The Makers of Light (14 page)

And, of course, Rianor would know what do do—and she needed
him
most of all. Where was he? Was he all right?

Her foot slid. She started falling—and stopped only because she managed to lash a hand and grasp the edge of a stair above her head.

She had been thinking of Rianor and thus she had not been counting the stairs; neither had she noted how tall and steep they were. Had she even known that she was on the kitchen staircase already?

Fool! She could not afford this! She could not afford to not know where she was going only because the thought of a man had distraught her so! She should push him out of her mind now, like she had before, up there with Inni when the fire had first stopped! Linden lost a few precious moments now on the stone steps, panting, trying to bring life back to her aching shoulder. She had dislocated it, probably—and what good was
that
to Rianor? She should help him, not create new problems for him! Let him come back to a House under control, not one in turmoil that contained, besides everything else, a heedless apprentice lying on the kitchen steps!

She gritted her teeth and trudged on. She had only passed these stairs once in her life, on her first morning in Qynnsent, and she had been carried by Rianor then. The kitchen was not her place.

But it was the place for backup firebuckets, and she did know the way, so she was there a minute later.

It was dark here, too, and it was still warm, but not too warm. Not like it had been on her first morning, when she had trembled and huddled into Rianor, the brightness of the lights and the heat of the stoves heavy and pressing, suffocating her, as if assaulting her very quintessence.

By the time they had passed through the kitchen on that morning, a Master Cook had already arrived. There had already been a big pot on one of the stoves, and it had suddenly hissed, its cover rising a few centimeters in the air, hot fog drifting away from it, filling the room. The fog was called "
steam,
" Rianor had later told her; it happened regularly when water was heated on a kitchen stove. He thought that steam was related to the fog that sometimes happened outside and turned the world into a blue-gray blurriness.

Whatever it was, it had reminded her of the smoke in her Healers' Passage visions; at that moment Linden had been almost more afraid of the steam than of the Healers' Passage itself.

But there was neither fire nor steam now, only darkness (for the kitchen's windows, high by the ceiling, had their shutters on) and lingering heat—but there
should
have been active light and heat.

"What is wrong? Why haven't you started a candle and a stove? Has the fire in the buckets failed as well?" Good that the Master Cook on duty had been sobbing in the corner very close to the stairs. Linden had been able to find him in this way, and had been able to walk to him without colliding with anything. The kitchen was enormous, and she only knew to walk between the stairs and the scullery.

The cook whimpered.

"It is all fine. Just tell me."

The cook whimpered again.

Linden slapped him. "Talk to me! What happened? Where are the buckets?"

"Here—Here they are, m'lady, right beside me. But they're cold ..."

Now
what was she to do?

"They've always been cold, m'lady, just staying here in the corner. Always! What use are buckets, after all ..."

That reached through Linden's own rising panic, and she scrabbled by the cook's side. Yes, this here was a bucket. This, too.

"You fool! Of course they have always been cold, that is how buckets are! You need to connect them to an outlet so that they will transfer fire to the corresponding fire system. The bucket won't become warm even then, but a stove can be turned on, and the lights. Don't you
know?
"

He did not. And why would he? The commoners outside in Mierber knew, for they had been using buckets in that past year, but a year before that most of them had not known about buckets, either. People did not know anything. People did not care.

"There, I have plugged the bucket into the outlet. You turn a stove on now." At least one stove in a kitchen should always be on, was that not right? Linden knew that from somewhere.

A small sleep candle was glowing in the vast kitchen space now; it had started by itself the moment Linden had plugged in the bucket. The cook's face looked twisted in that candle's tiny light, and the stoves, of which there were at least three, cast enormous shadows.

"I can't, m'lady! Please, I can't!"

"And why is that?" Linden's voice was deceptively calm. The man's face became even more twisted.

"I am just a Cook, m'lady. I just cook, m'lady! I put food on and in the stoves and take food out. I don't touch the stoves themselves, m'lady! They have fire in them!"

