The Diplomat (46 page)

She stumbled onto the landing of the third floor. Flames jumped across the walls and writhed about the beams while tapestries and paintings smoldered, their corners roasting to ash. Rema tightened the scarf and narrowed her eyes against the biting smoke. Elise’s medallion was burning cold against her neck, a shard of ice amid the heat.

“Jalaya!” The damp cloth muffled her voice, yet how could she not call for the one she loved? She staggered across the carpet of a wide, oak-paneled room. Tendrils of fire burned along the paneling, and a support column in one corner was covered in crawling tongues of flame. “Jalaya!”

The third floor was mostly bedchambers, one after another. Rema ran past long rows of doors, glancing quickly into each room, only to falter in her step—the corridor ahead was entirely ablaze. Rema retreated from the roaring mouth of flame. Jalaya was likely to be dead by now, and new tears mingled with those already summoned by the bitter smoke. Rema ducked her head as she hurried down another corridor. A beam split and toppled, and she swerved to avoid being hit. The building hadn’t been built to withstand fire, and there was real danger of the roof collapsing.

Rema turned a corner and came to a halt. Jalaya lay huddled on the floor with her face pressed against the carpet. She was dressed for her performance, and sweat soaked the gauzy fabric of her garments. Rema knelt beside her, reaching beneath her chin to lift her head. “Jalaya,” she said. “Can you hear me?”

“Rema.” Tears glued Jalaya’s lashes, and Rema was horrified to hear a harsh roughness in her voice. “She tied me to a chair. I slipped my wrists free and escaped, but there’s too much smoke, I got lost…”

“Don’t talk.” Rema helped Jalaya upright. As the smoke touched her face once more, Jalaya wheezed and slumped against Rema’s shoulder, her breaths coming in labored gasps. Rema unraveled the scarf and tied it about Jalaya’s mouth, ignoring a weak mutter of protest.

Tightening her hold on Jalaya’s waist, Rema directed them back the way she’d come. The flames had built in her absence, and they seared her so intensely that it felt as if her sweat were boiling. The door to the stairwell seethed with fire, and Rema held Jalaya close as they rushed past an inferno that had spread to the stairs themselves, scorching its way down the banisters.

They had struggled to the second floor and were about to descend to the first when a tremendous groan came from above. A second later, a cascade of wood and stone broke from the ceiling and toppled into the stairwell. The rubble lay between them and the first floor, and Rema could see no safe way to guide Jalaya over it.

“Trapped,” Jalaya said.

“No. There’s another stairwell on the other side of this floor. Cling to me, you’ll be fine.”

The second floor was comprised mostly of libraries and studies, and burning paper crackled around them as they navigated the smoke-filled corridors. Rema wiped a slick sheen of sweat from her forehead as the temperature continued to rise. The smoke had stolen her vision, and her lungs struggled to find relief in the choking air.

Jalaya slipped. Rema caught her and, with much effort, lifted and cradled her. She took several unwieldy steps forward—light as Jalaya was, Rema was exhausted, and she’d never been built for carrying women in the first place.

“Rema,” said Jalaya, her voice dry and feeble in Rema’s ear. “I’m sorry.”

With Jalaya draped over her arms, Rema continued to stagger through the deepening smoke as the fire muttered angrily about her. She pushed open a door with her shoulder and emerged into a corridor free of smoke or flames. The mouth of the stairwell lay ahead. She hurried toward it, swaying under the effort of carrying Jalaya, and stumbled into Artunos as he emerged from an adjoining corridor.

“I’ll take her,” said Artunos. Holding her gently, he hefted Jalaya over his shoulders. She seemed unconscious, but her chest rose with labored breaths. “Rema, I don’t want to tell you this, but you’ll never forgive me if I keep it from you. Elise and Ormun followed you in. As far as I know, they’re still in here.”

“Elise?” Rema swept her damp bangs away from her face. “Elise is in here with Ormun?”

“Nobody could stop them running in any more than we could stop you. Ormun actually commanded us to keep back. I searched the first floor, but I couldn’t find them.”

“Get Jalaya out of here. She needs water and a healer. I’m going back for Elise.”

“You’ll die, you realize. You’re lucky enough to have survived in there once, and it’s even more dangerous now.”

“Don’t scold me. Just take Jalaya to safety.” Rema closed her eyes and inhaled the clear air. Would she ever taste it again?

