Fire - Kristin Cashore [14]
Archer’s house had been Brocker’s house before Brocker had turned the running of the estate over to his son, and Brocker had used a wheeled chair before Archer had ever been born. The house was organised such that everything but Archer’s rooms and servant rooms were on the first floor, where Brocker could reach them.
Fire walked beside him down a stone hallway that was dim in the grey light seeping through tall windows. They passed the kitchen, the dining room, the stairway, and the guard room. The house was full of people, servants and guards coming in from outside, coming down from upstairs. The servant girls who passed them greeted Brocker but carefully ignored Fire, their minds guarded and cool. As always. If Archer’s servants did not resent her because she was a monster and Cansrel’s daughter, they resented her because they were in love with Archer.
Fire was happy to sink into a soft chair in Lord Brocker’s library and drink the cup of wine an unfriendly servant clapped into her hand. Brocker positioned his chair across from hers and settled his grey eyes on her face. ‘I’ll leave you alone, dear,’ he said, ‘if you wish to nap.’
‘Perhaps later.’
‘When’s the last time you had a good night’s sleep?’
Brocker was one person she felt comfortable admitting pain to, and fatigue. ‘I can’t remember. It’s not a thing that happens very often.’
‘You know there are drugs that will put you to sleep.’
‘They make me groggy, and stupid.’
‘I’ve just finished writing a history of military strategy in the Dells. You’re welcome to take it with you. It’ll put you to sleep while making you clever and unbeatable.’
Fire smiled and sipped the bitter Dellian wine. She doubted that Brocker’s history would put her to sleep. All she knew about armies and war came from Brocker, and he was never boring. Twenty-some years ago, in the heyday of old King Nax, Brocker had been the most brilliant military commander the Dells had ever seen. Until the day King Nax had seized him and shattered his legs - not broken them, but shattered them, eight men taking turns with a mallet - and then sent him home, half-dead, to his wife, Aliss, in the northern Dells.
Fire didn’t know what terrible thing Brocker had done to justify such treatment from his king. Neither did Archer. The entire episode had taken place before they were born, and Brocker never spoke of it. And the injuries were only the beginning of it, for a year or two later, when Brocker had recovered as well as he ever would, Nax had still been angry with his commander. He’d hand-picked a brute from his prisons, a dirty, savage man, and sent him north to punish Brocker by punishing Brocker’s wife. This was why Archer was brown-eyed, light-haired, handsome, and tall, while Brocker was grey-eyed and dark-haired and plain in appearance. Lord Brocker was not Archer’s true father.
In some places and times Brocker’s would have been a mind-boggling story, but not in King’s City and not in the days when King Nax had ruled at the pleasure of his closest adviser. Cansrel.
Brocker spoke, interrupting her gruesome thoughts. ‘I understand you’ve had the rare pleasure of being shot by a man who was not trying to kill you,’ he said. ‘Did it feel any different?’
Fire laughed. ‘I’ve never been shot more pleasantly.’
He chuckled, studying her with his mild grey eyes. ‘It’s rewarding to make you smile. The pain in your face drops away.’
He had always been able to make her smile. It was a relief to her, his dependable light mood, especially on days when Archer’s mood was heavy. And it was remarkable, since every moment he was in pain.
‘Brocker,’ she said. ‘Do you think it could have been different?’
He tilted his head, puzzled.
‘I mean Cansrel,’ she said, ‘and King Nax. Do you think their partnership could ever have been different? Could the Dells have survived them?’
Brocker considered her, his face gone quiet and grave at the very mention of Cansrel