The Rest of the Story: The whole of
Fire can be found on my
Writings page in PDF format, while the portion of the story that's been published on this blog so far is on
this page.
For this chapter I return to Randall's point of view. I had decided to tell of the confronation which began in the last chapter somewhat differently, starting at the end. I'd already laid out the fundamental idea that I was using back in Chapter 4, but this gave me a chance to draw on it. I hoped for a somewhat creepy effect, and I think I've achieved that.
Chapter 11
Ghosts
If he hadn’t known that he was already too late, Randall would have run. Even knowing, he still hurried through the busy streets of Novaro with as much haste as a Dominus could show in public. For once, he appreciated the way people shied away from him, making it possible to speed through the city that kept most pedestrians to a crawl. Laws kept carts off the roads during the day, but nothing kept horsemen and beasts of burden out. Thus Randall found his way blocked most often by mules and horses who did not know that they should flee before a Dominus in a hurry. He dodged around them as well as he could, staying on the raised stepping stones which elevated pedestrians above the filth and manure which accumulated in the streets. Not all the manure was animal, either, as some people emptied their chamberpots without concern for their fellow citizens. Since upper stories tended to overhang the streets, there was always the risk of being hit, and nothing could ruin the dignity of a Dominus quicker than being drenched in human waste. For once, Randall didn’t keep an eye above as he maneuvered through the streets. Even the smell of sweat and refuse, which made any visit to Novaro unpleasant, faded from the mind as the odor of smoke became more and more pronounced.
He had hoped he would be quick enough to prevent this insane move by Kulsin, but he had discovered his failure the moment he left the Novaro tower. In a city of close-packed buildings, the rumor of fire spread faster than the fire itself. Even though no one would speak to a Dominus directly, he had heard of it long before he could see the smoke. Snatches of a dozen conversations placed the flames variously in the fullers’ district, in the Circus Aurelius, or in the Imperial palace itself. However, most of the rumors pointed toward the home of Marcus Julius Principius, the unnamed heir to the Emperor. Randall cursed Kulsin a hundred times over under his breath as he jogged toward the home he had never visited. The majority of the citizens had already fled by the time he came within a mile. No one in Novaro took fires lightly. A few nearby buildings had begun to burn, and the Fire Watch hastened to pull down structures lest they provide fuel for the burgeoning conflagration. They had used water from the fountains in the area to fight the flames, but the flow proved insufficient for the task. The fire had gutted the still blazing Principius home, and the Watch had abandoned their efforts to save the townhouse in order to focus on containing the fire. Randall wondered how many of the nearby rundown tenements they could have saved had they not spent so much effort trying to rescue the wealthy Senator’s home.
Despite the danger from smoke and heat, a sizable crowd had gathered near the Senator’s home. The Watch’s dark cloaks marked them a source of authority in the chaos as they worked feverishly to slow the fire, though a few mingled with the other group of people. The residents of the townhouse, Randall supposed. Some appeared to be slaves, but one woman, dressed too well to be a slave though not well enough to be the mistress, wailed aloud while a tall, red-haired girl in an undersized tunic tried to comfort her. For a moment, he thought he saw something odd about the girl, who had the look of a slave, but he was too busy trying to avoid notice to worry about her. Even in chaos such as this, maybe especially in this sort of chaos, a Dominus drew all eyes. The smoke helped obscure what people saw, however, and he wasted no time as he stepped into a side alley filled with smoke from the burning buildings. There he found a gaping hole which let him into the Principius villa.
He had wrapped himself in a protective Circuit that kept the flames at a foot’s distance as he stepped through the ruins. The shield’s ability to stop solid objects as well as fire kept a collapsing doorway from crushing his skull. Unfortunately, purifying the air proved more challenging, and even though he didn’t choke on the smoke, he found his eyes watering and his nose filled with the scent of burning wood. Simply walking through the house put out flames as they fell within the range of his dampening Circuit, but he followed that up with some more directed magic, snuffing out flame and fanning away smoke as he sought the cause of the fire.