And you sleep in the kitchen at night in order to protect the rest of us from fire run amok?
Hundreds of years ago there
had
been a Great Fire.

Somehow Linden did not shout that at the man's face. It would not do. The man could not think now, and shouting could only make it worse. And perhaps the cook only knew how to protect the others from too much fire, and not from too little ... But no. Linden shook her head. She was lying to herself now, giving herself false hopes. He knew nothing. Sleeping here at night was, like everything else, just a ritual, just something the man did because it had to be done. The world had been safe for him so far. He had not had a need to actually see this world.

Linden should find a way to turn the thing on, herself ...

But why should she? She had been reaching towards a cooking stove but now snapped her hand back. The stove might even be on already just because she had plugged the bucket—the sleep candle
was
on because of that.

But, more importantly, she did not want the stove to be on. Her own knowledge that a stove should always work was no better than the cook's own mindless rituals—she did not know
why
a stove should work. What she did know was that the bucket, plugged where it was, could only give fire to the kitchen's lights and stoves, while the people upstairs remained in darkness and cold. That much was written in the
Emergency
section of the Qynnsent
Housekeeping
book; a bucket outlet only served the room where it was located.

With a quick motion, Linden unplugged the bucket and gripped its handle. It was heavy, and her shoulder hurt madly—and it hurt even worse when the cook screamed and threw himself at her.

His body was heavy; the impact threw her to the ground. The bucket clanged a few steps away from her. Wretch him if he had broken it; even two buckets of fire were too few already ...

"The light! The light!" He was panting, his big hands thumping, grappling the stone floor, trying to find her, squeeze her. She rolled over, and he missed her, finding the bucket instead. He kicked it away, then scrabbled for Linden again. "Heinous witch, the Lost Ones' own servant, may the Master curse you for eternity!"

She rolled over again, but he managed to clutch at her elbow—which gave her an idea of where exactly he was, so she could kick him in the stomach. He gasped, but he was too big for her. He did not let go, and he was twisting her hand now, maybe breaking it. Both Rianor and Master Keitaro had shown her tricks for fighting a bigger opponent, but in the next few moments not one of them worked, for she was already weak and wounded and becoming confused.

Then, suddenly, her free hand found the dagger at her belt. She had forgotten about it; her mind had been focused on trying to remember what exactly Rianor and Master Keitaro had taught her. Yet, now the hand itself acted with knowledge older than that, knowledge that right now did not even reach the mind. The hand thrust the dagger into the man's wrist by itself.

She kicked him in the head then, and again, until he fainted, the dagger still gripped firmly in her hand. She tore her sleeves and tied his hands with them, and she tied his legs with his own belt.

"I am sorry," she whispered as she located the two buckets in the darkness and tied each handle with an end of her own belt, hanging the whole thing from her less abused shoulder, dragging herself to the stairs. She
could
carry it all. She should, for there was no one else but her.

"I am sorry, Cook, but two buckets are too few already, and only the Master knows how much fire the kitchen has already used up and wasted from the bucket I plugged in here. You are just one foolish person, while up there is a whole House—and you
could
have come with me. I can't carry you, and I can't leave you untied, either. You are mad right now. Even if you don't hurt me and prevent me from going, you may hurt yourself or the next person who comes here. I am sorry."

She was sorry for stabbing his hand, too—but there had been no other way. At least her mind had taken enough control of her hand on time for her to not drive the dagger into his body a second time, and into a more suitable place.

So easily did a dagger enter a human's body.

And yet, so difficult was it for a dagger to enter metal or stone. So difficult to make mechanisms. That was the thought that occupied Linden's mind while, panting, trembling, colored spots dancing before her eyes even in the full darkness, she transcended each step to the hallway. So difficult it was to make mechanisms, even though it was mechanisms that people needed.

Mechanisms, and knowledge.

