'Are you in need of a healer, Lady?'

'No, Lord Prince. I was only thinking about something.'

He didn't believe her, she could see it in the sceptical set of his mouth; but he let it go. 'I've received an urgent summons from the south,' he said. 'I'll be on my way as soon as we've reached the king's court. I wondered if there was anything you wanted, Lady, that I could provide before I go.'

Fire tugged at a patch of gra.s.s and swallowed this disappointment. She could think of nothing she wanted, not that anyone could provide, except for the answer to a question. She asked it very quietly. 'Why are you kind to me?'

He paused, watching her hands that pulled at the gra.s.s. He crouched down to her eye level. 'Because I trust you.'

The world went very still around her, and she stared hard at the gra.s.s. The green of it was radiant in the sun's light.

'Why should you trust me?'

He glanced at the soldiers around them and shook his head. 'A conversation for another time.'

'I've thought of a thing you can do for me,' she said. 'I've thought of it in this very moment.'

'Go on.'

'You can take a guard when you go wandering at night.' And then, when his eyebrows shot up and she saw him formulating his refusal: 'Please, Lord Prince. There are people who'd like to kill you, and many others who'd die to prevent it. Show some respect to those who value your life so highly.'

He turned his face away from her, frowning. His voice was not pleased. 'Very well.'

That point settled, and sorry now, most likely, that he'd ever started the conversation, Brigan went back to his horse.

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IN THE SADDLE again, Fire mulled over the commander's trust, prodding and pushing it around, like a candy in her mouth, trying to decide whether she believed it. It wasn't that she thought him likely to lie. It was only that she thought him unlikely to trust - not completely, anyway, not the way Brocker or Donal did, or Archer, on the days Archer decided to trust her.

The problem with Brigan was that he was so closed. When had she ever had to judge a person by words alone? She had no formula for understanding a person like him, for he was the only one she'd ever met.

THE WINGED RIVER was so named because before its waters reached their journey's end, they took flight. At the place where the river leapt off a great green cliff and plunged into the Winter Sea, King's City had grown, starting on the north bank and spreading outward and south across the river. Joining the older city with the younger were bridges, the building of which had sent more than one unfortunate engineer over the falls to his death. A ca.n.a.l of steep locks on the northern side connected the city with Cellar Harbour far below.

Pa.s.sing through the city's outer walls with her escort of five thousand, Fire felt herself a gawkish country girl. So many people in this city, smells and noises, buildings painted bright colours, steeply roofed, crammed together, red wooden houses with green trim, purple and yellow, blue and orange. Fire had never seen a building before that was not made of stone. It hadn't occurred to her that houses could be any colour but grey.

People hung out of windows to watch the First Branch pa.s.s. Women in the street flirted with the soldiers, and threw flowers, so many flowers Fire couldn't believe the extravagance. These people tossed more flowers over Fire's head than she had seen in a lifetime.

A flower splatted against the chest of one of Brigan's top sword-fighters, riding to Fire's right. When Fire laughed at him, he beamed, and handed the flower to her. On this journey through the city streets Fire was surrounded not just by her guard but by Brigan's most proficient fighters, Brigan himself on her left. The commander wore the grey of his troops, and he'd positioned the standard-bearer some distance behind. It was all in an attempt to reduce the attention Fire drew, and Fire knew she wasn't playing her part in the charade. She should have been sitting gravely, her face bent to her hands, catching no one's eye. Instead she was laughing - laughing, and smiling, and numb to her aches and pains, and sparkling with the strangeness and the bustle of this place.

And then before too long - she couldn't have said if she sensed it or heard it first, but there was a change in their audience. A whisper seemed to work its way in among the cheers, and then a strange silence; a lull. She felt it: wonder, and admiration. And Fire understood that even with her hair covered, and even in her drab, dirty riding clothes, and even though this town hadn't seen her, possibly hadn't thought of her in seventeen years, her face and her eyes and her body had told them who she was. And her headscarf had confirmed it, for why else would she cover her hair? She became mindful of her animation that was only making her glow more brightly. She erased her smile and dropped her eyes.

Brigan signalled to his standard-bearer to come forward and ride beside them.

Fire spoke low. 'I sense no danger.'

