Fire - Kristin Cashore [63]
She pushed herself away from him, pretending horror. She ran from the room.
That evening Cansrel stood outside Fire’s closed door, pleading with her to understand. ‘Darling child,’ he said. ‘You need never fear me; you know I’d never act on such base instincts with you. It’s only that I worry about the men who would. You must understand the dangers of your power to yourself. If you were a son I would not be so worried.’
She let him make his explanations for a while, and was stunned, inside her room, with how easy it was to manipulate the master manipulator. Astonished and dismayed. Understanding that she’d learned how to do this from him.
Finally she came out and stood before him. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, Father.’ Tears slid down her face and she pretended they were on account of his bandaged hand, which, in part, they were.
‘I wish you would be more cruel with your power,’ he said, touching her hair and kissing her. ‘Cruelty is strong self-defence.’
And so, at the end of her experiment, Cansrel still trusted her. And he had reason to, for Fire didn’t think she could go through with anything like that again.
Then, in the spring, Cansrel began to talk of his need for a new plan, an infallible plan this time, to do away with Brigan.
WHEN FIRE’S BLEEDING began she felt compelled to explain to her guard why bird monsters had begun to gather outside her screen windows, and why raptor monsters swooped down occasionally, ripped apart the smaller birds, and then perched on the sills to stare inside, screeching. She thought the guards took it rather well. Musa sent the two with the best aim to the grounds below the rooms to do some raptor hunting rather perilously close to the palace walls.
The Dells was not known for hot summers, but a palace made of black stone with glass ceilings will get warm; on clear days the ceiling windows were levered open. When Fire passed through a courtyard or corridor during her bleeding the birds chirped and the raptors screeched through those screens as well. Sometimes flying monster bugs trailed in her wake. Fire didn’t imagine it did much for her reputation around the court, but then again, very little did. The square mark on her cheek was recognised and much talked of. She could sense the spinning gossip that stopped whenever she entered a room and started up again as she left.
She had told the king that she would think about the issue of the prisoner, but she didn’t, not really; she didn’t need to. She knew her mind. She spent a certain amount of energy monitoring his whereabouts so she could avoid him. A good bit more deflecting the attention of people of the court. She sensed curiosity from them foremost, and admiration; some hostility, especially from servants. She wondered if the court’s servants had clearer recollections of the particulars of Cansrel’s cruelty. She wondered if he had been crueller to them.
People followed her sometimes, at a distance, both men and women, servants and nobles, usually without any definite antagonism. Some of them tried to talk to her, called out to her. A grey-haired woman walked right up to her once, said, ‘Lady Fire, you are like a delicate blossom,’ and would have embraced her if Mila hadn’t held out a restraining hand. Fire, her abdomen heavy and aching with cramps and her skin tender and burning, felt the furthest thing from a delicate blossom. She couldn’t decide whether to slap the woman or fall into her embrace, weeping. And then a raptor monster scratched on a window screen above and the woman looked up and raised her arms to it, just as entranced with the predator as she had been with Fire.
From other ladies of the court Fire sensed envy and resentment, and jealousy for the heart of the king, who fretted over her from a distance like a stallion behind a fence and did little to hide his frustrated regard. When she met the eyes of these women, some of them with monster feathers in their hair or shoes of lizard monster skins, she lowered