Part 2 (1/2)

Leaning into the tree, sore and weary, Fire cursed her stupidity. She had two options now, and neither was acceptable. Either she must turn herself in to the guards at her doors and tomorrow wage a battle over her freedom with Archer, or she must enter the mind of one of those guards and trick his thoughts.

She reached out tentatively to see who was around. The poacher's mind bobbed against hers, asleep in his cage. Guarding her house were a number of men whose minds she recognised. At her side entrance was an older fellow named Krell who was something of a friend to her - or would have been, did he not have the tendency to admire her too much. He was a musician, easily as talented as she and more experienced, and they played together sometimes, Fire on her fiddle and Krell on flute or whistle. Too convinced of her perfection, Krell, ever to suspect her. An easy mark.

Fire sighed. Archer was a better friend when he did not know every detail of her life and mind. She would have to do this.

She slipped up to the house and into the trees near the side door. The feeling of a monster reaching for the gates of one's mind was subtle. A strong and practiced person could learn to recognise the encroachment and slam the gates shut. Tonight Krell's mind was alert for trespa.s.sers but not for this type of invasion; he was open and bored, and she crept her way in. He noticed a change and adjusted his focus, startled, but she worked quickly to distract him. You heard something. There it is, can you hear it again? Shouts, near the front of the house. Step away from the door and turn to look. You heard something. There it is, can you hear it again? Shouts, near the front of the house. Step away from the door and turn to look.

Without pause he moved from the entrance and turned his back to her. She crept out of the trees toward the door.

You hear nothing behind you, only before you. The door behind you is closed.

He never swung around to check, never even doubted the thoughts she'd implanted in his mind. She opened the door behind him, slipped through, and shut herself in, then leaned against the wall of her hallway for a moment, oddly depressed at how easy that had been. It seemed to her that it shouldn't be so easy to make a man into a fool.

Rather bleak now with self-disgust, she slumped her way upstairs to her room. A particular song was stuck in her head, dully playing itself over and over, though she couldn't think why. It was the funeral lament sung in the Dells to mourn the waste of a life.

She supposed thoughts of her father had brought the song to mind. She had never sung it for him or played it on her fiddle. She'd been too numb with grief and confusion to play anything after he'd died. A fire had been lit for him, but she had not gone to see it.

It had been a gift from Cansrel, her fiddle. One of his strange kindnesses, for he'd never had patience for her music. And now Fire was alone, the only remaining human monster in the Dells, and her fiddle was one of few happy things she had to remember him by.

Happy.

Well, she supposed there was a kind of gladness in his remembrance, some of the time. But it didn't change reality. In one way or another, all that was wrong in the Dells could be traced back to Cansrel.

It was not a thought to bring peace. But delirious now with fatigue, she slept soundly, the Dellian lament a backdrop to her dreams.

CHAPTER TWO.

FIRE WOKE FIRST to pain, and then to the consciousness of an unusual level of agitation in her house. Guards were bustling around downstairs, and Archer was among them.

When a servant pa.s.sed her bedroom door Fire touched the girl's mind, summoning her. The girl entered the room, not looking at Fire, glaring mutinously instead at the feather duster in her own hand. Still, at least she had come. Some of them scurried away, pretending not to hear.

She said stiffly, 'Yes, Lady?'

'Sofie, why are there so many men downstairs?'

'The poacher in the cages was found dead this morning, Lady,' Sofie said. 'An arrow in his throat.'

Sofie turned on her heel, snapping the door shut behind her, leaving Fire lying heartsick in bed.

She couldn't help but feel that this was her fault somehow, for looking like a deer.

SHE DRESSED AND went downstairs to her steward, Donal, who was grizzled and strong-headed and had served her since she was a baby. Donal raised a grey eyebrow at her and c.o.c.ked his head in the direction of the back terrace. 'I don't think he much cares whom he shoots,' he said.

Fire knew he meant Archer, whose exasperation she could sense on the other side of the wall. For all of his hot words, Archer did not like people in his care to die.

'Help me cover my hair, will you, Donal?'

A minute later, hair wrapped in brown, Fire went out to be with Archer in his unhappiness. The air on the terrace was wet like coming rain. Archer wore a long brown coat. Everything about him was sharp - the bow in his hand and the arrows on his back, his frustrated bursts of movement, his expression as he glared over the hills. She leaned on the railing beside him.

