Fire (Graceling Realm #2)(44)
Author: Kristin Cashore

A rock wall, high and long and incongruously neat, surrounded his property. Pens and cages dotted the grounds. Spots of colour, monsters behind bars, raptors, bears, and leopards screeching at each other.

In all the strangeness of the place, this was familiar to Fire, and brought memories crowding too close.

She half expected the boy to try to force her into one of those cages. One more monster for the black market, one more catch.

She didn't really care what intentions Cutter had for her here. Cutter was nothing, he was an annoyance, a gnat, and she would disabuse him quickly of the notion that his intentions were relevant. She would leave this place and go home.

THEY DID NOT lock her in a cage. They brought her into the house and drew her a hot bath in an upstairs room with a roaring fire that quite overcame the drafts from the windows. It was a small bedroom, the walls hung with tapestries that stunned her, though she hid her surprise and pleasure. They were woven with green fields, flowers, and blue sky, and they were beautiful, and very realistic. She had thought to refuse the bath, because she sensed, and resented, that its purpose was to prettify her. But standing in a place of fields and flowers made her want to be clean.

The men left. She set her vial of poison and her dart on a table and peeled her filthy dress away from her skin. She braced herself against the painful exhilaration of scalding bathwater, finally relaxing, closing her eyes, surrendering herself to the bliss of soap that lifted sweat, old blood, and river grime from her body and hair. Every few minutes she could hear the boy shouting messages up the stairs to the guards outside her room, and just as regularly to the guards on the rocks below her window. The monster was not to be trusted or helped to escape, he yelled. The boy knew what was best. The men would avoid mistakes if they followed the boy's advice, always. It must be nerve-racking, Fire thought, to be able to manipulate minds but not sense the state of them. His shouts were unnecessary, for she was not altering any of their minds. Not yet.

She played her mind through the building and the grounds, as she'd been doing since she'd come in range of the place. She recognised Cutter, downstairs with the boy and a number of men. As foggy as everyone else, and as condescending and insincere as he'd always been. Whatever the boy's words could do, it seemed they did not alter temperament.

When she stretched to her limits she could sense possibly thirty men in the house and grounds, and a spattering of women, too. All were muddle-minded. Archer was not there.

She pushed herself further.Archer? Archer!

There was no response.

And she wouldn't have minded not finding him here, she would have hoped it meant he'd come to his senses and abandoned his heroic pursuit - except for an unpleasant perception she wished she were cowardly enough to ignore. One or two of the foggy men on these grounds had the feeling of people she recognised. She thought they might have been guards recently in Nash's palace. And the simplest explanation for their presence here was that they'd come with Archer as part of his guard. Which begged the question of what had happened since, and who was left guarding Archer, and where Archer was.

The bath was still the purest, hottest ecstasy but she stood, and climbed out, suddenly impatient to be done with this place. She scrubbed herself dry and dressed in the flimsy long-sleeved gown they'd left for her. It had enough the look of bedroom clothing to make her uncomfortable, in addition to which, they'd taken her boots and coat away and given her nothing for her hair. She went to a wardrobe in the corner and dug through its random assortment of items until she'd found socks, a sturdy pair of boy's boots, a man's heavy robe that was far too big, and a brown woolen scarf that would do for a head wrapping.

She hoped, a bit grimly, that the ensemble looked as peculiar as it felt. She didn't need beauty to control the boy's empty-headed puppets, and she wasn't in the mood to gratify Cutter by presenting the appearance of a doe-eyed monster woman ready to be ravished by one of his disgusting male customers.

She ran her mind through the hundreds of creatures held on this estate, monster predators, horses and hunting dogs, even an odd collection of rodents she couldn't imagine the purpose of. The choice of horses satisfied her. They were none of them as sympathetic as Small, but several would suit her purposes.

She soaked the tip of her dart in the vial of sleeping poison and tucked the vial back into her gown. She held the dart in her hand, where it was hidden by the length of her heavy sleeve.

Taking a deep breath for courage, she went downstairs.

CUTTER'S SITTING ROOM was small and as warm as the bedroom had been, the walls similarly dressed, in tapestries showing fields of flowers rising to cliffs overhanging the sea. The rug here was colourful too, and it occurred to Fire that at least some of this beauty had been woven from monster fur.

And the books on the bookcases, and the golden clock on the mantelpiece - Fire wondered how much of this house's richness had been stolen.

Cutter sat at the head of the room, clearly believing himself to be the room's master. The room's true master leaned against the wall to the side, small, bored, blinking unmatched eyes, and surrounded by a woven field of flowers. Jod the archer stood beside Cutter. A man was positioned at each of the room's entrances.

Cutter barely glanced at Fire's attire. His eyes were glued to her face, his mouth stretched into a jubilant and proprietary simper. He looked just as he always had, except for a new vacantness of expression that must have to do with the fog.

'It's been no easy task stealing you, girl, especially since you've taken up residence in the king's palace,'

he said in the self-satisfied voice she remembered. 'It's taken a great deal of time and considerable spying. Not to mention that we had to kill a number of our own spies who were careless enough to be captured in your woods by you and your people. We seem to have the stupidest spies in the kingdom.

