“Probably,” Ordel answered. “We will not assume every covered wagon contains it.”

Mary marked the distinction.

The limeworks supplied the force threatening three roads.

We could wait beside each road and hope to arrive before the engines did.

Or we could stop the engines leaving.

Lexander studied the map for a long time.

“What is inside besides soldiers?”

“Laborers,” Istren said. “Some under guard. The western shed is occupied at night. We have not established how many.”

“Then we cannot bring the kilns down across it,” I said.

“We should not bring them down at all,” Ordel replied. “Not until the fuel has been accounted for.”

Thor moved the attack marker away from the center of the yard.

“We take the road, separate the workers, and disable the engines where they stand.”

Bruni bent close to the drawing.

“Which things may break?”

Ordel took another sheet.

“I will make you a list.”

Bruni nodded solemnly.

Eleanor, passing behind us, looked pleased.

Preparing an attack took longer than wanting one.

That left time for other things.

Helena found me outside the nursery the next morning, listening to Julian explain why a cloth horse could not be appointed king merely because it wore a ribbon.

“He needs an afternoon,” she said.

“Who?”

She looked at me.

“Julian.”

Inside, Carol offered a second ribbon.

Her argument appeared to be gaining strength.

“Is he tired?” I asked.

“He is fond of them. Those are different matters.”

I watched through the doorway.

Seraphina and Garrick were arranging cushions into something with too many walls. Ignatius held the horse while Julian attempted to negotiate the removal of its proposed crown.

The four children watched him whenever they were uncertain.

He watched all four whenever they moved.

“He has friends from his lessons,” Helena continued. “They asked him to join them in the garden yesterday.”

“Did he?”

“He said the little ones wanted him.”

I understood.

Perhaps too well.

We went inside.

Julian immediately began counting children with his eyes, as though our arrival meant he ought to give a report.

“Five,” Carol announced before he finished.

He smiled.

Then looked at Helena.

“Did you need something?”

“Your grandfather is taking you to the garden after your lesson,” she said. “Your friends are waiting.”

Julian glanced at the cushions.

“But—”

I sat on the carpet.

“I have been informed there is a dispute about a succession.”

Ignatius handed me the horse.

Carol pointed at the ribbon.

“King.”

“I see the difficulty.”

Julian laughed.

Then hesitated again.

“You’ll stay?”

“Until someone relieves me. Your grandmother is here too.”

Helena settled into a chair.

He rose slowly.

Garrick objected at once.

“Juli.”

Julian stopped.

I caught my son’s reaching hand.

“Julian is going to play with his friends.”

“We friends.”

“Yes. He has more.”

This required consideration.

Julian knelt and promised to hear about the cushion castle at supper.

Then he left with Garrick Valewood.

The twins watched the doorway.

Seraphina offered me a cushion.

By the time Evelyn found us, I had been appointed stable keeper and trapped behind a wall.

She looked down at me.

“You seem well suited to the position.”

“There was no consultation.”

Helena turned a page in her book.

“There was considerable consultation. You lost.”

Lethan asked us to move the petition that afternoon.

Not away.

Lower.

The angle strained his eye when the frost cleared.

Sivren adjusted the holder while Evelyn checked the strain upon the seventh chamber.

I waited above with Elara.

She had brought a basket of folded cloth from Ossa’s workroom. The linen was soft enough not to catch against the old scars around her wrists.

“He asked for something ordinary,” I said.

Elara looked toward the passage.

“People in pain still dislike an uncomfortable reading position.”

“I know.”

“You sound surprised.”

I considered that.

Then nodded.

She set the basket on the bench.

“When everyone is trying to save your life, asking them to move a chair can feel ungrateful.”

Below us, Evelyn said something I could not hear.

Sivren answered.

Then there was a pause.

Elara smiled faintly.

“They have probably put it too low.”

They had.

The second adjustment satisfied him.

Afterward, Evelyn asked whether he wanted to continue the next part of the separation.

Lethan asked what it would change.

She explained.

