Fire

Chapter Seventeen

As much as Fire had known about the play of power in the Dells, her knowledge had been drawn in broad strokes. She understood this now, because now she held a minute and specific map in her mind. The focal points were King's City; Mydogg's holding on the Pikkian border; and Gentian's land in the southern mountains below the river, not far from Fort Flood. There were places in between: Brigan's many other forts and outposts, the estates of lords and ladies with tiny armies and shifting alliances, the Great Greys in the south and west, the Little Greys in the north, the Winged River, the Pikkian River, the high, flat area north of King's City called Marble Rise. Rocky patches of poverty, flashes of violence, plundering, desolation; landscapes and landmarks that were bound to be keystones in the war between Nash, Mydogg, and Gentian.

Her work was never the same from day to day. She never knew what kind of folk Garan and Clara's people would pick up: Pikkian smugglers, common soldiers of Mydogg's or Gentian's, messengers of either, servants who had worked for them once. Men suspected of being their spies or the spies of their allies. Fire came to see that in a kingdom balanced delicately atop a pile of changing associations, the most critical commodity was information. The Dells spied on their friends and on their enemies; they spied on their own spies. And indeed, all players in the realm did the same.

The very first man they brought before her, an old servant of a neighbour of Mydogg's, opened wide at the sight of her and spilled every thought that bubbled into his head. "Both Lord Mydogg and Lord Gentian are rightly impressed with Prince Brigan," the man told her, staring, quivering. "Both have been buying horses and mounting their armies for the past few years like the prince did, and recruiting mountain folk and looters as soldiers. They respect the prince as an opponent, Lady. And did you know there are Pikkians in Lord Mydogg's army? Big, pale men hulking around his land."

This is easy, Fire thought to herself. I only have to sit here and they blurt everything out.

But Garan was unimpressed. "He told us nothing we didn't already know. Did you plumb him for more – names, places, secrets? How do you know you've learned every part of his knowledge?"

The next couple of fellows were less forthcoming – a pair of convicted spies, resistant to her, and strong. Both bruised around the face, both gaunt, and one of them limping and stoop-shouldered, wincing as he eased back in his chair, as if he had cuts or bruises on his back. "How were you injured?" she asked them, suspicious. "And where?" They sat before her mutely, eyes averted, stony-faced, and answered neither that question nor any other question she put to them.

When the interrogation was over and the two spies had gone back to the dungeons, she made her excuses to Garan, who'd sat in on the entire thing. "They were too strong for me, Lord Prince. I could get nothing from them."

Garan eyed her moodily over a sheaf of papers. "Did you try?"

"Of course I tried."

"Really? How hard did you try?" He stood, lips tight. "I have neither energy nor time to waste, Lady Fire. When you decide that you're actually going to do this thing, let me know."

He shoved his papers under his arm and pushed through the questioning room door, leaving her with her own indignation. He was right, of course. She hadn't tried, not really. She'd poked at their minds and, finding them closed, done nothing to force an opening. She hadn't even tried to get them to look into her face. How could she? Was she honestly expected to sit before men weakened by ill treatment and abuse them even further?

She jumped up and ran after Garan, finding him at a desk in his offices, scribbling madly in coded letters.

"I have rules," she said to him.

He stilled his pen, raised expressionless eyes to her face, and waited.

"When you bring me an old servant who's come willingly where the king's men have bidden him, a man who's never been convicted, or even accused, of a crime," Fire said, "I will not take his mind. I'll sit before him and ask questions, and if my presence makes him more talkative, very well. But I will not compel him to say things he would otherwise not have said. Nor," she added, voice rising, "will I take the mind of a person who's been fed too little, or denied medicines, or beaten in your gaols. I won't manipulate a prisoner you've mistreated."

Garan sat back and crossed his arms. "That's rich, isn't it? Your own manipulation is mistreatment; you've said it yourself."

"Yes, but mine is meant to be for good reason. Yours is not."

"It's not my mistreatment. I don't give the orders down there, I've no idea what goes on."

"If you want me to question them, you'd best find out."

To Garan's credit, the treatment of Dellian prisoners did change after that. One particularly laconic man, after a session in which Fire learned positively nothing, thanked her for it specifically. "Best dungeons I ever been in," he said, chewing on a toothpick.

"Wonderful," Garan grumbled when he'd gone. "We'll grow a reputation for our kindness to lawbreakers."

"A prison with a monster on its staff of interrogators is not likely to grow a reputation for kindness," Nash responded, quietly. Some loved to be brought before her, loved her presence too much to care what she caused them to reveal; but for the most part, Nash was right. She met with tens, gradually hundreds, of different spies and smugglers and soldiers who came into the room sullenly, sometimes even fighting the guards, needing to be dragged. She asked them questions in their minds. When did you last speak to Mydogg? What did he say? Tell me every word. Which of our spies is he trying to turn? Which of our soldiers are traitors? She took a breath and forced herself to plumb and twist and pound – sometimes even to threaten. No, you're lying again. One more lie and you'll start to feel pain. You believe that I can make you feel pain, don't you?

I'm doing this for the Dells, she told herself over and over when her own capacity for bullying made her numb with shame and panic. I'm doing this to protect the Dells from those who would destroy it.

"In a three-way war," said a prisoner who'd been caught smuggling swords and daggers to Gentian, "it seems to me that the king has the advantage of numbers. Doesn't it seem that way to you, Lady? Does anyone know Mydogg's numbers for sure?"

He was a fellow who kept tearing away from her hold, polite and pleasant and cloud-brained one moment, the next moment clear-headed, fighting against the shackles around his wrists and ankles, whimpering at the sight of her.

She nudged at his mind now, pushing him away from his own empty speculations and centering him on his actual knowledge.

"Tell me about Mydogg and Gentian," she said. "Do they intend to mount an attack this summer?"

"I don't know, Lady. I've heard nothing about it but rumours."

"Do you know Gentian's numbers?"

"No, but he buys an infinite number of swords."

"How many is 'infinite'? Be more specific."

"I don't know specifics," he said, still speaking truthfully, but beginning to break free again, the reality of his situation in this room coming back to him. "I have nothing more to say to you," he announced suddenly, staring at her big-eyed, beginning to shake. "I know what you are. I won't let you use me."

"I don't enjoy using you," Fire said tiredly, allowing herself, for a moment at least, to say what she felt. She watched him as he yanked at his wrists and gasped and fell back in his chair, exhausted and sniffling. Then she reached up and tugged at her headscarf so that her hair came tumbling down. The brightness startled him; he gaped at her, astonished; in that instant, she pushed into his mind again and grabbed hold easily. "What are these rumours you've heard about the plans of the rebel lords?"

"Well, Lady," he said, transformed again, smiling cheerfully. "I hear that Lord Mydogg wants to make himself the king of the Dells and Pikkia. Then he wants to use Pikkian boats to explore the sea and find new lands to conquer. A Pikkian smuggler told me that, Lady."

I'm getting better at this, Fire thought to herself. I'm learning all the cheap, disgusting little tricks.

And the muscles of her mind were stretching; practice was making her quicker, stronger. Control was becoming an easy – even comfortable – position for her to assume.

But all she ever learned were vague plans for attack someplace sometime soon, random violent intentions against Nash or Brigan, sometimes against herself. Swift changes in alliance that changed back again just as swiftly. Like Garan and Clara and everyone else, she was waiting to discover something solid, something large and treacherous that could serve as a call to action.

They were all waiting for a breakthrough. But sometimes Fire just wished desperately that she were allowed the occasional moment of solitude.

She had been a summer baby and in July her birthday passed – with little fanfare, for she kept the fact of it to herself. Archer and Brocker both had flowers sent. Fire smiled at this, for they would have sent something else had they known how many men of the court and the city had been sending her flowers, constantly, endlessly, flowers and more flowers, since her arrival two months ago. Her rooms were always a hothouse. She would have pitched them, the cut orchids and lilies and fine tall roses, for she had no interest in the attentions of these men; except that she loved the flowers, she loved being surrounded by the beauty of them. She found she had a knack for arranging them, colour to colour.

The king never sent flowers. His feelings had not changed, but he had stopped begging her to marry him. In fact, he'd asked her to teach him guarding against monsters. So over a series of days and weeks, each on either side of her door, she had taught him what he already knew but needed a push to remember. Intention, focus, and self-control. With practice, and with his new gloomy commitment to discipline, his mind became stronger and they moved the lessons to his office. He could be trusted now not to touch her, except when he'd had too much wine, which he did on occasion. They were irritating, his drunken tears, but at least drunk he was easy to control.

Of course, everyone in the palace noticed every time they were together, and thoughtless talk was easy. It was a solid spoke in the rumour wheel that the monster would eventually marry the king.

Brigan was away most of July. He came and went constantly, and now Fire understood where he was always going. Aside from the considerable time he spent with the army, he met with people: lords, ladies, businessmen of the black market, friends, enemies, talking this one or that one into an alliance, testing the loyalty of another. In some cases, spying was the only word for what he was doing. And sometimes fighting himself out of traps he wittingly or unwittingly walked into, coming back with bandages on his hand, black eyes, a cracked rib one time that would have stopped any sane person from riding. It was horrendous, Fire thought, some of the situations Brigan bounded off to throw himself into. Surely someone else should handle negotiations with a weapons dealer who was known to perform favours for Mydogg on occasion. Surely someone else should go to the well-guarded and isolated manor of Gentian's son, Gunner, in the southern peaks, to make clear the consequences if Gunner remained loyal to his father.

"He's too good at it," Clara told her, when Fire questioned the wisdom of these meetings. "He has this way of convincing people they want what he wants. And where he can't persuade with his words he often can with his sword."

Fire remembered the two soldiers who'd brawled at the sight of her on the day she'd joined the First Branch. She remembered how their viciousness had turned to shame and regret after Brigan had spoken to them for only a few moments.

Not all people who inspired devotion were monsters.

And apparently he was renowned for his skill with a blade. Hanna, of course, talked as if he were unbeatable. "I get my fighting skill from Papa," she said, and clearly she had it from somewhere. It seemed to Fire that most five-year-olds in a skirmish against a mob of children would have emerged with more than a broken nose, if they'd emerged at all.

On the last day of July, Hanna came to her with a bright fistful of wildflowers, collected, Fire guessed, from the grasses of the cliff above Cellar Harbour, at the back of the green house. "Grandmother said in a letter she thought your birthday was in July. Did I miss it? Why does no one know your birthday? Uncle Garan said ladies like flowers." She scrunched her nose doubtfully at this last, and stuck the flowers in Fire's face, as if she thought flowers were for eating and expected Fire to lean in and munch, like Small would have done.

With Archer's and Brocker's, they were her favourite flowers in all of her rooms.

One troubling day at the end of August, Fire was in the stables, brushing Small to clear her head. Her guard receded as Brigan ambled over, a collection of bridles slung on his shoulder. He leaned on the stall door and scratched Small's nose. "Lady, well met."

He had only just returned that morning from his latest excursion. "Prince Brigan. And where's your lady?"

"In her history lesson. She went without complaint and I've been trying to prepare myself for what it might mean. Either she's planning to bribe me about something or she's ill."

Fire had a question to ask Brigan, and the question was awkward. There was nothing to do but imitate dignity and fling it at him. She lifted her chin. "Hanna's asked me several times now why the monsters go crazy for me every month, and why I can't step outside for four or five days at a time unless I bring extra guards. I'd like to explain it to her. I'd like your permission."

It was impressive, his reaction – the command he had over his expression, emotionless as he stood on the other side of the door. He stroked Small's neck. "She's five years old."

Fire said nothing to this; only waited.

He scratched his head then, and squinted at her, uncertain. "What do you think? Is five too young to understand? I don't want her to be frightened."

"They don't frighten her, Lord Prince. She talks of guarding me from them with her bow."

Brigan spoke quietly. "I meant the changes that will happen to her own body. I wondered if the knowledge of it might frighten her."

"Ah." Fire's own voice was soft. "But then, perhaps I'm the right person to explain it, for she's not so guarded that I can't tell if it upsets her. I can suit my explanation to her reaction."

"Yes," Brigan said, still hesitant and squinting. "But you don't think five is very young?"

How odd it was, how dangerously dear, to find him so out of his element, so much a man, and wanting her advice on this thing. Fire spoke her opinion frankly. "I don't think Hanna is too young to understand. And I think she should have an honest answer to a thing that puzzles her."

He nodded. "I wonder she hasn't asked me. She's not shy with questions."

"Maybe she senses the nature of it."

"Can she be so sensitive?"

"Children are geniuses," Fire said firmly.

"Yes," Brigan said. "Well. You have my permission. Tell me afterwards how it goes."

But suddenly Fire wasn't listening, because she was unsettled, as she had been several times that day, by the sense of a presence that was strange, familiar, and out of place. A person who should not be here. She gripped Small's mane and shook her head. Small took his nose away from Brigan's chest and peered back at her.

"Lady," Brigan said. "What is it?"

"It almost seems – no, now it's gone again. Never mind. It's nothing."

Brigan looked at her, puzzled. She smiled, and explained. "Sometimes I have to let a perception sit for a while before it makes sense to me."

"Ah." He considered the span of Small's long nose. "Was it something to do with my mind?"

"What?" Fire said. "Are you joking?"

"Should I be?"

"Do you think I sense anything at all of your mind?"

"Don't you?"

"Brigan," she said, startled out of her manners. "Your consciousness is a wall with no cracks in it. Never once have I had the slightest hint of anything from your mind."

"Oh," he said eloquently. "Hmm." He rearranged the straps of leather on his shoulder, looking rather pleased with himself.

"I'd assumed you were doing it on purpose," Fire said.

"I was. Only it's hard to know how successful one is at such things."

"Your success is complete."

"How about now?"

Fire stared. "What you mean? Are you asking if I sense your feelings now? Of course I don't."

"And now?"

It came to her like the gentlest wave from the deep ocean of his consciousness. She stood quiet, and absorbed it, and took hold of her own feelings; for the fact of Brigan releasing a feeling to her, the first feeling he'd ever given her, made her inordinately happy. She said, "I sense that you're amused by this conversation."

"Interesting," he said, smiling. "Fascinating. And now that my mind is open, could you take it over?"

"Never. You've let a single feeling out, but that doesn't mean I could march in and take control."

"Try," he said; and even though his tone was friendly and his face open, Fire was frightened.

"I don't want to."

"It's only as an experiment."

The word made her breathless with panic. "No. I don't want to. Don't ask me to."

And now he was leaning close against the stall door, and speaking low. "Lady, forgive me. I've distressed you. I won't ask it again, I promise."

"You don't understand. I would never."

"I know. I know you wouldn't. Please, Lady – I wish it unsaid." Fire found that she was gripping Small's mane harder than she meant to be. She released the poor horse's hair, and smoothed it, and fought against the tears pushing their way to her surface. She rested her face against Small's neck and breathed his warm horsey smell.

And now she was laughing, a breathy laugh that sounded like a sob. "I'd thought once, actually, of taking your mind, if you asked. I'd thought I could help you fall asleep at night."

He opened his mouth to say something. Shut it again. His face closed for a moment, his unreadable mask falling into place. He spoke softly. "But that wouldn't be fair; for after I slept you'd be left awake, with no one to help you sleep."

Fire wasn't certain what they were talking about anymore. And she was desperately unhappy, for it was not a conversation to distract her from how she felt about this man.

Welkley walked in then with a summons for Brigan to go to the king. Fire was relieved to see him go.

On her way to her own rooms with her guard, that strange and familiar consciousness flitted again across her mind. The archer, the empty-headed archer.

Fire let out a frustrated breath of air. The archer was in the palace or on the grounds, or nearby in the city, or at least she'd thought so at times today; and he never stayed in her mind long enough for her to catch hold, or to know what to do. It was not normal, these prowling men and these minds as blank as if they were mesmerised by monsters. The sense of him here after all these months was not welcome.

Then in her rooms, she found the guards who were stationed there in a peculiar state. "A man came to the door, Lady," Musa said, "but he made no sense. He said he was from the king and he'd come to examine the view from your windows, but I didn't recognise him as a king's man and I didn't trust what he wanted. I didn't let him in."

Fire was rather astonished. "The view from my windows? Why on earth?"

"He didn't feel right, Lady," Neel said. "There was something funny about him. Nothing he said made any sense."

"He felt well enough to me," another guard said gruffly. "The king will not be pleased that we disobeyed."

"No," Musa said to her soldiers. "Enough of this argument. Neel is right, the man had a bad feeling to him."

"He made me dizzy," Mila said.

"He was an honourable man," another said, "and I don't believe we have the authority to turn the king's men away."

Fire stood in her doorway, her hand on the door frame to steady herself. She was certain as she listened to the disagreement between her guards – her guards, who never argued in front of their lady, and never talked back to their captain – that something was wrong. It wasn't just that they argued, or that this visitor sounded a suspicious fellow. Neel had said the man hadn't felt right; well, a number of her guards at this moment didn't feel right. They were much more open to her than usual, and a fog hovered in their minds. The most affected were the guards who argued now with Musa.

And she knew through some instinct, monster or human, that if they spoke of this man as honourable, they were reading him wrong. She knew with a certainty that she couldn't explain that Musa had been right to turn the man away.

"What did he look like, this fellow?"

A few of the guard scratched their heads and grumbled that they couldn't remember; and Fire could almost reach out and touch the fog of their minds. But Musa's mind was clear. "He was tall, Lady, taller than the king, and thin, wasted. He had white hair and dark eyes and he was not well. His colour was off, he was grey-like, and he had marks on his skin. A rash."

"A rash?"

"He wore plain clothing, and he had a positive armament of bows on his back – crossbow, short bow, a truly gorgeous longbow. He had a full quiver and a knife, but no sword."

"The arrows in his quiver. What were they made of ?"