'Nonetheless,' Brigan said grimly, 'if an archer leans out one of these windows, I want him to notice both of us. A man revenging himself on Cansrel isn't going to shoot you if he risks. .h.i.tting me.'

She thought of joking about it. If her enemies were Brigan's friends and her friends were Brigan's enemies, the two of them could walk through the world arm in arm and never be hit by arrows again.

But an eerie sound rose now from the silence. 'Fire,' a woman called from an upstairs window. A cl.u.s.ter of barefoot children in a doorway echoed the call. 'Fire. Fire!' And other voices joined in, and the cry swelled, until suddenly the people were singing out the word, chanting it, some in veneration, some almost in accusation - some with no reason at all except that they were caught up in the captive and mindless fervour of a crowd. Fire rode toward the walls of Nash's palace, stunned, confounded, by the music of her own name.

THE FAcADE OF the king's palace was black, this Fire had heard. But the knowledge didn't prepare her for the beauty or the luminosity of the stone. It was a black that shifted depending on the angle from which it was viewed, and that shimmered, and reflected the light of other things, so that Fire's first impression was of changing panels of black and grey and silver, and blue reflected from the eastern sky, and orange and red from the setting sun.

Fire's eyes had been starved for the colours of King's City, and she hadn't even known it. How her father must have shone in this place.

The five thousand soldiers veered off as Fire, her guard, and Brigan approached the ramp to the gates. Spears were raised and the doors swung in. The horses pa.s.sed through a black stone gatehouse and emerged into a white courtyard dazzling with the reflection of the sunset on quartz walls, and the sky pink behind flashing gla.s.s roofs. Fire craned her neck and gaped at the walls and roofs. A steward approached them and gaped at Fire.

'Eyes on me, Welkley,' Brigan said, swinging down from his horse.

Welkley, short, thin, impeccably dressed and groomed, cleared his throat and turned to Brigan. 'Forgive me, Lord Prince. I've sent someone to the offices to alert Princess Clara of your arrival.'

'And Hanna?'

'In the green house, Lord Prince.'

Brigan nodded and held a hand up to Fire. 'Lady Fire, this is the king's first steward, Welkley.'

Fire knew this was her cue to dismount and give her hand to Welkley, but when she moved, a spasm of pain radiated outward from the small of her back. She caught her breath, gritted her teeth, pulled her leg over her saddle and tipped, leaving it to Brigan's instincts to keep her from landing on her backside before the king's first steward. He caught her coolly and propped her on her feet, his face impa.s.sive, as if it were routine for her to launch herself at him every time she dismounted; and scowled at the white marble floor while she presented her hand to Welkley.

A woman entered the courtyard then that Fire could not fail to sense, a force of nature. Fire turned to locate her and saw a head of bouncy brown hair, sparkling eyes, a sparkling smile, and a handsome and ample figure. She was tall, nearly as tall as Brigan. She threw her arms around him, laughing, and kissed his nose. 'This is a treat,' she said. And then, to Fire, 'I'm Clara. And now I understand Nash; you're more stunning even than Cansrel.'

Fire couldn't find words to respond to this, and Brigan's eyes, suddenly, were pained. But Clara simply laughed again and patted Brigan's face. 'So serious,' she said. 'Go on, little brother. I'll take care of the lady.'

Brigan nodded. 'Lady Fire, I'll find you before I take my leave. Musa,' he said, turning to Fire's guard, who stood quietly with the horses. 'Go with the lady, all of you, wherever Princess Clara takes her. Clara, see that a healer visits her, today. A woman.' He kissed Clara's cheek hurriedly. 'In case I don't see you again.' He spun away and practically ran through one of the arched doorways leading into the palace.

'He always has a fire under his tail, Brigan,' Clara said. 'Come, Lady, I'll show you your rooms. You'll like them, they overlook the green house. The fellow who tends the green house gardens? Trust me, Lady, you'd let him stake your tomatoes.'

Fire was speechless with astonishment. The princess grabbed the lady's arm and pulled her toward the palace.

FIRE'S SITTING ROOM did indeed overlook a curious wooden house tucked into the back grounds of the palace. The house was small, painted a deep green, and surrounded by lush gardens and trees so that it seemed to blend in, as if it had sprouted from the ground like the growing things around it.

