Duel of Fire (Steel and Fire Book 1) (2 page)

She shifted under his gaze, her sturdy training boots squeaking on the floor. Berg worked with a few pupils privately in the grand homes of the nobility on the lower slopes of King’s Peak. Sword masters were in high demand—if your pockets were deep enough. Berg didn’t usually talk about his private students, though, and Dara and the others figured training nobles was just a vanity project. Most of the young lords wouldn’t stand a chance in a real tourney. Berg continued to stare at Dara without really seeing her.

“Should I join the others, Coach?” she asked.

He started. “No, not yet. Dara, you must help me. I cannot abide this young fool anymore. You will come with me next time. Show him what it is like to duel a real athlete.”

“Coach, I’ve got to stick to my training schedule. Can you take someone who isn’t entered in the Cup? I’m sure half of them would be able to beat this fellow.” She gestured to the other students working through their usual drills. She was a pro, or at least on the verge of becoming one. She didn’t have time to teach lessons to some spoiled noble.

“No, he is very good. This is the problem. He is too confident because he is good, but he does not respect the danger. He must learn.”

“What danger?” Dara asked. “The worst that could happen is he gets bruised up in some parlor match in Lower King’s. That’ll teach him.” The mountain was safe, peaceful. No one had fought with true sharpened swords since the reign of the First Good King.

“No, there is true danger for this young fool,” Berg said. He looked around at the two dozen students. Kel and Oat were nearest to them. They kept slowing their footwork to glance over. Kel’s curiosity burned like a Fire Lantern through the wire mesh of his mask. Oat tapped him on the head with his blade to draw his attention back to the drill.

Berg drew Dara away from them toward the corner where the gear trunks lined two walls.

“You must not speak of what I will say. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Coach.”

“The student is Prince Sivarrion.”

Dara blinked. “You want me to duel the prince?”

“He does not respect the blade. If a swordsman ever tries to attack him, he will believe he can win. He will try to fight. But he must learn to fear. He will never be the Fourth King if he falls to his own pride.”

“But people don’t get assassinated in Vertigon, Coach. It’s not like the Lands Below here. And if he’s already good—”

“You see, this is his problem. He believes he is too good. And the mountain has more dangers than you know.” Berg took Dara’s blade from her. It was quality steel, flexible, with a rounded tip. During a match, the tip would be rubbed with charcoal to mark the hits on her opponent’s jacket. Berg rubbed a hand across the battered guard, the metal cup that protected the duelist’s hand. It was a plain design, lacking any ornate etchings or inlays. “Tell me why we fight to ten, Dara.”

“That’s just the rule for tourneys,” Dara said. “Makes an interesting bout for the spectators that won’t end too quickly.”

“It is more than that,” Berg said. “Tell me the target area for a duel.”

“Anywhere that can bleed scores a point, even the hand.” Hand touches were Kel’s specialty. The dominant hand was always the closest target on your opponent. Dara could do them too, but she was better at dependable shots to the shoulder after clearing her opponent’s blade with a clean parry. Her style was all about careful precision.

“Yes, of course. Anywhere that can bleed. Prince Sivarrion believes he can win with a single fatal hit if ever he is attacked. He must see that ten hits to the hand, the arm, the toe, will bleed enough to put him in grave danger. And he must see that the fatal shot is not as easy as he thinks against a superior opponent.”

“But I’m sure you’ve taught him all this,” Dara said. “Why do you need me?”

“He does not listen,” Berg said. “He thinks he listens. But he does not
understand
. I am not so fast as I once was. You are the one to show him.”

Dara didn’t want a distraction this close to the Cup, and she already struggled to get enough time for practice when her parents needed her in their shop. It worried her that this prince was frustrating enough to send Berg into a rage. But she couldn’t refuse her coach. He had trained her for years, and she hated letting him down. Reluctantly, she agreed.

“Okay, Coach. I’ll duel him. But would it be okay if I have an extra private lesson in exchange for missing practice?”

“This will be a good lesson for you too, young Dara,” Berg said. “It will be worth one practice. Meet me by Fell Bridge at dawn in two days.”

2.

