Fire - Kristin Cashore [53]
She didn’t share that thought with Brigan, of course, but she did express her shock at the world’s sudden greenness. To which he smiled quietly at the night sky, a gesture she was beginning to associate with him.
‘It’ll keep getting greener as we approach King’s City, and softer,’ he said. ‘You’ll see there’s a reason this kingdom is called the Dells.’
‘I asked my father once—’ she started; and then stopped tongue-tied, horrified that she had begun to speak kindly of Cansrel before him.
When he finally broke their silence, his voice was mild. ‘I knew your mother, Lady. Did you realise that?’
Fire hadn’t realised it, but she supposed she should have, for Jessa had worked in the royal nurseries at a time when Brigan must have been very young. ‘I didn’t know, Lord Prince.’
‘Jessa was the person I went to whenever I’d been bad,’ he said, adding wryly, ‘after my mother was through with me, that is.’
Fire couldn’t help smiling. ‘And were you often bad?’
‘At least once a day, Lady, as I remember.’
Her smile growing, Fire watched him as he watched the sky. ‘Perhaps you weren’t very good at following orders?’
‘Worse than that. I used to set traps for Nash.’
‘Traps!’
‘He was five years older than I. The perfect challenge - stealth and cunning, you see, to compensate for my lack of size. I rigged nets to land on him. Closed him inside closets.’ Brigan chuckled. ‘He was a good-natured brother. But whenever our mother learned of it she’d be furious, and when she was done with me I’d go to Jessa, because Jessa’s anger was so much easier to take than Roen’s.’
‘How do you mean?’ Fire asked, feeling a drop of rain, and wishing it away.
He thought for a moment. ‘She’d tell me she was angry, but it didn’t sit like anger. She’d never raise her voice. She’d sit there sewing, or whatever she was doing, and we’d analyse my crimes, and invariably I’d fall asleep in my chair. When I woke it’d be too late to go to dinner and she’d feed me in the nurseries. A bit of a treat for a small boy who usually had to dress for dinner and be serious and quiet around a lot of boring people.’
‘A wicked boy, from the sound of it.’
His face flickered with a smile. Water splashed onto his forehead. ‘When I was six Nash fell over a tripline and broke his hand. My father learned of it. That put an end to my antics for a while.’
‘You gave in so easily?’
He didn’t answer her teasing tone. She looked at him, his eyebrows furrowed at the sky, his face sombre, and was frightened, suddenly, of what they were talking about; for again, suddenly, it seemed they might be talking about Cansrel.
‘I think I understand now why Roen lost her mind whenever I misbehaved,’ he said. ‘She was afraid of Nax finding out and taking it into his head to punish me. He was not . . . a reasonable man, in the time I knew him. His punishments were not reasonable.’
Then they were talking about Cansrel, and Fire was ashamed. She sat, head bowed, and wondered what Nax had done, what Cansrel had told Nax to do to punish a six-year-old who probably even then had been clever enough to see Cansrel for what he was.
Drops of rain pattered onto her scarf and her shoulders.
‘Your mother had red hair,’ Brigan said, lightly, as if they didn’t both feel the presence of two dead men among these rocks. ‘Nothing like yours, of course. And she was musical, Lady, like you. I remember when you were born. And I remember that she cried when you were taken away.’
‘Did she?’
‘Hasn’t my mother told you anything about Jessa?’
Fire swallowed a lump in her throat. ‘Yes, Lord Prince, but I always like hearing it again.’
Brigan wiped rain from his face. ‘Then I’m sorry I don’t remember more. If we knew a person was