Fire - Kristin Cashore [88]
The three sat in the sunny central courtyard, deliciously warm, for with the approach of winter there were advantages to a black palace with glass roofs. It had been a day of difficult and unproductive work that for Fire had yielded little more than a reiteration of Mydogg’s preference for frozen-grape wine. An old servant of Gentian’s had reported it to her; the servant had read a line or two about it in a letter Gentian had instructed him to burn, a letter from Mydogg. Fire still couldn’t understand this propensity of sworn enemies in the Dells to visit each other and send each other letters. And how frustrating that all the servant had seen was a bit about wine.
She slapped at a monster bug on her arm. Garan played absently with his walking stick, which he’d used to walk slowly to this spot. Brigan sat stretched out with his hands clasped behind his head, watching Hanna scuffle with Blotchy on the other side of the courtyard.
‘Hanna will never have friends who are people,’ Brigan said, ‘until she stops getting into scraps.’
Blotchy was whirling in circles with his mouth clamped around a stick he’d just found at the base of a courtyard tree - a branch, really, quite enormous, that swept a wide and multi-pronged radius as he spun. ‘This won’t do,’ Brigan said now. He jumped up, went to the dog, wrestled the branch away and broke it into pieces, then gave Blotchy back a stick of less hazardous dimensions. Determined, apparently, that if Hanna should have no friends, at least she should keep both eyes.
‘She has many friends who are people,’ Fire said gently when he got back.
‘You know I meant children.’
‘She’s too precocious for the children her age, and she’s too small for the other children to tolerate.’
‘They might tolerate her if she would tolerate them. I fear she’s becoming a bully.’
Fire spoke with certainty. ‘She is not a bully. She doesn’t pick on the others or single them out; she isn’t cruel. She fights only when she’s provoked, and they provoke her on purpose, because they’ve decided not to like her, and they know that if she does fight, you’ll punish her.’
‘The little brutes. They’re using you,’ Garan muttered to Brigan.
‘Is this just a theory, Lady? Or something you’ve observed?’
‘It’s a theory I’ve developed on the basis of what I’ve observed.’
Brigan smiled soberly. ‘And have you developed a theory about how I might teach my daughter to harden herself to taunts?’
‘I’ll think on it.’
‘Thank the Dells for your thinking.’
‘Thank the Dells for my health,’ Garan said, rising to his feet at the sight of Sayre, who’d entered the courtyard, looking very pretty in a blue dress. ‘I shall now bound away.’
He did not bound, but his steady walking was progress, and Fire watched his every step, as if her eyes on his back could keep him safe. Sayre met him and took his arm, and the two set off together.
His recent setback had frightened her. Fire could admit this to herself, now that he was improved. She wished that old King Arn and his monster adviser, conducting their experiments a hundred years ago, had discovered just a few more medicines, found the remedies to one or two more illnesses.
Hanna was the next to leave them, running to take Archer’s hand as he passed through with his bow.
‘Hanna’s announced her intentions to marry Archer,’ Brigan said, watching them go.
Fire smiled into her lap. She crafted her response carefully - but spoke it lightly. ‘I’ve seen plenty of women fall into an infatuation with him. But your heart can be easier than most other fathers, for she’s much too young for his brand of heartbreak. I suppose it’s a harsh thing to say of one’s oldest friend, but were she twelve years older I would not let them meet.’
True to her expectation, Brigan’s face was unreadable. ‘You’re little more than twelve years older than Hanna yourself.’
‘I’m a thousand years old,’ Fire