The rest was much a blur. Haman eventually introduced her to Twitch, and they had both been present when she swore to the Bosses to serve with loyalty, on pain of death or exile, and received her tattoo. That had been four years ago.
Skate shook the memories away and turned back to her soup. There was plenty of it left, and the temperature was now comfortable. She took several more gulps and looked back into the fireplace. There were marks on the mantle she had not seen before, and closer inspection revealed them to be stylized letters of some kind. “What does this say?” she asked, pointing to the writing.
“It’s in the language of the dwarves,” Belamy answered without looking up from his reading. He spoke some words that sounded harsh to her ears, with many hard “K” sounds and noises from deep in his throat. He then translated, “‘Speak my name, then a color you want.’ It rhymes in the Dwarvish.”
“What does it mean?”
“It’s a set of instructions. That fireplace was made for me by a craftsman of those folk who was skilled in the magic of the dwarves. If you’re near the fireplace while a fire is burning, you need to say the Dwarvish word for fire, and then the Dwarvish word for a color of your choosing. If you do it right, the fire will change color.”
“Does it work?”
“Of course.”
“I want to try it.”
“Certainly. What color would you like it to be?”
“Blue.”
“Then stand in front of the fireplace and say, ‘Gerunk kekondahash.’”
Skate had to twist her mouth around the words to get them out, and she did not feel like she had been able to get them correctly when she heard herself say them. “Gerenk kekondashash.” Belamy corrected her, and she said, “Gerunk kekondahash.”
As soon as the last syllable left her mouth, the orangish red flames flashed out for a moment, as if a great wind had blown from behind the fire, and then the room was awash in a bright blue light. The temperature remained unchanged, but the dancing shadows looked darker than they had before, and everything looked colder. It was a pretty shade of blue, though, and Skate was in awe of the result.
“That’s amazing!” she said. She caught herself, though, and bottled up her excitement. She decided to try to appear more detached and asked nonchalantly, “So, how do I turn it off?”
“Gerunk haktha.”
Skate spoke the words correctly the first time and the flash occurred once more, rebathing the room in the normal glow of orange and red hues. The shadows became less cold-looking as they shimmered in the moving light of the flames, no longer tinged with the cooler shades of blue. Belamy rose out of his seat, his acquired book in hand. “I’ll leave you to it, if you’d like to practice the words.”
Skate thought to ask him for more colors, realized she had no chance of remembering more than a few, and so let the question dissolve in her mind. It was not the question she had meant to ask anyway, and that question was weighing heavily on her. As Belamy reached the middle of the stairs, she called out. He stopped and turned, his bushy eyebrows raised in polite curiosity and attention.
“I—” She stopped because asking for help was a sign of weakness, and she was planning to steal from this man before long. She did not like asking close friends for any kind of help, much less strange old wizards who were demon-sent unliving monsters. “I want something.”
“More food? I’m sure there’s plenty left, or I can get Rattle to—”
“No, not food. I…” She swallowed hard. “I want to learn to read.”
Belamy’s face fell into an expression that revealed nothing. “I have had no students for many years, young lady. Why do you want to learn to read?”
Skate shrugged, not wanting to voice what was in her heart. Reading was her ticket up and a sign that she was not a nobody. “It’d help me find books for you, and I wouldn’t have to worry about Rattle anymore.”
Belamy smiled. “We can work something out tomorrow. Good night, Skate.” He turned back up the stairs, and Skate heard a door close. She turned to the fire and spoke the words. Sitting in the blue light, she knew she should go to bed, and she would, but she wanted to enjoy the flames a while longer.
She stared into the dancing tongues as they consumed the wood, and she smiled.
Chapter 8
In which fried eggs are swallowed whole, a command is ignored, and a lesson begins.
Skate woke up in the warm bed to see snow falling outside. It was not the small pellets of ice that would sting someone unfortunate enough to be caught in their path; nor was it the furious downpour of blinding white that signified a blizzard. Instead, she saw fat gentle flakes drifting lazily past her window, swirling in various directions as updrafts and downdrafts took their turns at play with the puffy-looking snow. She was glad to be indoors for the moment, though she sighed as she thought of what she needed to do for the day.
Whichever mark she chose (she had all but decided on Gherun over Gemhide because she was not going to risk stealing from someone who might be under the care of the Ink; such a breach of contract would be disastrous), she needed to begin watching today. She only had a five-day window left to work, and she did not want to wait until the last minute.
Skate perked up at the memory of her conversation with Belamy; they would need to discuss her learning to read today. She hopped out of bed, glad once again of the vent in the floor for the heat it funneled in.
Before she dressed, Skate moved to the desk in the room and proudly pulled out the slate. After she set it down on the surface of the desk, she threw on her freshly laundered but irredeemably tattered clothes and bounded down the stairs.
To her surprise, Belamy was not at his desk. There was a plate of fried eggs and a pancake topped with some red fruit sitting in front of the fire, which was burning much as she had left it the night before, blue and crackling happily. Skate called out, first to her host and then to his chef, but heard nothing in response. With a shrug, she sat down and picked up the pancake gingerly, unsure of how warm it was going to be.
As soon as her finger touched the food, Belamy’s voice filled the room. She dropped the pancake back onto the plate and jumped to her feet. So deep was her shock that it was several moments before she realized the voice was saying something intelligible.
“—to my supplier to get the necessary tools. I see you’ve found Rattle’s work for the morning; enjoy that. We’ll be back soon. Stay out of trouble until then.” Belamy’s cheerful voice drifted away, and then the room was quiet once more. Skate recognized it as some form of magic message left for her. She took a deep breath to push the startled excitement out of her and returned to her seated position, retrieving the pancake.
Skate enjoyed the warmth of the fire as she ate, moving on to the two eggs when she was done. She ate them the special way Delly had shown her earlier that very year, taking the fried egg between her fingers and placing the entire morsel in her mouth at once. “Thab ’ay you bon’t spill aby yolk on yer mug,” Delly had said, chewing happily. Skate did the same now, savoring the internal warmth as the yellow of the egg burst out of sight without any mess.
When she had all of her food down, Skate watched the blue flames for a few minutes more before rising and beginning her work for the day. She could hardly believe her luck. Belamy’s message indicated that they would be returning soon, so she did not have much time. If she could pull her heist now, she would not have to worry about stealing any more books for Belamy. She would not be able to learn to read either, but that seemed unimportant in the adrenaline of opportunity.