Firestorm

“Just watch, Terraling.”

I spun back to see the child dip her hands into the molten mass and hold it up . . . giggling while she did so. Two more scoops and she moved the small amount of lava to a hole she dug and poured it in. Mother goddess, she was playing in it.

I swallowed hard. It was one thing to know Salamanders dealt with the fire, but another to see a child play in an active lava flow.

“Come, meet my family.” Brand started down a set of steps cut into the mountain that led us on a switchback path to the floor. A soft meow snapped my head around as we reached the bottom. Peta stood at the top of the stairs.

Brand snorted. “We don’t need you following us, bad luck cat.”

She didn’t answer, just leapt from the stair to my shoulders where she landed easily and I fought not to crumple under her tiny weight, my bad shoulder reminding me it needed time to heal.

Peta balanced there, her tiny feet somehow impossibly heavy on my tender shoulder. “I told you I had a new assignment.” Her eyes stared into mine, glittering with her obvious distaste and the realization of what she said slammed into me.

I lifted my hands as I sputtered. “No, you’re kidding me right? I don’t need a familiar.”

But as I said it, I knew I was wrong. A familiar was the one soul I could depend on, the one soul that would have my back no matter what. But . . . “Peta, you must be mistaken, you’re meant for a Salamander. Not . . . me.”

She draped herself across my shoulders and the warmth of her body eased the ache in my injured shoulder. Her tail tickled down the front of my neck as it twitched. “I didn’t ask for this. If you have a complaint, get in line to take it up with the mother goddess.”

I turned to see Brand staring at us with wide eyes. “I’d get in line. That cat has lost more of her charges than any familiar in the Pit. Seriously, that cat is bad luck.”

Peta gave a barely felt shiver and I lifted a hand to her, putting one palm against the silken fur along her back. A simple choice lay in front of me. If Peta truly was my familiar, I didn’t want to have the kind of relationship she’d had with Loam, her previous charge. I wanted to have her on my side, a friend and confidant.

I lowered my hand. “She saved me twice already, Brand. If the mother goddess feels I am deserving of her then I am grateful.”

The twitching of her tail eased and she let out a soft breath against my neck but said nothing more. I took a step, feeling the change in my balance with her along for the ride. Three steps and I had it, walking as normally as if I’d always had a cat riding on my shoulders.

Brand arched an eyebrow and then shrugged. “It’s your life, but I’ll tell you now that my wife won’t be happy to have her in the house.”

My jaw tightened but I kept my mouth shut. I would need help to get Ash out alive and that meant for the moment I needed to keep Brand happy. As an Ender, he would have access to weapons and understood the layout of the Pit. My mind worked all the possible details, but the whole of it came to a simple piece. I had to find the armbands used for Traveling, steal them, and then break into the dungeon to get Ash. From there, we would get to the Traveling room.

A walk in the park on a sunny morning couldn’t be easier. And maybe if I told myself that enough, I’d believe it.

Brand led the way to a bridge that arched high over the lava, but even with that distance the heat was intense and my skin tightened as the moisture was quickly sucked out of me. I hurried across, passing Brand and not caring that he grinned at me. “Too much?”

A quick nod was all I gave him. Suddenly going back to the Deep for a swim in the Caribbean waters wasn’t looking too bad. If you discounted the sharks, Kracken, crocodiles, and tsunamis. On the far side of the bridge stood a large statue carved out of an opalescent white stone I didn’t recognize. The creature, a sinuous dragon, reached at least three times my height. I put a hand to it. “What is this?”

Brand stopped a few feet ahead of me. “A symbol of our world.”

“No, I meant the stone.”

“Don’t know, no one does. The statue has been there as long as Salamanders have existed in this mountain.”

He walked on.

“Guess that means this conversation is done,” I mumbled. Peta snorted.

We passed several homes and all activity slowly stopped. The women stood and stared at me, not bothering to hide the distrust, and in several cases, outright hate in their strange orange eyes.

“Be wary, Dirt Girl. You killed four men and these women know it,” Peta said.

I tried to swallow past the guilt rising in me. “Were they married?”

“One of them was,” Brand said, “He had a child on the way.”

Absolute sorrow washed through me and I stopped where I was, struggling to breathe. Those deaths had been necessary to save my family, but knowing I’d stolen a father from his unborn child? That was not who I was, I would never willingly hurt someone like that.

And yet I had done it without a thought. Without a care of who else I might affect as my spear thrust forward. “Mother goddess.” I leaned forward, putting my hands onto my thighs as the truth settled on me like a weight. I should be the one in the dungeon, awaiting my execution.

Peta butted her head against my ear, gaining my attention. “You do what you must to survive. We all do, Dirt Girl. That you feel their loss . . . that is good. When you stop feeling the pain of your actions . . .that is when you must be afraid. When you no longer care if you kill, then we have a problem.”