They were all waiting for a breakthrough. But sometimes Fire just wished desperately that she were allowed the occasional moment of solitude.

SHE HAD BEEN a summer baby and in July her birthday pa.s.sed - with little fanfare, for she kept the fact of it to herself. Archer and Brocker both had flowers sent. Fire smiled at this, for they would have sent something else had they known how many men of the court and the city had been sending her flowers, constantly, endlessly, flowers and more flowers, since her arrival two months ago. Her rooms were always a hothouse. She would have pitched them, the cut orchids and lilies and fine tall roses, for she had no interest in the attentions of these men; except that she loved the flowers, she loved being surrounded by the beauty of them. She found she had a knack for arranging them, colour to colour.

The king never sent flowers. His feelings had not changed, but he had stopped begging her to marry him. In fact, he'd asked her to teach him guarding against monsters. So over a series of days and weeks, each on either side of her door, she had taught him what he already knew but needed a push to remember. Intention, focus, and self-control. With practice, and with his new gloomy commitment to discipline, his mind became stronger and they moved the lessons to his office. He could be trusted now not to touch her, except when he'd had too much wine, which he did on occasion. They were irritating, his drunken tears, but at least drunk he was easy to control.

Of course, everyone in the palace noticed every time they were together, and thoughtless talk was easy. It was a solid spoke in the rumour wheel that the monster would eventually marry the king.

Brigan was away most of July. He came and went constantly, and now Fire understood where he was always going. Aside from the considerable time he spent with the army, he met with people: lords, ladies, businessmen of the black market, friends, enemies, talking this one or that one into an alliance, testing the loyalty of another. In some cases, spying was the only word for what he was doing. And sometimes fighting himself out of traps he wittingly or unwittingly walked into, coming back with bandages on his hand, black eyes, a cracked rib one time that would have stopped any sane person from riding. It was horrendous, Fire thought, some of the situations Brigan bounded off to throw himself into. Surely someone else should handle negotiations with a weapons dealer who was known to perform favours for Mydogg on occasion. Surely someone else should go to the well-guarded and isolated manor of Gentian's son, Gunner, in the southern peaks, to make clear the consequences if Gunner remained loyal to his father.

'He's too good at it,' Clara told her, when Fire questioned the wisdom of these meetings. 'He has this way of convincing people they want what he wants. And where he can't persuade with his words he often can with his sword.'

Fire remembered the two soldiers who'd brawled at the sight of her on the day she'd joined the First Branch. She remembered how their viciousness had turned to shame and regret after Brigan had spoken to them for only a few moments.

Not all people who inspired devotion were monsters.

And apparently he was renowned for his skill with a blade. Hanna, of course, talked as if he were unbeatable. 'I get my fighting skill from Papa,' she said, and clearly she had it from somewhere. It seemed to Fire that most five-year-olds in a skirmish against a mob of children would have emerged with more than a broken nose, if they'd emerged at all.

On the last day of July, Hanna came to her with a bright fistful of wildflowers, collected, Fire guessed, from the gra.s.ses of the cliff above Cellar Harbour, at the back of the green house. 'Grandmother said in a letter she thought your birthday was in July. Did I miss it? Why does no one know your birthday? Uncle Garan said ladies like flowers.' She scrunched her nose doubtfully at this last, and stuck the flowers in Fire's face, as if she thought flowers were for eating and expected Fire to lean in and munch, like Small would have done.

With Archer's and Brocker's, they were her favourite flowers in all of her rooms.

ONE TROUBLING DAY at the end of August, Fire was in the stables, brushing Small to clear her head. Her guard receded as Brigan ambled over, a collection of bridles slung on his shoulder. He leaned on the stall door and scratched Small's nose. 'Lady, well met.'

He had only just returned that morning from his latest excursion. 'Prince Brigan. And where's your lady?'

'In her history lesson. She went without complaint and I've been trying to prepare myself for what it might mean. Either she's planning to bribe me about something or she's ill.'

Fire had a question to ask Brigan, and the question was awkward. There was nothing to do but imitate dignity and fling it at him. She lifted her chin. 'Hanna's asked me several times now why the monsters go crazy for me every month, and why I can't step outside for four or five days at a time unless I bring extra guards. I'd like to explain it to her. I'd like your permission.'

