by S. K. Farrell
in Issue 77, June 2018
She was seven, when I first realised. Seven, or thereabouts.
Now, don’t get that look.
I know I should remember the age of my own daughter, should have been cherishing every moment, but it was complicated back then. It was before her mother ruined my business and had the Leone bailiffs take their strip of hide; those aren’t events I’m likely to forget, and I know she was older when they occurred. Like me, she was always short for her age. But seven seems about right.
I was still allowed to wait at one of the hauliers’ entrances to the compound in those days, while they sent up my request: if it pleases madam, if it would be acceptable, would your daughter be permitted to spend a day down in the city?
Your daughter: never mine, never ours. She was not mine, not in the eyes of the sorcerers, and who would argue with a sorcerer about blood?
I’d be made to wait, of course. Far longer than it took a simple message to travel back and forth, and they denied me far more often than they gave in. If they had no social commitment or ritual through which to parade her, she’d come. If the stablemaster wanted one of my foals at a good price, she’d come. If her mother had grown bored of dressing her up like a doll, she’d come.
I’d wait, and there would be the scampering of feet and she’d tear across the courtyard like a sandstorm, sending all the feral shawka lizards scattering under the cherry blossoms, as though they were her army, spreading out to do her bidding.
A flight of joy, she was: shining eyes and plump cheeks. I know that’s hard to believe, to see her now. So thin, all bones and edges.
Not that I’ve seen her since the wedding.
I’m sorry. This is difficult for me.
She was seven. I’d taken her out for the day, with no real purpose in mind. I wanted to listen to her chatter and squeeze her fat fingers. We’d wandered all round my yard, talking to the horses. She liked greys when she was young, thought they were the prettiest. I think I kept breeding that original Hanak line for the purpose of pleasing her. In those days, I had coin for such indulgences; as I said, it was before her mother ripped me off.
When it was time to head back, she begged me to take her through the Meydan of the Sister. The race season was over, so it was crammed with market stalls. I hate crossing the plazas, and Sister is the worst, with someone ever watching your belt, your pockets, waiting for their chance. So many people packed into an open space, and none with the sense to move out the way of those who don’t wish to linger. But she begged.
It was a drought summer: one of the worst. I don’t think you’ve experienced a dry season like it yet, and you should count yourself lucky. Down in the city, we bled. Every second day, according to some municipal rota, you had to trail down to the temple before dawn, to queue up in the violet dark until the doors opened, and they brought you through to the slabs in groups of thirty or forty, and opened your veins. Silent streams of seeping blood, rivers of the stuff, when water and grain were scant and people could scarce afford the sacrifice.
A fearsome drought, though. They even bled in the Houses, so it was said, and it wasn’t just the minor sorcerers, the petty barterers, using our strength to plead with the demons to open the wells and lift the water. No: that summer emptied the Houses of the erede, the heirs, the sorcerers bound by foulest ties to demon patrons, lords of their own plane. All twelve of those terrifying bastards, overseeing the rituals in the temple, carrying out their own hideous solicitations. The jails were empty within a week, the meydans packed with the cages where lives were spilled and reeking of copper. The desert almost reclaimed the city. Only the intercession of the demons stopped it, but to witness their miracles was to receive other scars, out of sight, that would take years to heal.
The heat that day, when my daughter hung on my arm and nagged me, was frightening: I could well believe that all the brass was going to melt from the exsanguination cages outside the temple, and that the glass of the demon-lights would blow out at any moment. I’d bled that morning and couldn’t quite shake the tremor that kept whispering through my limbs. Still, we had to get back up to the Leone compound by one route or another, so I gave in.
I thought she wanted ice. Ice and pastels, ice and pastels, that was her constant refrain when she was small. My tooth was as sweet as hers, and the idea of something sugary and cold was difficult to resist. I have to admit, I also gave in because I wanted to be seen with her. I loved the thrill of passing through some busy place with this miniature princess. All that long, luxurious hair bound up in jewelled chains, always dressed in the Leone sapphire blue: there was no mistaking what she was. To walk through the city, people would look at her with respect, with awe, with envy, with covetousness. And she was mine.
