“We’ll be his cocoon,” she said, her voice always cold, but her words flaming with the heat of emotion, “and he’ll never doubt that he was loved, regardless of everything.”
Finnikin spent the day with Isaboe and Jasmina, visiting the Flatlands. There had been much change these past months, with Beatriss’s people moving to Fenton and the priest-king opening a shrine house in her old village of Sennington. Who would have believed contentment could come to the area after so much upheaval?
“August and Abian are meeting us in Sennington for supper with blessed Barakah,” Isaboe said to Beatriss. “Why don’t you join us?”
Beatriss’s smile was bittersweet.
“Trevanion’s home tonight and Vestie does love our nights together, so perhaps another time.”
Finnikin could see his father from the window. “There are a lot of hardworking lads out there, Beatriss,” he said, watching Perri and Trevanion working with the Fenton lot in the fields. The younger lads were full of vigor.
Beatriss peered over his shoulder. “Well, the fact is that the lads do work hard, but not as much as when Trevanion’s home. Then every young man seems to break their back for his attention. As though he’s recruiting for the Guard.”
“And how is life with my father?” he teased.
“What I’ve seen of him?” she said, returning to fuss over Isaboe with currant cake. Everyone in the Flatlands felt a great need to feed his wife today. For the baby, they’d whispered to him.
“Your father instructs the Guard, and they do what he says,” Beatriss said. “He instructs Vestie, and she wants an explanation of the why and the why not. They love each other dearly, but he’s not used to having to explain his instructions.”
Finnikin laughed. “My father was never good at the why and the why not.”
“And how is Vestie faring?” Isaboe asked. Finnikin could see Beatriss’s daughter carrying Jasmina on her back around the fields, always staying close to Trevanion.
Beatriss grimaced. “I can’t lie. She asks at every single opportunity if she can go to Lucian’s mountain and down that valley. I asked her the other day if it was Tesadora she missed and she said . . .”
Beatriss hesitated.
“What?” Isaboe asked.
“She said, ‘I miss them both. I miss her, and I miss my friend Kintana.’”
Soon after, Trevanion entered the kitchen with Vestie and Jasmina, to find some string to mark out the rose garden he had promised to plant with the little girls in remembrance of Lord Selric’s daughters who once lived there.
“I thought you were on leave, Trevanion,” Isaboe said. “You’re supposed to rest.”
“There’s too much work to be done,” he said, reaching over Beatriss’s shoulder for a slice of cake. “Some wives buy trinkets and cloth. Mine buys a village.”
Beatriss laughed. She looked tired from the responsibility, but happy, and Finnikin knew that she would enjoy a reprieve these next few days with Trevanion home. By the entrance, Perri hovered. He was more agitated since they had arrived back from Charyn. No, perhaps not agitated, but withdrawn. Today he was Jasmina’s guard, and he watched her like a hawk. Fenton was a beehive of activity, with villagers coming and going, and the guard was at times overly cautious.
Beatriss’s bailiff came to the door soon after, and she disappeared for a while, to sort out an issue with one of the cottagers, while Trevanion took the two little girls with him to plant the rose garden.
“Come and sit, Perri,” Isaboe said when it was just the three of them left in the room. She had a strange relationship with Trevanion’s second-in-charge. In those months they were all together in exile, Perri had doubted her the most, but once she had proven her worth, he was steadfast in his allegiance to her. She had once told Finnikin that no guard made her feel safer. But perhaps the situation between Tesadora and Isaboe had altered things between them both.
“You want to speak to me,” she said. It was a statement rather than a question.
“What makes you think that, Your Majesty?” Perri asked quietly.
“You hover whenever you want to speak to me, and then you wait until everyone is gone and you speak. Even if it’s about the weather. Or your concern about Jasmina’s safety. Or about an idea you have to include the Forest Dwellers in the Flatland villages’ harvesttime.”
Perri didn’t respond.
“Am I not right?” she asked.
There was a ghost of a smile on Perri’s face. “You’re always right, my queen.”
