Fire - Kristin Cashore [0]
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PART ONE - Monsters
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
PART TWO - Spies
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
PART THREE - A Graceling
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
PART FOUR - The Dells
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
EPILOGUE
Also by Kristin Cashore
Graceling
Fire
KRISTIN CASHORE
Orion
www.orionbooks.co.uk
Copyright © Kristin Cashore 2009
Map by Jeffery C. Matthison
All rights reserved
The right of Kristin Cashore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2009
by Gollancz
An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group
Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
eISBN : 978 0 5750 8675 3
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Typeset by Deltatype Ltd, Birkenhead, Merseyside
Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham, Kent
The Orion Publishing Group’s policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
www.orionbooks.co.uk
For my little sister Catherine, the (Corinthian) pillar of my heart
Dellian Lament
While I was looking the other way your fire went out
Left me with cinders to kick into dust
What a waste of the wonder you were
In my living fire I will keep your scorn and mine
In my living fire I will keep your heartache and mine
At the disgrace of a waste of a life
PROLOGUE
LARCH OFTEN THOUGHT that if it had not been for his newborn son, he never would have survived his wife Mikra’s death. It was half that the infant boy needed a breathing, functioning father who got out of bed in the mornings and slogged through the day; and it was half the child himself. Such a good-natured baby, so calm. His gurgles and coos so musical, and his eyes deep brown like the eyes of his dead mother.
Larch was a game warden on the riverside estate of a minor lord in the south-eastern kingdom of Monsea. When Larch returned to his quarters after a day in the saddle, he took the baby from the arms of the nursemaid almost jealously. Dirty, stinking of sweat and horses, he cradled the boy against his chest, sat in his wife’s old rocker, and closed his eyes. Sometimes he cried, tears painting clean stripes down a grimy face, but always quietly, so that he would not miss the sounds the child made. The baby watched him. The baby’s eyes soothed him. The nursemaid said it was unusual for a baby so young to have such focused eyes. ‘It’s not something to be happy about,’ she warned, ‘a child with strange eyes.’
Larch couldn’t find it within himself to worry. The nursemaid worried enough for two. Every morning she examined the baby’s eyes, as was the unspoken custom of all new parents in the seven kingdoms, and every morning she breathed more easily once she’d confirmed that nothing had changed. For the infant who fell asleep with both eyes the same colour and woke with eyes of two different colours was a Graceling; and in Monsea, as in most of the kingdoms, Graceling babies immediately became the property of the king. Their families rarely saw them again.
When the first anniversary of the birth of Larch’s son had come and gone with no change to the boy’s brown eyes, the nursemaid still did not leave off her muttering. She’d heard tales of Graceling eyes that took more