Fire - Kristin Cashore [89]
‘Hmm,’ Brigan said. He didn’t ask her what she meant, which was for the best, because she wasn’t exactly sure. If she was suggesting she was too wise with the weight of her experience to fall prey to infatuation - well, the disproof was sitting before her in the form of a grey-eyed prince with a thoughtful set to his mouth that she found quite distracting.
Fire sighed, trying to shift her attention. Her senses were overloaded. This courtyard was one of the palace’s busiest, and, of course, the palace as a whole swarmed with minds. And just outside the palace grounds was stationed the entire First Branch, with which Brigan had arrived yesterday and would depart the day after tomorrow. She sensed minds more easily now than she had used to. She recognised a good many members of the First Branch, despite their distance.
She tried to push the feeling of them away. It was tiring, holding everything at once, and she couldn’t decide where to rest her focus. She settled on a consciousness that was bothering her. She leaned forward and spoke low to Brigan.
‘Behind you,’ she said, ‘a boy with very odd eyes is talking with some of the court children. Who is he?’
Brigan nodded. ‘I know the boy you mean. He came with Cutter. You remember the animal trader, Cutter? I want nothing to do with the man, he’s a monster smuggler and a brute - except that he happens to be selling a very fine stallion that almost has the markings of a river horse. I’d buy him in a breath if the money didn’t go to Cutter. It’s a bit tacky, you know, me buying a horse that’s likely to have been stolen. I may buy him anyway; in which case Garan will have a conniption at the expense. I suppose he’s right. I’m not in need of another horse. Though I wouldn’t hesitate if he really were a river horse - do you know the dappled grey horses, Lady, that run wild at the source of the river? Splendid creatures. I’ve always wanted one, but they’re no easy thing to catch.’
Horses were as distracting to the man as to his child. ‘The boy,’ Fire prompted dryly.
‘Right. The boy’s a strange one, and it isn’t just that red eye. He was lurking around when I went to look at the stallion, and I tell you, Lady, he gave me a funny feeling.’
‘What do you mean, a funny feeling?’
Brigan squinted at her in perplexity. ‘I can’t exactly say. There was something . . . disquieting . . . about his manner. The way he spoke. I did not like his voice.’ He stopped, somewhat exasperated, and rubbed his hair so it stood on end. ‘As I say it, I hear it makes no sense. There was nothing solid about him to fix on as troublesome. But still I told Hanna to stay away from him, and she said she already met him and didn’t like him. She said he lies. What do you think of him?’
Fire applied herself to the question with concerted effort. His mind was unusual, unfamiliar, and she wasn’t sure how to connect to it. She wasn’t even sure how to comprehend the borders of it. She couldn’t see it.
His mind gave her a very funny feeling indeed. And it was not a good funny feeling.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’ And a moment later, not quite knowing why: ‘Buy the stallion, Lord Prince, if it will get them out of this court.’
Brigan left, presumably to do what Fire said; and Fire sat alone, puzzling over the boy. His right eye was grey and his left eye was red, which was strange enough in itself. His hair was blond like wheat, his skin light, and he had the appearance of being ten or eleven. Could he be some kind of Pikkian? He was sitting facing her, a rodent monster in his lap, a mouse with glimmering gold fur. He was tying a string around its neck. Fire knew somehow that the creature was not his pet.
He pulled the string, too tight. The mouse’s legs began to jerk. Stop it, Fire thought furiously, aiming her message at the strange presence that was his mind.
He loosened the string immediately. The mouse lay in his lap, heaving with tiny breaths. Then the boy smiled at Fire, and stood up, and came to stand before her. ‘It doesn’t hurt him,’ he said. ‘It’s only a choking game,