'I'm a thousand years old,' Fire said, 'just like you.'

'Hmm,' Brigan said. He didn't ask her what she meant, which was for the best, because she wasn't exactly sure. If she was suggesting she was too wise with the weight of her experience to fall prey to infatuation - well, the disproof was sitting before her in the form of a grey-eyed prince with a thoughtful set to his mouth that she found quite distracting.

Fire sighed, trying to shift her attention. Her senses were overloaded. This courtyard was one of the palace's busiest, and, of course, the palace as a whole swarmed with minds. And just outside the palace grounds was stationed the entire First Branch, with which Brigan had arrived yesterday and would depart the day after tomorrow. She sensed minds more easily now than she had used to. She recognised a good many members of the First Branch, despite their distance.

She tried to push the feeling of them away. It was tiring, holding everything at once, and she couldn't decide where to rest her focus. She settled on a consciousness that was bothering her. She leaned forward and spoke low to Brigan.

'Behind you,' she said, 'a boy with very odd eyes is talking with some of the court children. Who is he?'

Brigan nodded. 'I know the boy you mean. He came with Cutter. You remember the animal trader, Cutter? I want nothing to do with the man, he's a monster smuggler and a brute - except that he happens to be selling a very fine stallion that almost has the markings of a river horse. I'd buy him in a breath if the money didn't go to Cutter. It's a bit tacky, you know, me buying a horse that's likely to have been stolen. I may buy him anyway; in which case Garan will have a conniption at the expense. I suppose he's right. I'm not in need of another horse. Though I wouldn't hesitate if he really were a river horse - do you know the dappled grey horses, Lady, that run wild at the source of the river? Splendid creatures. I've always wanted one, but they're no easy thing to catch.'

Horses were as distracting to the man as to his child. 'The boy,' Fire prompted dryly.

'Right. The boy's a strange one, and it isn't just that red eye. He was lurking around when I went to look at the stallion, and I tell you, Lady, he gave me a funny feeling.'

'What do you mean, a funny feeling?'

Brigan squinted at her in perplexity. 'I can't exactly say. There was something . . . disquieting . . . about his manner. The way he spoke. I did not like his voice.' He stopped, somewhat exasperated, and rubbed his hair so it stood on end. 'As I say it, I hear it makes no sense. There was nothing solid about him to fix on as troublesome. But still I told Hanna to stay away from him, and she said she already met him and didn't like him. She said he lies. What do you think of him?'

Fire applied herself to the question with concerted effort. His mind was unusual, unfamiliar, and she wasn't sure how to connect to it. She wasn't even sure how to comprehend the borders of it. She couldn't see see it. it.

His mind gave her a very funny feeling indeed. And it was not a good good funny feeling. funny feeling.

'I don't know,' she said. 'I don't know.' And a moment later, not quite knowing why: 'Buy the stallion, Lord Prince, if it will get them out of this court.'

Brigan left, presumably to do what Fire said; and Fire sat alone, puzzling over the boy. His right eye was grey and his left eye was red, which was strange enough in itself. His hair was blond like wheat, his skin light, and he had the appearance of being ten or eleven. Could he be some kind of Pikkian? He was sitting facing her, a rodent monster in his lap, a mouse with glimmering gold fur. He was tying a string around its neck. Fire knew somehow that the creature was not his pet.

He pulled the string, too tight. The mouse's legs began to jerk. Stop it Stop it, Fire thought furiously, aiming her message at the strange presence that was his mind.

He loosened the string immediately. The mouse lay in his lap, heaving with tiny breaths. Then the boy smiled at Fire, and stood up, and came to stand before her. 'It doesn't hurt him,' he said. 'It's only a choking game, for fun.'

His very words grated against her ears; grated, it seemed, against her brain, so horribly, like raptor monsters screeching, that she had to resist the impulse to cover her ears. Yet when she recalled the timbre of his voice, the voice itself was neither unusual nor unpleasant.

She stared at him coolly, so he would not see her bewilderment. 'A choking game? All the fun of it is on your side, and it's a sick kind of fun.'

He smiled again. His lopsided, red-eyed smile was somehow distressing. 'Is it sick? To want to be in control?'

'Of a helpless, frightened creature? Let it go.'

'The others believed me when I said it didn't hurt him,' he said, 'but you know not to. Plus, you're awfully pretty. So I'll give you what you want.'