Musa pursed her lips. "I didn't notice."

"A white wood," Neel said.

And so the foggy-headed archer had come to her rooms to see her views. And had left a number of her guards with puzzled expressions, and foggy heads.

Fire walked to the foggiest guard, the first who'd raised an argument, a fellow named Edler who was normally quite amiable. She put her hand to his forehead. "Edler. Does your head hurt?"

It took Edler a moment to process his answer. "It doesn't exactly hurt, Lady, but I don't feel quite like myself."

Fire considered how to word this. "May I have your permission to try to clear the discomfort?"

"Certainly, Lady, if you wish."

Fire entered Edler's consciousness easily, as she had the poacher's. She played around with his fog, touched it and twisted it, trying to decide what exactly it was. It seemed like a balloon that was filling his mind with emptiness, pushing his own intelligence to the edges.

Fire jabbed the balloon hard and it popped, and fizzled. Edler's own thoughts rushed forward and fell into place; and he rubbed his head with both hands. "It does feel better, Lady. I can picture that man clearly. I don't think he was the king's man."

"He wasn't the king's man," Fire said. "The king wouldn't send a sickly fellow armed with a longbow to my rooms to admire my views."

Edler sighed. "Rocks, but I'm tired."

Fire moved on to her next foggy guard, and thought to herself that here was a thing more ominous than anything she'd uncovered yet in the questioning rooms.

On her bed later she found a letter from Archer. Once the summer harvest was through, he intended to visit. It was a happiness, but it did not lighten the state of things.

She had thought herself the only person in the Dells capable of altering minds.

Chapter Eighteen

The year Fire spent training her father to experience things that didn't exist was also, thankfully, the year her relationship with Archer found a new happiness.

Cansrel hadn't minded experiencing non-existent things, for it was a time when existing things depressed him. Nax had been his conduit to all pleasures, and Nax was gone. Brigan grew more influential and had escaped another attack uninjured. It was some relief for Cansrel to feel sun on his skin in the midst of weeks of drizzle, or taste monster meat when it was not being served. There was solace in the touch of his daughter's mind – now that she knew better than to turn flames into flowers.

On her side of things, Fire's body suffered; she lost her appetite, grew thin, had attacks of dizziness, got cramps in her neck and shoulders that made playing music painful and brought on splitting headaches. She avoided contemplation of the thing she was thinking of doing. She was certain that if she looked at it straight on she'd lose control of herself.

Archer was not, in fact, the only person that year to bring her comfort. A young woman named Liddy, sweet and hazel-eyed, was the maid of Fire's bedrooms. She came upon Fire one spring day curled on the bed, fighting off a whirling panic. Liddy liked her mild young lady, and was sorry at her distress. She sat beside Fire and stroked her hair, at Fire's forehead and behind her ears, against her neck, and down to the small of her back. The touch was kindly meant, and the deepest and tenderest comfort in the world. Fire found herself resting her head in Liddy's lap while Liddy continued stroking. It was a gift, offered unjealously, and Fire accepted it.

That day, from that moment, something quiet grew between them. An alliance. They brushed each other's hair sometimes, helped each other dress and undress. They stole time together, whispering, like little girls who've discovered a soul mate.

Some things could not happen in Cansrel's proximity without Cansrel knowing; monsters knew things. Cansrel began to complain about Liddy. He did not like her, he did not like the time they spent together. Finally he lost patience and arranged a marriage for Liddy, sending her away to an estate beyond the town.

Fire was breathless, astounded, and heartbroken. Certainly she was glad that he'd merely sent Liddy away, not killed her or taken her into his own bed to teach her a lesson. But still, it was a bitter and selfish cruelty. It did not make her merciful.

Perhaps her lonesomeness after Liddy prepared her for Archer, though Liddy and Archer were manifestly different.

During that spring and into the summer she turned fifteen, Archer knew what mad thing Fire was contemplating. He knew why she couldn't eat and why her body suffered. It tormented him, took him out of his mind with fear for her. He fought with her about it; he fought with Brocker, who was also worried but who nonetheless refused to interfere. Over and over he begged Fire to release herself from the entire endeavour. Over and over Fire refused.

One August night during a frantic whispered battle under a tree outside her house, he kissed her. She stiffened, startled, and then knew, as his hands reached for her and he kissed her again, that she wanted this, she needed Archer, her body needed this wildness that was also comfort. She burrowed herself against him; she brought him inside and upstairs. And that was that; child companions became lovers. They found a place where they could agree, a release from the anxiety and unhappiness that threatened to overwhelm them. After making love with her friend, Fire often found herself wanting to eat. Kissing her and laughing, Archer would feed her in her own bed with food he carried in through the window.

Cansrel knew, of course, but where her gentle love of Liddy had been intolerable to him, her need for Archer roused nothing stronger than an amused acceptance of the inevitable. He didn't care, as long as she took the herbs when she needed to. "Two of us is enough, Fire," he'd say smoothly. She heard the threat in his words toward the baby she wasn't going to have. She took the herbs.

Archer did not act jealous in those days, or domineering. That came later.

Fire knew too well that things didn't ever stay the same. Natural beginnings came to natural or unnatural ends. She was eager to see Archer, more than eager, but she knew what he would come to King's City hoping for. She wasn't looking forward to putting this end into words for him.

Fire had taken to describing the foggy archer to everyone she questioned, very briefly at the end of each interview. So far it was to no avail.

"Lady," Brigan said to her today in Garan's bedroom. "Have you learned anything yet about that archer?"

"No, Lord Prince. No one seems to recognise his description."

"Well," he said, "I hope you'll keep asking."

Garan's health had had a setback, but he refused to go into the infirmary or stop working, which meant that in recent days his bedchamber had become quite a hub of activity. Breathing was a difficulty and he had no strength to sit up. Despite this, he remained more than capable of holding his side of an argument.

"Forget the archer," he said now. "We have more important matters to discuss, such as the exorbitant cost of your army." He glared at Brigan, who'd propped himself against the wardrobe, too directly in Fire's line of vision to ignore, tossing a ball back and forth in his hands that she recognised as a toy she'd seen Blotchy and Hanna fighting over on occasion. "It's far too expensive," Garan continued, still glaring from his bed. "You pay them too much, and then when they're injured or dead and no use to us you continue to pay them."

Brigan shrugged. "And?"

"You think we're made of money."

"I will not cut their pay."

"Brigan," Garan said wearily. "We cannot afford it."

"We must afford it. The eve of a war is not the time to start cutting an army's pay. How do you think I've managed to recruit so many? Do you really think them so shot through with loyalty for the bloodline of Nax that they wouldn't turn to Mydogg if he offered more?"

"As I understood it," Garan said, "the lot of them would pay for the privilege of dying in defence of none other than you."

Nash spoke from his seat in the window, where he was a dark shape outlined in the light of a blue sky. He'd been sitting there for some time. Fire knew he was watching her. "And that's because he always sticks up for them, Garan, when brutes like you try to take their money away. I wish you would rest. You look like you're about to pass out."

"Don't patronise me," Garan said; and then dissolved into a fit of coughing that had the sound of a saw blade tearing through wood.

Fire leaned forward in her chair and touched Garan's damp face. She'd come to an understanding with him regarding this bout of illness. He insisted on working, and so she agreed to bring him her reports from the questioning rooms; but only if he allowed her into his mind, to ease his sense of his throbbing head and burning lungs.

"Thank you," he said to her softly, taking her hand and holding it to his chest. "This conversation rots. Lady, give me some good news from the questioning rooms."

"I'm afraid there isn't any, Lord Prince."

"Still coming up with contradiction?"

"Most certainly. A messenger told me yesterday that Mydogg has definite plans to make an attack against both the king and Lord Gentian in November. Then today a new fellow told me Mydogg has definite plans to move his entire army north into Pikkia and wait for a war between Gentian and the king to play out before he so much as raises a sword. Plus, I spoke to a spy of Gentian's who says Gentian killed Lady Murgda in an ambush in August."

Brigan was spinning the ball now on the end of his finger, absent-mindedly. "I met with Lady Murgda on the fifteenth of September," he said. "She wasn't particularly friendly, but she was plainly not dead."

It was a tendency in the questioning rooms that had arisen suddenly in recent weeks, contradiction and misinformation, coming from all sides and making it very difficult to know which sources to trust. The messengers and spies Fire questioned were clear-headed and truthful with their knowledge. It was simply that their knowledge was wrong.

All at the Dellian court knew what it meant. Both Mydogg and Gentian were aware that Fire had joined the ranks of the enemy. To lessen the advantage she gave the Dellian throne, both rebel lords had begun misinforming some among their own people, and then sending them out to get caught.

"There are people close to both men," Garan said, "people who know the truth of their plans. We need those people – a close ally of Mydogg's, and one of Gentian's. And they have to be people we'd never suspect normally, for neither Mydogg nor Gentian must ever suspect us of questioning them."

"We need an ally of Mydogg's or Gentian's pretending to be among the most loyal allies of the king," Brigan said. "Shouldn't be so hard, really. If I shot an arrow out the window I'd probably hit one."

"It seems to me," Fire said carefully, "that if I take a less direct approach, if I question every person we're holding about things I haven't bothered to investigate before – every party they've ever been to, every conversation they've ever overheard but perhaps not understood the significance of, every horse they've ever seen heading south when it should've been heading north – "

"Yes," Brigan said. "It might yield something."

"And where are the women?" Fire asked. "Enough men. Give me the women Mydogg and Gentian've taken to bed, and the barmaids who've had to serve them their wine. Men are daft around women, incautious and boastful. There must be a hundred women out there carrying information we could use."

Nash spoke soberly. "That seems good advice."

"I don't know," Garan said. "I'm offended." He stopped, choked by a spasm of coughing. Nash moved to his brother's bed, sat beside him, and held his shoulder to steady him. Garan reached a shaky hand to Nash. Nash clasped it in his.

It always struck Fire, the physical affection between these siblings, who as often as not were at each other's throats over one thing or another. She liked the way the four of them shifted and changed shape, bumping and clanging against each other, sharpening each other's edges and then smoothing them down again, and somehow always finding the way to fit together.

"And," Brigan said, returning quietly to his previous topic, "don't give up on the archer, Lady."

"I won't, for he troubles me much," Fire said; and then sensed the approach of an altogether different archer. She looked into her lap to hide her flush of joy. "Lord Archer has just arrived at court," she said. "Welkley is bringing him here now."

"Ah," Brigan said. "And here's the man we should recruit to shoot arrows out the window."

"Yes," Garan said wickedly, "I hear his arrow is always finding new targets."

"I'd hit you if you weren't flat on your back," Brigan said, suddenly angry.

"Behave yourself, Garan," Nash hissed. Before Fire could even begin to react to the argument, which struck her as rather funny, Welkley and Archer were through the door, and everyone but Garan was standing.

"Lord King," Archer said immediately, dropping to his knee before Nash. "Lord Princes," he said next, standing to take Brigan's hand and stooping to take Garan's.

He turned to Fire. With great propriety he took her hands in his. And the instant their eyes met he was laughing and glinting with mischief, his face so happy and Archer-like that she began to laugh as well.

He lifted her up to give her a proper hug. He smelled like home, like the northern autumn rains.

She went for a walk with Archer around the palace grounds. The trees were blazing with autumn colour. Fire was astonished now, and thrilled, with the tree beside the green house, because in recent days it had transformed into the closest natural thing she'd ever seen to her hair.

Archer told her how bleak the north was in comparison. He told her about Brocker's activities, and the year's good harvest, and his passage south with ten soldiers through the rain. "I've brought your favourite musician," Archer said, "and he's brought his whistle."

"Krell," Fire said, smiling. "Thank you, Archer."

"This guard on our heels is all very well," Archer said, "but when can we be alone?"

"I'm never alone. I always have a guard, even in my bedchamber. "

"Surely that can change now I'm here. Why don't you tell them to go away?"

"They're under Brigan's orders, not mine," Fire said lightly. "And as it turns out, he's quite stubborn. I haven't been able to change his mind about it."

"Well," Archer said, smirking, "I will change his mind. I daresay he understands our need of privacy. And his authority over you must lessen now that I'm here."

Of course, Fire thought, and Archer's own authority must rise up to replace it. Her temper flared out; she caught at the ends of it and hauled it back in. "There's something I must tell you, Archer, and you're not going to like it."

His entire manner changed instantly, mouth hard, eyes flashing, and Fire was amazed at how fast their reunion had turned to this. She stopped and stared at him in exasperation, spoke over him to stop him. "Archer, stay within your rights. Don't you dare start accusing me of taking some man to my bed."

"A woman, then? It wouldn't be entirely without precedent, would it?"

She clenched her fists so hard her nails hurt the palms of her hands; and suddenly she was no longer concerned with holding on to the ends of her fury. "I was so excited for you to come," she said. "I was so happy to see you. And now already you've started in on me, and I wish you would leave. You understand me, Archer? When you get like this I wish you would leave. The love I give you, you take, and you use it against me."

She swung away from him, strode away, came back again and stood furious before him, aware that this was the first time she'd ever spoken to him this way. She should have spoken like this more. She'd been too generous with her patience.

We're not lovers anymore, she thought at him. This is the thing I needed to tell you. The closer you get to me the harder you pull, and your grip is too tight. You hurt me with it. You love me so much you've forgotten how to be my friend. I miss my friend, she thought at him fiercely. I love my friend. We're through as lovers. Do you understand?

Archer stood dazed, breathing heavily, eyes stony. Fire could see that he did understand.

And now Fire saw Hanna, and sensed her at the same time, coming over the hill at the archery range and bolting toward them with all her small speed.

Fire began a battle for her composure. "There's a child coming," she told Archer hoarsely, "and if you take your vile mood out on her I won't speak to you again."

"Who is she?"

"Brigan's daughter."

Archer stared at Fire very hard.

And then Hanna reached them, Blotchy careening close behind. Fire knelt to meet the dog. Hanna stopped before them, smiling and gasping, and Fire sensed her sudden confusion as she took in their silence. "What's wrong, Lady Fire?" Hanna asked.

"Nothing, Lady Princess. I'm happy to see you and Blotchy."

Hanna laughed. "He's getting your dress muddy."

Yes, Blotchy was destroying her dress, and practically bowling her over as he bounced in and out of her lap, for in his mind he was still a puppy, even though his body had grown. "Blotchy is much more important than my dress," Fire said, taking the wriggling dog in her arms, wanting his muddy joy.

Hanna came close and whispered in her ear. "Is that angry man Lord Archer?"

"Yes, and he is not angry with you."

"Do you think he would shoot for me?"

"Shoot for you?"

"Papa says he's the best in the kingdom. I want to see."

Fire couldn't have explained why this made her so sad, that Archer should be the best in the kingdom, and Hanna should want to see. She burrowed her face for a moment against Blotchy. "Lord Archer, Princess Hanna would like to see you shoot, for she's heard you're the best in all the Dells."

Archer was hiding his feelings from her mind, but Fire knew how to read his face. She knew how his eyes looked when he was blinking back tears, and the muted voice he used when he was too miserable for anger. He cleared his throat now, and spoke in that voice. "And what kind of bow do you favour, Lady Princess?"

"A longbow, like the one you carry, only yours is much bigger. Will you come? I'll show you."

Archer didn't look at Fire. He turned and followed Hanna up the hill, Blotchy bounding after them. Fire stood, and watched them go.

Quite unexpectedly, Musa took her arm. Fire placed her hand on Musa's, grateful to be touched, fiercely glad to think that her guard might be overpaid.

It was a very hard thing to have crushed the heart, and the hopes, of a friend.

After dark, unable to sleep, she went to the roofs. Eventually Brigan came wandering by and joined her. Now and then, since their conversation in the stables, he opened a flash of feeling to her. Tonight she could tell he was surprised to see her.

Fire knew why he was surprised. After her quarrel with Archer, Musa had told her, matter-of-factly, that at Fire's request Fire actually was permitted to be alone with Archer; that in the very beginning, in his instructions, Brigan had made an exception for Archer, as long as the grounds outside the windows were guarded and guards stood outside every door. She should have informed the lady of this before, Musa said, but she hadn't expected Lord Archer so soon. And once Fire and Archer had begun to argue, she hadn't wanted to interrupt.

Fire's face had burned at this knowledge. And here was why Brigan had defended Archer in Garan's bedroom earlier: he'd seen Garan's jibe as an offense to Fire, believed, even, that Fire was in love with Archer.

Fire told Musa, "The exception is not necessary."

"Yes, I got that sense," Musa said. Then Mila brought Fire a cup of wine in the timid, comprehending way Mila had. The wine was a comfort. Fire's head had begun to ache, and she recognised the onset of her pre-bleeding time.

Now, on the roof, Fire was silent. She said nothing, not even when Brigan greeted her. He seemed to accept her silence and was rather quiet himself, filling the space occasionally with the gentle patter of his conversation. He told her that Hanna was bedazzled by Archer, that they'd shot so many arrows together she had blisters between her fingers.

Fire was thinking about Archer's fear. She thought it was Archer's fear that made his love so hard to bear. Archer was controlling and imperious, and jealous and suspicious, and Archer always held her too near. Because he was afraid of her dying.

She broke a long silence with her first words of the night, spoken so quietly he moved closer to hear. "How long do you think you'll live?"

His breath was a surprised laugh. "Truly, I don't know. Many mornings I wake knowing I might die that day." He paused. "Why? What's on your mind tonight, Lady?"

Fire said, "It's likely one of these days a raptor monster will get me, or some arrow will find its way past my guard. It doesn't seem to me a morbid thought; only realistic."

He listened, leaning against the railing, his head propped on his fist.

"I only hope it won't cause my friends too much pain," she continued. "I hope they'll understand it was inevitable."