It was impressive, his reaction - the command he had over his expression, emotionless as he stood on the other side of the door. He stroked Small's neck. 'She's five years old.'

Fire said nothing to this; only waited.

He scratched his head then, and squinted at her, uncertain. 'What do you think? Is five too young to understand? I don't want her to be frightened.'

'They don't frighten her, Lord Prince. She talks of guarding me from them with her bow.'

Brigan spoke quietly. 'I meant the changes that will happen to her own body. I wondered if the knowledge of it might frighten her.'

'Ah.' Fire's own voice was soft. 'But then, perhaps I'm the right person to explain it, for she's not so guarded that I can't tell if it upsets her. I can suit my explanation to her reaction.'

'Yes,' Brigan said, still hesitant and squinting. 'But you don't think five is very young?'

How odd it was, how dangerously dear, to find him so out of his element, so much a man, and wanting her advice on this thing. Fire spoke her opinion frankly. 'I don't think Hanna is too young to understand. And I think she should have an honest answer to a thing that puzzles her.'

He nodded. 'I wonder she hasn't asked me. She's not shy with questions.'

'Maybe she senses the nature of it.'

'Can she be so sensitive?'

'Children are geniuses,' Fire said firmly.

'Yes,' Brigan said. 'Well. You have my permission. Tell me afterwards how it goes.'

But suddenly Fire wasn't listening, because she was unsettled, as she had been several times that day, by the sense of a presence that was strange, familiar, and out of place. A person who should not be here. She gripped Small's mane and shook her head. Small took his nose away from Brigan's chest and peered back at her.

'Lady,' Brigan said. 'What is it?'

'It almost seems - no, now it's gone again. Never mind. It's nothing.'

Brigan looked at her, puzzled. She smiled, and explained. 'Sometimes I have to let a perception sit for a while before it makes sense to me.'

'Ah.' He considered the span of Small's long nose. 'Was it something to do with my mind?'

'What?' Fire said. 'Are you joking?'

'Should I be?'

'Do you think I sense anything at all of your mind?'

'Don't you?'

'Brigan,' she said, startled out of her manners. 'Your consciousness is a wall with no cracks in it. Never once have I had the slightest hint of anything from your mind.'

'Oh,' he said eloquently. 'Hmm.' He rearranged the straps of leather on his shoulder, looking rather pleased with himself.

'I'd a.s.sumed you were doing it on purpose,' Fire said.

'I was. Only it's hard to know how successful one is at such things.'

'Your success is complete.'

'How about now?'

Fire stared. 'What you mean? Are you asking if I sense your feelings now? Of course I don't.'

'And now?'

It came to her like the gentlest wave from the deep ocean of his consciousness. She stood quiet, and absorbed it, and took hold of her own feelings; for the fact of Brigan releasing a feeling to her, the first feeling he'd ever given her, made her inordinately happy. She said, 'I sense that you're amused by this conversation.'

'Interesting,' he said, smiling. 'Fascinating. And now that my mind is open, could you take it over?'

'Never. You've let a single feeling out, but that doesn't mean I could march in and take control.'

'Try,' he said; and even though his tone was friendly and his face open, Fire was frightened.

'I don't want to.'

'It's only as an experiment.'

The word made her breathless with panic. 'No. I don't want to. Don't ask me to.'

And now he was leaning close against the stall door, and speaking low. 'Lady, forgive me. I've distressed you. I won't ask it again, I promise.'

'You don't understand. I would never.'

'I know. I know you wouldn't. Please, Lady - I wish it unsaid.' Fire found that she was gripping Small's mane harder than she meant to be. She released the poor horse's hair, and smoothed it, and fought against the tears pushing their way to her surface. She rested her face against Small's neck and breathed his warm horsey smell.

And now she was laughing, a breathy laugh that sounded like a sob. 'I'd thought once, actually, of taking your mind, if you asked. I'd thought I could help you fall asleep at night.'

He opened his mouth to say something. Shut it again. His face closed for a moment, his unreadable mask falling into place. He spoke softly. 'But that wouldn't be fair; for after I slept you'd be left awake, with no one to help you sleep.'

Fire wasn't certain what they were talking about anymore. And she was desperately unhappy, for it was not a conversation to distract her from how she felt about this man.

