Fire (Graceling Realm #2)(42)
Author: Kristin Cashore

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 realising 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 favour. 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 onto 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 about 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.

I N 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 recognised 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.

A sense of the foggy-minded archer flashed across her consciousness. Something sharp stung her chest.

Her mind went black.

PART THREE

A Graceling

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

SHE WOKE TO the screeching of a raptor monster, and human voices raised in alarm. The floor was lurching and creaking. A carriage, cold and wet.

'It's her blood,' yelled a familiar voice. 'The raptors smell her blood. Wash her, cover her, I don't care how, just do it—'

Men and raptors still screaming, a struggle above her. Water pouring onto her face, choking her, someone wiping at her nose, the pain so blinding that her mind spun around her and whirled her into darkness.Hanna? Hanna, are you—

SHE WOKE AGAIN, still crying out to Hanna, as if her mind had suspended itself in mid-cry waiting for her consciousness to return.Are you there, Hanna? Are you there?

No response came to her, no feeling of the child anywhere she could reach.

Her arm was trapped crookedly under her torso, her neck stiff and twisted, her face throbbing, and cold,cold was everywhere.

There were men in this carriage. She scrabbled among their minds for one who might be kind, who might bring her a blanket. Six men, stupid, bubbling with fog, one of them the archer with a habit of killing his friends. And the boy was here, too, the red-eyed, pale boy who made the fog, with the unreachable mind and the voice that hurt her brain. Hadn't Archer gone after this boy and this archer?Archer? Archer? Are you anywhere?