Fire

by Kristin Cashore

  She wrapped her hands around her warm cup and blinked wearily into its steam; and found, once she’d started talking, that confession was a comfort to her small and ragged heart. “I killed Cansrel to stop him from killing Brigan. And to stop Brigan from killing Cansrel, because that would have damaged his chance for any alliance with Cansrel’s friends. And, oh, for other reasons. I doubt I need to explain to any of you why it was best for him to die.”

  Tess stopped her work, her hands resting on the pile in her lap, and watched Fire closely. Her lips moved as Fire talked, as if she were testing the words in her own mouth.

  “I tricked him into thinking his leopard monster was a baby,” Fire said. “His own human monster baby. I stood outside the fence and watched him open the door of the cage, cooing to it, as if it were helpless, and harmless. The leopard was hungry. He always kept them hungry. It—it happened very fast.”

  Fire went silent for a moment, struggling against the picture that haunted her dreams. She spoke with her eyes closed. “Once I was sure he was dead, I shot the cat. Then I shot the rest of his monsters, because I hated them, I’d always hated them, and I couldn’t stand them screaming for his blood. And then I called the servants, and told them he’d killed himself and I hadn’t been able to stop him. I entered their minds and made full sure they believed me, which wasn’t difficult. He’d been unhappy since Nax’s death, and they all knew he was capable of mad things.”

  The rest of the story, she kept to herself. Archer had come and found her kneeling in Cansrel’s blood, staring at Cansrel, tearless. When he’d tried to pull her away she’d fought against him desperately, screamed at him to leave her alone. For several days she’d been savage to Archer, and Brocker, too, vicious, out of her mind and her body; and they’d stayed with her and taken care of her until she’d come back into herself. Then had followed weeks of listlessness and tears. They’d stayed with her through that as well.

  She sat numbly on the sofa. She wanted Archer’s company, suddenly, so that she could forgive him for telling the truth. It was time other people knew. It was time everyone knew what she was, and what she was capable of.

  She didn’t notice herself nodding off to sleep, even when Musa jumped forward to stop her drink from spilling.

  SHE WOKE HOURS later to find herself stretched out on the sofa, covered in blankets, kittens sleeping in the tangle of her hair. Tess was absent, but Musa, Mila, and Neel had not moved from their seats.

  Archer stood before the fireplace, his back to her.

  Fire half sat up and tugged her hair out from under the kittens. “Mila,” she said. “You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

  Mila’s voice was stubborn. “I want to stay and guard you, Lady.”

  “Very well,” Fire said, studying Archer, who’d swung around at the sound of her voice. His left cheekbone was bruised purple, which alarmed her at first, and then struck her as intensely interesting.

  “Who hit you?” she asked.

  “Clara.”

  “Clara!”

  “She whaled me one in return for upsetting you. Well,” he added, his voice dropping low. “At least, that was the main reason. I suppose Clara has several to choose from.” He glanced at Mila, who’d suddenly taken on the look of a boxer who’d been punched in the stomach one too many times. “This is awkward.”

  By your own doing, Fire thought to him furiously, and your careless words only make it worse. They don’t know about each other yet, and it’s not yours to reveal their secrets.

  “Fire,” he said, his eyes low and dismal. “It’s been some time since I did anyone any good. When my father arrives I won’t be able to look him in the face. I’m dying to do something worthwhile, something I needn’t be ashamed of, but I don’t seem to be capable of it while you’re within my view, and not needing me anymore, and in love with someone else.”

  “Oh, Archer,” she said, and then stopped, choked up with how frustrating he was. And how funny it seemed, and sad, that he should accuse her of love, and for once in his life be right.

  “I’m going west,” he said, “to Cutter.”

  “What?” she cried, dismayed. “Now? By yourself?”

  “No one’s paying any attention to that boy and that archer, and I know it’s a mistake. The boy’s not to be trifled with, and maybe you’ve forgotten, but twenty-some years ago that archer was in jail for rape.”

  And now Fire was near crying again. “Archer, I don’t think you should. Wait until after the gala and let me come with you.”

  “I believe it’s you they’re after.”

  “Please, Archer. Don’t go.”

