"The king's, Lady Fire."
Fire knew with utter certainty then that a man was in the king's compartments who should not be. Haste, fear of discovery, panic: it all came to her.
A confrontation was beyond her current strength even to consider; and then down the hall, in his own room, she sensed Archer. She grasped the servant girl's arm. "Run to Queen Roen and tell her a man is in the king's rooms who has no place there," she said.
"Yes, Lady. Thank you, Lady," the girl said, and scampered away. Fire continued down the hallway alone.
When she reached Archer's room she leaned in his doorway. He stood at the window and stared into the covered courtyard, his back to her. She tapped on his mind.
His shoulders stiffened. He spun around and stalked toward her, not once looking at her. He brushed past her and stormed on down the hall. The surprise of it made her dizzy.
It was for the best. She was not in a state to face him, if he was as angry as that.
She went into his room and sat on a chair, just for a moment, to still her throbbing head.
It took her ages to get to the stables, despite a number of helping hands; and when she saw Small she couldn't stop herself. She began to cry.
"Now, don't fret, Lady Fire," Roen's animal healer said. "It's all superficial wounds. He'll be right as a rainbow in a week's time."
Right as a rainbow, with his entire back half stitched together and bandaged and his head hanging low. He was happy to see her, even though it was her doing. He pressed himself against the stall door, and when she went inside he pressed himself against her.
"I reckon he's been worrying about you," the healer said. "He's perked up now you're here."
I'm sorry, Fire thought to him, her arms around his neck as best she could. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
She guessed that the fifty men would remain in the Little Greys until the Third Branch arrived and drove the raptor monsters high again. The stables would be quiet until then.
And so Fire stayed with Small, leaning against him, collecting his spit in her hair and using her mind to ease his own sense of his stinging pain.
She was curled up on a fresh bed of hay in the corner of Small's stall when Roen arrived.
"Lady," Roen said, standing outside the stall door, her eyes soft. "Don't move," she said as Fire tried to sit up. "The healer told me you should rest, and I suppose resting in here is the best we can hope for. Can I bring you anything?"
"Food?"
Roen nodded. "Anything else?"
"Archer?"
Roen cleared her throat. "I'll send Archer to you once I'm convinced he won't say something insufferable."
Fire swallowed. "He's never been this angry with me before."
Roen bent her face and considered her hands on the stall door. Then she came in and crouched before Fire. Just once she reached out and smoothed Fire's hair. She held a bit of it in her fingers, contemplating it carefully, very still on her knees in the hay, as if she were trying to work out the meaning of something. "Beautiful girl," she said. "You did a good thing today, whatever Archer thinks. Next time, mention it to someone beforehand so we're better prepared."
"Archer never would have let me do it."
"No. But I would have."
For a moment their eyes met. Fire understood that Roen meant what she said. She swallowed. "Any word from Grey Haven?"
"No, but the Third has been spotted from the lookout, so we may see our fifty men back as soon as this evening." Roen brushed off her lap and rose to her feet, all business again. "Incidentally, we found no one in the king's rooms. And if you insist on doting on your horse in this manner I suppose the least we can do is bring you pillows and blankets. Get some sleep in here, will you? Both of you, girl and horse. And I hope you'll tell me someday, Fire, why you did it."
With a swirl of skirts and a click of the latch, Roen was gone. Fire closed her eyes and considered the question.
She'd done it because she'd had to. An apology for the life of her father, who'd created a world of lawlessness where towns like Grey Haven fell under the attack of looters. And she'd done it to show Roen's son that she was on his side. And also to keep him alive.
Fire was asleep in her room that night when all fifty men clattered back from Grey Haven. The prince and the king wasted no time, departing south immediately with the Third. When Fire woke the next morning they were gone.
Chapter Eight
Cansrel had always let Fire into his mind to practise changing his thoughts. He'd encouraged it, as part of her training. She went, but every time it was like a waking nightmare.
She'd heard tales of fishermen who grappled for their lives with water monsters in the Winter Sea. Cansrel's mind was like an eel monster, cold, slick, and voracious. Whenever she reached for it she felt clammy coils wrapping around her and pulling her under. She struggled madly, first simply to take hold of it; then to transform it into something soft and warm. A kitten. A baby.
The warming of Cansrel's mind took enormous burning energy. Then calm, to soothe the bottomless appetite, and then she would begin to push at its nature with all her strength, to shape thoughts there that Cansrel would never have on his own. Pity for a trapped animal. Respect for a woman. Contentment. It required all her strength. A mind slippery and cruel resists change.
Cansrel never said so, but Fire believed his favourite drug was to have her in his mind, manhandling him into contentment. He was used to thrills, but contentment was a novelty, a state Cansrel seemed never to achieve except by her help. Warmth and softness two things that rarely touched him. He never, ever refused Fire when she asked permission to enter. He trusted her, for he knew that she used her power for good and never to harm.
He only forgot to take into consideration the broken line separating good from harm.
Today there was no entering Archer's mind. He was shutting Fire out. Not that it particularly mattered, for she never entered Archer's mind to alter it, only to test the waters, and she had no interest in the nature of his waters today. She was not going to apologise and she was not going to capitulate to the fight he wanted to have. Not that she would have to stretch far to find something to accuse him of. Condescension. Imperiousness. Obstinacy.
They sat at a square table with Roen and a number of Roen's spies discussing Fire's trespassing archer, the men the archer had shot, and the fellow Fire had sensed in the king's rooms yesterday.
"There are plenty of spies out there and plenty of archers," Roen's spymaster said, "though perhaps few as skilled as your mysterious archer seems to be. Lord Gentian and Lord Mydogg have built up whole squadrons of archers. And some of the kingdom's finest archers are in the employ of animal smugglers."
Yes, Fire remembered that. The smuggler Cutter had bragged of his archers. It was how he caught his merchandise, with darts tipped with sleeping poison.
"The Pikkians also have decent archers," another of Roen's men said. "And I know we like to think of them as clannish and simple, interested in nothing but boat-building, deep sea fishing, and the occasional sack of our border towns – but they follow our politics. They're not stupid, and they're not on the king's side. It's our taxes and our trade regulations that have kept them poor these thirty years."
"Mydogg's sister Murgda has just married a Pikkian," Roen said, "a naval explorer of the eastern seas. And we have reason to believe that lately Mydogg has been recruiting Pikkians into his Dellian army. And having some success at it."