Fire was coming to know her guard now, and she understood better than she had before the women who chose to ride with this army. Mila was from the southern mountains, where every child, boy or girl, learned to fight, and every girl had ample opportunity to practice what she’d learned. She was all of fifteen, but as a guard she was bold and quick. She had an older sister with two babies and no husband, and her wages provided for them. The King’s Army was well paid.
The First Branch continued its journey southeast to King’s City. Almost two weeks in and with about one week left to ride, they reached Fort Middle, a rough stone fortress rising out of rock with high walls and iron bars in narrow, glassless windows: the home of some five hundred auxiliary soldiers. A mean-looking, stark place, but everyone, including Fire, was happy to reach it. For one night she had a bed to sleep in and a stone roof above her head, which meant that so did her guard.
The next day the landscape changed. Very suddenly, the ground was made of rounded rock instead of jagged: smooth rock rolling almost like hills. Sometimes the rock was bright green with moss, or with veritable stretches of grass, and even a field of tall grass once, soft to their feet. Fire had never seen so much green and she thought it the most beautiful, most astonishing landscape in the world. The grass was like brilliant hair; as if the Dells itself were a monster. It was a foolish thought, she knew, but when her kingdom turned dazzling with color she felt suddenly that she belonged to this place.
She didn’t share that thought with Brigan, of course, but she did express her shock at the world’s sudden greenness. To which he smiled quietly at the night sky, a gesture she was beginning to associate with him.
“It’ll keep getting greener as we approach King’s City, and softer,” he said. “You’ll see there’s a reason this kingdom is called the Dells.”
“I asked my father once—” she started; and then stopped tongue-tied, horrified that she had begun to speak kindly of Cansrel before him.
When he finally broke their silence, his voice was mild. “I knew your mother, Lady. Did you realize that?”
Fire hadn’t realized it, but she supposed she should have, for Jessa had worked in the royal nurseries at a time when Brigan must have been very young. “I didn’t know, Lord Prince.”
“Jessa was the person I went to whenever I’d been bad,” he said, adding wryly, “after my mother was through with me, that is.”
Fire couldn’t help smiling. “And were you often bad?”
“At least once a day, Lady, as I remember.”
Her smile growing, Fire watched him as he watched the sky. “Perhaps you weren’t very good at following orders?”
“Worse than that. I used to set traps for Nash.”
“Traps!”
“He was five years older than I. The perfect challenge—stealth and cunning, you see, to compensate for my lack of size. I rigged nets to land on him. Closed him inside closets.” Brigan chuckled. “He was a good-natured brother. But whenever our mother learned of it she’d be furious, and when she was done with me I’d go to Jessa, because Jessa’s anger was so much easier to take than Roen’s.”
“How do you mean?” Fire asked, feeling a drop of rain, and wishing it away.
He thought for a moment. “She’d tell me she was angry, but it didn’t sit like anger. She’d never raise her voice. She’d sit there sewing, or whatever she was doing, and we’d analyze my crimes, and invariably I’d fall asleep in my chair. When I woke it’d be too late to go to dinner and she’d feed me in the nurseries. A bit of a treat for a small boy who usually had to dress for dinner and be serious and quiet around a lot of boring people.”
“A wicked boy, from the sound of it.”
His face flickered with a smile. Water splashed onto his forehead. “When I was six Nash fell over a tripline and broke his hand. My father learned of it. That put an end to my antics for a while.”
“You gave in so easily?”
He didn’t answer her teasing tone. She looked at him, his eyebrows furrowed at the sky, his face somber, and was frightened, suddenly, of what they were talking about; for again, suddenly, it seemed they might be talking about Cansrel.
“I think I understand now why Roen lost her mind whenever I misbehaved,” he said. “She was afraid of Nax finding out and taking it into his head to punish me. He was not . . . a reasonable man, in the time I knew him. His punishments were not reasonable.”
