That summer at Nash's court, an arrow from the bow of one of Brigan's most trusted captains had struck Cansrel in the back. At the start of her fifteenth year – on her fourteenth birthday, in fact – Fire had word from King's City that her father was injured and likely to die. She'd closed herself in her room and sobbed, not even knowing, for sure, what she was sobbing about, but unable to stop. She'd pressed her face against a pillow so that no one could hear.
Of course, King's City was known for its healers, for its advances in medicine and surgery. People there survived injuries people died of elsewhere. Especially people with the power to command an entire hospital's attention.
Some weeks later Fire had received the news that Cansrel was going to live. She'd run to her room again. She'd crawled onto her bed, utterly numb. As the numbness had worn off something sour had risen in her stomach and she'd begun to vomit. A vessel had burst in her eye, a blood bruise forming at the edge of her pupil.
Her body could be a powerful communicator sometimes, when her mind was trying to ignore a particular truth. Exhausted and sick, Fire had understood her body's message: it was time to reconsider the question of just how far her power over Cansrel could reach.
Lurched into wakefulness again by the same tired dreams, Fire kicked her blankets away. She covered her hair, found boots and weapons, and crept past Margo and Mila. Outside, most of the army slept under canvas roofs, but her guard lay in the open, arranged again around her tent. Under the vast sky, magnificent with stars, Musa and three others played cards in the light of a candle, as they had the night before. Fire held onto the tent opening to counter the vertigo she felt when she looked up at that sky.
"Lady Fire," Musa said. "What can we do for you?"
"Musa," Fire said. "I'm afraid you have the misfortune of guarding an insomniac."
Musa laughed. "Is it another climb tonight, Lady?"
"Yes, with my apologies."
"We're glad for it, Lady."
"I expect you're saying that to ease my guilt."
"No, truly, Lady. The commander wanders at night too, and he won't consent to a guard, even when the king orders it. If we're out with you we have an excuse to keep an eye on him."
"I see," Fire said, perhaps a bit sardonically. "Fewer guards tonight," she added, but Musa ignored this and woke as many as she'd woken the night before.
"It's orders," Musa said, as the men sat up blearily and strapped on their weapons.
"And if the commander doesn't follow the king's orders, why should you follow the commander's?"
Her question generated more than one set of raised eyebrows. "Lady," Musa said, "the soldiers in this army would follow the commander off a cliff if he asked it."
Fire was beginning to feel irritable. "How old are you, Musa?"
"Thirty-one."
"Then the commander should be a child to you."
"And you an infant, Lady," Musa said dryly, surprising a smile onto Fire's face. "We're ready. You lead the way."
She headed toward the same mound of rock she'd climbed earlier, because it would bring her closer to the sky and because she sensed it would also bring her guard closer to the insomniac they weren't supposed to be guarding. He was among those boulders somewhere, and the rise was broad enough that they could share it without meeting.
She found a high, flat rock to sit on. Her guard scattered themselves around her. She closed her eyes and let the night wash over her, hoping that after this she'd be weary enough for sleep.
She didn't move at the sense of Brigan's approach, but at the retreat of her guard she opened her eyes. He'd propped himself against a rock several paces from her. He was looking at the stars.
"Lady," he said in greeting.
"Lord Prince," she said, quietly.
He leaned there for a moment, gaze tilted upward, and Fire wondered if this was to be the extent of their conversation. "Your horse is named Small," he said finally, startling her with the randomness of it.
"Yes."
"Mine is named Big."
And now Fire was smiling. "The black mare? Is she very big?"
"Not to my eyes," Brigan said, "but I did not name her."
Fire remembered the source of Small's name. Indeed, she could never forget the man Cansrel had abused for her sake. "An animal smuggler gave Small his name. A brutish man called Cutter. He thought any horse that didn't respond well to flogging was small-minded. "
"Ah. Cutter," Brigan said, as if he knew the man; which, after all, should not be surprising, as Cansrel and Nax had probably shared suppliers. "Well, I've seen what your horse is capable of. Obviously he's not small-minded."
It was a dirty trick, his continued kindness to her horse. Fire took a moment to swallow her gratitude, all out of proportion, she knew, because she was lonesome. She decided to change the subject. "You can't sleep?"
He turned his face away from her, laughed shortly. "Sometimes at night my head spins."
"Dreams?"
"I don't get close enough to sleep for that. Worries."
Cansrel used to lull her to sleep sometimes, on sleepless nights. If Brigan would ever let her, if he would ever in a million years, she could ease his worries for him; she could help the commander of the King's Army fall asleep. It would be an honourable use of her power, a practical one. But she knew better than to suggest it.
"And you?" Brigan said. "You seem to do a lot of nighttime rambling."
"I have bad dreams."
"Dreams of pretend terrors? Or things that are true?"
"True," she said, "always. I've always had dreams of horrible things that are true."
He was quiet. He rubbed the back of his head. "It's hard to wake from a nightmare when the nightmare is real," he said, his mind giving her nothing, still, of what he was feeling; but in his voice and his words she heard a thing that felt like sympathy.
"Good night to you, Lady," he said a moment later. He turned and retreated to the lower ground of the camp.
Her guard trickled into place around her. She raised her face to the stars again and closed her eyes.
After about a week of riding with the First Branch, Fire fell into a routine – if a continuum of unsettling experiences could be called a routine.
Watch out! She thought to her guards one morning at breakfast as they wrestled a man to the ground who'd come running at her with a sword. Here comes another fellow with the same idea. Oh, dear, she added. I also sense a pack of wolf monsters at our western side.
"Inform one of the hunting captains of the wolves, if you please, Lady," Musa gasped, yanking at her quarry's feet and yelling at three or four guards to go punch the new attacker in the nose.
It was hard on Fire never to be allowed to be alone. Even on nights when sleep felt near, she continued her late walks with her guard, because it was the closest she could get to solitude. Most nights she crossed paths with the commander and they exchanged a few quiet lines of conversation. He was surprisingly easy to talk to.
"You let some men through your mental defences intentionally, Lady," Brigan said to her one night. "Don't you?"
"Some of them take me by surprise," she said, her back resting against rock and her eyes on the sky.
"Yes, all right," he said. "But when a soldier marches across the entire camp with his hand on his knife and his mind wide open, you know he's coming, and in most cases you could change his intentions and turn him around if you wanted to. If that man tries to attack you, it's because you've allowed it."