Fire (Graceling Realm #2)(53)
Author: Kristin Cashore

Fire thought of the raptor monster that had taken her by surprise this very morning, diving upon her and her guard as she exercised Small on the road, coming so close and fast that Small had panicked and kicked at the creature, almost losing his rider. Musa had been furious with herself, furious even with Fire, or at least with Fire's headscarf, which had loosened and released part of its property and been the reason for the attack in the first place. 'It's true we've a great deal more to do than erect a new bridge,'

Fire said now, 'and rebuild the parts of the palace that went up in the fire. But, Brigan, I do believe the worst is behind us.'

'Nash was sitting up when I went to the infirmary to see him today,' Brigan said, 'and shaving himself.

Mila was there, laughing at his mistakes.'

Fire reached a hand to the roughness of Brigan's jaw, because he had reminded her of one of her favourite places to touch. They came together then, and forgot about the suffering kingdom for a number of minutes, while Fire's guard tried to blend even more discreetly into the background.

'My guard is another matter we need to discuss,' Fire murmured. 'I must have solitude, Brigan, and it must be when I choose it, not when you do.'

Distracted, Brigan took a moment to respond. 'You've borne your guard patiently.'

'Yes, well, I agree I do need them much of the time, especially if I'm to stand so close to the crown.

And I trust them, Brigan - I'd go so far as to say I have love for some of them. But—'

'You need to be alone sometimes.'

'Yes.'

'And I've also promised you not to wander alone.'

'We must both promise each other,' Fire said, 'that we'll be thoughtful on the question, and answer it for ourselves on a case by case basis, and try not to take undue risks.'

'Yes, all right,' Brigan said. 'I'll concede this point.'

It was a piece in the structure of the ongoing conversation they had been having since the end of the war, about what it meant for them to be together.

'Could the kingdom ever bear me as its queen, Brigan?'

'Love, I'm not king. Nash is well out of danger.'

'But it could happen someday.'

He sighed. 'Yes. Well, then. We must consider it seriously.'

In the starlight she could just make out the towers of the bridge that men were building over the rush of the Winged River. In the daylight she watched them now and then, hanging from their ropes, balancing on scaffolding that barely seemed strong enough to withstand the current. She lost her breath every time one of them leapt over empty space.

THE ARRANGEMENTS AT the green house had become slightly peculiar, for Roen had decided to take the house back from Brigan and give it to Fire.

'I can understand you taking it from Brigan, if that's your pleasure,' Fire said, standing in the small green kitchen, having this argument with Roen for the third or fourth time. 'You're the queen, and it's the queen's house, and whatever Brigan may accomplish, he's highly unlikely ever to be queen. But Nash will have a queen someday, Roen, and the house by rights should be hers.'

'We'll build her something else,' Roen said with a careless sweep of her arm.

'Thisis the queen's house,' Fire repeated.

'It'smy house,' Roen said. 'I built it, and I can give it to whomever I want, and I don't know anyone who needs a peaceful retreat from the court more than you do, Fire—'

'I have a retreat. I have a house of my own in the north.'

'Three weeks away,' Roen snorted, 'and miserable half the year. Fire. If you're to stay at court then I want you to have this house, for your own daily retreat. Take Brigandell and Hannadell in if you like, or send them out on their ears.'

'Whatever woman Nash marries is already going to resent me enough—'

Roen spoke over her. 'You are queenly, Fire, whether you see it or not. And you'd be spending most of your time here anyway if I left the house to Brigan; and I'm through with arguing. Besides, it matches your eyes.'

This last was preposterous enough to render Fire speechless, and it didn't help that Tess, kneading dough at the table, nodded her head smartly and added, 'And the flowers are all in reds and golds and pinks, Lady Granddaughter, in case you hadn't noticed, and you've seen the big tree go all red in autumn.'

'Naxdell tried to steal that tree, twice,' Roen said, careening happily off topic. 'He wanted it in his own courtyard. He set the gardeners to digging it up, but where the limbs touch the ground they take root, and it was an impossible job. And mad. How did he think he was ever going to get it into the palace - through the roofs? Nax and Cansrel could never lay eyes on a beautiful thing without needing to possess it.'

Fire gave up. The arrangement was not orderly, but the truth was that she loved the little green house, its garden, and its tree, and she wanted to live there, and she didn't want anyone who already lived there to leave. It didn't matter who owned it and who had taken in whom. It was a bit like the dappled grey horse, who, being led through the palace and shown the grounds of the green house, and being made to understand that this was Fire's home, chose it for her home, too. She grazed behind the house on the cliff above Cellar Harbour and slept under the tree, and went for rides with Fire sometimes, and Small. She belonged to herself, though it was Fire who brought her in and out, and though Hanna had named her Horse, and though Brigan sat sometimes on a bench in the garden, radiating deliberate mildness, pretending not to notice the way she edged toward him, extending her nostrils almost to his very shoulder, cautiously sniffing.

