Fire (Graceling Realm #2)(7)
Author: Kristin Cashore

'Stop, Father! Stop it!'

Cansrel pulled a knife from his belt and advanced on the dog. Fire shrieked and grabbed at him. 'Don't hurt him, Father, please! Can't you feel that he didn't mean it?'

She scrabbled at Cansrel's mind but he was too strong for her. Hanging onto his trousers, punching him with her small fists, she burst into tears.

At that Cansrel stopped, shoved his knife back into his belt, and stood there, hands on hips, seething.

Twy limped away, whimpering, his tail between his legs. And then Cansrel seemed to change, dropping down to Fire again, hugging her and kissing her and murmuring until she stopped crying. He cleaned her fingers and bandaged them. He sat her down for a lesson on the control of animal minds. When finally he let her go she ran to find Twy, who'd made his way to her room and was huddled, bewildered and ashamed, in a corner. She took him into her lap. She practiced soothing his mind, so that next time she'd be able to protect him.

The following morning she woke to silence, rather than the usual sound of Twy stumping around outside her door. All day long she looked for him on her own grounds and Brocker's, but she couldn't find him.

He'd disappeared. Cansrel said, with smooth sympathy, 'I suppose he's run away. Dogs do that, you know. Poor darling.'

And so Fire learned to lie to her father when he asked if anyone had hurt her.

AS THE YEARS passed Cansrel's visits became less frequent but lasted longer, for the roads were unsafe. Sometimes, appearing at her door after months away, he brought women with him, or the traders who dealt his animals and drugs, or new monsters for his cages. Sometimes he spent his entire visit strung out on the poison of some plant; or, completely sober, he had strange, arbitrary, gloomy fits of temper, which he took out on everyone but Fire. Other times he was as lucid and lovely as the high notes Fire played on her flute. She dreaded his arrivals, his brassy, gorgeous, dissolute invasions of her quiet life.

And after every one of his departures she was so lonesome that music was the only thing to comfort her, and she threw herself headlong into her lessons, never even minding the moments when her teacher was hateful, or resentful of her growing skill.

Brocker never spared her the truth about Cansrel.

I don't want to believe you, she'd think to him after he'd told her another tale of something Cansrel had done.But I know it's true, because Cansrel himself tells me the stories, and he is never ashamed. He means them as lessons to guide my own behaviour. It worries him that I don't use my power as a weapon.

'Does he not understand how different you are from him?' Brocker would ask. 'Does he not see that you're built from a different mould entirely?'

Fire couldn't describe the loneliness she felt when Brocker talked that way. How she wished at times that her quiet, plain, and good neighbour had been her true father. She wished to be like Brocker, built from his mould. But she knew what she was and what she was capable of. Even after she'd done away with mirrors, she saw it in other people's eyes, and she knew how easy it would be to make her own miserable life just a little bit more pleasant, the way Cansrel did all the time. She never told anyone, even Archer, how much the temptation of it shamed her.

When she was thirteen the drugs killed Nax, and a twenty-three-year-old Nash became king of a kingdom in shambles. Cansrel's fits of fury became even more frequent. So did his periods of melancholy.

When she was fifteen Cansrel opened the door of the cage that held back his midnight blue leopard monster, and departed from Fire for the last time.

CHAPTER THREE

FIRE DIDN'T REALISE she'd fallen asleep in Lord Brocker's library until she awoke and found herself there. It was Brocker's monster kitten that woke her, swinging from the hem of her dress like a man on the end of a rope. She blinked, adjusting her eyes to the grainy light, absorbing the baby monster's consciousness. It was still raining. No one else was in the room. She massaged the shoulder of her injured arm and stretched in her chair, stiff and achy but feeling better rested.

The kitten climbed his way up her skirts, sank his claws into her knee, and peered at her, hanging. He knew what she was, for her headscarf had slipped back a finger width. The monsters appraised each other. He was bright green with gold feet, this kitten, and his daft little mind was reaching for hers.

Of course, no animal monster could control Fire's mind, but this never stopped some of the more dim varieties from trying. He was too small and silly to think of eating her, but he would want to play, nibble her fingers, lick some blood, and Fire could do without the stings from a monster cat game. She lifted him into her lap and scratched him behind the ears and murmured nonsense about how strong and grand and intelligent he was.For good measure, she sent him a blip of mental sleepiness. He turned a circle in her lap and plopped himself down.

Housecat monsters were prized for keeping down the monster mouse population, and the regular mouse population too. This baby would grow big and fat, live a long, satisfied life, and probably father scores of monster kittens.

Human monsters, on the other hand, tended not to live long. Too many predators, too many enemies. It was for the best that Fire was the only one remaining; and she had decided long ago, even before she'd taken Archer into her bed, that she would be the last. No more Cansrels.

She sensed Archer and Brocker in the hallway outside the library door, and then she heard their voices.

Sharp, agitated. One of Archer's moods - or had something new happened while she was sleeping? She touched their minds to let them know she was awake.