Lantern Maker’s Daughter

DARA woke late the next morning, her muscles stiff. Waves of sound and heat were already issuing from her father’s workshop. Their dwelling was a terraced house built in the mouth of a cave, with a tunnel leading back toward the workshop deep in the mountainside. Dara’s room was in the upper part of the house, jutting above the slope of Village Peak. She had a single window looking out at Square Peak, where Berg’s dueling school was located. When the weather was clear, she could just see King’s Peak, the third and tallest peak of Vertigon Mountain, off to her left.

Dara rolled out of bed and stretched on the thick woven rug covering her floor. She twisted her golden hair into a loose braid over her shoulder while she rotated her ankles, still thinking through her final bout with Kel last night. She had a new bruise at the base of her thumb from one of his expert hand touches. She may have figured out a tell that would help her counter that particular attack next time. She grinned. He was going to be mad if she found a way to beat his most famous move.

She pressed her foot against the stone wall at the back of the room to stretch out her calf. It was warm this close to the workshop. She laid her hands flat against the stone, feeling the heat and vibrations coming from deep within the mountain. Her father must have been working for hours already. The early morning was when he could focus best, and he needed a lot of focus to practice his art. It would be too dangerous otherwise.

Dara’s father, Rafe Ruminor, was a highly respected Fireworker. The mountain was an important source of Fire magic, one of the only known sources in the world. The Fire ran through the roots of the three peaks like blood through veins. Few were born with the ability to wield the molten energy. The Fireworkers of Vertigon used the Fire to craft valuable objects of beauty and power with their bare hands: sticks of metal that could set any substance alight at a touch, heat stones able to clear a path through the depths of a snowstorm, and some of the most glorious forged weapons known to mankind. The potential of such an industry had made it worth building a city atop the sheer cliffs of Vertigon Mountain.

Rafe’s specialty was conjured lanterns that would hold their light and warmth indefinitely. His designs were more intricate and beautiful than those of any other Fireworker in the city, and people traveled all the way from the Lands Below for his custom models. Dara’s mother, Lima, organized the sale and export of Rafe’s Fire Lanterns and also handled the operations of the Fireworkers’ Guild. The family business was the most successful Fireworking shop in Vertigon.

There was only one problem: the ability to work the Fire was innate. You either had it or you didn’t—and Dara didn’t. The Spark typically manifested in children between the ages of five and eight. Dara had waited in vain for her own Spark to appear, but her fingers remained cold and her senses numb.

Dara dressed quickly and thundered down the narrow wooden staircase to the kitchen. It had a wide window and a good view of King’s Peak with its multitude of bridges connecting to the other two peaks. The sun was already up, casting sharp shadows over the terraces. Dara hadn’t realized how late it was. No wonder she felt as if she could eat enough for three people.

Her mother was waiting for her at their large stone dining table.

“Where were you last night?” she said as Dara dropped into a chair and reached for a bowl of porridge. As usual, Dara didn’t look at the chair beside hers, which had been empty for over a decade.

“I went for a run after practice,” Dara said. “The rain finally let up.”

Lima pursed her lips. “Your father has been up for hours already.” She was an imposing woman, with a wide frame and silver-streaked hair tied into a tight bun. She didn’t approve of dueling. She wanted Dara to spend her time organizing ledgers at a desk and making connections with important clients. But endless meetings and paperwork were poor substitutes for the magic of the Fire.

“You were supposed to get up early to help with the summer orders,” she said.

“Oh, I forgot all about that. I’m sorry.”

“Dara, when we said you could train after your education—”

“I know. I’ll get it all done before I leave.”

Dara was supposed to help her mother in the mornings and train in the afternoons, but she found it harder to jump out of bed for paperwork than for a good run across the bridges. She couldn’t conjure up any enthusiasm for the business side of Fireworking.

Dara’s disappointment when she found out she couldn’t work the Fire had been shattering. And it had come close on the heels of her older sister’s death. Dara resisted the urge to glance at the empty chair. Renna had been born with the Spark and had already begun training in the art of Fireworking. The Ruminors would have had a Fireworker in the next generation if she hadn’t died. When they realized Dara couldn’t Work, Renna was already gone and it was too late for them to have another child.