It didn’t take long. In a small chamber which he supposed must have been a bedroom before the walls had burned away and the upper story spilled its contents inside, he found two badly-burned bodies lying among the broken crockery and shattered furniture. He could still recognize the black robe of a Dominus despite the fire’s markings. The charring surprised him more than the robe’s survival, as the cloth did not burn easily. Nothing but bones remained of the Dominus’s body, though he could easily tell that the other body had been a young girl. Hair and clothes had completely burned away, and the flames had consumed the flesh down to the bone in some places. Randall gagged as he dashed more wetness from his eyes. He had never met Lucia, and few identifying features remained in any case, but he didn’t know who else it could be. He fought to breathe past the tightness in his chest, spots flashing in front of his eyes. Only his fear of fainting in this burning house kept him on his feet. How could this have happened? Kulsin had wanted to bring Lucia to the City, probably hoping to frighten her into testifying against her uncle. After that, he’d have set her free as long as he didn’t really believe Aulus Principius had been training her. If he did believe that, Randall had no idea what he might have done, but surely not this. Even if Kulsin had decided to kill the girl, he wouldn’t have done it before she could testify. And all that aside, what had killed the Dominus?
Randall knew of one way to find out. Death memories tended to linger even when they did not create ghosts, and magic left its own trace. A death involving magic only a few hours old should still have a readable imprint, although the fire might have damaged it. Randall first brought the flames under control and cleared out the smoke, not a difficult task since the fire had pretty much burned itself out already. He then prepared his Circuit, carefully connecting filaments to the floor, the walls, the blackened brazier, anything that could hold a memory. The bodies themselves Randall ignored, as dead flesh never held anything a Dominus could read. He completed his Circuit with the Components necessary to turn magic into living memories. Carefully, in a small, steady trickle, Randall sent Essence, the very substance of magic, into the Circuit to bring the energized imprints to visible life.
A translucent image of a young girl appeared. She stood near where the bed had sat, only a few feet from the girl’s body on the floor. Her raven hair swung as she slowly shook her head, grey eyes wide as she screamed out words soundlessly at someone unseen. Randall wished he could hear what she was saying, but sound simply did not imprint well. She vanished suddenly, but a black-robed figure appeared almost immediately afterward, a Dominus standing near the door, forming a simple yet effective Circuit that should incapacitate its target.
Randall watched as Essence ran through convoluted channels. The reappearance of its target startled him, while the whirling vortex of Essence that surrounded her in response to the Circuit stunned him. Randall had never seen anything like it. The Domini disciplined themselves to use magic in strictly structured forms for specific, controlled purposes. A Dominus could only make very simple Circuits on the fly. Teams of Domini could join their abilities to make more complicated Circuits, but only at great effort over long time periods, carefully designing Circuits which they inlaid in physical objects that could hold them indefinitely. This swirling mass of magic differed from the structured magic of the Domini as much as a whirlpool differed from an aqueduct. The magical vortex twisted and tore at the Dominus’s Circuit, nearly wresting it from him as he struggled to maintain its function and focus. The girl tossed her head to and fro as she felt its diluted effects.
Suddenly another figure appeared, a red-haired girl at least a head taller than the other girl, and probably a few years older. A carving knife in hand, she rushed at the Dominus, coming from behind him where the doorway to the room had once stood. Her knife bounced off the shield protecting the Dominus, and his translucent image flickered as he shifted his attention from one girl to the other, the raven haired girl vanishing altogether from the tableau. The redhead tried to circle around the Dominus to get between him and younger woman, but he formed a simple and direct Circuit, a raw flow of magic which leapt from him to the girl, dropping her almost exactly where the body lay. She faded from sight as she died. The other girl popped back into existence, magic whirling around her once more as rage and fear twisted her face. A tendril of the whirlwind snapped out and latched onto the brazier still in the corner of the room. A gout of phantom fire leapt from it onto the Dominus. He tried to douse the small fire at the hem of his robes with magic, but more tendrils of the vortex encircled him, forming a less intense version of the whirlwind surrounding the girl. What had been a tiny, smoldering spark became an inferno in an instant, and he vanished within it, bursts of flame escaping to light the bed and other bits of cloth and wood. The magic remained a moment longer, encircling an upright corpse Randall could no longer see. The source of this storm remained quite still, watching with hollow eyes from inside her own whirlwind of Essence. Then magic and ghost faded together.
Randall watched phantom flames lick vanished walls, noting that the flames had left a stronger imprint than normal fire would have. Its rapid spread did not concern him as much as the red-haired girl. How could he have seen her die when he had also seen her alive outside? He had recognized her immediately. Why did the flame-licked body look as if it did not quite fit the slave girl? What had become of the other girl, the one around whom the magic swirled?
