Fire skt-2

by Kristin Cashore

  A claw caught her neck and yanked, pulled her high in her seat, and it occurred to her that she was about to die. But then an arrow struck the raptor that dragged at her, and more arrows followed it, and she looked ahead and saw the gates very near, cracked open, and Archer in the aperture, shooting faster than she'd known he could shoot.

  And then he stepped aside and Small slammed through the crack, and behind her, monster bodies slammed against the closing doors. They screamed, scraped. And she left it to Small to figure out where to go and when to stop. And people were around her, and Roen was reaching for her reins, and Small was limping, she could tell; and she looked to his back and his rump and his legs and they were torn apart, sticky with blood. She cried out in distress at the sight of it. She vomited.

  Someone grabbed her under the arms and pulled her out of her saddle. Archer, rigid and shaking, looking and feeling like he wanted to kill her. Then Archer went bright, and turned to black.

  Chapter Seven

  She woke to stinging pain, and to the sense of a hostile mind moving down the corridor outside her room. A stranger's mind. She tried to sit up, and gasped.

  "You should rest," a woman said from a chair along the wall. Roen's healer.

  Fire ignored the advice and pushed herself up gingerly. "My horse?"

  "Your horse is in about the same shape you're in," the healer said. "He'll live."

  "The soldiers? Did any of them die?"

  "Every man made it into the tunnel alive," she said. "A good many monsters died."

  Fire sat still, waiting for the pounding of her head to slow, so that she could get up and investigate the suspicious mind in the hallway. "How badly am I wounded?"

  "You'll have scars on your back and your shoulders and under your hair for the rest of your life. But we have all the medicines here that they have in King's City. You'll heal cleanly, without infection."

  "Can I walk?"

  "I don't recommend it; but if you must, you can."

  "I just need to check on something," she said, breathless from the effort of sitting. "Will you help me into my robe?" And then, noticing the skimpy sheath she wore: "Did Lord Archer see my wrists?"

  The woman came to Fire with a soft, white robe and helped her to hang it over her burning shoulders. "Lord Archer hasn't been in."

  Fire decided to focus on the agony of putting her arms into her sleeves, rather than trying to calculate how furious Archer must be, if he hadn't even been in.

  The mind she sensed was near, unguarded, and consumed with some underhanded purpose. All good reasons for it to have drawn Fire's attention, though she wasn't certain what she hoped to achieve by limping down this corridor in pursuit of it, willing to absorb whatever emotions it leaked accidentally but unwilling to take hold of it and plumb it for its true intentions.

  It was a guilty mind, furtive.

  She could not ignore it. I'll just follow, she thought to herself. I'll see where he goes.

  She was astonished a moment later when a servant girl observing her progress stopped and offered an arm.

  "My husband was at the back of that charge, Lady Fire," the girl said. "You saved his life."

  Fire hobbled down the hallway on the arm of the girl, happy to have saved someone's life if it meant that now she had a person to keep her from flopping onto the floor. Every step brought her closer to her strange quarry. "Wait," she whispered finally, leaning against the wall. "Whose rooms are behind this wall?"

  "The king's, Lady Fire."

  Fire knew with utter certainty then that a man was in the king's compartments who should not be. Haste, fear of discovery, panic: it all came to her.

  A confrontation was beyond her current strength even to consider; and then down the hall, in his own room, she sensed Archer. She grasped the servant girl's arm. "Run to Queen Roen and tell her a man is in the king's rooms who has no place there," she said.

  "Yes, Lady. Thank you, Lady," the girl said, and scampered away. Fire continued down the hallway alone.

  When she reached Archer's room she leaned in his doorway. He stood at the window and stared into the covered courtyard, his back to her. She tapped on his mind.

  His shoulders stiffened. He spun around and stalked toward her, not once looking at her. He brushed past her and stormed on down the hall. The surprise of it made her dizzy.

  It was for the best. She was not in a state to face him, if he was as angry as that.

