Fire skt-2

by Kristin Cashore

  "Everyone wants a bit of something beautiful," Clara said. "Among the wealthy it's the rare skins and furs sold on the black market. With everyone else it's whatever they find clogging the gutters or killed in the housetraps. It all amounts to the same thing, of course, but the rich people feel better knowing they've paid a fortune."

  Which was, of course, silly. This city, Fire saw, was part sober and part silly. She liked the gardens and the old crumbling sculptures, the fountains in the squares, the museums and libraries and bright rows of shops that Clara led her through. She liked the bustling cobbled streets where people were so busy with their noisy living that sometimes they didn't even notice the lady monster's guarded walking tour. Sometimes. She calmed a team of horses once that panicked when some children ran too close to their heels, murmuring to them, petting their necks. Business stopped on that street, and didn't resume until she and Clara had rounded a corner.

  She liked the bridges. She liked standing in the middle and looking down, feeling she could fall but knowing she wouldn't. The bridge farthest from the falls was a drawbridge; she liked the bells that rang when it rose and fell, soft, almost melodic, whispering around and through the other city noises. She liked the warehouses and docks along the river, the aqueducts and sewers, and the locks, creaking and slow, that brought supply ships up and down between river and harbour. She especially liked Cellar Harbour, where the falls created a mist of seawater and drowned out all sound and feeling.

  She even, hesitatingly, liked the feel of the hospitals. She wondered which one had cured her father of the arrow in his back, and she hoped that the surgeons brought good folk back to life too. There were always people outside the hospitals, waiting and worrying. She glanced at them, touching them with surreptitious wishes that their worry should come to a happy ending.

  "There used to be medical schools all over the city," Clara told her. "Do you know of King Arn and his monster adviser, Lady Ella?"

  "I remember the names from my history lessons," Fire said, reflecting, but not coming up with much.

  "They ruled a good hundred years ago," Clara said. "King Arn was an herbalist and Lady Ella a surgeon, and they became a bit obsessive about it, really – there are stories about them doing bizarre medical experiments on people who probably wouldn't have consented to it if a monster hadn't been the one making the suggestions, if you know what I mean, Lady. And they'd cut up dead bodies and study them, but no one was ever sure where they were getting the dead bodies from. Ah, well," Clara said, with a sardonic lift of the eyebrows. "Be that as it may, they revolutionised our understanding of doctoring and surgery, Lady. It's thanks to them we know the uses for all the strange herbs that grow in the crevices and caves at the edges of the kingdom. Our medicines to stop bleeding and keep wounds from festering and kill tumours and bind bones together and do just about everything else came from their experiments. Of course, they also discovered the drugs that ruin people's minds," she added darkly. "And anyway, the schools are closed now; there's no money for research. Or for art, for that matter, or engineering. Everything goes to policing – to the army, the coming war. I suppose the city will begin to deteriorate."

  It already was, Fire thought but didn't say. She saw the seedy, sprawling neighbourhoods that abutted the docks on the south side of the river, and the tumbledown alleyways that popped up in parts of the city centre where it seemed they shouldn't. Many, many sections of the city that were not devoted to knowledge or beauty, or any kind of goodness.

  Clara took her to lunch once with the twins' mother, who had a small and pleasant home on a street of florists. She also had a husband, a retired soldier who moonlighted as one of the twins' most reliable spies.

  "These days, my focus is smuggling," he told them in confidence over their meal. "Almost every wealthy person in the city dips into the black market now and then, but as often as not, when you find someone who's very deeply involved, you've also found someone who's the king's enemy. Especially if they're smuggling weapons or horses or anything Pikkian. If we're lucky, we're able to trace a buyer to the fellow he's buying for, and if that turns out to be one of the rebel lords, we bring the buyer in for questioning. Can't always trust their answers, of course."

