“Wonderful,” August muttered. “I was just getting to understand all the essence talk.”
“We’re born with a spirit,” the priest-king said. “It exists before we are shaped by time and place and wealth or poverty or circumstance. The lives we live tame and shape our spirits.”
Finnikin watched the various expressions around the room. He was glad to see that most were as confused as he was.
“I think it’s quite clear that Froi and the Charyn princess have acquired more than one spirit,” the priest-king said.
He was pensive for some time. “I remember long ago when I was a child, my pardu died. We were very close. Around that time, my sister’s child was born, and I could have sworn I sensed the spirit of my grandfather in that babe. Soon after, my pardu’s spirit left the boy. Once the departed rest in peace, most of their spirit settles with them. But they do leave some of it behind and it becomes part of another’s traits.”
“So Froi and the Charyn princess . . .”
“Unfortunately for now are a mystery.” The priest-king smiled. “But what this enemy girl has to offer Froi and Tesadora and Perri is a thing of beauty rather than malice, my queen.”
“Then why do I want to kill her?” she said coldly.
“Because you’re human and she shares the blood of a hateful man who tried to destroy our lives,” Abian said.
The priest-king took Isaboe’s hand.
“This will take me time. I don’t recognize the strange lettering on Froi’s scalp and Quintana’s nape. It’s not of the ancients. Whoever, or whatever, placed it there may have cursed Charyn. It might not be ours to solve, but it threads through the lives of those in Lumatere just as much.”
“Then how do we solve it?” Finnikin asked.
“I’ll see what we can find in our library, but our neighbors, the Belegonians and Osterians, are the greatest pilferers of the sacred mysteries from all over this land.”
“Perhaps Celie can —” Finnikin felt a kick under the table from Isaboe and remembered August and Abian’s presence “— ask a few questions. She’s so very good at that.”
August looked at him suspiciously. “I don’t want my daughter embroiled in this.”
Finnikin nodded. “Yes, yes. Women asking questions never ends well.”
He felt another kick. It was best to keep his mouth shut now.
The priest-king studied Froi’s note, and then he smiled.
“Beautiful penmanship. And who would have thought he could express himself so eloquently? What a waste that all he wants to do is be a soldier and a farmer.”
He looked at Perri and August. “No offense.”
“None taken . . . I think. Is it true that the . . . father is clever?” August stumbled on the words.
“Very,” Finnikin said, nodding, “and the uncle is apparently a gods’ touched genius. And the mother . . .”
“Have you gone on about the mother’s beauty as well?” Isaboe asked Perri.
Perri pulled up the sleeve of his shirt and displayed a bruise. “Twice. Tesadora’s fist.”
“That would be interesting.” Abian smiled at the thought. “Pitting the mother and Tesadora up against each other. Placing them in a room and seeing them fight it out.”
“Mercy,” Finnikin said.
“Yes, I’d pay all the gold in the land to see that,” Perri agreed. All the men agreed with gusto. Isaboe and Abian exchanged a look, and Finnikin saw a gleam of cynical humor in their eyes.
“Too predictable,” Isaboe said. “You men are too predictable.”
“We’ll be his cocoon, and he’ll never doubt that he was loved, regardless of everything.”
Froi woke lying between Lirah and Gargarin and wondered if he had heard those words out loud or in his dreams.
Arjuro crouched beside them and handed Froi a cup of something hot. He took a sip and tasted the bitter herbs, made a face, but took another sip. Arjuro held the back of his hand to Froi’s brow.
“You’ve got your color back, at least.”
“Why? Where did it go?” Froi joked, because Arjuro looked so serious.
“It went to that place you seem drawn to,” Arjuro said. “The dead are greedy for you!”
Arjuro’s eyes blazed with fury. Gargarin sat up, and Arjuro handed him a brew.
“I’ll say this once, and if you don’t honor my wishes, I’ll find a way of making your lives unpleasant,” Arjuro said to them all. “You never attempt to sacrifice your life for me again. No matter what they threaten me with, you move forward. You don’t look back!”
