Fire skt-2

by Kristin Cashore

  "Ah," he said, understanding. "Garan doesn't trust anyone, you know. It's his nature, and his job. Does he give you a hard time?"

  "No. He's kind enough. Everyone is, really. I mean, it's no harder for me here than it's been anywhere else. Just different."

  He thought about that for a moment. "Well. You mustn't let them bully you; they see only their side of it. They're so embroiled in the matters of the kingdom that they can't imagine any other way of living."

  Fire wondered what other way of living Brigan imagined; what life he dreamed of, if he hadn't been born to this one. She spoke carefully. "Do you think I should stay and help them as they ask?"

  "Lady, I can't say what you should do. You must do whatever you think is right."

  She caught something defensive in his tone, but she wasn't certain which one of them he was defending. She pressed him again. "And do you have an opinion as to what is right?"

  He was flustered. He looked away from her. "I don't wish to influence you. If you stay, I'll be terribly pleased. You'll be such invaluable help. But I'll also be sorry for what we would ask of you, truly sorry."

  It was a rare outburst – rare because he wasn't one for outbursts, and rare because it wasn't likely to occur to anyone else to be sorry. Rather at a loss, Fire gripped her bow tightly and said, "Taking someone's mind and changing it is a trespass. A violence. Can I ever use such a thing without overstepping my right? How will I know if I'm going too far? I'm capable of so many horrors."

  Brigan took a minute to think, staring intently into his hands. He tugged at the edge of his bandage. "I understand you," he said, speaking quietly. "I know what it's like to be capable of horrors. I'm training twenty-five thousand soldiers for a bloodbath. And there are things I've done I wish I'd never had to do. There are things I'll do in future." He glanced at her, then looked back into his hands. "No doubt this is presumptuous, Lady. But for whatever it's worth, if you'd like, I could promise to tell you if I ever believed you to be overstepping the rights of your power. And whether or not you choose to accept that promise, I'd very much like to ask you to do the same for me."

  Fire swallowed, hardly believing that he was entrusting her with so much. She whispered, "You honour me. I accept your promise, and I give you my own in return."

  The lights in the city houses were dimming one by one. And part of avoiding thoughts about something was not encouraging opportunities for that something to make itself felt.

  "Thank you for the fiddle," she said. "I play it every day."

  And she left him, and walked with her guard back to her rooms.

  It was in the great hall the next morning that she came to understand what had to be done.

  The walls of this cavernous room were made of mirrors. Passing through, on sudden impulse, Fire looked at herself.

  She caught her breath and kept looking, until she was beyond that first staggering moment of disbelief. She crossed her arms and squared her feet, and looked, and looked. She remembered a thing that made her angry. She'd told Clara her intention never to have children; and Clara had told her of a medicine that would make her very sick, but only for two or three days. After she recovered, she'd never have to worry again about the chance of becoming pregnant, no matter how many men she took to her bed. The medicine would make her permanently unable to bear children. One of the most useful discoveries of King Arn and Lady Ella.

  It made Fire so angry, the thought of such a medicine, a violence done to herself to stop her from creating anything like herself. And what was the purpose of these eyes, this impossible face, the softness and the curves of this body, the strength of this mind; what was the point, if none of the men who desired her were to give her any babies, and all it ever brought her was grief ? What was the purpose of a woman monster?

  It came out in a whisper. "What am I for?"

  "Excuse me, Lady?" Musa said.

  Fire shook her head. "Nothing." She took a step closer and pulled off her headscarf. Her hair slid down, shimmering. One of her guards gasped.

  She was fully as beautiful as Cansrel. Indeed, she was very like him.

  Behind her Brigan entered the great hall suddenly and stopped. In the mirror their eyes met, and held. It was clear he was in the middle of a thought or a conversation – one that her appearance had interrupted completely.

  It was so rarely he held her eyes. All the feeling she'd been trying to batter away threatened to trickle back.