Even though
people
only thought they needed light and warmth. Those in the hallway would have all crammed together in the alcove beside her mechanical elevator, where she plugged a bucket and lit two candles and a heating stove. They were pushing, shoving, having no regard for anything or anyone else at all.

"Stay back! I am taking it all away if you come any closer! Aren't you thinking? Where you are is lit and warm
enough.
"

While there were others, up in the servants' wing, who were screaming and perhaps hurting themselves or others in the darkness even now.

"Out of my way. And don't you dare touch the bucket. Either help the wounded ones, or don't do anything!" Somehow she managed to swing herself on the elevator's platform, grateful to the Master or whatever it was that had made her leave the platform here and not chain it on the top floor two days ago. She needed the elevator. She did not have the strength to lug a bucket up the Servants' stairs, dodging those who would dash down those same stairs in darkness and madness.

In her condition right now, she did not have the strength to elevate herself and a bucket, either.

"You." There was a man in a guard's uniform who was watching her instead of watching the light. "Come here."

He came, of his own accord, even though his knees started trembling as he stepped on the platform, and he had difficulty keeping his balance at first. Good that he had come by himself. For if he had not come, she would have found a way to force him—or to force someone else.

"Good man, pull this lever now. Yes, this metal stick, exactly. Now push it back. Pull again. Push—Close your eyes if you can't watch, but don't stop pushing and pulling."

If he did close his eyes, she did not know it, for the platform had moved high enough for the light to stop reaching them. But he pushed and pulled, steadily.

"Good. Keep it pushed now and reach out with the other hand." Click. "Yes. Good. Come now, you'll get some more light for a while, but then we are going back."

Somehow, she dragged herself out of the platform, and dragged the man, too, for he would not know where to step. Then, after she lit two other candles, she wondered—wearily, as if in a dream—why the screams would not stop despite the light, and wondered where the servants were.

"Lind! I knew you would come! I knew it!" Clare, gripping Linden's shoulders, staring at her as if, whatever the maid's words, she did not believe that it was her lady she was truly seeing. Clare's hands were cold, and she was barefoot, her hair entangled and falling over her eyes. She wore only a thin nightgown, and goosebumps and bruises were visible all over her.

"Oh, Clare. Clare, my darling ..." Linden could have born many things, but not that—not her maid, her dear friend, in such a state.

"We locked them all in, Lind, all that had not yet run." Linden might have been about to break down at Clare's sight—but then, suddenly, she saw that Clare's body might be battered but her eyes were fierce. Linden also realized that, even though some screams were still coming from the stairs, most were coming from the servants' rooms. A moment later, Brendan, too, came to her. His eyes were narrowed, and his hands held a giant chain of keys.

"My lady." He made a shaky bow to her. "We knew that we should stay by the elevator. We knew that you and the High Lord would not forget it."

* * *

Linden might have managed without Clare and Brendan that night—but then again, she might not have. If tens of Qynnsent servants had been running mindlessly in the corridor, shoving whoever and whatever came in their way, and if even only one or two of those had tried to assault her like the Cook had, she might have failed.

With Clare and Brendan's forethought, however, she had to deal with at most five servants at a time, and she had Clare and Brendan, as well as the man who had run the elevator for her, to help with those.

Nan had left the keys to her study with Brendan and asked him to stay on duty by her door, so that if she sent people from the cottage area to bring something to her, Brendan would let them in. Brendan, observant as he was, also knew where exactly in Nan's study the keys to all other rooms in the servants' wing were.

He had snatched those keys as soon as the fire had failed, even though he had overturned a table and sprained his ankle in the process. He had bumped into Clare, who'd had the same idea as him, under that very table. They had then scrabbled outside the study and locked every door they could—on all four servants' floors—so that others would not come out in the corridors. They had taken some beating in the process, especially in running up and down the stairs, but they had mostly succeeded. They had even managed to shove some of their colleagues into Nan's study and lock them there.