The walls of this cavernous room were made of mirrors. Passing through, on sudden impulse, Fire looked at herself.
She caught her breath and kept looking, until she was beyond that first staggering moment of disbelief. She crossed her arms and squared her feet, and looked, and looked. She remembered a thing that made her angry. She'd told Clara her intention never to have children; and Clara had told her of a medicine that would make her very sick, but only for two or three days. After she recovered, she'd never have to worry again about the chance of becoming pregnant, no matter how many men she took to her bed. The medicine would make her permanently unable to bear children. One of the most useful discoveries of King Arn and Lady Ella.
It made Fire so angry, the thought of such a medicine, a violence done to herself to stop her from creating anything like herself. And what was the purpose of these eyes, this impossible face, the softness and the curves of this body, the strength of this mind; what was the point, if none of the men who desired her were to give her any babies, and all it ever brought her was grief ? What was the purpose of a woman monster?
It came out in a whisper. "What am I for?"
"Excuse me, Lady?" Musa said.
Fire shook her head. "Nothing." She took a step closer and pulled off her headscarf. Her hair slid down, shimmering. One of her guards gasped.
She was fully as beautiful as Cansrel. Indeed, she was very like him.
Behind her Brigan entered the great hall suddenly and stopped. In the mirror their eyes met, and held. It was clear he was in the middle of a thought or a conversation – one that her appearance had interrupted completely.
It was so rarely he held her eyes. All the feeling she'd been trying to batter away threatened to trickle back.
And then Garan caught up with Brigan, speaking sharply. Nash's voice behind Garan, and then Nash himself appeared, saw her, and stopped cold beside his brothers. In a panic Fire grabbed at her hair to collect it, steeling herself against whatever stupid way the king intended to behave.
But it was all right, they were safe, for Nash was trying very hard to close himself. "Well met, Lady," he said with considerable effort. He threw his arms around both of his brothers' shoulders and moved with them out of the hall, out of her sight.
Fire was impressed, and relieved. She pushed her feelings back into their cell. And then, just before the brothers disappeared, her eyes caught the flash of something at Brigan's hip.
It was the hilt of his sword. The sword of the commander of the King's Army. And all at once, Fire understood.
Brigan did terrible things. He stuck swords into men in the mountains. He trained soldiers for war. He had enormous destructive power, just as his father had had – but he didn't use that power the way his father had done. Truly, he would rather not use it at all. But he chose to, so that he might stop other people from using power in even worse ways.
His power was his burden. He accepted it.
And he was nothing like his father. Neither were Garan or Clara; neither, really, was Nash. Not all sons were like their fathers. A son chose the man he would be.
Not all daughters were like their fathers. A daughter monster chose the monster she would be.
Fire looked into her face. The beautiful vision blurred suddenly behind her own tears. She blinked the tears away. "I've been afraid of being Cansrel," she said aloud to her reflection. "But I'm not Cansrel."
At her elbow, Musa said blandly, "Any one of us could have told you that, Lady."
Fire looked at the captain of her guard and laughed, because she wasn't Cansrel – she wasn't anyone but herself. She had no one's path to follow; her path was her own to choose. And then she stopped laughing, because she was terrified of the path she suddenly knew herself to be choosing. I can't do this, she thought. I'm too dangerous. I'll only make things worse.
No, she said back to herself. Already I'm forgetting. I'm not Cansrel; at every step on this path I create myself. And maybe I'll always find my own power horrifying, and maybe I can't ever be what I'd most like to be.
But I can stay here, and I can make myself into what I should be. Waste is criminal. I'll use the power I have to undo what Cansrel did. I'll use it to fight for the Dells.
Part Two
Spies
Chapter Seventeen
As much as Fire had known about the play of power in the Dells, her knowledge had been drawn in broad strokes. She understood this now, because now she held a minute and specific map in her mind. The focal points were King's City; Mydogg's holding on the Pikkian border; and Gentian's land in the southern mountains below the river, not far from Fort Flood. There were places in between: Brigan's many other forts and outposts, the estates of lords and ladies with tiny armies and shifting alliances, the Great Greys in the south and west, the Little Greys in the north, the Winged River, the Pikkian River, the high, flat area north of King's City called Marble Rise. Rocky patches of poverty, flashes of violence, plundering, desolation; landscapes and landmarks that were bound to be keystones in the war between Nash, Mydogg, and Gentian.
Her work was never the same from day to day. She never knew what kind of folk Garan and Clara's people would pick up: Pikkian smugglers, common soldiers of Mydogg's or Gentian's, messengers of either, servants who had worked for them once. Men suspected of being their spies or the spies of their allies. Fire came to see that in a kingdom balanced delicately atop a pile of changing associations, the most critical commodity was information. The Dells spied on their friends and on their enemies; they spied on their own spies. And indeed, all players in the realm did the same.
The very first man they brought before her, an old servant of a neighbour of Mydogg's, opened wide at the sight of her and spilled every thought that bubbled into his head. "Both Lord Mydogg and Lord Gentian are rightly impressed with Prince Brigan," the man told her, staring, quivering. "Both have been buying horses and mounting their armies for the past few years like the prince did, and recruiting mountain folk and looters as soldiers. They respect the prince as an opponent, Lady. And did you know there are Pikkians in Lord Mydogg's army? Big, pale men hulking around his land."
This is easy, Fire thought to herself. I only have to sit here and they blurt everything out.
But Garan was unimpressed. "He told us nothing we didn't already know. Did you plumb him for more – names, places, secrets? How do you know you've learned every part of his knowledge?"
The next couple of fellows were less forthcoming – a pair of convicted spies, resistant to her, and strong. Both bruised around the face, both gaunt, and one of them limping and stoop-shouldered, wincing as he eased back in his chair, as if he had cuts or bruises on his back. "How were you injured?" she asked them, suspicious. "And where?" They sat before her mutely, eyes averted, stony-faced, and answered neither that question nor any other question she put to them.
When the interrogation was over and the two spies had gone back to the dungeons, she made her excuses to Garan, who'd sat in on the entire thing. "They were too strong for me, Lord Prince. I could get nothing from them."
Garan eyed her moodily over a sheaf of papers. "Did you try?"
"Of course I tried."
"Really? How hard did you try?" He stood, lips tight. "I have neither energy nor time to waste, Lady Fire. When you decide that you're actually going to do this thing, let me know."
He shoved his papers under his arm and pushed through the questioning room door, leaving her with her own indignation. He was right, of course. She hadn't tried, not really. She'd poked at their minds and, finding them closed, done nothing to force an opening. She hadn't even tried to get them to look into her face. How could she? Was she honestly expected to sit before men weakened by ill treatment and abuse them even further?