“Here.” Artunos pulled a damp cloth from around his neck and handed it to her. “Damn you, Rema…” His composure broke, and he bowed his head. It was only the second time in her life that Rema had seen him in tears, and her own eyes stung in sympathy. Without another word, he returned down the hall, moving swiftly despite bearing Jalaya’s weight.

Rema wrapped the cloth around her mouth and returned to the nightmare of smoke and conflagration. The third floor would be entirely lost to inferno by now, and she could only hope that Elise hadn’t been consumed with it. At the thought, a new energy found its way into her empty limbs, and she forced herself through the heat and smoke, her pulse as quick as the flames. Yet it seemed hopeless, and she quickly grew disoriented again. The decorations and furniture around her had been transformed into torches; she no longer recognized the college as her own.

Despair had tightened almost completely around her heart when she heard a sound that scattered the darkness and gave her hope again—Elise, calling Rema’s name. Rema pursued her voice and found her standing behind a rubble-choked door, flushed and unkempt. Part of the floor upstairs must have collapsed, and the entire ceiling was likely to follow.

“My beloved.” Elise gave a forlorn smile. “You heard me calling. I shouldn’t have, but I wanted to see your face one more time.”

Rema tried to shift the collapsed stones. They were too heavy, and her hands fell away, the debris unmoved. “Elsie, help me!”

“You don’t understand. This is the price for my magic. I killed Bannon, and now my death will restore the balance.”

“I don’t give a damn about the balance. We can move this. Don’t you dare give up on our love.”

“I’ll love you even in death.” Elise’s grief-stricken eyes betrayed the calm in her voice. “But there’s no way for me to escape. You have to find Jalaya and save yourself.”

“I found her. She’s safe.” Rema tugged at a chunk of masonry and only managed to scrape her hands. “Damnit! Elsie, help me! How can you be so passive?”

“Because this is my fate.” Elise lowered her gaze. “I’m only relieved that I didn’t hurt anyone else. Go, Rema. Your father’s dream is so very near.”

The smoke was building and the flames were gathering. Either the ceiling would cave in, the fire would reach them or the smoke would overwhelm them; in any event, they had little time. “Please try. You must have more strength left than I do.”

“I can hear the roof above me groaning. You have to run.”

Rema kicked the rubble in exasperation. “Why did you go into that stupid room?”

“Don’t scold me. I was searching for you. I couldn’t know the roof would fall in.”

“I’m not scolding you. I’m just furious that you’re so close and I can’t even hold you. I need you, Elise. Without you, I’ll never be—”

“There you are!” The rasping voice came from behind her, and Rema turned, her heart racing; she’d forgotten he was here. Ormun’s face dripped with sweat, and his eyes were red and swollen. “I was looking everywhere, dear.”

“Help me move this.” Rema took his sleeve and pulled. “Hurry. Elise is trapped.”

Ormun was broad and powerful, and surely possessed the strength to clear enough space for Elise to crawl free. Yet he resisted her tugging, remaining where he stood. “There’s hardly time to move rocks and things. We should get out of here while we still can, sister.”

“I won’t leave while she’s behind that debris. If you don’t get her out, I’ll die here with her.”

A desperate spasm contorted Ormun’s features. He took Rema’s arm and pulled her toward him. “If you won’t follow me out, I’ll drag you out.” She struggled and swung at him with her free hand. He caught her wrist. “Unconscious, if I have to. You don’t have the luxury of death, dear. I need you.”

It had to end here—his dominance, his cruelty, his manipulation. Live or die, she would never concede. “If you separate me from her, I’ll die no less than if you’d torn out my heart. I’ll never again speak or move. I’ll remain motionless until my lungs cease and body grows cold. I love her, Ormun. She belongs to nobody, least of all to you, yet she has chosen to be with me. Even if you drag me away, my soul will remain to die with hers, and then you’ll have no sister at all. You’ll be alone with that dark madness.”

Ormun struck her across the face. “I don’t want to hear it,” he said as she reached for her stinging cheek. “How do you expect me to comprehend the workings of your unclouded heart? You know that I must do as I will.”

“Then will yourself to move that debris. You delude yourself if you think I’m within your reach. What stands before you is only the shell of the woman you’ve tormented. The part of me that was your sister, the part of me that remembers how to love and be loved…that part is with her.”

