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  Her fatigue compounded now with guilt, Fire ducked back into the tent for a headscarf and her own bow and quiver. She emerged and joined her six armed and sleepy companions. Musa lit candles and passed them around. Quietly, in procession, the line of seven skirted the edge of the cavern.

  The narrow, sloping pathway they climbed some minutes later led to a perforation in the side of the mountain. Fire could see little beyond the opening, but instinct told her not to venture too far and not to loose her hold on the edges of rock that formed a kind of doorway to either side of her. She didn't want to fall.

  The night was gusty, damp, and cold. She knew it was senseless to get herself wet, but she soaked in the rain and the untamed feeling of the storm anyway, while her guard huddled just inside the opening and tried to protect the candles.

  There was a shift in her consciousness: people nearing, riders. Many. Difficult to tell the difference between two hundred and two hundred and fifty at this distance, and knowing so few of them personally. She concentrated, and decided that she was sensing well more than two hundred. And they were tired, but not in any unusual state of distress. The search party must have met with success.

  "The search party's returning," she called back to her guard. "They're close. I believe the scout unit's with them."

  At their silence she turned to glance at them, and found six pairs of eyes watching her in various states of unease. She stepped out of the rain, into the passageway. "I thought you'd like to know," she said more quietly. "But I can keep my perceptions to myself, if they make you uncomfortable."

  "No," Musa said. "It's appropriate for you to tell us, Lady."

  "Is the commander well, Lady?" one of the men asked.

  Fire had been trying to determine this for herself, finding the man irritatingly difficult to isolate. He was there, of this she was sure. She supposed the continued impenetrability of his mind must indicate some measure of strength. "I can't quite tell, but I think so."

  And then the music of hoofbeats echoed through the corridor as somewhere, in some crevice of the mountain below them, the riders entered the tunnels that led to the sleeping cavern.

  A short while later, plodding downward, Fire received an abrupt answer to her concern when she sensed the commander walking up the passageway toward them. She stopped in her tracks, causing the guard behind her to whisper something most ungentlemanly as he contorted himself to avoid lighting her headscarf with his flame.

  "Is there any other route to the cavern from here?" she blurted out; then knew the answer, then shrivelled in mortification at her own display of cowardice.

  "No, Lady," Musa said, hand to her sword. "Do you sense something ahead?"

  "No," Fire said miserably. "Only the commander." Come to fetch the wandering monster, who'd proven herself wild and irresponsible. He'd keep her on a chain from now on.

  He came into view a few minutes later, climbing with a candle in his hand. When he reached them he stopped, nodded at the soldiers' formal greetings, spoke quietly to Musa. The scout unit had been recovered unharmed. They'd run into a nasty party of cave bandits twice their size, and after tearing up the bandits they'd got themselves turned around in the dark. Their injuries were minor. In ten minutes' time they would all be asleep.

  "I hope you'll get some sleep as well, sir," Musa said. Suddenly Brigan smiled. He stepped aside to let them by and momentarily met Fire's glance. His eyes were exhausted. He had a day-old beard and he was drenched.

  And apparently he had not come to fetch her after all. Once she and her attendants had passed him he turned away, and continued up the sloping corridor.

  Chapter Eleven

  She woke the next morning stiff and achy from yesterday's riding. Margo handed her bread and cheese, and a basin of water to wash her face. After this, Fire reached for her fiddle and played a single reel, slowly and then with increasing speed, to wake herself up. The effort of it crystallised her mind.

  "The commander didn't mention this advantage of our guard duty," Mila said, smiling shyly. Musa stuck her head through the flap of the tent.

  "Lady," Musa said, "the commander bade me tell you we'll be passing near Queen Roen's fortress around midday. He has business with the horsemaster. There'll be time for you to take a short meal with the lady queen, if you like."

  "You've been on your horse since yesterday," Roen said, taking her hands, "so I'm guessing you don't feel as lovely as you look. There, that smile tells me I'm right."

  "I'm tight as a bowstring," Fire admitted.

