The Price of Fire is uploaded! It’s currently available for pre-order (to be published January 3, 2023)! I really enjoy writing The Alchemist’s Agent series. I have so much fun getting to play in new worlds, and to think of what force actually makes a gigantic empire function. To me, as much as I love the grand adventures and cataclysmic action a la Lord of The Rings, what fascinates me are the smaller stories. All the people who work and live in the empire.

They may not lead an army, or have a noble quest but they make the world what it is. So the continued adventures of Lady Azadiya and Ibram and Ahksell might never reach the imperial court (although you never know with an alchemist…) but I hope you all enjoy reading about them as much as I love figuring out how to write them! The ebook is going to be available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google, Apple, Smashwords, and all the other usual suspects for $0.99 until the pre-order is over. After that, it will be set up as its normal price of $4.99 (USD).

If you’d like to have a taste of what you’re in for, here’s the cover and a sample first chapter below:

Chapter One

Ibram ignored the explosion. The loud clap of thunder and the whoosh of displaced air was no more exciting than the bangs and whistles folk grew accustomed to hearing living so close to the living mountain; it barely rattled the tiled roof of The Blinded Seer. He merely tapped the fallen rafter dust off his bread roll while the potgirl ran about the draughtshop, slinging weighted linen squares over the wide-mouthed pitchers of ale on the customers’ tables. Ibram shook his head and sighed. His wedge of cheese was now liberally sprinkled with the remains of a thousand years’ neglect of housekeeping.

“Shouldn’t you be seeing to that, Agent?” one of the merchants on the farther side of the draughtshop called out to him. “Thought you folk stood in for the village militia around here.” 

Ibram lifted his head at the low murmurs of agreement from the merchant’s fellow travelers. The merchant wore the billowy red trousers and soft laced over-robe of a man from one of the Vissilian provinces further east. He’d traveled a long way to be wrong. Still, as a representative for the Sect of Seven Fires, Ibram needed to be polite.

He mustered up a smile. “Never you worry,” he called out. “It’s nothing but a little light alchemical entertainment.” The merchant did not look convinced; he hunched his thin shoulders and glanced up at the wooden beams which supported the tiled roof.  Ibram tried once more. “It will be a story to keep you company on the road west, to be—”

A roiling, bellowing cacophony bloomed at Ibram’s left; the explosion slammed wide the wooden latticed window shutters, and shook the walls. Ibram threw himself to the ground, body shuddering as the very air itself tore at his back as if gripping him by the back of his clothes. He hit the rush-covered floor flat, and knocked his chin to the side as he wrapped both arms about his head. His teeth clacked together, his mouth flooded with the taste of hot copper. He heard the men and women about him shouting, some in alarm and some in anger, the creak of overturned furniture and the sharp shriek of roof tiles smashing to ground outside.

Yilka’s megrims. Ibram groaned through a hacking cough as his lungs shuddered against his ribs; he rocked himself to his hands and knees. The air was thick with dust that clogged his throat and nostrils. He spit and frowned at the sight of blood mixing with the rushes on the floor. The potgirl’s mouth opened in a silent scream as she scrambled back under the counter. He poked inside his mouth with his tongue and winced; he’d bitten his lower lip. His ears felt stuffed with wool, the sounds of shock and people running as dim as if he were standing atop a tall cliff. He squinted as he coughed and spat again. A clanging bell pierced the air, and then three more.

That blast had been close by, or else so large they’d lost the living mountain and every alchemist who lived upon it. Ibram’s neck was loose as a jelly as he wobbled to his feet, and stumbled into a run out of the door of the draughtshop. Panicked folk ran past him on the street.

The air was yellow with smoke, rather than grey. The center of the blaze seemed to be down the street. Ibram retched at the taste of smoke and dust in the back of throat, and tucked his face into his elbow to breathe through his gambeson. He cast his eyes skyward; he saw the green tree-covered mountains high above Lityen; the ridge looked untouched. The folk screaming as they ran past must have been evacuating from the scene, rather than simply panicking.

Flares shot out into the air, high and bright enough to be seen in midday—two red and one green. The Preceptory of Yseult had seen the trouble; they were on the march. Ibram fell more than stepped off the walkway into the street, and ran smack into a woman with two buckets yoked on her shoulders, pushing past a family clutching their children in their arms. She shouted—or at least he thought she did—her mouth moved. The bells clanged steadily, louder than anything, and his ears refused to hear any less volume.

“Fire!” Ibram yelled, and the woman nodded quickly.

“Fire!” he thought she shouted back, and then rushed past him.

Ibram staggered, regained his balance, and took off after her. An Attendant in green and grey with her gar in hand stood in the middle of the street. She slammed the butt of the gar into the ground and swept her right arm to the left, pushing most of the fleeing crowd to the side. It didn’t so much contain the chaos as compress it, but the woman with the yoked buckets ran past to join the line of volunteers heading into the smoke. Ibram ran past the bucket line. The sky darkened from yellow to slate grey as they drew near the corner of the street.