  Unsurprisingly, this sort of talk was always fuel for Clara's pressure tactics with Fire. "With your power, it'd be easy for us to learn who's on whose side. You could help us find out if our allies are true," she'd say, or, "You could figure out where Mydogg's planning to attack first." Or, when that didn't work, "You could uncover an assassination plot. Wouldn't you feel terrible if I were assassinated because you weren't helping?" And in a moment of desperation: "What if they're planning to assassinate you? There have to be some who are, especially now that people think you might marry Nash."

  Fire never responded to the endless battery, never admitted the doubt – and guilt – she was beginning to feel. She only filed the arguments away to mull over later, along with the ongoing arguments of the king. For occasionally after dinner – often enough that Welkley had installed a chair in the hallway – Nash came to speak to her through the door. He conducted himself decently, talked of the weather and stately visitors to the court; and always, always tried to convince her to reconsider the matter of the prisoner.

  "You're from the north, Lady," he'd say to her, or something like it. "You've seen the loose hold the law has outside this city. One misstep, Lady, and the entire kingdom could fall through our fingers."

  And then he'd grow quiet, and she would know the marriage proposal was coming. She would send him away with her refusal and take what comfort she could in the company of her guard; and consider very seriously the state of the city, and the kingdom, and the king. And what her own place should be.

  To busy herself and ease her sense of uselessness, she took Garan's advice in the nurseries. Entering cautiously at first, sitting quietly on a chair and watching the children as they played, read, squabbled, for this was where her mother had worked, and she wanted to take in its feeling slowly. She tried to picture a young, orange-haired woman in these rooms, counselling children with her even temper. Jessa had had a place in these noisy, sunlit rooms. Somehow the very thought made Fire feel like less of a stranger here. Even if it also made her more lonely.

  Teaching guarding against animal monsters was delicate work, and Fire came up against some parents who wanted nothing of her association with their children. But a mix of royal and servant children did become her pupils.

  "Why are you so fascinated with insects?" she asked one of her cleverest students one morning, an eleven-year-old boy named Cob who could build a wall in his mind against raptor monsters, and resist the urge to touch Fire's hair when he saw it, but would not kill a monster bug even if it was camped out on his hand making a dinner of his blood. "You have no trouble with the raptors."

  "Raptors," Cob said with high-pitched scorn. "They have no intelligence, only a big meaningless surge of feeling they think they can mesmerise me with. They're completely unsophisticated."

  "True," Fire said. "But compared to monster bugs, they're veritable geniuses."

  "But monster bugs are so perfect," Cob said wistfully, going cross-eyed as a dragonfly monster hovered at the tip of his nose. "Look at their wings. Look at their jointed legs and their beady little eyeballs and look how smart they are with their pinchers."

  "He loves all bugs," Cob's younger sister said, rolling her eyes. "Not just monster bugs."

  Perhaps his problem, Fire thought to herself, is that he's a scientist. "Very well," she said. "You may allow monster bugs to sting you, in appreciation of their excellent pinchers. But," she added sternly, "there are one or two bugs that would do you harm if they could, and those you must learn to guard yourself against. Do you understand? "

  "Must I kill them?"

  "Yes, you must kill them. But once they're dead, you could always dissect them. Had you thought of that?"

  Cob brightened. "Really? Will you help me?"

  And
so Fire found herself borrowing scalpels and clips and trays from a healer in the castle infirmary and engaging in some rather peculiar experimentation, perhaps along the lines of what King Arn and Lady Ella had done one hundred years before. On a smaller scale, of course, and with much less brilliant results.

  She crossed paths often with Princess Hanna. From her windows she saw the girl running to and from the little green house. She also saw Sayre, and other tutors, and sometimes Garan, and even Clara's legendary gardener, who was blond and bronzed and muscular, like something out of a heroic romance. And sometimes an old woman, tiny and bent, who wore an apron and had pale green eyes and was the frequent stopping block to Hanna's headlong rushes.