  "Sit down, dear. Make yourself comfortable. Take off that scarf, I won't let any gaping no-heads in here for the next half-hour."

  Such a relief to release her hair. The weight of it was great, and after a morning of riding, the scarf was sticky, and itchy. Fire sank gratefully into a chair, rubbed her scalp, and allowed Nax's queen to shovel vegetables and casserole onto her plate. "Haven't you ever considered cutting it short?" Roen asked.

  Oh, cutting it short. Hacking it all off, throwing it once and for all on the fire. Dyeing it black, if only monster hair would take colour. When she and Archer had been very young, they'd gone so far as to shave it off once as an experiment. It had shown again on her scalp within the hour. "It grows extremely fast," Fire said wearily, "and I've found it's easier to control if it's long. Short pieces break loose and escape from my scarf."

  "I suppose they would," Roen said. "Well. I'm glad to see you. How are Brocker and Archer?"

  Fire told her that Brocker was splendid and Archer, as usual, was angry.

  "Yes, I suppose it's what he would be," Roen said robustly, "but don't mind him. It's right for you to be doing this, going to King's City to help Nash. I believe you can handle his court. You're not a child anymore. How is your casserole?"

  Fire took a bite, which was very nice, actually, and fought the disbelieving expression trying to rise to her face. Not a child anymore? Fire had not been a child for quite some time.

  And then, of course, Brigan appeared in the doorway to say hello to his mother and to bring Fire back to her horse, and immediately Fire felt herself revert to a child. Some part of her brain went missing whenever this soldier came near. It froze from his coldness.

  "Brigandell," Roen said, rising from her chair to embrace him. "You've come to steal my guest from me."

  "In exchange for forty soldiers," Brigan said. "Twelve injured, so I've also left you a healer."

  "We can manage without the healer, if you need him, Brigan."

  "His family's in the Little Greys," Brigan said, "and I promised him a stay here when I could. We'll manage with our numbers until Fort Middle."

  "Well then," Roen said briskly. "Are you sleeping?"

  "Yes."

  "Come now. A mother can tell when her son lies. Are you eating? "

  "No," Brigan said gravely. "I've not eaten in two months. It's a hunger strike to protest the spring flooding in the south."

  "Gracious," Roen said, reaching for the fruit bowl. "Have an apple, dear."

  * * * *

  Fire and Brigan didn't speak as they exited the fortress together to continue the journey to King's City. But Brigan ate an apple, and Fire wound up her hair, and found herself a little more comfortable beside him.

  Somehow it helped to know he could make a joke.

  And then, three kindnesses.

  Fire's guard waited with Small near the back of the column of troops. As Fire and Brigan moved toward the spot, Fire began to know that something was wrong. She tried to focus, which was difficult with so many people milling around. She waited for Brigan to stop speaking to a captain who'd appeared alongside them with a question about the day's schedule.

  "I think my guards are holding a man," she told Brigan quietly, when the captain had gone.

  His voice dropped. "Why? What man?"

  She had only the basics, and the most important assurances. "I don't know anything except that he hates me, and he hasn't hurt my horse."

  He nodded. "I had
n't thought of that. I'll have to do something to stop people targeting your horse."

  They had picked up their pace at Fire's warning. Now, finally, they came upon a nasty scene: Fire's guards, two of them, holding back a soldier who shouted curses and spit out blood and teeth, while a third guard cracked him across the mouth again and again to shut him up. Horrified, Fire reached for the mind of the guard to stop his fist.

  And then she absorbed the details that turned the scene into a story. Her fiddle case fallen open on the ground, smeared with mud. The remains of her fiddle beside it. The instrument was smashed, splintered almost beyond recognition, the bridge rammed into the belly as if by a cruel and hateful boot.

  It was worse, somehow, than being hit by an arrow. Fire stumbled to Small and buried her face in his shoulder; she had no control over the tears running down her face, and she did not want Brigan to see them.

  Behind her, Brigan swore sharply. Someone – Musa – laid a handkerchief on Fire's shoulder. The captive was still cursing, screaming now that he could see Fire, horrible things about her body, what he would do to her, intelligible even through his broken, swollen mouth. Brigan strode to him.

