"Murgda may still light this fire Gentian spoke of," Brigan was saying. "They may still try to kill Nash. You must all increase your vigilance. At a certain point it might be wise if Murgda's and Gentian's thugs began to disappear, do you understand me?" He turned to Fire. "How best for you to leave this room?"
Fire forced herself to consider the question. "The way I came. I'll call a cart and take the lift, and climb the ladder to my window." And then she had a night of the same work ahead of her: monitoring Murgda and everyone else, and telling Welkley, the guard – everyone – who was where, who must be stopped, and who must be killed, so that Brigan could ride to Fort Flood and his messengers could ride north and no one would learn enough about anything to know to try to pursue them, and no one would light any fires.
"You're crying," Clara said. "It'll only make your nose worse."
"Not real tears," Fire said. "Just exhaustion."
"Poor thing," Clara said. "I'll come to your rooms later and help you through this night. And now you must go, Brigan. Is the hallway clear?"
"I need a minute," Brigan said to Clara. "A single minute alone with the lady."
Clara's eyebrows shot up. She glided into the next room wordlessly.
Brigan went and shut the door behind her, then turned around to face Fire. "Lady," he said. "I have a request for you. If I should die in this war – "
Fire's tears were real now, and there was no helping them, for there was no time. Everything was moving too fast. She crossed the room to him, put her arms around him, clung to him, turning her face to the side, learning all at once that it was awkward to show a person all of one's love when one's nose was broken.
His arms came around her tightly, his breath short and hard against her hair. He held on to the silk of her hair and she pressed herself against him until her panic calmed to something desperate, but bearable.
Yes, she thought to him, understanding now what he'd been about to ask. If you die in the war, I'll keep Hanna in my heart. I promise I won't leave her.
It was not easy letting go of him; but she did, and he was gone.
In the cart on the way back to her rooms, Fire's tears stopped. She'd reached a point of such absolute numbness that everything, save a single living thread holding her mind to the palace, stopped. It was almost like sleeping, like a senseless, stupefying nightmare.
And so, when she stepped out of the window onto the rope ladder and heard a strange bleating on the ground below – and listened, and heard a yip, and recognised Blotchy, who sounded as if he were in some kind of pain – it was not intelligence that led her to climb down toward Blotchy, rather than up to her rooms and the safety of her guards. It was dumb bleariness that sent her downward, a dull, dumb need to make sure the dog was all right.
The sleet had turned to a light snowfall, and the grounds of the green house glowed, and Blotchy was not all right. He lay on the green house path, crying, his two front legs flopping and broken.
And his feeling contained more than pain. He was afraid, and he was trying to push himself by his back legs toward the tree, the enormous tree in the side yard.
This was not right. Something was very wrong here, something eerie and bewildering. Fire searched the darkness wildly, stretched her mind into the green house. Her grandmother was sleeping inside. So were a number of guards, which was all wrong, for the green house night guards were not meant to sleep.
And then Fire cried out in distress, for under the tree she felt Hanna, awake, and too cold, and not alone, someone with her, someone angry who was hurting her, and making her angry, and frightening her.
Fire stumbled, ran toward the tree, reaching desperately for the mind of the person hurting Hanna, to stop him. Help me, she thought to the guards up in her room. Help Hanna.
A sense of the foggy-minded archer flashed across her consciousness. Something sharp stung her chest.
Her mind went black.
Part Three
A Graceling
Chapter Twenty-Six
She woke to the screeching of a raptor monster, and human voices raised in alarm. The floor was lurching and creaking. A carriage, cold and wet.
"It's her blood," yelled a familiar voice. "The raptors smell her blood. Wash her, cover her, I don't care how, just do it – "
Men and raptors still screaming, a struggle above her. Water pouring onto her face, choking her, someone wiping at her nose, the pain so blinding that her mind spun around her and whirled her into darkness. Hanna? Hanna, are you –
She woke again, still crying out to Hanna, as if her mind had suspended itself in mid-cry waiting for her consciousness to return. Are you there, Hanna? Are you there?
No response came to her, no feeling of the child anywhere she could reach.
Her arm was trapped crookedly under her torso, her neck stiff and twisted, her face throbbing, and cold, cold was everywhere.
There were men in this carriage. She scrabbled among their minds for one who might be kind, who might bring her a blanket. Six men, stupid, bubbling with fog, one of them the archer with a habit of killing his friends. And the boy was here, too, the red-eyed, pale boy who made the fog, with the unreachable mind and the voice that hurt her brain. Hadn't Archer gone after this boy and this archer? Archer? Archer? Are you anywhere?
The floor tilted, and she became colder and wetter, and understood that she lay in a puddle of water that shifted and rocked with the floor. Everywhere she could hear the slap of water. And there were large creatures under the carriage. She could feel them.
They were fish.
This carriage was a boat.
I'm being stolen away, she thought wonderingly, in a boat. But I can't be. I need to go back to the palace, I need to watch Lady Murgda. The war. Brigan. Brigan needs me! I've got to get out of this boat!
A man near her gasped something. He was rowing, he was exhausted, he was complaining of blistered hands.
"You're not tired," the boy said tonelessly. "Your hands don't hurt. Rowing is fun." He sounded bored as he said it, and thoroughly unconvincing, but Fire could feel the men experience a collective surge of enthusiasm. The creaking sound, which she recognised now as oars in oarlocks, increased its pace.
He was powerful, and she was weak. She needed to steal his foggy men away from him. But could she, while numb with pain and cold, and confusion?
The fish. She must reach for the fish lumbering enormously beneath her and urge them to the surface to capsize the boat.
A fish threw its back against the boat's underside. The men yelled, pitching sideways, dropping oars. Another hard blow, men falling and cursing, and then the boy's horrible voice.
"Jod," he said. "Shoot her again. She's awake and this is her doing."
Something sharp pricked her thigh. And it was well enough, she thought as she slipped into blackness. It wouldn't solve anything to drown them if she drowned too.
She woke, and groped for the mind of the rower nearest the boy. She stabbed at the fog she found there, and took hold. She compelled the man to stand, drop his oar, and punch the boy in the face.
The boy's scream was terrible, scratching like claws across her brain.
"Shoot her, Jod," he gasped. "No, her. Shoot the monster bitch."
Of course, she thought to herself as the dart pierced her skin. It's the archer I need control of. I'm not thinking. They've muddied my mind so I can't think.