Free Fire by Kristin Cashore

the shame of her father’s legacy.

    CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
     
     
    F IRE SUPPOSED IT was too much to hope that the king and the warrior would pass so close to their mother’s holding without stopping. The final portion of their journey took them across rocky hills crowded with the king’s resting soldiers.
    The soldiers had not made camp, but they were napping, cooking meat before fires, playing cards. The sun was low. She couldn’t remember in her tired mind whether armies ever travelled through darkness. She hoped this army was not staying the night on these hills.
    Archer and his guards formed a wall around her as they passed the soldiers, Archer so close on her injured side that her left leg brushed against his right. Fire kept her face down, but still she felt the eyes of soldiers on her body. She was so exhausted, so impossibly sore, but she held her consciousness alert, flicking through the minds around her, looking for trouble. Looking also for the king and his brother, and wishing desperately not to find them.
    There were women among the soldiers, but not many. She heard the occasional low whistle, the occasional grunt. Epithets, too, and more than one fight broke out between men as she passed, but no one threatened her.
    And then as they neared the ramp to Roen’s drawbridge she stirred and looked up, and was thankful, suddenly, for the presence of the soldiers. She knew that south of the Little Greys raptor monsters moved sometimes in swarms, found areas of dense population and circled there, waiting, but she had never seen anything like it before. There must have been two hundred raptors, flashing bright colours against an orange and pink sky, high up where only the luckiest of arrows could reach them. Their screeches made her cold. Her hand flew to the edges of her headscarf to check for stray hairs, for she knew that if the raptors discovered what she was, they’d cease even to notice the human army. All two hundred would turn on her.
    ‘You’re all right, love,’ Archer muttered beside her. ‘Quickly now. We’re almost inside.’
     
    INSIDE THE ROOFED courtyard of Queen Roen’s fortress, Archer helped her as she fell more than stepped from Small’s back. She balanced herself between her horse and her friend, and caught her breath. ‘You’re safe now,’ Archer said, his arm around her, bracing her, ‘and there’ll be time to rest before dinner.’
    Fire nodded vaguely. ‘He needs a gentle hand,’ she managed to say to the man who took Small’s reins.
    She barely noticed the girl who showed her to her room. Archer was there; he stationed his men at her doorway, and before he took his leave he warned the girl to take care with her arm.
    Then Archer was gone. The girl sat Fire on the bed. She helped her out of her clothes and untied her headscarf, and Fire collapsed onto the pillows. And if the girl stared wide-eyed at Fire, touching her bright hair wonderingly, Fire didn’t care. Already she was asleep.
     
    WHEN SHE WOKE her room flickered with candles. A small woman in a brown dress was lighting them. Fire recognised Roen’s mind, quick and warm. Then the woman turned to face her, and Fire recognised Roen’s dark eyes, and her beautifully cut mouth, and the white streak that grew at the front and centre of her long black hair.
    Roen set her candle down and sat on the edge of Fire’s bed. She smiled at Fire’s groggy expression. ‘Well met, Lady Fire.’
    ‘Well met, Lady Queen.’
    ‘I spoke with Archer,’ Roen said. ‘How is your arm? Are you hungry? Let’s have dinner now, before my sons arrive.’
    Her sons. ‘Haven’t they already arrived?’
    ‘They’re still outside with the Fourth Branch. Brigan’s passing command of the Fourth to one of his captains and sending them east tonight, and I understand it involves endless preparations. The Third comes here in a day or two. Brigan will ride with them to King’s City and leave Nash in his palace, and then he’ll take them