Ibram saw the bucket brigade stretch off to the stone and clay fountain that provided that part of Pillared Circle with its fresh water. His stinging eyes widened. Harsh, caustic smoke filled his nose; he sneezed. The short row of connected honeycomb buildings stood ablaze before him; sparks shot out from their shared chimney, but behind that, shot orange and gold flames high above even the stone chimney. The bakery-mill tower was all afire, flames outlined every beam of wood. A muffled man’s voice—almost like Ibram were underwater—floated past his hearing. He looked to the side; Amota Berac stood by a group of villagers, tall and wide as a Jolek’s pine tree, directing them into a partially collapsed building. Ibram shook his head and pulled his ears until finally something popped or cleared itself, and the sounds of a great many folk panicking reached his ears in full voice.

“Amota Berac!” he yelled above the din as he made his way towards him. He choked in the smoke, and then cleared his throat. “Berac! Uncle!”

Amota Berac turned his head, and frowned until he caught sight of Ibram. He nodded sharply and then pointed towards the right of the blaze. “Grab some of these quivering feneks, and evacuate The High Climber!” he bellowed in his deep voice. “I’ve got The Sun Eagle in hand!”

Black smoke belched up to the sky as part of the High Climber’s roof lost its fight with the flames. Ibram wrapped his arm about his face again, and nodded. A line of folk stood gawping nearest an intact plinth, hunched together with dire faces as they watched the evening courtyards’ collapse.

“Either you’re for the water line, or you come with me!” Ibram yelled.

The closest man startled as if woken from a daze. He looked about himself, and then staggered off the walkway in the direction of fountain. A pack of four men and women joined Ibram’s side. He nodded, and gestured to the second exit off Pillared Circle.

“There’s folk in those courtyards!” he yelled, and charged forward. They followed.

The row of small evening courtyards was closed for the daytime, bless Yilka the Green’s third and most beautiful face, but flames ate at their conjoined roofs. He dodged past the ever-growing tendrils of the bucket line to the front of The High Climber. He pressed the back of his hand to the right side door of the evening courtyard, and then the left; both panels were hot.

“I don’t see anyone!” one of the women with Ibram shouted. She stood with her hands shading her eyes by the window on the left side of the door, which showed no flames nor belched smoke.

“That’s nothing,” her companion said. “That’s for the door guards! It only looks out.”

Ibram backed up a few steps. His chest shuddered with the force of his coughing; his lungs ached this close to the smoke. He could hear the hissing crackle of flames above the noise of the other rescuers, and felt sparks spit down from above, singing his forehead. The thick wooden doors were shut, but the hinges said they opened outward. The strap hinges on either side were in good shape, and they barred both with a thick plank while closed for the day. The place would be cinders before they battered their way through. Ibram shook his head, and wiped sweat from his face.

“Pry open—” he coughed. “Pry open the window!”

The roof of The High Climber was about to join its neighbors. Around them the fire roared, a sooty echoing bellow that rattled Ibram’s brains in his skull as its heat singed the flesh of his skin and hands. He drew his sica, and jammed its sturdy curved blade between the wooden lattice frame and the wall. One of the women jammed her own dagger on the opposite side and began to wrench the wood free.

The ground rumbled beneath his feet and refused to settle. Ibram widened his stance for balance. Behind him, drums began to beat. He braced himself with one foot against the wall, and risked a glance behind him. Attendants from the Preceptory of Yseult rushed up the street in three lines, all in green and grey, with bandages wrapped around their mouths. If there had been air in Ibram’s lungs for a sigh of relief, he would have done so in a heartbeat.

“The Water’s Breath!” one of his little helpers shouted. “They’ve brought the voice of the river to us!”

Ibram nodded, briefly transfixed. It wasn’t often even in Lityen that folk saw alchemy perform its lavish achievements, but the Water’s Breath certainly qualified. The double front lines of Attendants carried the broad tapered ceramic barrels braced on their own wooden gars. The back formation, three deep, beat the drums that sent the low rumbling noise up through those same barrels and brought the fire low. As they approached, the flames shrunk back dying under the thud-thumping bass thunder, transmuting the very air into something the fire feared most—as if tons of water were pouring out instead of rings of air. The pressure from the devices made Ibram’s ears pop. The heads of the bucket lines surged forward with ragged yells, swinging actual water from the fountain to cover the embers and flames the Water’s Breath could not yet suppress.

A brace of Attendants launched themselves high in the air and rolled into a landing nearest the burning evening courtyards. One of them, dark-skinned, taller than a mountain and twice as wide, and who carried a gar that must have been seven feet tall in his left hand, waved at Ibram. Ibram gasped a laugh and shook his head.

“Ahksell!” he called out. “There’s a door I need knocked down, if you’ve a moment!”