'I should have antic.i.p.ated this,' he said, not looking at her. 'He as good as told us it would happen.'

'There's nothing you could have done. Your guard is already spread too thin.'

'I could have imprisoned him inside.'

'And how many guards would that have taken? We live in stone houses, Archer, not palaces, and we don't have dungeons.'

He swiped at the air with his hand. 'We're mad, you know that? Mad to think we can live here, so far from King's City, and protect ourselves from Pikkians and looters and the spies of rebel lords.'

'He hadn't the look or the speech of a Pikkian,' she said. 'He was Dellian, like us. And he was clean and tidy and civilised, not like any looter we've ever seen.'

The Pikkians were the boat people from the land above the Dells, and it was true that they crossed the border sometimes to steal timber and even labourers from the Dellian north. But the men of Pikkia, though not all alike, tended to be big, and lighter-skinned than their Dellian neighbours - at any rate, not small and dark like the blue-eyed poacher had been. And Pikkians spoke with a distinctive throaty accent.

'Well,' Archer said, determined not to be soothed, 'then he was a spy. Lord Mydogg and Lord Gentian have spies crawling all over the kingdom, spying on the king, spying on the prince, spying on each other - spying on you, for all we know,' he added grouchily. 'Has it never occurred to you that the enemies of King Nash and Prince Brigan might want to steal you and use you as a tool to overthrow the royal family?'

'You think everyone wants to steal me,' Fire said mildly. 'If your own father had me tied up and sold to a monster zoo for spare change, you'd claim that you'd suspected him all along.'

He spluttered at this. 'You should should suspect your friends, or at least anyone other than me and Brocker. And you should have a guard whenever you walk out your door, and you should be quicker to manipulate the people you meet. Then I'd have less cause to worry.' suspect your friends, or at least anyone other than me and Brocker. And you should have a guard whenever you walk out your door, and you should be quicker to manipulate the people you meet. Then I'd have less cause to worry.'

These were old arguments and he already knew her responses by heart. She ignored him. 'Our poacher was a spy of neither Lord Mydogg's nor Lord Gentian's,' she said calmly.

'Mydogg has grown quite an army for himself in the northeast. If he decided to ”borrow” our more central land to use as a stronghold in a war against the king, we wouldn't be able to stop him.'

'Archer, be reasonable. The King's Army wouldn't leave us alone to defend ourselves. And regardless, the poacher was not sent here by a rebel lord; he was far too vapid. Mydogg would never employ a vapid scout, and if Gentian lacks Mydogg's intelligence, well, still, he's not fool enough to send a man with a floating, empty head to do his spying.'

'All right,' Archer said, voice rising in exasperation, 'then I return to the theory that it's something to do with you. The moment he recognised you he talked about being a dead man, and clearly he was well-informed on that point. Explain it to me, will you? Who was the man, and why the rocks is he dead?'

He was dead because he'd hurt her, Fire thought; or maybe because she'd seen him and talked to him. Little sense in it, but it would make a good joke, if Archer were in the mood for any sort of joke. The poacher's murderer was a man after Archer's own heart, for Archer also didn't like men to hurt Fire or make her acquaintance.

'And a rather good shot,' she said out loud.

He was still glowering into the distance, as if he expected the murderer to pop up from behind a boulder and wave. 'Hmm?'

'You'd get along well with this murderer, Archer. He would've had to shoot through both the bars of the outer enclosure and the bars of the poacher's cage, wouldn't he? He must be a good shot.'

Admiration for another archer seemed to cheer him slightly. 'More than that. From the depth of the wound and the angle, I think he fired long-range, from the trees beyond that rise.' He pointed to the bald patch Fire had climbed the night before. 'Through two sets of bars is impressive enough, and then into the man's throat? At least we can be sure none of our neighbours did it personally. Not one of them could have made that shot.'

'Could you?'

The question was a small gift to him to improve his mood, for there was no shot made that Archer couldn't match. He glanced at her, grinning. Looked at her again more closely. His face softened. 'I'm a beast for taking this long to ask how you feel this morning.'

The muscles of her back were tight knots of rope and her bandaged arm ached; her entire body was paying dearly for last night's abuse. 'I'm all right.'