  And then Garan caught up with Brigan, speaking sharply. Nash's voice behind Garan, and then Nash himself appeared, saw her, and stopped cold beside his brothers. In a panic Fire grabbed at her hair to collect it, steeling herself against whatever stupid way the king intended to behave.

  But it was all right, they were safe, for Nash was trying very hard to close himself. "Well met, Lady," he said with considerable effort. He threw his arms around both of his brothers' shoulders and moved with them out of the hall, out of her sight.

  Fire was impressed, and relieved. She pushed her feelings back into their cell. And then, just before the brothers disappeared, her eyes caught the flash of something at Brigan's hip.

  It was the hilt of his sword. The sword of the commander of the King's Army. And all at once, Fire understood.

  Brigan did terrible things. He stuck swords into men in the mountains. He trained soldiers for war. He had enormous destructive power, just as his father had had – but he didn't use that power the way his father had done. Truly, he would rather not use it at all. But he chose to, so that he might stop other people from using power in even worse ways.

  His power was his burden. He accepted it.

  And he was nothing like his father. Neither were Garan or Clara; neither, really, was Nash. Not all sons were like their fathers. A son chose the man he would be.

  Not all daughters were like their fathers. A daughter monster chose the monster she would be.

  Fire looked into her face. The beautiful vision blurred suddenly behind her own tears. She blinked the tears away. "I've been afraid of being Cansrel," she said aloud to her reflection. "But I'm not Cansrel."

  At her elbow, Musa said blandly, "Any one of us could have told you that, Lady."

  Fire looked at the captain of her guard and laughed, because she wasn't Cansrel – she wasn't anyone but herself. She had no one's path to follow; her path was her own to choose. And then she stopped laughing, because she was terrified of the path she suddenly knew herself to be choosing. I can't do this, she thought. I'm too dangerous. I'll only make things worse.

  No, she said back to herself. Already I'm forgetting. I'm not Cansrel; at every step on this path I create myself. And maybe I'll always find my own power horrifying, and maybe I can't ever be what I'd most like to be.

  But I can stay here, and I can make myself into what I should be. Waste is criminal. I'll use the power I have to undo what Cansrel did. I'll use it to fight for the Dells.

  Part Two

  Spies

  Chapter Seventeen

  As much as Fire had known about the play of power in the Dells, her knowledge had been drawn in broad strokes. She understood this now, because now she held a minute and specific map in her mind. The focal points were King's City; Mydogg's holding on the Pikkian border; and Gentian's land in the southern mountains below the river, not far from Fort Flood. There were places in between: Brigan's many other forts and outposts, the estates of lords and ladies with tiny armies and shifting alliances, the Great Greys in the south and west, the Little Greys in the north, the Winged River, the Pikkian River, the high, flat area north of King's City called Marble Rise. Rocky patches of poverty, flashes of violence, plundering, desolation; landscapes and landmarks that were bound to be keystones in the war between Nash, Mydogg, and Gentian.

  Her work was never the same from day to day. She never knew what kind of folk Garan and Clara's people would pick up: Pikkian smugglers, common soldiers of Mydogg's or Gentian's, messengers of either, servants who had worked for them once. Men s
uspected of being their spies or the spies of their allies. Fire came to see that in a kingdom balanced delicately atop a pile of changing associations, the most critical commodity was information. The Dells spied on their friends and on their enemies; they spied on their own spies. And indeed, all players in the realm did the same.

  The very first man they brought before her, an old servant of a neighbour of Mydogg's, opened wide at the sight of her and spilled every thought that bubbled into his head. "Both Lord Mydogg and Lord Gentian are rightly impressed with Prince Brigan," the man told her, staring, quivering. "Both have been buying horses and mounting their armies for the past few years like the prince did, and recruiting mountain folk and looters as soldiers. They respect the prince as an opponent, Lady. And did you know there are Pikkians in Lord Mydogg's army? Big, pale men hulking around his land."

  This is easy, Fire thought to herself. I only have to sit here and they blurt everything out.

