Fire (41 page)

‘Lord Brocker is also your child’s grandfather,’ Fire said mildly. ‘And there are two grandmothers you needn’t be ashamed of.’

‘And anyway,’ Clara said, ‘if we’re to be judged by our parents and grandparents, then we all may as well impale ourselves upon jagged bits of rock.’

Yes, Fire thought to herself grimly. That wasn’t far from true.

When she was alone she couldn’t avoid thoughts of home, memories. On the roof, visiting the mare, she fought off thinking of Small, who was far away in King’s City, most certainly wondering why she had gone away and if she was ever coming back.

At night, when she struggled with sleep, Cansrel and Archer kept changing places in her nightmares. Cansrel, his throat torn apart, was suddenly Archer, staring at her just as balefully as Cansrel always had. Or sometimes she was luring Archer, rather than Cansrel, to his death, or luring them together, or sometimes Cansrel was killing Archer, or raping Archer’s mother, and maybe Archer found him and killed him. Whatever happened, whichever dead man died again in her dreams, she woke to the same pitiless grief.

NEWS CAME FROM the northern front that Brigan was sending Nash down to Fort Flood and Brocker and Roen would follow him.

Garan was indignant.

‘I can understand sending Nash here to take his place,’ he said. ‘But why is he having done with his entire strategising team? He’ll be sending us the Third and Fourth next, and taking Mydogg’s army on all by himself.’

‘It must be becoming too dangerous there for anyone who isn’t a soldier,’ Clara said.

‘If it’s dangerous, he should tell us.’

‘He
has
told us, Garan. What do you think he means when he says even in camp a night’s rest is rare? Do you imagine Mydogg’s soldiers are keeping ours out late with drinking games and dancing? And did you read the latest report? A soldier of the Third attacked his own company the other day, killed three of his fellow soldiers before he himself was killed. Mydogg had promised to pay a fortune to his family if he turned traitor.’

Working in the healing room, Fire could not fail to learn the things that happened in battle and in war. And she understood that despite the torn-up bodies the medics brought in from the tunnels every day, despite the difficulty of supplying food to the southern camps and carrying the injured away and repairing weapons and armour, and despite the bonfires lit every night to burn the dead, the southern war was thought to be going well. Here at Fort Flood it was a matter of skirmishes on horseback and on foot, one group of soldiers trapping another in a cave, quick strikes and retreats. Gentian’s soldiers, who were led by one of Mydogg’s Pikkian captains, were disorganised. Brigan’s, on the other hand, were finely trained to know their responsibilities in any given situation, even in the chaos of the tunnels. Brigan had left predicting it would be only a matter of weeks before they made some kind of significant breakthrough.

But on the northern front, the fighting took place on the open, flat terrain north of the city, where there was little advantage to cleverness of strategy. The ground and the visibility warranted full-out battle, all day until dark fell. Almost every battle ended with the royal side in retreat. They were fierce, Mydogg’s men, and both Mydogg and Murgda were there with them; and the snow and ice were proving to be no friends to the horses. Too often the soldiers fought on their feet, and then it began to show that the King’s Army was vastly outnumbered. Very slowly, Mydogg was advancing on the city.

And of course, the north was where Brigan had gone, because Brigan always went wherever things were going most badly. Fire supposed he needed to be there in order to give rousing speeches and lead the charge into the fray, or whatever it was commanders did in wartime. She resented his competence at something so tragic and senseless. She wished he, or somebody, would throw down his sword and say, ‘Enough! This is a silly way to decide who’s in charge!’ And it seemed to her, as the beds in the healing room filled and emptied and filled, that these battles didn’t leave much to be in charge of. The kingdom was already broken, and this war was tearing the broken pieces smaller.

Cansrel would have liked it. Meaningless destruction was to his taste. The boy probably would’ve liked it too.

Archer would have reserved his judgment - reserved it from her, at least, knowing her scathing opinion. And whatever his opinion, he would have gone out and fought bravely for the Dells.

As Brigan and Nash were doing.

WHEN NASH’S FRONT guard clattered through the gate, Fire was ashamed to find herself running up to the roof, stumbling, uncontrolled.