At night Fire rubbed Tess's feet and brushed out the silver-white hair that reached almost to her knees.

Her grandmother insisted on being her servant, and Fire understood that. When she could, she insisted on the same thing back.

ONE PERSON FIRE spent time with had nothing to give. Lady Murgda, traitor and attempted murderer, had been kept in the dungeons since the final battle of the war. Her husband was dead. So was her brother. She was well into her pregnancy, which was the only reason she had been left alive. She lashed at Fire with bitter and hateful words when Fire visited, but still Fire continued to visit, not always certain why she did. Sympathy for a strong person who'd been brought low? Respect for a pregnant woman? At any rate, she was not afraid of Murgda's vitriol.

One day as she stepped out of Murgda's cell she met Nash being helped in by Welkley and one of the healers. Grasping his hand, looking at the message in his eyes, she understood that she was not the only person with sympathy for Murgda's miserable situation.

They didn't have a lot of words for each other these days, Fire and Nash. Something unbreakable had formed between them. A bond of memory and experience, and a desperate fondness that seemed not to require words.

How wonderful to see him on his feet.

' I ' L L ALWAYS BE leaving,' Brigan said.

'Yes,' Fire said. 'I know.'

Early morning, and they were tangled together in her bed in the green house. Fire was memorising every scar on his face and his body. She was memorising the pale clear grey of his eyes, because he was leaving today with the First to the north, escorting his mother and father to their respective homes.

'Brigan,' she said, so that he would talk, and she could hear his voice and memorise it.

'Yes?'

'Tell me again where you're going.'

'HANNA HAS ACCEPTED you completely,' he said a few minutes later.

'She's not jealous, or confused.'

'She has accepted me,' Fire said. 'But she is a little jealous.'

'Is she?' he said, startled. 'Should I talk to her?'

'It's a small thing,' Fire said. 'She does allow for you loving me.'

'She loves you, too.'

'She does love me. Really, I don't think any child could see her father beginning to love someone else and not feel jealousy. At least, that's what I imagine. It never happened to me.' She lost her voice. She continued in thoughts.I was, wholly and truly, the only person I ever knew my father to love.

'Fire,' he whispered, kissing her face. 'You did the thing you had to do.'

He never tried to own me, Brigan. Roen said that Cansrel could never see a beautiful thing without wanting to possess it. But he did not try to possess me. He let me be my own.

ON THE DAY the surgeons removed Fire's fingers, Brigan was in the north. In the infirmary Hanna held Fire's good hand tightly, chattering her almost to dizziness, and Nash held Hanna's hand, and reached his other hand, a bit cheekily, out to Mila, who gave him a look like acid. Mila, big-eyed, big-bellied, and glowing like a person with a wonderful secret, seemed to have a curious talent for attracting the fondness of men who far outranked her. But she had learned something from the last one.

She had learned propriety, which was the same as saying she had learned to trust only herself. So much so that she was not afraid to be rude to the king, when he asked for it.

Garan came in at the last minute, sat down, and, through the whole bloody thing, talked to Mila and Nash and Hanna about the plans for his wedding. Fire knew that it was an attempt to distract her. She thanked them for this kindness by trying very hard to be distracted.

It was not a pleasant surgery. The drugs were good, but they took away the pain alone, not the sensation of her fingers being stolen from her hand; and later, when the drugs wore off, the pain was terrible.

And then, over days and weeks, the pain began to fade. When no one but her guard was around to hear, she fought with her fiddle, and was astonished with how quickly the fighting turned into something more hopeful. Her changed hand couldn't do all that it had formerly done. But it could still make music.

HER DAYS WERE full. An end to the war had not put an end to treachery and lawlessness, particularly in the kingdom's far reaches, where so much went unseen. Clara and Garan often had spy-room work for her. She talked to the people they set her to, but the work she preferred was in the palace infirmary, or even better, in the city hospitals, where all kinds of folk came with all kinds of needs. It was true that some of them wanted nothing to do with her, and in the usual way, even more of them wanted her far too much, and they all made too big a fuss over the role she had played in saving the king's life. They talked about it as if it had been all her doing, and none of Nash's, and none of the kingdom's best surgeons', and when she tried to deflect their praise, they began on the subject of how she had tricked Lord Mydogg's war plans out of Lord Gentian and assured the victory of the Dells. How such rumours had been started, she didn't know, but it seemed there was no stopping them. So she moved among their moods calmly, building barriers against their admiration, helping where she could, and learning practicalities of surgery that astonished her.

'Today,' she announced triumphantly to Garan and Clara, 'a woman came in who'd dropped a cleaver on her foot and cut off her own toe. The surgeons reattached it. Can you believe it? With their tools and their drugs I almost believe they could reattach a leg. We must give more money to the hospitals, you know. We must train more surgeons and build hospitals all over the kingdom. We must build schools!'

'I wish I could take my legs off,' Clara groaned, 'until this baby is born, and then have them reattached afterwards. And my back, too. And my shoulders.'