“You’ve lost your mind,” Gentian said indignantly, staring at his son.
“You have no mind to lose,” Gunner snarled. “Have we any secrets you haven’t told yet to the king’s monster pet? Go on, tell her the rest, and when you’re done, I’ll break her neck.”
“Nonsense,” Gentian said sternly. “You’ll do no such thing.”
“Go on, tell her.”
“I’ll tell her nothing until you’ve sat down, and apologized, and shown you can behave yourself.”
Gunner made a noise of impatient disgust and came to stand before Fire. He stared at her face, and then quite shamelessly at her breasts.
Gunner is unstable, Fire told Brigan. He’s winged a knife at the wall and broken it.
Can you get more out of them about the boats? Brigan thought back. How many horses?
Before Fire could ask, Gunner touched a finger to her collarbone and Fire dropped her perception of Brigan, of Gentian, of the whole rest of the palace. She put everything into Gunner, into fighting his intent, for she knew his attention and his hand were tending downward and she thought she might lose hold of him entirely if she allowed him a handful of her breast, which was what he wanted, or more accurately, what he wanted to start with.
And she did get his hand to rise, but it rose to her throat, and encircled it, and very slightly squeezed. For a long second Fire could not breathe, she could not find her brain. He was choking her.
“Mydogg thinks the crown will send reinforcements south to Fort Flood when we attack,” Gunner said, whispering, and finally letting her go. “Maybe even a whole branch of the King’s Army, if not two branches. And when the north is less crowded with the king’s soldiers, Mydogg will send word for the beacons on Marble Rise to be lit. Do you understand, monster?”
Marble Rise was a high, coastal area north of the city, and Fire did understand. “The soldiers on the Pikkian ships will see the smoke,” she said lightly.
“Clever thing,” Gunner said, circling his hand around her throat again, then changing his mind, taking a handful of her hair and pulling on it. “And the smoke is the signal they’ve been waiting for to make land and march on the city.”
“The city,” Fire whispered.
“Yes,” Gunner said, “this city. And why not go straight for King’s City? The timing will be perfect. Nash will be dead. Brigan will be dead.”
“He means that we’re killing them tomorrow,” Gentian interjected, watching his son warily. “We have it all planned. There’s to be a fire.”
Gunner yanked on Fire’s hair, very hard. “I’m telling her, Father,” he said savagely. “I decide what she knows. I am in charge of her.”
He grabbed her neck again and pulled her against his body, rough and disgusting. Fighting for breath, Fire capitulated to old-fashioned pain, reaching for his groin, grabbing whatever she could get hold of and twisting as hard as she could. In the moment of his scream she took a swipe at his mind, but her own mind was a balloon, soft and hollow, with no sharp edges, no claws for gripping. He stepped back from her, breathing hard. His fist came out of nowhere and slammed into her face.
For an instant she lost consciousness. Then she resurfaced, to the taste of blood and the familiar feeling of pain. The rug. I’m lying on the rug, she thought. Face in agony, head in agony. She moved her mouth. Jaw intact. She wiggled her fingers. Hands intact. Brigan?
Brigan responded.
Good, she thought blearily. Mind intact. She began to stretch her mind out to the rest of the palace.
But Brigan wasn’t through communicating. He was trying to make her understand something. He was worried. He heard noises. He was on the balcony above, ready to drop down at her command.
Fire realized that she also heard noises. She rolled her head sideways and saw Gentian and Gunner yelling at each other, pushing each other around, one pompous and outraged, the other frightening because of a deranged look in his eyes that brought the memory of why she was in this room back to Fire. She propped herself up on her elbow and dragged herself onto her knees. She sent Brigan a question.
Is there anything else you need to know about Mydogg?
There was not.
She rose to her feet, staggered to the sofa, and leaned against it, eyes closed, until the pain of her head became something she thought she could bear. Then come down. This interview has come to the end of its usefulness. They’re fighting each other. She watched Gunner shove his father against the glass of the balcony door. They’re grappling against the balcony door this moment.
