FUKASHI

The roof is burning when Fukashi emerges onto it from the stairs. He engulfs himself in shadow for protection, but nothing can stop the flames from coiling around him and climbing down the ladder well at his back. The fire’s spread isn’t normal, too fast. It eats up concrete like it’s dry wood.

This is a corical fire.

He hopes Nora won’t try to come up.

In the middle of the roof stands his husband. Arthur’s clothes are engulfed in flames, but he stands firm, his hands raised palm-forward towards a small figure made of pure fire.

Fukashi’s heart dips low into his stomach.

Cel is barely her own shape. She is yellow and orange and red fire tongues lapping at the sky. She is the fire’s center hub. It laps off of her in every direction. The heat on the roof is unbearable. Fukashi builds a bubble of shadow around himself just so he can breathe. It’s a hard shield to maintain. Fire is light, and all the darkness he summons wants to flee from it. He’s draining quickly, but he doesn’t have time to worry about himself.

Cel is in the open.

A flurry of people come thundering down an outdoor stairwell nearby. Of course, they pause in horror when they see the scene on the neighboring roof.

Fukashi wastes no time. He slips into a shadow and reappears before them, drawing knives from hidden folds of darkness and ending their lives with quick swipes of silver. He hoists their bodies through the shadows to drop them on the roof of the apartment. It is mere moments before the air reeks of burning flesh.

“Arthur, stop her!” he calls across the crackling flames. Behind him, the fire alarms are sounding, their shrieks deafening. People scream as the fire travels across the top floor at an unprecedented speed.

Arthur seems to be hesitating. He approaches Cel like she’ll spook. What he needs to do is scoop her up and run before someone else sees her.

Fukashi takes initiative. He storms through the flames, trying not to wonder how long they have until the building collapses beneath their feet. He reaches Arthur’s side, sweat pouring down the side of his face, and roughly grabs him by the shoulder.

“Arthur, we need to get her out of here!”

Arthur bats his touch away. His face twists with something like shame. He speaks softly. Fukashi can barely make out his words. “I don’t want to do this to her. I promised I never would.”

“Do what?” Fukashi snarls and stomps his foot like a child. “Do what you must to save her life, Tsula!”

The name seems to startle Arthur out of his stupor. Grimly, he drops his hands, and his hair turns to black flame. The whites of his eyes glow fiery red around his pitch black irises. He strides toward Cel and reaches out as if to grip her shoulders. His hands hover over golden flame.

He speaks, and Fukashi shudders at the strange quality of his voice. It’s a deep, rattling sound, like thunder’s roar and lightning’s crackle overlaid. If a tiger spoke, Fukashi thinks it would sound like this.

“Desist,” Arthur growls. “Unbecome fire. Return to us, Cel.”

Fire ripples, and suddenly Cel is human again, human and bare as the day she was born.

She looks startled for a breath, then scared. “Daddy, I—”

“Go to sleep,” Arthur commands.

Lids drooping, she falls forward, and he catches her. Fukashi is at their side in an instant, concealing them both in a layer of shadow.

“You will explain that later,” he snaps. His heart thunders in his chest, and his hands shake with adrenaline, fear, and fury.

How dare you keep secrets from me, fox!

He forms clothes from darkness for Arthur, yanking off the charred scraps of what he’d been wearing already. For Cel, he crafts a blanket. Her hair is ash-gray again, so he drapes a shadow over it, too. As Arthur hoists her into his arms, Fukashi creates a disc of black beneath their feet and they fall into it. He clings to Arthur’s elbow, dumping them out about five floors below in the stairwell. The building is ten stories tall, and the fire has not been burning long, but this floor is already thick with smoke. Fukashi slaps masks of shadow over each of their faces to filter the smoke and feels a painful pinch in his gut.

“I’m at my corical limit,” he tells Arthur who nods as they rush down the stairs. The building above them groans just as they burst outside onto the street. There’s a crowd, of course, but no paramedics in sight.

Fukashi is relieved when Nora rushes up to them. She’s calm as she leads them to the back of the crowd without a word, then begins guiding them along the edge of the neighborhood. Just as he’d trained her to do, she takes them to the stairway leading down to the port. In emergencies she knows to go to Lem’s warehouse.

It’s not until she’s knocking on a side-door in an alleyway that he snaps out of his daze. She’s awkwardly conversing through the two-way speaker when Fukashi gently brushes her aside and takes over. Luckily, he recognizes the voice coming through the static.

“Zy, it’s Fukashi. Let us in.”

A pause. “Yes, sir.”

Something inside the door clicks, and the light next to the handle flashes green. He opens the rusty door and ushers the others inside. Arthur’s expression is worryingly blank. He clutches Cel to himself tightly, like she might disappear if he lets go.

They walk into the warehouse in silence. The bay is half empty, and the workers lounge on what few shipping containers are present.

