Fire - Kristin Cashore [10]
She’d never been injured accidentally before. It was hard to know how to categorise this attack in her mind; it almost seemed funny. She had a dagger scar on one forearm, another on her belly. An arrow gouge from years ago in her back. It was a thing that happened now and then. For every peaceful man, there was a man who wanted to hurt her, even kill her, because she was a gorgeous thing he could not have, or because he’d despised her father. And for every attack that had left a scar there were five or six other attacks she’d managed to stop.
Tooth marks on one wrist: a wolf monster. Claw marks at one shoulder: a raptor monster. Other wounds, too, the small, invisible kind. Just this morning, in the town, a man’s hot eyes on her body, and the man’s wife beside him, burning at Fire with jealousy and hatred. Or the monthly humiliation of needing a guard during her woman’s bleedings to protect her from monsters who could smell her blood.
‘The attention shouldn’t embarrass you,’ Cansrel would have said. ‘It should gladden you. Don’t you feel it, the joy of having an effect on everyone and everything simply by being?’
Cansrel had never found any of it humiliating. He’d kept predator monsters as pets - a silvery lavender raptor, a blood-purple mountain lion, a grass-coloured bear glinting with gold, the midnight blue leopard with gold spots. He’d underfed them on purpose and walked among their cages, his hair uncovered, scratching his own skin with a knife so that his blood beaded on the surface. It had been one of his favourite things to make his monsters scream and roar and scrape their teeth on the metal bars, wild with their desire for his monster body.
She couldn’t begin to imagine feeling that way, without fear, or shame.
THE AIR WAS turning damp and cold, and peace was too far away for her to reach tonight.
Slowly she headed back to her tree. She tried to grab hold and climb, but it didn’t take much scrabbling at the trunk for her to understand that she was not, under any circumstances, going to be able to enter her bedroom the way she’d exited.
Leaning into the tree, sore and weary, Fire cursed her stupidity. She had two options now, and neither was acceptable. Either she must turn herself in to the guards at her doors and tomorrow wage a battle over her freedom with Archer, or she must enter the mind of one of those guards and trick his thoughts.
She reached out tentatively to see who was around. The poacher’s mind bobbed against hers, asleep in his cage. Guarding her house were a number of men whose minds she recognised. At her side entrance was an older fellow named Krell who was something of a friend to her - or would have been, did he not have the tendency to admire her too much. He was a musician, easily as talented as she and more experienced, and they played together sometimes, Fire on her fiddle and Krell on flute or whistle. Too convinced of her perfection, Krell, ever to suspect her. An easy mark.
Fire sighed. Archer was a better friend when he did not know every detail of her life and mind. She would have to do this.
She slipped up to the house and into the trees near the side door. The feeling of a monster reaching for the gates of one’s mind was subtle. A strong and practiced person could learn to recognise the encroachment and slam the gates shut. Tonight Krell’s mind was alert for trespassers but not for this type of invasion; he was open and bored, and she crept her way in. He noticed a change and adjusted his focus, startled, but she worked quickly to distract him. You heard something. There it is, can you hear it again? Shouts, near the front of the house. Step away from the door and turn to look.
Without pause he moved from the entrance and turned his back to her. She crept out of the trees toward the door.
You hear nothing behind you, only before you. The door behind you is closed.
He never swung around to check, never even doubted the thoughts she’d implanted in his mind. She opened the door behind him, slipped through,