Fire - Kristin Cashore [50]
‘All four by himself?’ Fire asked, distressed and confused, sitting down hard in an armchair.
‘Young Brigan is good with a sword,’ Brocker said grimly.
‘But is he badly hurt?’
‘He’ll live, though the surgeons worried at first. He was stabbed in the leg in a place that bled terribly.’ Brocker moved his chair to the fireplace and threw Roen’s letter onto the crackling flames. ‘It was very nearly the end of the boy, Fire, and I don’t doubt that Cansrel will try again.’
That summer at Nash’s court, an arrow from the bow of one of Brigan’s most trusted captains had struck Cansrel in the back. At the start of her fifteenth year - on her fourteenth birthday, in fact - Fire had word from King’s City that her father was injured and likely to die. She’d closed herself in her room and sobbed, not even knowing, for sure, what she was sobbing about, but unable to stop. She’d pressed her face against a pillow so that no one could hear.
Of course, King’s City was known for its healers, for its advances in medicine and surgery. People there survived injuries people died of elsewhere. Especially people with the power to command an entire hospital’s attention.
Some weeks later Fire had received the news that Cansrel was going to live. She’d run to her room again. She’d crawled onto her bed, utterly numb. As the numbness had worn off something sour had risen in her stomach and she’d begun to vomit. A vessel had burst in her eye, a blood bruise forming at the edge of her pupil.
Her body could be a powerful communicator sometimes, when her mind was trying to ignore a particular truth. Exhausted and sick, Fire had understood her body’s message: it was time to reconsider the question of just how far her power over Cansrel could reach.
LURCHED INTO WAKEFULNESS again by the same tired dreams, Fire kicked her blankets away. She covered her hair, found boots and weapons, and crept past Margo and Mila. Outside, most of the army slept under canvas roofs, but her guard lay in the open, arranged again around her tent. Under the vast sky, magnificent with stars, Musa and three others played cards in the light of a candle, as they had the night before. Fire held onto the tent opening to counter the vertigo she felt when she looked up at that sky.
‘Lady Fire,’ Musa said. ‘What can we do for you?’
‘Musa,’ Fire said. ‘I’m afraid you have the misfortune of guarding an insomniac.’
Musa laughed. ‘Is it another climb tonight, Lady?’
‘Yes, with my apologies.’
‘We’re glad for it, Lady.’
‘I expect you’re saying that to ease my guilt.’
‘No, truly, Lady. The commander wanders at night too, and he won’t consent to a guard, even when the king orders it. If we’re out with you we have an excuse to keep an eye on him.’
‘I see,’ Fire said, perhaps a bit sardonically. ‘Fewer guards tonight,’ she added, but Musa ignored this and woke as many as she’d woken the night before.
‘It’s orders,’ Musa said, as the men sat up blearily and strapped on their weapons.
‘And if the commander doesn’t follow the king’s orders, why should you follow the commander’s?’
Her question generated more than one set of raised eyebrows. ‘Lady,’ Musa said, ‘the soldiers in this army would follow the commander off a cliff if he asked it.’
Fire was beginning to feel irritable. ‘How old are you, Musa?’
‘Thirty-one.’
‘Then the commander should be a child to you.’
‘And you an infant, Lady,’ Musa said dryly, surprising a smile onto Fire’s face. ‘We’re ready. You lead the way.’
SHE HEADED TOWARD the same mound of rock she’d climbed earlier, because it would bring her closer to the sky and because she sensed it would also bring her guard closer to the insomniac they weren’t supposed to be guarding. He was among those boulders somewhere, and the rise was broad enough that they could share it without meeting.
She found a high, flat rock to sit on. Her guard scattered themselves around her. She closed her eyes and let the night wash over her, hoping that after this she’d be weary enough for sleep.
She didn’t move at the sense of Brigan’s approach, but at