  “I must,” he said, suddenly, explosively. He turned away from her, held up a hand against her. “Look at you,” he said, tears thick in his voice. “I can’t even bear to look at you. I must do something, don’t you see? I must get away. They’re going to let you do it, you know, you and Brigan together, the grand assassination team. Here,” he said, yanking a folded paper from his coat pocket and pitching it savagely onto the sofa beside her.

  “What’s that?” Fire asked, bewildered.

  “A letter from him,” Archer practically yelled. “He was at the desk just before you woke, writing it. He told me if I didn’t give it to you he’d break both my arms.”

  Tess appeared suddenly in the doorway and jabbed a finger at Archer. “Young man,” she barked, “there’s a child that lives in this house, and you’ve got no cause to yell the roof off.” She turned and stomped away. Archer stared after her in amazement. Then he spun to the fireplace and leaned against the mantel, head in hands.

  “Archer,” Fire pleaded. “If you must do this, take as many soldiers as you can. Ask Brigan for a convoy.”

  He didn’t answer. She wasn’t even sure he’d heard. He turned to face her and said, “Goodbye, Fire.” He stalked out of the room, abandoning her to her panic.

  Her thoughts clamored after him desperately. Archer! Keep a strong mind. Go safely.

  I love you.

  BRIGAN’S LETTER WAS short.

  Lady:

  I have a confession. I knew that you killed Cansrel. Lord Brocker told me the day I went to your house to escort you here. You must forgive him for betraying the confidence. He told me so that I might understand what you were, and treat you accordingly. In other words, he told me in order to protect you, from me.

  You asked me once why I trust you. This is not the entire reason, but it’s a part. I believe you have shouldered a great deal of pain for the sake of other people. I believe you’re as strong and as brave as anyone I’ve met or heard of. And wise and generous in the use of your power.

  I must ride suddenly to Fort Flood, but will return in time for the gala. I agree you must be involved in our plan—though Archer is wrong if he thinks it pleases me. My siblings will tell you our thoughts. My soldiers are waiting and this is hastily written, but meant sincerely.

  Yours, Brigan.

  P.S. Do not leave this house until Tess has told you the truth, and forgive me for keeping it from you. I made a promise to her, and have been chafing under it ever since.

  FIRE BREATHED SHAKILY as she walked to the kitchen, where she sensed Tess to be. The old woman raised green eyes from the work of her hands.

  “What does Prince Brigan mean,” Fire said, frightened of the question, “when he says you must tell me the truth?”

  Tess put down the dough she was kneading and wiped her palms on her apron. “What an upside-down day this is,” she said. “I never saw this coming. And now that we’re here, you’re such a sight I’m intimidated.” She shrugged, quite at a loss. “My daughter Jessa was your mother, child,” she said. “I’m your grandmother. Would you care to stay for dinner?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  FIRE GLIDED THROUGH the following days in a state of wonderment. To learn that she had a grandmother was staggering enough. But to sense, from their first hesitant dinner together, that her grandmother was curious to know her, and o
pen to her company? This was almost too much for one young human monster who’d experienced so little joy to bear.

  She ate dinner every night in the kitchen of the green house with Tess and Hanna. Hanna’s stream of chatter filled the spaces in the conversation between grandmother and granddaughter, and soothed, somehow, their awkwardness as they tried to find the way to relate to each other.

  It helped that Tess was straightforward and honest, and that Fire could sense the sincerity of every mixed-up thing she said. “I’m mostly unflappable,” Tess said over their first dinner of dumplings and raptor monster stew. “But you’ve flapped me, monster Lady. I told myself all these years you were Cansrel’s daughter, and not truly Jessa’s. A monster, not a girl, that we were better off without. I tried to tell Jessa, too, though she would never listen, and she was right. Plain as day I can see her in your face.”

  “Where?” Hanna demanded. “What parts of her face?”

  “You have Jessa’s forehead,” Tess said, brandishing a spoon at Fire helplessly. “And the same expression in your eyes, and her lovely, warm skin. You take after her eye and hair coloring, though yours is a hundred times what hers was, of course. The young prince told me he trusted you,” she finished weakly. “But I couldn’t believe him. I thought he was ensnared. I thought you’d marry the king, or worse, him, and it would begin all over.”

