Fire skt-2

by Kristin Cashore

  What followed was a description of a violation so graphic Fire couldn't help but feel the force of its malice. But the prisoners who spoke to her like this only made her patient, and oddly depressed. It seemed to Fire that they had a right to their words, the only defence they had against her ill use. And of course these were the men who would be dangerous to her if ever released, some of them so dangerous she was compelled to recommend they never be released; and this did not help to soothe her guilt. True, these were not men whose freedom would be a boon to society. Nonetheless, they would not be so inhumanly vile had she not been around to provoke them.

  This man today fared worse than most others, for Archer came forward suddenly and punched him in the face. "Archer!" Fire exclaimed. She called for the dungeon guards to take the man away, which they did, lifting him from the floor, where he lay dizzy and bleeding. Once he was gone Fire gaped at Archer, then glared, too exasperated to trust herself to speak.

  "I'm sorry," he said sullenly, yanking his collar loose, as if it choked him. "That one got under my skin more than the others."

  "Archer, I simply can't – "

  "I said I was sorry. I won't do it again."

  Fire crossed her arms and stared him down. After a few moments, Archer actually began to smile. He shook his head, sighing hopelessly. "Perhaps it's the promise of your angry face that keeps me misbehaving," he said. "You're so beautiful when you're angry."

  "Oh, Archer," she snapped, "flirt with someone else."

  "I will, if you command it," he quipped, with a goofy grin that caught her off guard, so that she had to stop her own face from twitching into a smile.

  For a moment, it was almost as if they were friends again.

  She had a serious conversation with Archer a few days later on the archery range, where she had come with her fiddle looking for Krell. She found Krell with Archer, Hanna, and the king, all four of them shooting at targets and Hanna well boosted by advice from all sides. Hanna concentrated hard, her feet planted stubbornly, miniature bow in her hands, miniature arrows on her back, and she was not talking. It was a characteristic Fire had noted: in riding, swordplay, and archery, and any other lesson that interested her, Hanna ceased her chatter, and showed a surprising capacity for focus.

  "Brigan used to focus like that in his lessons too," Clara had told Fire, "and when he did, it was a great relief to Roen; for otherwise, guaranteed, he was plotting some kind of trouble. I believe he used to provoke Nax on purpose. He knew Nax favoured Nash."

  "Is that true?" Fire asked.

  "Oh yes, Lady. Nash was better-looking. And Brigan was better at everything else, and more like his mother than his father, which I don't think worked in his favour. Ah well, at least he didn't start the brawls Hanna starts."

  Yes, Hanna started brawls, and it could not be because her father favoured anyone over her. But today she was not brawling, and once she woke from the daze of her bow and arrows enough to notice the lady and the fiddle, the girl begged a concert, and got one.

  Afterward Fire walked around the archery range with Archer and Nash, her guard trailing behind.

  The simultaneous company of these two men was a funny thing, for they mirrored each other. Each in love with her, gloomy and moping; each resigned to hopelessness and each subdued, but resenting the presence of the other. And neither doing much to hide any of this from her, for as usual Nash's feelings were open, and Archer's body language unmistakable.

  But Nash's manners were better than Archer's, at least for the moment, and the court had a greater hold on his time. As Archer's choice of conversation became less inclusive, Nash took his leave.

  Fire considered Archer, so tall and fine-looking beside her, his bow in hand. She spoke quietly. "You drove him away, with your talk of our childhood in the north."

  "He wants you, and he doesn't deserve you."

  "As you deserve me?"

  Archer's face took on a grim smile. "I've always known I don't deserve you. Every regard you've ever shown me has been a gift undeserved."

  That is not true, she thought to him. You were my loyal friend even before I could walk.

  "You've changed," Archer said. "Do you realise how much? The more time I spend with you here the less I know you. All these new people in your life, and your happiness in this princess child – and her dog, of all things. And the work you do every day – you use your power, every day. I used to have to fight with you to use it even to defend yourself."

