Fiametta walked around the pit, planning her spell. She would lay Uri's body on the side opposite the furnace. No need to include the furnace itself in the diagram of forces. For one thing, Thur and Tich would have to cross and recross her lines, to add wood, stir the melt, and adjust the play of the bellows. There was no call for magic in the purely physical process of melting the bronze. The moment when Thur knocked out the iron plug at the base of the furnace and the metal flowed across her line, that would be the proper moment to start channeling Uri's urgent ghost into this creation. Fiametta realized she was really vague about cooling times. Those iron bands would have to be broken loose to release ... Uri, but if done too soon the mold might burst and the statue slump; if too late, it might grow too stiff. Scaling up was always a problem. Papa had said. And she was scaling up this spell with a vengeance. I must be mad.
An unexpected sharp noise came from the chained Losimon, that Fiametta finally realized was a shriek, pushed out around his gag. The startled guard had recoiled to the end of his chain. On the other side of his pillar two kobolds lugging a bar of copper recoiled from him with twittering cries.
The Losimon tried to cross himself, and gargled through the cloth in his mouth, "Demons! Demons in broad day!" "
Ugly! Ugly Man!" squeaked the kobolds.
It was dusk, really, Fiametta decided, dancing at the sky. The courtyard was in shadow, and overhead thick clouds scudded across a purpling sty. It was growing chill. She could smell rain in the air.
"Over here." Thur motioned to the kobolds to bring their burden to the furnace. Tich ran to the kitchen with the news. By the time he returned with Ruberta and the nameless woman, a second pair of gnomes were emerging from the ground beside Thurs feet. There was something revoltingly organic about how the earth squeezed them forth, reminding Fiametta of the clown in the marketplace who extruded whole eggs from his bulging mouth for a trick. But they brought another copper bar. With a giggle, the first pair dove back headfirst into the earth. Then the third pair-emerged, cheerful as cicadas.
Thur began stacking the copper carefully in the furnace, alternating with more wood. Master Beneforte had filled a downstairs storeroom with select pine, laid in to dry especially for this project. The Losimons had taken some—how closely had her father calculated his fuel? They would find out. More kobolds, or the same kobolds, popped up like weasels. Fiametta soon lost count, but Thur did not. "That's the last," he said.
Fiametta came to his side as he backed out and closed the iron door to the furnace through which he'd been squeezing to load ingots and fuel. He rubbed his hair out of his eyes with the back of a dirty hand. He was big and warm, and his blue eyes were exhilarated. Even the absurd undersized robe he wore like a tunic, with his bare calves sticking out, could not quite make him look silly.
He could burn for this. For her. There was a momentum in this moment that had nothing to do with Ferrante. She could feel it, the drive of art from the inside out, the determination to complete. She had hated her father, some days, for being as willing to consume others as himself to fuel that drive. And what she'd hated in her father she was not at all sure she liked finding in herself.
"Are you scared?" she asked Thur.
"No. Yes. I'm scared I might do something to spoil all this beautiful preparation. I mean, the furnace alone is a work of art. No wonder his ghost lingered, cut off so close to this being finished. It's a wonder he's not howling around it. If I can bring this off—it would be a bride-price for your Papa worthy of you. Poor miner's son be damned!"
Be not! "Thur, you realize—I have no idea what the effect on the statue will be when the spell wears off." Nor on Uri.
"The little brass hare was fine, you said. It's going to be magnificent. You'll see." He paused. "We can light the furnace now."
"That's a job for me." Fiametta brightened in a whiff of nostalgia. "I used to light all of Papa's fires for him."
They gripped hands, then Thur stepped back. Fiametta closed her eyes. For you, Papa. And for Abbot Monreale, and Ascanio and his Mama, and poor Lord and Lady Pia, and Tich and Ruberta and her niece and the lady with no name. For all of Montefoglia. "Piro!"
The furnace roared, then the sound dropped to a busty hiss. Thur started pumping one bellows, and on the opposite side of the beehive Tich began working the second pair. In a private spot beyond the furnace, sheltered by the gallery, the nameless lady sat, watching with interest. The first light from the furnace picked out an approving glitter in her dark eyes. She drew her cloak around a kobold, one of a cluster at her feet, who turned its wrinkled face up to her adoringly. In the twilight, one could almost imagine them as children. Almost.
A few sparks wavering in the heat rose from the furnace vents, but not much smoke. The wood burned hot and dry and clear, just as it should. Not . .. not too conspicuous, Fiametta hoped. But we had better not be too long at this.
She rounded up Ruberta, and together they carried Uri's bier into the darkening courtyard. Enough light leaked from the furnace to prevent stumbles, but Fiametta decided to have Ruberta hold a lantern for the next part.
"I can draw the diagram and lay out the symbols, and then rest while the bronze is melted. As long as we are all careful not to step on them. I'll draw them as close and tight to the bier and the pit as I can. You hold the light so I can be sure there is no break in the line."
"Where's your chalk, girl?" asked Ruberta.
"This spell doesn't use chalk." She knelt and took a small sharp knife from the basket of tools and objects she had made ready. She rolled up her right sleeve, and turned her palm out to expose her wrist. She studied her veins. "Um."
Ruberta held her hand to her lips in dismay, but suggested faintly, "Parallel to your tendons, dear, not across them. If you still mean to be able to write or do anything else, after."
"Uh ... right. Good idea. Thank you." This was hard. Think of it as practice for childbirth. The lines had to be drawn with the mage's own blood. No one else's would do. She had to give Papa credit for that one, anyway. No easy way; she dug the knife in point-first and dragged it through her flesh. She had to do it again before the blood was flowing freely enough down her hand for her to write with her index finger. She cleared her mind, stepped to Uri's head, and began.
Her head was swimming by the time she'd murmured her way all around and closed her circle at the starting point. Another problem of scaling up. She stopped squeezing her arm and the blood oozed to a halt. She sat a moment on the ground to recover.
"Is it melting yet?" wheezed Tich to Thur, sagging on his bellows. "Is it time to add the tin?"
"Not nearly." Thur poked his head around the side of the furnace and grinned at him. "If you add it too soon, the tin exhales from the alloy and you lose your trouble and expense. We've hours to go yet."
Tich moaned. But after a few moments of whispered conversation, a couple of smirking kobolds crept out of the corner by the lady and took over his bellows, jumping and hanging off the handle like monkeys. Tich sweated and rested by Fiametta. The rest of the kobolds pitched in, alternated with diving in and out of the furnace in their shadow-form, hooting and giggling. The orange glow from the flames lit the demonic scene. The Losimon prisoner also saw it as a vision out of hell, it seemed, for he had given up his surly sneer and cowered, snivelling and weeping, on the far end of his chain, the whites of his eyes wide in the dare. Ruberta brought watered wine and bread and hard garlic sausage all around. Fiametta ate gratefully, but thought, We have to speed this up.