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.