Fire (Graceling Realm #2)(29)
Author: Kristin Cashore

'What did he look like, this fellow?'

A few of the guard scratched their heads and grumbled that they couldn't remember; and Fire could almost reach out and touch the fog of their minds. But Musa's mind was clear. 'He was tall, Lady, taller than the king, and thin, wasted. He had white hair and dark eyes and he was not well. His colour was off, he was grey-like, and he had marks on his skin. A rash.'

'A rash?'

'He wore plain clothing, and he had a positive armament of bows on his back - crossbow, short bow, a truly gorgeous longbow. He had a full quiver and a knife, but no sword.'

'The arrows in his quiver. What were they made of ?'

Musa pursed her lips. 'I didn't notice.'

'A white wood,' Neel said.

And so the foggy-headed archer had come to her rooms to see her views. And had left a number of her guards with puzzled expressions, and foggy heads.

Fire walked to the foggiest guard, the first who'd raised an argument, a fellow named Edler who was normally quite amiable. She put her hand to his forehead. 'Edler. Does your head hurt?'

It took Edler a moment to process his answer. 'It doesn't exactly hurt, Lady, but I don't feel quite like myself.'

Fire considered how to word this. 'May I have your permission to try to clear the discomfort?'

'Certainly, Lady, if you wish.'

Fire entered Edler's consciousness easily, as she had the poacher's. She played around with his fog, touched it and twisted it, trying to decide what exactly it was. It seemed like a balloon that was filling his mind with emptiness, pushing his own intelligence to the edges.

Fire jabbed the balloon hard and it popped, and fizzled. Edler's own thoughts rushed forward and fell into place; and he rubbed his head with both hands. 'It does feel better, Lady. I can picture that man clearly. I don't think he was the king's man.'

'He wasn't the king's man,' Fire said. 'The king wouldn't send a sickly fellow armed with a longbow to my rooms to admire my views.'

Edler sighed. 'Rocks, but I'm tired.'

Fire moved on to her next foggy guard, and thought to herself that here was a thing more ominous than anything she'd uncovered yet in the questioning rooms.

On her bed later she found a letter from Archer. Once the summer harvest was through, he intended to visit. It was a happiness, but it did not lighten the state of things.

She had thought herself the only person in the Dells capable of altering minds.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE YEAR FIRE spent training her father to experience things that didn't exist was also, thankfully, the year her relationship with Archer found a new happiness.

Cansrel hadn't minded experiencing non-existent things, for it was a time when existing things depressed him. Nax had been his conduit to all pleasures, and Nax was gone. Brigan grew more influential and had escaped another attack uninjured. It was some relief for Cansrel to feel sun on his skin in the midst of weeks of drizzle, or taste monster meat when it was not being served. There was solace in the touch of his daughter's mind - now that she knew better than to turn flames into flowers.

On her side of things, Fire's body suffered; she lost her appetite, grew thin, had attacks of dizziness, got cramps in her neck and shoulders that made playing music painful and brought on splitting headaches.

She avoided contemplation of the thing she was thinking of doing. She was certain that if she looked at it straight on she'd lose control of herself.

Archer was not, in fact, the only person that year to bring her comfort. A young woman named Liddy, sweet and hazel-eyed, was the maid of Fire's bedrooms. She came upon Fire one spring day curled on the bed, fighting off a whirling panic. Liddy liked her mild young lady, and was sorry at her distress. She sat beside Fire and stroked her hair, at Fire's forehead and behind her ears, against her neck, and down to the small of her back. The touch was kindly meant, and the deepest and tenderest comfort in the world. Fire found herself resting her head in Liddy's lap while Liddy continued stroking. It was a gift, offered unjealously, and Fire accepted it.

That day, from that moment, something quiet grew between them. An alliance. They brushed each other's hair sometimes, helped each other dress and undress. They stole time together, whispering, like little girls who've discovered a soul mate.

Some things could not happen in Cansrel's proximity without Cansrel knowing; monsters knew things.

Cansrel began to complain about Liddy. He did not like her, he did not like the time they spent together.

Finally he lost patience and arranged a marriage for Liddy, sending her away to an estate beyond the town.

Fire was breathless, astounded, and heartbroken. Certainly she was glad that he'd merely sent Liddy away, not killed her or taken her into his own bed to teach her a lesson. But still, it was a bitter and selfish cruelty. It did not make her merciful.

Perhaps her lonesomeness after Liddy prepared her for Archer, though Liddy and Archer were manifestly different.

During that spring and into the summer she turned fifteen, Archer knew what mad thing Fire was contemplating. He knew why she couldn't eat and why her body suffered. It tormented him, took him out of his mind with fear for her. He fought with her about it; he fought with Brocker, who was also worried but who nonetheless refused to interfere. Over and over he begged Fire to release herself from the entire endeavour. Over and over Fire refused.

