Fire - Kristin Cashore [49]
‘Yes,’ Fire said, surprised, finding the strange man among her guard. ‘I believe he’s harmless.’
Harmless and huge, Fire saw when she emerged from her tent. His fiddle was like a toy in his hands; this man’s sword must look like a butter knife when he swung it. But the face that sat above his tree trunk of a body was quiet and thoughtful and mild. He lowered his eyes before her and held the fiddle out to her.
Fire shook her head. ‘You’re very generous,’ she said, ‘but I don’t like to take it from you.’
The man’s voice was so deep it sounded like it came from the earth. ‘We all know the story of what you did at Queen Roen’s fortress months back, Lady. You saved the life of our commander.’
‘Well,’ Fire said, because he seemed to expect her to say something. ‘Nonetheless.’
‘The men cannot stop talking about it,’ he continued, bowing, then pushing the fiddle into her small hands with his enormous ones. ‘And besides, you’re the better fiddler.’
Fire watched the man lumber away, touched, immensely comforted by his voice, by the huge gentle feeling of him. ‘Now I understand how our scout units can tear up parties of bandits twice their size,’ she said aloud.
Musa laughed. ‘He’s a good one to have on our side.’
Fire plucked the strings of the fiddle. It was in good tune. Its tone was sharp, strident - it was no master’s instrument. But it was a tool with which she could make music.
And a declaration.
Fire ducked inside her tent for her bow and came out again. Strode across the plain of soldiers toward a rise of rock that she could see some distance away. Her guard scrambled to follow her and surround her; the eyes of soldiers attached themselves to her as she passed. She reached the mound of boulders and climbed. She sat down and tucked the fiddle under her chin.
In the hearing of them all she played whatever music it pleased her to play.
CHAPTER TWELVE
IF ONLY FIRE could talk her sleeping self into the same courage.
It was her father’s dying eyes that never let her sleep.
The answer to Brocker’s question in her fourteenth year, the question about whether she could alter Cansrel’s mind lastingly, had been simple, once she’d allowed herself to consider it. No. Cansrel’s mind was strong as a bear and hard as the steel of a trap, and every time she left it, it slammed back into place behind her. There were no permanent alterations to Cansrel’s mind. There was no changing who he was. It had relieved her, to know there was nothing she could do, because it meant no one could ever expect it of her.
Then, in that same year, Nax had drugged himself to death. As the contours of power had shifted and resettled, Fire had seen what Brocker saw, and Archer, and Roen: a kingdom that stood on the verge of several permutations of possibility. A kingdom, suddenly, that could change.
She had been dazzlingly well-informed. On one side she’d received Cansrel’s confidences; on the other she’d known all that Brocker learned from his and Roen’s spies. She knew that Nash was stronger than Nax had been, strong enough sometimes to frustrate Cansrel, but a game to Cansrel still, compared with the younger brother, the prince. At eighteen the boy Brigan, the absurdly young commander, was said to be strong-minded, level, forceful, persuasive, and angry, the only person of influence in all King’s City who was not influenced by Cansrel. Some among the clear-headed talked as if they expected Brigan to be the difference between a continuation of the current lawless and depraved state of things, and change.
‘Prince Brigan is injured,’ Brocker announced one winter day when she came to visit. ‘I’ve just received word from Roen.’
‘What happened?’ Fire asked, startled. ‘Is he all right?’
‘There’s a gala in the king’s palace every January,’ Brocker said.
‘Hundreds of guests and dancing and a great deal of wine and nonsense, and a thousand dark corridors for people to sneak around in. Apparently Cansrel hired four men to corner Brigan and cut his throat. Brigan heard word of it and was ready for