Before Randall could reverse the magic and watch the scene again from the beginning, she reappeared, kneeling next to where the body lay, tears streaming down her face and lips quavering as she mouthed indiscernible words. She reached out and rolled some invisible object over, into the space occupied by the body. Suddenly, magic whirled around both her and the body, and they
changed. The girl’s hair lengthened as its shade brightened to a fiery red, she grew taller and older before his eyes. The image of the dead girl reappeared as the magic embraced her, overlaid with the burned corpse still there. He watched as it shrank in age and height, its hair darkening to a raven black, its proportions exactly matching what remained of the body that lay there now. The ghost image of the corpse departed with the magic, but the live girl, now the twin of the one who had died, remained. Her now mature body did not fit well into the old tunic, which had not changed with her. She stared at herself, eyes wider than ever and face going very pale beneath the new freckles. Her eyes wandered the room wildly, until she finally noticed the fire. Lurching to her feet, she ran awkwardly from the room, nearly tripping over her own feet.
Randall watched her leave the reach of his Circuit. He had more questions than answers now. Who had died here? He thought that Lucia was young, probably twelve or thirteen, and dark hair made more sense for a Novar as well. The tall, red-haired girl looked like a Northerner, probably a slave. So had Lucia, the black-haired girl, survived, becoming the red-haired girl in the process? Or had the red-haired girl been masquerading as Lucia the whole time? Whoever she was, she had
shapechanged. From everything he knew, only the misnamed demons had that ability. Even without the shapechanging, the Essence had behaved so differently for her than for the Domini. Was that what happened when a woman learned the magic? Randall doubted it, but the alternative scared him more. What if she really were a Malwer? Was her brother a shapechanger as well? If Randall couldn’t tell her identity for certain, he couldn’t know whether they shared the same blood at all. He had to find the red-haired girl before she changed into someone, or something, else.
First, though, he had to deal with this mess. A sharp surge in the flow of Essence brought the ghostly flames much closer to life. Randall could smell the smoke and feel the rush of heat, he could see the fire which filled the room gain the same substance as real flame. As suddenly as it had come, it vanished, the increased flow of magic washing away the imprint, rendering it blank to any other Domini who came by. Whatever else happened, he didn’t want Kulsin and his lackeys hunting Lucia down and destroying her, which they most certainly would do if they discovered the truth. It would be better for them to think her dead. He knew that such obstruction bordered on Forbidden; that its discovery could make him a Renegade. He also knew that Kulsin and his ilk would label her a murderer, an enemy of the Domini, unable to see a frightened young girl who had reacted in terror and anger, which is what he dearly hoped
he had seen. Randall didn’t want Lucia harmed unless it became absolutely necessary. If it did, he’d do it himself. If he could.
Randall weaved through the convoluted streets of another city. It did not even occur to him to marvel that he had come hundreds of miles in less than an hour. Instead, the upcoming interview occupied his mind, except for that part which he dedicated to navigating the haphazard city. While the Domini had laid out the main thoroughfares in an orderly and sensible manner, the narrow streets and alleys which had sprung up around them obscured that order. The Inner City made Novaro look well-planned. Small streets crossed the thoroughfares from every direction, sometimes five or six coming together at a single point. These streets varied in size from just wide enough for a man to large enough for an army to march ten abreast. Their construction differed as well. While large granite blocks paved the main arteries, the smaller roads could be made of bricks or stones or gravel. It all came from letting the Domini build their own city, placing homes and their corresponding streets as needed rather than letting Philosopher planners lay the whole thing out from the start. The homes were as diverse as the roads, ranging from palatial to quaint, and a few that were both. Size and design did not always match, and a few Domini had tried to create grand structures without sufficient room, while others seemed content with sprawling simplicity. Architectures crossed the world, from Novar to Kairnin to Manuelite. Quite a few bore no resemblance to any culture’s architecture, while others borrowed elements from all of them.
The home of Lucia’s uncle had the simple lines of a Novar townhouse, tamed to a smaller size than the homes in which he must have grown up. Still, it held Aulus Principius and his jailers comfortably. Four or five of them stood at positions both inside and outside the home around the clock to make sure that the prisoner couldn’t go anywhere. Randall doubted that the guards held him in place as tightly as the oath he had given to the Senate. Aulus Principius kept his word.