  Fire took a careful breath. "Archer. Sometimes in the courtyards or the hallways, I've taken to changing people's attentions so they don't notice me. So I can walk by without being hassled, and everyone else can continue their work without distraction."

  "You're not ashamed of your abilities anymore," Archer said. "And the sight of you – you're glowing. Truly, Fire. I don't recognise you."

  "But the ease with which I've come to use my power. Can you understand how it frightens me, Archer?"

  Archer stopped for a moment, his gaze fierce, his eyes on three dark dots in the sky. The archery range stood at a high point overlooking the sea. A trio of raptor monsters circled now over some trade boat below, and arrows flew from the bows of its sailors. It was a rough autumn sea and a blustery autumn wind, and arrow after arrow failed to hit its mark.

  Archer took one stunning, lazy shot. A bird fell. Then Fire's guard Edler connected with a shot of his own, and Archer clapped him on the shoulder to congratulate him.

  Fire thought her question forgotten, and so she was surprised when he spoke.

  "You've always been far more afraid of yourself than of any of the terrors in the world outside yourself. Were it the other way around, we'd both have peace."

  He said it kindly, not critically; it was his forlorn wish for peace. Fire hugged her fiddle now with both arms, muting the strings with the fabric of her dress. "Archer, you know me. You recognise me. We must get past this thing between us, you must accept how I've changed. I could not bear it if by refusing your bed I should also lose your friendship. We were friends before. We must find the way to be friends again."

  "I know," he said. "I know, love. I'm trying. I am."

  He walked away from her then and stared at the sea. He stood for some time, silent. When he walked back she was still standing there, holding her fiddle to her breast. After a moment something like a smile eased the sadness in his face.

  "Will you tell me why you're playing a different fiddle?" he said.

  It was a good story to tell, and distant enough from today's feelings that it calmed her in the telling.

  The company of Brigan and Garan was a great relief, compared to that of Archer and Nash. They were so easy. Their silences never felt loaded with grave things they yearned to say, and if they brooded, at least it had no connection to her.

  The three sat in the sunny central courtyard, deliciously warm, for with the approach of winter there were advantages to a black palace with glass roofs. It had been a day of difficult and unproductive work that for Fire had yielded little more than a reiteration of Mydogg's preference for frozen-grape wine. An old servant of Gentian's had reported it to her; the servant had read a line or two about it in a letter Gentian had instructed him to burn, a letter from Mydogg. Fire still couldn't understand this propensity of sworn enemies in the Dells to visit each other and send each other letters. And how frustrating that all the servant had seen was a bit about wine.

  She slapped at a monster bug on her arm. Garan played absently with his walking stick, which he'd used to walk slowly to this spot. Brigan sat stretched out with his hands clasped behind his head, watching Hanna scuffle with Blotchy on the other side of the courtyard.

  "Hanna will never have friends who are people," Brigan said, "until she stops getting into scraps."

  Blotchy was whirling in circles with his mouth clamped around a stick he'd just found at the base of a courtyard tree – a branch, really, quite enormous, that swept a wide and multi-pronged radius as he spun. "This won't do," B
rigan said now. He jumped up, went to the dog, wrestled the branch away and broke it into pieces, then gave Blotchy back a stick of less hazardous dimensions. Determined, apparently, that if Hanna should have no friends, at least she should keep both eyes.

  "She has many friends who are people," Fire said gently when he got back.

  "You know I meant children."

  "She's too precocious for the children her age, and she's too small for the other children to tolerate."

  "They might tolerate her if she would tolerate them. I fear she's becoming a bully."

  Fire spoke with certainty. "She is not a bully. She doesn't pick on the others or single them out; she isn't cruel. She fights only when she's provoked, and they provoke her on purpose, because they've decided not to like her, and they know that if she does fight, you'll punish her."

  "The little brutes. They're using you," Garan muttered to Brigan.

  "Is this just a theory, Lady? Or something you've observed?"

  "It's a theory I've developed on the basis of what I've observed."