Welkley walked in then with a summons for Brigan to go to the king. Fire was relieved to see him go.

ON HER WAY to her own rooms with her guard, that strange and familiar consciousness flitted again across her mind. The archer, the empty-headed archer.

Fire let out a frustrated breath of air. The archer was in the palace or on the grounds, or nearby in the city, or at least she'd thought so at times today; and he never stayed in her mind long enough for her to catch hold, or to know what to do. It was not normal, these prowling men and these minds as blank as if they were mesmerised by monsters. The sense of him here after all these months was not welcome.

Then in her rooms, she found the guards who were stationed there in a peculiar state. 'A man came to the door, Lady,' Musa said, 'but he made no sense. He said he was from the king and he'd come to examine the view from your windows, but I didn't recognise him as a king's man and I didn't trust what he wanted. I didn't let him in.'

Fire was rather astonished. 'The view from my windows? Why on earth?'

'He didn't feel right, Lady,' Neel said. 'There was something funny about him. Nothing he said made any sense.'

'He felt well enough to me,' another guard said gruffly. 'The king will not be pleased that we disobeyed.'

'No,' Musa said to her soldiers. 'Enough of this argument. Neel is right, the man had a bad feeling to him.'

'He made me dizzy,' Mila said.

'He was an honourable man,' another said, 'and I don't believe we have the authority to turn the king's men away.'

Fire stood in her doorway, her hand on the door frame to steady herself. She was certain as she listened to the disagreement between her guards - her guards, who never argued in front of their lady, and never talked back to their captain - that something was wrong. It wasn't just that they argued, or that this visitor sounded a suspicious fellow. Neel had said the man hadn't felt right; well, a number of her guards at this moment didn't feel right. They were much more open to her than usual, and a fog hovered in their minds. The most affected were the guards who argued now with Musa.

And she knew through some instinct, monster or human, that if they spoke of this man as honourable, they were reading him wrong. She knew with a certainty that she couldn't explain that Musa had been right to turn the man away.

'What did he look like, this fellow?'

A few of the guard scratched their heads and grumbled that they couldn't remember; and Fire could almost reach out and touch the fog of their minds. But Musa's mind was clear. 'He was tall, Lady, taller than the king, and thin, wasted. He had white hair and dark eyes and he was not well. His colour was off, he was grey-like, and he had marks on his skin. A rash.'

'A rash?'

'He wore plain clothing, and he had a positive armament of bows on his back - crossbow, short bow, a truly gorgeous longbow. He had a full quiver and a knife, but no sword.'

'The arrows in his quiver. What were they made of ?'

Musa pursed her lips. 'I didn't notice.'

'A white wood,' Neel said.

And so the foggy-headed archer had come to her rooms to see her views. And had left a number of her guards with puzzled expressions, and foggy heads.

Fire walked to the foggiest guard, the first who'd raised an argument, a fellow named Edler who was normally quite amiable. She put her hand to his forehead. 'Edler. Does your head hurt?'

It took Edler a moment to process his answer. 'It doesn't exactly hurt, Lady, but I don't feel quite like myself.'

Fire considered how to word this. 'May I have your permission to try to clear the discomfort?'

'Certainly, Lady, if you wish.'

Fire entered Edler's consciousness easily, as she had the poacher's. She played around with his fog, touched it and twisted it, trying to decide what exactly it was. It seemed like a balloon that was filling his mind with emptiness, pushing his own intelligence to the edges.

Fire jabbed the balloon hard and it popped, and fizzled. Edler's own thoughts rushed forward and fell into place; and he rubbed his head with both hands. 'It does feel better, Lady. I can picture that man clearly. I don't think he was the king's man.'

'He wasn't the king's man,' Fire said. 'The king wouldn't send a sickly fellow armed with a longbow to my rooms to admire my views.'

Edler sighed. 'Rocks, but I'm tired.'

Fire moved on to her next foggy guard, and thought to herself that here was a thing more ominous than anything she'd uncovered yet in the questioning rooms.

On her bed later she found a letter from Archer. Once the summer harvest was through, he intended to visit. It was a happiness, but it did not lighten the state of things.

She had thought herself the only person in the Dells capable of altering minds.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.