He heard her, or felt her, beside him. He reached rather absently for her other hand, stared into it, tracing the living skin at the base of her dead fingers. "You have a reputation among the soldiers," he said. "Not just the injured soldiers – you've developed a reputation that's spread through the entire army. Did you know? They're saying the beauty of you is so powerful, and the mind of you so warm and insistent and strong, that you can call people back from death."
Fire spoke quietly. "There are many people who've died. I've tried to hold on, but still they let go."
Nash sighed and gave her back her hand. He tilted his face up to the stars. "We're going to win this war, you know," he said, "now that our army's together. But the world doesn't care who wins. It'll go on spinning, no matter how many people are slaughtered tomorrow. No matter if you and I are slaughtered." After a moment, he added, "I almost wish it wouldn't, if we aren't allowed to go on spinning with it."
Most soldiers in the camp were sleeping by the time Fire and her guard left the healing rooms and crossed again to the command tents. She stepped through the flap of Brigan's office to find him standing at a table covered with diagrams, rubbing his head while five men and three women argued a point about archers and arrows and wind patterns on Marble Rise.
If Brigan's captains did not notice her unobtrusive entry at first, they came to notice, for the tent, though large, was not so mammoth that seven newcomers could hang back in the corners. The argument dissipated and turned to stares.
"Captains," Brigan said with obvious fatigue. "Let this be the only time I ever have to remind you of your manners."
Eight sets of eyes spun back to the table.
"Lady Fire," Brigan said. He sent her a question. How are you?
Exhausted.
Enough for sleep?
I think so.
I'll be at this for a while yet. Perhaps you should sleep while you can.
No, I'll wait for you.
You could sleep here.
Would you wake me when you're through?
Yes.
Promise?
Yes.
Fire paused. I don't suppose there's any way for me to walk into your sleeping quarters without everyone watching?
A quick smile came and went across Brigan's face. "Captains," he said, cutting his attention back to his officers, who had been trying their hardest to bore their eyes into the diagrams on the table despite their suspicions that the commander and the monster were engaged in some outlandish manner of silent conversation. "Kindly step outside for three minutes."
First Brigan dismissed the majority of Fire's guard. Then he escorted Musa, Margo, and Fire through the flap that led to his sleeping tent, and lit the braziers so they wouldn't be cold.
She woke to the light of a candle and the feel of Brigan near. Musa and Margo were gone. She turned under her blankets and saw him sitting on a chest, watching her, his features plain and dear, and soft in the candlelight. She couldn't help the tears that sprang to her eyes from the feeling of him alive.
"Did you say my name?" she whispered, remembering what had woken her.
"Yes."
"Will you come to bed?"
"Fire," he said. "Will you forgive me if your beauty is a comfort?"
She propped herself on an elbow, looking back at him, astonished. "Will you forgive me if I take my strength from yours?"
"You may always have whatever strength I have. But you're the strong one, Fire. Right now I don't feel strong."
"I think," she said, "that sometimes we don't feel the things that we are. But others can feel them. I feel your strength." And then she saw that his cheeks were wet.
She had been sleeping in a shirt of his she had found, and her own thick socks. She crawled from his bed and padded across the damp floor to him. Barelegged and wet-footed, she climbed into his lap. He took her up, cold and shaking, clinging to her. His breath was ragged. "I'm sorry, Fire. I'm sorry about Archer."
She could feel that it was more. She could feel how much in the world he was sorry for, and how much anguish, grief, and exhaustion he was carrying. "Brigan," she whispered. "None of this is your fault. Do you understand me? It's not your fault."
She held him tightly, pulled him into the softness of her body so that he could feel the comfort of her while he cried. She repeated it in whispers, kisses, and feeling. Not your fault. This is not your fault. I love you. I love you, Brigan.
After some time, he seemed to cry himself out. Holding her numbly, he came aware of her kisses, and began to return them. The pain in his feeling turned into a need that she also felt. He consented to be led to bed.
She woke, blinking her eyes against a torch's violent light, held over her by a man she recognised as one of Brigan's squires. Behind her Brigan stirred. "Eyes on me, Ander," he snarled in a voice very awake and very unambiguous about its expectations of being obeyed.
"I'm sorry, sir," the man said. "I have a letter, sir."
"From whom?"
"Lord Mydogg, sir. The messenger said it's urgent."
"What time is it?"
"Half past four."
"Wake the king and my four first captains, take them into my office, and wait for me there. Light the lamps."
"What is it?" Fire whispered as the soldier named Ander lit a candle for them and left. "Does Mydogg always send letters in the middle of the night?"
"This is the first," Brigan said, searching for his clothes. "I expect I know the occasion."
Fire reached for her own clothing and pulled it under the blankets so she could dress without exposing her skin to freezing air. "What's the occasion?"
He stood and fastened his trousers. "Love, you don't have to get up for this. I can come back and tell you what it's about."
"Do you think Mydogg's asking for some kind of meeting?"
In the glow of the candle he glanced at her keenly, mouth tight. "I do."
"Then I should be involved."
He sighed shortly. He slapped his sword belt around his waist and reached for his shirt. "Yes, you should."
A meeting was, indeed, what Mydogg wanted; a meeting to discuss terms of compromise with Brigan and Nash, so that all might avoid a battle that promised to be the most devastating the war had yet seen. Or at least, this was what it said in his letter.
Their breath turned to fog in the cold air of Brigan's office. "It's a trick," Brigan said, "or a trap. I don't believe Mydogg would ever agree to a compromise. Nor do I believe he cares how many people die."
"He knows that we match him in numbers now," Nash said. "And far exceed him in horses, which finally matters, now that it's water on the rocks instead of ice and snow."
One of the captains, small and terse and trying not to shiver, crossed his arms. "And he knows the mental advantage our soldiers will have with their commander and their king leading them into battle together."
Brigan rubbed his hair frustratedly. "For the first time, he sees that he's going to lose. So he's setting some sort of trap, and calling it compromise."
"Yes," Nash said. "The meeting is a trap. But what are we to do, Brigan? You know what the cost of this battle will be, and our enemy claims to put forth an alternative. Are we to refuse to consider it?"
The meeting took place on the plain of rock that stretched between both camps. The sun rose on Lord Mydogg, Lady Murgda's Pikkian husband, Brigan, and Nash, making long shadows that shifted in a gloss of water. Some distance behind Mydogg and his brother-in-law a small guard of bowmen stood at attention, arrows drawn and notched. Behind Brigan and Nash a guard of bowmen did the same, the symmetry disturbed by Fire's presence, with six of her own guard, in a group behind Brigan's. Mydogg, the brother-in-law, Brigan, and Nash stood close together. This was intentional. Each was protected from his enemy's bowmen by his enemy.