She shivered. Summer was well over, and if she'd had half a mind tonight she would have brought a coat. Brigan had remembered his coat, a fine long coat that Fire liked, because Brigan was wearing it, and Brigan was quick and strong, and always seemed comfortable whatever he was wearing. And now his hands reached for the buttons and he shrugged himself out of the coat, for try as she might, Fire couldn't hide her shivers.

"No," Fire said. "It's my own fault for forgetting the season."

He ignored this and helped her into the coat, which was too big; and its warmth and bigness were welcome, and so was its smell, of wool, and campfires, and horses. She whispered it into his mind. Thank you.

After a moment, he said, "It seems we're both afflicted with sober thoughts tonight."

"What have you been thinking?"

That unhappy laugh again. "Nothing that will cheer you. I've been trying to find a way around this war."

"Oh," Fire said, rising for a moment from her self-absorption.

"It's a fruitless line of thought. There's no way around it, not with two enemies bent on fighting."

"It isn't your fault, you know."

He glanced at her. "Reading my mind, Lady?"

She smiled. "Lucky guess, I suppose."

He smiled, too, and raised his face to the sky. "I understand you rank dogs above dresses, Lady."

Fire's own laughter was a balm to her heart. "I explained about the monsters, by the way. She already knew a bit about it. I think your housekeeper takes good care of her."

"Tess," Brigan said. "She's taken good care since the day Hanna was born." He seemed to hesitate then, his voice carefully inscrutable. "Have you met her?"

"No," Fire said; for indeed, Brigan's housekeeper still looked upon Fire with cold eyes whenever she looked upon her at all. As Brigan must know, judging by his manner of asking.

"I think it's good for Hanna to have someone old in her life," Brigan said, "who can talk of all different times, not just the last thirty years. And Hanna loves Tess, and all of her stories." He yawned and rubbed his hair. "When will you start your new line of questioning?"

"Tomorrow, I suppose."

"Tomorrow," he said, sighing. "Tomorrow I go away."

Chapter Nineteen

Fire had come to know more about the insignificant habits and tastes of Lord Mydogg, Lord Gentian, Murgda, Gunner, all their households and all their guests than any person could care to know. She knew Gentian was ambitious but also slightly feather-brained at times and had a delicate stomach, ate no rich foods, and drank only water. She knew his son Gunner was cleverer than his father, a reputable soldier, a bit of an ascetic when it came to wine and women. Mydogg was the opposite, denied himself no pleasure, was lavish with his favourites but stingy with everyone else. Murgda was stingy with everyone including herself, and known to be exceedingly fond of bread pudding.

This was not helpful information. Clara and the king had better things to do than sit and witness its discovery, and Garan was still confined to his bed. More and more Fire was left alone in the questioning rooms, excepting, of course, Musa, Mila, and Neel. Brigan had ordered these three to attend Fire in any of her confidential court business, and they spent the greater part of every day with her.

Archer stood sometimes with her guard while she worked. He had asked permission to do so, and Clara had granted it, and so, rather absently, had Fire. She didn't mind Archer's presence. She understood that he was curious. She only minded the sense she got that Clara was more likely to join the interrogation if Archer was there.

Archer was quiet these days, keeping to himself, his thoughts hidden behind a closed door. Confusion obvious, at times, in his manner. Fire was as gentle with him as she could be, for she appreciated what she knew must be a conscious effort on his part, to suppress his own instinct for furious outbursts. "How long will you be able to stay at court?" she asked him, so that he would know she didn't really want him to leave.

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Now that the harvest is over, Brocker is well able to handle affairs. I could stay for some time, if I were wanted."

She made no answer to that, but touched his arm and asked him if he'd like to sit in on the afternoon's interrogations.

She learned that Mydogg favoured the smuggled wine of an obscure Pikkian vineyard where frost came early and the grapes were left to freeze on the vine. She learned that Murgda and her Pikkian husband, the naval explorer, were thought to be very much in love. Finally and at long last, she learned something useful: the name of a tall, dark-eyed archer with spot-on aim who was old enough by now to have white hair.

"Jod," her informant grunted. "Knew him some twenty years ago. We were together in old Nax's dungeons, "til Jod got out. He was in for rape. Didn't know he was sick. Not surprised, the way they piled us on top of each other, the things went on in there. You know what I'm talking about, you monster freak bitch."

"Where is he now?"

It wasn't easy with this man, or pleasant. At every question he fought against her hold, and then lost the fight and succumbed, ashamed and hateful. "How should I know? I hope he's hunting monster-eating bitch dogs like you. I'd like to watch him – "

What followed was a description of a violation so graphic Fire couldn't help but feel the force of its malice. But the prisoners who spoke to her like this only made her patient, and oddly depressed. It seemed to Fire that they had a right to their words, the only defence they had against her ill use. And of course these were the men who would be dangerous to her if ever released, some of them so dangerous she was compelled to recommend they never be released; and this did not help to soothe her guilt. True, these were not men whose freedom would be a boon to society. Nonetheless, they would not be so inhumanly vile had she not been around to provoke them.

This man today fared worse than most others, for Archer came forward suddenly and punched him in the face. "Archer!" Fire exclaimed. She called for the dungeon guards to take the man away, which they did, lifting him from the floor, where he lay dizzy and bleeding. Once he was gone Fire gaped at Archer, then glared, too exasperated to trust herself to speak.

"I'm sorry," he said sullenly, yanking his collar loose, as if it choked him. "That one got under my skin more than the others."

"Archer, I simply can't – "

"I said I was sorry. I won't do it again."

Fire crossed her arms and stared him down. After a few moments, Archer actually began to smile. He shook his head, sighing hopelessly. "Perhaps it's the promise of your angry face that keeps me misbehaving," he said. "You're so beautiful when you're angry."

"Oh, Archer," she snapped, "flirt with someone else."

"I will, if you command it," he quipped, with a goofy grin that caught her off guard, so that she had to stop her own face from twitching into a smile.

For a moment, it was almost as if they were friends again.

She had a serious conversation with Archer a few days later on the archery range, where she had come with her fiddle looking for Krell. She found Krell with Archer, Hanna, and the king, all four of them shooting at targets and Hanna well boosted by advice from all sides. Hanna concentrated hard, her feet planted stubbornly, miniature bow in her hands, miniature arrows on her back, and she was not talking. It was a characteristic Fire had noted: in riding, swordplay, and archery, and any other lesson that interested her, Hanna ceased her chatter, and showed a surprising capacity for focus.

"Brigan used to focus like that in his lessons too," Clara had told Fire, "and when he did, it was a great relief to Roen; for otherwise, guaranteed, he was plotting some kind of trouble. I believe he used to provoke Nax on purpose. He knew Nax favoured Nash."

"Is that true?" Fire asked.

"Oh yes, Lady. Nash was better-looking. And Brigan was better at everything else, and more like his mother than his father, which I don't think worked in his favour. Ah well, at least he didn't start the brawls Hanna starts."

Yes, Hanna started brawls, and it could not be because her father favoured anyone over her. But today she was not brawling, and once she woke from the daze of her bow and arrows enough to notice the lady and the fiddle, the girl begged a concert, and got one.

Afterward Fire walked around the archery range with Archer and Nash, her guard trailing behind.

The simultaneous company of these two men was a funny thing, for they mirrored each other. Each in love with her, gloomy and moping; each resigned to hopelessness and each subdued, but resenting the presence of the other. And neither doing much to hide any of this from her, for as usual Nash's feelings were open, and Archer's body language unmistakable.

But Nash's manners were better than Archer's, at least for the moment, and the court had a greater hold on his time. As Archer's choice of conversation became less inclusive, Nash took his leave.

Fire considered Archer, so tall and fine-looking beside her, his bow in hand. She spoke quietly. "You drove him away, with your talk of our childhood in the north."

"He wants you, and he doesn't deserve you."

"As you deserve me?"

Archer's face took on a grim smile. "I've always known I don't deserve you. Every regard you've ever shown me has been a gift undeserved."

That is not true, she thought to him. You were my loyal friend even before I could walk.

"You've changed," Archer said. "Do you realise how much? The more time I spend with you here the less I know you. All these new people in your life, and your happiness in this princess child – and her dog, of all things. And the work you do every day – you use your power, every day. I used to have to fight with you to use it even to defend yourself."

Fire took a careful breath. "Archer. Sometimes in the courtyards or the hallways, I've taken to changing people's attentions so they don't notice me. So I can walk by without being hassled, and everyone else can continue their work without distraction."

"You're not ashamed of your abilities anymore," Archer said. "And the sight of you – you're glowing. Truly, Fire. I don't recognise you."

"But the ease with which I've come to use my power. Can you understand how it frightens me, Archer?"

Archer stopped for a moment, his gaze fierce, his eyes on three dark dots in the sky. The archery range stood at a high point overlooking the sea. A trio of raptor monsters circled now over some trade boat below, and arrows flew from the bows of its sailors. It was a rough autumn sea and a blustery autumn wind, and arrow after arrow failed to hit its mark.

Archer took one stunning, lazy shot. A bird fell. Then Fire's guard Edler connected with a shot of his own, and Archer clapped him on the shoulder to congratulate him.

Fire thought her question forgotten, and so she was surprised when he spoke.

"You've always been far more afraid of yourself than of any of the terrors in the world outside yourself. Were it the other way around, we'd both have peace."

He said it kindly, not critically; it was his forlorn wish for peace. Fire hugged her fiddle now with both arms, muting the strings with the fabric of her dress. "Archer, you know me. You recognise me. We must get past this thing between us, you must accept how I've changed. I could not bear it if by refusing your bed I should also lose your friendship. We were friends before. We must find the way to be friends again."

"I know," he said. "I know, love. I'm trying. I am."

He walked away from her then and stared at the sea. He stood for some time, silent. When he walked back she was still standing there, holding her fiddle to her breast. After a moment something like a smile eased the sadness in his face.

"Will you tell me why you're playing a different fiddle?" he said.

It was a good story to tell, and distant enough from today's feelings that it calmed her in the telling.

The company of Brigan and Garan was a great relief, compared to that of Archer and Nash. They were so easy. Their silences never felt loaded with grave things they yearned to say, and if they brooded, at least it had no connection to her.

The three sat in the sunny central courtyard, deliciously warm, for with the approach of winter there were advantages to a black palace with glass roofs. It had been a day of difficult and unproductive work that for Fire had yielded little more than a reiteration of Mydogg's preference for frozen-grape wine. An old servant of Gentian's had reported it to her; the servant had read a line or two about it in a letter Gentian had instructed him to burn, a letter from Mydogg. Fire still couldn't understand this propensity of sworn enemies in the Dells to visit each other and send each other letters. And how frustrating that all the servant had seen was a bit about wine.

She slapped at a monster bug on her arm. Garan played absently with his walking stick, which he'd used to walk slowly to this spot. Brigan sat stretched out with his hands clasped behind his head, watching Hanna scuffle with Blotchy on the other side of the courtyard.

"Hanna will never have friends who are people," Brigan said, "until she stops getting into scraps."

Blotchy was whirling in circles with his mouth clamped around a stick he'd just found at the base of a courtyard tree – a branch, really, quite enormous, that swept a wide and multi-pronged radius as he spun. "This won't do," Brigan said now. He jumped up, went to the dog, wrestled the branch away and broke it into pieces, then gave Blotchy back a stick of less hazardous dimensions. Determined, apparently, that if Hanna should have no friends, at least she should keep both eyes.

"She has many friends who are people," Fire said gently when he got back.

"You know I meant children."

"She's too precocious for the children her age, and she's too small for the other children to tolerate."

"They might tolerate her if she would tolerate them. I fear she's becoming a bully."

Fire spoke with certainty. "She is not a bully. She doesn't pick on the others or single them out; she isn't cruel. She fights only when she's provoked, and they provoke her on purpose, because they've decided not to like her, and they know that if she does fight, you'll punish her."

"The little brutes. They're using you," Garan muttered to Brigan.

"Is this just a theory, Lady? Or something you've observed?"

"It's a theory I've developed on the basis of what I've observed."

Brigan smiled soberly. "And have you developed a theory about how I might teach my daughter to harden herself to taunts?"

"I'll think on it."

"Thank the Dells for your thinking."

"Thank the Dells for my health," Garan said, rising to his feet at the sight of Sayre, who'd entered the courtyard, looking very pretty in a blue dress. "I shall now bound away."

He did not bound, but his steady walking was progress, and Fire watched his every step, as if her eyes on his back could keep him safe. Sayre met him and took his arm, and the two set off together.

His recent setback had frightened her. Fire could admit this to herself, now that he was improved. She wished that old King Arn and his monster adviser, conducting their experiments a hundred years ago, had discovered just a few more medicines, found the remedies to one or two more illnesses.

Hanna was the next to leave them, running to take Archer's hand as he passed through with his bow.

"Hanna's announced her intentions to marry Archer," Brigan said, watching them go.

Fire smiled into her lap. She crafted her response carefully – but spoke it lightly. "I've seen plenty of women fall into an infatuation with him. But your heart can be easier than most other fathers, for she's much too young for his brand of heartbreak. I suppose it's a harsh thing to say of one's oldest friend, but were she twelve years older I would not let them meet."

True to her expectation, Brigan's face was unreadable. "You're little more than twelve years older than Hanna yourself."

"I'm a thousand years old," Fire said, "just like you."

"Hmm," Brigan said. He didn't ask her what she meant, which was for the best, because she wasn't exactly sure. If she was suggesting she was too wise with the weight of her experience to fall prey to infatuation – well, the disproof was sitting before her in the form of a grey-eyed prince with a thoughtful set to his mouth that she found quite distracting.

Fire sighed, trying to shift her attention. Her senses were overloaded. This courtyard was one of the palace's busiest, and, of course, the palace as a whole swarmed with minds. And just outside the palace grounds was stationed the entire First Branch, with which Brigan had arrived yesterday and would depart the day after tomorrow. She sensed minds more easily now than she had used to. She recognised a good many members of the First Branch, despite their distance.

She tried to push the feeling of them away. It was tiring, holding everything at once, and she couldn't decide where to rest her focus. She settled on a consciousness that was bothering her. She leaned forward and spoke low to Brigan.

"Behind you," she said, "a boy with very odd eyes is talking with some of the court children. Who is he?"

Brigan nodded. "I know the boy you mean. He came with Cutter. You remember the animal trader, Cutter? I want nothing to do with the man, he's a monster smuggler and a brute – except that he happens to be selling a very fine stallion that almost has the markings of a river horse. I'd buy him in a breath if the money didn't go to Cutter. It's a bit tacky, you know, me buying a horse that's likely to have been stolen. I may buy him anyway; in which case Garan will have a conniption at the expense. I suppose he's right. I'm not in need of another horse. Though I wouldn't hesitate if he really were a river horse – do you know the dappled grey horses, Lady, that run wild at the source of the river? Splendid creatures. I've always wanted one, but they're no easy thing to catch."

Horses were as distracting to the man as to his child. "The boy," Fire prompted dryly.

"Right. The boy's a strange one, and it isn't just that red eye. He was lurking around when I went to look at the stallion, and I tell you, Lady, he gave me a funny feeling."

"What do you mean, a funny feeling?"

Brigan squinted at her in perplexity. "I can't exactly say. There was something... disquieting... about his manner. The way he spoke. I did not like his voice." He stopped, somewhat exasperated, and rubbed his hair so it stood on end. "As I say it, I hear it makes no sense. There was nothing solid about him to fix on as troublesome. But still I told Hanna to stay away from him, and she said she already met him and didn't like him. She said he lies. What do you think of him?"

Fire applied herself to the question with concerted effort. His mind was unusual, unfamiliar, and she wasn't sure how to connect to it. She wasn't even sure how to comprehend the borders of it. She couldn't see it.

His mind gave her a very funny feeling indeed. And it was not a good funny feeling.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know." And a moment later, not quite knowing why: "Buy the stallion, Lord Prince, if it will get them out of this court."

Brigan left, presumably to do what Fire said; and Fire sat alone, puzzling over the boy. His right eye was grey and his left eye was red, which was strange enough in itself. His hair was blond like wheat, his skin light, and he had the appearance of being ten or eleven. Could he be some kind of Pikkian? He was sitting facing her, a rodent monster in his lap, a mouse with glimmering gold fur. He was tying a string around its neck. Fire knew somehow that the creature was not his pet.

He pulled the string, too tight. The mouse's legs began to jerk. Stop it, Fire thought furiously, aiming her message at the strange presence that was his mind.

He loosened the string immediately. The mouse lay in his lap, heaving with tiny breaths. Then the boy smiled at Fire, and stood up, and came to stand before her. "It doesn't hurt him," he said. "It's only a choking game, for fun."

His very words grated against her ears; grated, it seemed, against her brain, so horribly, like raptor monsters screeching, that she had to resist the impulse to cover her ears. Yet when she recalled the timbre of his voice, the voice itself was neither unusual nor unpleasant.

She stared at him coolly, so he would not see her bewilderment. "A choking game? All the fun of it is on your side, and it's a sick kind of fun."

He smiled again. His lopsided, red-eyed smile was somehow distressing. "Is it sick? To want to be in control?"

"Of a helpless, frightened creature? Let it go."

"The others believed me when I said it didn't hurt him," he said, "but you know not to. Plus, you're awfully pretty. So I'll give you what you want."

He bent to the ground and opened his hand. The monster mouse fled, a streak of gold, disappearing into an opening in the roots of a tree.

"You have interesting scars on your neck," he said, straightening. "What cut you?"

"It's none of your affair," Fire said, shifting her headscarf so that it covered her scars, very much disliking his gaze.

"I'm glad I got to talk to you," he said. "I've wanted to for some time. You're even better than I hoped." He turned around, and left the courtyard.

What an unpleasant child.

