Part 19 (2/2)

Yes, Hanna started brawls, and it could not be because her father favoured anyone over her. But today she was not brawling, and once she woke from the daze of her bow and arrows enough to notice the lady and the fiddle, the girl begged a concert, and got one.

Afterward Fire walked around the archery range with Archer and Nash, her guard trailing behind.

The simultaneous company of these two men was a funny thing, for they mirrored each other. Each in love with her, gloomy and moping; each resigned to hopelessness and each subdued, but resenting the presence of the other. And neither doing much to hide any of this from her, for as usual Nash's feelings were open, and Archer's body language unmistakable.

But Nash's manners were better than Archer's, at least for the moment, and the court had a greater hold on his time. As Archer's choice of conversation became less inclusive, Nash took his leave.

Fire considered Archer, so tall and fine-looking beside her, his bow in hand. She spoke quietly. 'You drove him away, with your talk of our childhood in the north.'

'He wants you, and he doesn't deserve you.'

'As you deserve me?'

Archer's face took on a grim smile. 'I've always known I don't deserve you. Every regard you've ever shown me has been a gift undeserved.'

That is not true, she thought to him. You were my loyal friend even before I could walk. You were my loyal friend even before I could walk.

'You've changed,' Archer said. 'Do you realise how much? The more time I spend with you here the less I know you. All these new people in your life, and your happiness in this princess child - and her dog, of all things. And the work you do every day - you use your power, every day. I used to have to fight with you to use it even to defend yourself.'

Fire took a careful breath. 'Archer. Sometimes in the courtyards or the hallways, I've taken to changing people's attentions so they don't notice me. So I can walk by without being ha.s.sled, and everyone else can continue their work without distraction.'

'You're not ashamed of your abilities anymore,' Archer said. 'And the sight of you - you're glowing. Truly, Fire. I don't recognise you.'

'But the ease with which I've come to use my power. Can you understand how it frightens me, Archer?'

Archer stopped for a moment, his gaze fierce, his eyes on three dark dots in the sky. The archery range stood at a high point overlooking the sea. A trio of raptor monsters circled now over some trade boat below, and arrows flew from the bows of its sailors. It was a rough autumn sea and a bl.u.s.tery autumn wind, and arrow after arrow failed to hit its mark.

Archer took one stunning, lazy shot. A bird fell. Then Fire's guard Edler connected with a shot of his own, and Archer clapped him on the shoulder to congratulate him.

Fire thought her question forgotten, and so she was surprised when he spoke.

'You've always been far more afraid of yourself than of any of the terrors in the world outside yourself. Were it the other way around, we'd both have peace.'

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 friends.h.i.+p. 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 gla.s.s 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 sc.r.a.ps.'

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-p.r.o.nged 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 pa.s.sed 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.'

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