Fire

"I said I was sorry. I won't do it again."

Fire crossed her arms and stared him down. After a few moments, Archer actually began to smile. He shook his head, sighing hopelessly. "Perhaps it's the promise of your angry face that keeps me misbehaving," he said. "You're so beautiful when you're angry."

"Oh, Archer," she snapped, "flirt with someone else."

"I will, if you command it," he quipped, with a goofy grin that caught her off guard, so that she had to stop her own face from twitching into a smile.

For a moment, it was almost as if they were friends again.

She had a serious conversation with Archer a few days later on the archery range, where she had come with her fiddle looking for Krell. She found Krell with Archer, Ha

"Brigan used to focus like that in his lessons too," Clara had told Fire, "and when he did, it was a great relief to Roen; for otherwise, guaranteed, he was plotting some kind of trouble. I believe he used to provoke Nax on purpose. He knew Nax favoured Nash."

"Is that true?" Fire asked.

"Oh yes, Lady. Nash was better-looking. And Brigan was better at everything else, and more like his mother than his father, which I don't think worked in his favour. Ah well, at least he didn't start the brawls Ha

Yes, Ha

Afterward Fire walked around the archery range with Archer and Nash, her guard trailing behind.

The simultaneous company of these two men was a fu

But Nash's ma

Fire considered Archer, so tall and fine-looking beside her, his bow in hand. She spoke quietly. "You drove him away, with your talk of our childhood in the north."

"He wants you, and he doesn't deserve you."

"As you deserve me?"

Archer's face took on a grim smile. "I've always known I don't deserve you. Every regard you've ever shown me has been a gift undeserved."

That is not true, she thought to him. You were my loyal friend even before I could walk.

"You've changed," Archer said. "Do you realise how much? The more time I spend with you here the less I know you. All these new people in your life, and your happiness in this princess child – and her dog, of all things. And the work you do every day – you use your power, every day. I used to have to fight with you to use it even to defend yourself."

Fire took a careful breath. "Archer. Sometimes in the courtyards or the hallways, I've taken to changing people's attentions so they don't notice me. So I can walk by without being hassled, and everyone else can continue their work without distraction."

"You're not ashamed of your abilities anymore," Archer said. "And the sight of you – you're glowing. Truly, Fire. I don't recognise you."

"But the ease with which I've come to use my power. Can you understand how it frightens me, Archer?"

Archer stopped for a moment, his gaze fierce, his eyes on three dark dots in the sky. The archery range stood at a high point overlooking the sea. A trio of raptor monsters circled now over some trade boat below, and arrows flew from the bows of its sailors. It was a rough autumn sea and a blustery autumn wind, and arrow after arrow failed to hit its mark.

Archer took one stu

Fire thought her question forgotten, and so she was surprised when he spoke.

"You've always been far more afraid of yourself than of any of the terrors in the world outside yourself. Were it the other way around, we'd both have peace."

He said it kindly, not critically; it was his forlorn wish for peace. Fire hugged her fiddle now with both arms, muting the strings with the fabric of her dress. "Archer, you know me. You recognise me. We must get past this thing between us, you must accept how I've changed. I could not bear it if by refusing your bed I should also lose your friendship. We were friends before. We must find the way to be friends again."

"I know," he said. "I know, love. I'm trying. I am."

He walked away from her then and stared at the sea. He stood for some time, silent. When he walked back she was still standing there, holding her fiddle to her breast. After a moment something like a smile eased the sadness in his face.

"Will you tell me why you're playing a different fiddle?" he said.

It was a good story to tell, and distant enough from today's feelings that it calmed her in the telling.

The company of Brigan and Garan was a great relief, compared to that of Archer and Nash. They were so easy. Their silences never felt loaded with grave things they yearned to say, and if they brooded, at least it had no co

The three sat in the su

She slapped at a monster bug on her arm. Garan played absently with his walking stick, which he'd used to walk slowly to this spot. Brigan sat stretched out with his hands clasped behind his head, watching Ha

"Ha

Blotchy was whirling in circles with his mouth clamped around a stick he'd just found at the base of a courtyard tree – a branch, really, quite enormous, that swept a wide and multi-pronged radius as he spun. "This won't do," Brigan said now. He jumped up, went to the dog, wrestled the branch away and broke it into pieces, then gave Blotchy back a stick of less hazardous dimensions. Determined, apparently, that if Ha

"She has many friends who are people," Fire said gently when he got back.

"You know I meant children."

"She's too precocious for the children her age, and she's too small for the other children to tolerate."

"They might tolerate her if she would tolerate them. I fear she's becoming a bully."

Fire spoke with certainty. "She is not a bully. She doesn't pick on the others or single them out; she isn't cruel. She fights only when she's provoked, and they provoke her on purpose, because they've decided not to like her, and they know that if she does fight, you'll punish her."