“See there,” Isaboe said, looking at Finnikin and pointing at Perri. “There is a clever, clever man.”
Perri sat down, but still didn’t speak until finally Finnikin stood, knowing there would be no talk today in his presence.
“I’ll see what my father’s doing,” he said with a sigh.
“No. Stay, Finn,” Perri said.
Finnikin was glad to, and he caught the quick flash of concern in Isaboe’s eyes.
Perri swallowed hard. “I feel as if I’m breaking a confidence here, but she never quite confided in me, so perhaps it’s my truth I speak of today as well.”
Finnikin somehow knew Perri was speaking of Tesadora.
“We were enemies all our young lives . . . Tesadora and I,” Perri said, “and then when we reached fifteen . . . well, you can imagine. We still hated each other and hardly ever exchanged a word, but I’d know where to find her in the forest and she’d know what I was there for.” He shook his head. “It was madness, and regardless of what we got up to out there among that bracken, we were both filled with hate for each other and everyone else in this kingdom. Until the day I came across Trevanion. You were newly born, Finn, and your father had lost your mother, Bartolina. And he put all his trust in me.” Perri looked away. “Me.” He shook his head. “You both do it now with the little princess, and sometimes I want to warn you that there’s something base inside of me. How could you trust me with that precious creature?”
“You never need ask that, Perri,” Isaboe said, reaching out to take his hand. He moved it away. Perri wasn’t much for touching and emotions.
“Were you still with Tesadora when my father made Trevanion captain?” Isaboe asked.
Perri nodded. “We were aged twenty at the time. I lived in the barracks with the rest of the Guard, and when I was on leave, I’d ride out to the forest and share her bed. It was nothing more than that, I’d tell myself. Tesadora would say it as well. ‘Don’t read more into this than what it is.’ Through Trevanion and my place in the Guard, I’d been introduced to respectable women, but I was always drawn back to her. We’d do cruel things to each other, but she reminded me of your father, Finn. She knew exactly what I was, but still saw some good. I began to see my worth through both their eyes.”
He looked at Isaboe. “I’m breaking an unspoken confidence here, Your Majesty.”
“There are many unspokens between you and Tesadora, Perri,” she said firmly. “I’d advise you one day to speak them.”
He sighed, and for a moment, Finnikin believed Perri wouldn’t continue. But they waited.
“Almost nineteen years ago, she was with child.”
Finnikin heard the sharp intake of Isaboe’s breath.
Perri nodded. “So we played a game of pretense that we lived a normal life. I spent every spare day with Tesadora in the forest. We started planting gardens and building a cottage. She told no one about the babe, of course. At that time, she was estranged from her mother and from every Forest Dweller. They did hate Tesadora for her mixed blood.”
“Why estranged from her mother?” Isaboe asked.
He looked up at her, a rueful expression on his face. “Because Tesadora believed Seranonna loved the royal children more than her own half-Charynite bastard. They had a strange relationship, Tesadora and Seranonna, but she still grieves her mother today. That I know.”
“And the babe?” Isaboe asked quietly, her hand absently going to her swollen belly.
“I came home to Tesadora one time nearing her ninth month and she told me there was no babe. She had bled and it was gone.” He shook his head bitterly. “And I . . . I accused her of killing the child. The only thing that stopped me from harming her was a promise I made to the captain that I would never strike a woman. I felt it so strongly. In my heart she hadn’t killed just our babe; she had killed the life I wanted with her. So I made sure I never crossed her path again . . . until six years later.”
The days of the unspeakable.
“After the deaths of your family, my queen.”
Perri seemed to be in another place. Every Lumateran had his or her own horror-filled memory of that time.
“Regardless of what I thought Tesadora had done, I couldn’t bear the idea of watching her burn like her mother, so I traveled out to the forest and found her in a hiding place. One known only to us. She had gone searching for any survivors and found the helpless novices of Sagrami.”
Perri had hidden them across the kingdom and close to the Sendecane border, the first of many to keep them safe.
