Fire Dance by Ilana C. Myer

Author:Ilana C. Myer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

CHAPTER

15

THE need-fires of Manaia began as branches piled to the sky. For days students hauled firewood to the courtyard, assembling two mountainous piles with a space like a corridor between. Sendara Diar and Julien Imara made a slow circuit of the piles, inspecting them. The night of the festival, they would blaze as pillars of flame. It was hard to picture on a drab afternoon after rain, mist stealing through the courtyard like a ghost’s fingers. But Julien had heard from Sendara a little of what would happen on that night. The festival was to be held in two days; as it neared, Julien felt as if tension was squeezing her around the middle, that it would break her in half. The secret she carried—Julien Imara, a girl of no consequence who until now had had nothing but the pitiful fact of her own loneliness to hide.

They’d kill Valanir Ocune if they found him. He hadn’t said as much, but something in his manner told her that. And that had shocked Julien—more than finding him had, more than being selected for his plan to help the Court Poet. That such things could happen in the Academy.

After their meeting in the Hall of Harps that first night, he had taken her to an abandoned tower, where she huddled in her cloak against drafts. They’d sat at a small fire and he’d explained what he needed of her. “There is no danger in the work,” he said. “Not for you. But if you are found with me…”

“I’ll take that risk,” she said, when she saw he found it difficult to go on. It pained him to risk her safety, that was clear to her. It was the reason she trusted him—that, and the fact of who he was.

“My associate will be there to guard us,” said Valanir. “After all this is over, you must never let on to anyone that you know him, or people will wonder. His name must not be linked with mine. For his protection.” He paused. Firelight outlined his face, the mark on his eye. “It will be a dark night. No candles are permitted in the castle while the need-fires burn. The dark may serve us well.”

Now strolling in the courtyard alongside Sendara, she thought that they each, in truth, walked alone—if Sendara could be said to be alone, with the devotion of her father and Etherell Lyr at her beck. But certainly they were cut off from one another.

Julien would have thought to feel a degree of pridefulness from harboring a secret. To take comfort from the new importance it gave her. When she and Sendara walked together in the courtyard to inspect the piles, the other girl walked with her head bowed and her cheeks a rose tint as if her thoughts were far away. It was not hard to guess where they were. She’d once said, in response to something innocuous, “There’s so much you don’t know, Julien.”

Julien had not had a response to that.

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