Free River Secrets by Shannon Hale Page A

cliff if the idea took you.”
    “What’re you talking about?” asked Finn.
    “That was another body they just found out there. Burned brittle.”
    “And you think Enna—”
    Razo glared. “Who else, Finn?”
    Lord Belvan urged Razo into the next room. Razo glanced back at Enna—she was neither furious nor devastated. She was dazed. Stunned to silence. The door shut.
    Razo sat on the floor. In memory, her look pierced him like the long, thin thorns that slip deep into skin. He knew now that if Enna had burned those people, she did not know she had.
    Razo shared the space with three of Bayern’s Own, who spent an hour chewing over the ugly situation.
    “If a war starts and we’re here…,” said one.
    “Prisoners for the duration, if not executed on the spot.”
    “Do you think Lady Megina’s to blame? Who is she, anyway? I never heard of the king’s cousin till she was suddenly ambassador.”
    Razo kept quiet, picking at the wood grain. Enna’s face had sent him tilting, and he seemed to rock as though unaccustomed to still earth after hours on horseback.
    After a second hour, the noise outside their window lost its urgency and dwindled to the hum and rub of every day. When his three companions left to find Talone, Razo stayed.
    He was sitting in an abandoned chair before the hearth when Enna burst into the room, slamming the door behind her. She set a fire blazing in the hearth, spitting sparks.
    “Watch it, Enna!” Razo leaped from his seat and hopped about, slapping at his clothes.
    “You think I didn’t know you were there? You think I’d burn you by accident?”
    Razo brushed off his lummas, petulant that there were no burned spots to account for his yelping. “You could’ve—”
    “You’re fine, Razo.”
    He barely breathed the question. “Enna,
are
you burning again?”
    “No.”
    “I saw you sneak into that stable yesterday, and I thought—”
    Enna put back her head and laughed, but it came out hard, as though the laugh burned her throat. “I was shortening the stirrups on your horse’s saddle!”
    “My stirrups… that was you!”
    “Of course it was, you dolt.” She tried to sound casual, the kind of voice she used for throwing around insults, but her words were strained. “I didn’t burn anybody.”
    “Are you sure? Not by accident? Not in your sleep or… or anything?”
    She sat on the floor before her fire. Her fingers rubbed the hem of her tunic, her eyes followed the flames, and Razo thought how Enna, like fire, like wind, could never hold completely still.
    “What happened with me and Isi on our journey—I never told you much. Maybe if I had, if you’d understood, you’d know that I’ve changed, that I…” She paused as though she struggled with words. It made him feel proud, that Enna would care what she said to him, that she worried what he thought.
    “Isi and I went to Yasid,” she continued in her artless voice. “We learned how to share our knowledge of fire and wind languages with each other, so that we’d have balance. I form fire out of the heat that rises off living things, and during the war, that heat was gathering around me constantly, pressing in, demanding. But now that I have wind speech, too, the wind’s always nearby to blow off the heat so it can’t overwhelm me. Same with Isi—the wind used to hound her with its speech, with the images of what it had touched. But now that she understands fire speech, too, the heat’s always there to break up the wind.”
    Enna cleared her throat. The sound made her seem young, just a little girl. “What I’m trying to explain is, I’m not the fire’s puppet. I can’t lose control anymore. So if you still think I’m burning people, you’d have to believe that I’m doing it on purpose. That I want to.” She looked now at Razo, and he imagined that because she had been staring at the fire so long, her gaze was hot on his skin. “I don’t want to, Razo. And I’m not. And I won’t. Burn another