  Brigan smiled soberly. "And have you developed a theory about how I might teach my daughter to harden herself to taunts?"

  "I'll think on it."

  "Thank the Dells for your thinking."

  "Thank the Dells for my health," Garan said, rising to his feet at the sight of Sayre, who'd entered the courtyard, looking very pretty in a blue dress. "I shall now bound away."

  He did not bound, but his steady walking was progress, and Fire watched his every step, as if her eyes on his back could keep him safe. Sayre met him and took his arm, and the two set off together.

  His recent setback had frightened her. Fire could admit this to herself, now that he was improved. She wished that old King Arn and his monster adviser, conducting their experiments a hundred years ago, had discovered just a few more medicines, found the remedies to one or two more illnesses.

  Hanna was the next to leave them, running to take Archer's hand as he passed through with his bow.

  "Hanna's announced her intentions to marry Archer," Brigan said, watching them go.

  Fire smiled into her lap. She crafted her response carefully – but spoke it lightly. "I've seen plenty of women fall into an infatuation with him. But your heart can be easier than most other fathers, for she's much too young for his brand of heartbreak. I suppose it's a harsh thing to say of one's oldest friend, but were she twelve years older I would not let them meet."

  True to her expectation, Brigan's face was unreadable. "You're little more than twelve years older than Hanna yourself."

  "I'm a thousand years old," Fire said, "just like you."

  "Hmm," Brigan said. He didn't ask her what she meant, which was for the best, because she wasn't exactly sure. If she was suggesting she was too wise with the weight of her experience to fall prey to infatuation – well, the disproof was sitting before her in the form of a grey-eyed prince with a thoughtful set to his mouth that she found quite distracting.

  Fire sighed, trying to shift her attention. Her senses were overloaded. This courtyard was one of the palace's busiest, and, of course, the palace as a whole swarmed with minds. And just outside the palace grounds was stationed the entire First Branch, with which Brigan had arrived yesterday and would depart the day after tomorrow. She sensed minds more easily now than she had used to. She recognised a good many members of the First Branch, despite their distance.

  She tried to push the feeling of them away. It was tiring, holding everything at once, and she couldn't decide where to rest her focus. She settled on a consciousness that was bothering her. She leaned forward and spoke low to Brigan.

  "Behind you," she said, "a boy with very odd eyes is talking with some of the court children. Who is he?"

  Brigan nodded. "I know the boy you mean. He came with Cutter. You remember the animal trader, Cutter? I want nothing to do with the man, he's a monster smuggler and a brute – except that he happens to be selling a very fine stallion that almost has the markings of a river horse. I'd buy him in a breath if the money didn't go to Cutter. It's a bit tacky, you know, me buying a horse that's likely to have been stolen. I may buy him anyway; in which case Garan will have a conniption at the expense. I suppose he's right. I'm not in need of another horse. Though I wouldn't hesitate if he really were a river horse – do you know the dappled grey horses, Lady, that run wild at the source of the river? Splendid creatures. I've always wanted one, but they're no easy thing to catch."

  Horses were as distracting to the man as to his child. "The boy," Fire prompted dryly.

  "Right. The boy's a strange one, and it isn't just that red eye. He was lurking around when I went to look at the stallion, and I tell you, Lady, he gave me a funny feeling."

  "What do you mean, a funny feeling?"

  Brigan squinted at her in perplexity. "I can't exactly say. There was something... disquieting... about his manner. The way he spoke. I did not like his voice." He stopped, somewhat exasperated, and rubbed his hair so it stood on end. "As I say it, I hear it makes no sense. There was nothing solid about him to fix on as troublesome. But still I told Hanna to stay away from him, and she said she already met him and didn't like him. She said he lies. What do you think of him?"

  Fire applied herself to the question with concerted effort. His mind was unusual, unfamiliar, and she wasn't sure how to connect to it. She wasn't even sure how to comprehend the borders of it. She couldn't see it.

  His mind gave her a very funny feeling indeed. And it was not a good funny feeling.