It had never happened before, that Fire should not be able to form a conception of a consciousness. Even Brigan's mind, which she couldn't enter, offered the shape and feeling of its barricades to her perception. Even the foggy archer, the foggy guards; she couldn't explain their minds, but she could perceive them.

Reaching for this boy's mind was like walking through a collection of twisted mirrors facing other twisted mirrors, so that all was distorted and misleading, and befuddling to the senses, and nothing could be known or understood. She couldn't get a straight look at him, not even his outline.

And this was what she stewed over for some time after the boy left; and this stewing was why it took her so long to attend to the condition of the children he'd been talking to. The children in the courtyard who'd believed what he'd said. Their minds were blank, and bubbling with fog.

Fire could not fathom this fog. But she was certain she'd found its source.

By the time she realised she mustn't let him go, the sun was setting, the stallion was bought, and the boy was already gone from the court.

Chapter Twenty

That same night brought information that distracted everyone from the matter of Cutter's boy.

It was late evening and Fire was in the stables when she sensed Archer returning from the city to the palace. It was not a thing she would have sensed so forcefully, not searching for it particularly; except that he was eager to talk to her, and open as an infant, and also slightly drunk.

Fire had only just begun to brush Small, who was standing with eyes closed from the bliss of it and drooling onto his stall door. And she wasn't anxious to see Archer if he was both eager and drunk. She sent him a message. We'll talk when you're sober.

Some hours later with her regular guard of six, Fire followed the maze from her rooms to Archer's. But then outside his door she was perplexed, for she sensed that her Mila, who was off-duty, was inside Archer's chamber.

Fire's thoughts groped for an explanation, any explanation other than the obvious. But Mila's mind was open, as even strong minds tended to be when they were experiencing what Mila was experiencing just now on the other side of this door; and Fire remembered how sweet and pretty her guard was, and how many opportunities Archer had had to notice her.

Fire stood staring at Archer's door, silent and shaking. She was quite certain he had never done anything to make her this angry before.

She turned on her heel and marched down the hallway. She found the stairs and marched up them, and up, and up, until she burst onto the roof, where she set to marching back and forth. It was cold and damp, and she had no coat, and it smelled like coming snow. Fire didn't notice, didn't care. Her baffled guard stood out of her way so she wouldn't trample them.

After some time the thing happened she'd been waiting for: Mila fell asleep. And none too soon, for it was late now, and Brigan was climbing wearily to the roofs. She mustn't meet Brigan tonight. She would not be able to stop herself from telling him everything, and Archer might deserve to have his laundry aired, but Mila did not.

She marched down by a stairway that Brigan was not taking up. She traced the maze again to Archer's rooms and stood outside his door. Archer, she thought to him. Get out here, now.

He emerged quickly, if barefoot and confused and a bit hastily thrown together; and Fire for the first time exercised her privilege of being alone with him, sending her guards to either end of the long corridor. She could not quite force herself to appear calm, and when she spoke, her voice was scathing. "Must you prey on my guard?"

The puzzlement left his face and he spoke hotly. "I'm not a predator, you know. Women come to me quite willingly. And why should you care what I do?"

"It hurts people. You're careless with people, Archer. Mila, why Mila? She's fifteen years old!"

"She's sleeping now, happy as a kitten in a patch of sun. You're stirring up trouble over nothing."

Fire took a breath, and spoke low. "And in a week's time, when you grow tired of her, Archer, because someone else has captured your fancy; when she becomes despondent or depressed, or pathetic, or furious, because you've snatched the thing away that makes her so happy – I suppose then she'll be stirring up trouble over nothing?"

"You talk as if she's in love with me."

He was maddening; she would like to kick him. "They always fall in love with you, Archer, always. Once they've known the warmth of you, they always fall in love with you, and you never do with them, and when you drop them it breaks their hearts."

He bit the words off. "A curious accusation, coming from you."

She understood him, but she would not let him turn this into that. "We're talking about my friends, Archer. I beg you – if you must have the entire palace in your bed, leave the women who are my friends out of it."

"And I don't see why this should matter to you now, when it never did before."

"I never had friends before!"

"You keep using that word," he said bitterly. "She's not your friend, she's your guard. Would your friend do what she's done, knowing your history with me?"

"She knows little about it, except that it is history. And you forget I'm in a position to know how she regards me."

"But there must be plenty she hides from you – as she's been hiding her meetings with me all this time. A person may have many feelings about you that you don't know."

She watched him, crestfallen. He was so physical in his arguments. He loomed and gestured, his face went dark or burned with light. His eyes blazed. And he was just as physical with his love and his joy, and this was why they all fell in love with him, for in a world that was dismal he was alive and passionate, and his attentions, while they lasted, were intoxicating.

And she hadn't missed the meaning in his words: this thing with Mila had been going on for some time. She turned away from him, held a hand up against him. She couldn't fight with the appeal of Lord Archer to a fifteen-year-old soldier girl from the impoverished southern mountains. And she couldn't quite forgive herself for not realising this might happen, for not paying closer attention in her mind to Archer's whereabouts and his company.

She dropped her hand, turned back, and spoke with weariness. "Of course she has feelings about me I don't know. But whatever those feelings are, they don't negate the feeling she does show me, or the friendship in her behaviour that goes beyond the loyalty of a guard. You will not turn my anger away from you and onto her."

Archer seemed to deflate then. He slumped against his door and stared at his bare toes in the manner of a man accepting that he has lost. "I wish you would come home," he said weakly; and for a panicked moment Fire thought he was going to cry.

But then he seemed to take hold of himself. He looked up at her quietly. "So you have friends now. And a protective heart."

She matched his quietness. "I've always had a protective heart. Only now I have more people inside it. They've joined you there, Archer – never replaced you."

He thought about that for a moment, staring at his feet. "You needn't worry about Clara, anyway," he said. "She ended it almost the moment it began. I believe it was out of loyalty to you."

Fire deliberately chose to think of this as good news. She would focus on it ending, whatever it had been, and ending by Clara's choice – rather than on the small matter of it having begun.

There was a short, sad pause. He said, "I'll end things with Mila."

"The sooner you do, the sooner it'll be behind her. And you've lost your questioning-room privileges with this thing, Archer. I'll not have you there plaguing her with your presence."

He glanced up sharply then, and stood straight. "A relieving change of topic. You remind me of the reason I wanted to talk to you. Do you know where I was today?"

Fire couldn't turn away from the subject so easily. She rubbed both temples. I've no idea, and I'm exhausted, so whatever it is, have out with it quickly.

"I was visiting the house of a retired captain who was an ally of my father's," Archer said. "By the name of Hart. A rich man, and a great friend to the crown. His young wife sent the invitation. Hart himself was not home."

Fire rubbed her temples harder. "You do Brocker's ally great honour," she said dryly.

"Well, but listen to this. She's quite a drinker, Hart's wife, and do you know what we were drinking?"

"I've no energy for riddles."

He was smiling now. "A rare Pikkian wine made from the juice of frozen grapes," he said. "They've a whole case of it hidden at the back of their wine cellar. She didn't know where it came from – she only just discovered it while I was there. She seemed to find it odd, that her husband should've hidden it away, but I think it was a wise thing for a known ally of the king to do, don't you?"

Nash felt Captain Hart's treachery very personally. For indeed, it took little more than a week of redirected questioning, and of watching Hart while seeming not to watch him, to learn that Lord Mydogg on occasion made a present of his favourite wine; and to learn that the messengers Hart sent south to deal with his speculations in the gold mines met with interesting and obscure fellows along the way, at inns, or over drinking games, who were then seen to strike out in a northerly direction that was the straightest path to Mydogg.

It was enough for Garan and Clara to decide Hart must be questioned. The matter on the table next was how.

On a moonlit night in mid-November, Captain Hart set south along the cliff road that led to his second home – a pleasant, seaside cottage to which he retreated on occasion to find respite from his wife, who drank far more than was good for the health of her marriage. He rode in his very fine carriage and was attended, as usual, not only by his drivers and footmen but by a guard of ten men on horseback. It was how a wise man travelled the cliff road in the dark, so that he could defend himself from all but the largest company of bandits.

Unfortunately, the company of bandits that hid behind the rocks on that particular night was quite large indeed; and led by a man who, if shaved, and dressed at the height of fashion, and seen in daylight engaged in some highly correct activity, might bear a resemblance to the king's steward Welkley.

The bandits set upon the travelling party with great, bandit-like howls. While the majority of the ne'er-do-wells roughed up the members of Hart's entourage, went through their pockets, bound them with ropes, and collected Hart's very fine horses, Welkley and several others entered the carriage. Inside, an irate Captain Hart was waiting for them, brandishing sword and dagger. Welkley, with a highly athletic dodge to left and right that many at court would have found quite surprising, stabbed the captain in the leg with a dart tipped with sleeping poison.

One of Welkley's fellows, Toddin, was a man whose shape, size, and bearing were quite similar to Hart's. After a patch of speedy undressing and dressing inside the carriage, Toddin was wearing Hart's hat, coat, muffler, and yellow monster skin-boots, whereas Hart was wearing much less than he had been before, and lying insensible in a pile of Toddin's clothing. Toddin now grabbed Hart's sword and rolled with Welkley out of the carriage. Cursing and grunting, they set to sword fighting very near the cliff, in full view of Hart's bound servants, who watched with horror as the man who appeared to be Hart fell to the ground, clutching his side. A trio of bandits picked him up and hurled him into the sea.

The company of bandits now fled, with their plunder of miscellaneous coinage, fourteen horses, one carriage, and one captain inside the carriage sleeping like the dead. Closer to the city Hart was slipped into a sack and passed to a delivery man who would bring him into the palace with the night's grain. The rest of the booty was rushed away, to be sold on the black market. And finally the bandits returned to their homes, transformed themselves into milkmen, storekeepers, farmers, gentlemen; and threw themselves down for a short night's sleep.

In the morning Hart's men were found by the road, bound and shivering, much ashamed of the story they had to tell. When the news reached the palace, Nash sent a convoy to investigate the incident. Welkley arranged a bouquet of flowers to be sent to Hart's widow.

And everyone was relieved that afternoon, when word finally came from Toddin's wife that Toddin was in good health. He was a phenomenal ocean swimmer with a great tolerance for cold, but the night had clouded over, and the boat sent to pick him up had taken a long time to find him. Naturally, everyone had worried.

When they first dragged Captain Hart before Fire, his mind was a closed box and his eyes were screwed shut. For days Fire could get nowhere with him. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that an old friend and colleague of Lord Brocker's should be so strong," she said to Musa, Mila, and Neel in the questioning room, after yet another session during which Captain Hart hadn't looked at her once.

"Indeed, Lady," Musa said. "A man who accomplished all that Commander Brocker accomplished in his time would have chosen strong captains."

Fire had been thinking more of what Brocker had endured personally than what he had accomplished militarily – King Nax's mad punishment for Brocker's mysterious crime. Fire watched her three guards absently as they brought out a quick meal of bread and cheese. Mila handed Fire a plate, avoiding her eyes.

This was Mila's way now. In the last few weeks, since Archer had ended things, she'd shrunk somehow – gone silent and contrite around her lady. Fire, in turn, had been trying to be extra kind, careful not to subject Mila to Archer's presence any more than was necessary. Not a word had passed between the two women on the subject, but both of them knew that the other knew.

Ravenous, Fire tore off a piece of bread and bit into it; and noticed Mila sitting mutely, staring at her own food but not eating it. I could flay Archer, Fire thought. Sighing, she pushed her attention back to the matter of Captain Hart.

He was a man who had achieved much wealth after retiring from the army, gradually accustoming himself to comfort. Might comfort soften him now?

Over the next couple of days, Fire arranged for Hart's cell in the dungeons to be cleaned and improved. He was given fine bedding and carpets, and books, and lighting, and good food and wine, and warm water to wash whenever he asked for it; and rat traps, which were perhaps the greatest luxury of all. One day with her hair swirling around her shoulders, and wearing a dress perhaps a bit more low-cut than was her usual style, she wandered down to his underground lair to visit.

When her guard opened the door for her, he looked up from his book to see who was there. His face slackened. "I know what you're doing," he said. And perhaps he did. But it wasn't enough to stop him staring, and Fire knew she'd found her way in.

She imagined a man in prison might be lonely, especially if he had a pretty wife at home who preferred wine and young men to her husband. She sat next to him on his bed during her visits. She ate whatever food he offered her, and accepted cushions for her back. Her nearness loosened him, and a battle began that was far from easy. At his weakest, Hart was still strong.

Clara, Garan, and Nash soaked up what Fire learned like the sand of Cellar Harbour during a rainstorm.

"I still can't get him to say anything useful about Mydogg," Fire said. "But truly, we're in luck, for he happens to know a great deal about Gentian, and he's less unwilling to spill Gentian's secrets."

"He's Mydogg's ally," Clara said. "Why should we trust what he thinks he knows about Gentian? Couldn't Gentian be sending out false messengers for Mydogg to catch, just as he does with us?"

"He could," Fire said, "but I can't quite explain it – the certainty with which Hart speaks. The confidence in his assertions. He knows the tricks Mydogg and Gentian have been playing on us. He's quite positive his knowledge of Gentian is not of that ilk. He won't tell me his sources, but I'm inclined to believe his information."

"All right," Clara said. "Tell us what you've learned, and we'll use whatever means we can to confirm it."

"He says Gentian and his son, Gunner, are coming north to attend the palace gala that happens in January," Fire said.

"That's nervy," Clara said. "I'm impressed."

Garan snorted. "Now that we know about his indigestion, we can torture him with cake."

"Gentian will pretend to apologise to the court for his rebel activities," Fire said. "He'll talk of renewed friendship with the crown. But in the meantime his army will move north-east from his estate and hide in the tunnels of the Great Greys near Fort Flood. Sometime in the days after the gala, Gentian intends to assassinate both Nash and Brigan. Then he'll ride like blazes to the location of his army, and attack Fort Flood."

The twins' eyes were wide. "Not nervy after all," Garan said. "Stupid. What kind of commander starts a war in the middle of winter?"

"The kind that's trying to catch his enemy by surprise," Clara said.

"In addition to which," Garan continued, "he should send someone anonymous and expendable to do his assassinating. What'll happen to his clever plan when he gets himself killed?"

"Well," Clara said, "it's no news Gentian's stupid. And thank the Dells for Brigan's foresight. The Second is already at Fort Flood, and he's taking the First quite near there as we speak."

"What of the Third and the Fourth?" Fire asked.

"They're in the north," Clara said, "patrolling, but in readiness to fly wherever they're needed. You must tell us where they're needed."

"I've no idea," Fire said. "I cannot get him to tell me Mydogg's plans. He says Mydogg intends to do nothing – sit back while Gentian and the king reduce each other's numbers – but I know he's lying. He also says Mydogg's sending his sister, Murgda, south to the gala, which is true; but he won't tell me why."

"Lady Murgda to the gala as well!" Clara exclaimed. "What's got into everyone?"

"What else?" Garan said. "You must give us more."

"I've nothing more," Fire said. "I've told you everything. Apparently Gentian's plans have been in place for some time."

Nash was clutching his forehead. "This is very grim. Gentian has a force of some ten thousand, supposedly, and we've ten thousand at Fort Flood to meet him. But in the north we've ten thousand scattered far and wide – "

"Fifteen thousand," Fire said. "We can call on the auxiliaries."

"All right then, we've fifteen thousand scattered far and wide, and Mydogg has what? Do we even know? Twenty thousand? Twenty-one thousand? To attack wherever takes his fancy – my mother's fortress, or Fort Middle, Fort Flood if he wishes, the city itself – with days, possibly weeks, before our troops can organise to meet him."

"He can't hide twenty thousand soldiers," Clara said, "not if we're looking for them. Even in the Little Greys, he can't hide them, and he could never get all the way to the city without being seen."

"I need Brigan," Nash said. "I want Brigan here, now."

"He'll come when he can, Nash," Garan said, "and we're keeping him informed."

Fire found herself stretching out with the feelers of her mind to soothe a king who was frightened. Nash perceived what she was doing. He reached for her hand. With thanks, and with something else he couldn't help, he kissed her fingers.

Chapter Twenty-One

It was a curious matter of Dellian politics, the yearly gala at court to which everyone of any significance was invited. The seven courtyards were converted to ballrooms, and loyalists and traitors came together to dance, to sip from goblets of wine while pretending to be friends. Almost everyone capable of travel attended, though Mydogg and Gentian generally didn't dare, a pretense of friendship on their parts being a mite too incredible; and for a week or so the palace was bursting with the servants and guards and pets, and the endless requirements of guests. The stables were too crowded, and the horses fidgety.

Brocker had explained to Fire once that the gala was always held in January, to celebrate the lengthening of days. She learned now that December was a month of preparation. On every level of the palace, Fire saw workmen engaged in repairs. Window-washers hung from the courtyard ceilings and wall-washers from the balconies, polishing glass and stone.

Garan, Clara, Nash, and Fire were also preparing. If Gentian intended to kill Nash and Brigan in the days after the gala and then ride to Fort Flood to start a war, then Gentian and Gunner must be killed the day of the gala – and Lady Murgda might as well be disposed of, too, as long as she was around. Then Brigan must fly to Fort Flood and start the war himself, surprising Gentian's armies in their tunnels and caves.

"Tunnel fighting," Garan said, "and in January. I don't envy them."

"What'll we do about the north?" Nash kept asking.

"Maybe we can learn something about Mydogg's plan from Lady Murgda at the gala," Garan said, "before we kill her."

"And how exactly are we going to pull off these assassinations?" Nash said, pacing, wild-eyed. "They'll be constantly guarded, they'll let no one near them, and we can't start a war in the court. I can't think of a worse time or place to have to murder three people in secret!"