  Don't hit him again, Fire thought desperately, Brigan, please; for the sound of bone scraping bone was not aiding her attempts to stop crying. Brigan uttered another oath, then a sharp command, and Fire understood from the sudden formlessness of the soldier's words that the man was being gagged. And then dragged away, back toward the fortress, Brigan and a number of Fire's guard accompanying him.

  The scene was suddenly quiet. Fire became conscious of her own gasping breath and forced herself calm. Horrible man, she thought into Small's mane. Horrible, horrible man. Oh, Small. That man was horrible.

  Small made a snorting noise and deposited some very comforting drool on her shoulder.

  "I'm so sorry, Lady," Musa said behind her. "He took us in completely. From now on we'll let no one near us who wasn't sent by the commander."

  Fire wiped her face with the handkerchief and turned sideways toward the captain of her guard. She couldn't quite look at the pile of tinder on the ground. "I don't blame you for it."

  "The commander will," Musa said. "As he should."

  Fire took a steadying breath. "I should have known playing it would be provoking."

  "Lady, I forbid you to blame yourself. Truly, I won't allow it."

  At this Fire smiled, and held the handkerchief out to Musa. "Thank you."

  "It's not mine, Lady. It's Neel's."

  Fire recognised the name of one of her male guards. "Neel's?"

  "The commander took it from Neel and gave it to me to give to you, Lady. Keep it. Neel won't miss it, he has a thousand. Was it a very expensive fiddle, Lady?"

  Yes, of course, it had been. But Fire had never valued it for that. She had valued it because of a rare and strange kindness that was gone now.

  She studied Neel's handkerchief. "It's no matter," she said, measuring her words. "The commander didn't hit that man. I asked him not to in his mind, and he didn't."

  Musa accepted the apparent change of subject. "I wondered at that. He doesn't strike his own soldiers, as a rule, you know. But this time I thought we might see the exception. His face was murder."

  And he had taken the trouble to secure another man's handkerchief. And he had shared her concern for her horse. Three kindnesses.

  Fire understood then that she had been afraid of Brigan, of her heart being injured by the hatred of a person she couldn't help but like; and shy, as well, of his roughness, and his impenetrability. And she was still shy. But she was no longer afraid.

  They rode hard the rest of the day. As night closed in they made camp on a flat mass of rock. Tents and fires cropped up all around her, seeming to stretch on forever. It occurred to Fire that she had never been this far from home. Archer would be missing her, that she knew, and knowing it soothed her own loneliness a bit. His fury if he heard about her fiddle would be a terrible thing. Normally his furies were an aggravation to her, but she would welcome it now; if he were here, she could draw strength from his fire.

  Before too long the eyes of the soldiers nearest her drove her into her tent. She could not stop thinking of the words of the man who'd destroyed the fiddle. Why did hatred so often make men think of rape? And there was the flaw in her monster power. As often as the power of her beauty made one man easy to control, it made another man uncontrollable and mad.

  A monster drew out all that was vile, especially a female monster, because of the desire, and the endless perverted channels for the expression of malice. With all weak men, the sight of her was a drug to their minds. What man could use hate or love well when he was drugged?

  The consciousnesses of five thousand men pressed in on her.

  Mila and Margo had followed her into the tent, of course, and sat nearby, hands on swords. Silent, alert, and bored. Fire was sorry for being such a boring charge. She wished she could go out to Small without being seen. She wished she could bring Small into the tent.

  Musa looked in through the flap. "Pardon me, Lady. A soldier has come from the scout units to lend you his fiddle. The commander vouches for him, but says we're to ask your impressions before we let him near you. He's just outside, Lady."

  "Yes," Fire said, surprised, finding the strange man among her guard. "I believe he's harmless."

  Harmless and huge, Fire saw when she emerged from her tent. His fiddle was like a toy in his hands; this man's sword must look like a butter knife when he swung it. But the face that sat above his tree trunk of a body was quiet and thoughtful and mild. He lowered his eyes before her and held the fiddle out to her.