A moment later Archer pushed the library door open and held it wide for his father. They came in together, talking, Archer jabbing the air angrily with his bow. 'Curse Trilling's guard for trying to take the man alone.'

'Perhaps he had no choice,' Brocker said.

'Trilling's men are too hasty.'

Brocker brightened with amusement. 'Interesting accusation, boy, coming from you.'

'I'm hasty with my tongue, Father, not my sword.' Archer glanced at Fire and her sleeping kitten.

'Love. How do you feel?'

'Better.'

'Our neighbour Trilling. Do you trust him?'

Trilling was one of the less foolish men Fire dealt with on a regular basis. His wife had employed Fire not only to tutor her boys in music but to teach them how to protect their minds against monster power.

'He's never given me reason to distrust him,' she said. 'What's happened?'

'He's found two dead men in his forest,' Archer said. 'One is his own guard, and I regret to say that the other is another stranger. Each with knife wounds and bruises, as if they'd been fighting each other, but what killed them both were arrows. Trilling's guard was shot from a distance in the back. The stranger was shot in the head at close range. Both arrows made of the same white wood as the bolt that killed your poacher.'

Fire's mind raced to make sense of it. 'The archer came upon them fighting, shot Trilling's guard from far away, then ran up to the stranger and executed him.'

Lord Brocker cleared his throat. 'Possibly a rather personal execution. Assuming the archer and the stranger were companions, that is, and it does seem likely that all these violent strangers in our woods have something to do with each other, doesn't it? The stranger from today had grievous knife injuries to his legs that might not have killed him, but would certainly have made it difficult for the archer to get him away once Trilling's guard was dead. I wonder if the archer shot Trilling's guard to protect his companion, then realised his companion was too injured to save, and decided to dispose of him, too?'

Fire raised her eyebrows at that, considering, and petted the monster cat absently. If the archer, the poacher, and this new dead stranger had, indeed, been working together, then the archer's responsibility seemed to be clean-up, so that no one was left behind to answer questions about why they were there in the first place. And the archer was good at his job.

Archer stared at the floor, tapping the end of his bow against the hard wood. Thinking. 'I'm going to Queen Roen's fortress,' he said.

Fire glanced at him sharply. 'Why?'

'I need to beg more soldiers of her, and I want the information of her spies. She might have thoughts about whether any of these strangers have anything to do with Mydogg or Gentian. I want to know what's going on in my forest, Fire, and I want this archer.'

'I'm going with you,' Fire said.

'No,' Archer said flatly.

'I am.'

'No. You can't defend yourself. You can't even ride.'

'It's only a day's journey. Wait a week. Let me rest, and then I'll go with you.'

Archer held up a hand and turned away from her. 'You're wasting your breath. Why would I ever allow such a thing?'

Because Roen is always unaccountably kind to me when I visit her northern fortress, Fire wanted to say.

Because Roen knew my mother. Because Roen is a strong-minded woman, and there's something consoling in the regard of a woman. Roen never desires me, or if she ever does, it's not the same.

'Because,' she said out loud, 'Roen and her spies will have questions for me about what happened when the poacher shot me, and what little I managed to sense from his mind. And because,' she added, as Archer moved to object, 'you are neither my husband nor my father; I am a woman of seventeen, I have my own horses and my own money, and I decide for myself where I go and when. This is not yours to forbid.'

Archer slammed the end of his bow against the floor, but Lord Brocker was chuckling. 'Don't argue with her, boy. If it's information you're after, you're a fool not to take the monster at your disposal.'

'The roads are dangerous,' Archer said, practically spitting.

'It's dangerous here,' Brocker retorted. 'Isn't she safest with your bow to defend her?'

'She's safest inside, in a room with the door closed and locked.'

Brocker turned his chair toward the exit. 'She has precious few friends, Archer. It would be cruel for you to rush off to Roen and leave her behind.'

Fire found that she was holding the kitten close, cradling him against her breast, as if she were shielding him from something. From the way it felt to have her movements, her feelings, even, debated by two prickly men. She had the sudden mad wish that this little green-haired creature in her arms were her own baby, to hold and adore and to deliver her from people who did not understand her. Foolish, she thought to herself furiously. Don't even think it. What does the world need with another mind-stealing baby?

Lord Brocker grasped Archer's hand and looked into his eyes, steadying his son, calming him. Then Brocker rolled to the exit and closed the door on their quarrel.

Archer watched Fire, his face uncertain. And Fire sighed, finally forgiving her stubborn friend and the stubborn father who'd adopted him. Their arguments, however they squashed her, were drawn from the wells of two very large hearts.

She dropped the kitten to the floor and stood, taking Archer's hand as his father had done. Archer looked down at their joined hands soberly. He brought her fingers to his mouth, kissed her knuckles, and made a show of inspecting her hand, as if he'd never seen it before.

'I'll pack my things,' Fire said. 'Just tell me when we're leaving.'