Then they were talking about Cansrel, and Fire was ashamed. She sat, head bowed, and wondered what Nax had done, what Cansrel had told Nax to do to punish a six-year-old who probably even then had been clever enough to see Cansrel for what he was.
Drops of rain pattered onto her scarf and her shoulders.
“Your mother had red hair,” Brigan said, lightly, as if they didn’t both feel the presence of two dead men among these rocks. “Nothing like yours, of course. And she was musical, Lady, like you. I remember when you were born. And I remember that she cried when you were taken away.”
“Did she?”
“Hasn’t my mother told you anything about Jessa?”
Fire swallowed a lump in her throat. “Yes, Lord Prince, but I always like hearing it again.”
Brigan wiped rain from his face. “Then I’m sorry I don’t remember more. If we knew a person was going to die, we’d hold harder to the memories.”
Fire corrected him, in a whisper. “The good memories.” She stood. This conversation was a mix of too many sadnesses. And she didn’t mind the rain, but it seemed unfair to inflict it upon her guard.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE MORNING OF her final day of riding Fire woke to an aching back, aching breasts, knotted muscles in her neck and shoulders. There was never any predicting how the time before her monthly bleeding would manifest itself. Sometimes it passed with hardly a symptom. Other times she was an unhappy captive in her own body.
And at least she’d be under Nash’s roofs by the time the bleeding began; she wouldn’t have to embarrass herself with an explanation for the increase in monster attacks.
On Small’s back she was bleary-minded, anxious, nervous. She wished for her own bed; she wished she hadn’t come. She was in no mood for beauty, and when they passed a great rocky hill with wildflowers springing from every crack she had to give herself a talking to to keep the mist out of her eyes.
The land grew greener, and finally they came upon a gorge that stretched to left and right before them, teeming with trees that reached up from the bottom, and thundering with the waters of the Winged River. A road ran east to west above the river, and a grass track, clearly much traveled, ran parallel to the road. The army turned eastward and moved fast along the grass track. The road was full of people, carts, carriages, headed in both directions. Many stopped to watch the First Branch go by, and raised arms in greeting.
Fire decided to imagine that she was out for a gallop with her guard, and none of these other thousands existed. No river or road to her right, no King’s City before her. To think this way was a comfort, and her body screamed for comfort.
WHEN THE FIRST stopped for its midday meal, Fire had no appetite. She sat in the grass, elbows on knees, holding her throbbing head in place.
“Lady,” the commander’s voice said above her.
Fire assumed a placid expression and looked up. “Yes, Lord Prince?”
“Are you in need of a healer, Lady?”
“No, Lord Prince. I was only thinking about something.”
He didn’t believe her, she could see it in the skeptical set of his mouth; but he let it go. “I’ve received an urgent summons from the south,” he said. “I’ll be on my way as soon as we’ve reached the king’s court. I wondered if there was anything you wanted, Lady, that I could provide before I go.”
Fire tugged at a patch of grass and swallowed this disappointment. She could think of nothing she wanted, not that anyone could provide, except for the answer to a question. She asked it very quietly. “Why are you kind to me?”
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He paused, watching her hands that pulled at the grass. He crouched down to her eye level. “Because I trust you.”
The world went very still around her, and she stared hard at the grass. The green of it was radiant in the sun’s light.
“Why should you trust me?”
He glanced at the soldiers around them and shook his head. “A conversation for another time.”
“I’ve thought of a thing you can do for me,” she said. “I’ve thought of it in this very moment.”
“Go on.”
“You can take a guard when you go wandering at night.” And then, when his eyebrows shot up and she saw him formulating his refusal: “Please, Lord Prince. There are people who’d like to kill you, and many others who’d die to prevent it. Show some respect to those who value your life so highly.”
He turned his face away from her, frowning. His voice was not pleased. “Very well.”
That point settled, and sorry now, most likely, that he’d ever started the conversation, Brigan went back to his horse.