Dara’s mother had been more upset that she couldn’t train in the family art than Dara herself. At least her father tried to hide it. When Dara was nine, long past the age when Workers typically felt their first link to the Fire, he had suggested that she take up dueling. She had loved it from the moment she first drove the tip of a blade into a target and felt the force of the hit vibrating up her arm.

Rafe had intended swordplay to be a diversion, a consolation until she was old enough to help her mother with the business, but it soon became Dara’s one and only passion. She threw herself into training, thriving on the fact that the harder she worked, the better she became. It had nothing to do with some inborn Spark beyond her control. As she got older, her disappointment over not being able to Work the Fire had faded.

“You may need to skip some of your afternoon practices for the next few weeks,” her mother said. “The work is piling up.”

“Can you hire someone else to help you?” Dara asked.

Lima’s pursed lips thinned to a blade-sharp line. “With the current restrictions on the Fire your father can’t increase his production enough to support another employee,” she said. “His access shrinks every year.”

Heavy footfalls sounded outside the kitchen door, and Dara’s father emerged from the tunnel at the back of the house. As always, he smelled of fire and metal.

“Hello, dear ones!” Rafe Ruminor filled every room he entered. He was tall and lean, with a strong jaw and golden hair like Dara’s. Lima rose, standing almost as tall as her husband, and kissed his cheek. They were a formidable pair, and it was easy to see why they commanded such respect on the mountain.

“You’re up late, my young spark,” Rafe said, dropping a heavy hand on Dara’s shoulder.

“I ran after training last night,” Dara said.

“One day you’re going to get injured, and you’ll wish you’d spent more time on something besides those swords,” Lima said.

“But the Cup is in two months.”

“Now, now. There will be time to win plenty of tourneys,” Rafe said. He sighed expansively. “Perhaps it is for the best. There may be no business in the future if the Warden continues to parse out the Fire to those who are not worthy of it.”

“It can’t be that bad,” Dara mumbled. “They’re just making Firesticks and Everlights.”

“Watch your mouth, Dara,” her mother said. “You have no respect for your father’s Art.”

“Of course I do. It’s just that—”

“He has toiled his whole life to perfect his creations,” Lima continued, warming up to the familiar lecture. “He deserves better than to have his access to the Fire diluted so hacks can sell cheap tricks. If Warden Lorrid would stop granting Fire shares to every new upstart that thinks he can Wield, we wouldn’t have this issue.”

Dara sighed at the old-fashioned term:
Wield.
Long ago, the Firewielders were the most powerful force on the mountain. They had warred over access to the Fire of Vertigon, drenching the mountain in smoke and blood. But now the power was Worked, not Wielded.

The First Good King, Sovar Amintelle, had been a Firewielder. When he prevailed over the others he designed a system to control the flow of Fire through the veins of the mountain and keep the surviving Wielders in check. His son lacked the ability to Wield, so he assigned a Warden to ensure that no Firewielder could become too powerful and disrupt the peace established by the First Good King.

Now, the Fire was strictly regulated, used almost exclusively for the production of useful objects. It flowed from the Well beneath the Fire Warden’s greathouse and through the roots of the mountain. Each Fireworker’s shop received a controlled amount of Fire, just enough to create their masterworks. The Workers were also forbidden from creating Fire-infused weapons for anyone but the king, his guards, and the army. This ensured that the famed Peace of Vertigon endured. But the more powerful Fireworkers didn’t like the constraints, however necessary.

“Never fear, my dear,” Rafe said, washing his hands in the stone basin beneath the window. He looked out at King’s Peak across the Gorge. “Perhaps the winds are turning. I may yet be able to protect the noble Art.”

Lima squeezed her husband’s shoulder and began ladling portions of spiced mountain goat porridge into his bowl. Dara ate hers mechanically. Lima may be formidable, but she was an indifferent cook at best.

As her mother talked about the lantern orders that would need to be completed and delivered before winter, Dara thought about her strategy for her royal duel the following morning. It was always useful to practice against someone besides the regulars at the school. She didn’t have high hopes for the dueling abilities of the heir-prince, though.