  “It’s all right,” Fire said softly, immune to grudges, because she was newly fallen in love with having a grandmother.

  She wished she could thank Brigan, but he was still away from court and unlikely to return before the gala. She wished more than anything that she could tell Archer. Whatever else he might feel, he would share her joy in this—he would laugh in astonishment at the news. But Archer was bumbling around somewhere west with the smallest of guards—according to Clara, he’d taken only four men—getting into who knew what kind of trouble. Fire determined to make a list of all the delights and the confusions of having a grandmother, to tell him when he returned.

  She was not the only person worried about Archer. “It wasn’t such a terrible thing, really, that he told your secret,” Clara said—forgetting, Fire thought dryly, that at the time Clara had found it terrible enough to punch him. “We’re all more content with you in the plan now we know. And we admire you for it. Truly, Lady, I wonder you never told us before.”

  Fire didn’t respond to this, for she couldn’t explain that the admiration was part of the reason she hadn’t told. It was not rewarding to be the hero of other people’s hatred for Cansrel. She had not killed him out of hatred.

  “Archer’s an ass, but still I hope he’ll be careful,” Clara finished, one hand resting absently on her belly while the other riffled through a pile of floor plans. “Does he know the terrain in the west? There are great crevices in the ground. Some of them open to caves, but some of them are bottomless. Trust him to fall into one.” She stopped riffling for a moment, closed her eyes, and sighed. “I’ve decided to be grateful to him for supplying my child with a sibling. Gratitude takes less energy than anger.”

  When the truth had come out, Clara had indeed accepted it with a generous equanimity. It had not been so easy for Mila, though she hadn’t taken to anger either. In her chair now beside the door, more than anything, Mila looked dazed.

  “Ah, well,” Clara said, still sighing. “Have you memorized anything above level six? You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”

  “No more than the next person. Why?”

  Clara pulled two enormous, curling pages from the pile of floor plans. “Here are the layouts for seven and eight. I’ll have Welkley verify I’ve labeled the guest rooms correctly before you start learning all the names. We’re trying to keep those floors empty for your use, but there are those who like the views.”

  Memorizing the palace’s floor plans was different for Fire from what it would be for other people, because Fire couldn’t get herself to conceive of the palace as a map, flat on the page. The palace was a three-dimensional space that whirled out from her head, full of moving minds walking down corridors, passing laundry chutes and climbing stairways Fire couldn’t sense but was expected to fill in now from her memory of a map on a page. It wasn’t enough now for Fire to know, for example, that Welkley was on the eastern end of the palace’s second level. Where was he, precisely? What room was he in, and how many doors and windows did it have? How close was it to the nearest servants’ closet, or the nearest stairway? The minds that she sensed near Welkley—were they in the room with him, or were they in the hallway, or the next room over? If Fire needed to give Welkley mental directions to guide him to her own rooms this instant without anyone seeing him, could she do it? Could she keep eight levels, hundreds of hallways, thousands of rooms, doorways, windows, balconies, and her perception of a court full of consciousnesses all in her mind at once?

  The simple answer was that no, she couldn’t. But she was going to have to learn to do it as best she could, because the assassination plan for gala night depended on it. In her rooms, in the stables with Small, on the roofs with her guard, she practiced and practiced, all day long, constantly—proud of herself, sometimes, for how far she’d moved beyond her early days in this palace. She would certainly never get lost wandering these halls again.

  The success of the plan hinged rather nerve-rackingly on Fire’s ability to isolate Gentian, Gunner, and Murgda, separately or together, secretly, somewhere in the palace. It was imperative that she manage to do this, because the backup plans were messy, involved too many soldiers and too many scuffles, and would be next to impossible to keep quiet.

  Once alone with them, Fire would learn whatever she could from each and all of them. In the meantime Brigan would find a discreet way to join her and ensure that the information exchange ended with Fire alive and the other three dead. And then news of the entire escapade would have to be contained somehow, for as long as possible. This would also be one of Fire’s jobs: monitoring the palace for people who suspected what had happened, and arranging for those people to be quietly captured before they said anything. Because no one—no one—on the wrong side of the crown could be permitted to know where matters stood or what Fire had learned. Information would only be valuable as long as no one knew they knew it.