IN THE SADDLE again, Fire mulled over the commander’s trust, prodding and pushing it around, like a candy in her mouth, trying to decide whether she believed it. It wasn’t that she thought him likely to lie. It was only that she thought him unlikely to trust—not completely, anyway, not the way Brocker or Donal did, or Archer, on the days Archer decided to trust her.
The problem with Brigan was that he was so closed. When had she ever had to judge a person by words alone? She had no formula for understanding a person like him, for he was the only one she’d ever met.
THE WINGED RIVER was so named because before its waters reached their journey’s end, they took flight. At the place where the river leapt off a great green cliff and plunged into the Winter Sea, King’s City had grown, starting on the north bank and spreading outward and south across the river. Joining the older city with the younger were bridges, the building of which had sent more than one unfortunate engineer over the falls to his death. A canal of steep locks on the northern side connected the city with Cellar Harbor far below.
Passing through the city’s outer walls with her escort of five thousand, Fire felt herself a gawkish country girl. So many people in this city, smells and noises, buildings painted bright colors, steeply roofed, crammed together, red wooden houses with green trim, purple and yellow, blue and orange. Fire had never seen a building before that was not made of stone. It hadn’t occurred to her that houses could be any color but gray.
People hung out of windows to watch the First Branch pass. Women in the street flirted with the soldiers, and threw flowers, so many flowers Fire couldn’t believe the extravagance. These people tossed more flowers over Fire’s head than she had seen in a lifetime.
A flower splatted against the chest of one of Brigan’s top swordsmen, riding to Fire’s right. When Fire laughed at him, he beamed, and handed the flower to her. On this journey through the city streets Fire was surrounded not just by her guard but by Brigan’s most proficient fighters, Brigan himself on her left. The commander wore the gray of his troops, and he’d positioned the standard-bearer some distance behind. It was all in an attempt to reduce the attention Fire drew, and Fire knew she wasn’t playing her part in the charade. She should have been sitting gravely, her face bent to her hands, catching no one’s eye. Instead she was laughing—laughing, and smiling, and numb to her aches and pains, and sparkling with the strangeness and the bustle of this place.
And then before too long—she couldn’t have said if she sensed it or heard it first, but there was a change in their audience. A whisper seemed to work its way in among the cheers, and then a strange silence, a lull. She felt it: wonder, and admiration. And Fire understood that even with her hair covered, and even in her drab, dirty riding clothes, and even though this town hadn’t seen her, possibly hadn’t thought of her in seventeen years, her face and her eyes and her body had told them who she was. And her headscarf had confirmed it, for why else would she cover her hair? She became mindful of her animation that was only making her glow more brightly. She erased her smile and dropped her eyes.
Brigan signaled to his standard-bearer to come forward and ride beside them.
Fire spoke low. “I sense no danger.”
“Nonetheless,” Brigan said grimly, “if an archer leans out one of these windows, I want him to notice both of us. A man revenging himself on Cansrel isn’t going to shoot you if he risks hitting me.”
She thought of joking about it. If her enemies were Brigan’s friends and her friends were Brigan’s enemies, the two of them could walk through the world arm in arm and never be hit by arrows again.
But an eerie sound rose now from the silence. “Fire,” a woman called from an upstairs window. A cluster of barefoot children in a doorway echoed the call. “Fire. Fire!” And other voices joined in, and the cry swelled, until suddenly the people were singing out the word, chanting it, some in veneration, some almost in accusation—some with no reason at all except that they were caught up in the captive and mindless fervor of a crowd. Fire rode toward the walls of Nash’s palace, stunned, confounded, by the music of her own name.
THE FACADE OF the king’s palace was black, this Fire had heard. But the knowledge didn’t prepare her for the beauty or the luminosity of the stone. It was a black that shifted depending on the angle from which it was viewed, and that shimmered, and reflected the light of other things, so that Fire’s first impression was of changing panels of black and gray and silver, and blue reflected from the eastern sky, and orange and red from the setting sun.
