Fire - Kristin Cashore [64]
CROSSING A BRIGHT white courtyard one day, Fire witnessed a spectacular fight between a pack of small children on one side and Prince Garan’s daughter, passionately assisted by her puppy, on the other. Garan’s daughter was the instigator of the swinging fists, this Fire saw plainly; and from the broiling emotions in the bunch Fire sensed that she herself might be the matter of dispute. Stop, she thought to the children from across the courtyard, now; at which every one of them save Garan’s girl froze, turned to stare, and then ran shrieking into the palace.
Fire sent Neel for a healer and rushed with the rest of her guard to the girl, whose face was swelling and whose nose ran with blood. ‘Child,’ Fire said, ‘are you all right?’
The girl was engaged in an argument with her puppy, who jumped and yapped and strained against her hand on his collar. ‘Blotchy,’ she said, crouching to his level, her voice congested with blood, ‘down. Down, I say! Stop it! Monster rocks!’ This last as Blotchy jumped and banged against her bloody face.
Fire took hold of the puppy’s mind and soothed him to calmness.
‘Oh, thank goodness,’ the child said woefully, plopping down on the marble floor beside Blotchy. She ran searching fingers over her cheeks and nose. She winced and pushed her sticky hair out of her face. ‘Papa will be disappointed.’
As before, this child was quite closed to Fire mentally, impressively so, but Fire had understood enough of the other children’s feelings to interpret what she meant. ‘Because you came to my defence, you mean.’
‘No, because I forgot to guard my left side. He reminds me all the time. I think my nose is broken. He’ll punish me.’
It was true Garan was not the personification of kindness, but still, Fire couldn’t imagine him punishing a child for not winning a fight against approximately eight adversaries. ‘Because someone else broke your nose? Surely not.’
The child gave a mournful sigh. ‘No, because I threw the first punch. He said I mustn’t do that. And because I’m not in my lessons. I’m supposed to be in my lessons.’
‘Well, child,’ Fire said, trying not to be amused. ‘We’ve fetched you a healer.’
‘It’s just there are so many lessons,’ the girl went on, not much interested in the healer. ‘If Papa were not a prince I wouldn’t have all these lessons. I love my riding lessons but I could die from my history lessons. And now he won’t let me ride his horses, ever. He lets me name his horses but he never lets me ride them, and Uncle Garan will tell him I missed my lessons, and Papa’ll say I can’t ride them ever. Does Papa ever let you ride his horses?’ the girl asked Fire tragically, as if she knew she was bound to receive the most calamitous of responses.
But Fire could not answer, for her mouth was hanging open, her mind scrambling to make sense of the thing she’d thought she understood. This child with dark eyes and hair and a mashed-up face, and an Uncle Garan and a princely father, and an unusual propensity for mental closedness. ‘I’ve only ridden my own horse,’ she managed to say.
‘Have you met his horses? He has many. He’s crazy for horses.’
‘I think I’ve only met one,’ Fire said, still disbelieving. Sluggishly she began to strain through some mental arithmetic.
‘Was it Big? Big’s a mare. Papa says most soldiers favour stallions, but Big is fearless and he wouldn’t trade her for any stallion. He says you’re fearless, too. He says you saved his life. That’s why I defended you,’ she said dismally, her current dilemma rounding back to her again. She touched the vicinity of her nose. ‘Perhaps it’s not broken. Perhaps it’s only sprained. Do you think he’ll be less angry if my nose is only sprained?’
Fire had begun to clutch her forehead. ‘How old are you, child?’
‘Six come winter.’
Neel came trotting across the courtyard then with a healer, a smiling man in green. ‘Lady Fire,’ the healer