"Sit down, brother," Clara said. "Calm down. We've time yet to sort it out. We'll think of something."

Brigan promised to return to court by the end of December. He wrote, from wherever he was, that he had sent a force north to collect Lord Brocker and bring him south, for apparently the old commander had offered his assistance to the younger in the event of actual war. Fire was stunned. She had never known Brocker to travel further than the neighbouring town.

At night with her guard on the roof, and missing Brigan's company, she stared at the city before her, trying to comprehend what was coming.

In the north, troops of the king's soldiers searched the mountains and tunnels and all of Mydogg's usual stomping grounds for his army. Spies searched Pikkia and the south and west. All to no avail: either Mydogg was hiding his men very well or he'd vanished them with magic. Brigan sent reserves to fortify Roen's fortress, Fort Middle, and the southern gold mines. The number of soldiers stationed in the city rose noticeably.

For her part, Fire had taken to grilling Captain Hart about the animal trader Cutter and his young fog maker with mismatched eyes. But Hart claimed to know nothing of it, and finally Fire had to believe him. After all, the boy didn't seem to fit in to the war plans, and neither did the poacher or stranger in her woods up north, nor the archer who'd wanted a look at her view. As to where they did fit in, Fire was alone in her speculations.

"I'm sorry, Fire," Clara said flatly. "I'm sure it's as creepy as you say, but I've no time for it if it's nothing to do with the war or the gala. We'll focus on it afterwards."

The only person who cared was Archer, who was little help, for true to his nature, he only assumed that at the base of the matter was someone's intention to steal Fire from him.

As it turned out, Clara's preoccupation did extend beyond the war and the gala, on one point. She was pregnant.

The princess brought Fire to Cellar Harbour to tell her, so that the roar of the falls would keep everyone, even Fire's guard, from overhearing the conversation. Clara was dry-eyed and straight about it. And once Fire had adjusted to the news, she found that she was not particularly surprised.

"I was careless," Clara said. "I've never liked those herbs; they nauseate me. And I've never fallen pregnant before. I suppose I convinced myself I couldn't. And now I'm paying for my stupidity, for everything nauseates me."

She hadn't seemed nauseated to Fire; in recent weeks she'd seemed nothing but calm and well. She was a fine actress, Fire knew this, and probably the best woman for this accident to befall. She was not lacking in money or support, and she would do her work up to the very day the child was born, and start again right after, and she would be a strong mother, and practical.

"Archer is the father," Clara said.

Fire nodded. She'd assumed this. "He'll be generous once you tell him. I know he will."

"I don't care about that. What I care about is your feeling. Whether I've hurt you, by jumping into his bed, and then being stupid enough for this to happen."

Fire was startled by this, and touched. "You've certainly not hurt me," she said firmly. "I have no hold on Archer, and no jealousy where he's concerned. You mustn't worry on my account."

Clara's eyebrows rose. "You're very strange."

Fire shrugged. "Archer has always had enough jealousy of his own to turn me off to the feeling of it."

Clara looked into Fire's face, into her eyes, and Fire looked back, quiet and matter-of-fact, determined that Clara should see that she meant it. Finally Clara nodded. "This is a great relief to me. Please don't tell my brothers," she added, sounding anxious for the first time. "They'll all rise up determined to hack him to pieces, and I'll be furious with them. We've too much else to be thinking about. This couldn't have been more ill-timed." She paused for a moment, then spoke plainly. "And besides, I don't want any harm to come to him. Perhaps he didn't give me everything I hoped he would. But I can't help thinking that what he did give me is rather marvellous."

It was not the type of gift everyone could welcome in such a way.

Fire's guard Margo slept in Fire's bedchamber, and Musa and Mila did too on alternating nights. One dawn Fire woke to the feeling of someone out of place, and perceived that Mila was vomiting in the bathing room.

Fire rushed to the girl and held her pale hair away from her face. She rubbed Mila's back and shoulders, and as she came fully awake, began to understand what she was seeing.

"Oh, Lady," Mila said, beginning to cry. "Oh, Lady. What you must think of me."

Fire was, indeed, thinking a great many hurried thoughts, and her heart was bursting with compassion. She put an arm around Mila. "I have nothing but sympathy for you. I'm going to help you however I can."

Mila's tears turned to sobs and she wrapped both arms around Fire. She held on to Fire's hair, speaking raggedly. "I ran out of the herbs."

Fire was horrified at this. "You could have asked me for them, or any of the healers."

"I could never, Lady. I was too ashamed."

"You could have asked Archer!"

"He is a lord. How could I trouble him?" She was crying so hard she was choking. "Oh, Lady. I've ruined my life."

And now Fire was furious over Archer's lack of trouble, for most certainly, all of this had happened at little inconvenience to him. She held the girl tight and rubbed her back and made hushing noises to soothe her. It seemed to comfort Mila to hold on to her hair.

"There's something I want you to know," Fire said, "and you must remember it now more than ever."

"Yes, Lady?"

"You may always ask me for anything."

It was in the coming days that Fire began to feel the lie in her words to Clara. It was true she was not jealous of Clara or Mila for anything they'd done with Archer. But she was not immune to the feeling of jealousy. Though she was brainstorming, plotting, planning with the royal siblings, her outward self focused on the details of the coming gala and the war, inside, in her moments of quiet, Fire was grievously distracted.

She imagined what it would be like if her own body were a garden of brown soil sheltering a seed. How she would warm that seed if it were hers, and feed it, and how ferociously she would protect it; how ferociously she would love that dot, even after it left her body, and grew away from her, and chose the way it would wield an enormous power.

When she became nauseated and fatigued, her breasts swollen and sore, she even began to think of herself as pregnant, even though she knew it was impossible. The pain was a joy to her. And then, of course, her bleeding came, and tore her pretending apart, and she knew it had only been the usual symptoms of her pre-bleeding time. And she found herself crying as bitterly to know she wasn't pregnant as Mila had cried to know she was.

And her grief was frightening, because it had its own will. Her grief filled her mind with comforting, terrible ideas.

In the middle of December planning, Fire made a choice. She hoped she chose right.

On the very last day of December, which happened to be Hanna's sixth birthday, Hanna appeared at Fire's door, tattered and crying. Her mouth bled, and bleeding knees peeked through holes in both trouser legs.

Fire sent for a healer. When it was determined that Hanna was not crying over any injury to her body, Fire sent the healer away, knelt before the girl, and hugged her. She deciphered Hanna's feelings and gasps as best she could. Finally she came to understand what had happened. The others had taunted Hanna about her father, because he was always away. They'd told Hanna that Brigan was forever leaving because he wanted to get away from her. Then they'd told her he wasn't coming back this time. That was when she'd started hitting them.

In her gentlest voice and with her arms around the girl, Fire told Hanna over and over that Brigan loved her; that he hated to leave her; that the first thing he always did on his return was go find her; that indeed, she was his favourite topic of conversation, and his greatest happiness. "You wouldn't lie to me," Hanna said to Fire, her sobs coming quiet. Which was true; and which was the reason Fire said nothing on the point of Brigan coming home this time. It seemed to her that to assure anyone Brigan was ever coming home was always to risk a lie. He'd been gone now nearly two months, and in the last week, no one had heard a word from him.

Fire gave Hanna a bath and dressed her in one of her own shirts that made a long-sleeved dress that Hanna found quite funny. She fed Hanna dinner, and then, still sniffling, the girl fell asleep in Fire's bed. Fire sent word with one of her guards so that no one would be alarmed.

When Brigan's consciousness appeared suddenly in her range, she took a moment to calm her own shaking relief. Then she sent him a message in his mind. He came to her rooms immediately, unshaven and smelling of the cold, and Fire had to stop herself from touching him. When she told him what the children had told Hanna, his face closed and he seemed very tired. He sat on the bed, touched Hanna's hair, leaned down to kiss her forehead. Hanna woke up. She said, "You're cold, Papa," crawled into his arms, and fell asleep again.

Brigan rearranged Hanna in his lap then, and looked over her head at Fire. And Fire was so struck by how much she liked having this grey-eyed prince on her bed with his child that she sat down, hard. Luckily there was a chair behind her.

"Welkley tells me you've not been out of your rooms much this week, Lady," Brigan said. "I hope you're not unwell."

"I was quite ill," Fire croaked, and then bit her tongue, because she hadn't meant to tell him.

His worry was instant. He opened the feeling of it to her.

"No," she said. "Don't fret, it was a small thing. I'm recovered." Which was a lie, for her body was sore still and her heart raw as Hanna's knees. But it was what she hoped would be the truth, eventually.

He studied her, unconvinced. "I suppose if that's what you say, I'll have to believe you. But do you have the care you need?"

"Yes, of course. I beg you to forget it."

He lowered his face to Hanna's hair. "I'd offer you birthday cake," he said. "But it looks like we'll have to wait until tomorrow."

That night the stars were cold and brittle, and the full moon seemed very far away. Fire bundled herself up so that she was twice as wide around as usual.

On the roof she found Brigan standing contentedly hatless in a draft. She blew warm air into her mittened hands. "Are you immune to winter, then, Lord Prince?"

He led her to a place protected from the wind by a broad chimney. He encouraged her to lean back against the chimney. When she did, she was surprised, for it was lovely and warm, like leaning against Small. Her guard faded into the background. The tinkling sound of the drawbridge bells whispered over the rumble of the falls. She closed her eyes.

"Lady Fire," Brigan's voice said. "Musa told me about Mila. Would you care to tell me about my sister?"

Fire's eyes flashed open. There he was at the railing, his eyes on the city, his breath shooting out like steam. "Hmm," she said, too astonished to build a proper defence. "And what would you like to know about her?"

"Whether or not she's pregnant, of course."

"Why should she be pregnant?"

He turned then to look at her, and their eyes met. Fire had a feeling her unreadable face was not as successfully unreadable as his. "Because outside of her work," he said dryly, "she's overly fond of a gamble. And she's thinner, and tonight she ate little, and turned green at the sight of the carrot cake, which I assure you is something I've never seen her do once in my life. Either she's pregnant or she's dying." His eyes turned back to the city and his voice went smooth. "And don't tell me the father of these babies, because then I'd be tempted to harm him, and that would be inconvenient, don't you think, what with Brocker expected, and all these people about who adore him?"

If he'd deciphered this much, then there was no point in pretense. She said mildly, "Nor would it set an example for Hanna."

"Humph." He leaned his mouth on his fist. His breath steamed out in every direction. "I take it they don't know about each other yet? And I take it I'm to keep all of it secret. Is Mila as unhappy as she looks?"

"Mila is devastated," Fire said softly.

"I could kill him for that."

"I believe she's too angry, or too despairing, to think straight. She won't take his money. So I'm taking it myself, and I'll hold it for her, and hope she changes her mind."

"She may keep her job if she wants it; I won't force her out of it.

We'll work something out." He shot her a wry glance. "Don't tell Garan." And then, grimly: "Ah, Lady. It's a mean time to be welcoming babies to the world."

Babies, Fire thought to herself. Babies to the world. She sent it out into the air: Welcome to you, babies. And found, with great frustration, that she was crying. It seemed a symptom of her friends' pregnancies that Fire should not be able to stop crying.

Brigan was transformed from hard to soft, his hands scrambling through pockets for a handkerchief that wasn't there. He came to her. "Lady, what is it? Please tell me."

"I've missed you," she blubbered, "these past two months."

He took her hands. "Please tell me what's wrong."

And then, because he was holding her hands, she told him all of it, quite simply: how desperately she wanted children, and why she'd decided she mustn't have them, and how out of fear of changing her mind, she'd arranged quietly, with Clara and Musa's help, to take the medicines that would make it forever impossible. And she hadn't recovered, not nearly, for her heart was small and shivering, and it seemed that she couldn't stop crying.

He listened, quietly, growing more and more amazed; and when she finished he was silent for some time. He considered her mittens with something of a helpless expression. He said, "I was insufferable to you the night we met. I've never forgiven myself."

It was the last thing Fire had expected him to say. She looked into his eyes, which were pale as the moon.

"I'm so sorry for your sadness," he said. "I don't know what to tell you. You must live where many people are having babies, and adopt them all. We must keep Archer around – he's quite a useful chap, really, isn't he?"

At that she smiled, almost laughed. "You've made me feel better. I thank you."

He gave her her hands back then, carefully, as if he were afraid they might drop to the roof and shatter. He smiled at her softly.

"You never used to look at me straight, but now you do," she said, because she remembered it, and was curious.

He shrugged. "You weren't real to me then."

She wrinkled her forehead. "What does that mean?"

"Well, you used to overwhelm me. But now I've got used to you."

She blinked, surprised into silence by her own foolish pleasure at his words; and then laughed at herself for being pleased with the suggestion that she was ordinary.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The next morning Fire walked to Nash's office with Musa, Mila, and Neel to meet the royal siblings and Archer.

The gala was only weeks away and the extent of Fire's involvement in the assassination plan was a matter of ongoing debate. To Fire's mind it was simple. She should be the assassin in all three cases because she was far more likely than anyone else to be able to lure each victim to a solitary and unguarded place, and she might also manage to learn a great deal from them before killing them.

But when she stated her case Garan argued that Fire was no sword fighter, and if any of the three proved to be strong-minded she would end up on someone's blade. And Clara did not want the assassin to be a person with no killing experience. "You'll hesitate," Clara said today. "When you see what it really means to stick a knife in someone's chest, you won't be able to do it."

Fire knew herself to be more experienced than anyone in this room save Archer realised. "It's true I won't want to do it," she responded calmly, "but when I have to, I will do it."

Archer was fuming darkly in a corner. Fire ignored him, for she knew the futility of appealing to him – especially these days, when his attitude toward her ranged from high dudgeon to shame, because her sympathies and her time were tied up with Mila, and he sensed it, and resented it, and knew it was his own fault.

"We can't send a novice to kill three of our most fearsome enemies," Clara said again.

For the first time since the topic had been broached, Brigan was present in person to convey his opinion. He leaned a shoulder against the wall, arms crossed. "But it's obvious she must be involved," he said. "I don't think Gentian'll give her much resistance, and Gunner's clever, but ultimately he's led by his father. Murgda may prove difficult, but we're desperate to learn what she knows – where Mydogg's hiding his army, in particular – and Lady Fire is the person most qualified for that job. And," he said, raising his eyebrows to stop Clara's objections, "the lady knows what she's capable of. If she says she'll go through with it, she will."

Archer wheeled on Brigan then, snarling, for his mood had found what it was looking for: an outlet that was not Fire. "Shut up, Archer," Clara said blandly, cutting him off before he even began.

"It's too dangerous," Nash said from his desk, where he sat gazing worriedly at Fire. "You're the swordsman, Brigan. You should do it."

Brigan nodded. "All right, well, what if the lady and I did it together? She to get them to a private place and question them, and I to kill them, and protect her."

"Except that I'll find it much harder to trick them into trusting me if you're there," Fire said.

"What if I hid?"

Archer had been approaching Brigan slowly from across the room, and now he stood before the prince, barely seeming to breathe. "You've no compunctions whatsoever about putting her in danger," he said. "She's a tool to you and you're heartless as a rock."

Fire's temper flared. "Don't you call him heartless, Archer. He's the only person here who believes me."

"Oh, I believe you can do it," Archer said, his voice filling the corners of the room like a hiss. "A woman who can stage the suicide of her own father can certainly kill a few Dellians she's never met."

It was as if time slowed down, and everyone else in the room disappeared. There was only Fire, and Archer before her. Fire gaped at Archer, disbelieving, and then understanding, like coldness that starts in your extremities and seeps to your core, that he truly had just said aloud the words she'd thought she'd heard.

And Archer gaped back, just as stunned. He slumped, blinking back tears. "Forgive me, Fire. I wish it unsaid."

But she thought it through in slow time, and understood that it couldn't be unsaid. And it was less that he'd exposed the truth, and more the way he'd exposed it. He'd accused her, he who knew all that she felt. He'd taunted her with her own shame.

"I'm not the only one who's changed," she whispered, staring at him. "You've changed too. You've never been cruel to me before."

She turned, still with that sense that time had slowed. She glided out of the room.

Time caught up with Fire in the frozen gardens of the green house, where it occurred to her after a single shivering minute that she had a compulsive inability to remember her coat. Musa, Mila, and Neel stood quietly around her.

She sat on a bench under the big tree, great round tears seeping down her cheeks and plopping into her lap. She took the handkerchief Neel offered. She looked into the faces of her guard, one after the other. She was searching their eyes to see if behind the quiet of their minds they were horrified, now that they knew.

Each of them looked calmly back. She saw that they were not horrified. They met her eyes with respect.

It struck her that she was very lucky in her life's people, that they should not mind the company of a monster so unnatural that she'd murdered her only family.

A thick, wet snow began to fall, and finally the side door of the green house opened. Bundled in a cloak, Brigan's housekeeper, Tess, marched out to her. "I suppose you intend to freeze to death under my nose," the woman snapped. "What's wrong with you?"

Fire looked up without much interest. Tess had soft green eyes, deep as two pools of water, and angry. "I murdered my father," Fire said, "and pretended it was a suicide."

Clearly, Tess was startled. She crossed her arms and made indignant noises, determined, it seemed, to disapprove. And then all at once she softened, like a clump of snow in a thaw that collapses from a roof, and shook her head, bewildered. "That does change things. I suppose the young prince'll be telling me, "I told you so'. Well, look at you, child – soaked right through. Pretty as a sunset, but no brain in your head. You didn't get that from your mother. You may as well come inside."

Fire was mildly dumbfounded. The little woman pulled her under the cloak and pushed her into the house.