The temporary cradle could now support more of his preservation independently. Sivren proposed transferring another part of the load, while Maelin watched for any disturbance in the battle memory.

He would remain asleep in body.

They would stop if he asked.

The answer took several minutes.

Tomorrow.

Evelyn accepted it.

When she told me, I felt the familiar impulse to ask whether waiting increased the danger.

Then she added, “He wants to read today.”

I looked at Elara.

She picked up her basket.

“A sensible use of an afternoon.”

We left for the limeworks before dawn the following day.

Thor led.

Bruni, Rauth, Ordel, Istren, and I went with the assault group. A section of Orenshal soldiers supported the road position under one of Edric’s officers.

The king remained with Baldr and Merova’s ready force.

Lexander stayed in Concordia.

Nobody enjoyed every assignment.

Everybody understood them.

By the time we reached the observation point, mist lay along the old quarry road.

The limeworks stood below us.

White dust covered its broken walls. Fresh wheel marks cut through the yard. Beyond the first kiln, laborers hauled a long iron frame toward a wagon.

A guard struck one of them across the shoulders with a stick.

Rauth moved beside me.

Only an inch.

Thor touched his arm.

“When the shed is clear.”

He nodded and became still again.

Istren counted the men he could see.

Ordel compared the fuel stores with his sketch.

One of the covered vessels had been moved.

“There,” he said, pointing beside the western shed.

Too close to the people inside.

Thor changed our opening signal.

“No strike at the kiln. Uriah, shield the shed from that vessel. Bruni, take the wagon road. Rauth with me.”

I looked at the gap between the buildings.

Enough room.

Not much.

“Ready.”

Thor raised two fingers.

Then lowered them.

Bruni stepped onto the quarry road carrying a length of timber taken from an abandoned loading frame.

The first wagon stopped.

The second attempted to turn.

He placed the timber across the road and held it there.

“No.”

The driver dropped the reins.

I reached the western shed as the alarm began.

Ice rose between the occupied building and the covered vessel, sloping toward the empty yard. I left the air above it open. Ordel had been very clear about trapped pressure.

A spear struck the ice.

I pulled it free before its owner could recover and threw it onto the roof beyond him.

“Move away from the shed.”

He looked at my eyes.

Then moved.

Thor’s lightning cracked across the metal gate mechanism at the inner yard.

The gate fell crooked and jammed open.

Rauth reached the guards before they could close around the laborers. He fought with a short, heavy blade and an economy of movement that made every step matter.

When one man dropped his weapon, Rauth passed him to the soldiers behind us and continued toward the locked shed.

Nobody had time to kneel and make a speech.

“Key?” he called.

The captured guard pointed.

Rauth took it from his belt.

The shed opened.

People blinked into the morning light.

“Follow the soldiers,” Thor called. “Stay clear of the wagons.”

Ordel was already beneath the nearest engine.

I disliked seeing him there.

I disliked it more when a wheel began to turn.

Bruni caught the frame with one hand.

“Stay.”

The engine stayed.

Ordel emerged carrying a toothed iron piece.

“This one is finished.”

“Break now?”

“The axle. Only the axle.”

Bruni smiled.

Wood cracked.

Across the yard, someone lifted the cover from the fuel vessel beside my wall of ice.

Heat rolled out.

The man held a burning cord.

I reached for him with wind.

Istren’s arrow arrived first.

It drove through his sleeve and pinned his arm to the wagon’s upright. The cord fell onto the white dust.

I crushed the ember beneath my boot.

The man stared at me, breathing hard.

“Don’t,” I said.

He did not.

The last workers came out carrying someone on a door.

Thor sent Rauth with them.

Istren signaled movement beyond the eastern wall.

Reinforcements.

Thor looked toward Ordel.

“How many?”

“Four engines disabled. Two incomplete frames. I need another minute for the coupling stores.”

“You have half.”

He ran.

I turned toward the eastern approach.

A strip of winter formed across the bare slope. Not a great storm. A hard crust of ice over loose stones, where advancing soldiers could see exactly what they would have to cross.