  Brigan would ride through the night to Fort Flood. The instant he got there, the war would begin.

  THE DAY OF the gala, Tess helped Fire into her dress that had been commissioned, fastening hooks, smoothing and straightening bits that were already smooth and straight, and all the time murmuring her pleasure. Next, a team of hairdressers yanked and braided Fire to distraction, exclaiming at the range of reds, oranges, and golds in her hair, its occasional astonishing strands of pink, its impossibly soft texture, its luminosity. It was Fire’s first experience of trying to improve her appearance. Very quickly the process grew tiresome.

  Nonetheless, when it finally ended and the hairdressers left and Tess insisted on pulling her to the mirror, Fire saw, and understood, that everyone had done the job well. The dress, deep shimmering purple and utterly simple in design, was so beautifully cut and so clingy and well-fitting that Fire felt slightly naked. And her hair. She couldn’t follow what they’d done with her hair, braids thin as threads in some places, looped and wound through the thick sections that fell over her shoulders and down her back, but she saw that the end result was a controlled wildness that was magnificent against her face, her body, and the dress. She turned to measure the effect on her guard—all twenty of them, for all had roles to play in tonight’s proceedings, and all were awaiting her orders. Twenty jaws hung slack with astonishment—even Musa’s, Mila’s, and Neel’s. Fire touched their minds, and was pleased, and then angry, to find them open as the glass roofs in July.

  “Take hold of yourselves,” she snapped. “It’s a disguise, remember? This isn’t going to work if the people meant to help me can’t keep their heads.”

  “It will work, Lady Granddaughter.” Tess handed Fire two kni
ves in ankle holsters. “You’ll get what you want from whomever you want. Tonight King Nash would give you the Winged River as a present, if you asked for it. Dells, child—Prince Brigan would give you his best warhorse.”

  Fire strapped a knife to each ankle and did not smile at that. Brigan couldn’t give gifts until he’d returned to court, and that was a thing, two hours before the gala, he had not yet done.

  ONE OF SEVERAL staging areas reserved by the royal siblings for the night was a suite of rooms on the fourth floor with a balcony overlooking the large central courtyard. Fire stood in the balcony with three of her guard, deflecting the attention of hundreds of people below.

  She had never seen a party before, let alone a royal ball. The courtyard sparkled gold from the light of thousands upon thousands of candles: walls of candles behind balustrades at the edges of the dance floor so the ladies wouldn’t set their dresses on fire; candles in wide lamps hanging from the ceilings by silver chains; candles melted to the railings of every balcony, including her own. Light flickered over the people, turning them beautiful in their dresses and suits, their jewelry, the silver cups they drank from. The sky was fading. Musicians tuned their instruments and began to play over and through the tinkle of laughter. The dancing began, and it was the perfect picture of a winter party.

  How absolutely the look of a thing could differ from its feel. If Fire had not had such an intense need to concentrate, if she hadn’t been so far from humor, she might have laughed. For she knew herself to be standing above a microcosm of the kingdom itself, a web of traitors, spies, and allies in fancy costumes, representing every side, watching each other with calculation, trying to hear each other’s conversations, and keenly aware of everyone who entered or exited. It began with Lord Gentian and his son, the focal center of the room even though they stood at its edges. Gunner, medium size and nondescript, had a way of blending into the corner, but Gentian was tall with bright white hair and too famously an enemy of this court to be inconspicuous. Surrounding him were five of his “attendants,” men with the look of vicious dogs stuffed into formal clothing. Swords were not the fashion at balls such as this; the only visible weapons were on the palace guards stationed at the doorways. But Fire knew that Gentian, Gunner, and their thinly disguised bodyguards had knives. She knew they were wound tight with distrust; she could feel it. And she saw Gentian tugging his collar, repeatedly, uncomfortably. She saw him and his son turning sharply at every noise, their social smiles false, frozen almost to the point of crazedness. She thought that Gentian was a nice-looking man, finely dressed, seemingly distinguished, unless you were in a position to feel his screaming nerves. Gentian was regretting the plan that had brought him here.