And then, because Brigan was coming and when he did he would be in danger, she brought each of her ankles up to her hands, one at a time—vaguely suspecting that if she did it the other way, reaching hands down to feet, her head would fall off and roll away. She pulled her knives from their holsters. She stumped closer to the struggling men, both too preoccupied to notice her or the knives in her hands. She blotted her bleeding face on her gorgeous purple sleeve, and teetered, and waited.
It wasn’t long. She felt Brigan and saw him almost at the same time, saw him yank the balcony door open and Gentian fall out through the opening, saw Gentian surge back in again, but different now, because his mind was gone, he was just a body now, a dagger was in his back, and Brigan was pushing him violently to get him out of the way and to give Gunner a thing to trip over as Brigan descended with his sword.
It was a horrible thing to watch, actually, Brigan killing Gunner. He smashed his sword hilt into Gunner’s face, so hard Gunner’s face changed shape. He kicked Gunner full onto his back and, his expression smooth and focused, drove his sword into Gunner’s heart. That was it, it was so quick, and so brutal, and then he was upon her, worried, helping her to the sofa, finding a cloth for her face, all too fast for her to take control of the horror she was sending out to him.
He felt it, and understood it. His own face closed. His inspection of her injuries changed to something clinical and emotionless.
She caught his sleeve. “It startled me,” she whispered. “That’s all.”
There was shame in his eyes. She held tighter to his sleeve.
“I won’t let you be ashamed before me,” she said. “Please, Brigan. We’re the same. What I do only looks less horrible.” And, she added, understanding it only as she said it, even if this part of you frightens me, I have no choice but to like it, for it’s a part of you that will keep you safe in the war. I want you to live. I want you to kill those who would kill you.
He didn’t say anything. But after a moment he leaned in again to touch the bones of her cheek and chin, gently, no longer avoiding her eyes, and she knew he accepted what she’d said. He cleared his throat. “Your nose is broken,” he said. “I can set it for you.”
“Yes, all right. Brigan, there’s a laundry chute outside, just down the hall. We need to find sheets or something to wrap up the bodies, and you need to carry them to the chute and drop them in. I’ll tell Welkley to clear all the servants out of the northernmost laundry room and to get ready to deal with an enormous mess. We have to hurry.”
“Yes, good plan,” Brigan said. He took tight hold of the back of her head. “Try to keep still.” And then he grasped her face and did something that hurt far more than Gunner’s blow had, and Fire cried out, and battled him with both her fists.
“All right,” he gasped, letting go of her face and catching her arms, though not before she hit him hard in the side of the head. “I’m sorry, Fire. It’s done. Sit back and let me handle the bodies. You need to rest, so you can guide us through what’s left tonight.” He jumped up and disappeared into the bedroom.
“What’s left,” Fire murmured, still crying slightly from the pain. She leaned on the armrest of the sofa and breathed until the ache of her face receded and stabilized, joining the blunt throbbing rhythm of the misery of her head. Slowly, softly, she pushed her mind to travel all around the palace and the grounds, touching on Murgda, touching on Murgda’s and Gentian’s people, touching on their
allies, latching on to Quislam and his wife. She found Welkley and conveyed her instructions.
Blood was in her mouth, dripping down the back of her throat. Just as the sensation became intolerably disgusting Brigan appeared at her elbow, sheets slung over his shoulder, and plunked a bowl of water and cups and cloths on the table before her. He moved on to the bodies of Gentian and Gunner and set to bundling them up. Fire rinsed out her mouth and ran her mind again through the palace.
For a moment at the edges of her perception she thought that someone felt wrong, out of place. On the grounds? In the green house? Who was it? The feeling disappeared, and she couldn’t locate it again, which was frustrating, and unsettling, and thoroughly exhausting. She watched Brigan wrap Gunner’s body in a sheet, his own face dark with bruises, his hands and his sleeves covered with Gunner’s blood.
“Our army is greatly outnumbered,” she said. “Everywhere.”