Randall walked up to the door, receiving barely a glance from the Dominus on guard there. Kulsin had given no orders to prevent Aulus from receiving guests, and Randall had visited him often before the arrest, although he had not come since. He had meant to come, but his shame at the role he had played in the Senator’s house-arrest had encouraged him to put it off. The longer he went without talking to Aulus, the harder it became to face him and explain both his actions in the Senate and his lengthening absence. Only now, with the shock of what he’d just seen still muddling his thoughts, did urgent need force him to seek out Aulus Principius no matter how awful it felt.
Randall found the Senator in his reading room, reclining on a couch while he examined a yellowed scroll. Another Dominus sat on a stool nearby. Cubbyholes filled to overflowing with scrolls, tablets, and books seemed to interest Aulus’s keeper less than the blue and green rug on the floor. At the new arrival’s look, the guard left to give them some privacy. Randall had no illusions about the guard’s discretion or loyalty, so he formed a Circuit to keep their voices confined to the room.
Aulus put down his scroll, sat up, looked at his visitor carefully, then said without preamble, “Kulsin tells me you betrayed me.” His tone was too neutral for the words.
Randall’s paused halfway onto the vacated stool, his planned speech slipping from his mind. “That’s not... exactly true.”
“Not
exactly true? Well, I’m relieved.” Randall had forgotten how sarcastic Aulus could be. He forced himself to sit down.
“I’m trying to do what’s right, Aulus.”
“And that includes betraying my trust?”
“I don’t know what it includes! I just know that neither you nor Kulsin are right.”
“And you are?”
“Maybe I am, maybe not...” Randall shook his head, deciding to deal with the issue by avoiding it. “That’s not why I came here. Kulsin sent Tian to try to take your niece.”
“I’ve been expecting this. If he harmed her... wait a moment. What do you mean by ‘try’?”
“Tian is dead.”
“Dead? Did she kill him?”
“You don’t seem particularly surprised.”
“I know something of what she’s capable of, but obviously not enough. Tell me what happened.”
“Not much remained by the time I arrived. There were two bodies. One belonged to Tian, the other looked like Lucia’s.”
“He killed her!” Aulus bolted to his feet, causing Randall to nearly overbalance on his stool. The older man’s hands clenched and unclenched, his face flushed with anger.
The younger Dominus hastened ahead. “No, no! Tian killed Lucia’s slave girl. The tall red-haired one.”
The fury drained out of Aulus, the harsh lines of his face softening. “Jaelin. Her name was Jaelin. What happened to Lucia?”
“I raised the ghosts to see what had happened. Tian tried to stun Lucia, but she resisted somehow. Essence whirled around her, and Tian’s Circuit couldn’t hold together. The slave girl--Jaelin, you said--attacked the Dominus. He killed her, and Lucia killed him. Aulus, I’ve never seen anything like it. I didn’t think Essence could behave that way--she just reached out to a brazier and threw the flames at Tian. Did you know about this?”
“I’ve seen her do things before, but nothing like that. I can believe it though. What happened to Lucia?”
“When Tian was dead, she went to Jaelin, and they both
changed. She became the slave girl, and Jaelin’s body became hers.”
“Are you saying she changed shape?” Aulus looked at Randall hard. “Are you sure you didn’t misread the ghosts?”
“I’m perfectly sure. I had seen the red-haired girl outside, before I went into the house. She was gone when I came back out, though. You didn’t know about the shapechanging, did you?”
“No I didn’t. Did anyone else see this?”
“No, and I wiped it before I left. Kulsin claims you’ve taught her in defiance of our laws. This would convince him beyond all doubt.”
“Taught her? I’ve spent months trying to figure out how she’s doing these things. How could I have taught them to her?”
“I’m not saying that you have, I’m telling you that Kulsin believes you have. What have you learned about her? Do you know what she is?”
“She’s a frightened young girl, one we have to find.”
“How? If she can change shape, she could be anyone by now.”
“I don’t think so. She barely understands what she’s doing. I watched her for months, remember, and it’s obvious she has no real control over it. She may not even be able to change back.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. To do that sort of thing would require precise control. I can’t imagine the complexity of the Circuit. You can’t do anything at all by accident.”
“Randall, you’re assuming that her magic works like ours. I can’t tell you how it works, but I know she doesn’t see Essence and manipulate it directly. I don’t think she sees it at all.”