  She went into his room and sat on a chair, just for a moment, to still her throbbing head.

  It took her ages to get to the stables, despite a number of helping hands; and when she saw Small she couldn't stop herself. She began to cry.

  "Now, don't fret, Lady Fire," Roen's animal healer said. "It's all superficial wounds. He'll be right as a rainbow in a week's time."

  Right as a rainbow, with his entire back half stitched together and bandaged and his head hanging low. He was happy to see her, even though it was her doing. He pressed himself against the stall door, and when she went inside he pressed himself against her.

  "I reckon he's been worrying about you," the healer said. "He's perked up now you're here."

  I'm sorry, Fire thought to him, her arms around his neck as best she could. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

  She guessed that the fifty men would remain in the Little Greys until the Third Branch arrived and drove the raptor monsters high again. The stables would be quiet until then.

  And so Fire stayed with Small, leaning against him, collecting his spit in her hair and using her mind to ease his own sense of his stinging pain.

  She was curled up on a fresh bed of hay in the corner of Small's stall when Roen arrived.

  "Lady," Roen said, standing outside the stall door, her eyes soft. "Don't move," she said as Fire tried to sit up. "The healer told me you should rest, and I suppose resting in here is the best we can hope for. Can I bring you anything?"

  "Food?"

  Roen nodded. "Anything else?"

  "Archer?"

  Roen cleared her throat. "I'll send Archer to you once I'm convinced he won't say something insufferable."

  Fire swallowed. "He's never been this angry with me before."

  Roen bent her face and considered her hands on the stall door. Then she came in and crouched before Fire. Just once she reached out and smoothed Fire's hair. She held a bit of it in her fingers, contemplating it carefully, very still on her knees in the hay, as if she were trying to work out the meaning of something. "Beautiful girl," she said. "You did a good thing today, whatever Archer thinks. Next time, mention it to someone beforehand so we're better prepared."

  "Archer never would have let me do it."

  "No. But I would have."

  For a moment their eyes met. Fire understood that Roen meant what she said. She swallowed. "Any word from Grey Haven?"

  "No, but the Third has been spotted from the lookout, so we may see our fifty men back as soon as this evening." Roen brushed off her lap and rose to her feet, all business again. "Incidentally, we found no one in the king's rooms. And if you insist on doting on your horse in this manner I suppose the least we can do is bring you pillows and blankets. Get some sleep in here, will you? Both of you, girl and horse. And I hope you'll tell me someday, Fire, why you did it."

  With a swirl of skirts and a click of the latch, Roen was gone. Fire closed her eyes and considered the question.

  She'd done it because she'd had to. An apology for the life of her father, who'd created a world of lawlessness where towns like Grey Haven fell under the attack of looters. And she'd done it to show Roen's son that she was on his side. And also to keep him alive.

  Fire was asleep in her room that night when all fifty men clattered back from Grey Haven. The prince and the king wasted no time, departing south immediately with the Third. When Fire woke the next morning they were gone.

  Chapter Eight

  Cansrel had always let Fire into his mind to practise changing his thoughts. He'd encouraged it, as part of he
r training. She went, but every time it was like a waking nightmare.

  She'd heard tales of fishermen who grappled for their lives with water monsters in the Winter Sea. Cansrel's mind was like an eel monster, cold, slick, and voracious. Whenever she reached for it she felt clammy coils wrapping around her and pulling her under. She struggled madly, first simply to take hold of it; then to transform it into something soft and warm. A kitten. A baby.

  The warming of Cansrel's mind took enormous burning energy. Then calm, to soothe the bottomless appetite, and then she would begin to push at its nature with all her strength, to shape thoughts there that Cansrel would never have on his own. Pity for a trapped animal. Respect for a woman. Contentment. It required all her strength. A mind slippery and cruel resists change.

