"Would you marry me, Fire, if I slept in no one's bed but yours?"
He knew the answer to that, but it didn't hurt to remind him. "No, and I should find my bed quite cramped."
Archer laughed and kissed her hand, then released it ceremoniously; and Fire picked up her knife and fork, smiling. Shaking her head in disbelief, Roen turned aside to take a note from an approaching servant. "Ah," she said, reading the note and frowning. "It's good that you're going. Lord Mydogg and Lady Murgda are on their way."
"On their way?" Fire said. "You mean they're coming here?"
"Just for a visit."
"A visit! Surely you don't visit each other?"
"Oh, it's all a farce, of course," Roen said, waving her hand tiredly.
"Their way of showing that the royal family doesn't intimidate them, and our way of pretending that we're open to dialogue. They come and I have to let them in, because if I refuse them, it'll be taken as a hostile gesture and they'll have an excuse to come back with their army. We sit across from each other, we drink wine, they ask me nosy questions that I don't answer about Nash and Brigan and the royal twins, they tell me secrets their own spies have supposedly learned about Gentian, information that either I already know or they've fabricated. They pretend that the king's real enemy is Gentian, and that Nash should ally with Mydogg against Gentian. I pretend it's a good idea and suggest that Mydogg pass his army over to Brigan's use as a show of faith. Mydogg refuses; we agree we've reached an impasse; Mydogg and Murgda take their leave, poking their noses into as many rooms as they can on the way out."
Archer's eyebrows were looking skeptical. "Isn't this sort of thing a bit more risky than it's worth? For everyone?"
"They're coming at a good time – Brigan just left me all those soldiers. And when they're here, we're all so heavily guarded every minute that I don't suppose either side would ever try anything, for fear of all of us getting killed. I'm as safe as I ever am. But," she added, studying both of them gravely, "I want you to depart tomorrow at first light. I won't have you meeting them – there's no reason to get you and Brocker tangled up in Mydogg's nonsense, Archer. And I don't want them to see Fire."
It was almost achieved. In fact, Fire, Archer, and their guards had travelled some distance from Roen's fortress and were just about to turn off onto a different path when the party from the north approached. Twenty rather fearsome soldiers – chosen because they had the aspects of pirates, with broken teeth and scars? Big and paleish, some of them. Pikkian? And a tough-looking man and woman who had the aura of a winter wind. Easily brother and sister, both squat and thin-lipped and icy in their expressions, until their eyes combed Fire's party and settled, with genuine and uncalculated amazement, on Fire herself.
The siblings glanced at each other. Some silent understanding passed between them.
"Come," Archer muttered, motioning to his guards and Fire to move on. The parties clattered past each other without even a greeting.
Oddly rattled, Fire touched Small's mane, stroking his rough hair. The lord and lady had been only names before, a dot on the Dellian map and a certain unknown quantity of soldiers. Now they were real, and solid, and cold.
She had not liked the glance they'd shared at the sight of her. Nor did she care for the feeling of their hard eyes on her back as Small carried her away.
Chapter Nine
It happened again: only days after Fire and Archer returned home, another man was found trespassing in Archer's forest, a stranger. When the soldiers brought him in, Fire sensed the same mental fog she'd sensed with the poacher. And then before Fire could even begin to consider whether and how to use her power to wangle information from him, an arrow came through the open window, straight into the middle of Archer's guard room, and struck the trespasser between the shoulder blades. Archer threw himself on top of Fire, dragging her down. The trespasser toppled and fell beside her, a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. His empty mind fizzled into no mind at all, and from her crushed position on the floor, soldiers' feet yanking at her hair and Archer yelling orders above her, she reached for the archer who'd made the shot.
He was faint, a good distance away, but she found him. She tried to grasp hold of him but a boot trod on her finger and the explosion of pain distracted her. When she reached for him again he was gone.
He's run west into Trilling's woods, she thought to Archer, because she had no breath to speak. And his mind is as blank as the others.
Her finger was not broken, only beastly sore when she moved it. It was the second finger on her left hand so she put off playing harp and flute for a day or two, but she refused to spare herself when it came to her fiddle. She'd been without the instrument for too long. She simply tried not to think of the pain, because every stab of pain was accompanied now by a stab of vexation. Fire was tired of being injured.
She sat in her bedroom one day, playing a cheerful tune, a song for dancing, but something in her mood slowed the tempo and discovered sad parts in it. Eventually she found herself switching to a different song altogether, one that was manifestly sorrowful, and her fiddle cried out its feeling.
Fire stopped and lowered the instrument to her lap. She stared at it, then hugged it against her chest like a baby, wondering what was wrong with her.
She had an image in her head of Cansrel in the moment he had given her this fiddle. "I'm told this has a nice sound, darling," he'd said, holding it out to her almost carelessly, as if it were an inconsequential bit of rubbish that had not cost him a small fortune. She'd taken it, appreciative of its handsomeness but knowing that its real value would depend upon its tone and feeling, neither of which Cansrel could be any judge of. She'd drawn her bow across its strings as an experiment. The fiddle had responded instantly, wanting her touch, speaking to her in a gentle voice that she'd understood and recognised.
A new friend in her life.
She'd been unable to hide her pleasure from Cansrel. His own gladness had swelled.
"You're astonishing, Fire," he'd said. "You're a constant source of wonder to me. I'm never more happy than when I've made you happy. Isn't it peculiar?" he'd said, laughing. "Do you really like it, darling?"
In her chair in her room, Fire forced herself to look around at the windows and walls and take stock of the present. The light was fading. Archer would be coming back soon from the fields, where he was helping with the plowing. He might have some news about the ongoing search for the archer. Or Brocker might have a letter from Roen with updates about Mydogg and Murgda, or Gentian, or Brigan, or Nash.
She found her longbow and quiver and, shaking off memories like loose hairs, left her house in search of Archer and Brocker.
There was no news. There were no letters.
One monthly bleeding passed for Fire, with all its attendant aches and embarrassments. Everyone in her house, in Archer's house, and in the town knew what it signified whenever she stepped outside with an entourage of guards. Eventually another passed like the first. Summer was near. The farmers were willing potatoes and carrots to take hold in the rocky ground.
Her lessons progressed much as usual.
"Stop, I implore you," she said one day at Trilling's, interrupting an earsplitting clamour of flutes and horns. "Let's begin again at the top of the page, shall we? And, Trotter," she begged the eldest boy, "try not to blow so hard; I guarantee you, that shrieking noise is from blowing too hard. All right? Ready?"
The enthusiastic massacre began once more. She did love the children. Children were one of her small joys, even when they were fiends to each other; even when they imagined they were hiding things from her, like their own idleness or, in some cases, their talent. Children were smart and malleable. Time and patience made them strong and stopped them fearing her or adoring her too much. And their frustrations were familiar to her, and dear.