Page 37 of Inferno

“So you’re actually made offire?”

“Yes.” There was a hint of a smile in Nerik’s voice, though not on his featureless face.

Yorin shook his head. “That makes no sense. Fire can’t be sentient.”

“To be fair,” Nerik replied, “it makes just as little sense to us that what is essentially a compartmentalised bag of water could be sentient. But here we both are.”

Yorin leaned forward, peering at Nerik’s face. “How do you…? You don’t have a mouth.”

Nerik shook his head. “Not in the way that humans do, no.”

“So how do you speak?”

“The same way any other creature does. Vibrations of air. We use soot and ash to mould the sounds.”

“But how do you not… What holds you together? If you’re just smoke, surely you’d just float away in a breeze.”

Slowly and carefully, Nerik reached out one hand towards Yorin. “Touch me. It’s okay, if you stick to just my hand, it won’t burn you.”

For a long moment, Yorin didn’t move, while Nerik stood patiently, waiting for him to make up his mind. Then Yorin took two slow, tentative steps forward. He reached out his hand, and like he was patting the wildest of predators, touched the very tip of his finger to the top of Nerik’s hand.

The instant his finger made contact, the hazy smoke beneath his hand solidified into a shimmering black. It felt slightly rough, like freshly sawn wood.

“That is very strange,” he muttered, then suddenly hoped that Nerik didn’t take offence to the statement. It was hardly Nerik’s choice what type of body he’d been born into.

Curiosity outweighing his apprehension, Yorin slid a fraction closer, letting his hand touch Nerik’s more fully. He took his hand away and the hazy outline returned. “Okay, um…” He let his eyes wander down over Nerik’s body, then up again to his face, making note of a few pertinent details along the way and tucking them away for future discussion. One thing at a time, he reminded himself firmly. “You said you had two forms,” he reminded Nerik. “What’s the other one?”

“Pure fire,” Nerik replied. “I can show you, but… well, first of all, it could make a bit of a mess on the floor.”

“I can clean the floor later,” Yorin said dismissively. The kitchen floor was made of stone tiles, easy to sweep or scrub, whichever was necessary.

“Okay,” Nerik agreed hesitantly. “And secondly, I’d need a couple of things from you first. Some wood, so that I can heat myself up enough to make flames. And a cup of water.”

“There’s wood in the box by the fireplace,” Yorin said, pointing to the box. “And water in the barrel by the sink.”

“Yeah, but…” Nerik sighed. “Could you please put some water in a cup and put the cup on the table?”

“Why? I’m not trying to be difficult,” Yorin added, moving to fulfil the request. “I just don’t really understand what you’re doing.” He set the cup down, then stood back.

Nerik, meanwhile, had fetched a few smallish logs from the box. “Infernals have to perform a constant balancing act between generating heat and making sure we don’t burn too hot. If we let the fire run rampant and we don’t have enough fuel around, we risk burning up all the wood inside us. So the water is to slow down the fire. But too much of it and we can very easily end up putting our fire out entirely. It’s a very careful process. I can’t just stick my hand in a barrel and hope for the best.”

So many things about Nerik’s recent behaviour were starting to make sense. “That’s why you were sick, that night in the storm,” Yorin said.

Nerik nodded. “I’d been caught in the rain for too long. My fire nearly went out.”

“And if that happens?”

“Then I die.”

Yorin swallowed hard. “I see.”

“I would have died if you hadn’t been there,” Nerik said, so softly Yorin could barely hear him. “You started a fire and warmed me up. I was too cold to have managed that myself.”

Yorin nodded, his throat feeling tight, then he took a deep breath. “Right. Let’s see this flame thing, then.”

“Stand back,” Nerik warned him. “If you get too close, this one will burn you.”

Yorin backed up so he was right by the door, then nodded. As he watched, Nerik held the first of the logs close to his abdomen. It pressed up against a solid barrier for a moment, then melted into the wall of smoke and disappeared. He did the same with the second and third, then seemed to take a deep breath. Did infernals breathe? Yorin supposed the fire must need to get air from somewhere…