She had an image in her head of Cansrel in the moment he had given her this fiddle. 'I'm told this has a nice sound, darling,' he'd said, holding it out to her almost carelessly, as if it were an inconsequential bit of rubbish that had not cost him a small fortune. She'd taken it, appreciative of its handsomeness but knowing that its real value would depend upon its tone and feeling, neither of which Cansrel could be any judge of. She'd drawn her bow across its strings as an experiment. The fiddle had responded instantly, wanting her touch, speaking to her in a gentle voice that she'd understood and recognised.

A new friend in her life.

She'd been unable to hide her pleasure from Cansrel. His own gladness had swelled.

'You're astonishing, Fire,' he'd said. 'You're a constant source of wonder to me. I'm never more happy than when I've made you happy. Isn't it peculiar?' he'd said, laughing. 'Do you really like it, darling?'

In her chair in her room, Fire forced herself to look around at the windows and walls and take stock of the present. The light was fading. Archer would be coming back soon from the fields, where he was helping with the plowing. He might have some news about the ongoing search for the archer. Or Brocker might have a letter from Roen with updates about Mydogg and Murgda, or Gentian, or Brigan, or Nash.

She found her longbow and quiver and, shaking off memories like loose hairs, left her house in search of Archer and Brocker.

THERE WAS NO news. There were no letters.

One monthly bleeding pa.s.sed for Fire, with all its attendant aches and embarra.s.sments. Everyone in her house, in Archer's house, and in the town knew what it signified whenever she stepped outside with an entourage of guards. Eventually another pa.s.sed like the first. Summer was near. The farmers were willing potatoes and carrots to take hold in the rocky ground.

Her lessons progressed much as usual.

'Stop, I implore you,' she said one day at Trilling's, interrupting an earsplitting clamour of flutes and horns. 'Let's begin again at the top of the page, shall we? And, Trotter,' she begged the eldest boy, 'try not to blow so hard; I guarantee you, that shrieking noise is from blowing too hard. All right? Ready?'

The enthusiastic ma.s.sacre began once more. She did love the children. Children were one of her small joys, even when they were fiends to each other; even when they imagined they were hiding things from her, like their own idleness or, in some cases, their talent. Children were smart and malleable. Time and patience made them strong and stopped them fearing her or adoring her too much. And their frustrations were familiar to her, and dear.

But, she thought, at the end of the day I must give them back. They're not my children - someone else feeds them and tells them stories. I'll never have children. I'm stuck in this town where nothing ever happens and nothing ever will happen and there's never any news. I'm so restless I could take Renner's horrible flute and break it over his head.

She touched her own head, took a breath, and made very sure that Trilling's second son knew nothing of her feeling.

I must find my even temper, she thought. What is it I'm hoping for, anyway? Another murder in the woods? A visit from Mydogg and Murgda and their pirates? An ambush of wolf monsters?

I must stop wishing for things to happen. Because something will happen eventually, and when it does, I'll be bound to wish it hadn't.

THE NEXT DAY, she was walking the path from her house to Archer's, quiver on back and bow in hand, when one of the guards called down to her from Archer's back terrace. 'Fancy a reel, Lady Fire?'

It was Krell, the guard she'd tricked the night she'd been unable to climb up to her bedroom window. A man who knew how a flute should be played; and here he was, offering to save her from her own desperate fidgets. 'Goodness, yes,' she said. 'Just let me get my fiddle.'

A reel with Krell was always a game. They took turns, each inventing a pa.s.sage that was a challenge to the other to pick up and join; always keeping in time but raising tempo gradually, so that eventually it took all of their concentration and skill to keep up with each other. They were worthy of an audience, and today Brocker and a number of guards wandered out to the back terrace for the show.

Fire was in the mood for technical gymnastics, which was fortunate, because Krell played as if he were determined to make her break a string. Her fingers flew, her fiddle was an entire orchestra, and every note beautifully brought into being struck a chord of satisfaction within her. She wondered at the unfamiliar lightness in her chest and realised she was laughing.

So great was her focus, it took her a while to register the strange expression that crept to Brocker's face as he listened, finger tapping the armrest of his chair. His eyes were fixed behind Fire and to the right, in the direction of Archer's back doorway. Fire comprehended that someone must be standing in Archer's entrance, someone Brocker watched with startled eyes.

And then everything happened at once. Fire recognised the mind in the doorway; she spun around, fiddle and bow screeching apart; she stared at Prince Brigan leaning against the door frame.

Behind her Krell's quick piping stopped. The soldiers on the terrace cleared throats and turned, falling to attention as they recognised their commander. Brigan's eyes were expressionless. He shifted and stood up straight, and she knew that he was going to speak.

Fire turned and ran down the terrace steps to the path.

ONCE OUT OF sight Fire slowed and stopped. She leaned over a boulder, gasping for air, her fiddle clunking against the stone with a sharp, dissonant cry of protest. The guard Tovat, the one with the orangish hair and the strong mind, came running up behind her. He stopped beside her.