Beautiful horse
, she cried out to her companion.
Beautiful horse, I can’t bear this. I can bear Archer and Cansrel if I must, but I cannot bear this too. Make him go away. Why must my friends be soldiers?

Some time later, when Nash came to the roof to find her, she didn’t kneel, like her own guard and the roof guard did. She kept her back turned to Nash and her eyes on the horse, her shoulders hunched as if to protect herself from his presence.

‘Lady Fire,’ he said.

Lord King. I mean no disrespect, but I beg you to go away.

‘Certainly, Lady, if you wish it,’ he said mildly. ‘But first I’ve promised to deliver about a hundred messages from the northern front and the city - from my mother, your grandmother, Hanna, Brocker, and Mila, for starters.’

Fire imagined a message from Brocker: I blame you for the death of my son
.
A message from Tess: You’ve ruined your beautiful hands with your carelessness, haven’t you, Lady Granddaughter? A message from Hanna: You left me here alone.

Very well
, she thought to Nash.
Tell me your messages, if you must.

‘Well,’ Nash said, somewhat bemused, ‘they send their love, of course. And their heartbreak over Archer, and their relief that you’re alive. And Hanna specifically asked me to tell you that Blotchy is recovering. Lady—’ He stopped. ‘Fire,’ he said. ‘Why will you talk to my sister and my brothers but not to me?’

She snapped at him.
If Brigan said we talked he was being disingenuous.

Nash paused. ‘He didn’t. I suppose I assumed. But surely you’ve been talking to Clara and Garan.’

Clara and Garan aren’t soldiers. They aren’t going to die
, she thought to him, realising as she conveyed it that this reasoning was flawed, for Garan could die of his illness, and Clara of childbirth. And Tess of old age, and Brocker and Roen of an attack on their travelling party, and Hanna could be thrown from a horse.

‘Fire—’

Please, Nash, please. Don’t make me talk about reasons, please, just let me be alone. Please!

He was stung by this. He turned to go. Then he stopped and turned back. ‘Just one more thing. Your horse is in the stables.’

Fire looked across the rocks at the grey horse stamping her hooves at the snow, and didn’t understand. She sent her confusion to Nash.

‘Didn’t you tell Brigan you wanted your horse?’ he asked.

Fire spun around, looking straight at him for the first time. He struck a handsome figure and fierce, a tiny new scar running into his lip, his cloak hanging over armour of mail and leather. She said, ‘You don’t mean Small?’

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘Small. Anyway, Brigan thought you wanted him. He’s downstairs.’

Fire ran.

SHE HAD CRIED so often and so much since she’d found Archer’s body, cried at the slightest thing, always silent tears rolling down her face. The way she began to cry when she saw Small, plain and quiet with his hair in his eyes, pressing against his stall door to reach her, was different. She thought she might choke from the violence of these sobs, or rip something inside her.

Musa was alarmed, and came into the stall with her, rubbing her back as she clung to Small’s neck and gasped. Neel produced handkerchiefs. It was no use. She couldn’t stop crying.

It’s my fault
, she said to Small over and over.
Oh Small, it’s my fault. I was supposed to be the one to die, not Archer. Archer was never supposed to die.

After a long time, she cried herself to a place where she understood that it was not her fault. And then she cried more, from the simple grief of knowing that he was gone.

SHE WOKE, NOT from a nightmare, but
to
something - something comforting. The sensation of being wrapped in warm blankets and sleeping against a warm breathing back that belonged to Small.

Musa and several other guards were having a murmured conversation with someone outside the stall. Fire’s bleary mind groped its way toward them. The someone was the king.

Her panic was gone, replaced with an odd, peaceful emptiness. She pushed herself up and ran her bandaged hand lightly along Small’s wonderful barrel body, swerving to touch the places where his fur grew crooked around raptor monster scars. His mind snoozed gently, and the hay near his face moved with his breath. He was a dark lump in the torchlight. He was perfect.

She touched Nash’s mind. He came to the stall door and leaned over it, looking at her. Hesitation, and love, obvious on his face and in his feeling.

‘You’re smiling,’ he said.

