Flamecaster by Cinda Williams Chima Page B

you really think that would help—to be somewhere else, for a while, anyway?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Adrian said. “Maybe. Probably.” The tea was kicking in, and his thoughts had become clumsy, aimlessly stumbling into each other.
    â€œIf you feel guilty about your father’s death, one way to heal is to help others.” She seemed to be trying to convince herself. “There are so many people dying needlessly that want to go on living. Saving a life can offset the taking of life.” The Voyageur noticed his drooping eyelids. “Come,” she said. “Sit down on the bed before you topple over.”
    He moved to the pallet on the floor, then eased into a lying-down position.
    Taliesin sat on a stool next to him. “In truth, it may be safer for you to go south with me and let everyone here think you’re dead. You can heal yourself by healing others. Perhaps that’s what the Maker intends for you.”
    â€œI don’t understand,” Adrian said. “How does it make sense that the Maker would take my father and Hana and leave me behind?”
    â€œIt’s easy to die, Mageling,” Taliesin said, stroking his hair. “It’s staying alive that’s hard work.”

6
A LONG FUSE
    It had been a long time since Jenna Bandelow had been up the road that led to the Number Two mine. As that one played out, new ones had opened, farther west and lower down.
    There had been changes since four years ago, when Maggi and Riley had died. Most of the trees were gone now, burned for charcoal to feed the hungry steel mills, or cut down so there wouldn’t be cover for ambushes along the road to the garrison house. The Ardenine regulars (everyone called them mudbacks because of their uniforms) had moved the headquarters up here so the soldiers coming and going wouldn’t have to pass through the dangerous streets of the city, where soldiers disappeared on a regular basis.
    Four years ago, it had been a miserable March day, with the sleet pelting down, and the wind howling out of the witchy north. Today, it was a clear cold night in October, but the wind still blew, carrying the promise of winter from the fresh snowfalls in the Spirit Mountains.
    Last time, Jenna had been packed into the wagon with Riley and Maggi, who were about to die, but none of them knew it. This time, she sat high in the driver’s seat, with a slightly older boy named Byram beside her. A younger boy rode in the back with the barrels. He called himself Mick.
    They shouldn’t have much to say to each other, but that didn’t keep Byram from talking all the way from town.
    Byram wouldn’t be his real name—not if he was smart. He knew Jenna as a boy named Flamecaster. Sometimes she went by Sparks instead. That was just easier, all the way around. It had been so long since she’d been a girl that she wasn’t sure she remembered the ins and outs of it.
    Jenna preferred to keep her mouth shut and play her cards close. That way, if any of them was caught, they wouldn’t have much to say to the blackbirds, either.
    When she wasn’t on Patriot business, Jenna answered to the name of Riley Collier, a skilled blaster from the Heartfangs. She rotated from mine to mine, boring the blasting holes, packing them with powder and setting them off, moving rock off the coal seams so the miners could get at them.
    It was a good job, for a mining job, if you had steady hands and the nerve to do it. Unlike some of the other jobs, it didn’t require a lot of muscle. It also wasn’t so strenuous that you were fit for nothing else when you went off shift. Her days were shorter, with nobody looking over her shoulder, because none of the bosses was eager to go down there with her. It allowed more time in the fresh air, less underground, and she’d learned useful skills—skills she would be using tonight.
    They were nearing the turnoff to the garrison house when