The Fire Mage’s Fake Fiancée

By four o'clock, a fire mage would offer to pay Sera to pretend she wanted him.

For now, her petition had seven signatures and one thumbprint, and the clerk wanted her to remove the thumbprint.

“It obscures the margin,” he said.

Beyond the embassy windows, rain tapped the courtyard stones. The registration clock showed twelve minutes to closing. Sera put her warming pouch under her left wrist and drew the paper closer with her right. The pouch smelled faintly of scorched barley; Pella had left it too near the kitchen stove again. Its warmth made holding a pen possible.

“The margin contains no text.”

“A declaration should be signed.”

“Mistress Dossin cannot write. She can testify to the number of mornings her household tap has been locked.” Sera turned to the second sheet. “Her mark is witnessed here.”

The clerk examined the witness line as though hoping it might fall off.

She had spent the morning reducing fourteen households to three paragraphs. They wanted water before the laundries opened, rather than after the communal cistern had been drained for paying customers. Frost's district steward had called that a scheduling disagreement. Sera had called it denial of access, then crossed out the phrase when she realized it would permit him to argue about her language instead of the lock.

“Registration acknowledges receipt,” she said. “You need not endorse the remedy.”

That gave him somewhere respectable to retreat. He lifted his stamp.

The consultation-room door opened behind him.

“Lady Ansel? I need ten minutes.”

Sera recognized Caio Bellan before she turned. People had been describing his workshop accident for nine days, generally to explain why Fire should oversee its own repairs. The man himself was taller than the newspaper woodcut suggested, with wet dark hair and a coat whose left cuff had burned into a scalloped edge. He held a folded document between two fingers, safely away from the wet wool.

“You may have the minutes after my petition is registered.”

“It closes at four.”

“Yes.”

He looked at the clock, then at the hovering stamp. “I'll stand here.”

The clerk finally stamped both sheets. Sera waited for the ink to set before taking her receipt. She was mildly surprised Bellan had waited.

When the clerk left, Caio laid his document on the unoccupied end of the desk.

“Ninety days,” he said. “Paid. No actual wedding.”

Sera kept one hand on her petition.

“Are you selling a house?”

“An engagement.”

For several seconds she watched rain run off his hem onto the floor. At thirty-one, she had received proposals delivered through mothers, cousins, ambassadors and, once, a physician who thought marriage might make her stop working through supper. None had begun with a duration.

“Whose?”

“Ours, if you're willing.” He nudged the paper forward. “People say you're practical.”

“People also say I sleep in an ice chest. You should inspect your sources.”

He glanced at her warming pouch, and had the sense to say nothing.

She opened the document. The first paragraph was a proposed public declaration; the second mentioned attendance, clothes and reasonable conduct. No figure appeared beside compensation. Her name had been spelled correctly. The word obedience had not appeared, which was a low standard but an improvement on the physician.

“My commission appointment expires in six weeks,” she said. “An engagement cannot renew it.”

“It can get us nominated under the mixed-house inspection statute.”

“It can get a petition heard. Three houses still have to vote.”

“Three might, if Fire and Frost aren't fighting over every pipe.”

She looked up. “You propose paying me to stop fighting?”

His ears reddened. “That sounded better when I practiced.”

“With whom?”

“A cracked furnace lining.”

“An undemanding audience.”

He rubbed a patch of dried mortar from his thumb. It fell onto her immaculate desk. She found herself studying the hands that followed it: short nails, an old crescent scar, a blister protected with narrow linen. A working man's hands inside an heir's coat. The distinction might matter. It might also be exactly what he wanted her to notice.

“I won't sell my vote,” she said.

“I don't want it sold.”

“Then explain the work before explaining the disguise.”

Caio pulled out the visitor's chair, noticed the water dripping from him, and stayed standing. He described the workshop accident with surprisingly little ornament. A heating collar had split while he was testing a lining. His output had been too high. He had finished the test alone rather than wait for his fitter. The cracked collar had scorched a bench; no one had been injured. Fire's delegation now intended to remove his municipal inspection endorsement while letting him keep the private repair orders.

“They'll let me mend things,” he said. “They won't let me ask why they broke.”

“Perhaps because you broke one.”

“Perhaps. I still need to examine the ones I didn't.”

He did not smile that away. Sera eased her cramped fingers against the pouch.

“A joint inspector would need someone outside your family's accounts,” she said.

“You negotiate district water budgets. You can read an allocation without getting distracted by the expensive seal.”

