Chapter Text
The whole of King's City is bathed in the Lady Fire's joy as she returns from the western lands, whether they know it or not.
(Yes, no longer just the lady monster, but in fact, the Lady Fire. Fire, who has cried so many times in her long life, cried of joy on her realization of that. It was a mercy to her, a small and unexpected kindness, that she was a person to them. Not a monster, but a person.)
Brigan can feel it, she knows, as they near the palace, because amusement and pleasure radiate from him, little waves washing up out of the depths of his mind. Pleasure at her joy.
Successful trip? He inquires, from where he's making his way down to meet her as she returns to the green house.
Oh, Brigan, she cries. You have no idea! The girl queen, the lady queen, I should say, of Monsea—
Calm down, love, he sends to her. He is hurrying across the courtyard, his coat hastily thrown on over his shoulders to protect against the chill biting through the air, his hair silver and his eyes as clear and grey as ever. She goes to meet him as fast as her aging legs will carry her, and if there's one thing she never tires of it's the way her heart eases on coming home to him.
"Come on," he says. "Everyone's impatient to hear the news."
::
Nash's office is, as usual, very crowded. Besides Nash at his desk, and Clara and Garan on one of the sofa's, and any number of advisors and important people, there are Nash's children (not so very young anymore, hardly children, really) and her nephew Aran, and Hanna sidling in the door after them, wearing battered riding clothes and smelling of horse and cold. She flings her arms around Fire with an enthusiasm that seems to belong more to her five year old self than the fifty-four year old commander of the King's Army.
"Welcome back, Mother," she says, kissing Fire's cheek. "I take it everything went well? Here," she maneuvers Fire to a seat on the opposite sofa. Fire reaches out across the desk to squeeze Nash's hand in greeting.
"Welcome back, little sister," he says, smiling a quick, fond smile. "Won't you tell us what you've learned?"
"Yes, please do, Fire," says Clara. "Garan has been worrying whether we'll have to spend more money for spies now that the Seven Kingdoms know of us."
"I wasn't," says Garan. "I'm retired. I leave the worrying to other unfortunate souls now."
"I don't think any worrying will be necessary," says Fire, smiling, for this is so very good news.
And she tells them the story of the young queen of Monsea, the daughter of the Graceling boy by the name of Immiker; the daughter of the boy who killed Archer.
"Lord King,” she concludes, “I respectfully advise that we keep communication open with Monsea. They're on their way to stability, and their queen is wise and fair, but she's young and she will need our help."
Garan raises his eyebrows, and asks the question hanging heavy and unspoken in the room.
"You trust the daughter of that man? After what he did? Think carefully, Fire, before you trust someone who was raised by him and borne by him. Even if she is not evil, she may be weakminded or easy to control."
"He killed her mother," says Fire, simply, "and he made the man who was like a father to her commit terrible crimes that drove him out of his mind. There are men who died just months ago, in front of her eyes, because of what Leck did more than ten years ago. There’s nothing of him in her, only the sorrow he forced on her.”
They are all watching her intently.
“Do you know what she said about me when she arrived?” she continues, trying to make them understand. “She said ‘you have brought a woman who controls minds into a castle of people particularly vulnerable to such things,’ and she was ready to turn us all back out into the snow. She had the strongest mind of all of them. I would trust her,” says Fire, nearly fifty years after Archer’s death, “with my life.”
::
A fire crackles in the fireplace of the green house, throwing up shadows onto the wall.
You should have seen her, she whispers into his mind absently. She was crying, Brigan, and she was so full of sorrow, but her mind was so strong. And she stood so tall.
Brigan smiles down at his book, amusement radiating gently from him.
What?
He opens a memory to her. It’s a little faded around the edges but still clear, of Fire from years ago striding through a field hospital, dying soldiers all around her. Sadness is clear on her face, but calm and quiet sadness.
She’s us, says Fire, awed both by his revelation and her own. She’s you and Nash trying to rebuild a broken kingdom, and she’s me in—everything.
In one sense, Bitterblue might have it easier, because she had not loved Leck, and never felt torn between her father and her country. But she also had it harder.
“What do you think?” she asks aloud after a minute.
He shuts his book, considering.
“I agree with your judgement of character, as always, Fire. But we must be cautious. If the Seven Kingdoms really are as unstable as you say—well. We will simply have to choose carefully in our allies.” He pauses for a moment. “I should like to meet Queen Bitterblue. She makes you very happy.”
“Brigan, I—” I never would have thought that I’d reach the point where the fact that my worst enemy survived to live a long and healthy life, and bear children—I never would have thought that I would be thankful for that.
“Things change,” says Brigan. “I am thankful for Cansrel if only because without him, you would not exist.”