Not that they knew that. I suppose I looked like a manservant, or a guard of sorts. Perhaps her clown. Anyone looking with an intent to harm her must have assumed there was a troop of professional bodyguards trailing us through the crowds, because we were never hassled, although in truth, her mother never sent any. That’s how a House like Leone maintains its wealth, you know: tight-fistedness. Anyway. I wanted to show her off, I can confess that now. It was my fault.
As soon as we walked out into the square, she started dragging me through the crowd, pulling me where she wanted to go. I was amused at how we must look, with this tiny tyrant in the lead. I was proud to draw stares, but mostly I was so hot I didn’t have the energy to resist. Past the tables covered in towers of shawka cages, past the priests selling prayer vials and stitching incisions – none of that was interesting to her – but then past the ice sellers, too.
I called out after her. The charm of being hauled by my aching arm was wearing off, and I was drenched in sweat. She didn’t listen. She’d pulled me all the way across the square before I saw the smoke and realised: it was the flame adepts. She wanted to see the fire conjurers play their tricks. Her eyes were bright, and she was skipping from foot to foot. I was soft, back then, quick to fall under her enchantment even when exhausted, and I couldn’t deny her this excitement, even though the afternoon had settled upon me like a leaden weight.
Hot enough that the paint on the temple railings was starting to veer and drip, and she wanted to stand right in front of some charlatan juggling globes of flame, singeing bystanders’ eyebrows? That contrariness: I’d like to say it came from her mother, but maybe that was another fault of my own.
Nearby, there was a tea-tent, open-sided with a deep awning that cast at least some shade. I positioned myself there and let her get as close to the adepts as she wanted. I could see her, watch anyone approaching, be at her side in a heartbeat. I saw no harm. Her livery and her chains had always protected her; the Leone grip on the city was even tighter in those days, and the hastily assembled bleeding pens provided a powerful deterrent to crime while the drought lingered. A boy brought me cool, sweet tea, and I watched my precious child clapping her hands and giggling as the pyromancers capered for her amusement.
Do you know that in the Visser Kingdom they’re wary of the adept? They license them, make them swear oaths, give them positions of influence. They don’t have demons there, in that limp, watery part of the world. No demons, just the sweat of men to get things done, nudged along by this paltry, elemental mummery, this tinkering with nature that so delighted my daughter.
One of the entertainers was tall and young. He didn’t look like he’d had a proper meal in some time, and he wasn’t wearing much, just loose, short trousers and some cheap, gold-painted bangles. His tattooed skin was deep desert dark. I looked and saw something tawdry – most of these street conjurers sell sex on the side, and his gaze slid my way more than once – but to her, he was something wonderful, beautiful even. She got closer, and quieter. Fell still. Just watching, I thought.
I don’t recall the exact moment it happened, but in a blink, in the time it takes to drop a porcelain teacup so that it shatters on the burnished cobbles, there were flames licking up her little arm.
There was no moment of decision; I was in motion.
I can still recall the way my heart strained at the sudden exertion and the shock, and, in the slowing down of time that accompanies a disaster, how I wondered in a detached way if it was going to burst in my chest. I was screaming, but I couldn’t hear myself: I only knew afterwards, from my torn throat.
About four long strides. That’s how long it took me to reach her.
By then she was engulfed in tearing flame. I reached out for her. The skin of my palms rose in blisters, but I grabbed at her, desperate to drag her close and pull her to the ground, to smother the fire with my own body, take the pain for myself. She stumbled, and turned, and looked up at me.
On her face, the most exultant smile.
I flung myself forwards, screaming her name, but she twisted aside and I lost my balance, smacking both knees down onto the cobbles. By the time I’d scrabbled to my feet, she’d convulsed away, arms flailing.
