Fire - Kristin Cashore [141]
‘This is his doing,’ Fire heard Roen murmur to Brocker. ‘Brigan mapped these tunnels, and before he left here, he and his scouts worked out all the most likely locations for the supply routes and the horses specifically. He got it right.’
‘Of course he did,’ Brocker said. ‘He surpassed me a long time ago.’
Something in his tone caused Fire to stop her spoon halfway to her mouth and scrutinise him, listening to his words again in her mind. It was the pride in his voice that rang strange. And of course, Brocker had always spoken proudly of the boy commander who’d followed his own path so magnificently. But today he sounded as if he were crossing over into indulgence.
He looked up at her to see why she was staring. His eyes, pale and clear, caught hers, and held.
She understood for the first time what Brocker had done twenty-some years ago to set Nax into a rage.
As she pushed away from the table Brocker’s voice carried after her, tired, and oddly defeated. ‘Fire, wait. Fire, love, let me talk to you.’
She ignored him. She shouldered her way through the door.
I T WAS ROEN who came to her on the roof.
‘Fire,’ she said. ‘We’d like to talk to you, and it would be much easier for Lord Brocker if you would come down.’
Fire was amenable to this, because she had questions, and rather explosive things she found herself wanting to say. She folded her arms at Musa and looked into Musa’s hazel eyes. ‘Musa, you may complain to the commander all you like, but I insist on speaking to the queen and Lord Brocker alone. Do you understand me?’
Musa cleared her throat uncomfortably. ‘We’ll station ourselves outside the door, Lady.’
Downstairs in Brocker’s living quarters with the door closed and locked, Fire stood against a wall and stared not at Brocker but at the great wheels of his chair. Every once in a while she glanced into his face, and then into Roen’s, because she couldn’t help herself. It seemed to her that this was happening too often lately, that she should look into a face and see someone else there, and understand pieces of the past that she had not understood before.
Roen’s black hair with its white streak was pulled back tightly, and her face was also tight, with concern. She came and stood beside Brocker, gently putting a hand on his shoulder. Brocker reached up and touched Roen’s hand. Even knowing what she now knew, the unfamiliarity of the gesture startled Fire.
‘I have never seen the two of you together before this war,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Brocker said. ‘You’ve never known me to travel, child. The queen and I haven’t once been in each other’s company since—’
Roen finished for him quietly. ‘Since the day Nax set those brutes on you in my green house, I do believe.’
Fire glanced at her sharply. ‘You saw it happen?’
Roen gave a grim nod. ‘I was made to watch. I believe he hoped I would miscarry my bastard baby.’
And so Nax had been inhuman, and Fire felt the force of it; but still, she could not get around the fact of her anger.
‘Archer is your son,’ she said to Brocker, choking on her own indignation.
‘Of course Archer is my son,’ Brocker said heavily. ‘He has always been my son.’
‘Did he even know he had any kind of brother? He could’ve benefited from a steady brother like Brigan. And Brigan, does he know? I won’t keep it from him.’
‘Brigan knows, child,’ Brocker said, ‘though Archer never did, to my regret. When Archer died, I understood that Brigan must know. We told him, just weeks ago, when he came to the northern front.’
‘And what of him? Brigan could have stood to call you father, Brocker, rather than a mad king who hated him because he was cleverer and stronger than his own true son. He could have grown up in the north away from Nax and Cansrel and never had to become—’ She stopped and turned her face away, trying to calm her frantic voice. ‘Brigan should have been a northern lord, with a farm and a holding and a stable full of horses. Not a prince.’
‘But Brigandell is a prince,’ Roen said quietly. ‘He is my son. And Nax was the only one with the power to disinherit him and