Part 33 (1/2)

ONE PERSON FIRE spent time with had nothing to give. Lady Murgda, traitor and attempted murderer, had been kept in the dungeons since the final battle of the war. Her husband was dead. So was her brother. She was well into her pregnancy, which was the only reason she had been left alive. She lashed at Fire with bitter and hateful words when Fire visited, but still Fire continued to visit, not always certain why she did. Sympathy for a strong person who'd been brought low? Respect for a pregnant woman? At any rate, she was not afraid of Murgda's vitriol.

One day as she stepped out of Murgda's cell she met Nash being helped in by Welkley and one of the healers. Grasping his hand, looking at the message in his eyes, she understood that she was not the only person with sympathy for Murgda's miserable situation.

They didn't have a lot of words for each other these days, Fire and Nash. Something unbreakable had formed between them. A bond of memory and experience, and a desperate fondness that seemed not to require words.

How wonderful to see him on his feet.

' I ' L L ALWAYS BE leaving,' Brigan said.

'Yes,' Fire said. 'I know.'

Early morning, and they were tangled together in her bed in the green house. Fire was memorising every scar on his face and his body. She was memorising the pale clear grey of his eyes, because he was leaving today with the First to the north, escorting his mother and father to their respective homes. 'Brigan,' she said, so that he would talk, and she could hear his voice and memorise it.

'Yes?'

'Tell me again where you're going.'

'HANNA HAS ACCEPTED you completely,' he said a few minutes later.

'She's not jealous, or confused.'

'She has accepted me,' Fire said. 'But she is a little jealous.'

'Is she?' he said, startled. 'Should I talk to her?'

'It's a small thing,' Fire said. 'She does allow for you loving me.'

'She loves you, too.'

'She does love me. Really, I don't think any child could see her father beginning to love someone else and not feel jealousy. At least, that's what I imagine. It never happened to me.' She lost her voice. She continued in thoughts. I was, wholly and truly, the only person I ever knew my father to love. I was, wholly and truly, the only person I ever knew my father to love.

'Fire,' he whispered, kissing her face. 'You did the thing you had to do.'

He never tried to own me, Brigan. Roen said that Cansrel could never see a beautiful thing without wanting to possess it. But he did not try to possess me. He let me be my own.

ON THE DAY the surgeons removed Fire's fingers, Brigan was in the north. In the infirmary Hanna held Fire's good hand tightly, chattering her almost to dizziness, and Nash held Hanna's hand, and reached his other hand, a bit cheekily, out to Mila, who gave him a look like acid. Mila, big-eyed, big-bellied, and glowing like a person with a wonderful secret, seemed to have a curious talent for attracting the fondness of men who far outranked her. But she had learned something from the last one. She had learned propriety, which was the same as saying she had learned to trust only herself. So much so that she was not afraid to be rude to the king, when he asked for it.

Garan came in at the last minute, sat down, and, through the whole b.l.o.o.d.y thing, talked to Mila and Nash and Hanna about the plans for his wedding. Fire knew that it was an attempt to distract her. She thanked them for this kindness by trying very hard to be distracted.

It was not a pleasant surgery. The drugs were good, but they took away the pain alone, not the sensation of her fingers being stolen from her hand; and later, when the drugs wore off, the pain was terrible.

And then, over days and weeks, the pain began to fade. When no one but her guard was around to hear, she fought with her fiddle, and was astonished with how quickly the fighting turned into something more hopeful. Her changed hand couldn't do all that it had formerly done. But it could still make music.

HER DAYS WERE full. An end to the war had not put an end to treachery and lawlessness, particularly in the kingdom's far reaches, where so much went unseen. Clara and Garan often had spy-room work for her. She talked to the people they set her to, but the work she preferred was in the palace infirmary, or even better, in the city hospitals, where all kinds of folk came with all kinds of needs. It was true that some of them wanted nothing to do with her, and in the usual way, even more of them wanted her far too much, and they all made too big a fuss over the role she had played in saving the king's life. They talked about it as if it had been all her doing, and none of Nash's, and none of the kingdom's best surgeons', and when she tried to deflect their praise, they began on the subject of how she had tricked Lord Mydogg's war plans out of Lord Gentian and a.s.sured the victory of the Dells. How such rumours had been started, she didn't know, but it seemed there was no stopping them. So she moved among their moods calmly, building barriers against their admiration, helping where she could, and learning practicalities of surgery that astonished her.

'Today,' she announced triumphantly to Garan and Clara, 'a woman came in who'd dropped a cleaver on her foot and cut off her own toe. The surgeons reattached it. Can you believe it? With their tools and their drugs I almost believe they could reattach a leg. We must give more money to the hospitals, you know. We must train more surgeons and build hospitals all over the kingdom. We must build schools!'

'I wish I could take my legs off,' Clara groaned, 'until this baby is born, and then have them reattached afterwards. And my back, too. And my shoulders.'

Fire went to Clara to rub her shoulders, and to ease into Clara's mind and take away what she could of Clara's haggard feeling. Garan, who was not attending to either of them, scowled at the papers on his desk. 'All the mines in the south that were closed before the war have been reopened,' he said. 'And now Brigan believes the miners are not paid enough. Nash agrees, the vexing rockhead.'

Fire slid her knuckles against the knots of muscle in Clara's neck. The metalsmith of the palace had made two fingers for her that attached to her hand with straps and helped her with picking things up and carrying. They didn't help with ma.s.sage, so she pulled them off, and pulled her headscarf off too, releasing the tension of her own scalp. 'Mining is hard work,' she said, 'and dangerous.'

Garan slapped his pen onto the table beside her metal fingers. 'We are not made of money.'

'Isn't it the kingdom's gold they're mining?'

He frowned at this. 'Clara, where do you stand?'

'I don't care,' Clara moaned. 'No, don't leave that spot. It's exactly right.'

Garan watched Fire ma.s.saging his extremely pregnant sister. When Clara moaned again, his grimace began to turn up at the corners. 'Have you heard what people are calling you, Fire?' he asked.

'What is it now?'

'”The monster life-giver”. And I've also heard the term ”monster protector of the Dells” bandied about.'

'Rocks,' Fire said under her breath.

'And there are s.h.i.+ps in the harbour that have put up new sails in red, orange, pink, and green. Have you seen them?'

'Those are all colours of the Dellian standard,' Fire said - other than pink, she added quietly to herself, ignoring a streak of pink in her peripheral vision.

'Of course,' Garan said. 'And I suppose that's your explanation for what they're doing to the new bridge.'

Fire took a small breath, braced herself, and rested eyes on Garan. 'What are they doing to the bridge?'

'The builders have decided to paint the towers green,' he said, 'and line the cross-ribs with mirrors.'

Fire blinked. 'What's that got to do with me?'

'Imagine,' Garan said, 'how it will look at sunrise and sunset.'