“But how--”
Aulus began to pace, his quick strides taking him the length of the small room almost as soon as he turned. “We know that Essence reacts to the mind, that it’s influenced in some way by a person’s consciousness. If we thoroughly understood that interaction, it’s feasible we could read a person’s mind by observing the ebb and flow of Essence. What if it works the other way as well and Essence can affect a person’s mind? What if that person were sensitive enough to its subtlety that she began to understand what its influence meant, that this sensation meant that someone nearby were angry, say? Like the way we hear sounds, identify them as words, and understand the concepts, all the while not even recognizing them as vibrations in the air--to us, they’re just words.”
“So you’re saying that Lucia’s so sensitive to Essence that she knows what it means without even being aware of it? I don’t see how this explains her ability to do things with it.”
“Well, she’s more sensitive to it, but it’s also more sensitive to her. Essence responds to everyone. We can speculate about mind-reading because it is affected by a person’s thoughts. You and I were born with the ability to approach it in a different way than normal people. What if, in Lucia’s case, Essence responds to her just like it responds to everyone else, but more strongly? She doesn’t manipulate it by teaching her mind to focus on it in a new way--it’s as natural as speaking is for us. If she can understand the vibrations in the air, how much of a leap is it for her to make her own vibrations. It may be harder, but she’s already past the hardest part, understanding what they mean.”
“Do you really think that’s how it works for her? It’s... incredible. I can’t imagine how it could be true.”
Aulus stopped his pacing to look Randall in the eyes. “It’s as much speculation as anything else. I’ll tell you this, though, in all the time I watched her, she never seemed to notice Essence itself. She always seemed to focus on what, or who, she was manipulating.”
“If this is so, shouldn’t you be able to tell? If Essence is so sensitive to her, Lucia should be broadcasting her thoughts. Even if we can’t read what particular thoughts she’s thinking, but we should see the ripples.”
“You couldn’t tell from the ghosts, but sometimes you can see how Essence responds to just her thoughts, even when she’s not changing anything. Randall, imagine what she could teach us. We spend years experimenting in order to figure out the Circuits to do simple tasks. We could discover as much in a few moments just by watching how she does those things.”
“You might think it’s wonderful; others will find it terrifying. Kulsin, for example. If he knew about this, he’d want her dead.”
“We’ll have to keep him away from her, then.” Aulus fixed Randall with a look that demanded, although the words came out as a plea, “Will you help her? Whatever you think of me, you can’t let Kulsin kill her just because he doesn’t understand her power.”
“I’ll do what I can, but you have other problems right now, Aulus. Kulsin intends to Expel you.”
“That’s what he intended to do, but what evidence does he have now? You said he’ll think Lucia is dead, so he doesn’t have anything left to work with.”
“He’ll have your nephew testify.”
The older Senator smiled grimly. “If he does that, he’ll be the one defying our laws. He can’t have an Initiate testify.” Even Aulus agreed with that law. Redleaf made the students too susceptible to persuasion for them to make reliable witnesses. Besides, no student should know about the internal politics of the Domini that early.
“Kulsin plans to promote the boy to Acolyte.”
“Victor’s too young for that; he hasn’t even been here a year yet. Kulsin can’t possibly think he’s ready to advance.”
“There’s precedent. I skipped a year, so did you.”
“We had superior educations, making some of the mundane training unnecessary, but even then it took two years. If he’s like us, Victor still needs that long to develop a firm grasp on magic before he can be made an Acolyte.”
“His grasp on magic is better than you think. It almost seems like he has an intuition for it.”
Aulus waved that away. “This is too transparent, Randall. Promoting Victor to Acolyte before he’s ready might kill him. My allies will see through this charade of Kulsin’s and keep Victor where he is.”
“No they won’t, Aulus. If--and I do mean if--they have the boy’s best interests at heart, they know that whatever risk promoting him now incurs, it’s better than the alternative.”
“What alternative?”
“He’s learning too fast, Aulus! Don’t you realize what that means? No one learns this quickly. It takes us years to do even simple things, but he does it like he’s known how all his life. Some of the conservatives think that Kulsin’s playing politics when Victor should be dealt with more directly. It frightens them, and they’re not the only ones. Seeing him work is unnerving. All of his instructors are worried, even me.”
“What are you saying? You don’t believe the old myths, do you? That he’s some sort of doppleganger?”
“Kulsin thinks it’s simpler than that, fortunately. He thinks you taught him. If he thought it was the other... The old records warn that it’s possible--”
“That’s a myth, a legend with no substance. No one really believes in them anymore,” Aulus scoffed.
