Fire - Kristin Cashore [132]
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