  Fire shook her head. "You're very generous," she said, "but I don't like to take it from you."

  The man's voice was so deep it sounded like it came from the earth. "We all know the story of what you did at Queen Roen's fortress months back, Lady. You saved the life of our commander."

  "Well," Fire said, because he seemed to expect her to say something. "Nonetheless."

  "The men cannot stop talking about it," he continued, bowing, then pushing the fiddle into her small hands with his enormous ones. "And besides, you're the better fiddler."

  Fire watched the man lumber away, touched, immensely comforted by his voice, by the huge gentle feeling of him. "Now I understand how our scout units can tear up parties of bandits twice their size," she said aloud.

  Musa laughed. "He's a good one to have on our side."

  Fire plucked the strings of the fiddle. It was in good tune. Its tone was sharp, strident – it was no master's instrument. But it was a tool with which she could make music.

  And a declaration.

  Fire ducked inside her tent for her bow and came out again. Strode across the plain of soldiers toward a rise of rock that she could see some distance away. Her guard scrambled to follow her and surround her; the eyes of soldiers attached themselves to her as she passed. She reached the mound of boulders and climbed. She sat down and tucked the fiddle under her chin.

  In the hearing of them all she played whatever music it pleased her to play.

  Chapter Twelve

  If only fire could talk her sleeping self into the same courage.

  It was her father's dying eyes that never let her sleep.

  The answer to Brocker's question in her fourteenth year, the question about whether she could alter Cansrel's mind lastingly, had been simple, once she'd allowed herself to consider it. No. Cansrel's mind was strong as a bear and hard as the steel of a trap, and every time she left it, it slammed back into place behind her. There were no permanent alterations to Cansrel's mind. There was no changing who he was. It had relieved her, to know there was nothing she could do, because it meant no one could ever expect it of her.

  Then, in that same year, Nax had drugged himself to death. As the contours of power had shifted and resettled, Fire had seen what Brocker saw, and Archer, and Roen: a kingdom that stood on the verge of several permutations of possibi
lity. A kingdom, suddenly, that could change.

  She had been dazzlingly well-informed. On one side she'd received Cansrel's confidences; on the other she'd known all that Brocker learned from his and Roen's spies. She knew that Nash was stronger than Nax had been, strong enough sometimes to frustrate Cansrel, but a game to Cansrel still, compared with the younger brother, the prince. At eighteen the boy Brigan, the absurdly young commander, was said to be strong-minded, level, forceful, persuasive, and angry, the only person of influence in all King's City who was not influenced by Cansrel. Some among the clear-headed talked as if they expected Brigan to be the difference between a continuation of the current lawless and depraved state of things, and change.

  "Prince Brigan is injured," Brocker announced one winter day when she came to visit. "I've just received word from Roen."

  "What happened?" Fire asked, startled. "Is he all right?"

  "There's a gala in the king's palace every January," Brocker said.

  "Hundreds of guests and dancing and a great deal of wine and nonsense, and a thousand dark corridors for people to sneak around in. Apparently Cansrel hired four men to corner Brigan and cut his throat. Brigan heard word of it and was ready for them and killed all four – "

  "All four by himself?" Fire asked, distressed and confused, sitting down hard in an armchair.

  "Young Brigan is good with a sword," Brocker said grimly.

  "But is he badly hurt?"

  "He'll live, though the surgeons worried at first. He was stabbed in the leg in a place that bled terribly." Brocker moved his chair to the fireplace and threw Roen's letter onto the crackling flames. "It was very nearly the end of the boy, Fire, and I don't doubt that Cansrel will try again."

  That summer at Nash's court, an arrow from the bow of one of Brigan's most trusted captains had struck Cansrel in the back. At the start of her fifteenth year – on her fourteenth birthday, in fact – Fire had word from King's City that her father was injured and likely to die. She'd closed herself in her room and sobbed, not even knowing, for sure, what she was sobbing about, but unable to stop. She'd pressed her face against a pillow so that no one could hear.