Gargarin’s response was a slurp. He passed the brew to Lirah, who was staring at Froi.
“I dreamed you died.”
“I’m here, Lirah.”
“Those at the lake of the half dead will never let me be,” she said.
Lirah would always be haunted by her attempt to end her life and Quintana’s, all those years ago.
“They trapped me in my dreams and I saw you there.”
“I’m here, Lirah,” he repeated. “Being threatened by Arjuro, who obviously woke up in a bad mood.”
Arjuro scowled. Froi smiled. Perhaps he was just relieved to be back with them.
“I wasn’t actually sacrificing myself,” Froi explained. “I came up with a plan and the plan went accordingly. Why would I sacrifice myself for any of you?”
“It wasn’t a plan, though,” Gargarin said, suddenly angry at Froi. “You didn’t talk it over with us. You just said, ‘Give me your cloak and your staff,’ and then you started walking away.”
“You would have talked me out of it,” Froi said.
“How do you know that?”
“I would have,” Lirah said. “I would have said, ‘What a stupid idea. You’re sacrificing yourself for Arjuro.’”
She handed the brew back to Arjuro. “Despite the fact that he lost ten years of his life searching for you, trapped in that hellhole Lumatere,” she added.
Froi couldn’t help thinking how much smarter Lirah was than the rest of them. Everyone else would have danced around the truth for too long a time. Lirah was able to slap them in the face with it until it could be avoided no longer.
Arjuro was even more furious.
“Who told you that?” he demanded of Gargarin.
“The Lumaterans.”
“What?”
“Yes, yes. You’ve missed out on some great excitement,” Gargarin said, waving him off as if it was old news.
“The ginger king tried to kill Froi,” Lirah said.
Arjuro seemed to think they were playing with him and started to stalk away in disgust, but Gargarin gripped his robe and pulled Arjuro toward him.
“We’re even, brother,” Gargarin said, their faces so close and alike.
Arjuro grimaced with anguish.
“We’ll never be even,” Arjuro said. “You didn’t plan Lumatere’s curse, so my imprisonment was not your doing. But on the night of the oracle’s death, I planned exactly what I’d do to you and it became your prison for all those years. So we will never be even.”
And Froi heard the self-hatred in Arjuro’s voice, but Gargarin didn’t let go. Instead he held a hand to Arjuro’s face.
“I want my brother back. So I say we are even.”
Arjuro didn’t speak, and it was too strange for them all.
“Tell him about looking at the side of wonder,” Froi said to Gargarin.
Gargarin seemed irritated. “Am I going to have to do that again and again?”
“Already he’s sick of it,” Lirah muttered.
Froi laughed. They were the maddest people he knew, and he laughed until his side hurt.
“What’s the side of wonder?” Arjuro asked, confused. “Why is he laughing like a fool?”
“Because there are two sides of a day, according to Gargarin,” Froi explained. “The side of despair and the side of wonder. On the side of despair, we’re freezing half to death. On the side of wonder, the four of us are together.”
br />
The words lay unspoken among them. One was missing.
And all that time, Perabo wordlessly watched them. Froi didn’t want to know what the keeper of the caves was thinking.
He slept and woke again, heard Gargarin and Arjuro murmuring beside him. They didn’t speak of their time in the dungeons of two rival palaces and they didn’t speak of love, either, but it was all there in their voices. The brothers were talkers, after all. They were different from Trevanion and Perri in that way. In his time since Sarnak, Froi had come to learn as much about the power of silence as the power of words.
He slept on and off, but always woke to the sound of their voices.
“Who knows? But there’s talk that the street lords are in the valley and that they murdered those lads. . . .”
“The Avanosh uncle? That idiot?”
“You shouldn’t have spoken to him that way. You know what De Lancey’s like. . . .”
“It’s the star of the north, and it’s only seen when the land is ready to thaw. . . .”
“I’m telling you. They want me to set up a school in the godshouse, and you have no idea how annoying those collegiati are. . . .”