One August night during a frantic whispered battle under a tree outside her house, he kissed her. She stiffened, startled, and then knew, as his hands reached for her and he kissed her again, that she wanted this, she needed Archer, her body needed this wildness that was also comfort. She burrowed herself against him; she brought him inside and upstairs. And that was that; child companions became lovers.

They found a place where they could agree, a release from the anxiety and unhappiness that threatened to overwhelm them. After making love with her friend, Fire often found herself wanting to eat. Kissing her and laughing, Archer would feed her in her own bed with food he carried in through the window.

Cansrel knew, of course, but where her gentle love of Liddy had been intolerable to him, her need for Archer roused nothing stronger than an amused acceptance of the inevitable. He didn't care, as long as she took the herbs when she needed to. 'Two of us is enough, Fire,' he'd say smoothly. She heard the threat in his words toward the baby she wasn't going to have. She took the herbs.

Archer did not act jealous in those days, or domineering. That came later.

Fire knew too well that things didn't ever stay the same. Natural beginnings came to natural or unnatural ends. She was eager to see Archer, more than eager, but she knew what he would come to King's City hoping for. She wasn't looking forward to putting this end into words for him.

FIRE HAD TAKEN to describing the foggy archer to everyone she questioned, very briefly at the end of each interview. So far it was to no avail.

'Lady,' Brigan said to her today in Garan's bedroom. 'Have you learned anything yet about that archer?'

'No, Lord Prince. No one seems to recognise his description.'

'Well,' he said, 'I hope you'll keep asking.'

Garan's health had had a setback, but he refused to go into the infirmary or stop working, which meant that in recent days his bedchamber had become quite a hub of activity. Breathing was a difficulty and he had no strength to sit up. Despite this, he remained more than capable of holding his side of an argument.

'Forget the archer,' he said now. 'We have more important matters to discuss, such as the exorbitant cost of your army.' He glared at Brigan, who'd propped himself against the wardrobe, too directly in Fire's line of vision to ignore, tossing a ball back and forth in his hands that she recognised as a toy she'd seen Blotchy and Hanna fighting over on occasion. 'It's far too expensive,' Garan continued, still glaring from his bed. 'You pay them too much, and then when they're injured or dead and no use to us you continue to pay them.'

Brigan shrugged. 'And?'

'You think we're made of money.'

'I will not cut their pay.'

'Brigan,' Garan said wearily. 'We cannot afford it.'

'We must afford it. The eve of a war is not the time to start cutting an army's pay. How do you think I've managed to recruit so many? Do you really think them so shot through with loyalty for the bloodline of Nax that they wouldn't turn to Mydogg if he offered more?'

'As I understood it,' Garan said, 'the lot of them would pay for the privilege of dying in defence of none other than you.'

Nash spoke from his seat in the window, where he was a dark shape outlined in the light of a blue sky.

He'd been sitting there for some time. Fire knew he was watching her. 'And that's because he always sticks up for them, Garan, when brutes like you try to take their money away. I wish you would rest. You look like you're about to pass out.'

'Don't patronise me,' Garan said; and then dissolved into a fit of coughing that had the sound of a saw blade tearing through wood.

Fire leaned forward in her chair and touched Garan's damp face. She'd come to an understanding with him regarding this bout of illness. He insisted on working, and so she agreed to bring him her reports from the questioning rooms; but only if he allowed her into his mind, to ease his sense of his throbbing head and burning lungs.

'Thank you,' he said to her softly, taking her hand and holding it to his chest. 'This conversation rots.

Lady, give me some good news from the questioning rooms.'

'I'm afraid there isn't any, Lord Prince.'

'Still coming up with contradiction?'

'Most certainly. A messenger told me yesterday that Mydogg has definite plans to make an attack against both the king and Lord Gentian in November. Then today a new fellow told me Mydogg has definite plans to move his entire army north into Pikkia and wait for a war between Gentian and the king to play out before he so much as raises a sword. Plus, I spoke to a spy of Gentian's who says Gentian killed Lady Murgda in an ambush in August.'

Brigan was spinning the ball now on the end of his finger, absent-mindedly. 'I met with Lady Murgda on the fifteenth of September,' he said. 'She wasn't particularly friendly, but she was plainly not dead.'

It was a tendency in the questioning rooms that had arisen suddenly in recent weeks, contradiction and misinformation, coming from all sides and making it very difficult to know which sources to trust. The messengers and spies Fire questioned were clear-headed and truthful with their knowledge. It was simply that their knowledge was wrong.

All at the Dellian court knew what it meant. Both Mydogg and Gentian were aware that Fire had joined the ranks of the enemy. To lessen the advantage she gave the Dellian throne, both rebel lords had begun misinforming some among their own people, and then sending them out to get caught.

'There are people close to both men,' Garan said, 'people who know the truth of their plans. We need those people - a close ally of Mydogg's, and one of Gentian's. And they have to be people we'd never suspect normally, for neither Mydogg nor Gentian must ever suspect us of questioning them.'

'We need an ally of Mydogg's or Gentian's pretending to be among the most loyal allies of the king,'