The First had a week's leave in King's City, and then they'd take to the road again under whatever captain Brigan had left in command. Brigan, she discovered when she emerged from her bathing room, had decided to assign her entire guard to her permanently, with the same rules as before: six guards to accompany her wherever she went, and two women in her bedroom when she slept. She was sorry for this, that these soldiers should have to continue such a dull charge, and sorrier still at the thought of them underfoot. It was worse than a bandage that chafed at a wound, her endless lack of solitude.
At dinnertime she claimed a backache, to avoid having to appear so soon before Nash and his court. Nash sent servants to her room pushing carts bearing a feast that could have fed all the residents of her own stone house in the north, and Archer's house as well. She thought of Archer, and then cast the thought away. Archer brought the tears too near.
Welkley came with four fiddles after dinner, two hanging from the fingers of each hand. Astonishing fiddles, nothing modest about them, smelling wonderfully of wood and varnish and gleaming brown, orange, vermilion. They were the best he'd been able to find in such a short time, Welkley explained. She was to choose one of the four, as a gift from the royal family.
Fire thought she could guess which member of the royal family had spared a minute amidst his preoccupations to order a roundup of the city's finest fiddles, and again she found herself uncomfortably close to tears. She took the instruments from the steward one by one, each more beautiful than the last. Welkley waited patiently while she played them, testing their feeling against her neck, the sharpness of the strings on her fingertips, the depth of their sound. There was one she kept reaching for, with a copper-red varnish, and a clarity like the point of a star, precise and lonesome, reminding her, somehow, of home. This one, she thought to herself. This is the one. Its only flaw, she told Welkley, was that it was too good for her skill.
That night memories kept her awake, and aches, and anxiety. Shy of the court bustling with people even late into the night, and not knowing the route to any quiet view of the sky, she went with six of her guard to the stables. She leaned on the stall door before her dozing, lopsided horse.
Why have I come here? she asked herself. What have I got myself into? I don't belong in this place. Oh, Small. Why am I here?
From the warmth of her fondness for her horse she constructed a fragile and changeable thing that almost resembled courage. She hoped it would be enough.
Chapter Fourteen
The snoop who'd been captured in the king's palace was not the same man Fire had sensed in the king's rooms at Roen's fortress, but his consciousness did have a similar feeling.
"What does that mean?" Nash demanded. "Does it mean he was sent by the same man?"
"Not necessarily, Lord King."
"Does it mean he's of the same family? Are they brothers?"
"Not necessarily, Lord King. Family members can have broadly different consciousnesses, as can two men under the same employ. At this point I can only determine that their attitudes and their aptitudes are similar."
"And what help is that? We didn't bring you all this distance so you could tell us he's of average disposition and intelligence, Lady."
In King Nash's office, with its stunning views of the city, its bookshelves rising from floor to mezzanine to domed ceiling, its rich green carpet and gold lamps, and most especially its handsome and high-strung monarch, Fire was in a state of mental stimulation that made it difficult for her to focus on the prisoner, or care about his claims to intelligence. The king was intelligent, and fatuous and powerful and flighty. This was what impressed Fire, that this man with the dark good looks was all things at once, open as the sky, and desperately difficult to subdue.
When she'd first come through the door of this office with six of her guard the king had greeted her glumly. "You entered my mind before you entered this room, Lady."
"Yes, Lord King," she said, startled into honesty before him and his men.
"I'm glad of it," Nash said, "and I give you leave. Around you I cannot bear my behaviour."
He sat at his desk, staring at the emerald ring on his finger. While they waited for the prisoner to be brought before them, the room turned to a mental battlefield. Nash was keenly aware of her physical presence; he struggled not to look at her. He was just as keenly aware of her presence inside his mind, and here was the problem, for he clung to her there, perversely, to savour the excitement of her where he could. And it did not work both ways. He could not ignore her and cling to her simultaneously.
He was too weak and too strong in all the wrong places. The harder she took hold of his consciousness the harder he pulled at her to keep taking, so that her control turned somehow into his control and his taking. And so she fought off his mental suckers, but that was no good either. It was too much like letting him go, and leaving his body to his mind's volatility.
She could not find the right way to hold him. She sensed him slipping away. And he became more and more agitated, and finally his eyes slid to her face; he stood, and began pacing. And then the prisoner arrived, and her answers to Nash's questions only added to his frustration.
"I'm sorry if I'm no help to you, Lord King," she said now. "There are limits to my perception, especially with a stranger."
"We know you've caught trespassers on your own property, Lady," one of the king's men said, "who had a distinct feeling to their minds. Is this man like those men?"
"No, sir, he isn't. Those men had a kind of mental blankness. This man thinks for himself."
Nash stopped before her and frowned. "Take control of his mind," he said. "Compel him to tell us the name of his master."
The prisoner was exhausted, nursing an injured arm, frightened of the lady monster, and Fire knew she could do what the king commanded easily enough. She gripped Nash's consciousness as tightly as she could. "I'm sorry, Lord King. I only take control of people's minds for the sake of self-defence."
Nash struck her across the face, hard. The blow threw her onto her back. She was scrambling to her feet practically before she'd hit the rug, ready to run, or fight, or do whatever she needed to do to protect herself from him, no matter who he was, but all six of her guards surrounded her now and pulled her out of the king's reach. In the corner of her vision she saw blood on her cheekbone. A tear ran into the blood, and her cheek smarted terribly. He'd cut her with the great square emerald of his ring.
I hate bullies, she thought at him furiously.
The king was crouched on the floor, his head in his hands, his men beside him, confused, whispering to each other. He raised his eyes to Fire. She sensed his mind, clear now, and understanding what he'd done. His face was broken with shame.
Her fury dropped away as quickly as it had come. She was sorry for him.
She sent him a firm message. This is the last time I'll ever appear before you, until you've learned to guard yourself against me.
She turned to the door without waiting for a dismissal.
Fire wondered if a bruise and a square-shaped cut on her cheek might make her ugly. In her bathing room, too curious to stop herself, she held a mirror to her face.
One glance and Fire shoved the mirror under a stack of towels, her question answered. Mirrors were useless, irritating devices. She should have known better.
Musa was perched on the edge of the bath, scowling, as she had been since her guard contingent had returned with their bleeding charge. It irked Musa, Fire knew, to be trapped between Brigan's orders and the king's sovereignty.