“They’ve been trained with that expectation in mind,” he said flatly. “And thanks to you, we have the element of surprise on both fronts. You’ve done more tonight than any of us could have hoped. I’ve already sent messages north to the Third and Fourth and most of the auxiliaries—soon they’ll be consolidated on the shore north of the city and Nash will ride to join them. And I’ve sent an entire battalion to Marble Rise to take charge of the beacons and pick off any messengers heading for the boats. You see how it’s laid out? Once the Third and Fourth are in position, we’ll light the beacons ourselves. Mydogg’s army will make land, suspecting nothing, and we’ll attack them, with the sea to their back. And where they outnumber us with men we’ll outnumber them with horses—they can’t have more than four or five thousand on the boats—and their horses will be in no state to fight after weeks on the sea. It’ll help. Maybe make up a bit for our own daftness in not realizing that Mydogg might be building a navy with his Pikkian friends.”
It was difficult for Fire to wipe blood from her nose without touching it. “Murgda’s a problem,” she said, gasping at the pain. “Eventually someone’s going to notice Gentian and Gunner are missing, and then Murgda will suspect what we’ve done and what we know.”
“It almost doesn’t matter, as long as none of her messengers are able to reach those boats.”
“Yes, all right, but there are a hundred people at court this minute who’ll be willing to make a go at being the one messenger who gets through.”
Brigan tore a sheet in half with a massive ripping sound. “Do you think you could get her out of her rooms?”
Fire closed her eyes and touched on Murgda. Any change of heart, Lady Murgda? she thought, trying not to sound as weak as she felt. I’m resting in my bedroom. You’re welcome to join me.
Murgda responded with scorn, and with the same recalcitrance she’d displayed before. She had no intention of going anywhere near Lady Fire’s rooms.
“I don’t think so,” Fire said.
“Well then, for now we’ll just have to keep her from suspecting for as long as we can, however we can. The longer it takes, the more time we have to set our own wheels into motion. The shape of the war is ours to choose now, Lady.”
“We’ve done Mydogg an enormous favor. I suppose he’ll be the commander of Gentian’s army now. He’ll no longer have to share.”
Brigan knotted a last sheet and stood. “I doubt he ever meant to share for long, anyway. Mydogg was always the more real threat. Is the hallway clear? Shall I get on with this?”
A very good reason to get on with it bubbled into Fire’s mind. She sighed. “The master of the guard is calling to me. One of Quislam’s servants is coming, and—and Quislam’s wife, and a number of guards. Yes, go,” she said, pushing herself to her feet, dumping her bowl of bloody water into a plant beside the sofa. “Oh! Where’s my mind? How are you and I to leave this room?”
Brigan heaved one of the bundles onto his back. “The same way I came. You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
ON THE BALCONY, tears seeped down Fire’s face from the effort of detracting the attention of eight levels of potential onlookers. They put the candles out and sank into shadow.
“I won’t let you fall,” Brigan said quietly. “Nor will Clara. Do you understand?”
Fire was slightly too lightheaded to understand. She’d lost blood and she did not think she was capable of this thing just now, but it didn’t matter, because Quislam’s people were coming and it had to be done. She stood with her back to Brigan as he told her to, his back to the railing, and he crouched, and the next thing she knew he was lifting her up by her knees. Her palms touched the underside of the balcony above. He shifted her backward and her searching fingers found the bars to that balcony. For one horrible moment she looked down and saw what he’d done to achieve this angle; he was perched on his own railing, his feet locked around his own bars, leaning back over empty space while he lifted her. Slightly sobbing, Fire grasped the bars and held. Clara’s hands came down from above and locked tight around her wrists.
“Got her,” Clara said.
Brigan abandoned her knees for her ankles and she was rising again, and suddenly the beautiful, merciful railing was before her, and she grabbed on to it, and wrapped both arms over it, and Clara was pulling at her torso and her legs and assisting her clumsy and painful climb over it. She crashed onto the balcony floor. She gasped, and with a monumental effort focused her mind, and pushed herself to a standing position so that she might aid in Brigan’s ascent; and found him already standing beside her, breathing quickly. “Inside,” he said.