They slowed.

Behind them, an officer shouted.

I called thunder over his next order.

Ordel returned with Bruni carrying a crate beneath each arm.

“These?” I asked.

“More useful intact.”

Thor counted our people through the broken gate.

Then pointed toward the road.

“Out.”

This time, I was already moving.

We did not destroy the limeworks.

The kilns remained standing.

Some fuel remained behind because moving it would have endangered everyone on the road.

But four completed fire engines would not travel anywhere soon. The unfinished frames lacked the parts Ordel had carried away, and the forced laborers were no longer there to repair them.

We brought out thirty-one people.

Seven enemy soldiers surrendered and traveled separately under guard.

Two of our escorts were injured. One worker had a fever that concerned the healers more than any of the fresh cuts.

When we reached the support wagons, the rescued workers kept looking back.

One finally approached Ordel.

“They’ll make us build it again.”

The siege god set down the iron coupling he had been inspecting.

“You are coming with us.”

“I know. But when they—”

He stopped.

Ordel waited.

The man looked at Bruni beside the road.

At Thor speaking with the healers.

At the soldiers offering water instead of orders.

“I don’t have to finish it?”

“No.”

The man sat on the nearest wagon step.

After a while, he began to cry.

Ordel stayed beside him until the convoy moved.

The captured crates proved almost as valuable as the disabled engines.

Not because of the metal alone.

One held replacement parts wrapped in workshop sheets. Beneath them lay a road book marked with delivery dates and quantities.

Eliza had it copied before anyone began drawing conclusions.

Three settlements appeared on the next week’s schedule.

The same three roads we had been watching.

“It does not mean the attacks are canceled,” Lexander said when he came through from Concordia to review it.

“No,” Thor agreed. “It means they have lost equipment intended for them.”

“And we can warn the settlements,” I said.

Mary had already begun.

Ordel examined the workshop sheets.

His expression changed.

“These crews are being taught what to do if their channels freeze.”

I looked at him.

He turned one page toward me.

Relief vents.

Insulated feed lines.

An instruction to conceal fire beneath a frozen crossing rather than attempt to melt it from above.

We had expected Surtr to adapt.

Seeing the instruction written for ordinary field crews made the danger more practical.

“Give every team a copy,” I said.

“Including the mortal officers,” King Edric added. “Especially them.”

Thor nodded.

“And nobody assumes a frozen road is a safe road.”

Lethan had tried to give that warning long before any of us stood around this table.

This time, people wrote it down.

Evelyn met me outside our rooms after the briefing.

She had changed out of her infirmary clothes.

Her hair was still damp from washing.

“The seventh chamber?” I asked.

“Holding.”

I stopped.

“The transfer?”

“A little more of the load. No disturbance in the other sleepers.”

“And Lethan?”

“He asked us to read the petition aloud again afterward.”

I leaned against the doorframe.

My shoulders had begun to ache once the armor came away.

Evelyn touched my face.

“You can be pleased before asking what remains difficult.”

I closed my eyes briefly.

“I’m pleased.”

“Good.”

Inside, Adriana sat with Julian and Cassia. They had spread the pages of Julian’s family book across the table.

Cassia was objecting to a drawing.

“The pony was larger than that.”

“Then it would not fit in the passage,” Julian said.

“It barely did.”

Adriana laughed.

Near the hearth, the four little ones were occupied with the cushion castle. Helena had surrendered the horse’s crown but negotiated a firm prohibition against appointing the cat to public office.

Garrick Valewood sat beside her, repairing a loose wooden wheel.

Julian looked up when he saw me.

“We played outside today.”

“I heard.”

“I won twice.”

“At what?”

He began explaining.

The rules involved a ball, three chalk circles, and a disagreement about whether a tree root counted as part of the boundary.

I sat down to listen.

For once, he did not begin by telling me what the younger children had needed.

He told me what he had done.

Behind him, Carol placed the ribbon crown on the wooden horse.

Nobody stopped her.