The battles of the southern front were waged on the land and in the caves bounded by Gentian's holding, Fort Flood, and the Winged River. Whatever ground the commander had managed to win or lose, the fort itself was still under royal control. Rising high on an outcrop of rock, surrounded by walls almost as tall as its roofs, it functioned as the army's headquarters and hospital.
Clara came running to them as they entered the gates. She stood beside Neel's horse as the guards unstrapped Fire, lowered her to the ground, and unwrapped her from her blankets. Clara was crying, and when she embraced Fire and kissed her face, taking care not to jar Fire's hands, which were still tied to her body, Fire sank numbly against her. She wished she could wrap her arms around this woman who cried for Archer and whose belly was round with Archer's baby. She wished she could melt into her.
"Oh, Fire," Clara finally said, "we've been out of our minds with worry. Brigan leaves tonight for the northern front. It'll relieve him greatly to see you alive before he goes."
"No," Fire said, pulling suddenly away from Clara, and startled by her own feeling. "Clara, I don't want to see him. Tell him I wish him well, but I don't want to see him."
"Oh," Clara said, taken aback. "Well. Are you certain? Because I can't think how we're going to stop him, once he returns from the tunnels and learns you're here."
The tunnels. Fire sensed her own rising panic. "My hands," she said, focusing on a more isolated pain. "Is there a healer with the time to attend to them?"
The fingers of her right hand were pinkish and puffy and blistered, like hunks of raw poultry. Fire stared at them, tired and sick, until she sensed that the healer was cheered by their appearance. "It's too soon to know for sure," the woman said, "but we have grounds for hope."
She smoothed a salve into the hand very, very gently, wrapped it in loose bandages, and unwrapped the other hand, humming.
The outer two fingers on Fire's left hand were black and dead-looking from the tips all the way down to the second knuckles.
The healer, no longer humming, asked if it was true what she'd heard, that Fire was an accomplished fiddler. "Well," the woman said. "All we can do now is watch them, and wait."
She gave Fire a pill and a liquid to swallow, applied the salve, and wrapped bandages around the hand. "Stay here," she said. She bustled out of the small, dark room, which had a smoky fire in the grate and shutters over the windows to hold in the heat.
Fire had a vague memory of a time when she had been better at ignoring things it was no use to consider. She had been in control once, and had not sat dismal and wretched on examination tables while the entirety of her guard stood watching her with a sympathetic sort of bleakness.
And then she felt Brigan coming, an enormous moving force of emotion: concern, relief, reassurance, too intense for Fire to bear. She began to gasp; she was drowning. As he came into the room she slid off the table and ran into a corner.
No, she thought to him. I don't want you here. No.
"Fire," he said. "What is it? Please tell me."
Please, you must go away. Please, Brigan, I beg you.
"Leave us," Brigan said quietly to the guard.
No! I need them!
"Stay," Brigan said in the same tone of voice, and her guard, which by now had developed a high threshold for bewilderment, turned around and filed back into the room.
Fire, Brigan thought to her. Have I done something to make you angry?
No. Yes, yes, you have, she thought wildly. You never liked Archer. You don't care that he's dead.
That is untrue, he thought to her with utter certainty. I had my own regard for Archer, and besides, it hardly matters, because you love him, and I love you, and your grief brings me grief. There is nothing in Archer's death but sadness.
That's why you must go, she thought to him. There's nothing in this but sadness.
There was a noise in the doorway and a man's harsh voice. "Commander, we're ready."
"I'm coming," Brigan said over his shoulder. "Wait for me outside. "
The man left.
Go, Fire thought to Brigan. Don't keep them waiting.
I will not leave you like this, he thought.
I won't look at you, she thought, pressing at the wall clumsily with her bandaged hands. I don't want to see your new battle scars.
He came to her in her corner, the stubborn, steady feeling of him unchanged. He touched his hand to her right shoulder and bent his face to her left ear, his stubble rough and his face cold against hers and the feel of him achingly familiar, and suddenly she was leaning back against him, her arms awkwardly embracing his left arm, stiff with leathered armour, and pulling it around her.
"You're the one with new scars," he said very quietly, so that only she could hear.
"Don't go," she said. "Please don't go."
"I desperately want not to go. But you know that I must."
"I don't want to love you if you're only going to die," she cried, burying her face in his arm. "I don't love you."
"Fire," he said. "Will you do something for me? Will you send me word on the northern front, so I know how you're faring?"
"I don't love you."
"Does that mean you won't send word?"
"No," she said confusedly. "Yes. I'll send word. But – "
"Fire," he said gently, beginning to untangle himself from her. "You must feel what you feel. I – "
Another voice, sharp with impatience, interrupted from the doorway. "Commander! The horses are standing."
Brigan spun around to face the man, swearing with as much exasperation and fury as Fire had ever heard anyone swear. The man scuttled away in alarm.
"I love you," Brigan said very calmly to Fire's back. "I hope in the coming days it may comfort you to know that. And all I ask of you is that you try to eat, Fire, and sleep, no matter how you feel. Eat and sleep. And send me word, so I know how you are. Tell me if there's anyone, or anything, I can send to you."
Go safely. Go safely, she thought to him as he left the building and his convoy pounded through the gates.
What a silly, empty thing it was to say to anyone, anywhere.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Fire guessed that there was little for a person with no hands to do at Fort Flood. Clara was busy with Brigan's captains and a constant stream of messengers, and Garan rarely even showed his face, scowling in his customary manner when he did. Fire avoided them, as she avoided the room where endless rows of soldiers lay suffering.
She was not permitted to step outside the walls of the fortress. She divided her time between two places: the bedroom she shared with Clara, Musa, and Margo, feigning sleep whenever Clara entered, for Clara asked too many questions about Archer. And the heavily guarded roof of the fort, where she stood in a warm hooded cloak, hands enclosed safely in her armpits, and communed with the grey dappled horse.
The mare – for Fire was clear-minded enough now to know she was a mare – was living on the rocks north of the building. She had broken away from Fire's group as they'd approached the fort and, despite the attempts of the horsemaster, would not consent to being stabled along with the other horses. Fire refused to allow anyone to subdue her with drugs, nor would Fire herself compel the horse into confinement. The horsemaster had thrown his arms in the air in disgust. This horse was obviously an uncommonly fine animal, but he was up to his elbows in injured horses and cast shoes and broken field harnesses, and had no time to waste on a recalcitrant.