  Cansrel never said so, but Fire believed his favourite drug was to have her in his mind, manhandling him into contentment. He was used to thrills, but contentment was a novelty, a state Cansrel seemed never to achieve except by her help. Warmth and softness two things that rarely touched him. He never, ever refused Fire when she asked permission to enter. He trusted her, for he knew that she used her power for good and never to harm.

  He only forgot to take into consideration the broken line separating good from harm.

  * * * *

  Today there was no entering Archer's mind. He was shutting Fire out. Not that it particularly mattered, for she never entered Archer's mind to alter it, only to test the waters, and she had no interest in the nature of his waters today. She was not going to apologise and she was not going to capitulate to the fight he wanted to have. Not that she would have to stretch far to find something to accuse him of. Condescension. Imperiousness. Obstinacy.

  They sat at a square table with Roen and a number of Roen's spies discussing Fire's trespassing archer, the men the archer had shot, and the fellow Fire had sensed in the king's rooms yesterday.

  "There are plenty of spies out there and plenty of archers," Roen's spymaster said, "though perhaps few as skilled as your mysterious archer seems to be. Lord Gentian and Lord Mydogg have built up whole squadrons of archers. And some of the kingdom's finest archers are in the employ of animal smugglers."

  Yes, Fire remembered that. The smuggler Cutter had bragged of his archers. It was how he caught his merchandise, with darts tipped with sleeping poison.

  "The Pikkians also have decent archers," another of Roen's men said. "And I know we like to think of them as clannish and simple, interested in nothing but boat-building, deep sea fishing, and the occasional sack of our border towns – but they follow our politics. They're not stupid, and they're not on the king's side. It's our taxes and our trade regulations that have kept them poor these thirty years."

  "Mydogg's sister Murgda has just married a Pikkian," Roen said, "a naval explorer of the eastern seas. And we have reason to believe that lately Mydogg has been recruiting Pikkians into his Dellian army. And having some success at it."

  Fire was startled; this was news, and not of the happy variety. "How big has Mydogg's army grown?"

  "It's still not as big as the King's Army," Roen said firmly. "Mydogg has said to my face that he has twenty-five thousand soldiers at the underside, but our spies to his holding in the northeast put the count at only twenty thousand or so. Brigan has twenty thousand patrolling in the four branches alone, and an additional five thousand in the auxiliaries."

  "And Gentian?"

  "We're not certain. Our best guess is ten thousand or so, all living in caves below the Winged River near his estate."

  "Numbers aside," the spymaster said, "everyone has archers and spies. Your archer could be working for anyone. If you'll leave the arrow and bolt with us we may be able to eliminate some possibilities or at least determine where his gear comes from. But I'll be honest with you: I wouldn't hold out too much hope. You haven't given us much to go on."

  "The man who was killed in your cages," Roen said. "The one you call the poacher. He gave you no hint of his purpose? Even you, Fire?"

  "His mind was blank," Fire said. "No evil intent, no honourable intent. He had the feel of a simpleton, someone's tool."

  "And the man in the king's rooms yesterday," Roen said. "Did he have that feel?"

  "No. He may certainly have been working for someone else, but his mind was consumed with purpose, and with guilt. He thought for himself."

  "Nash said his belongings were disturbed," Roen said, "but nothing was taken. We wonder if the man was looking for a number of letters that I happened to be carrying on my own person in Nash's absence – and good thing, too. A spy – but whose? Fire, you would recognise the man if he crossed your path again?"

  "I would. I don't believe he's in the castle now. Perhaps he left under cover of the Third."

  "We wasted a day," the spymaster said. "We could have used you yesterday to find him and question him."

  And then Fire was reminded that even when Archer wouldn't look her in the face he was her friend, for he said crisply, "Lady Fire was in need of rest yesterday, and anyway, she is not a tool for your use."