Fire’s eyes had been starved for the colors of King’s City, and she hadn’t even known it. How her father must have shone in this place.
The five thousand soldiers veered off as Fire, her guard, and Brigan approached the ramp to the gates. Spears were raised and the doors swung in. The horses passed through a black stone gatehouse and emerged into a white courtyard dazzling with the reflection of the sunset on quartz walls, and the sky pink above flashing glass roofs. Fire craned her neck and gaped at the walls and roofs. A steward approached them and gaped at Fire.
“Eyes on me, Welkley,” Brigan said, swinging down from his horse.
Welkley, short, thin, impeccably dressed and groomed, cleared his throat and turned to Brigan. “Forgive me, Lord Prince. I’ve sent someone to the offices to alert Princess Clara of your arrival.”
“And Hanna?”
“In the green house, Lord Prince.”
Brigan nodded and held a hand up to Fire. “Lady Fire, this is the king’s first steward, Welkley.”
Fire knew this was her cue to dismount and give her hand to Welkley, but when she moved, a spasm of pain radiated outward from the small of her back. She caught her breath, gritted her teeth, pulled her leg over her saddle and tipped, leaving it to Brigan’s instincts to keep her from landing on her backside before the king’s first steward. He caught her coolly and propped her on her feet, his face impassive, as if it were routine for her to launch herself at him every time she dismounted; and scowled at the white marble floor while she presented her hand to Welkley.
A woman entered the courtyard then that Fire could not fail to sense, a force of nature. Fire turned to locate her and saw a head of bouncy brown hair, sparkling eyes, a sparkling smile, and a handsome and ample figure. She was tall, nearly as tall as Brigan. She threw her arms around him, laughing, and kissed his nose. “This is a treat,” she said. And then, to Fire, “I’m Clara. And now I understand Nash; you’re more stunning even than Cansrel.”
Fire couldn’t find words to respond to this, and Brigan’s eyes, suddenly, were pained. But Clara simply laughed again and patted Brigan’s face. “So serious,” she said. “Go on, little brother. I’ll take care of the lady.”
Brigan nodded. “Lady Fire, I’ll find you before I take my leave. Musa,” he said, turning to Fire’s guard, who stood quietly with the horses. “Go with the lady, all of you, wherever Princess Clara takes her. Clara,
see that a healer visits her, today. A woman.” He kissed Clara’s cheek hurriedly. “In case I don’t see you again.” He spun away and practically ran through one of the arched doorways leading into the palace.
“He always has a fire under his tail, Brigan,” Clara said. “Come, Lady, I’ll show you your rooms. You’ll like them, they overlook the green house. The fellow who tends the green house gardens? Trust me, Lady, you’d let him stake your tomatoes.”
Fire was speechless with astonishment. The princess grabbed the lady’s arm and pulled her toward the palace.
FIRE’S SITTING ROOM did indeed overlook a curious wooden house tucked into the back grounds of the palace. The house was small, painted a deep green, and surrounded by lush gardens and trees so that it seemed to blend in, as if it had sprouted from the ground like the growing things around it.
The famous gardener was nowhere in sight, but as Fire watched from her window, the door to the house opened. A young, chestnut-haired woman in a pale yellow dress stepped outside and passed through the orchard to the palace.
“It’s Roen’s house, technically,” Clara said, standing at Fire’s shoulder. “She had it built because she believed the king’s queen should have a place to retreat to. She lived there fully after she broke with Nax. She’s given it to Brigan’s use, for the moment, until Nash chooses a queen.”
And so that young woman must be associated with Brigan. Interesting, indeed, and a very pretty view, until Fire moved to her bedchamber windows and encountered a sight she appreciated even more: the stables. She stretched her mind and found Small, and was immensely comforted to know he would be near enough for her to feel.
Her rooms were too large, but comfortable, the windows open and fitted with wire screens; a consideration someone had taken for her specially, she suspected, so she could pass her window with her hair uncovered and not have to worry about raptor monsters or an invasion of monster bugs.