'Forgive my intrusion, Lady,' he said. 'You left unarmed. Are you ill, Lady?'

She laid her forehead against the boulder, ashamed because he was right; in addition to fleeing like a chicken from a woman's skirts, she'd left unarmed. 'Why is he here?' she asked Tovat, still pressing fiddle and bow and forehead into the boulder. 'What does he want?'

'I left too soon to know,' Tovat said. 'Shall we go back? Do you need a hand, Lady? Do you need the healer?'

She doubted Brigan was the type to make social calls, and he rarely travelled alone. Fire closed her eyes and reached her mind over the hills. She couldn't sense his army, but she found twenty or so men in a group nearby. Outside her front door, not Archer's.

Fire sighed into the rock. She stood, checked her headscarf, and tucked fiddle and bow under her arm. She turned toward her own house. 'Come, Tovat. We'll learn soon enough, for he's come for me.'

THE SOLDIERS OUTSIDE her door were not like Roen's men or Archer's, who admired her and had reason to trust her. These were ordinary soldiers, and as she and Tovat came into their sight she sensed an a.s.sortment of the usual reactions. Desire, astonishment, mistrust. And also guardedness. These men were mentally guarded, more than she would have expected from a random a.s.semblage. Brigan must have selected them for their guardedness; or warned them to remember it.

She corrected herself. They were not all men. Three among them had long hair tied back and the faces and the feeling of women. She sharpened her mind. Five more again were men whose appraisal of her lacked a particular focus. She wondered, hopefully, if they might be men who did not desire women.

She stopped before them. Every one of them stared.

'Well met, soldiers,' she said. 'Will you come inside and sit?'

One of the women, tall, with hazel eyes and a powerful voice, spoke. 'Our orders are to wait outside until our commander returns from Lord Archer's house, Lady.'

'Very well,' Fire said, somewhat relieved that their orders weren't to seize her and throw her into a burlap bag. She pa.s.sed through the soldiers to her door, Tovat behind her. She stopped at a thought and turned again to the woman soldier. 'Are you in charge, then?'

'Yes, Lady, in the commander's absence.'

Fire touched again on the minds in the group, looking for some reaction to Brigan's election of a female officer. Resentment, jealousy, indignation. She found none.

These were not ordinary soldiers after all. She couldn't be sure of his motive, but something had gone into Brigan's choosing.

She stepped inside with Tovat and closed the door on them.

ARCHER HAD BEEN in town during the concert on the terrace, but he must have come home shortly thereafter. It was not long before Brigan returned to her door, and this time Brocker and Archer accompanied him.

Donal showed the three men into her sitting room. In an attempt to cover her embarra.s.sment and also to rea.s.sure them that she wasn't going to make another dash for the hills, Fire spoke quickly. 'Lord Prince, if your soldiers wish to sit or take something to drink, they're welcome in my house.'

'Thank you, Lady,' he said evenly, 'but I don't expect to stay long.'

Archer was agitated about something, and Fire didn't need any mental powers to perceive it. She motioned for Brigan and Archer to sit, but both remained standing.

'Lady,' Brigan said, 'I come on the king's behalf.'

He didn't quite look her in the face as he spoke, his eyes touching on the air around her but avoiding her person. She decided to take it as an invitation to study him with her own eyes, for his mind was so strongly guarded against her that she could glean nothing that way.

He was armed with bow and sword, but unarmoured, dressed in dark riding clothes. Clean-shaven. Shorter than Archer but taller than she remembered. He held himself aloof, dark hair and unfriendly eyebrows and stern face, and aside from his refusal to look at her she could sense nothing of his feelings about this interview. She noticed a small scar cutting into his right eyebrow, thin and curved. It matched the scars on her own neck and shoulders. A raptor monster had nearly taken his eye, then. Another scar on his chin. This one straight, a knife or a sword.

She supposed the commander of the King's Army was likely to have as many scars as a human monster.

'Three weeks ago in the king's palace,' Brigan was saying, 'a stranger was found in the king's rooms and captured. The king asks you to come to King's City to meet the prisoner, Lady, and tell whether he's the same man who was in the king's rooms at the fortress of my mother.'

King's City. Her birthplace. The place where her own mother had lived and died. The gorgeous city above the sea that would be lost or saved in the war that was coming. She'd never seen King's City, except in her imagination. Certainly, no one had ever suggested before that she go there and see it for real.

She forced her mind to consider the question seriously even though her heart had already decided. She would have many enemies in King's City, and too many men who liked her too much. She would be stared at, and a.s.saulted, and she would not ever have the option of resting her mental guard. The king of the kingdom would desire her. And he and his advisers would wish her to use her power against prisoners, enemies, every one of the million people they did not trust.

And she would have to travel with this rough man who didn't like her.

'Does the king request this,' Fire asked, 'or is it an order?'

Brigan considered the floor coolly. 'It was stated as an order, Lady, but I won't force you to go.'

And so the brother, apparently, was permitted to disobey the king's orders; or perhaps it was a measure of how little Brigan wanted to deliver her to his weak-headed brother, that he was willing to refuse the command.