  But Garan was unimpressed. "He told us nothing we didn't already know. Did you plumb him for more – names, places, secrets? How do you know you've learned every part of his knowledge?"

  The next couple of fellows were less forthcoming – a pair of convicted spies, resistant to her, and strong. Both bruised around the face, both gaunt, and one of them limping and stoop-shouldered, wincing as he eased back in his chair, as if he had cuts or bruises on his back. "How were you injured?" she asked them, suspicious. "And where?" They sat before her mutely, eyes averted, stony-faced, and answered neither that question nor any other question she put to them.

  When the interrogation was over and the two spies had gone back to the dungeons, she made her excuses to Garan, who'd sat in on the entire thing. "They were too strong for me, Lord Prince. I could get nothing from them."

  Garan eyed her moodily over a sheaf of papers. "Did you try?"

  "Of course I tried."

  "Really? How hard did you try?" He stood, lips tight. "I have neither energy nor time to waste, Lady Fire. When you decide that you're actually going to do this thing, let me know."

  He shoved his papers under his arm and pushed through the questioning room door, leaving her with her own indignation. He was right, of course. She hadn't tried, not really. She'd poked at their minds and, finding them closed, done nothing to force an opening. She hadn't even tried to get them to look into her face. How could she? Was she honestly expected to sit before men weakened by ill treatment and abuse them even further?

  She jumped up and ran after Garan, finding him at a desk in his offices, scribbling madly in coded letters.

  "I have rules," she said to him.

  He stilled his pen, raised expressionless eyes to her face, and waited.

  "When you bring me an old servant who's come willingly where the king's men have bidden him, a man who's never been convicted, or even accused, of a crime," Fire said, "I will not take his mind. I'll sit before him and ask questions, and if my presence makes him more talkative, very well. But I will not compel him to say things he would otherwise not have said. Nor," she added, voice rising, "will I take the mind of a person who's been fed too little, or denied medicines, or beaten in your gaols. I won't manipulate a prisoner you've mistreated."

  Garan sat back and crossed his arms. "That's rich, isn't it? Your own manipulation is mistreatment; you've said it yourself."

  "Yes, but mine is meant to be for good reason. Yours is not."

  "It's not my mistreatment. I don't give the orders down there, I've no idea what goes on."

  "If you want me to question them, you'd best find out."

  To Garan's credit, the treatment of Dellian prisoners did change after that. One particularly laconic man, after a session in which Fire learned positively nothing, thanked her for it specifically. "Best dungeons I ever been in," he said, chewing on a toothpick.

  "Wonderful," Garan grumbled when he'd gone. "We'll grow a reputation for our kindness to lawbreakers."

  "A prison with a monster on its staff of interrogators is not likely to grow a reputation for kindness," Nash responded, quietly. Some loved to be brought before her, loved her presence too much to care what she caused them to reveal; but for the most part, Nash was right. She met with tens, gradually hundreds, of different spies and smugglers and soldiers who came into the room sullenly, sometimes even fighting the guards, needing to be dragged. She asked them questions in their minds. When did you last speak to Mydogg? What did he say? Tell me every word. Which of our spies is he trying to turn? Which of our soldiers are traitors? She took a breath and forced herself to plumb and twist and pound – sometimes even to threaten. No, you're lying again. One more lie and you'll start to feel pain. You believe that I can make you feel pain, don't you?

  I'm doing this for the Dells, she told herself over and over when her own capacity for bullying made her numb with shame and panic. I'm doing this to protect the Dells from those who would destroy it.

  "In a three-way war," said a prisoner who'd been caught smuggling swords and daggers to Gentian, "it seems to me that the king has the advantage of numbers. Doesn't it seem that way to you, Lady? Does anyone know Mydogg's numbers for sure?"

  He was a fellow who kept tearing away from her hold, polite and pleasant and cloud-brained one moment, the next moment clear-headed, fighting against the shackles around his wrists and ankles, whimpering at the sight of her.

  She nudged at his mind now, pushing him away from his own empty speculations and centering him on his actual knowledge.