He bent to the ground and opened his hand. The monster mouse fled, a streak of gold, disappearing into an opening in the roots of a tree.

'You have interesting scars on your neck,' he said, straightening. 'What cut you?'

'It's none of your affair,' Fire said, shifting her headscarf so that it covered her scars, very much disliking his gaze.

'I'm glad I got to talk to you,' he said. 'I've wanted to for some time. You're even better than I hoped.' He turned around, and left the courtyard.

WHATAN UNPLEASANT child.

It had never happened before, that Fire should not be able to form a conception of a consciousness. Even Brigan's mind, which she couldn't enter, offered the shape and feeling of its barricades to her perception. Even the foggy archer, the foggy guards; she couldn't explain their minds, but she could perceive them.

Reaching for this boy's mind was like walking through a collection of twisted mirrors facing other twisted mirrors, so that all was distorted and misleading, and befuddling to the senses, and nothing could be known or understood. She couldn't get a straight look at him, not even his outline.

And this was what she stewed over for some time after the boy left; and this stewing was why it took her so long to attend to the condition of the children he'd been talking to. The children in the courtyard who'd believed what he'd said. Their minds were blank, and bubbling with fog.

Fire could not fathom this fog. But she was certain she'd found its source.

By the time she realised she mustn't let him go, the sun was setting, the stallion was bought, and the boy was already gone from the court.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

THAT SAME NIGHT brought information that distracted everyone from the matter of Cutter's boy.

It was late evening and Fire was in the stables when she sensed Archer returning from the city to the palace. It was not a thing she would have sensed so forcefully, not searching for it particularly; except that he was eager to talk to her, and open as an infant, and also slightly drunk.

Fire had only just begun to brush Small, who was standing with eyes closed from the bliss of it and drooling onto his stall door. And she wasn't anxious to see Archer if he was both eager and drunk. She sent him a message. We'll talk when you're sober We'll talk when you're sober.

Some hours later with her regular guard of six, Fire followed the maze from her rooms to Archer's. But then outside his door she was perplexed, for she sensed that her Mila, who was off-duty, was inside Archer's chamber.

Fire's thoughts groped for an explanation, any explanation other than the obvious. But Mila's mind was open, as even strong minds tended to be when they were experiencing what Mila was experiencing just now on the other side of this door; and Fire remembered how sweet and pretty her guard was, and how many opportunities Archer had had to notice her.

Fire stood staring at Archer's door, silent and shaking. She was quite certain he had never done anything to make her this angry before.

She turned on her heel and marched down the hallway. She found the stairs and marched up them, and up, and up, until she burst onto the roof, where she set to marching back and forth. It was cold and damp, and she had no coat, and it smelled like coming snow. Fire didn't notice, didn't care. Her baffled guard stood out of her way so she wouldn't trample them.

After some time the thing happened she'd been waiting for: Mila fell asleep. And none too soon, for it was late now, and Brigan was climbing wearily to the roofs. She mustn't meet Brigan tonight. She would not be able to stop herself from telling him everything, and Archer might deserve to have his laundry aired, but Mila did not.

She marched down by a stairway that Brigan was not taking up. She traced the maze again to Archer's rooms and stood outside his door. Archer Archer, she thought to him. Get out here, now Get out here, now.

He emerged quickly, if barefoot and confused and a bit hastily thrown together; and Fire for the first time exercised her privilege of being alone with him, sending her guards to either end of the long corridor. She could not quite force herself to appear calm, and when she spoke, her voice was scathing. 'Must you prey on my guard?'

The puzzlement left his face and he spoke hotly. 'I'm not a predator, you know. Women come to me quite willingly. And why should you care what I do?'

'It hurts people. You're careless with people, Archer. Mila, why Mila? She's fifteen years old!'

'She's sleeping now, happy as a kitten in a patch of sun. You're stirring up trouble over nothing.'

Fire took a breath, and spoke low. 'And in a week's time, when you grow tired of her, Archer, because someone else has captured your fancy; when she becomes despondent or depressed, or pathetic, or furious, because you've s.n.a.t.c.hed the thing away that makes her so happy - I suppose then she'll be stirring up trouble over nothing?'

'You talk as if she's in love with me.'

He was maddening; she would like to kick him. 'They always fall in love with you, Archer, always. Once they've known the warmth of you, they always fall in love with you, and you never do with them, and when you drop them it breaks their hearts.'

He bit the words off. 'A curious accusation, coming from you.'