“And Frost gains renewed inspection access before its provisional appointment lapses.” She tapped the paper. “Which makes this look very much like two compromised parties inventing a courtship to retain influence.”

“Yes.”

The plain admission was more troublesome than a denial. She could reject a lie quickly. A useful bad idea required work.

“Why an engagement rather than a commercial alliance?”

“A commercial alliance needs both estates' authorization. My aunt controls the Bellan estate office. She won't file one with Frost while their cooling claims are disputed. Personal declarations don't require her signature.”

“They do require personal honesty.”

“Then say no.”

She disliked how that answer loosened something in her. Outside, a cart rattled through the gate. She thought of the seven signatures downstairs, and of the steward who would open their petition after she had lost the position from which she could insist on an answer.

“I will examine the inspection petition. That is all I have agreed to.”

Caio nodded, too quickly, and reached for a second folded sheet. His sleeve caught the projecting handle of the desk brazier.

The little iron vessel tipped off its stand.

Sera shoved her petition away from the coals. Caio lunged between the brazier and the curtain, catching the iron handle with his left hand. Fire sprang from his bare right hand in a narrow orange ribbon. He grimaced and directed it toward the hearth, struggling to bank the startled output while holding the brazier clear of the cloth. His burned cuff brushed the flame, and the smell of singed wool sharpened.

The brazier struck the edge of the desk. Its remaining leg buckled. Sera caught his wrist to pull him back from the falling iron, her glove lying beside the petition where she had removed it to write.

His skin was startlingly warm. His fingers opened toward her, yielding to the pull.

The orange ribbon disappeared.

Coals scattered onto the hearth slab. One rolled under the desk, still red. Caio stared at his empty hand. The brazier clanged against the stone, and Sera kept her grip until he had regained his balance.

Then three heavy knocks came through the soles of her shoes.

They were spaced evenly. The glass in the window shivered on the third.

“Let go,” she said, meaning herself as much as him.

He stepped away as soon as she released him. With the iron shovel from the hearth he retrieved the stray coal, crouching to check that it had touched only stone. His movements were careful now. The remaining embers glowed steadily. Her hand felt pleasantly, astonishingly warm.

Pella arrived with the clerk at her shoulder and a kitchen cloth in each fist.

“Which of you broke my brazier?”

“I did,” Caio said.

“The stand was crooked yesterday,” Sera said.

“It was crooked yesterday because somebody moved it with their boot.” Pella knelt, picked up the bent leg with her cloth and inspected the dark patch on Caio's sleeve. “You'll pay for it. Did you burn her?”

Sera flexed her fingers. No blister, no pain. A faint pink flush crossed her palm, unfamiliar enough to make her look twice.

“I don't think so.”

Pella's expression changed. “You don't think?”

“Bring me water, please. Room temperature.”

The clerk stood near the door, clutching the stamp he had forgotten to put away. “Was that a tremor?”

“Write what you felt,” Sera told him. “Three knocks, shortly after the brazier fell. Ask the porter whether he felt them too. Don't call it anything yet.”

Caio remained crouched beside the coals. He turned his hand over and studied the old blister beneath its linen. Whatever had happened had left that untouched.

“Can you normally do that?” he asked.

“No.”

He looked frightened. She had expected delight, perhaps a claim that she was the answer to his accident. Instead he asked, “Are you certain you're all right?”

She sat, because warmth that unfamiliar deserved caution. Pella placed the water within reach and pulled the brazier well clear of both their feet.

“My resting temperature is low,” Sera said. “That does not make me resistant to burns.”

“I wasn't trying to test anything.”

“I know.”

His relief arrived visibly and left him embarrassed. She felt a small answering embarrassment of her own. For a moment she had been holding a stranger's wrist without negotiating any of the distance she ordinarily maintained. She remembered the exact shape of it far too clearly.

She drank. The warmth in her palm was fading.

“Tomorrow morning,” she said, “bring a lawyer who works outside your family office. Lio Fen, if he is available. I will ask my physician to come.”

“About the engagement?”

“About whether either proposal is safe enough to consider.”

Caio folded his inspection petition, leaving the engagement paper on her desk only after she nodded permission. He gave Pella his workshop address for the replacement brazier.

Sera watched him leave, then wrote down the time of the contact before the clerk's clock could make her doubt it. Beneath it she added the three knocks and the red coal that had kept burning. Her petition lay undamaged beside the receipt. She tucked both into her work folder; whatever Bellan wanted tomorrow, fourteen households still needed their water.