But the clock kept striking. No one came. He didn’t dare go to the garret window that would give him a view of Alakut. If they came while he was there, it would be hard to explain why he watched a fire instead of racing to it.

So Ben waited through a sleepless night. Some of his Alakut brigade arrived in the morning, long after it was over.

“We thought we could handle it,” whined the head footman from Lubozny House. “We’ve trained for weeks-“

“Three,” Ben interrupted coldly. “When you bothered to come. You didn’t know enough to put out a brush fire in a park, let alone a shop. “Anyone hurt?”

“A woman who slept in the cellar-she was fried black. And two of us,” said an undercook from the Gemcutters’ Guildhall. The cook was a big woman, one of the few who came to every training session. “The healers said they breathed smoke. We got them at the Alakut Infirmary… .”

Ben yanked on his coat. “Smoke! Were you wearing masks? When I told you smoke is as deadly as fire?” Some glared at him as if it were his fault that they hadn’t remembered about smoke.

Ben flung open his door and strode out into the glare of the morning sun on snow. At least his so-called firefighters had brought a large sleigh. They tumbled into it after him and raced to the infirmary, arriving in time for Ben to hold one smoke-stricken man’s hands as he died. As his last breath escaped the man’s lips, Ben felt a joy so intense that it made him weep. The healers, even the fire brigade, looked properly sober and admiring. They think it’s grief, Ben thought, trembling as he fought laughter.

What he’d felt just now was almost too intense to bear. He’d made the rules. He’d told them, they hadn’t listened, and two people had paid the price, this fellow and the beggar woman. The fire had killed them for him. He had turned it loose as mages commanded the winds to rescue becalmed ships, and the fire had given him its greatest gift-the power over human life.

The destruction of wood and glass and porcelain was nothing to this, Ben thought. Look at them, after their complaints over the drills and schedule. Let one die-let one of them struggle to breathe until the struggle was too much-and suddenly Ben had their attention. Here was why Kugisko had treated him callously. The stakes weren’t high enough.

Gently he freed himself from the man’s grip. “I’ll look at my other firefighter,” he informed the healers. “And then that beggar. What was she doing there? And then I need to see Alakut council. One of you tell them I will meet them in the council hall, by midday.”

Healers and brigade trainees alike, they scrambled to do as he ordered. It was amazing, the way dead people changed things.

The joy was less powerful with the second firefighter: the healers said he would live, though his lungs would never be the same. The beggar woman, though … again he felt that overpowering thrill. He had done this-Bennat Ladradun, his mother’s scapegoat, ignored by the coin counters of the island councils. They would heed him now, wouldn’t they?

He rested a hand on the dead beggar’s charcoaled ankle, knowing the picture he made, solemn-faced, eyes bright with tears. The firefighters watched him with awe as they fought to keep from vomiting at the dreadful smell of burned flesh.

He drew his hand away, pretending not to notice the black flakes that clung to his palm. “Such a price to pay,” he murmured shaking his head. “Maybe we could not have saved this poor creature, but we might have saved our own people.”

They stood back to let him pass, like a noble, like a king. It was the best morning of his life.

By the third hour of the afternoon, his world was bleak again. The Alakut council had argued, expressed regret, and refused him more funds to train a second brigade, though he explained that one was not enough for the whole island. His brigade, they said, had done poorly at this first challenge. They had to wait and see. They would insist that those who were supposed to learn the skills attended training more often.

Ben managed to contain his rage until he reached the warehouse. There, when no one could see or hear, he slammed his hands against the walls. Only fire respected him. The Alakut council, it seemed, required a special lesson. He feared that it would be a frightful one, but they had to learn that fire exacted a frightful price.

Chapter 10

Sunsday night Daja and Frostpine stood on a broad gallery from which two staircases led to the meeting hall of the Mages’ Society of Kugisko. They held glasses of mulled cider as they watched the activity below. Kugisko’s mages, dressed in assorted finery, gathered in clusters and broke apart, greeting colleagues. Daja, too, wore her best, a Trader-style knee-length coat and leggings in gold-brown damask trimmed with black braid. No one put on elegant leather slippers when they had to walk to and from sleighs as snow fell, so Daja wore polished Kugiskan boots with gold spirals stamped around the rim. Frostpine, as always, wore his Fire-red habit over his layers of non-Temple clothes, but no one could ignore Frostpine, even in this gaudy crowd. Light glittered from gems and crystals or shimmered over velvets and brocade. Mages who were not priests or religious dedicates, Daja had found, tended to peacock in dress and ornaments.

Masters were accompanied by those students they deemed worthy. The students, their clothes good but plain, struggled to hide awe. Already Daja had seen Camoc, Arnen, and two more young mages she recognized from Camoc’s shop, as well as the carpentry-and cooking-mages she had met.

“I don’t see Olennika Potcracker,” Daja remarked to Frostpine. “I wanted you to meet her.”