“We spent another ten years apart during the curse, and for all that time, I still believed she had done something to that babe. That she didn’t want a child with my savage blood. But when we all returned here with Froi, the strangest thought occurred to me. It was during those times I’d take Froi out to the Forest Dwellers. His bond with Tesadora was strong, in a strange way. He had the same shaped eyes. More than anything, I . . . I felt something strong toward him and I knew she felt it as well and I started to believe . . .”
“That he was yours?” Finnikin asked.
Perri nodded. “Strange, but yes. I convinced myself that all those years ago, she had given birth to a child and perhaps passed it on to a traveler. Eighteen years ago in this kingdom, it wasn’t rare for the forest to be a path for foreigners. I didn’t know what to think with Froi, except I honestly believed he was ours.”
“Until we interrogated Rafuel of Sebastabol in the spring?” Finnikin asked.
Perri nodded. “When he told the story of their day of weeping.”
There was bitterness and self-disgust in his expression.
“Tesadora had spoken the truth. And, of course, meeting Gargarin of Abroi and Lirah of Serker confirmed that Froi didn’t belong to us.”
“And when you finally spoke of it, what did she say?” Isaboe asked.
He shook his head with regret. “We never spoke of it. Now all I feel is shame and confusion. She would have been . . . broken after the loss, and I broke her even more. At the time she lost the child, she had no one. I try hard not to speak ill of the Forest Dwellers. Most of them are dead, and I’ll never forget the way they died. It took me a long while to get the stench of burnt flesh out of my head. But they treated her poorly all her life. Even before we were at war with Charyn, they hated the idea of tainted blood. Her mother made no apology about the foreigner she had taken as a lover. The way the Forest Dwellers saw it, Tesadora didn’t belong to them. . . . She still feels it, and it pains me.”
He looked up at Isaboe. ”I want her to be happy . . . yet I’ve never known her to be so confused and sad . . . and euphoric at the same time as she is now. And it’s all about you . . . and the Other.”
Isaboe stiffened. “You met her?” she asked. “Quintana of Charyn?”
He nodded.
“And?”
Perri retrieved an envelope from his pocket.
“It’s for the priest-king . . . from Tesadora. It speaks of strange things.”
Isaboe stared at it and then retrieved an envelope from her pocket.
“It’s the letter Finnikin gave me from Froi to the priest-king. I’m presuming no less strange.”
Perri handed his letter to Isaboe, and she placed the two together.
“Describe it,” she said quietly. “You feel it as well. Whatever Tesadora feels for the girl, you do as well.”
Perri looked away.
“I won’t judge you,” Isaboe said.
He grimaced. “It’s a recognition of — I can’t explain. It’s as if I know her, not in the realness of our world, but in here,” he said, pointing to his chest. “The way I believed I knew Froi.”
Isaboe stared at the letters, her fingers tracing the writing on both envelopes.
She looked up, and Finnikin saw tears in her eyes. He knew she missed both Froi and Tesadora.
“I get a sense that the priest-king knows more than he’s let on,” she said. “It may be quite a supper we have tonight.”
It was late in the night when Isaboe retrieved the two letters and handed them to the priest-king. They had enjoyed a simple meal with Abian and August, and Finnikin was grateful for their presence in his family’s life. With them, he and Isaboe weren’t the consort or queen. They were the children of people once loved by these friends. Tonight there had been talk of the dead king and queen that brought a laugh, instead of tears.
“We should go,” Abian said, understanding that the letters meant palace business.
“No,” Isaboe said. “Stay. This concerns Froi . . . and Froi concerns you.”
The priest-king spent some time reading the letters while Jasmina slept in Abian’s arms and Perri and August found more candles to light the room.
