Fire stared in astonishment then at the tree beside the house, wondering how she'd failed to notice it from her window. She realised it was because she'd assumed from above that it was a grove of trees and never a single organism. Its mammoth trunk split off in six directions, the limbs so many and so massive that some of them bent with their weight down to the ground, burrowed into the grass, and rose up again to the sky. Supports had been built for some of the heaviest limbs to hold them up and prevent them from breaking.
Beside her, Garan watched the amazement on her face. Sighing, he walked to a bench beside the pathway to the house, where he sat with his eyes closed. Fire noticed his drawn face and his slumped posture. He looked washed out. She went and sat next to him.
"Yes, it's extraordinary," he said, opening his eyes. "It's grown so big it'll kill itself. Every father names his heirs. Surely you know that."
Fire turned from the tree to glance at him, startled. Garan looked back at her coolly.
"My father never named me," he said. "He named Nash, and Brigan. Brigan did differently. Hanna will be his first heir even after he marries and has an army of sons. Of course I never minded. I've never once wanted to be king."
"And of course," Fire said smoothly, "none of it will matter once the king and I marry and produce a jungle of monster heirs."
He hadn't been expecting that. He sat still for a moment, measuring, and then half smiled, despite himself, understanding that it was a joke. He changed the subject again. "And what have you been doing with yourself, Lady? You've been ten days at court with little but a fiddle to occupy you."
"And why should you care? Is there something you want me to do?"
"I've no employment for you until you decide to help us."
Help them – help this strange royal family. She found herself wishing that it weren't so impossible. "You said you didn't want me to help you."
"No, Lady, I said I was undecided. I remain undecided."
The door of the green house swung open then and the lady with the chestnut hair walked down the path toward them. And suddenly the feeling of Garan's mind changed to something lighter. He jumped up and went to the woman and reached for her hand. He walked her back to Fire, his face alight; and Fire understood that of course he'd steered their walk in this direction intentionally. She'd been too wrapped up in their conversation to notice.
"Lady Fire," Garan said, "this is Sayre. Sayre has the misfortune of being Hanna's history tutor."
Sayre smiled up at Garan, a smile that had everything in the world to do with Garan, so that Fire couldn't fail to understand what she was seeing. "It's not so bad as all that," Sayre said. "She's more than capable. It's just she gets restless."
Fire held out her hand. The two ladies greeted each other, Sayre exceedingly polite and ever so mildly jealous. Understandable. Fire would have to advise Garan not to cart lady monsters along on his trips to visit his sweetheart. Some of the smartest men had a hard time comprehending the obvious.
Then Sayre took her leave and Garan watched her go, rubbing his head absently and humming.
The son of a king and a woman who's a palace tutor? Fire thought to him, propelled by some strange joy into cheekiness. Shocking.
Garan lowered his eyebrows and tried to look stern. "If you're desperate for something to do, Lady, go to the nurseries and teach guarding against monster animals. Get the children on your side so Brigan's daughter still has some teeth in her mouth next he sees her."
Fire turned to go, a smile playing around her lips. "Thank you for walking with me, Lord Prince. I should tell you I'm difficult to deceive. You may not trust me, but I know you like me."
And she told herself it was Garan's regard that had buoyed her mood, and nothing to do with a woman whose significance had been reassigned.
Chapter Sixteen
Fire was, in fact, in need of something to do, because without an occupation all she could do was think. And thinking brought her back, over and over, to her lack of occupation, and the question of how much help, in fact, she would be capable of offering this kingdom – if her heart and her mind didn't positively forbid it. The matter plagued her at night when she couldn't sleep. She had bad dreams of what it meant to trick people and hurt people, nightmares of Cansrel making Cutter grovel in imagined pain.
Clara took Fire sightseeing. The city folk adorned themselves with even more monster trappings than the court folk, and with much less concern for the aesthetic integration of the whole. Feathers jammed randomly into buttonholes; jewellery, quite stunning really, necklaces and earrings made of monster shells, worn by a baker woman over her mixing bowl and covered in flour dust. A woman wearing a blue-violet wig from the fur of some silky monster beast, a rabbit or a dog, the hair short and uneven and sticking out in spikes. And the woman's face underneath quite plain, the overall effect tending to an odd caricature of Fire herself; but still, there was no denying she had something lovely atop her head.
"Everyone wants a bit of something beautiful," Clara said. "Among the wealthy it's the rare skins and furs sold on the black market. With everyone else it's whatever they find clogging the gutters or killed in the housetraps. It all amounts to the same thing, of course, but the rich people feel better knowing they've paid a fortune."
Which was, of course, silly. This city, Fire saw, was part sober and part silly. She liked the gardens and the old crumbling sculptures, the fountains in the squares, the museums and libraries and bright rows of shops that Clara led her through. She liked the bustling cobbled streets where people were so busy with their noisy living that sometimes they didn't even notice the lady monster's guarded walking tour. Sometimes. She calmed a team of horses once that panicked when some children ran too close to their heels, murmuring to them, petting their necks. Business stopped on that street, and didn't resume until she and Clara had rounded a corner.
She liked the bridges. She liked standing in the middle and looking down, feeling she could fall but knowing she wouldn't. The bridge farthest from the falls was a drawbridge; she liked the bells that rang when it rose and fell, soft, almost melodic, whispering around and through the other city noises. She liked the warehouses and docks along the river, the aqueducts and sewers, and the locks, creaking and slow, that brought supply ships up and down between river and harbour. She especially liked Cellar Harbour, where the falls created a mist of seawater and drowned out all sound and feeling.
She even, hesitatingly, liked the feel of the hospitals. She wondered which one had cured her father of the arrow in his back, and she hoped that the surgeons brought good folk back to life too. There were always people outside the hospitals, waiting and worrying. She glanced at them, touching them with surreptitious wishes that their worry should come to a happy ending.
"There used to be medical schools all over the city," Clara told her. "Do you know of King Arn and his monster adviser, Lady Ella?"
"I remember the names from my history lessons," Fire said, reflecting, but not coming up with much.
"They ruled a good hundred years ago," Clara said. "King Arn was an herbalist and Lady Ella a surgeon, and they became a bit obsessive about it, really – there are stories about them doing bizarre medical experiments on people who probably wouldn't have consented to it if a monster hadn't been the one making the suggestions, if you know what I mean, Lady. And they'd cut up dead bodies and study them, but no one was ever sure where they were getting the dead bodies from. Ah, well," Clara said, with a sardonic lift of the eyebrows. "Be that as it may, they revolutionised our understanding of doctoring and surgery, Lady. It's thanks to them we know the uses for all the strange herbs that grow in the crevices and caves at the edges of the kingdom. Our medicines to stop bleeding and keep wounds from festering and kill tumours and bind bones together and do just about everything else came from their experiments. Of course, they also discovered the drugs that ruin people's minds," she added darkly. "And anyway, the schools are closed now; there's no money for research. Or for art, for that matter, or engineering. Everything goes to policing – to the army, the coming war. I suppose the city will begin to deteriorate."