Fire (Graceling Realm #2)(47)
Author: Kristin Cashore

Fire closed her eyes, trying to bear the pressure of all of this meaningless, horrible news. She did not want to go to Fort Flood. But she understood that she couldn't stay here indefinitely, imposing on these people's hospitality. And she supposed the army healers might as well look at her hands, which she herself had not yet seen, but which were obviously swollen, and useless, and ached beneath their bandages as if pain hung at the ends of her arms instead of hands.

She tried not to dwell on what it would mean if the healers told her she was going to lose them.

There was another thing she tried, and usually failed, not to dwell on - a memory of an occurrence that had taken place oh, months ago - before the gala planning, before Archer had ever found Mydogg's wine in Captain Hart's cellar. Fire had been questioning prisoners, all day, every day, and Archer had watched sometimes. And they'd talked to that foul-mouthed fellow who'd spoken of a tall archer with spot-on aim, a r**ist who'd been held in Nax's dungeons some twenty years ago. Jod. And Fire had been happy, because finally she'd known the name and the nature of her foggy-minded archer.

On that day, she hadn't remembered that some twenty years ago Nax had hand-picked a brute from his dungeons and sent him north to rape Brocker's wife, the only happy consequence of which had been the birth of Archer.

The interrogation had ended with Archer punching the informant in the face. On that day, Fire had thought it was because of the man's language.

And perhaps it had been. Fire would never know now at what point Archer had begun to suspect Jod's identity. Archer had kept his thoughts and fears to himself. For Fire had just broken his heart.

WHEN THE DAY came, her guards - nineteen of them now, for Mila was not here - wrapped her in many blankets for the journey, and strapped her arms carefully to her body so that her hands would be near her body's heat. They lifted her into Neel's saddle, and when Neel climbed up behind her they strapped her loosely to him. The party rode slowly, and Neel was strong and attentive, but still it was frightening to trust oneself entirely to someone else's balance.

And then, in time, the motion became soothing. She leaned back against him, relinquished responsibility, and slept.

The dappled grey horse, when separated from Fire and faced with the rock people, Fire's guard, and nineteen military mounts, had proven to be completely wild. It had clopped around on the rocks above ground during her illness, bolting every time a person emerged, refusing to be bridled, or stabled underground, or even approached. But nor did it seem willing to be left behind when it saw Fire being borne away. As the party picked its way east, the horse followed, tentatively, always at a safe distance.

THE BATTLES OF the southern front were waged on the land and in the caves bounded by Gentian's holding, Fort Flood, and the Winged River. Whatever ground the commander had managed to win or lose, the fort itself was still under royal control. Rising high on an outcrop of rock, surrounded by walls almost as tall as its roofs, it functioned as the army's headquarters and hospital.

Clara came running to them as they entered the gates. She stood beside Neel's horse as the guards unstrapped Fire, lowered her to the ground, and unwrapped her from her blankets. Clara was crying, and when she embraced Fire and kissed her face, taking care not to jar Fire's hands, which were still tied to her body, Fire sank numbly against her. She wished she could wrap her arms around this woman who cried for Archer and whose belly was round with Archer's baby. She wished she could melt into her.

'Oh, Fire,' Clara finally said, 'we've been out of our minds with worry. Brigan leaves tonight for the northern front. It'll relieve him greatly to see you alive before he goes.'

'No,' Fire said, pulling suddenly away from Clara, and startled by her own feeling. 'Clara, I don't want to see him. Tell him I wish him well, but I don't want to see him.'

'Oh,' Clara said, taken aback. 'Well. Are you certain? Because I can't think how we're going to stop him, once he returns from the tunnels and learns you're here.'

The tunnels. Fire sensed her own rising panic. 'My hands,' she said, focusing on a more isolated pain.

'Is there a healer with the time to attend to them?'

THE FINGERS OF her right hand were pinkish and puffy and blistered, like hunks of raw poultry. Fire stared at them, tired and sick, until she sensed that the healer was cheered by their appearance. 'It's too soon to know for sure,' the woman said, 'but we have grounds for hope.'

She smoothed a salve into the hand very, very gently, wrapped it in loose bandages, and unwrapped the other hand, humming.

The outer two fingers on Fire's left hand were black and dead-looking from the tips all the way down to the second knuckles.

The healer, no longer humming, asked if it was true what she'd heard, that Fire was an accomplished fiddler. 'Well,' the woman said. 'All we can do now is watch them, and wait.'

She gave Fire a pill and a liquid to swallow, applied the salve, and wrapped bandages around the hand.

'Stay here,' she said. She bustled out of the small, dark room, which had a smoky fire in the grate and shutters over the windows to hold in the heat.

Fire had a vague memory of a time when she had been better at ignoring things it was no use to consider. She had been in control once, and had not sat dismal and wretched on examination tables while the entirety of her guard stood watching her with a sympathetic sort of bleakness.

And then she felt Brigan coming, an enormous moving force of emotion: concern, relief, reassurance, too intense for Fire to bear. She began to gasp; she was drowning. As he came into the room she slid off the table and ran into a corner.