'If the king expects me to use my power to interrogate his prisoners he'll be disappointed,' Fire said.

Brigan flexed and clenched his sword hand, once. A flicker of something - impatience, or anger. He looked into her eyes for the briefest of moments, and looked away. 'I don't imagine the king will compel you to do anything you don't want to do.'

By which Fire understood that the prince considered it within her power and her intention to control the king. Her face burned, but she lifted her chin a notch and said, 'I'll go.'

Archer spluttered. Before he could speak she swung to him and looked up into his eyes. Don't quarrel with me in front of the king's brother Don't quarrel with me in front of the king's brother, she thought to him. And don't ruin this two months' peace. And don't ruin this two months' peace.

He glared back at her. 'I'm not the one who ruins it,' he said, his voice low.

Brocker was accustomed to this; but how must they look to Brigan, staring at each other, having one side of an argument? I won't do this now. You may embarra.s.s yourself, but you will not embarra.s.s me. I won't do this now. You may embarra.s.s yourself, but you will not embarra.s.s me.

Archer drew in a breath that sounded like a hiss, turned on his heel, and stormed out of the room. He slammed the door, leaving an uncomfortable silence in his wake.

Fire touched a hand to her headscarf and turned back to Brigan. 'Please forgive our rudeness,' she said.

Not a flicker in those grey eyes. 'Of course.'

'How will you ensure her safety on the journey, Commander?' Brocker asked quietly. Brigan turned to him, then sat in a chair, resting his elbows on his knees; and his whole manner seemed to change. With Brocker he was suddenly easy and comfortable and respectful, a young military commander addressing a man who could be his mentor.

'Sir, we'll ride to King's City in the company of the entire First Branch. They're stationed just west of here.'

Brocker smiled. 'You misunderstand me, son. How will you ensure she'll be safe from the First Branch? In a force of five thousand there'll be some with the mind to hurt her.'

Brigan nodded. 'I've hand-picked a guard of twenty soldiers who can be trusted to care for her.'

Fire crossed her arms and bit down hard. 'I don't need to be cared for. I can defend myself.'

'I don't doubt it, Lady,' Brigan said mildly, looking into his hands, 'but if you're to ride with us you'll have a guard nonetheless. I can't transport a civilian female in a party of five thousand men on a journey of nearly three weeks and not provide a guard. I trust you to see the sense in it.'

He was talking around the fact that she was a monster who provoked all the worst kinds of behaviour. And now that her temper was done flaring, she did see the sense in it. Truly, she'd never pitted herself against five thousand men before. She sat down. 'Very well.'

Brocker chuckled. 'If only Archer were here to see the powers of rational argument.'

Fire snorted. Archer wouldn't consider her allowance of the guard to be evidence of the powers of rational argument. He'd take it as proof that she was in love with whichever of her guards was most handsome.

She stood up again. 'I'll ready myself,' she said, 'and ask Donal to ready Small.'

Brigan stood with her, his face closed again, impa.s.sive. 'Very good, Lady.'

'Will you wait here with me, Commander?' Brocker said. 'I've a thing or two to tell you.'

Fire scrutinised Brocker. Oh? What do you need to tell him? Oh? What do you need to tell him?

Brocker had too much cla.s.s for a one-sided argument. He also possessed a mind so clear and strong that he could open a feeling to her with perfect precision, so that it came to her practically as a sentence. I want to give him military advice I want to give him military advice, Brocker thought to her.

Mildly rea.s.sured, Fire left them.

WHEN SHE GOT to her bedroom Archer was sitting in a chair against the wall. Taking a liberty with his presence, for it wasn't his room to enter without invitation. But she forgave him. Archer couldn't abandon the responsibilities of his house and farms so suddenly in order to travel with her. He would stay behind, and they would be a long time apart - almost six weeks to get there and back, and longer if she stayed any time in King's City.

When Brocker had asked her, in her fourteenth year, just how much power she had over Cansrel's mind when she was inside it, Archer had been the one to defend her. 'Where's your heart, Father? The man is her father. Don't make her relationship with him more difficult than it already is.'

'I'm only asking questions,' Brocker had responded. 'Does she have the power to shift his att.i.tudes? Could she change his ambitions permanently?'

'Anyone can see these are not idle questions.'

'They're necessary questions,' Brocker had said, 'though I wish they were not.'

'I don't care. Leave her be,' Archer had said, so pa.s.sionately that Brocker had let her be, at least for the moment.

Fire supposed she would miss Archer defending her on this trip. Not because she wanted his defence, but simply because it was what Archer did when he was near.

She unearthed her saddlebags from a pile at the bottom of her closet and began to fold underclothing and riding gear into them. There was no point in bothering with dresses. No one ever noticed what she wore, and after three weeks in her bags they would be unwearable anyway.

'You'll desert your students?' Archer said finally, leaning over his knees, watching her pack. 'Just like that?'

She turned her back to him on the pretense of searching for her fiddle, and smiled. He had never been quite so concerned for her students before.