Fire - Kristin Cashore [118]
‘Murgda may still light this fire Gentian spoke of,’ Brigan was saying. ‘They may still try to kill Nash. You must all increase your vigilance. At a certain point it might be wise if Murgda’s and Gentian’s thugs began to disappear, do you understand me?’ He turned to Fire. ‘How best for you to leave this room?’
Fire forced herself to consider the question. ‘The way I came. I’ll call a cart and take the lift, and climb the ladder to my window.’ And then she had a night of the same work ahead of her: monitoring Murgda and everyone else, and telling Welkley, the guard - everyone - who was where, who must be stopped, and who must be killed, so that Brigan could ride to Fort Flood and his messengers could ride north and no one would learn enough about anything to know to try to pursue them, and no one would light any fires.
‘You’re crying,’ Clara said. ‘It’ll only make your nose worse.’
‘Not real tears,’ Fire said. ‘Just exhaustion.’
‘Poor thing,’ Clara said. ‘I’ll come to your rooms later and help you through this night. And now you must go, Brigan. Is the hallway clear?’
‘I need a minute,’ Brigan said to Clara. ‘A single minute alone with the lady.’
Clara’s eyebrows shot up. She glided into the next room wordlessly.
Brigan went and shut the door behind her, then turned around to face Fire. ‘Lady,’ he said. ‘I have a request for you. If I should die in this war—’
Fire’s tears were real now, and there was no helping them, for there was no time. Everything was moving too fast. She crossed the room to him, put her arms around him, clung to him, turning her face to the side, learning all at once that it was awkward to show a person all of one’s love when one’s nose was broken.
His arms came around her tightly, his breath short and hard against her hair. He held on to the silk of her hair and she pressed herself against him until her panic calmed to something desperate, but bearable.
Yes, she thought to him, understanding now what he’d been about to ask. If you die in the war, I’ll keep Hanna in my heart. I promise I won’t leave her.
It was not easy letting go of him; but she did, and he was gone.
I N THE CART on the way back to her rooms, Fire’s tears stopped. She’d reached a point of such absolute numbness that everything, save a single living thread holding her mind to the palace, stopped. It was almost like sleeping, like a senseless, stupefying nightmare.
And so, when she stepped out of the window onto the rope ladder and heard a strange bleating on the ground below - and listened, and heard a yip, and recognised Blotchy, who sounded as if he were in some kind of pain - it was not intelligence that led her to climb down toward Blotchy, rather than up to her rooms and the safety of her guards. It was dumb bleariness that sent her downward, a dull, dumb need to make sure the dog was all right.
The sleet had turned to a light snowfall, and the grounds of the green house glowed, and Blotchy was not all right. He lay on the green house path, crying, his two front legs flopping and broken.
And his feeling contained more than pain. He was afraid, and he was trying to push himself by his back legs toward the tree, the enormous tree in the side yard.
This was not right. Something was very wrong here, something eerie and bewildering. Fire searched the darkness wildly, stretched her mind into the green house. Her grandmother was sleeping inside. So were a number of guards, which was all wrong, for the green house night guards were not meant to sleep.
And then Fire cried out in distress, for under the tree she felt Hanna, awake, and too cold, and not alone, someone with her, someone angry who was hurting her, and making her angry, and frightening her.
Fire stumbled, ran toward the tree, reaching desperately for the mind of the person