The famous gardener was nowhere in sight, but as Fire watched from her window, the door to the house opened. A young, chestnut-haired woman in a pale yellow dress stepped outside and pa.s.sed through the orchard to the palace.

'It's Roen's house, technically,' Clara said, standing at Fire's shoulder. 'She had it built because she believed the king's queen should have a place to retreat to. She lived there fully after she broke with Nax. She's given it to Brigan's use, for the moment, until Nash chooses a queen.'

And so that young woman must be a.s.sociated with Brigan. Interesting, indeed, and a very pretty view, until Fire moved to her bedchamber windows and encountered a sight she appreciated even more: the stables. She stretched her mind and found Small, and was immensely comforted to know he would be near enough for her to feel.

Her rooms were too large, but comfortable, the windows open and fitted with wire screens; a consideration someone had taken for her specially, she suspected, so she could pa.s.s her window with her hair uncovered and not have to worry about raptor monsters or an invasion of monster bugs.

It occurred to her then that perhaps these had been Cansrel's rooms, or Cansrel's screens. Just as quickly she dismissed the possibility. Cansrel would have had more rooms, and larger, closer to the king, overlooking one of the white inner courtyards, with a balcony outside each tall window, as she'd seen when she first entered the courtyard.

And then her thoughts were interrupted by the consciousness of the king. She looked to the door of her bedchamber, puzzled, and then startled, as Nash burst in.

'Brother King,' Clara said, much surprised. 'Couldn't wait for her to wash the road dust from her hands?'

Fire's guard of twenty dropped to their knees. Nash didn't even see them, didn't hear Clara, strode across the room to the window where Fire stood. He clamped his hand around her neck and tried to kiss her.

She'd sensed it coming, but his mind was quick and slippery, and she hadn't moved fast enough to take hold. And during their previous encounter he'd been drunk. He was not drunk now, and the difference was marked. To avoid his kiss she dropped to her knee in an imitation of subservience. He held on to her, struggling to make her rise.

'You're choking her,' Clara said. 'Nash. Nash, stop!'

She grabbed wildly at Nash's mind, caught hold of it, lost it again; and decided in a fit of temper that she would fall unconscious before she kissed this man. Then, quite suddenly, Nash's hand was wrenched from her throat by a new person she recognised. She took a great, relieved breath and pulled herself up by the windowpane.

Brigan's voice was dangerously calm. 'Musa, give us the room.'

The guard vanished. Brigan took a handful of Nash's shirtfront and shoved him hard against the wall. 'Look at what you're doing,' Brigan spat. 'Clear your mind!'

'Forgive me,' Nash said, sounding genuinely aghast. 'I lost my head. Forgive me, Lady.'

Nash tried to turn his face to Fire, but Brigan's fist tightened around his collar and pressed against his throat to stop him. 'If she's going to be unsafe here I'll take her away this instant. She'll come south with me, do you understand?'

'All right,' Nash said. 'All right.'

'It's not all right. This is her bedchamber. Rocks, Nash! Why are you even here?'

'All right right,' Nash said, pushing at Brigan's fist with his hands. 'Enough. I see I was wrong. When I look at her, I lose my head.'

Brigan dropped his fist from his brother's neck. Took a step back and rubbed his face with his hands. 'Then don't look at her,' he said tiredly. 'I have business with you before I go.'

'Come to my office.'

Brigan c.o.c.ked his head at the doorway. 'I'll meet you in five minutes' time.'

Nash turned and slumped out of the room, banished. A puzzle of inconsistencies, this eldest of Nax's sons, and the king in name; but which of these brothers was the king in practice?

'Are you all right, Lady?' Brigan asked, frowning after Nash.

Fire was not all right. She clutched her aching back. 'Yes, Lord Prince.'

'You can trust Clara, Lady,' Brigan said, 'and my brother Garan. And Welkley, and one or two of the king's men that Clara can point you to. In the absence of Lord Archer I'd like to escort you home myself next time I pa.s.s north through the city. It's a route I travel often. It shouldn't be more than a few weeks. Is this acceptable to you?'

It was not acceptable; it was too long by far. But Fire nodded, swallowing painfully.

'I must go,' he said. 'Clara knows how to get messages to me.'

Fire nodded again. Brigan turned and was gone.