She understood him, but she would not let him turn this into that. 'We're talking about my friends, Archer. I beg you - if you must have the entire palace in your bed, leave the women who are my friends out of it.'

'And I don't see why this should matter to you now, when it never did before.'

'I never had friends before!'

'You keep using that word,' he said bitterly. 'She's not your friend, she's your guard. Would your friend do what she's done, knowing your history with me?'

'She knows little about it, except that it is history. And you forget I'm in a position to know how she regards me.'

'But there must be plenty she hides from you - as she's been hiding her meetings with me all this time. A person may have many feelings about you that you don't know.'

She watched him, crestfallen. He was so physical in his arguments. He loomed and gestured, his face went dark or burned with light. His eyes blazed. And he was just as physical with his love and his joy, and this was why they all fell in love with him, for in a world that was dismal he was alive and pa.s.sionate, and his attentions, while they lasted, were intoxicating.

And she hadn't missed the meaning in his words: this thing with Mila had been going on for some time. She turned away from him, held a hand up against him. She couldn't fight with the appeal of Lord Archer to a fifteen-year-old soldier girl from the impoverished southern mountains. And she couldn't quite forgive herself for not realising this might happen, for not paying closer attention in her mind to Archer's whereabouts and his company.

She dropped her hand, turned back, and spoke with weariness. 'Of course she has feelings about me I don't know. But whatever those feelings are, they don't negate the feeling she does show me, or the friendship in her behaviour that goes beyond the loyalty of a guard. You will not turn my anger away from you and onto her.'

Archer seemed to deflate then. He slumped against his door and stared at his bare toes in the manner of a man accepting that he has lost. 'I wish you would come home,' he said weakly; and for a panicked moment Fire thought he was going to cry.

But then he seemed to take hold of himself. He looked up at her quietly. 'So you have friends now. And a protective heart.'

She matched his quietness. 'I've always had a protective heart. Only now I have more people inside it. They've joined you there, Archer - never replaced you.'

He thought about that for a moment, staring at his feet. 'You needn't worry about Clara, anyway,' he said. 'She ended it almost the moment it began. I believe it was out of loyalty to you.'

Fire deliberately chose to think of this as good news. She would focus on it ending, whatever it it had been, and ending by Clara's choice - rather than on the small matter of it having begun. had been, and ending by Clara's choice - rather than on the small matter of it having begun.

There was a short, sad pause. He said, 'I'll end things with Mila.'

'The sooner you do, the sooner it'll be behind her. And you've lost your questioning-room privileges with this thing, Archer. I'll not have you there plaguing her with your presence.'

He glanced up sharply then, and stood straight. 'A relieving change of topic. You remind me of the reason I wanted to talk to you. Do you know where I was today?'

Fire couldn't turn away from the subject so easily. She rubbed both temples. I've no idea, and I'm exhausted, so whatever it is, have out with it quickly I've no idea, and I'm exhausted, so whatever it is, have out with it quickly.

'I was visiting the house of a retired captain who was an ally of my father's,' Archer said. 'By the name of Hart. A rich man, and a great friend to the crown. His young wife sent the invitation. Hart himself was not home.'

Fire rubbed her temples harder. 'You do Brocker's ally great honour,' she said dryly.

'Well, but listen to this. She's quite a drinker, Hart's wife, and do you know what we were drinking?'

'I've no energy for riddles.'

He was smiling now. 'A rare Pikkian wine made from the juice of frozen grapes,' he said. 'They've a whole case of it hidden at the back of their wine cellar. She didn't know where it came from - she only just discovered it while I was there. She seemed to find it odd, that her husband should've hidden it away, but I think it was a wise thing for a known ally of the king to do, don't you?'

NASH FELT CAPTAIN Hart's treachery very personally. For indeed, it took little more than a week of redirected questioning, and of watching Hart while seeming not to watch him, to learn that Lord Mydogg on occasion made a present of his favourite wine; and to learn that the messengers Hart sent south to deal with his speculations in the gold mines met with interesting and obscure fellows along the way, at inns, or over drinking games, who were then seen to strike out in a northerly direction that was the straightest path to Mydogg.

It was enough for Garan and Clara to decide Hart must be questioned. The matter on the table next was how.