  She was strong, this little woman, always carrying Hanna around, and it appeared she was the housekeeper of the green house. Her love for the child was obvious, and she had no love for Fire. Fire had encountered her once in the orchard and found her mind as closed as Brigan's. Her face, at the sight of the monster lady, had gone cold and unhappy.

  The palace had outside walkways built into the stone portions of the roof. At night, far from sleep, Fire walked them with her guard. From the heights she could see the glimmer of the great torches on the bridges, kept lit throughout the night so that boats on the fast-running waters below always knew exactly how close they were to the falls. And from the heights she could hear those falls roaring. On clear nights she watched the city spread sleeping around her and the flash of stars on the sea. She felt like a queen. Not like a real queen, not like the wife of King Nash. More like a woman at the top of the world. At the top of a city, in particular, where the people were becoming real to her; a city of which she was growing rather fond.

  Brigan returned to court three weeks from the day he'd left. Fire knew the instant he arrived. A consciousness was like a face you saw once and forever recognised. Brigan's was quiet, impenetrable, and strong, and indubitably his from the instant her mind tripped over it.

  She happened to be with Hanna and Blotchy at the time, in the morning sun of a quiet courtyard corner. The little girl was examining the raptor scars on Fire's neck and trying to wheedle from her, not for the first time, the story of how she'd got those scars and saved Brigan's soldiers. When Fire declined, the girl wheedled at Musa.

  "You weren't even there," Fire objected, laughing, when Musa began the tale.

  "Well," Musa said, "if no one who was there will tell it – "

  "Someone's coming who knows it to tell it," Fire said mysteriously, causing Hanna to freeze, and stand bolt upright.

  "Papa?" she said, turning in circles now, spinning to look at each of the entrances. "Do you mean Papa? Where?"

  He came through an archway on the other side of the courtyard. Hanna shrieked and bolted across the marble floor. He caught her up and carried her back the way she'd come, nodding to Fire and the guard, smiling through Hanna's stream of chatter.

  And what was it with Brigan every time he reappeared? Why this instinct to bolt? They were friends now, and Fire should be beyond this fear of him. She forbade herself to move and focused on Blotchy, who offered his ears to be petted.

  Brigan put Hanna down and crouched before the child. He touched his fingers to her chin and moved her face one way and the other, surveying her still-bruised and bandaged nose. He interrupted her quietly. "And tell me what happened here?"

  "But Papa," she said, changing subject in mid-sentence. "They were saying bad things about Lady Fire."

  "Who were?"

  "Selin and Midan and the others."

  "And what? Then one of them punched you in the nose?"

  Hanna scuffed her shoes at the ground. "No."

  "Tell me what happened."

  Another scuff at the ground, and then Hanna spoke dismally. "I hit Selin. He was wrong, Papa! Someone had to show him."

  Brigan was silent for a moment. Hanna rested one hand on either of his bent knees and dropped her eyes to the floor. She sighed dramatically behind her curtain of hair.

  "Look at me, Hanna."

  The girl obeyed.

  "Was hitting Selin a reasonable way to show him he was wrong?"

  "No, Papa. I did badly. Are you going to punish me?"

  "I'm going to take away your fighting lessons for now. I didn't agree to them so that you might misuse them."

  Hanna sighed again. "For how long?"

  "Until I'm convinced you understand what they're for."

  "And will you take away my riding lessons?"

  "Have you ridden over anyone you shouldn't?"

  A small giggle. "Of course not, Papa!"

  "Then you'll keep your riding lessons."

  "Will you let me ride your horses?"

  "You know the answer to that. You must grow bigger before you ride warhorses."

  Hanna reached her hand out and rubbed her palm on the stubble of his face with an ease and affection Fire found hard to bear, so that she had to look away and stare fiercely at Blotchy, who was shedding silky hairs all over her skirt. "How long do you stay, Papa?"

  "I don't know, love. I'm needed in the north."

  "You have a wound, too, Papa." Hanna took Brigan's left hand, which was wrapped in a bandage, and inspected it. "Did you throw the first punch?"