“Did you see his hideous self?”
Froi was wide awake. He knew they were speaking of their father, the man Froi resembled.
Gargarin was silent.
“In his letter, De Lancey said you refused to speak to him,” Arjuro said.
“But I saw him,” Gargarin said. “I saw that wretched piece of shit. And I wanted to step outside and look him in the eye and say, ‘You don’t scare us anymore. You can’t hurt us anymore. Because you don’t exist to us anymore.’”
Froi sat up and Gargarin’s eyes were on him.
“I wanted to say, ‘Your face has been taken by another, so I’ve forgotten the malice in your eyes and the bitterness of your mouth.’”
“Why can’t you just kill him?” Lirah said, her voice hard. “It’s easy. You wouldn’t think twice about killing an enemy. He was your enemy.”
“I’d do it for you,” Froi said quietly. “I’d do a good job.”
If there was contemplation, it was only brief.
“No,” Arjuro said. “Let Quintana bring our little one into this world without his spirit being stained by blood on our hands.”
“Anyway,” Gargarin said, his voice ragged, “I’ve seen you kill, Froi. You’re too quick and clean, and I saw his hideous self close enough to know the truth. That he’s dying. Of the same disease that took the stonemason in Paladozza, Arjuro. Do you remember?”
“Oh, yes. Slow and painful. Good. Good.”
And all the while, Perabo still watched them.
“Who are you people?” he finally asked. “You’re no stranger to them, Lumateran.”
Froi stayed silent.
“If we tell you the truth, we’ll have to kill you, Perabo,” Gargarin said, getting to his feet.
Sometimes . . . sometimes Froi wondered how far Gargarin would go to hide the truth. Was it jest in his voice, or a warning?
“Then answer me this. Is Quintana of Charyn carrying Tariq’s child?” Perabo demanded. “Or another’s?” His eyes were fixed on Froi.
“Does it matter?” Gargarin asked.
“It does to those of Lascow!” Perabo said.
“Then, we give the people what they want to hear, Perabo,” Gargarin said with a sigh. “And if the people want to hear that the child she’s carrying belongs to Tariq of Lascow, then we tell them that the babe belongs to Tariq.”
Gargarin stood before the man. “What did Tariq always say? Anything for Charyn. Anything for peace.”
Perabo was silent.
“So it’s your choice. Take us to the Lasconian army or we continue this journey without you, as we have since he”— Gargarin pointed down at Froi —“flew through the air and snatched the future mother of our king from death. No one else did that, Perabo. They planned it, they started it, but they did not see it through, and he did.” Gargarin pointed at Froi again, just in case Perabo forgot who “he” was. “So do you travel to the Lasconians and tell them that perhaps Tariq’s queen doesn’t carry his child? And do they turn their back on saving a king because they believe his mother is a whore? Does the cycle of shit in our lives continue, Perabo? Or do we give Charyn a fighting chance?”
Perabo extinguished the fire with the brew from his mug.
“We don’t want to be traveling through the woods in the dark” was all he said.
Froi rode with Lirah that day.
“Tell me again,” she said, asking him to replay every conversation that had taken place between Froi and Quintana on their final night together. Lirah believed the answer to Quintana’s whereabouts lay in those words. “You’re leaving something out.”
“Well . . . there are certain things that are . . . private,” he mumbled, aware that Gargarin and Arjuro were riding beside them.
“You little beasts,” Arjuro said. “I thought it was only the once.”
Froi seethed. “Yes, well . . . it’s none of your business . . . and it was a very long and stressful night in Paladozza and we woke up quite a few times . . . and one thing led to another.”
“What? With the belly in between?” Arjuro continued.
“I’m not going to have this conversation,” Froi muttered, trying to take the reins from Lirah so they could ride ahead. She pushed his hands away.
“Then, what did you speak about that night?” she asked.
“Lists. Of people we trusted. Hers was short. Mine wasn’t. End of conversation.”