“Get out of my way.” Ormun approached the fallen doorway. Straining his broad arms, he heaved aside several of the larger chunks of masonry. “Go on, you fat pig. See if you can squeeze through that.”

Elise pushed herself through the gap. The splintered doorframe tore her dress, drew a thin line of blood along her cheek and snagged her hair, but she managed to wriggle into the corridor. The moment she was on her feet, she kissed Rema with desperate intensity. Ormun yanked Elise away from the embrace. “Don’t test me. Get moving.”

Flames rolled toward them, engulfing furniture, eating decorations and capering with ecstasy among burning pages. Elise and Rema staggered, coughing, through the burning halls while Ormun followed. His brooding anger was every bit as blistering as the fire around them. Rema knew what it meant to provoke the brutal jackal that stalked the shadows of his mind, baying insanity.

They entered a long hallway, its fixtures swallowed by flame. The heat roasted Rema’s skin, and the acrid smell of burning hair wafted about them. As they moved, smoke clung to their faces, and Elise and Ormun began wheezing. Rema removed her dampened rag and forced it upon the unwilling Elise. “My father raised me amid smoke,” said Rema. “Have no fear.”

As they neared the end of the corridor, the chill against Rema’s chest sharpened into a point of frozen agony. She leapt forward, and as she did the ceiling above her howled and split. A pile of wood, stone and broken furniture tumbled into the hallway. Elise tripped, and Rema caught her arm.

“Rema,” said Elise, pointing behind them. “Look.”

Ormun’s leg had been caught by the rubble, pinning him to the carpet. He tugged at his trapped limb, his face stretched in almost comic surprise. “Rema.” His voice was as bemused as his expression. “It’s fallen on me.”

“Go, Elsie,” said Rema. “The stairwell is just ahead of you.”

“I’m not leaving you!” Elise gave Rema an incredulous look. “You just gave that heartfelt speech about never leaving me. What kind of ridiculous double standard—”

“If you love me, please do as I say. I’ll join you outside. I promise.”

Elise sighed. “A promise it is, then.” She kissed Rema before stumbling through the smoke.

“Rema, get this off me,” said Ormun. “Hurry.”

Rema crouched at his side. The building was crumbling around them, beams tearing and joints splitting, and the smoke hung dense above their heads; there was no time to squander. Yet if she left this building without cleansing her soul, she would never be free. She met Ormun’s dulled eyes, and as he stared back at her, he seemed to understand her intention. He relaxed, and his arms fell to his side.

“Betany told me that your performance was some kind of trap,” he said. “I suppose she lit this fire to interrupt it. It seems rather extreme, even for her.”

“She arranged it this way in order to hurt me.” Rema reached for his hand. “She wanted to take away the things I most loved.”

“How was your little plan intended to unfold?”

“I would have coaxed you to take part in a performance. You’d have agreed, relishing as always the opportunity to play the lead role. The magician would have guided you into a box. You would have waited in the dark, uncertain, until someone knocked you on the head. The box was to be smuggled away, a double was arranged to fool the crowd. It could have been hours until people realized you were missing.”

“Much craftier than anything I could come up with. And then you’d have killed me?”

“I let the others believe that I would, but no. There’s a tiny island two weeks off the coast, well outside any sea traveler’s path. I was going to leave you there to live out your life as best you could.”

“And why would you do that?” Ormun winced and pressed his hand to his thigh. “It seems to me, dear, that leaving me alive could only have created problems. Someone was bound to find me eventually.”

Rema hunched lower, trying to keep her head beneath the worst of the smoke. “Do you remember my nineteenth birthday? You were still that gentle boy who accompanied me throughout the palace, consoling me when I was worried, celebrating with me when I did well. That morning, you burst into my chambers with your birthday present. It was a little golden bird. I was delighted by it and put it on my shelf. Then we sat on my bed, looking out the window and watching the real birds moving and singing in the trees.”

“I remember. You were so boyish then, with your short hair.”

“I told you then that I wished we could all live like birds.” Rema smiled as the memory became more vivid. “I praised them for singing instead of fighting, building instead of destroying. It was the kind of silly thing a girl of nineteen might say, but I was sincere. And you began to cry. You said that some nights you laid awake for hours while a cold hatred crept through your body, as if something malign were taking over your thoughts and dreams. It was a black cloud, you said, that stole into your eyes and blocked out everything good.”