Fire - Kristin Cashore [139]
WITH BROCKER CAME not only Roen but Mila, for Brocker had asked the girl to serve as his military assistant, and Mila had accepted. Brocker and Roen - old friends who had not seen each other since the time of King Nax - now were practically inseparable, and Mila was often with them.
Fire saw Nash only now and then, coming to the fort for information or to strategise with Garan and Clara, Brocker and Roen. Dirty and haggard, his smiles thin.
‘I believe King Nash will come back,’ Mila would say to Fire calmly every time he left again for the caves. Even though Fire knew there was no logic backing Mila’s assertion, the words comforted her.
Mila had changed. She worked hard beside Brocker, quiet and intent. ‘I learned that there’s a drug to end a pregnancy when it first announces itself,’ she told Fire lightly one day. ‘It’s too late for me, of course. Did you know about it, Lady?’
Fire was stunned. ‘Of course not, or I would have told you, and found it for you.’
‘Clara told me about it,’ Mila said. ‘The king’s healers are impressive, but it does seem as if you need to have grown up in certain sections of King’s City even to have a hope of knowing all they’re capable of. I was angry when I heard,’ she added. ‘I was furious. But it’s no use, really, to think about it now. I’m no different from anyone else, am I, Lady? We’re all walking paths we would never have chosen for ourselves. I suppose I grow tired sometimes of my own complaining.’
‘That boy of mine,’ Brocker said, later the same day. He was sitting beside Fire in a chair on the roof, where he’d consented to be carried because he’d wanted to see the grey dappled horse. He shook his head and grunted. ‘My boy. I expect I have grandchildren I’ll never know about. Trust him to die, so instead of my being furious about Mila and Princess Clara, I’m comforted.’
They watched the dance taking place on the ground before them: two horses circling each other, one plain and brown who stretched his nose out occasionally in an attempt to plant a wet kiss on the other’s elusive grey rump. Fire was trying to make friends of the two horses, for the mare, if she truly intended to follow Fire wherever she went, was going to need a few more souls in the world that she could trust. Today the mare had stopped trying to intimidate Small by rearing at him and kicking. This was progress.
‘She’s a river mare,’ Brocker said.
‘A what?’
‘A river mare. I’ve seen one or two dappled greys like that before; they come from the mouth of the Winged River. I don’t think there’s much of a common market for river horses, despite them being so fine - they’re absurdly expensive, on account of being hard to catch and even harder to break. They’re not as sociable as other horses.’
Fire remembered then that Brigan had spoken once, covetously, of river horses. She also remembered that the mare had carried her stubbornly south and west from Cutter’s estate, until Fire had turned her around. She had been trying to go home - to take Fire to her home where the river began. Now she was here, where she had not wanted to be, but where she’d chosen to be nonetheless.
Dear Brigan, she thought to herself. People want incongruous, impossible things. Horses do, too.
‘Has the commander had a look at her yet?’ Brocker asked, sounding amused by his own question. Apparently Brocker was acquainted with Brigan’s stance on horses.
‘I care nothing of her value,’ Fire said softly, ‘and I will not help him break her.’
‘You’re not being fair,’ Brocker said mildly. ‘The boy is known for his kindness to horses. He doesn’t break animals that show no inclination toward him.’
‘But what horse wouldn’t be inclined?’ Fire said, and then stopped, because she was being silly and sentimental, and saying too much.
A moment later Brocker said, in an odd, bewildered voice she didn’t entirely know what to think of, ‘I’ve made some grievous mistakes, and my mind spins when I try to comprehend all that has come of them. I have not been the man I should have been, not to anyone. Perhaps,