The Queen's House – for Fire reminded herself that this was Roen's house, not Brigan's – seemed a good place to soothe an unhappy soul. The rooms were small and cozy, painted soft greens and blues and full of soft furniture, the fireplaces huge, the January fires in them roaring. It was obvious a child lived here, for her school papers and balls and mittens and playthings, and Blotchy's nondescript chewed-up belongings, had found their way into every corner. It was less obvious Brigan lived here, though there were clues for the discerning observer. The blanket Tess wrapped Fire in looked suspiciously like a saddle blanket.

Tess sat Fire on a sofa before the fireplace, and her guard in armchairs around their lady. She gave all of them cups of hot wine. She sat with them, folding a pile of very small shirts.

Fire shared the sofa with two monster kittens she'd never seen before. One was crimson and the other copper with crimson markings, and they were sleeping tangled together, so that it was hard to tell which head or tail belonged to which. They reminded Fire of her hair, which was bound now under a scarf that was clammy and cold. She pulled the scarf free and spread it beside her to dry. Her hair slid down, a blaze of light and colour. One of the kittens raised its head at the brightness, and yawned.

She wrapped her hands around her warm cup and blinked wearily into its steam; and found, once she'd started talking, that confession was a comfort to her small and ragged heart. "I killed Cansrel to stop him from killing Brigan. And to stop Brigan from killing Cansrel, because that would have damaged his chance for any alliance with Cansrel's friends. And, oh, for other reasons. I doubt I need to explain to any of you why it was best for him to die."

Tess stopped her work, her hands resting on the pile in her lap, and watched Fire closely. Her lips moved as Fire talked, as if she were testing the words in her own mouth.

"I tricked him into thinking his leopard monster was a baby," Fire said. "His own human monster baby. I stood outside the fence and watched him open the door of the cage, cooing to it, as if it were helpless, and harmless. The leopard was hungry. He always kept them hungry. It – it happened very fast."

Fire went silent for a moment, struggling against the picture that haunted her dreams. She spoke with her eyes closed. "Once I was sure he was dead, I shot the cat. Then I shot the rest of his monsters, because I hated them, I'd always hated them, and I couldn't stand them screaming for his blood. And then I called the servants, and told them he'd killed himself and I hadn't been able to stop him. I entered their minds and made full sure they believed me, which wasn't difficult. He'd been unhappy since Nax's death, and they all knew he was capable of mad things."

The rest of the story, she kept to herself. Archer had come and found her kneeling in Cansrel's blood, staring at Cansrel, tearless. When he'd tried to pull her away she'd fought against him desperately, screamed at him to leave her alone. For several days she'd been savage to Archer, and Brocker, too, vicious, out of her mind and her body; and they'd stayed with her and taken care of her until she'd come back into herself. Then had followed weeks of listlessness and tears. They'd stayed with her through that as well.

She sat numbly on the sofa. She wanted Archer's company, suddenly, so that she could forgive him for telling the truth. It was time other people knew. It was time everyone knew what she was, and what she was capable of.

She didn't notice herself nodding off to sleep, even when Musa jumped forward to stop her drink from spilling.

She woke hours later to find herself stretched out on the sofa, covered in blankets, kittens sleeping in the tangle of her hair. Tess was absent, but Musa, Mila, and Neel had not moved from their seats.

Archer stood before the fireplace, his back to her.

Fire half sat up and tugged her hair out from under the kittens. "Mila," she said. "You don't have to stay if you don't want to."

Mila's voice was stubborn. "I want to stay and guard you, Lady."

"Very well," Fire said, studying Archer, who'd swung around at the sound of her voice. His left cheekbone was bruised purple, which alarmed her at first, and then struck her as intensely interesting.

"Who hit you?" she asked.

"Clara."

"Clara!"

"She whaled me one in return for upsetting you. Well," he added, his voice dropping low. "At least, that was the main reason. I suppose Clara has several to choose from." He glanced at Mila, who'd suddenly taken on the look of a boxer who'd been punched in the stomach one too many times. "This is awkward."

By your own doing, Fire thought to him furiously, and your careless words only make it worse. They don't know about each other yet, and it's not yours to reveal their secrets.

"Fire," he said, his eyes low and dismal. "It's been some time since I did anyone any good. When my father arrives I won't be able to look him in the face. I'm dying to do something worthwhile, something I needn't be ashamed of, but I don't seem to be capable of it while you're within my view, and not needing me anymore, and in love with someone else."

"Oh, Archer," she said, and then stopped, choked up with how frustrating he was. And how funny it seemed, and sad, that he should accuse her of love, and for once in his life be right.

"I'm going west," he said, "to Cutter."

"What?" she cried, dismayed. "Now? By yourself?"

"No one's paying any attention to that boy and that archer, and I know it's a mistake. The boy's not to be trifled with, and maybe you've forgotten, but twenty-some years ago that archer was in gaol for rape."

And now Fire was near crying again. "Archer, I don't think you should. Wait until after the gala and let me come with you."

"I believe it's you they're after."

"Please, Archer. Don't go."

"I must," he said, suddenly, explosively. He turned away from her, held up a hand against her. "Look at you," he said, tears thick in his voice. "I can't even bear to look at you. I must do something, don't you see? I must get away. They're going to let you do it, you know, you and Brigan together, the grand assassination team. Here," he said, yanking a folded paper from his coat pocket and pitching it savagely onto the sofa beside her.

"What's that?" Fire asked, bewildered.

"A letter from him," Archer practically yelled. "He was at the desk just before you woke, writing it. He told me if I didn't give it to you he'd break both my arms."

Tess appeared suddenly in the doorway and jabbed a finger at Archer. "Young man," she barked, "there's a child that lives in this house, and you've got no cause to yell the roof off." She turned and stomped away. Archer stared after her in amazement. Then he spun to the fireplace and leaned against the mantle, head in hands.

"Archer," Fire pleaded. "If you must do this, take as many soldiers as you can. Ask Brigan for a convoy."

He didn't answer. She wasn't even sure he'd heard. He turned to face her and said, "Goodbye, Fire." He stalked out of the room, abandoning her to her panic.

Her thoughts clamoured after him desperately. Archer! Keep a strong mind. Go safely.

I love you.

Brigan's letter was short.

Lady: I have a confession. I knew that you killed Cansrel. Lord Brocker told me the day I came to your house to escort you here. You must forgive him for betraying the confidence. He told me so that I might understand what you were, and treat you accordingly. In other words, he told me in order to protect you, from me. You asked me once why I trust you. This is not the entire reason, but it's a part. I believe you have shouldered a great deal of pain for the sake of other people. I believe you're as strong and as brave as anyone I've met or heard of. And wise and generous in the use of your power. I must ride suddenly to Fort Flood, but will return in time for the gala. I agree you must be involved in our plan – though Archer is wrong if he thinks it pleases me. My siblings will tell you our thoughts. My soldiers are waiting and this is hastily written, but meant sincerely. Yours,

Brigan.

P.S. Do not leave this house until Tess has told you the truth, and forgive me for keeping it from you. I made a promise to her, and have been chafing under it ever since.

Fire breathed shakily as she walked to the kitchen, where she sensed Tess to be. The old woman raised green eyes from the work of her hands.

"What does Prince Brigan mean," Fire said, frightened of the question, "when he says you must tell me the truth?"

Tess put down the dough she was kneading and wiped her palms on her apron. "What an upside-down day this is," she said. "I never saw this coming. And now that we're here, you're such a sight I'm intimidated." She shrugged, quite at a loss. "My daughter Jessa was your mother, child," she said. "I'm your grandmother. Would you care to stay for dinner?"

Chapter Twenty-Three

Fire glided through the following days in a state of wonderment. To learn that she had a grandmother was staggering enough. But to sense, from their first hesitant dinner together, that her grandmother was curious to know her, and open to her company? This was almost too much for one young human monster who'd experienced so little joy to bear.

She ate dinner every night in the kitchen of the green house with Tess and Hanna. Hanna's stream of chatter filled the spaces in the conversation between grandmother and granddaughter, and soothed, somehow, their awkwardness as they tried to find the way to relate to each other.

It helped that Tess was straightforward and honest, and that Fire could sense the sincerity of every mixed-up thing she said. "I'm mostly unflappable," Tess said over their first dinner of dumplings and raptor monster stew. "But you've flapped me, monster Lady. I told myself all these years you were Cansrel's daughter, and not truly Jessa's. A monster, not a girl, that we were better off without. I tried to tell Jessa, too, though she would never listen, and she was right. Plain as day I can see her in your face."

"Where?" Hanna demanded. "What parts of her face?"

"You have Jessa's forehead," Tess said, brandishing a spoon at Fire helplessly. "And the same expression in your eyes, and her lovely, warm skin. You take after her eye and hair colouring, though yours is a hundred times what hers was, of course. The young prince told me he trusted you," she finished weakly. "But I couldn't believe him. I thought he was ensnared. I thought you'd marry the king, or worse, him, and it would begin all over."

"It's all right," Fire said softly, immune to grudges, because she was newly fallen in love with having a grandmother.

She wished she could thank Brigan, but he was still away from court and unlikely to return before the gala. She wished more than anything that she could tell Archer. Whatever else he might feel, he would share her joy in this – he would laugh in astonishment at the news. But Archer was bumbling around somewhere west with the smallest of guards – according to Clara, he'd only taken four men – getting into who knew what kind of trouble. Fire determined to make a list of all the delights and the confusions of having a grandmother, to tell him when he returned.

She was not the only person worried about Archer. "It wasn't such a terrible thing, really, that he told your secret," Clara said – forgetting, Fire thought dryly, that at the time Clara had found it terrible enough to punch him. "We're all more content with you in the plan now we know. And we admire you for it. Truly, Lady, I wonder you never told us before."

Fire didn't respond to this, for she couldn't explain that the admiration was part of the reason she hadn't told. It was not rewarding to be the hero of other people's hatred for Cansrel. She had not killed him out of hatred.

"Archer's an ass, but still I hope he'll be careful," Clara finished, one hand resting absently on her belly while the other rifled through a pile of floor plans. "Does he know the terrain in the west? There are great crevices in the ground. Some of them open to caves, but some of them are bottomless. Trust him to fall into one." She stopped rifling for a moment, closed her eyes, and sighed. "I've decided to be grateful to him for supplying my child with a sibling. Gratitude takes less energy than anger."

When the truth had come out, Clara had indeed, accepted it with a generous equanimity. It had not been so easy for Mila, though she hadn't taken to anger either. In her chair now beside the door, more than anything, Mila looked dazed.

"Ah, well," Clara said, still sighing. "Have you memorised anything above level six? You're not afraid of heights, are you?"

"No more than the next person. Why?"

Clara pulled two enormous, curling pages from the pile of floor plans. "Here are the layouts for seven and eight. I'll have Welkley verify I've labelled the guest rooms correctly before you start learning all the names. We're trying to keep those floors empty for your use, but there are those who like the views."

Memorising the palace's floor plans was different for Fire from what it would be for other people, because Fire couldn't get herself to conceive of the palace as a map, flat on the page. The palace was a three-dimensional space that whirled out from her head, full of moving minds walking down corridors, passing laundry chutes and climbing stairways Fire couldn't sense but was expected to fill in now from her memory of a map on a page. It wasn't enough now for Fire to know, for example, that Welkley was on the eastern end of the palace's second level. Where was he, precisely? What room was he in, and how many doors and windows did it have? How close was it to the nearest servants' closet, or the nearest stairway? The minds that she sensed near Welkley – were they in the room with him, or were they in the hallway, or the next room over? If Fire needed to give Welkley mental directions to guide him to her own rooms this instant without anyone seeing him, could she do it? Could she keep eight levels, hundreds of hallways, thousands of rooms, doorways, windows, balconies, and her perception of a court-full of consciousnesses all in her mind at once?

The simple answer was that no, she couldn't. But she was going to have to learn to do it as best she could, because the assassination plan for gala night depended on it. In her rooms, in the stables with Small, on the roofs with her guard, she practised and practised, all day long, constantly – proud of herself, sometimes, for how far she'd moved beyond her early days in this palace. She would certainly never get lost wandering these halls again.

The success of the plan hinged rather nerve-rackingly on Fire's ability to isolate Gentian, Gunner, and Murgda, separately or together, secretly, somewhere in the palace. It was imperative that she manage to do this, because the backup plans were messy, involved too many soldiers and too many scuffles, and would be next to impossible to keep quiet.

Once alone with them, Fire would learn whatever she could from each and all of them. In the meantime Brigan would find a discreet way to join her and ensure that the information exchange ended with Fire alive and the other three dead. And then news of the entire escapade would have to be contained somehow, for as long as possible. This would also be one of Fire's jobs: monitoring the palace for people who suspected what had happened, and arranging for those people to be quietly captured before they said anything. Because no one – no one – on the wrong side of the crown could be permitted to know where matters stood or what Fire had learned. Information would only be valuable as long as no one knew they knew it.

Brigan would ride through the night to Ford Flood. The instant he got there, the war would begin.

The day of the gala, Tess helped Fire into her dress that had been commissioned, fastening hooks, smoothing and straightening bits that were already smooth and straight, and all the time murmuring her pleasure. Next, a team of hairdressers yanked and braided Fire to distraction, exclaiming at the range of reds, oranges, and golds in her hair, its occasional astonishing strands of pink, its impossibly soft texture, its luminosity. It was Fire's first experience of trying to improve her appearance. Very quickly the process grew tiresome.

Nonetheless, when it finally ended and the hairdressers left and Tess insisted upon pulling her to the mirror, Fire saw, and understood, that everyone had done the job well. The dress, deep shimmering purple and utterly simple in design, was so beautifully-cut and so clingy and well-fitting that Fire felt slightly naked. And her hair. She couldn't follow what they'd done with her hair, braids thin as threads in some places, looped and wound through the thick sections that fell over her shoulders and down her back, but she saw that the end result was a controlled wildness that was magnificent against her face, her body, and the dress. She turned to measure the effect on her guard – all twenty of them, for all had roles to play in tonight's proceedings, and all were awaiting her orders. Twenty jaws hung slack with astonishment – even Musa's, Mila's, and Neel's. Fire touched their minds, and was pleased, and then angry, to find them open as the glass roofs in July.

"Take hold of yourselves," she snapped. "It's a disguise, remember? This isn't going to work if the people meant to help me can't keep their heads."

"It will work, Lady Granddaughter." Tess handed Fire two knives in ankle holsters. "You'll get what you want from whomever you want. Tonight King Nash would give you the Winged River as a present, if you asked for it. Dells, child – Prince Brigan would give you his best warhorse."

Fire strapped a knife to each ankle and did not smile at that. Brigan couldn't give gifts until he'd returned to court, and that was a thing, two hours before the gala, he had not yet done.

One of several staging areas reserved by the royal siblings for the night was a suite of rooms on the fourth floor with a balcony overlooking the large central courtyard. Fire stood in the balcony with three of her guard, deflecting the attention of hundreds of people below.

She had never seen a party before, let alone a royal ball. The courtyard sparkled gold from the light of thousands upon thousands of candles: walls of candles behind balustrades at the edges of the dance floor so the ladies wouldn't set their dresses on fire; candles in wide lamps hanging from the ceilings by silver chains; candles melted to the railings of every balcony, including her own. Light flickered over the people, turned them beautiful in their dresses and suits, their jewellery, the silver cups they drank from. The sky was fading. Musicians tuned their instruments and began to play over and through the tinkle of laughter. The dancing began, and it was the perfect picture of a winter party.

How absolutely the look of a thing could differ from its feel. If Fire had not had such an intense need to concentrate, if she hadn't been so far from humour, she might have laughed. For she knew herself to be standing above a microcosm of the kingdom itself, a web of traitors, spies, and allies in fancy costumes, representing every side, watching each other with calculation, trying to hear each other's conversations, and keenly aware of everyone who entered or exited. It began with Lord Gentian and his son, the focal centre of the room even though they stood at its edges. Gunner, medium size and nondescript, had a way of blending into the corner, but Gentian was tall with bright white hair and too famously an enemy of this court to be inconspicuous. Surrounding him were five of his 'attendants', men with the look of vicious dogs stuffed into formal clothing. Swords were not the fashion at balls such as this; the only visible weapons were on the palace guards stationed at the doorways. But Fire knew that Gentian, Gunner, and their thinly disguised body-guards had knives. She knew they were wound tight with distrust; she could feel it. And she saw Gentian tugging his collar, repeatedly, uncomfortably. She saw him and his son turning sharply at every noise, their social smiles false, frozen almost to the point of crazedness. She thought that Gentian was a nice-looking man, finely dressed, seemingly distinguished, unless you were in a position to feel his screaming nerves. Gentian was regretting the plan that had brought him here.

It overwhelmed Fire to keep track of everyone in this courtyard, and stretching herself beyond this courtyard was positively dizzying. But as best as she could, and using whatever minds gave her access, she was compiling a mental list of people in the palace she thought might be sympathetic to Lord Gentian or Lady Murgda, people who were not to be trusted, and also people who were. She communicated the list to a secretary in Garan's offices who took down names and descriptions and communicated them to the master of the guard, whose many jobs this night included knowing where everyone was at all times and preventing any unplanned appearances of weapons, or disappearances of significant people.

The sky was dark now. Fire sensed archers moving into the shadows of the balconies around her. Both Gentian and Murgda had been housed on the palace's third level overlooking this very courtyard, the rooms above, below, across, and to either side of them empty of guests, and temporarily occupied with a royal military presence that made Fire's guard seem quite shabby.

These had been Brigan's orders.

Fire wasn't certain which she was dreading more: what it would mean for her and his family personally if he did not arrive in time, or what it would mean for their night's work and the war. She thought these might be pieces of the same fear. If Brigan didn't come, he was probably dead, and with that, all things would fall apart anyway, whether they be big, like tonight's plans, or small, like her heart.