  "Tell me about Mydogg and Gentian," she said. "Do they intend to mount an attack this summer?"

  "I don't know, Lady. I've heard nothing about it but rumours."

  "Do you know Gentian's numbers?"

  "No, but he buys an infinite number of swords."

  "How many is 'infinite'? Be more specific."

  "I don't know specifics," he said, still speaking truthfully, but beginning to break free again, the reality of his situation in this room coming back to him. "I have nothing more to say to you," he announced suddenly, staring at her big-eyed, beginning to shake. "I know what you are. I won't let you use me."

  "I don't enjoy using you," Fire said tiredly, allowing herself, for a moment at least, to say what she felt. She watched him as he yanked at his wrists and gasped and fell back in his chair, exhausted and sniffling. Then she reached up and tugged at her headscarf so that her hair came tumbling down. The brightness startled him; he gaped at her, astonished; in that instant, she pushed into his mind again and grabbed hold easily. "What are these rumours you've heard about the plans of the rebel lords?"

  "Well, Lady," he said, transformed again, smiling cheerfully. "I hear that Lord Mydogg wants to make himself the king of the Dells and Pikkia. Then he wants to use Pikkian boats to explore the sea and find new lands to conquer. A Pikkian smuggler told me that, Lady."

  I'm getting better at this, Fire thought to herself. I'm learning all the cheap, disgusting little tricks.

  And the muscles of her mind were stretching; practice was making her quicker, stronger. Control was becoming an easy – even comfortable – position for her to assume.

  But all she ever learned were vague plans for attack someplace sometime soon, random violent intentions against Nash or Brigan, sometimes against herself. Swift changes in alliance that changed back again just as swiftly. Like Garan and Clara and everyone else, she was waiting to discover something solid, something large and treacherous that could serve as a call to action.

  They were all waiting for a breakthrough. But sometimes Fire just wished desperately that she were allowed the occasional moment of solitude.

  She had been a summer baby and in July her birthday passed – with little fanfare, for she kept the fact of it to herself. Archer and Brocker both had flowers sent. Fire smiled at this, for they would have sent something else had they known how many men of the court and the city had been sending her flowers, constantly, endlessly, flowers and more flowers, since her arrival two months ago. Her rooms were always a hotho
use. She would have pitched them, the cut orchids and lilies and fine tall roses, for she had no interest in the attentions of these men; except that she loved the flowers, she loved being surrounded by the beauty of them. She found she had a knack for arranging them, colour to colour.

  The king never sent flowers. His feelings had not changed, but he had stopped begging her to marry him. In fact, he'd asked her to teach him guarding against monsters. So over a series of days and weeks, each on either side of her door, she had taught him what he already knew but needed a push to remember. Intention, focus, and self-control. With practice, and with his new gloomy commitment to discipline, his mind became stronger and they moved the lessons to his office. He could be trusted now not to touch her, except when he'd had too much wine, which he did on occasion. They were irritating, his drunken tears, but at least drunk he was easy to control.

  Of course, everyone in the palace noticed every time they were together, and thoughtless talk was easy. It was a solid spoke in the rumour wheel that the monster would eventually marry the king.

  Brigan was away most of July. He came and went constantly, and now Fire understood where he was always going. Aside from the considerable time he spent with the army, he met with people: lords, ladies, businessmen of the black market, friends, enemies, talking this one or that one into an alliance, testing the loyalty of another. In some cases, spying was the only word for what he was doing. And sometimes fighting himself out of traps he wittingly or unwittingly walked into, coming back with bandages on his hand, black eyes, a cracked rib one time that would have stopped any sane person from riding. It was horrendous, Fire thought, some of the situations Brigan bounded off to throw himself into. Surely someone else should handle negotiations with a weapons dealer who was known to perform favours for Mydogg on occasion. Surely someone else should go to the well-guarded and isolated manor of Gentian's son, Gunner, in the southern peaks, to make clear the consequences if Gunner remained loyal to his father.