The next day, they reached what was known as the little woods of Charyn. There in the middle of the kingdom sat a tiny piece of Lumatere, teasing Froi. It was as if one of the gods had picked up Lumatere’s trees and moss and flown it to the neighboring kingdom. Beyond the woods were the three hills of the north that led to the province of Desantos. But north wasn’t Perabo’s destination for the time being. West of the woods, the Lasconians had taken up residence in a fortress that once belonged to a Serkan lord. They were planning to head south to confront the Nebian army. But from what had taken place at the lake, Froi was certain that the Nebian army would be traveling into these very same woods.
Soon after, Perabo steered his horse off the track and they followed him out of the little woods to a clearing of neglected grazing land. In the distance was a heavily guarded wall that surrounded a castle, round in shape and imposing in height. Whoever had constructed it had been interested in impressing as much as defending, and Gargarin’s admiration of the structure was clear. They followed Perabo to the gates, and he waved up to the guards on the battlements. Soon enough, the portcullis was raised and they rode into the outer bailey, where men were practicing swordplay and hitting targets. Froi noticed that their skills weren’t of the highest standard, and his heart sank at the idea of this being the army that would defend Quintana against Bestiano and Nebia. The lads’ banter stopped when they noticed Froi watching.
Perabo dismounted first and whistled to one of the men, who came to take their horses.
Inside the castle, the keep was bustling with the business of the day. There was a fireplace on both the north and south walls and an impressive water-carrying system. Arjuro nudged Froi and indicated Gargarin with a toss of his head and a roll of his eyes.
“That’s where I went wrong,” Gargarin muttered.
“What?”
“The well shaft. Look. Accessible at all six levels. Imagine all the to-ing and fro-ing I could have saved the servants in the palace.”
“We’re about to be attacked, and he’s thinking of design,” Arjuro said.
But Gargarin wasn’t listening. His eyes studied every detail of the castle hungrily.
“It once belonged to the provincaro of Serker’s cousin as a means of keeping an eye on the north,” Perabo said. “He liked his creature comforts.”
They followed Perabo up a set of winding steps that circled the entire keep, and Froi counted
up to seventy archways that afforded a view of what was taking place down below.
“Don’t look down,” Perabo warned them when they almost reached the top and the view from the archways became imposing. Froi sensed that Perabo was instructing himself more than the others.
“You obviously haven’t been imprisoned on the roof of a castle in the Citavita, Perabo,” Lirah said.
“Or hung upside down over a balconette, staring down into the gravina, waiting to die,” Gargarin added.
“Nothing worse than being chained to the balconette with your head facing down over that abyss,” Arjuro joined in, not one to be outdone in the misery stakes.
“Try balancing on a piece of granite between the godshouse and the palace with nothing beneath you but air,” Froi said.
Perabo stopped and took a deep breath and looked as if he was going to be sick.
“Don’t look down, Perabo,” Froi advised.
In a chamber at the top of the keep, they were introduced to Dolyn of Lascow. He was a great-uncle of Tariq on his mother’s side and now led the Lasconians.
“How long have you and your men been here, Dolyn?” Gargarin asked, shaking his hand.
“Too long. We first settled in Serker, believing it could be a larger training ground for the army, but the lads were spooked. We’re getting restless here and are about to head south.”
“Bestiano and the Nebians are on our doorstep,” Gargarin said. “Heading north.”
Dolyn was disturbed by the news. “Do you think they’ll try to take this garrison?”
“I doubt they’ll take the chance just yet,” Perabo said, having recovered from his dizziness. “I’m thinking that they’ll settle an army of that size in one of the valleys among those hills.”
“We could follow them,” Arjuro said. “They may have a better idea of where Quintana of Charyn is.”
Dolyn noticed Arjuro and held out a hand.
“It’s an honor to have you here, Priestling. We need all the blessings we can get.”
The Lasconian leader beckoned one of the soldiers over.
“Find a chamber for the brothers to share,” he said.
Froi watched Gargarin move a fraction so that his shoulder pressed against Lirah. Gargarin’s eyes fixed on Dolyn. And then he waited.