No, she thought to him.I don't want you here. No.

'Fire,' he said. 'What is it? Please tell me.'

Please, you must go away. Please, Brigan, I beg you.

'Leave us,' Brigan said quietly to the guard.

No! I need them!

'Stay,' Brigan said in the same tone of voice, and her guard, which by now had developed a high threshold for bewilderment, turned around and filed back into the room.

Fire, Brigan thought to her. Have I done something to make you angry?

No. Yes, yes, you have, she thought wildly.You never liked Archer. You don't care that he's dead .

That is untrue, he thought to her with utter certainty. I had my own regard for Archer, and besides, it hardly matters, because you love him, and I love you, and your grief brings me grief. There is nothing in Archer's death but sadness.

That's why you must go, she thought to him.There's nothing in this but sadness .

There was a noise in the doorway and a man's harsh voice. 'Commander, we're ready.'

'I'm coming,' Brigan said over his shoulder. 'Wait for me outside. '

The man left.

Go, Fire thought to Brigan.Don't keep them waiting .

I will not leave you like this, he thought.

I won't look at you, she thought, pressing at the wall clumsily with her bandaged hands.I don't want to see your new battle scars .

He came to her in her corner, the stubborn, steady feeling of him unchanged. He touched his hand to her right shoulder and bent his face to her left ear, his stubble rough and his face cold against hers and the feel of him achingly familiar, and suddenly she was leaning back against him, her arms awkwardly embracing his left arm, stiff with leathered armour, and pulling it around her.

'You're the one with new scars,' he said very quietly, so that only she could hear.

'Don't go,' she said. 'Please don't go.'

'I desperately want not to go. But you know that I must.'

'I don't want to love you if you're only going to die,' she cried, burying her face in his arm. 'I don't love you.'

'Fire,' he said. 'Will you do something for me? Will you send me word on the northern front, so I know how you're faring?'

'I don't love you.'

'Does that mean you won't send word?'

'No,' she said confusedly. 'Yes. I'll send word. But—'

'Fire,' he said gently, beginning to untangle himself from her. 'You must feel what you feel. I—'

Another voice, sharp with impatience, interrupted from the doorway. 'Commander! The horses are standing.'

Brigan spun around to face the man, swearing with as much exasperation and fury as Fire had ever heard anyone swear. The man scuttled away in alarm.

'I love you,' Brigan said very calmly to Fire's back. 'I hope in the coming days it may comfort you to know that. And all I ask of you is that you try to eat, Fire, and sleep, no matter how you feel. Eat and sleep. And send me word, so I know how you are. Tell me if there's anyone, or anything, I can send to you.'

Go safely. Go safely, she thought to him as he left the building and his convoy pounded through the gates.

What a silly, empty thing it was to say to anyone, anywhere.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

FIRE GUESSED THAT there was little for a person with no hands to do at Fort Flood. Clara was busy with Brigan's captains and a constant stream of messengers, and Garan rarely even showed his face, scowling in his customary manner when he did. Fire avoided them, as she avoided the room where endless rows of soldiers lay suffering.

She was not permitted to step outside the walls of the fortress. She divided her time between two places: the bedroom she shared with Clara, Musa, and Margo, feigning sleep whenever Clara entered, for Clara asked too many questions about Archer. And the heavily guarded roof of the fort, where she stood in a warm hooded cloak, hands enclosed safely in her armpits, and communed with the grey dappled horse.

The mare - for Fire was clear-minded enough now to know she was a mare - was living on the rocks north of the building. She had broken away from Fire's group as they'd approached the fort and, despite the attempts of the horsemaster, would not consent to being stabled along with the other horses. Fire refused to allow anyone to subdue her with drugs, nor would Fire herself compel the horse into confinement. The horsemaster had thrown his arms in the air in disgust. This horse was obviously an uncommonly fine animal, but he was up to his elbows in injured horses and cast shoes and broken field harnesses, and had no time to waste on a recalcitrant.

And so the mare lived free on the rocks, eating food if it was left for her, finding food if it wasn't, and coming to visit Fire whenever Fire called to her. Her feeling was strange and wild, her mind a marvellous unbroken thing that Fire could touch and influence, but never truly comprehend. She belonged alone on the rocks, unconstrained, and vicious when she needed to be.

And yet there was love in the feeling of her too - constraining, in its way. This horse had no intention of leaving Fire.

They spent time within view of each other, their feelings connected by the tether of Fire's power. She was beautiful to look at, her coat soft patches and circles of grey, her mane and her tail thick and long, and tangled, and deep grey like slate. Her eyes were blue.

Fire wished she were allowed out of the fort. She would like to join the horse on the rocks, and climb onto her back, and be carried away wherever the horse wanted to go.

GARAN CAME STALKING into her bedroom one morning while she was curled under her covers, trying to numb herself to the burning of her hands and pretending to sleep. He stood over her and said without preliminary, 'Get up, Fire. We need you.'