Fire

Unsurprisingly, this sort of talk was always fuel for Clara's pressure tactics with Fire. "With your power, it'd be easy for us to learn who's on whose side. You could help us find out if our allies are true," she'd say, or, "You could figure out where Mydogg's pla

Fire never responded to the endless battery, never admitted the doubt – and guilt – she was begi

"You're from the north, Lady," he'd say to her, or something like it. "You've seen the loose hold the law has outside this city. One misstep, Lady, and the entire kingdom could fall through our fingers."

And then he'd grow quiet, and she would know the marriage proposal was coming. She would send him away with her refusal and take what comfort she could in the company of her guard; and consider very seriously the state of the city, and the kingdom, and the king. And what her own place should be.

To busy herself and ease her sense of uselessness, she took Garan's advice in the nurseries. Entering cautiously at first, sitting quietly on a chair and watching the children as they played, read, squabbled, for this was where her mother had worked, and she wanted to take in its feeling slowly. She tried to picture a young, orange-haired woman in these rooms, counselling children with her even temper. Jessa had had a place in these noisy, sunlit rooms. Somehow the very thought made Fire feel like less of a stranger here. Even if it also made her more lonely.

Teaching guarding against animal monsters was delicate work, and Fire came up against some parents who wanted nothing of her association with their children. But a mix of royal and servant children did become her pupils.

"Why are you so fascinated with insects?" she asked one of her cleverest students one morning, an eleven-year-old boy named Cob who could build a wall in his mind against raptor monsters, and resist the urge to touch Fire's hair when he saw it, but would not kill a monster bug even if it was camped out on his hand making a di

"Raptors," Cob said with high-pitched scorn. "They have no intelligence, only a big meaningless surge of feeling they think they can mesmerise me with. They're completely unsophisticated."

"True," Fire said. "But compared to monster bugs, they're veritable geniuses."

"But monster bugs are so perfect," Cob said wistfully, going cross-eyed as a dragonfly monster hovered at the tip of his nose. "Look at their wings. Look at their jointed legs and their beady little eyeballs and look how smart they are with their pinchers."

"He loves all bugs," Cob's younger sister said, rolling her eyes. "Not just monster bugs."

Perhaps his problem, Fire thought to herself, is that he's a scientist. "Very well," she said. "You may allow monster bugs to sting you, in appreciation of their excellent pinchers. But," she added sternly, "there are one or two bugs that would do you harm if they could, and those you must learn to guard yourself against. Do you understand? "

"Must I kill them?"

"Yes, you must kill them. But once they're dead, you could always dissect them. Had you thought of that?"

Cob brightened. "Really? Will you help me?"

And so Fire found herself borrowing scalpels and clips and trays from a healer in the castle infirmary and engaging in some rather peculiar experimentation, perhaps along the lines of what King Arn and Lady Ella had done one hundred years before. On a smaller scale, of course, and with much less brilliant results.

She crossed paths often with Princess Ha

She was strong, this little woman, always carrying Ha

The palace had outside walkways built into the stone portions of the roof. At night, far from sleep, Fire walked them with her guard. From the heights she could see the glimmer of the great torches on the bridges, kept lit throughout the night so that boats on the fast-ru

Brigan returned to court three weeks from the day he'd left. Fire knew the instant he arrived. A consciousness was like a face you saw once and forever recognised. Brigan's was quiet, impenetrable, and strong, and indubitably his from the instant her mind tripped over it.

She happened to be with Ha

"You weren't even there," Fire objected, laughing, when Musa began the tale.

"Well," Musa said, "if no one who was there will tell it – "

"Someone's coming who knows it to tell it," Fire said mysteriously, causing Ha

"Papa?" she said, turning in circles now, spi

He came through an archway on the other side of the courtyard. Ha

And what was it with Brigan every time he reappeared? Why this instinct to bolt? They were friends now, and Fire should be beyond this fear of him. She forbade herself to move and focused on Blotchy, who offered his ears to be petted.

Brigan put Ha

"But Papa," she said, changing subject in mid-sentence. "They were saying bad things about Lady Fire."

"Who were?"

"Selin and Midan and the others."

"And what? Then one of them punched you in the nose?"

Ha

"Tell me what happened."