Within the room, Clara and Brigan talked back and forth rapidly. Fire understood that Brigan was not waiting to see what would happen with Murgda, or with Gentian’s men, or with Welkley and the bodies in the laundry room, or with anyone. Brigan was going now, this instant, across the hallway and into the opposite rooms, through the window and down a very long rope ladder to the grounds and his waiting horse, his waiting soldiers, to ride to the tunnels at Fort Flood and begin the war.
“Murgda may still light this fire Gentian spoke of,” Brigan was saying. “They may still try to kill Nash. You must all increase your vigilance. At a certain point it might be wise if Murgda’s and Gentian’s thugs began to disappear, do you understand me?” He turned to Fire. “How best for you to leave this room?”
Fire forced herself to consider the question. “The way I came. I’ll call a cart and take the lift, and climb the ladder to my window.” And then she had a night of the same work ahead of her: monitoring Murgda and everyone else, and telling Welkley, the guard—everyone—who was where, who must be stopped, and who must be killed, so that Brigan could ride to Fort Flood and his messengers could ride north and no one would learn enough about anything to know to try to pursue them, and no one would light any fires.
“You’re crying,” Clara said. “It’ll only make your nose worse.”
“Not real tears,” Fire said. “Just exhaustion.”
“Poor thing,” Clara said. “I’ll come to your rooms later and help you through this night. And now you must go, Brigan. Is the hallway clear?”
“I need a minute,” Brigan said to Clara. “A single minute alone with the lady.”
Clara’s eyebrows shot up. She glided into the next room wordlessly.
Brigan went and shut the door behind her, then turned around to face Fire. “Lady,” he said. “I have a request for you. If I should die in this war—”
Fire’s tears were real now, and there was no helping them, for there was no time. Everything was moving too fast. She crossed the room to him, put her arms around him, clung to him, turning her face to the side, learning all at once that it was awkward to show a person all of one’s love when one’s nose was broken.
His arms came around her tightly, his breath short and hard against her hair. He held on to the silk of her hair and she pressed herself against him until her panic calmed to something desperate, but bearable.
Yes, she thought to him, understanding now what he’d been ab
out to ask. If you die in the war, I’ll keep Hanna in my heart. I promise I won’t leave her.
It was not easy letting go of him; but she did, and he was gone.
IN THE CART on the way back to her rooms, Fire’s tears stopped. She’d reached a point of such absolute numbness that everything, save a single living thread holding her mind to the palace, stopped. It was almost like sleeping, like a senseless, stupefying nightmare.
And so, when she stepped out of the window onto the rope ladder and heard a strange bleating on the ground below—and listened, and heard a yip, and recognized Blotchy, who sounded as if he were in some kind of pain—it was not intelligence that led her to climb down toward Blotchy, rather than up to her rooms and the safety of her guards. It was dumb bleariness that sent her downward, a dull, dumb need to make sure the dog was all right.
The sleet had turned to a light snowfall, and the grounds of the green house glowed, and Blotchy was not all right. He lay on the green house path, crying, his two front legs flopping and broken.
And his feeling contained more than pain. He was afraid, and he was trying to push himself by his back legs toward the tree, the enormous tree in the side yard.
This was not right. Something was very wrong here, something eerie and bewildering. Fire searched the darkness wildly, stretched her mind into the green house. Her grandmother was sleeping inside. So were a number of guards, which was all wrong, for the green house night guards were not meant to sleep.
And then Fire cried out in distress, for under the tree she felt Hanna, awake, and too cold, and not alone, someone with her, someone angry who was hurting her, and making her angry, and frightening her.
Fire stumbled, ran toward the tree, reaching desperately for the mind of the person hurting Hanna, to stop him. Help me, she thought to the guards up in her room. Help Hanna.
Fire Page 27