  Roen tapped her fingernails on the table, not attending, following her own thoughts. "Every man is an enemy," she said grimly. "Mydogg, Gentian, the black market, Pikkia. They've got people sneaking around trying to learn Brigan's plans for the troops, steal our allies from us, figure out a good place and time to do away with Nash or Brigan or one of the twins, or even me." She shook her head. "And in the meantime, we're trying to learn their numbers and their allies and their allies' numbers. Their plans for attack. We're trying to steal their spies and convert them to our side. No doubt they're doing the same with our spies. The rocks only know whom among our own people we should trust. One of these days a messenger will come through my gates to tell me my sons are dead."

  She spoke unemotionally; she wasn't trying to elicit comfort or contradiction, she was only stating fact. "We do need you, Fire," she added. "And don't look all panicked like that. Not to change people's thoughts. Only to take advantage of the greater sense of people that you have."

  No doubt Roen meant her words. But with the kingdom in this unstable state the lesser expectation would grow to include the greater, sooner rather than later. Fire's head began to throb harder than she thought she could bear. She glanced at Archer, who responded by avoiding her eyes, frowning at the table, and changing the subject abruptly.

  "Can you spare me any more soldiers, Lady Queen?"

  "I suppose I can't deny you my soldiers when yesterday Fire saved their lives," Roen said. "Brigan has helped by leaving me ten dozen men from the Third. You may take eight of the soldiers from my original guard who went to Grey Haven."

  "I would prefer eight of the ten dozen from the Third," Archer said.

  "They're all in the King's Army," Roen said, "all trained by Brigan's people, all equally competent, and the men who went to Grey Haven already have a natural allegiance to your lady, Archer."

  Allegiance wasn't quite the word for it. The soldiers who'd gone to Grey Haven seemed to regard Fire now with something akin to worship; which was, of course, why Archer didn't want them. A number of them had sought her out today and knelt before her, kissed her hand and pledged to protect her.

  "Very well," Archer said grumpily, somewhat mollified, Fire suspected, because Roen had referred to Fire as his lady. Fire added immaturity to the things she could accuse him of in the fight they weren't going to have.

  "Let's go over the encounter one more time," the spymaster said. "Every one of the encounters, in minute detail. Lady Fire? Please begin again in the forest."

  Archer spoke to her finally, an entire week later, when the raptors had gone and so had much of her soreness, and their own departure was imminent. They were at the table in Roen's sitting room, waiting for Roen to join them for dinner. "I cannot bear your silence any longer," Archer said.

  Fire had to stop herself from laughing at the joke of it. She noted the two servants standing beside the door, their faces carefully blank while
their minds spun excitedly – probably with gossip to bring back to the kitchen.

  "Archer," she said. "You're the one who's been pretending I don't exist."

  Archer shrugged. He sat back and regarded her, a challenge in his eyes. "Can I ever trust you now? Or must I always be prepared for this brand of heroic madness?"

  She had an answer to that, but she couldn't say it aloud. She leaned forward and held his eyes. It was not the first mad thing I've ever done for this kingdom. Perhaps you who know the truth of things should not have been surprised. Brocker won't be, when we tell him what I did here.

  After a moment his eyes dropped from hers. His fingers realigned the forks on the table. "I wish you were not so brave."

  She had no response to that. She was desperate sometimes, and a little crazy, but she was not brave.

  "Are you determined to leave me in this world to live without my heart?" Archer asked. "Because that's what you very nearly did."

  She watched her friend play with the fringe of the tablecloth, his eyes avoiding hers, his voice carefully light, trying to look as if he were speaking of something small, like an appointment she'd forgotten that had inconvenienced him.

  She reached across the table and held her hand open to him. "Make peace with me, Archer."

  At that moment Roen swept through the door and slid into a chair between them. She turned on Archer, eyes narrow and unamused. "Archer, is there a servant girl in my fortress you haven't taken to bed? I announce you're leaving and within minutes two of them are at each other's throats, and another is crying her eyes out in the scullery. Honestly. You've been here all of nine days." She glanced at Fire's open hand. "I've interrupted something."