Finnikin took the time to look around the house that once belonged to Beatriss. It was as if it was always meant to be a house of learning. Once or twice he had attended a lecture here with Sir Topher on rhetoric and dialectics. When Celie of the Flatlands was home weeks ago, Finnikin had accompanied her to an Osterian godling’s lecture on philosophy. But they had a long way to go in their plan to create lessons for the young. Their greatest obstacle was convincing Lumaterans of the worth of their children learning when they believed they were better put to use on the farm or in the quarry on the Rock. Neither Finnikin nor Isaboe wanted the school filled only with the children of nobility. It was not what they wanted for Jasmina.
Back in the solar, the priest-king spread out the parchments on the bench. Finnikin could see the markings copied from Quintana of Charyn’s neck and those from Froi’s skull. The words differed, but the lettering style was similar. They belonged together in a way that the lettering on Phaedra and the Charyn princess’s nape didn’t.
“Here are the similarities in Tesadora’s account and Froi’s,” the priest-king finally said. “A woman traveling the same road as Froi tells him that the spirit of her half-dead child lives within him. Her husband makes mention that she bled a child on the day of their weeping.”
He pointed to Tesadora’s letter. “A woman in our valley is suffering melancholy because her connection with a young girl who traveled to the valley has been severed. We assume the girl was Quintana of Charyn. The woman, according to her husband, bled a child on the day of weeping.”
He looked at Perri. “Tesadora is told by Quintana of Charyn that the half-dead spirit of Tesadora’s child lives within her. Tesadora bled a child on the day of their weeping.”
Abian’s reaction was much the same as Isaboe’s. A sorrow for Tesadora beyond words.
“Are they possessed?” Abian asked when she was composed. “Tesadora and the women?”
The priest-king shook his head. “I need to look into this more, but no. I don’t think so. And it’s not just the women. It’s the men as well. Perri?”
Perri hesitated and then nodded.
“But what do these shared experiences have to do with Froi’s lettering and the Charyn princess?” Finnikin asked.
“Well, you gave me the letters just after supper, Finnikin,” the priest-king said, his eyes twinkling with laughter. “Do you expect me to have worked it out that fast?”
Finnikin laughed with him. “Yes, actually I do.”
“Did you know?” Isaboe asked the priest-king quietly.
The old man looked up at her, and Finnikin saw the tremble in his shoulders. Finnikin wasn’t quite sure what Isaboe was asking, but the priest-king seemed to realize exactly what it was.
/>
“Why do you ask?” the priest-king said.
“Because of the markings on Froi’s back that only the gifted such as you can see. Different from the visible ones on his skull.”
The priest-king smiled. “Well, let’s not pretend that you don’t have a gift, Your Majesty. Did you know?” he asked.
Isaboe looked at Finnikin and shook her head. “Froi was naked that time in Sorel when he was to be sold as a slave. I saw nothing written on his back.”
“Nothing at all?” the priest-king asked.
“I knew where to find him,” Isaboe said. “I always seemed to know where to find Froi, but never realized I was looking. So he was a beacon of some sort. But I don’t have the power of this second sight.”
They waited for the priest-king to speak.
“And from the very moment you met him, you began to teach him,” she said, after he remained silent. “Even in exile. As if you were preparing him for something.”
“I never saw the writing,” the priest-king said. “He worked my garden enough times without a shirt on his back, but I saw nothing. I’m not as powerful as the priestling Arjuro. But I knew there was something about Froi.”
The priest-king’s smile was gentle. “Sometimes . . . sometimes, I can see the essence of the gods in another. Rich or poor. Man or woman. Lumateran or Charynite. I’ve seen yours, Isaboe. Its power matched by only a few. That doesn’t make you or me or Froi better or worse than others. It just means the gods have marked us for a journey, regardless of whether we want to take it.”
“Who else?” Finnikin asked. “Who else is marked by the gods?” He prayed it wasn’t his daughter. He didn’t want Jasmina to walk a path without them. He could see Isaboe’s hand pressed against her belly.
“Who?” Isaboe asked, but the priest-king shook his head.
“If I tell you that, my queen, you’ll do all you can to alter their path. The gods don’t like that.”
The priest-king sighed, tapping at the pages before him. “But we’re not here to discuss the essence of the gods. We’re here to talk about spirits.”