Fire - Kristin Cashore [69]
It already was, Fire thought but didn’t say. She saw the seedy, sprawling neighbourhoods that abutted the docks on the south side of the river, and the tumbledown alleyways that popped up in parts of the city centre where it seemed they shouldn’t. Many, many sections of the city that were not devoted to knowledge or beauty, or any kind of goodness.
Clara took her to lunch once with the twins’ mother, who had a small and pleasant home on a street of florists. She also had a husband, a retired soldier who moonlighted as one of the twins’ most reliable spies.
‘These days, my focus is smuggling,’ he told them in confidence over their meal. ‘Almost every wealthy person in the city dips into the black market now and then, but as often as not, when you find someone who’s very deeply involved, you’ve also found someone who’s the king’s enemy. Especially if they’re smuggling weapons or horses or anything Pikkian. If we’re lucky, we’re able to trace a buyer to the fellow he’s buying for, and if that turns out to be one of the rebel lords, we bring the buyer in for questioning. Can’t always trust their answers, of course.’
Unsurprisingly, this sort of talk was always fuel for Clara’s pressure tactics with Fire. ‘With your power, it’d be easy for us to learn who’s on whose side. You could help us find out if our allies are true,’ she’d say, or, ‘You could figure out where Mydogg’s planning to attack first.’ Or, when that didn’t work, ‘You could uncover an assassination plot. Wouldn’t you feel terrible if I were assassinated because you weren’t helping?’ And in a moment of desperation: ‘What if they’re planning to assassinate you? There have to be some who are, especially now that people think you might marry Nash.’
Fire never responded to the endless battery, never admitted the doubt - and guilt - she was beginning to feel. She only filed the arguments away to mull over later, along with the ongoing arguments of the king. For occasionally after dinner - often enough that Welkley had installed a chair in the hallway - Nash came to speak to her through the door. He conducted himself decently, talked of the weather and stately visitors to the court; and always, always tried to convince her to reconsider the matter of the prisoner.
‘You’re from the north, Lady,’ he’d say to her, or something like it. ‘You’ve seen the loose hold the law has outside this city. One misstep, Lady, and the entire kingdom could fall through our fingers.’
And then he’d grow quiet, and she would know the marriage proposal was coming. She would send him away with her refusal and take what comfort she could in the company of her guard; and consider very seriously the state of the city, and the kingdom, and the king. And what her own place should be.
To busy herself and ease her sense of uselessness, she took Garan’s advice in the nurseries. Entering cautiously at first, sitting quietly on a chair and watching the children as they played, read, squabbled, for this was where her mother had worked, and she wanted to take in its feeling slowly. She tried to picture a young, orange-haired woman in these rooms, counselling children with her even temper. Jessa had had a place in these noisy, sunlit rooms. Somehow the very thought made Fire feel like less of a stranger here. Even if it also made her more lonely.
Teaching guarding against animal monsters was delicate work, and Fire came up against some parents who wanted nothing of her association with their children. But