Fire - Kristin Cashore [133]
Go safely. Go safely, she thought to him as he left the building and his convoy pounded through the gates.
What a silly, empty thing it was to say to anyone, anywhere.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
FIRE GUESSED THAT there was little for a person with no hands to do at Fort Flood. Clara was busy with Brigan’s captains and a constant stream of messengers, and Garan rarely even showed his face, scowling in his customary manner when he did. Fire avoided them, as she avoided the room where endless rows of soldiers lay suffering.
She was not permitted to step outside the walls of the fortress. She divided her time between two places: the bedroom she shared with Clara, Musa, and Margo, feigning sleep whenever Clara entered, for Clara asked too many questions about Archer. And the heavily guarded roof of the fort, where she stood in a warm hooded cloak, hands enclosed safely in her armpits, and communed with the grey dappled horse.
The mare - for Fire was clear-minded enough now to know she was a mare - was living on the rocks north of the building. She had broken away from Fire’s group as they’d approached the fort and, despite the attempts of the horsemaster, would not consent to being stabled along with the other horses. Fire refused to allow anyone to subdue her with drugs, nor would Fire herself compel the horse into confinement. The horsemaster had thrown his arms in the air in disgust. This horse was obviously an uncommonly fine animal, but he was up to his elbows in injured horses and cast shoes and broken field harnesses, and had no time to waste on a recalcitrant.
And so the mare lived free on the rocks, eating food if it was left for her, finding food if it wasn’t, and coming to visit Fire whenever Fire called to her. Her feeling was strange and wild, her mind a marvellous unbroken thing that Fire could touch and influence, but never truly comprehend. She belonged alone on the rocks, unconstrained, and vicious when she needed to be.
And yet there was love in the feeling of her too - constraining, in its way. This horse had no intention of leaving Fire.
They spent time within view of each other, their feelings connected by the tether of Fire’s power. She was beautiful to look at, her coat soft patches and circles of grey, her mane and her tail thick and long, and tangled, and deep grey like slate. Her eyes were blue.
Fire wished she were allowed out of the fort. She would like to join the horse on the rocks, and climb onto her back, and be carried away wherever the horse wanted to go.
GARAN CAME STALKING into her bedroom one morning while she was curled under her covers, trying to numb herself to the burning of her hands and pretending to sleep. He stood over her and said without preliminary, ‘Get up, Fire. We need you.’
It was not said with anger, but it didn’t have the feeling of a request, either. Fire blinked up at him. ‘My hands are useless,’ she said.
‘What we need you for does not require hands.’
Fire closed her eyes. ‘You want me to question someone. I’m sorry, Garan. I don’t feel well enough.’
‘You’d feel better if you got up and stopped moping,’ he said bluntly, ‘and anyway, it’s not an interrogation we need you for.’
Fire was furious. ‘You never took Archer into your heart. You care nothing for what happened.’
Garan spoke hotly. ‘You can’t see into my heart, or you wouldn’t say such a stupid thing. I’m not leaving this room until you get up. There’s a war going on not a stone’s throw from here, and I’ve enough that’s heavy on my mind without you wasting yourself away like a self-absorbed brat. Do you want me to have to send a message to Brigan and Nash and Brocker one day, telling them you died, of nothing in particular? You’re making me ill, Fire, and I beg you, if you won’t get up for yourself, do it for me. I’m not keen on dying.’
Fire had pushed herself to a seated position