She moved with the speed of wildfire across parched grassland. In her wake, destruction: the trailing silks of a silversmith’s stall billowed into immolation, an almond-seller’s tray overturned in a rattling clatter, and people shouted, ran, collided, and cried. They swerved and spiralled away from her. The fire adepts moved the quickest, scattering from the meydan before anyone could lay hands on them, throw accusations that they had caused this nightmare, this appalling scene.
My little girl, dancing in flames.
I staggered through the chaos, catching sight of her near the temple steps, still spinning, arms outstretched. Her aura of flame had intensified to a golden-white nimbus, and as she whipped back and forth, wrapped in fire and searing my sight, I thought I could see her skeleton at the fire’s core: black, fragile, and diminishing.
I pushed towards her. Half-blind, I didn’t see the faces of those I shouldered past, or the pall of smoke clogging the air now that four stalls were ablaze. Nor did I see, until he stood right behind her, the red-robed man.
Before I could get any closer, he had seized her by the upper arms.
Her body became indistinguishable, all fire, a fallen sun, and by rights he should have howled in agony. But it was not he who screamed: it was my daughter. The most harrowing sound, animal and innocent all at once, and my heart twisted. Uncanny, crimson flames vomited from her mouth, then she dimmed, like cooling metal, like setting glass, her white intensity fading through red and amber until she was, once more, a child, albeit one blurred in my eyes by the dancing afterimages of the furious heat and light that had shrouded her.
They stood for a moment: her face contorted in pain, his impassive. I met her gaze, but I could not comprehend her. Her perfect, child-soft skin was unblemished, her hair tousled but intact, her dress still blue. Sapphire blue. Her eyes widened, and I read an imprecation there. Aching, terrified, I had no idea what it might be.
The red-robed man loosened his grip, and she sagged, rubbing at her arms, which were bloodlessly pale where he’d held her. I longed to go to her, to close this gap of mere strides, but the man’s frozen posture stopped me.
I know, I know: how could I resist? How could I not comfort my child?
Well, in the moments since he’d stopped her, and done whatever he’d done to dispel her fiery curse, I had seen more than the plain, devout robes. I had seen the silver spiderweb of scar tissue that knotted both his arms, and I had seen his eyes: gleaming, black orbs with crimson pinprick pupils. They didn’t dress in their House colours, on the rare occasions they were called forth from the compounds. It was assumed that they would put such rivalry aside if the need were so great. But this was an erede, a high sorcerer, one of a handful of men in the city who bridged the demon plane and our own. I had never been so close to one before, and the scent of him, the liquid grace of his movements, raised the hair on the back of my neck and told my body in no uncertain terms to prepare for flight. Bile rose in my throat to see his long, thin fingers clamped on my daughter’s flesh.
“Who is this child?” he asked me, his voice low and cold.
I didn’t know how to answer; I feared he’d take her away, punish her, although I still couldn’t grasp what had happened, or what she had done. According to the truce, he wore no insignia. Yet if his House were Manzoni, or Facta, he could find something here to use, something harmful.
Hoarse, hesitant, I ventured that she was Leone. His eyes narrowed at that: any fool could see she was a Leone child.
“But who is her father?”
She wasn’t looking at me. Knew not to: knew, even at seven, what my answer had to be, by law, by all our customs.
I still felt a horrible wrench, a snap, deep in my chest to say it.
“She has no father.”
The statement may have dragged talons through my soul, but I think it saved her. For him, it seemed something of a disappointment. He thawed, disinterested now that the girl was an illegitimate brat: no political leverage to be gained, no bargaining token.
He crouched down so that he could look her in the eye and took one of her hands between both of his own. The skin across the back of his neck and shaven scalp was weathered, wrinkled to leather by the sun. I watched the pair of them, swaying on my feet.
“How did you call the fire, child?”
She seemed to understand.
“I sang it, Sir.”
“You sang it? What do you mean? You spoke words?”
A shake of the head, and some black curls tumbled free from the tangled chains.
“I sang it inside,” she told him, tapping her chest with her free hand.
“You heard the fire’s note?”
Another nod, and he looked thoughtful.
“And now?”