What a lot of trouble. But it was all worth it, boy, wasn't it? Look at her.'

'She is lovely,' the boy said disinterestedly. 'You shouldn't sell her. You should keep her here with us.'

Cutter's forehead creased with puzzlement. 'The rumour among my colleagues is that Lord Mydogg is prepared to pay a fortune for her. In fact, a number of my buyers have shown particular interest. But perhaps I should keep her here with us.' His expression brightened. 'I could breed her! What a price her babies would fetch.'

'What we do with her remains to be seen,' the boy said.

'Precisely,' Cutter said. 'Remains to be seen.'

'If she would only behave herself,' the boy continued, 'then we wouldn't have to punish her, and she might understand that we want to be friends. She might find she likes it here. Speaking of which, she's a bit too quiet for my tastes at the moment. Jod, draw an arrow. If I command it, shoot her someplace painful that won't kill her. Shoot her in the knee. It might be to our advantage to hobble her.'

This was not the job for a small dart bow. Jod swung his longbow from his back, pulled a white arrow from his quiver, and drew smoothly on a string most men wouldn't even have the strength to draw. He held the notched arrow, waiting, calm and easy. And Fire was slightly sick, and it was not because she knew that an arrow of that size shot with that bow at this range would shatter her knee. She was sick because Jod moved with his bow as if it were a limb of his body, so natural and graceful, and too much like Archer.

She spoke to placate the boy, but also because there were beginning to be questions to which she wanted answers. 'An archer shot a man imprisoned in my father's cages last spring,' she said to Jod. 'It was an uncommonly difficult shot. Were you that archer?'

Jod had no idea what she was talking about, that was plain. He shook his head, wincing, as if he were trying to remember all the things he'd ever done and could go back no further than yesterday.

'He's your man,' the boy said blandly. 'Jod does all our shooting. Far too talented to be wasted. And so delightfully malleable,' he said, tapping a fingertip to his own head, 'if you know what I mean. One of my luckiest finds, Jod.'

'And what is Jod's history?' Fire asked the boy, trying to match his bland tone.

The boy seemed delighted all out of proportion with this question. He smiled a very pleased, and unpleasant, smile. 'Interesting you should ask. Only weeks ago we had a visitor wondering the very same thing. Who knew, when we hired ourselves an archer, that he would come to be the subject of so much mystery and speculation? And I wish we could satisfy your curiosity, but it seems Jod's memory is not what it used to be. We've no idea what he was up to, what would it be, twenty-one years ago?'

Fire had taken a step toward the boy as he spoke, unable to prevent herself, clutching the dart hard in her hand. 'Where is Archer?'

At this the boy smirked, more and more happy with this turn of conversation. 'He left us. He didn't care for the company. He's gone back to his estate in the north.'

He was a terrible liar, too used to people believing him. 'Where is he?' Fire said again, her voice cracking now with a panic that made the boy smile wider.

'He left a couple of his guards behind,' the boy said. 'Kind of him, really. They were able to tell us a bit about your life at court, and your weaknesses. Puppies. Helpless children.'

Several things happened in quick succession. Fire rushed toward the boy. The boy gestured to Jod, calling, 'Shoot!' Fire smashed through Jod's fog, causing him to swing his bow wildly and release his arrow into the ceiling. The boy yelled, 'Shoot her but don't kill her!' and hurtled himself away, trying to sidestep Fire, but Fire lunged at him, reached, just barely jabbed his flailing arm with her dart. He jumped away from her, swinging fists at her, still yelling; and then his face slackened. He tipped and slumped.

Fire had clamped hold of every mind in the room before the boy even hit the floor. She bent over him, yanked a knife from his belt, walked to Cutter, and pointed the shaking blade at Cutter's throat.Where is Archer? she thought, because speech had become impossible.

Cutter stared back at her, entranced and stupid. 'He didn't care for the company. He's gone back to his estate in the north.'

No, Fire thought, wanting to hit him in her frustration.Think. You know this. Where—

Cutter interrupted, squinting at her with puzzlement, as if he couldn't remember who she was, or why he was talking to her. He said, 'Archer is with the horses.'

Fire turned and left the room and the house. She glided past men who watched her progress with vacant eyes. Cutter is wrong, she told herself, preparing herself with denial. Archer is not with the horses. Cutter is wrong.

And, of course, this was true, for it was not Archer she found on the rocks behind the stable. It was only his body.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT passed in a blur of numbness and anguish.

It was a thing about being a monster. She couldn't look at a body and pretend she was looking at Archer. She knew, she could feel, that the fires of Archer's heart and mind were nowhere near. This body was a horrible thing, almost unrecognisable, lying there, mocking her, mocking Archer with its emptiness.

Nonetheless, this did not stop her dropping to her knees and stroking the cold arm of this body, over and over, breathing shallowly, not entirely sure what she was doing. Taking hold of the arm, clutching it, while confused tears ran down her face.