Naturally, tears were the response to these words. Angry with herself, she tried to stop them, but they squeezed out nonetheless.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

He came into the stall and crouched down in the space between Small’s head and chest. He stroked Small’s neck, considering her.

‘I understand you’ve been crying a great deal,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said, defeated.

‘You must be tired and sore from it.’

‘Yes.’

‘And your hands. Are they still very painful?’

There was something comforting about this calm interrogation. ‘They’re a bit better than they were.’

He nodded gravely and continued to stroke Small’s neck. He was dressed as before, except now he carried his helmet under one arm. He seemed older in the darkness and the orange light. He was older, ten years older, than herself. Almost all of her friends were older; even Brigan, the youngest sibling, was almost five years her senior. But she didn’t think it was the difference in years that made her feel like such a child, surrounded by adults.

‘Why are you still here?’ she asked. ‘Shouldn’t you be in a cave somewhere inspiring people?’

‘I should,’ he said, shouldering her sarcasm lightly, ‘and I came here for my horse so that I might ride out to the camps. But now I’m talking to you instead.’

Fire traced a long, thin scar on Small’s back. She thought about her tendency lately to communicate more easily with horses and dying strangers than with the people she had thought she loved.

‘It’s not reasonable to love people who are only going to die,’ she said.

Nash thought about that for a moment, stroking Small’s neck with great deliberation, as if the fate of the Dells depended on that smooth, careful movement.

‘I have two responses to that,’ he said finally. ‘First, everyone’s going to die. Second, love is stupid. It has nothing to do with reason. You love whomever you love. Against all reason I loved my father.’ He looked at her keenly. ‘Did you love yours?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

He stroked Small’s nose. ‘I love you,’ he said, ‘even knowing you’ll never have me. And I love my brother, more than I ever realised before you came along. You can’t help whom you love, Lady. Nor can you know what it’s liable to cause you to do.’

She made a connection then. Surprised, she sat back from him and studied his face, soft with shadows and light. She saw a part of him she hadn’t seen before.

‘You came to me for lessons to guard your mind,’ she said, ‘and you stopped asking me to marry you, both at the same time. You did those things out of love for your brother.’

‘Well,’ he said, looking a bit sheepishly at the floor. ‘I also took a few swings at him, but that’s neither here nor there.’

‘You’re good at love,’ she said simply, because it seemed to her that it was true. ‘I’m not so good at love. I’m like a barbed creature. I push everyone I love away.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t mind you pushing me away if it means you love me, little sister.’

CHAPTER THIRTY

S
HE BEGAN TO write a letter in her mind to Brigan. It wasn’t a very good letter. Dear Brigan, I don’t think you should be doing what you’re doing. Dear Brigan, people are swirling away from me and I am swirling apart.

The swelling of her hands had gone down, and no places had blackened that hadn’t been black before. There would likely be a surgery, the healers said, when more time had passed, to remove the two dead fingers on her left hand.

‘With all your medicines,’ Musa asked one of the healers, ‘you really have nothing to help her?’

‘There are no medicines to bring a dead thing back to life,’ the healer said crisply. ‘The best thing right now will be for Lady Fire to start using her hands again regularly. She’ll find a person can manage quite well without ten fingers.’

It was not like it had been before. But what a relief to have permission to cut her food, button her own buttons, tie back her own hair, and she would do it, even if her movements were clumsy and infantile at first and her living fingers burned, even if she sensed pity in the feeling of her watching friends. The pity only made her more stubborn. She asked permission to help with practical tasks in the healing room - dressing wounds, feeding the soldiers who couldn’t feed themselves. They never minded if she dribbled broth onto their clothing.

As her dexterity improved, she even began to assist with some of the simpler aspects of surgery: holding lamps, handing the surgeons their supplies. She found that she had a strong stomach for blood, and infections, and men’s insides - even though men’s insides were rather more messy than the insides of monster bugs. Some of these soldiers were familiar to her because of the three weeks she’d spent travelling with the First. She supposed that some of them had been her enemies once, but that feeling seemed gone from them, now that they were at war and in pain and in such need of comfort.