And then, only a few minutes later, she stumbled upon him as he materialised at the edges of her range on the nearest city bridge. Almost involuntarily she sent him a surge of feeling that began as fury but turned immediately to worry and also relief at feeling him, so uncontrolled that she couldn't be sure some of her deeper feeling hadn't seeped through.

He sent back assurance and exhaustion and apology, and she reached back to him with apology of her own, and he apologised again, more insistently this time. Brigan has arrived, she thought hurriedly to the others, and pushed their own expressions of relief out of her mind. Her focus was unravelling. She scrabbled to regain control of the courtyard.

Lady Murgda was keeping a lower profile than Gentian. Like Gentian, she'd arrived with attendants, at least twenty of them, 'servants' who had the feeling of persons used to fighting. A number of these persons were in the courtyard below. Others were spread throughout the palace, presumably watching whomever Murgda had instructed them to watch; but Murgda herself had gone straight to her rooms at her arrival and had not emerged since. She was holed up there now, a level below Fire and across from where Fire stood, though Fire could not see her. She could only feel her, sharp and intelligent, as Fire had known she would be, harder than her two enemies below and more guarded, but buzzing with a similar edginess, and burning with suspicion.

Clara, Garan, Nash, Welkley, and several guards entered Fire's room. Sensing them, but not turning from the balcony view, Fire touched their minds in greeting and, through the open balcony door, heard Clara muttering.

"I've figured out who Gentian's got tailing me," Clara said, "but I'm not so sure of Murgda's tail. Her people are better trained."

"They're Pikkian, some of them," Garan said. "Sayre tells me she saw Pikkian-looking men, and heard their accents."

"Is it possible Lord Gentian could be daft enough to have no one watching Lady Murgda?" Clara said. "His entourage is pretty obvious, and none of it seems trained on her."

"There's no ease in watching Lady Murgda, Lady Princess," Welkley said. "She's barely shown her face. Lord Gentian, on the other hand, has asked for your audience three times, Lord King, and three times I've brushed him off. He's quite eager to tell you in person all kinds of made-up reasons why he's here."

"We'll give him the opportunity to explain, once he's dead," Garan said.

Fire listened to the conversation with one fraction of her attention and monitored Brigan's progress with another – he was in the stables now – dancing all the while around Gentian, Gunner, and Murgda. So far she had only played around their minds, searching for ways in, approaching but not taking hold. She instructed a servant below – one of Welkley's people – to offer wine to Gentian and Gunner. Both men waved the serving girl away. Fire sighed, wishing the elder were not so plagued with indigestion and the younger so austere in his habits. Young Gunner was a bit troublesome, actually, stronger-minded than she'd like. Gentian, on the other hand – she wondered if it was time to enter Gentian's mind and begin pushing. He grew more and more anxious, and she got the sense that he had wanted the wine he'd refused.

Brigan pushed into the room behind her. "Brother," Fire heard Garan say. "Cutting it a bit close this time even by your standards, don't you think? Everything in place at Fort Flood?"

"Poor boy," Clara said. "Who punched up your face?"

"No one relevant," Brigan said shortly. "Where's Lady Fire?"

Fire turned from the courtyard, went to the balcony door, stepped into the room, and came face to face with Nash, very handsome, very smartly dressed, who froze, stared back at her unhappily, turned, and strode into the next room. Garan and Welkley stared also, mouths agape, and Fire remembered that she was dressed up. Even Clara seemed struck dumb.

"All right," Fire said, "I know. Pull yourselves together and let's get on with things."

"Is everyone in position?" Brigan asked. Mud-splattered and radiating cold, he looked like he'd been fighting for his life not ten minutes ago and had nearly lost, his cheekbone scraped raw, his jaw bruised, and a bloody bandage across his knuckles. He directed his question at Fire, searching her face with gentle eyes that did not match the rest of his appearance.

"Everyone's in position," she said. Do you need a healer, Lord Prince? He shook his head, peering down at his knuckles with mild amusement. "And our enemies? Anyone we weren't expecting? Any of Cutter's foggy friends about, Lady?"

"No, thank the Dells." Are you in pain?

"All right," Clara said. "We have our swordsman, so let's get moving. Brigan, could you attempt, at least, to make yourself presentable? I know this is a war, but the rest of us are trying to pretend it's a party."

The third time Fire instructed Welkley's serving girl to offer Gentian wine, Gentian grabbed the cup and downed it in two gulps.

Fire was fully inside Gentian's mind now. It was not a stable place. He kept glancing at the balcony belonging to Murgda. When he did this, his entire handsome being flashed with anxiety, and with a peculiar wishfulness.

Fire began to wonder why, if Gentian was so anxious about Lady Murgda's balcony, he'd assigned none of his men to monitor Murgda. For Clara had figured right. Fire knew the feeling of every person in Gentian's entourage, and with a small effort, she could locate each of them. They were lurking around the doors and the persons of various gala guests; they were lurking near the guarded entrances to the royal residences and offices. None of them were lurking around Murgda.

Murgda, on the other hand, had spies on everyone. Two of them were milling around Gentian this moment.

Gentian took another cup of wine and glanced once more at Murgda's empty balcony. It was so odd, the emotion that accompanied these glances. Something like a frightened child looking for reassurance from an adult.

Why would Gentian look to the balcony of his enemy for reassurance?

Suddenly Fire wanted very much to feel what would happen if Murgda came onto her balcony and Gentian saw her. But Fire was not going to be able to compel Murgda onto her balcony without Murgda knowing she was being compelled. And then it would be only one more step to Murgda figuring out why.

It seemed to Fire that if she couldn't sneak up on Murgda, she might as well be direct. She sent a message.

Come out, lady rebel, and tell me why you're here.

Murgda's response was both immediate and startling: an ironic, hard pleasure at being so hailed; an utter lack of surprise or fear; a desire, unmistakable, to meet with the lady monster in person; and a blatant and unapologetic mistrust.

Well, Fire thought, her tone deliberately careless. I'll meet with you, if you'll go to the place I specify.

Amusement and contempt in response to this. Murgda was not fool enough to be led into a trap.

And I'm not keen enough to see you, Lady Murgda, that I would let you choose the meeting place.

Stubborn refusal to leave her self-created fortress.

You don't imagine I'd come to you in your rooms, Lady Murgda? No, I begin to think we are not meant to meet after all.

A determination – a need – to meet Lady Fire, to see her.

It was intriguing, this need, and Fire was content to use it for her own purposes. She breathed to calm her nerves, for her next message must be perfect in tone: amused – delighted, even – to the point of mild acquiescence, and somewhat curious, but rather indifferent as to where all of this might lead.

I suppose we could start by getting a look at each other. I'm on the balcony just across from you and up.

Suspicion. Fire was trying to lure Murgda out again.

Very well then, Lady Murgda. If you think our plan is to kill you publicly at our winter party and start a war in the court, then by all means, don't venture onto your balcony. I cannot blame you for caution, though it does seem to disallow your own interests. Goodbye, then.

A burst of irritation in response to this, which Fire ignored. Then scorn, then mild disappointment; and finally, silence. Fire waited. Minutes passed, and her sense of Murgda shrank, as if Murgda were pulling her feelings away and closing herself tight.

More minutes passed. Fire was beginning to try to cobble together a new plan when suddenly she felt Murgda moving through her rooms toward her balcony. Fire nudged Gentian to a place in the courtyard where he would not be able to see Fire but would have an unobstructed view of Murgda's balcony door. Then Fire stepped forward into the light of the candles on her own railing.

Murgda stopped behind her balcony door and peeked out at Fire through the glass pane. She was as Fire remembered her: a short, plain-faced woman, straight-shouldered and tough-looking. Fire was pleased, oddly, by the strong and purposeful sight of her.

Murgda didn't emerge to the balcony; she didn't even crack the door open. But this was what Fire had expected and the most she dared to hope for, and it was enough, for down below, Gentian's eyes caught hold of Murgda.

His reaction came to Fire plain as a pail of water thrown in her face. His confidence surged. His nerves were immensely comforted.

She understood now why Gentian wasn't spying on Murgda, and why Lord Mydogg's ally Captain Hart had known so much about Gentian. She understood a good many things, including why Murgda had come. She had come to help Gentian see his plans through. For somewhere along the line, Mydogg and Gentian had become allies against the king.

And Fire was reading something from Murgda as well, something less surprising. Whether Gentian knew it or not, his ally had come for one other reason. Fire read it in Murgda's eyes that stared across the courtyard at her, and in the feeling Murgda was releasing now without meaning to: stupefaction, wonderment, and lust, though not the lust Fire was used to. This lust was hard and scheming, and political. Murgda wanted to steal her. Mydogg and Murgda wanted her for their very own monster tool – had wanted her since the first moment they'd seen her last spring.

Knowledge – even the knowledge that your enemies had unified to outnumber you – was strengthening. Fire saw now quite assuredly what she must do. What she could do, if she took care and kept hold of all the stray ends. You see? she thought now charmingly to Murgda. You've shown your face, and you're still alive.

Murgda's mind sharpened and closed. She narrowed her eyes at Fire and rested her hand on her stomach in an interesting manner Fire understood, because she'd seen it before. Murgda spun around and walked out of sight, never once noticing Gentian, who was still craning his neck at her below.

Fire stepped back into the shadows. Flatly, without dramatics, she communicated to the others all she had learned. They were surprised; horrified; unsurprised; eager to proceed. She answered as best she could what she believed to be their questions.

I don't know if I'll ever get Lady Murgda out of her rooms, she thought to them. I don't know if Murgda will die tonight. But Lord Gentian will do whatever I say, and I can probably manage Gunner. Let's start with them. Lord Mydogg's allies can tell us Lord Mydogg's plans.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Fire wanted Gentian, and more particularly Gunner, to see her clearly. So she went to the king's own living quarters, which were on the second level overlooking the courtyard, and walked right out onto the balcony. She looked straight into the dazzled faces of Gentian and Gunner, whom she'd placed in fine position to see her. She smiled suggestively at Gunner and made eyes, which was ridiculous and embarrassing but had the desired effect. And then Nash himself stormed onto the balcony, looked to see whom she was flirting with, glared at Gentian and Gunner, took Fire's arm, and yanked her back inside. The whole thing lasted possibly nine seconds, a fortunate brevity, for the mental strain on Fire was enormous.

There had been too many minds in the courtyard to control at once. She'd had help. Welkley's people had been on the floor creating distractions to deflect attention from her. But persons here and there had seen, and Fire had to make a list now of people who must be watched with extra care on the chance they'd found it interesting that the lady monster seemed to be working her charms on Gentian and Gunner – interesting enough to talk about it, or even do something about it.

Still, it had worked. Gentian and Gunner had stared, paralysed by the vision of her. I want to talk to you, she'd thought to them as Nash had dragged her away. I want to join your side. But don't tell anyone, or you'll put me in danger.

Now she sank into a chair in Nash's sitting room, her head in her hands, monitoring Gentian's eagerness, Gunner's suspicion and desire, and skimming the rest of the courtyard and the entirety of the palace for anything relevant or worrisome. Nash went to a side table and came back, crouching before her with a cup of water.

"Thank you," she said, glancing up gratefully and taking the cup. "You did well, Lord King. They believe you guard me jealously and I've a wish to escape. Gentian is positively brimming with indignation. "

Clara, sprawled on a sofa, snorted in disgust. "Gullible no-heads."

"It's not their fault, really," Nash said soberly, still crouched before Fire. He was having a hard time getting up and leaving her. Fire could feel that he was trying. She wanted to put a hand on his arm, out of gratitude for all the ways he always tried, but she knew her touch would be no help to him. Why don't you take water to your brother, she thought to him gently, for Garan had begun to sweat with one of the fevers that overtook him in moments of stress, and was resting on the sofa with his feet in Clara's lap. Nash bent his chin to his chest and stood to do what she said.

Fire considered Brigan, who'd leaned back against a bookshelf, arms crossed, eyes closed, ignoring the argument beginning now between his sister and brothers about the whys and wherefores of Gentian's stupidity. He was neatly dressed and shaved, but the bruise on his face had darkened to something purple and ugly, and he looked so tired, as if he'd like to sink into the bookshelf and become a part of its solid, inanimate bookshelfness.

When did you last sleep? she thought to him.

His pale eyes came open and regarded her. He shrugged, and shook his head, and she knew it had been too long ago.

Who hurt you?

He shook his head again, and mouthed a word across the room. Bandits.

Were you riding alone?

"I had to," he said quietly, "or not get here in time."

I was not criticising you, she thought. I trust you to do what you must.

He opened a memory to her. He'd promised her, one green and gold day at the start of summer, not to wander alone at night. Yet he'd ridden last night alone, and most of today. It was within her right to criticise.

I wish, Fire began, and then stopped, because she could not think to him that she wished they did not have this task to do, she wished she could comfort him and help him to sleep. She wished this war away that he and Nash would fight, hacking with swords and fists on a frozen field against too many men. These brothers. How would they get out of such a thing alive?

Panic bunched inside her. Her tone grew tart. I've grown quite fond of your warhorse, Big. Will you give her to me?

He stared at her with about as much incredulity as such a question, posed to the army's commander on the eve of battle, rightly deserved. And now Fire was laughing, and the sudden, unexpected lightness soothed her aching brain. All right, all right. I was only testing that you were awake and in your right mind. The sight of you taking a nap against the bookshelf doesn't inspire confidence.

He was still looking at her as if she might be half-crazy, but he flexed his hand and rested it on his sword hilt, pushing himself upright, ready to go wherever she told him to. He cocked his head at the doorway leading to Nash's other rooms, where Fire's guard, a group of messengers, and a small army of soldiers were waiting to assist however they were needed.

Fire stood. The others stopped their chatter and looked to her.

"Levels seven and eight," she said to Brigan, "the far northern wing. The rooms overlooking the smallest courtyard. At this moment it's the emptiest part of the palace, and it has been all day, so that's where I'll take Gentian and Gunner. You and Clara go there now. Find whatever empty room you can, on whichever level is easiest to get to without being seen, and I'll try to lead them as close to you as I can. If you need my help getting through the halls, or if Murgda's tails give you trouble, call for me."

Brigan nodded and went to the side rooms to collect his soldiers. Fire sat back down and dropped her head again into the palms of her hands. Every stage of this process required focus. Right now she must monitor Brigan and Clara and their soldiers and their tails and everyone who noticed any one of them. While keeping stock of Gentian, Gunner, and Murgda, of course, and perhaps sending Gentian and Gunner occasional blips of helpless desire; and holding on to a sense of the palace as a whole, in case anything anywhere, at any time, should feel wrong for any reason.

She breathed through a mild headache forming above her temples. She stretched out with her mind.

Fifteen minutes later, Clara, Brigan, and a number of soldiers had found their way to an unoccupied suite of rooms on level eight in the far northern wing. Three of Murgda's spies and three of Gentian's were with them also, several unconscious, and the conscious ones boiling with fury, presumably at the indignity of being bound and gagged and shoved into closets.

Brigan sent assurance that all was well. "All right," Fire said to Nash and Garan. All right, she thought to all those involved throughout the palace. I'm beginning.

She hunched in her chair and closed her eyes. She touched Gentian's mind and then entered it. She touched on Gunner and decided that he was not oblivious enough for sneakery.

Gunner, she thought to him, warm and flirtatious, gushing herself at him – and then thrusting herself into the cracks that opened with his involuntary rush of pleasure. Gunner. I want you to come to me. I need to see you. Can I trust you to be kind to me?

Suspicion washed along the edges of his gladness, but Fire murmured at it, lulled it, and took harder hold. You must go where I direct you and tell no one, she told both him and Gentian. Now, leave the courtyard through the main arch and climb the central stairway to level three, as if you were returning to your rooms. I'll lead you to a place that's safe for all of us, far away from the king and his tiresome guards.

Gentian began to move, and then, more reluctantly, Gunner. Their five henchmen moved with them and Fire expanded her reach, stepping into each of their minds. The seven proceeded toward the exit and Fire skimmed the rest of the courtyard. It didn't matter who noticed, but it did matter very much who followed.

Three consciousnesses separated themselves casually from the dancing and fell in behind Gentian's guard. Fire recognised two as Murgda's spies and the other as a minor lord she'd identified earlier as a probable Murgda sympathiser. She touched their minds, tested, and decided that they were too guarded for her to enter without them noticing. She would have to lead the others and trust these three to follow.

Ten men. She thought she could handle that while holding the floor plan and thousands of moving figures in her mind.

How her power had grown, with practice. She could not have done this a year ago. Only last spring, the First Branch had utterly overwhelmed her.

Her party of ten ascended the steps to the third level. Now move down the hallway and turn into the corridor containing your rooms, Fire thought to Gentian and Gunner. Her mind raced ahead to that very corridor and found it alarmingly full of people. She sped some up, slowed some down, and sent some into their rooms, forcefully in the case of the strong-minded, for there was no time to take the proper care. When Gentian, Gunner, and their five attendants turned the corner to their rooms, the hallway stretched emptily before them.

The hallway was still empty moments later when Gentian and Gunner came abreast of their rooms. Stop there, she told them. She switched to the minds of the soldiers hiding in the suites around Gentian's. When Murgda's men rounded the corner, she sent the soldiers a message: Go now. Soldiers piled into the hallway and set about capturing Gentian's five guards and Murgda's three spies.

Run! Fire screamed at Gentian and Gunner, perhaps unnecessarily, as they seemed already to be running. They're onto us! Run! Run! Down the hallway! Turn left at the lantern! Now, down that corridor! Look for the green door on the left! Through the green door and you're safe! Yes, you're safe. Now up, up. Climb the stairs. Quiet, slow. Slow down. Stop, she thought. Stop for a minute.

