"She is lovely," the boy said disinterestedly. "You shouldn't sell her. You should keep her here with us."
Cutter's forehead creased with puzzlement. "The rumour among my colleagues is that Lord Mydogg is prepared to pay a fortune for her. In fact, a number of my buyers have shown particular interest. But perhaps I should keep her here with us." His expression brightened. "I could breed her! What a price her babies would fetch."
"What we do with her remains to be seen," the boy said.
"Precisely," Cutter said. "Remains to be seen."
"If she would only behave herself," the boy continued, "then we wouldn't have to punish her, and she might understand that we want to be friends. She might find she likes it here. Speaking of which, she's a bit too quiet for my tastes at the moment. Jod, draw an arrow. If I command it, shoot her someplace painful that won't kill her. Shoot her in the knee. It might be to our advantage to hobble her."
This was not the job for a small dart bow. Jod swung his longbow from his back, pulled a white arrow from his quiver, and drew smoothly on a string most men wouldn't even have the strength to draw. He held the notched arrow, waiting, calm and easy. And Fire was slightly sick, and it was not because she knew that an arrow of that size shot with that bow at this range would shatter her knee. She was sick because Jod moved with his bow as if it were a limb of his body, so natural and graceful, and too much like Archer.
She spoke to placate the boy, but also because there were beginning to be questions to which she wanted answers. "An archer shot a man imprisoned in my father's cages last spring," she said to Jod. "It was an uncommonly difficult shot. Were you that archer?"
Jod had no idea what she was talking about, that was plain. He shook his head, wincing, as if he were trying to remember all the things he'd ever done and could go back no further than yesterday.
"He's your man," the boy said blandly. "Jod does all our shooting. Far too talented to be wasted. And so delightfully malleable," he said, tapping a fingertip to his own head, "if you know what I mean. One of my luckiest finds, Jod."
"And what is Jod's history?" Fire asked the boy, trying to match his bland tone.
The boy seemed delighted all out of proportion with this question. He smiled a very pleased, and unpleasant, smile. "Interesting you should ask. Only weeks ago we had a visitor wondering the very same thing. Who knew, when we hired ourselves an archer, that he would come to be the subject of so much mystery and speculation? And I wish we could satisfy your curiosity, but it seems Jod's memory is not what it used to be. We've no idea what he was up to, what would it be, twenty-one years ago?"
Fire had taken a step toward the boy as he spoke, unable to prevent herself, clutching the dart hard in her hand. "Where is Archer?"
At this the boy smirked, more and more happy with this turn of conversation. "He left us. He didn't care for the company. He's gone back to his estate in the north."
He was a terrible liar, too used to people believing him. "Where is he?" Fire said again, her voice cracking now with a panic that made the boy smile wider.
"He left a couple of his guards behind," the boy said. "Kind of him, really. They were able to tell us a bit about your life at court, and your weaknesses. Puppies. Helpless children."
Several things happened in quick succession. Fire rushed toward the boy. The boy gestured to Jod, calling, "Shoot!" Fire smashed through Jod's fog, causing him to swing his bow wildly and release his arrow into the ceiling. The boy yelled, "Shoot her but don't kill her!" and hurtled himself away, trying to sidestep Fire, but Fire lunged at him, reached, just barely jabbed his flailing arm with her dart. He jumped away from her, swinging fists at her, still yelling; and then his face slackened. He tipped and slumped.
Fire had clamped hold of every mind in the room before the boy even hit the floor. She bent over him, yanked a knife from his belt, walked to Cutter, and pointed the shaking blade at Cutter's throat. Where is Archer? she thought, because speech had become impossible.
Cutter stared back at her, entranced and stupid. "He didn't care for the company. He's gone back to his estate in the north."
No, Fire thought, wanting to hit him in her frustration. Think. You know this. Where –
Cutter interrupted, squinting at her with puzzlement, as if he couldn't remember who she was, or why he was talking to her. He said, "Archer is with the horses."
Fire turned and left the room and the house. She glided past men who watched her progress with vacant eyes. Cutter is wrong, she told herself, preparing herself with denial. Archer is not with the horses. Cutter is wrong.
And, of course, this was true, for it was not Archer she found on the rocks behind the stable. It was only his body.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
What happened next passed in a blur of numbness and anguish.
It was a thing about being a monster. She couldn't look at a body and pretend she was looking at Archer. She knew, she could feel, that the fires of Archer's heart and mind were nowhere near. This body was a horrible thing, almost unrecognisable, lying there, mocking her, mocking Archer with its emptiness.
Nonetheless, this did not stop her dropping to her knees and stroking the cold arm of this body, over and over, breathing shallowly, not entirely sure what she was doing. Taking hold of the arm, clutching it, while confused tears ran down her face.
The sight of the arrow embedded in the body's stomach began to bring her a little too close to sensibility. An arrow shot into a man's stomach was cruel, its damage painful and slow. Archer had told her that long ago. He had taught her never to aim there.
She stood and turned away from this thinking, stumbled away, but it seemed to follow her across the yard. A great outdoor bonfire was alight between the stable and the house. She found herself standing before it, staring into the flames, fighting her mind, which seemed insistent that she contemplate the notion of Archer, dying, slowly, in pain. All alone.
At least her last words to him had been words of love. But she wished she'd told him just how much she loved him. How much she had to thank him for, how many good things he had done. She hadn't told him nearly enough.
She reached into the fire and took hold of a branch.
She was not entirely aware of carrying flaming branches to Cutter's green house. She wasn't aware of the men she commandeered to help her, or the trips back and forth stumbling from bonfire to house, house to bonfire. People ran frantically from the burning building. She might have spotted Cutter among them; she might have spotted Jod; she wasn't sure and she didn't care; she instructed them not to interfere. When she could no longer see the house from the black smoke billowing around it, she stopped carrying fire to it. She looked around for more of Cutter's buildings to burn.
She had mind enough to release the dogs and rodents before torching the sheds they lived in. She found the bodies of two of Archer's guards on the rocks near the predator monster cages. She took one of their bows and shot the monsters with it. She burned the men's bodies.
By the time she got to the stable the horses were panicking from the smoke and from the sounds of roaring flame, and shouting voices, and buildings falling apart. But they stilled as she entered – even the most frantic among them, even those who couldn't see her – and left their stalls when she told them to. Finally empty of horses, but full as it was of wood and hay, the stable blazed up like a mighty monster made of fire.
She bumbled around the perimeter to Archer's body. She watched, lungs hacking, until the flames reached him. Even when she could no longer see him she kept watching. When the smoke became so thick that she was choking on it, her throat burning from it, she turned her back on the fire she'd made, and walked away.