He said it kindly, not critically; it was his forlorn wish for peace. Fire hugged her fiddle now with both arms, muting the strings with the fabric of her dress. "Archer, you know me. You recognise me. We must get past this thing between us, you must accept how I've changed. I could not bear it if by refusing your bed I should also lose your friendship. We were friends before. We must find the way to be friends again."
"I know," he said. "I know, love. I'm trying. I am."
He walked away from her then and stared at the sea. He stood for some time, silent. When he walked back she was still standing there, holding her fiddle to her breast. After a moment something like a smile eased the sadness in his face.
"Will you tell me why you're playing a different fiddle?" he said.
It was a good story to tell, and distant enough from today's feelings that it calmed her in the telling.
The company of Brigan and Garan was a great relief, compared to that of Archer and Nash. They were so easy. Their silences never felt loaded with grave things they yearned to say, and if they brooded, at least it had no connection to her.
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 said, "just like you."
"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?"