Gentian and Gunner stopped, baffled, frantic, and alone, on a spiral stairway somewhere between levels five and six. Fire kept a finger on them, petted and soothed them, and stretched back to the hallway where the short, nasty scuffle had taken place. Did you get everyone? she asked the soldier in charge. Did anyone see you?

The soldier communicated that all had gone well.

Thank you, Fire said. Well done. If you have any trouble, call for me. She took a long, steadying breath and returned to Gentian and Gunner on the stairway.

I'm sorry, she murmured soothingly. Are you all right? I'm sorry. I'll take care of you.

Gunner was in no good humour, breaking loose a bit from her hold. He was angry about the loss of his guards, angry to be huddled in a narrow stairway, furious with himself for allowing a monster to commandeer his intentions and put him in danger. Fire flooded him, overwhelming him with heat and with feelings and suggestions designed to stop him thinking. Then she sent him a steely and certain message. You knowingly put yourself in danger when you came traipsing into the palace of the king. But you have nothing to fear. I've chosen you, and I am stronger than the king. Take hold of yourself. Think how much easier it'll be to injure him with me on your side.

Simultaneously Fire checked the corridors to which this spiral stairway led. Gala guests walked and mingled in the corridor of level eight. Level seven was empty.

Brigan was on level eight. But Fire's mind was growing sluggish with fatigue.

Brigan, she thought, too weary to concern herself with manners. I'm taking them to level seven, to the unoccupied rooms just below you. When the time comes, you may have to climb down by the balcony.

Brigan's response came quickly: this was perfectly fine. Fire was not to worry about him or the balcony.

Go up, Fire told Gentian and Gunner. Climb. Yes, one more level. Now quietly through the door. Down the corridor, yes, and turn left. Slowly... slowly... Fire strained to remember the guest plan and to feel where Brigan was. There, she said finally, stop. Enter the room to your right. Gunner was still spluttering. She gave him an unaffectionate shove.

Inside the room, Gunner's anger changed to puzzlement, and then, quite abruptly, to contentment. This was odd, but Fire had no energy to contemplate it. Sit down, gentlemen, she told them numbly. Stay away from the windows and the balcony. I'll be there in a few minutes and we can talk.

Fire did one more sweep of the corridors, of the courtyards, of Murgda and Murgda's people, reassuring herself that no one was suspicious and nothing was out of place. With a great sigh she turned her mind back to the room to find Mila kneeling on the floor before her, gripping her hand, and others in her guard, and Garan and Nash, watching her anxiously. It was a comfort to find herself still with them.

"All right," she said. "Now for my own journey."

Fire floated down the hallway on Nash's arm, flanked by members of both of their guards and attracting a great deal of attention. The couple climbed the central stairway to level three, as Gentian had done, but turned in the opposite direction and wound through the corridors, stopping finally before the entrance to Fire's rooms.

"Good night to you, Lady," Nash said. "I hope you'll recover from your headache."

He took her hand, raised her fingers to his mouth, and kissed them; then dropped them and slumped darkly away. Fire looked after him with true fondness, not on her face but into his mind, for he was playing his part very well tonight, and she knew it was hard on him, even if the lovestruck and jealous monarch was not much of a stretch.

Then Fire smiled sweetly at Murgda's and Gentian's tails – several of whom smiled back at her idiotically – and went into her rooms. Fingers pressed to temples, she forced her mind through an examination of the grounds and the skies outside her window.

"There's no one out there," she told her guard, "and no raptor monsters. Let's begin."

Musa creaked Fire's window open and took a blade to the screen. Cold air poured into the room, bits of slush spitting onto the carpet. Fire spared a thought for Brigan and his guard, who would be riding later in that sleet. Musa and Mila lowered a rope ladder out the window.

The ladder's in place, she thought to the soldiers in the room below. She heard their window squeak open, and checked the skies and the grounds again. No one was there, not even the green house guard.

"All right," she said. "I'm going."

She felt then, suddenly, how loath Musa was to let Fire go, how it pained Musa to send Fire anywhere alone and unguarded. Fire held Musa's hand harder than was necessary. "I'll call for you if I need you," she promised. Tight-lipped, Musa helped her out the window into the cold.

Her dress and slippers were not made for winter, nor for anything approximating weather, but rather clumsily she managed the descent to the window below. Soldiers pulled her inside and tried not to stare as she straightened her dress. Then they tucked her under the cloth of a wheeled cart bearing food bound for level seven.

It was a fine, sturdy cart, and Nash's floors were strong and smooth, and a minute or two of determined shivering under the tablecloth warmed her. A servant pushed her through the halls and then wheeled her onto the lift, which rose on its ropes without a single creak or jolt. On level seven another servant rolled her out. He followed her mental directions down hallways and around corners, finally pushing her into the far northern corridor and stopping outside the room containing Gentian and Gunner.

She reached upward to find Brigan. He was not there.

Sweeping around in a panic, she realised what she'd done. Rocks, she seethed to Brigan. Monster rocks. I miscalculated. I did not send them to the rooms directly below yours. They're one suite over to the west.

Brigan sent assurance that he wasn't worried about this. He could scale the balconies to the neighbouring rooms.

They're occupied rooms.

He was certain they weren't.

Not the ones on your level, Brigan. The ones on mine. I've led Gentian and Gunner to occupied rooms. Quisling? Quisland? Someone beginning with Q. Her head stabbed with pain. Should I try to move them again? I think Gunner would refuse. Oh, this is dreadful. I'll spread the word that the fellow beginning with Q must be kept from his rooms somehow, and his wife and servants and guards too. I can't think what we'll do with Gentian and Gunner's bodies now, she thought bitterly, overwhelmed almost to tears with the consequences of her mistake.

Quislam? Brigan offered. Lord Quislam from the south?

Yes, Quislam.

But isn't Quislam Gentian's ally?

Fire strained to remember. Yes, Quislam is Gentian's ally. But it makes no difference, other than to explain why Gunner stopped fighting once he entered the room.

But, Brigan thought, if Gunner thinks himself safe in the room of an ally, then perhaps he'll be easier to handle. Perhaps her mistake had been fortunate.

Fire was turning hysterical. It isn't. It's not fortunate. It creates countless problems.

Fire –

Her concentration was fracturing to pieces and she grasped wildly at a thing that seemed, suddenly and senselessly, to matter. Brigan, your mental control is as strong as anyone's I've ever encountered. Look how well you're able to communicate – you're practically sending me sentences. And you don't need to explain why you're so strong. You made yourself that way of necessity. My father – Fire was impossibly drained. A fist in her head was punching at her brain. My father hated you more than anyone.

Fire –

Brigan, I'm so tired.

Fire.

Brigan was saying her name, and he was sending her a feeling. It was courage and strength, and something else too, as if he were standing with her, as if he'd taken her within himself, letting her rest her entire body for a moment on his backbone, her mind in his mind, her heart in the fire of his.

The fire of Brigan's heart was astounding. Fire understood, and almost could not believe, that the feeling he was sending her was love.

Pull yourself together, he thought to her. Get yourself into that room.

She climbed out from under the cart. She opened the door to the room.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Both Gentian and Gunner sat in chairs facing the entry. As she shut the door, Gunner rose to his feet and edged sideways against the wall in a direction that brought him slightly nearer to her.

A shield with Quislam's colours was propped against a footstool. Fire saw that the carpet was a patchwork of squares in rust, brown, and red; the curtains red; the sofa and chairs brown. At least they wouldn't have to worry about bloodstains. She soaked in the feeling of these two men, and knew immediately where the trouble would lie in this room. Of course it would not be with Gentian, so charming and so blitheringly happy to see her, so easy for even her torpid mind to invade that she would have wondered how such a man could ever have risen to a place of power, had the answer not stood scowling before her in the form of Gunner.

He was a bit like Nash used to be: unpredictable, confusing, too much for her to control, but not entirely under his own control either. He began to prowl back and forth along the wall, his eyes always on her. And though he was not a big man or imposing, something tight and smooth in his movements caused Fire to see suddenly why the others had been worried. He was a calculating creature with a capacity for strong, fast viciousness.

"Won't you sit down, Gunner?" Fire murmured, moving herself sideways, away from both of them, and seating herself calmly on the sofa – which was a mistake, because more than one person could fit on a sofa, and the sofa was where Gunner now seemed inclined to sit. She fought him with her mind, which felt puffy and stiff, pushed him back toward the seats nearer his father, but he would not sit if he couldn't sit with her. He retreated to his wall and resumed prowling.

"And what can we do for you, darling child?" Gentian said, slightly drunk and bouncing in his seat with happiness.

How she wished she could go slowly. But her time in this room was borrowed from Lord Quislam.

"I want to join your side," she said. "I want your protection."

"You're not to be trusted, looking like that," Gunner growled. "Never trust a monster."

Gentian chided his son. "Gunner! Did she not prove her trustworthiness when we were set upon in the hallway? Mydogg wouldn't wish us to be rude."

"Mydogg does not care what we do, as long as it's to his advantage," Gunner said. "We shouldn't trust Mydogg either."

"Enough," Gentian said, his voice suddenly sharp and commanding. Gunner glowered, but made no retort.

"And how long have you been allied with Mydogg?" Fire asked, turning innocent eyes to Gentian.

She latched tightly to Gentian's mind and directed him to speak.

Some twenty minutes later she had learned, and conveyed to the siblings, that Mydogg and Gentian had allied themselves largely in response to the lady monster joining the ranks of the king, and that Hart had only told part of the story when he'd said Gentian planned to attack Fort Flood with his force of ten thousand. Really Gentian would attack Fort Flood with fifteen thousand. After they had allied, Mydogg had moved five thousand of his own Pikkian recruits piecemeal to Gentian, through the tunnels.

It had not been easy to play-act delight at that particular piece of news. It meant Brigan would be outnumbered by five thousand at Fort Flood. But perhaps it also meant that the rest of Mydogg's army, wherever it was hiding, only numbered fifteen thousand or so? Perhaps the other two branches of the King's Army plus all the auxiliaries could then meet Mydogg on equal ground...

"Our spies tell us you've been looking all over the kingdom for Mydogg's army," Gentian said now, interrupting her calculations. He giggled, playing around with a knife he'd pulled from his boot because his son, pacing and snarling, was making him nervous. "I can tell you why you haven't found it. It's on the sea."

"On the sea," Fire said, genuinely surprised.

"Yes," Gentian said, "Mydogg has twenty thousand strong – ah, I see that number impresses you? He's always recruiting, that Mydogg. Yes, he's got twenty thousand strong on the sea, just out of sight of Marble Rise, in a hundred Pikkian boats. And fifty more Pikkian boats, carry nothing but horses. They're big boat people, you know, the Pikkians. Lady Murgda's own husband's a boat type. An explorer, until Mydogg got him interested in the business of war. Sit down, Gunner," Gentian said sharply, reaching out to Gunner as he loomed past, slapping Gunner's arm with the flat of his knife.

Gunner swung on his father abruptly, grappled for the knife, wrested it from Gentian's grip, and flung it at the far wall. It screeched against stone and thumped onto the rug, bent crooked. Fire kept her face still so he would not know how much he'd frightened her.

"You've lost your mind," Gentian said indignantly, staring at his son.

"You have no mind to lose," Gunner snarled. "Have we any secrets you haven't told yet to the king's monster pet? Go on, tell her the rest, and when you're done, I'll break her neck."

"Nonsense," Gentian said sternly. "You'll do no such thing."

"Go on, tell her."

"I'll tell her nothing until you've sat down, and apologised, and shown you can behave yourself."

Gunner made a noise of impatient disgust and came to stand before Fire. He stared at her face, and then quite shamelessly at her breasts.

Gunner is unstable, Fire told Brigan. He's winged a knife at the wall and broken it.

Can you get more out of them about the boats? Brigan thought back. How many horses?

Before Fire could ask, Gunner touched a finger to her collarbone and Fire dropped her perception of Brigan, of Gentian, of the whole rest of the palace. She put everything into Gunner, into fighting his intent, for she knew his attention and his hand were tending downward and she thought she might lose hold of him entirely if she allowed him a handful of her breast, which was what he wanted, or more accurately, what he wanted to start with.

And she did get his hand to rise, but it rose to her throat, and encircled it, and very slightly squeezed. For a long second Fire could not breathe, she could not find her brain. He was choking her.

"Mydogg thinks the crown will send reinforcements south to Fort Flood when we attack," Gunner said, whispering, and finally letting her go. "Maybe even a whole branch of the King's Army, if not two branches. And when the north is less crowded with the king's soldiers, Mydogg will send word for the beacons on Marble Rise to be lit. Do you understand, monster?"

Marble Rise was a high, coastal area north of the city, and Fire did understand. "The soldiers on the Pikkian ships will see the smoke," she said lightly.

"Clever thing," Gunner said, circling his hand around her throat again, then changing his mind, taking a handful of her hair and pulling on it. "And the smoke is the signal they've been waiting for to make land and march on the city."

"The city," Fire whispered.

"Yes," Gunner said, "this city. And why not go straight for King's City? The timing will be perfect. Nash will be dead. Brigan will be dead."

"He means that we're killing them tomorrow," Gentian interjected, watching his son warily. "We have it all planned. There's to be a fire."

Gunner yanked on Fire's hair, very hard. "I'm telling her, Father," he said savagely. "I decide what she knows. I am in charge of her."

He grabbed her neck again and pulled her against his body, rough and disgusting. Fighting for breath, Fire capitulated to old-fashioned pain, reaching for his groin, grabbing whatever she could get hold of and twisting as hard as she could. In the moment of his scream she took a swipe at his mind, but her own mind was a balloon, soft and hollow, with no sharp edges, no claws for gripping. He stepped back from her, breathing hard. His fist came out of nowhere and slammed into her face.

For an instant she lost consciousness. Then she resurfaced, to the taste of blood and the familiar feeling of pain. The rug. I'm lying on the rug, she thought. Face in agony, head in agony. She moved her mouth. Jaw intact. She wiggled her fingers. Hands intact. Brigan?

Brigan responded.

Good, she thought blearily. Mind intact. She began to stretch her mind out to the rest of the palace.

But Brigan wasn't through communicating. He was trying to make her understand something. He was worried. He heard noises. He was on the balcony above, ready to drop down at her command.

Fire realised that she also heard noises. She rolled her head sideways and saw Gentian and Gunner yelling at each other, pushing each other around, one pompous and outraged, the other frightening because of a deranged look in his eyes that brought the memory of why she was in this room back to Fire. She propped herself up on her elbow and dragged herself onto her knees. She sent Brigan a question.

Is there anything else you need to know about Mydogg?

There was not.

She rose to her feet, staggered to the sofa, and leaned against it, eyes closed, until the pain of her head became something she thought she could bear. Then come down. This interview has come to the end of its usefulness. They're fighting each other. She watched Gunner shove his father against the glass of the balcony door. They're grappling against the balcony door this moment.

And then, because Brigan was coming and when he did he would be in danger, she brought each of her ankles up to her hands, one at a time – vaguely suspecting that if she did it the other way, reaching hands down to feet, her head would fall off and roll away. She pulled her knives from their holsters. She stumped closer to the struggling men, both too preoccupied to notice her or the knives in her hands. She blotted her bleeding face on her gorgeous purple sleeve, and teetered, and waited.

It wasn't long. She felt Brigan and saw him almost at the same time, saw him yank the balcony door open and Gentian fall out through the opening, saw Gentian surge back in again, but different now, because his mind was gone, he was just a body now, a dagger was in his back, and Brigan was pushing him violently to get him out of the way and to give Gunner a thing to trip over as Brigan descended with his sword.

It was a horrible thing to watch, actually, Brigan killing Gunner. He smashed his sword hilt into Gunner's face, so hard Gunner's face changed shape. He kicked Gunner full onto his back and, his expression smooth and focused, drove his sword into Gunner's heart. That was it, it was so quick, and so brutal, and then he was upon her, worried, helping her to the sofa, finding a cloth for her face, all too fast for her to take control of the horror she was sending out to him.

He felt it, and understood it. His own face closed. His inspection of her injuries changed to something clinical and emotionless.

She caught his sleeve. "It startled me," she whispered. "That's all."

There was shame in his eyes. She held tighter to his sleeve.

"I won't let you be ashamed before me," she said. "Please, Brigan. We're the same. What I do only looks less horrible." And, she added, understanding it only as she said it, even if this part of you frightens me, I have no choice but to like it, for it's a part of you that will keep you safe in the war. I want you to live. I want you to kill those who would kill you.

He didn't say anything. But after a moment he leaned in again to touch the bones of her cheek and chin, gently, no longer avoiding her eyes, and she knew he accepted what she'd said. He cleared his throat. "Your nose is broken," he said. "I can set it for you."

"Yes, all right. Brigan, there's a laundry chute outside, just down the hall. We need to find sheets or something to wrap up the bodies, and you need to carry them to the chute and drop them in. I'll tell Welkley to clear all the servants out of the northernmost laundry room and to get ready to deal with an enormous mess. We have to hurry."

"Yes, good plan," Brigan said. He took tight hold of the back of her head. "Try to keep still." And then he grasped her face and did something that hurt far more than Gunner's blow had, and Fire cried out, and battled him with both her fists.

"All right," he gasped, letting go of her face and catching her arms, though not before she hit him hard in the side of the head. "I'm sorry, Fire. It's done. Sit back and let me handle the bodies. You need to rest, so you can guide us through what's left tonight." He jumped up and disappeared into the bedroom.

"What's left," Fire murmured, still crying slightly from the pain. She leaned on the armrest of the sofa and breathed until the ache of her face receded and stabilised, joining the blunt throbbing rhythm of the misery of her head. Slowly, softly, she pushed her mind to travel all around the palace and the grounds, touching on Murgda, touching on Murgda's and Gentian's people, touching on their allies, latching onto Quislam and his wife. She found Welkley and conveyed her instructions.

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.

In 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.