She jolted and gasped, then tried to pull away from him, but he had her caught. The thumbnail of his right hand was long, and capped with a sharp crescent of dark metal, around which blood welled. He’d cut her.
I did nothing: he was an erede.
“Be still.”
She was.
“Listen now. What do you hear?”
Her whole body seemed to clench, her shoulders rising and falling in an awkward roll. The sorcerer looked at her, brows raised in expectation.
“Nothing, Sir,” she told him, her voice a shudder.
He let go of her and straightened to stand. I watched as her hand slipped up into her loose hair. She started to twist the wavy strands around her fingers.
Like she did when I asked her if she’d stolen sugar to feed to the foals. Like she did when I asked her whether her mother treated her well.
She was lying.
He scooped her up in his arms, then, and carried her to me. Her small size had tricked him into thinking she was younger. I had to force myself not to grab at her. Once safely in my arms, I could feel her warmth on my weeping palms: sweet warmth, child warmth, not the glow of an arcane inferno.
The clamour of the square hit me: the angry shouting and the clatter of horse hooves as the militia closed in. My feelings must’ve shown on my face because the sorcerer dismissed my worry.
“A little blood, a little fire.”
That’s what he said, gesturing towards her hand, then the marketplace. He promised no one would bother us, that he’d smooth it out. She had but a quirk in the blood, not so uncommon amongst the Highborn. A slight sensitivity to fire. She’d grow out of it. She’d be fine.
He laid a hand on her bloodied wrist, and I saw the skin pinken and heal before he let her go and glided away towards the disorder in the meydan.
I didn’t dare to put her down. I carried her, clutched tight to my chest, away from that place, into the shadows of a quiet alley.
I asked her what she’d heard. No judgement, no admonition, just a question. She was limp in my arms, drained of energy to fight or dissemble.
“I heard his voice,” she told me.
I asked her, whose voice? The sorcerer’s voice?
She told me, no. She told me she didn’t know his name, but that his voice had been whispery, and had made her want to cry.
“It wasn’t that man, Papa. It was the man behind him.”
I gripped her tighter, carrying her so that her head rested on my shoulder, and she couldn’t see my face. I paced towards the Sadek quarter apartment I kept in those days, to keep her there overnight, bathe her, comfort her, shield her away from her mother’s questioning for a little longer.
It was on that day, I knew. I’d have died to prevent anyone else finding out.
I knew my daughter had an adept quirk and could dance within the melody of a flame. Not uncommon, the sorcerer had said, but I’d wager he had no idea what it felt like, to watch your own child become a living torch in the shatter of a teacup.
I knew she could lie to an adult. Not just any adult, but an erede, whose eyes I couldn’t meet without gut-wrenching terror, whose daily business was to barter blood for diabolic power.
And I knew that it wasn’t just the little bit of fire.
All through the long night of sitting in my armchair, watching her sleep, my mind tried to flee from understanding, but I was continually trapped in dead ends.
I knew.
When the sorcerer let her blood and leaned in, my daughter had heard his patron. She had heard a demon whispering in her ear.
Don’t you think I’ve tortured myself, over the years, with thoughts of what I should have done? What if I’d never taken her to the market, what if she’d told the truth, what if I’d sought help from the Leone?
Whichever way I’ve twisted and turned it, I’ve consoled myself that there’s no way I could have guessed the particulars: that she would steal a demon patron for her own, in a pact sealed with the heartblood of her own husband. No one could guess that. Within my daughter, the tiny princess, not just blood, and fire, but something utterly monstrous, awaiting its moment. Again, I’d like to blame that inheritance on her mother, but in darker moments, in the quiet times before dawn, I cannot be sure.
If no one could foresee where, exactly, this would end, not the erede, not me, then my daughter’s crimes are her own. But I am forced to admit, since that day when she was seven – seven or thereabouts – I always knew they were coming.
©June 2018, S.K. Farrell
SK Farrell is an Edinburgh-based writer of fantasy and science fiction. Her work has appeared previously in the British Fantasy Society’s Horizons magazine, and in Shoreline of Infinity. She can be found on Twitter @sk_farrell.