“Business slow?” he asks the seventeen-year-old Vultharian girl waiting for them across the bay. She’s dark-skinned, plump, and pretty, just like her parents had been. They’d passed from dragon fever two years ago, both nearly at the same time, leaving behind Zypyria and her older brother Rarder. After the funeral, Rarder had vanished, so Zy alone took over the business. At fifteen, she’d embraced ownership of her family’s smuggling company. Arthur makes a point to look out for her. Her parents are the ones who got him into Malais, after all.

“No slower than usual,” she says, her accent as sharp as any Malroix’s. She was born here after all. She frowns at Arthur, her brow knit with concern. “Everything alright, Uncle Arthur?”

“There was a fire at our apartment,” Fukashi explains when it becomes apparent that Arthur isn’t going to answer. He’s still got a strange look on his face, like he’s mentally elsewhere.

“Oh. Oh Cores! No wonder you look a bit rough,” Zy says, shaking her head and placing a hand over her heart. “I’m sorry to hear that. Come on, I’ve got a few rooms open. You can stay as long as you like.” She takes them into the side building where most of her workers stay. She sets them up in a wood-paneled room with two small beds. “If it’s not enough I can shuffle my guys around so there’s space for the girls.”

“This will do perfectly. Thank you, Zy.” Fukashi offers a tired smile. She smiles back before leaving them alone. Fukashi locks the door behind her as Arthur sits on one of the beds, Cel in his lap. He still won’t let her go.

Fukashi feels anger budding under his skin. He’s exhausted as he plops himself on the bed across from Arthur. Nora comes at his bidding, sitting beside him and watching Cel worriedly.

“What. Happened.” Fukashi bites out each word.

Arthur’s gaze is still distant, but he answers. “Wildfire,” he says.

“I realize that,” Fukashi growls, “but how? I thought you were training her so this wouldn’t happen!”

Arthur’s eyes finally sharpen. He holds Fukashi’s stare, tired and resolved. About what though, Fukashi can’t begin to guess. “I thought she’d be fine, but she doesn’t have limiters,” he says gruffly. He glances aside. “That must be why...”

Fukashi’s muscles coil, but he has nowhere to spring. “No more fire,” he says firmly. “If she can’t control it, then we can’t risk her using it again.”

Arthur’s head whips back toward him. A ring of red appears around his irises. “We will not cage her to herself.”

It’s an odd way to put it, but Fukashi understands his meaning. “We can’t afford another fire. We’ll be lucky if no one saw!”

Arthur bolts up, startling Nora. Fukashi puts an arm over her shoulders to soothe her.

“Just where are you going?” he demands as Arthur turns much more gently and lays Cel on the bed.

“To do damage control.”

“Not yet you aren’t!”

Arthur turns back around, something predatory in the slow movement. He glares at Fukashi. “We can’t afford to wait.”

Fukashi points to Cel. “She was scared but awake when she came out of the fire. You put her to sleep. What in Styx did you do, Arthur!”

Arthur closes his eyes, but the tight clench of his fists tells Fukashi he’s furious. When his eyes snap back open, he says flatly, “I can control people with my voice. I figured it out when I first came to Malais.”

Fukashi goes cold. He slowly rises from the bed, the ramifications of that ringing through his thoughts with a sinister chime. “Have you ever used it on me?” he asks.

“No,” Arthur says, “and until today, I hadn’t used it on Cel either.”

That at least explains his hesitation and the guilty pinch of his eyes.

“Anyone else?” he wants to know.

Arthur glances at Nora very briefly, then looks away before she can notice. “The forger I was getting impatient with. Some minor officials in the government. Vivienne Vonadieu.”

Fukashi swears quietly and runs his hands through his hair.

Nora. He used it on Nora. Who knows what he’s put in the poor girl’s head? No wonder she’d been so amenable to living with them.

“The fuck, Arthur? That’s much worse than wildfire!”

“I know.” Arthur stares at the window. The curtains are a geometric pattern in an ugly combination of orange and brown. “No one can know.”

“What about Leopold?” Fukashi wants to know. “You’re doing business with the man and you killed his wife.”

“Vivienne was a disgusting woman,” Arthur replies quietly, “and I didn’t risk using it on Leopold. There are limits in the long term for controlling people. I haven’t tested it enough to be confident that he wouldn’t remember in the long run.”

Fukashi paces from the window to the door. “There were a lot of people in that apartment building, and the others besides.”

“I know.”

Fukashi whirls on him. “Go. Fix it. When you get back, we’ll figure out what to do.”

Arthur whispers something to Cel before he leaves, and her eyes flutter open.

“Daddy?” she mumbles as he turns away.

“I’ll return soon.” He leaves without looking back, the door closing softly in his wake.

Nora crosses to the other bed and tries fussing with the shadow-blanket. When it slips through her fingers like smoke, she turns a questioning look on Fukashi.

“Teacher, are you alright?”

He sits back down and holds his head in his hands, thinking far too hard of that little glance Arthur had cast at Nora. He’s always known that Arthur is a very good liar, very good at keeping secrets. Sly as his namesake suggests.

“I’m alright, Nora.”

But you might not be.