Fire - Kristin Cashore [16]
King Nax had fathered a set of twins with a palace laundry girl. Then Brocker had committed his mysterious offense, and Nax had retaliated. And on the day that Nax had destroyed his own military commander, he’d dealt a fatal blow to any hope of rule in his kingdom. The fighting had burgeoned out of control. Roen had borne Nax another dark-haired son named Brigan. The Dells had entered a desperate time.
CANSREL HAD QUITE enjoyed being surrounded by desperation. It had entertained him to smash things apart with his power, and for entertainment he’d been insatiate.
The few women Cansrel couldn’t seduce with the power of his beauty or his mind, he raped. The few women Cansrel impregnated he killed. He didn’t want monster babies growing into monster children and adults who might undermine his power.
Brocker had never been able to tell Fire why Cansrel hadn’t killed Fire’s mother. It was a mystery; but she knew better than to hope for a romantic explanation. Fire had been conceived in a time of depraved pandemonium. Cansrel had probably forgotten he’d taken Jessa to his bed, or never noticed the pregnancy - she was only a palace servant, after all. He’d probably not realised the pregnancy was his, until the child had been born with hair so astonishing that Jessa had named her Fire.
Why had Cansrel allowed Fire to live? Fire didn’t know the answer to that, either. Curious, he’d gone to see her, probably intending to smother her. But then, looking into her face, listening to the noises she made, touching her skin - absorbing her tiny, intangible, perfect monsterness - he’d decided, for some reason, that here was a thing he didn’t want to smash.
While she was still a baby, Cansrel took her away from her mother. A human monster had too many enemies, and he wanted her to grow up in a secluded place far from King’s City where she would be safe. He brought her to his own estate in the northern Dells, a holding he rarely inhabited. He left her with his dumbfounded steward, Donal, and a scattering of cooks and maids. ‘Raise her,’ he said.
The rest Fire remembered. Her neighbour Brocker took an interest in the orphan monster and saw to her education in history and writing and mathematics. When she showed interest in music, he found her a teacher. Archer became Fire’s playmate, eventually her trusted friend. Aliss died of a lingering sickness that had set in after Archer’s birth. Fire learned from the reports Brocker received that Jessa had died as well. Cansrel visited often.
His visits were confusing, because they reminded her that she had two fathers, two who never entered each other’s presence if they could help it, never conversed beyond what civility demanded, and never agreed.
One was quiet and gruff and plain in a chair with big wheels. ‘Child,’ he’d say to her gently, ‘just as we respect you by guarding our minds from you and behaving decently to you, so must you respect your friends by never using your powers deliberately against us. Does that make sense to you? Do you understand? I don’t want you to do a thing unless you understand it.’
Her other father was luminous and brilliant and, in those earlier years, happy almost all of the time. He kissed her and swirled her around and carried her upstairs to bed, his body hot and electric, his hair like warm satin when she touched it. ‘What has Brocker been teaching you?’ he’d ask in a voice smooth as chocolate. ‘Have you been practicing using the power of your mind against the servants? The neighbours? The horses and the dogs? It’s right that you should do so, Fire. It’s right and it’s your right, because you’re my beautiful child, and beauty has rights that plainness never will.’
Fire knew which