Ahksell rushed forward, and lunged with his gar. He yelled as he stamped the ground with his leading foot, and thrust the wooden staff forward. The double doors bubbled inwards as if facing an invisible battering ram, but held. Ibram waved his group of helpers away from the display of force.

Ahksell drew back his gar with a swift jerk, and the doors followed, bowing out; the hinges whined and broke with a shattering crack. Wood splinters flew through the air; Ibram ducked, throwing his arms over his head. The Water’s Breath rumbled up from the earth, shaking Ibram’s bones from his feet up as it suppressed the fires. He heard answering booms around him as the other Attendants ploughed inside the neighboring structures. The heavy wooden doors thudded to the ground. Ibram bounced out of his crouch and ran forward; an invisible hand yanked him back just as two servants stumbled out of the smoke-filled doorway and collapsed to the ground.

***

It was the work of hours to put out the flames, even with the Water’s Breath in full use, and every hand either throwing a bucket or dragging a body away from the wreckage. The bakery-mill had been the worst of it, of course, but its demise had spelled disaster for its neighbors. When its tower had blown, the alchemists had been forced to collapse the rest of the building on top of it to try and keep the flames from spreading.

Ibram watched the crowds of folk picking through the smoking wreckage from his position by the fountain. The Attendants from Yseult had set down the Water’s Breath and left himself and a few other younger agents to guard it, as if anyone with sense would touch an alchemist’s property after that little display. Now, several of them—those not brought low from the alchemists’ continuous drumming—were engaged in raising large sections of burnt wood and shifting piles of cracked stone to search for survivors. The healers had erected a tent for the wounded, and Ibram could see Doctor Berot yelling at a group of young villagers carrying empty buckets.  

Ibram sat down on the edge of the fountain, and coughed. He hacked and spat on the ground, and tugged on the back of his hair. His throat rasped from all the smoke still in the air. He breathed carefully, but wound up with his head between his knees, regardless, as he hacked something acrid free from his throat.

“Ib-la,” Amota Berac said, and Ibram lifted his head. “Do Ama na’nu eeteight huskvith, Di monen.”

“Ker Ama…” he coughed. “I’ll ring a bell to Yilka the Green and break an egg for Catha the Grey,” Ibram answered in Vissilian, too tired to remember his Merrilian like a good boy. “Ama can’t complain I’m reckless if I’m thanking a goddess or two, to be sure.”

His uncle stood before him, just as layered in soot, with scraggled bits of wood in his dark beard. He raised both hands and gripped Ibram’s jaw, turning his head this way and that. Ibram twitched his head free, and coughed.

“Feeling better?” Amota Berac rasped, and cleared his throat. He beat little bits of charred wood from his arms and the front of his gambeson, rubbing his torch-shaped bronze brooch clean. “We all of us had a healthy swallow of smoke.”

Ibram shrugged and rocked to his feet with a groan. “I’ve a mind to dunk myself in the nearest stream, if that’s what you mean.” He ran both hands through his hair, and then tucked it behind his ears. “Have they found the fire suppression tiles?” Ibram gestured to the folk walking amongst the ruins. “How could they fail like this?”

The garden provinces saved space by building close together, in honeycomb buildings that often shared more than one wall. Fire was an ever-present danger, and one only a fool disregarded. The Sect of Seven Fires did a brisk business in enchanted tiles such as usually festooned every building, little mosaics that worked to keep fire away from places it should not enter.

“A flour mill is a dangerous place, no matter what size of business they do.” Amota Berac shook his head. He smoothed Ibram’s hair back from his face. “I’m sending you back with the Water’s Breath,” he said. “Ladyship will want her report.”

Ibram snorted and coughed again. “What is there to say?”

“She’ll wish to know how the Water’s Breath performed. We were lucky the fire began when it did, else the streets would have been packed,” Amota Berac said with a terrible gentleness to his tone. “There’s nothing more to be done here.”

“How did that get here?” Ibram asked, and jerked his thumb at the ceramic barrel of the Water’s Breath. “I thought they kept that up the living mountain near the practice fields.”

“We jumped,” Ahksell said behind him, and Ibram whirled around with a frown. Amota Berac released him just before Ibram might have done his neck a disservice.

“Jumped down a mountain?” he asked. “Not even you are that hard on your knees.”

Ahksell shrugged, and untied the bandage from the lower half of his face. He stuffed it under his belt, and leaned on his gar. “As you say,” he agreed. “Are you going back up to speak with Mentor Hobon?”

Ibram opened his mouth, but Amota Berac beat him to it. “He is, young Solari,” he said, and put his hands on his hips. “A bath and a meal as well, if you should remember in what directions the kitchens lie.”

“I’ll come with you then,” Ahksell said. “Tolly and the rest of the drummers need to return the devices anyway. I am not so tired, so I can help carry.”

Ibram sighed. “As you say.”