Fire - Kristin Cashore [116]
He felt it, and understood it. His own face closed. His inspection of her injuries changed to something clinical and emotionless.
She caught his sleeve. ‘It startled me,’ she whispered. ‘That’s all.’
There was shame in his eyes. She held tighter to his sleeve.
‘I won’t let you be ashamed before me,’ she said. ‘Please, Brigan. We’re the same. What I do only looks less horrible.’ And, she added, understanding it only as she said it, even if this part of you frightens me, I have no choice but to like it, for it’s a part of you that will keep you safe in the war. I want you to live. I want you to kill those who would kill you.
He didn’t say anything. But after a moment he leaned in again to touch the bones of her cheek and chin, gently, no longer avoiding her eyes, and she knew he accepted what she’d said. He cleared his throat. ‘Your nose is broken,’ he said. ‘I can set it for you.’
‘Yes, all right. Brigan, there’s a laundry chute outside, just down the hall. We need to find sheets or something to wrap up the bodies, and you need to carry them to the chute and drop them in. I’ll tell Welkley to clear all the servants out of the northernmost laundry room and to get ready to deal with an enormous mess. We have to hurry.’
‘Yes, good plan,’ Brigan said. He took tight hold of the back of her head. ‘Try to keep still.’ And then he grasped her face and did something that hurt far more than Gunner’s blow had, and Fire cried out, and battled him with both her fists.
‘All right,’ he gasped, letting go of her face and catching her arms, though not before she hit him hard in the side of the head. ‘I’m sorry, Fire. It’s done. Sit back and let me handle the bodies. You need to rest, so you can guide us through what’s left tonight.’ He jumped up and disappeared into the bedroom.
‘What’s left,’ Fire murmured, still crying slightly from the pain. She leaned on the armrest of the sofa and breathed until the ache of her face receded and stabilised, joining the blunt throbbing rhythm of the misery of her head. Slowly, softly, she pushed her mind to travel all around the palace and the grounds, touching on Murgda, touching on Murgda’s and Gentian’s people, touching on their allies, latching onto Quislam and his wife. She found Welkley and conveyed her instructions.
Blood was in her mouth, dripping down the back of her throat. Just as the sensation became intolerably disgusting Brigan appeared at her elbow, sheets slung over his shoulder, and plunked a bowl of water and cups and cloths on the table before her. He moved on to the bodies of Gentian and Gunner and set to bundling them up. Fire rinsed out her mouth and ran her mind again through the palace.
For a moment at the edges of her perception she thought that someone felt wrong, out of place. On the grounds? In the green house? Who was it? The feeling disappeared, and she couldn’t locate it again, which was frustrating, and unsettling, and thoroughly exhausting. She watched Brigan wrap Gunner’s body in a sheet, his own face dark with bruises, his hands and his sleeves covered with Gunner’s blood.
‘Our army is greatly outnumbered,’ she said. ‘Everywhere.’
‘They’ve been trained with that expectation in mind,’ he said flatly. ‘And thanks to you, we have the element of surprise on both fronts. You’ve done more tonight than any of us could have hoped. I’ve already sent messages north to the Third and Fourth and most of the auxiliaries - soon they’ll be consolidated on the shore north of the city and Nash will ride to join them. And I’ve sent an entire battalion to Marble Rise to take charge of the beacons and pick off any messengers heading for the boats. You see how it’s laid out? Once the Third and Fourth are in position, we’ll light the beacons ourselves. Mydogg’s army will make land, suspecting nothing, and we’ll attack them, with the sea to their back. And where they outnumber us with men we’ll outnumber them with horses - they can’t have more than four or five thousand