  "I don't know," she said. "I don't know." And a moment later, not quite knowing why: "Buy the stallion, Lord Prince, if it will get them out of this court."

  Brigan left, presumably to do what Fire said; and Fire sat alone, puzzling over the boy. His right eye was grey and his left eye was red, which was strange enough in itself. His hair was blond like wheat, his skin light, and he had the appearance of being ten or eleven. Could he be some kind of Pikkian? He was sitting facing her, a rodent monster in his lap, a mouse with glimmering gold fur. He was tying a string around its neck. Fire knew somehow that the creature was not his pet.

  He pulled the string, too tight. The mouse's legs began to jerk. Stop it, Fire thought furiously, aiming her message at the strange presence that was his mind.

  He loosened the string immediately. The mouse lay in his lap, heaving with tiny breaths. Then the boy smiled at Fire, and stood up, and came to stand before her. "It doesn't hurt him," he said. "It's only a choking game, for fun."

  His very words grated against her ears; grated, it seemed, against her brain, so horribly, like raptor monsters screeching, that she had to resist the impulse to cover her ears. Yet when she recalled the timbre of his voice, the voice itself was neither unusual nor unpleasant.

  She stared at him coolly, so he would not see her bewilderment. "A choking game? All the fun of it is on your side, and it's a sick kind of fun."

  He smiled again. His lopsided, red-eyed smile was somehow distressing. "Is it sick? To want to be in control?"

  "Of a helpless, frightened creature? Let it go."

  "The others believed me when I said it didn't hurt him," he said, "but you know not to. Plus, you're awfully pretty. So I'll give you what you want."

  He bent to the ground and opened his hand. The monster mouse fled, a streak of gold, disappearing into an opening in the roots of a tree.

  "You have interesting scars on your neck," he said, straightening. "What cut you?"

  "It's none of your affair," Fire said, shifting her headscarf so that it covered her scars, very much disliking his gaze.

  "I'm glad I got to talk to you," he said. "I've wanted to for some time. You're even better than I hoped." He turned around, and left the courtyard.

  What an unpleasant child.

  It had never happened before, that Fire should not be able to form a conception of a consciousness. Even Brigan's mind, which she couldn't enter, offered the shape and feeling of its barricades to her percep
tion. Even the foggy archer, the foggy guards; she couldn't explain their minds, but she could perceive them.

  Reaching for this boy's mind was like walking through a collection of twisted mirrors facing other twisted mirrors, so that all was distorted and misleading, and befuddling to the senses, and nothing could be known or understood. She couldn't get a straight look at him, not even his outline.

  And this was what she stewed over for some time after the boy left; and this stewing was why it took her so long to attend to the condition of the children he'd been talking to. The children in the courtyard who'd believed what he'd said. Their minds were blank, and bubbling with fog.

  Fire could not fathom this fog. But she was certain she'd found its source.

  By the time she realised she mustn't let him go, the sun was setting, the stallion was bought, and the boy was already gone from the court.

  Chapter Twenty

  That same night brought information that distracted everyone from the matter of Cutter's boy.

  It was late evening and Fire was in the stables when she sensed Archer returning from the city to the palace. It was not a thing she would have sensed so forcefully, not searching for it particularly; except that he was eager to talk to her, and open as an infant, and also slightly drunk.

  Fire had only just begun to brush Small, who was standing with eyes closed from the bliss of it and drooling onto his stall door. And she wasn't anxious to see Archer if he was both eager and drunk. She sent him a message. We'll talk when you're sober.

  Some hours later with her regular guard of six, Fire followed the maze from her rooms to Archer's. But then outside his door she was perplexed, for she sensed that her Mila, who was off-duty, was inside Archer's chamber.

  Fire's thoughts groped for an explanation, any explanation other than the obvious. But Mila's mind was open, as even strong minds tended to be when they were experiencing what Mila was experiencing just now on the other side of this door; and Fire remembered how sweet and pretty her guard was, and how many opportunities Archer had had to notice her.