ON A MOONLIT night in mid-November, Captain Hart set south along the cliff road that led to his second home - a pleasant, seaside cottage to which he retreated on occasion to find respite from his wife, who drank far more than was good for the health of her marriage. He rode in his very fine carriage and was attended, as usual, not only by his drivers and footmen but by a guard of ten men on horseback. It was how a wise man travelled the cliff road in the dark, so that he could defend himself from all but the largest company of bandits.

Unfortunately, the company of bandits that hid behind the rocks on that particular night was quite large indeed; and led by a man who, if shaved, and dressed at the height of fashion, and seen in daylight engaged in some highly correct activity, might bear a resemblance to the king's steward Welkley.

The bandits set upon the travelling party with great, bandit-like howls. While the majority of the ne'er-do-wells roughed up the members of Hart's entourage, went through their pockets, bound them with ropes, and collected Hart's very fine horses, Welkley and several others entered the carriage. Inside, an irate Captain Hart was waiting for them, brandishing sword and dagger. Welkley, with a highly athletic dodge to left and right that many at court would have found quite surprising, stabbed the captain in the leg with a dart tipped with sleeping poison.

One of Welkley's fellows, Toddin, was a man whose shape, size, and bearing were quite similar to Hart's. After a patch of speedy undressing and dressing inside the carriage, Toddin was wearing Hart's hat, coat, m.u.f.fler, and yellow monster skin-boots, whereas Hart was wearing much less than he had been before, and lying insensible in a pile of Toddin's clothing. Toddin now grabbed Hart's sword and rolled with Welkley out of the carriage. Cursing and grunting, they set to sword fighting very near the cliff, in full view of Hart's bound servants, who watched with horror as the man who appeared to be Hart fell to the ground, clutching his side. A trio of bandits picked him up and hurled him into the sea.

The company of bandits now fled, with their plunder of miscellaneous coinage, fourteen horses, one carriage, and one captain inside the carriage sleeping like the dead. Closer to the city Hart was slipped into a sack and pa.s.sed to a delivery man who would bring him into the palace with the night's grain. The rest of the booty was rushed away, to be sold on the black market. And finally the bandits returned to their homes, transformed themselves into milkmen, storekeepers, farmers, gentlemen; and threw themselves down for a short night's sleep.

In the morning Hart's men were found by the road, bound and shivering, much ashamed of the story they had to tell. When the news reached the palace, Nash sent a convoy to investigate the incident. Welkley arranged a bouquet of flowers to be sent to Hart's widow.

And everyone was relieved that afternoon, when word finally came from Toddin's wife that Toddin was in good health. He was a phenomenal ocean swimmer with a great tolerance for cold, but the night had clouded over, and the boat sent to pick him up had taken a long time to find him. Naturally, everyone had worried.

WHEN THEY FIRST dragged Captain Hart before Fire, his mind was a closed box and his eyes were screwed shut. For days Fire could get nowhere with him. 'I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that an old friend and colleague of Lord Brocker's should be so strong,' she said to Musa, Mila, and Neel in the questioning room, after yet another session during which Captain Hart hadn't looked at her once.

'Indeed, Lady,' Musa said. 'A man who accomplished all that Commander Brocker accomplished in his time would have chosen strong captains.'

Fire had been thinking more of what Brocker had endured personally than what he had accomplished militarily - King Nax's mad punishment for Brocker's mysterious crime. Fire watched her three guards absently as they brought out a quick meal of bread and cheese. Mila handed Fire a plate, avoiding her eyes.

This was Mila's way now. In the last few weeks, since Archer had ended things, she'd shrunk somehow - gone silent and contrite around her lady. Fire, in turn, had been trying to be extra kind, careful not to subject Mila to Archer's presence any more than was necessary. Not a word had pa.s.sed between the two women on the subject, but both of them knew that the other knew.

Ravenous, Fire tore off a piece of bread and bit into it; and noticed Mila sitting mutely, staring at her own food but not eating it. I could flay Archer, Fire thought. Sighing, she pushed her attention back to the matter of Captain Hart.

He was a man who had achieved much wealth after retiring from the army, gradually accustoming himself to comfort. Might comfort soften him now?

Over the next couple of days, Fire arranged for Hart's cell in the dungeons to be cleaned and improved. He was given fine bedding and carpets, and books, and lighting, and good food and wine, and warm water to wash whenever he asked for it; and rat traps, which were perhaps the greatest luxury of all. One day with her hair swirling around her shoulders, and wearing a dress perhaps a bit more low-cut than was her usual style, she wandered down to his underground lair to visit.