“That, Aulus, is what brought you to this point. You truly believe, deep down, that everyone thinks like you do. Anyone who disagrees is either stupid or lying.”
“And what do you think? Do you really believe he’s a doppleganger out of some fairy tale?”
“No, I don’t. But some Senators think it’s possible.”
“Ridiculous!”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Then you do believe in dopplegangers?”
“I don’t believe that your nephew is one. I also don’t believe that the existence of them is as ludicrous as you think. I saw what your niece did, remember? I want to believe you’re right about her abilities and she somehow does it all by accident. Note, it’s less farfetched to believe that some
thing has taken her place. It’s not a leap of logic to think that something like it has taken Victor’s place as well. So don’t tell me it’s impossible.” Randall came to a halt, his argument spent. He waited for Aulus to respond, but that didn’t happen, so he filled the silence himself. “At the least, you can be certain that some of the Senators believe. If Kulsin wanted to pursue that particular course, it’d be messy. No one’s spoken the word yet, but you can hear the threat in Kulsin’s diatribes. Your supporters will go along with what he wants rather than risk him making the accusation. The thing is, the boy scares them as well. Some of them are more comfortable with the idea that you taught him.”
“And what do you think?”
“I don’t know. Did you teach Victor?”
“Will you believe me if I say no?”
“You’ve never lied to me, Aulus. You’ll dance around the truth if you want to hide something, but if you tell me straight out I’ll trust you.”
“Then, no, I did not teach my nephew. What will Kulsin do when he discovers that?”
“He probably won’t accept it. You know him--he never lets facts get in the way of his beliefs.”
Aulus’s laugh was short and bitter. “You’re right, of course. He also never lets his beliefs get in the way of politics. If Victor denies that I taught him, he has no grounds to attack me. What will Kulsin do then?”
The answer was so obvious it appalled Randall that he hadn’t thought of it earlier. “He’ll have to go after Victor. The possibility of doppleganger won’t go away now that the Senators are thinking of it. With no alternative explanation, the proceedings for Inquisition will take place, whether Kulsin really wants them to or not. Since Inquisitions always find what they’re looking for, Victor will die. Do you think Kulsin realizes that? He’s perfectly convinced that you taught him, so maybe he hasn’t considered the possibility that he can’t prove it. I don’t think he wants the boy dead.”
“Oh, Kulsin’s considered it, all right, and he knows that I’ll consider it as well. It’s very clever. The only way my nephew will survive is if Kulsin can prove that I taught him. I can only defend myself if I’m willing to sacrifice my nephew.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I need to get a message to Victor. Will you deliver it? You owe me this much.”
Randall sighed, knowing that he could not argue against that. “Okay, I’ll help you as long as it means helping Victor.”
“Good. Come back tomorrow, I should be ready then.”
Somewhat annoyed at the dismissal, Randall departed. The guard, who had been standing at the door, went in the moment he left.
This is a 5,166 word chapter of a 90,110 word novel.
I'm hardly the first person to suggest that ghosts are not so much souls as memories, impressions of someone's life remaining where they had passed. I'm not really sure I believe in ghosts at all, but the idea appealed to me, so I inserted it into my fantasy novel. I also liked the idea that memories of strong emotion and magic last longer, which is what caused the players in this scene to fade in and out, hopefully adding to its overall creepiness.
If this book is ever published, and
if I get any say in its cover art (which is seldom the case, I understand), this is the scene I want on its cover.
I've just recently finished reading two books, George R.R. Martin's
A Feast for Crows, and Robert Jordan's
Knife of Dreams. I've noticed that Martin is absolutely brutal to his characters, killing and crippling them without much concern, while Jordan preserves even the smallest character until he absolutely has to give them up. I don't think either path works that well. Killing off important and semi-important characters increases the sense of risk and makes the story more powerful, but go too far and it's hard to get attached to anyone. I always read books for the characters, and I'd like my readers to get attached to mine, enough so that they worry whenever their lives seem at risk. I killed off a few characters in
Fire. Jaelin wasn't the first--that honor belongs to Victrinus, I believe--but I'll admit I've become kind of attached to her. She was a rather minor character in the book so far, but in later chapters certain things come out that make her far more interesting. I began to regret her death, which is how I knew it was the right thing to do. A death that means nothing is cheap, and I don't like cheap deaths in fiction.
from Amazon, it may be a while before I come up for air. I'm also working on Fire's sequel, which is tentatively titled Water. Very original, huh? Remember, these are both part of