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SHE HAD A bath, and a ma.s.sage and warm compress from a healer so skilled that Fire didn't care if the woman couldn't keep her hands out of her hair. Dressed in the plainest dress of the many choices a wide-eyed servant girl had brought to her, Fire felt more like herself; as much like herself as she could, in these strange rooms, and not knowing what to expect next from this strange royal family. And deprived of music, for she had returned her borrowed fiddle to its rightful owner.

The First had a week's leave in King's City, and then they'd take to the road again under whatever captain Brigan had left in command. Brigan, she discovered when she emerged from her bathing room, had decided to a.s.sign her entire guard to her permanently, with the same rules as before: six guards to accompany her wherever she went, and two women in her bedroom when she slept. She was sorry for this, that these soldiers should have to continue such a dull charge, and sorrier still at the thought of them underfoot. It was worse than a bandage that chafed at a wound, her endless lack of solitude.

At dinnertime she claimed a backache, to avoid having to appear so soon before Nash and his court. Nash sent servants to her room pushing carts bearing a feast that could have fed all the residents of her own stone house in the north, and Archer's house as well. She thought of Archer, and then cast the thought away. Archer brought the tears too near.

Welkley came with four fiddles after dinner, two hanging from the fingers of each hand. Astonishing fiddles, nothing modest about them, smelling wonderfully of wood and varnish and gleaming brown, orange, vermilion. They were the best he'd been able to find in such a short time, Welkley explained. She was to choose one of the four, as a gift from the royal family.

Fire thought she could guess which member of the royal family had spared a minute amidst his preoccupations to order a roundup of the city's finest fiddles, and again she found herself uncomfortably close to tears. She took the instruments from the steward one by one, each more beautiful than the last. Welkley waited patiently while she played them, testing their feeling against her neck, the sharpness of the strings on her fingertips, the depth of their sound. There was one she kept reaching for, with a copper-red varnish, and a clarity like the point of a star, precise and lonesome, reminding her, somehow, of home. This one, she thought to herself. This is the one. Its only flaw, she told Welkley, was that it was too good for her skill.

That night memories kept her awake, and aches, and anxiety. Shy of the court bustling with people even late into the night, and not knowing the route to any quiet view of the sky, she went with six of her guard to the stables. She leaned on the stall door before her dozing, lopsided horse.

Why have I come here? she asked herself. What have I got myself into? I don't belong in this place. Oh, Small. Why am I here? Oh, Small. Why am I here?

From the warmth of her fondness for her horse she constructed a fragile and changeable thing that almost resembled courage. She hoped it would be enough.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

THE SNOOP WHO'D been captured in the king's palace was not the same man Fire had sensed in the king's rooms at Roen's fortress, but his consciousness did have a similar feeling.

'What does that mean?' Nash demanded. 'Does it mean he was sent by the same man?'

'Not necessarily, Lord King.'

'Does it mean he's of the same family? Are they brothers?'

'Not necessarily, Lord King. Family members can have broadly different consciousnesses, as can two men under the same employ. At this point I can only determine that their att.i.tudes and their apt.i.tudes are similar.'

'And what help is that? We didn't bring you all this distance so you could tell us he's of average disposition and intelligence, Lady.'

In King Nash's office, with its stunning views of the city, its bookshelves rising from floor to mezzanine to domed ceiling, its rich green carpet and gold lamps, and most especially its handsome and high-strung monarch, Fire was in a state of mental stimulation that made it difficult for her to focus on the prisoner, or care about his claims to intelligence. The king was intelligent, and fatuous and powerful and flighty. This was what impressed Fire, that this man with the dark good looks was all things at once, open as the sky, and desperately difficult to subdue.

When she'd first come through the door of this office with six of her guard the king had greeted her glumly. 'You entered my mind before you entered this room, Lady.'

'Yes, Lord King,' she said, startled into honesty before him and his men.

'I'm glad of it,' Nash said, 'and I give you leave. Around you I cannot bear my behaviour.'

He sat at his desk, staring at the emerald ring on his finger. While they waited for the prisoner to be brought before them, the room turned to a mental battlefield. Nash was keenly aware of her physical presence; he struggled not to look at her. He was just as keenly aware of her presence inside his mind, and here was the problem, for he clung to her there, perversely, to savour the excitement of her where he could. And it did not work both ways. He could not ignore her and cling to her simultaneously.