  Brigan twitched a smile at Fire. Focused on the lady more closely. And then his eyes went cold and his mouth formed a hard line; and Fire was frightened, and hurt by his disregard.

  And then reason returned, and she understood what he saw. It was the lingering square mark of Nash's ring on her cheek.

  It was weeks ago, Fire thought to him. He's behaved himself since.

  Brigan stood, lifting Hanna with him. He spoke to the girl quietly. "I did not throw the first punch. And right now I must have a chat with your uncle the king."

  "I want to come," Hanna said, wrapping arms around him.

  "You may come as far as the hall, but there I must leave you."

  "But why? I want to come."

  "It's a private chat."

  "But – "

  Firmly: "Hanna. You heard me."

  There was a sullen silence. "I can walk for myself."

  Brigan lowered Hanna to the floor. Another sullen silence as they regarded each other, the taller side much more calmly than the shorter.

  Then a small voice. "Will you carry me, Papa?"

  Another flicker of smile. "I suppose you're not too big yet."

  Brigan carried Hanna back across the courtyard and Fire listened to the receding music of Hanna's voice. Blotchy was doing as he always did – sitting, and considering, before following his lady. Knowing it was unethical, Fire reached out to his mind and convinced him to stay. She couldn't help it; she needed him. His ears were soft.

  Brigan had been unshaven, in black clothing, his boots spattered with mud. His light eyes standing out in a weary face.

  She'd very much come to like his face.

  And of course she understood now why her body wanted to run whenever he appeared. It was a correct instinct, for there was nothing to be got from this but sadness.

  She wished she hadn't seen his gentle way with his child.

  Fire was spectacularly good at not thinking about a thing when she chose, if the thing was hurtful, or just plain stupid. She manhandled, pummelled, packed this thing away. His own brother in love with her, and she Cansrel's daughter?

  It was not to be thought of.

  What she did think of, more urgently now, was the question of her purpose at this court. For if Brigan's next responsibility took him north, then surely he meant to deposit her home. And she was not ready to go.

  She had grown up between Brocker and Cansrel and she was not naïve. She'd seen the parts of the city with the abandoned buildings and the smell of filth; she understood the look and feel of city people who were hungry, or lost to drugs. She understood what it meant that even with a military force in four large pieces, Brigan couldn't stop looters from knocking a town off a cliff. And these were only the small things, these were
mere policing. War was coming, and if Mydogg and Gentian overran this city and this kingdom with their armies, if one of them made himself king, how much lower would that push those already at the bottom?

  Fire couldn't imagine leaving, going all the way back to her stone house where the reports came slowly and the only variance in her routine was the occasional empty-headed trespasser whom no one knew the significance of. How could she refuse to help when there was so much at stake here? How could she go away?

  "You're wasting something you have," Clara had said to her once, almost with resentment. "Something the rest of us could only imagine possessing. Waste is criminal."

  Fire hadn't responded. But she'd heard, more deeply than Clara had realised.

  Tonight, while she was fighting with herself on the roof, Brigan appeared beside her and leaned on the railing. Fire took a steadying breath and watched the glimmer of torches in the city, trying not to look at him, or be pleased of his company.

  "I hear you're crazy for horses," she said lightly.

  He broke into a smile. "Something's come up and I'm leaving tomorrow night, following the river west. I'll be back two days later, but Hanna won't forgive me. I'm in disgrace."

  Fire remembered her own experience of being five. "I expect she misses you terribly when you go."

  "Yes," he said, "and I'm always going. I wish it weren't the way of things. But I wanted to check with you before I left, Lady. I travel north soon, this time without the army. It'll be faster, and safer, if you'd like to return home."

  Fire closed her eyes. "I suppose I should say yes."

  He hesitated. "Would you prefer me to arrange for a different escort?"

  "Goodness, no," she said, "it's not that. It's only that every one of your siblings is pressuring me to stay at court and use my mental power to help with the spy work. Even Prince Garan, who hasn't decided yet if he trusts me."