Fire - Kristin Cashore [145]
‘Did you say my name?’ she whispered, remembering what had woken her.
‘Yes.’
‘Will you come to bed?’
‘Fire,’ he said. ‘Will you forgive me if your beauty is a comfort?’
She propped herself on an elbow, looking back at him, astonished. ‘Will you forgive me if I take my strength from yours?’
‘You may always have whatever strength I have. But you’re the strong one, Fire. Right now I don’t feel strong.’
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that sometimes we don’t feel the things that we are. But others can feel them. I feel your strength.’ And then she saw that his cheeks were wet.
She had been sleeping in a shirt of his she had found, and her own thick socks. She crawled from his bed and padded across the damp floor to him. Barelegged and wet-footed, she climbed into his lap. He took her up, cold and shaking, clinging to her. His breath was ragged. ‘I’m sorry, Fire. I’m sorry about Archer.’
She could feel that it was more. She could feel how much in the world he was sorry for, and how much anguish, grief, and exhaustion he was carrying. ‘Brigan,’ she whispered. ‘None of this is your fault. Do you understand me? It’s not your fault.’
She held him tightly, pulled him into the softness of her body so that he could feel the comfort of her while he cried. She repeated it in whispers, kisses, and feeling. Not your fault. This is not your fault. I love you. I love you, Brigan.
After some time, he seemed to cry himself out. Holding her numbly, he came aware of her kisses, and began to return them. The pain in his feeling turned into a need that she also felt. He consented to be led to bed.
SHEWOKE, BLINKING her eyes against a torch’s violent light, held over her by a man she recognised as one of Brigan’s squires. Behind her Brigan stirred. ‘Eyes on me, Ander,’ he snarled in a voice very awake and very unambiguous about its expectations of being obeyed.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ the man said. ‘I have a letter, sir.’
‘From whom?’
‘Lord Mydogg, sir. The messenger said it’s urgent.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Half past four.’
‘Wake the king and my four first captains, take them into my office, and wait for me there. Light the lamps.’
‘What is it?’ Fire whispered as the soldier named Ander lit a candle for them and left. ‘Does Mydogg always send letters in the middle of the night?’
‘This is the first,’ Brigan said, searching for his clothes. ‘I expect I know the occasion.’
Fire reached for her own clothing and pulled it under the blankets so she could dress without exposing her skin to freezing air. ‘What’s the occasion?’
He stood and fastened his trousers. ‘Love, you don’t have to get up for this. I can come back and tell you what it’s about.’
‘Do you think Mydogg’s asking for some kind of meeting?’
In the glow of the candle he glanced at her keenly, mouth tight. ‘I do.’
‘Then I should be involved.’
He sighed shortly. He slapped his sword belt around his waist and reached for his shirt. ‘Yes, you should.’
A MEETING WAS, indeed, what Mydogg wanted; a meeting to discuss terms of compromise with Brigan and Nash, so that all might avoid a battle that promised to be the most devastating the war had yet seen. Or at least, this was what it said in his letter.
Their breath turned to fog in the cold air of Brigan’s office. ‘It’s a trick,’ Brigan said, ‘or a trap. I don’t believe Mydogg would ever agree to a compromise. Nor do I believe he cares how many people die.’
‘He knows that we match him in numbers now,’ Nash said. ‘And far exceed him in horses, which finally matters, now that it’s water on the rocks instead of ice and snow.’
One of the captains, small and terse and trying not to shiver, crossed his arms. ‘And he knows the mental advantage our soldiers will have with their commander and their king leading them into battle together.’
Brigan rubbed his hair frustratedly. ‘For the first time, he sees that he’s going