Isaboe stood and walked to Froi, then sat facing him.
“And that is why we need you, Froi. Talk us through it. What if we want to take a step toward peace? Who has the most power? Gargarin of Abroi? The provincari? The godshouse?”
“The provincari united have the power,” Froi said. “My advice is that you go to Gargarin but that you also establish a relationship with the individual provincari. Deep down, they’re slightly impressed with Lumateran nobility. Take advantage of that. And then remember that the godshouse is important to the people and if you’re going to impress Charyn, you’re going to want to impress the godshouse.” He looked at the priest-king. “They want nothing more than absolution from the blessed Barakah. They understand the pain that took place here at the hands of Charyn’s army and they know they can’t change the past, but they want to acknowledge it.”
“How strong is their army now, Froi?” Trevanion asked.
Froi was dreading that question. His eyes met Trevanion’s.
“Very strong. United, it’s even stronger.”
“If they were ever to attack . . . ?” Isaboe asked.
“We wouldn’t stand a chance.”
He heard the sharp intake of breath around the room.
“So the way I see it, we try very, very hard not to be attacked by them,” Sir Topher said.
“Well, we could see the situation from the side of wonder,” Froi said.
“Oh, there’s a side of wonder in all of this?” Finnikin asked, sarcasm lacing his words. “Charyn has a new army large enough to decimate us, and he tells us we’re going to look on the brighter side.”
They all stared at Froi as if he were some foolish child.
“If we make friends with them, we’ll have a powerful ally in Charyn,” he said.
“Very simplistic,” Isaboe said.
Froi shook his head with frustration. “It’s the way I see things now,” he said. “The simpler it is to keep peace, the better our lives are. You don’t want Lumaterans to die, my queen. They don’t want Charynites to die. Trust me on that. A powerful Nebian captain surrendered and was on his knees because he didn’t want one more Charynite to die. He knew the man he surrendered to was a good man who did not want one more Charynite to die. So when good leaders don’t want their people to die, they spend quite some time trying to work out how to achieve things without going to war. It’s that simple!”
He needed to walk. He needed to count, because his blood was jumping. But most of all he needed to show them that he had control over himself. No counting. You can do this without the counting.
“At the moment, Charyn has a stable alliance among the provincari, and the way I see it, they want peace,” he continued. “They need it. They may have the power to decimate a neighboring kingdom, but they need that power to mend their own decimated people.”
Isaboe took his hand. “You’d be our perfect envoy to them, Froi, and regardless of whom . . . she is married to, you would still have an opportunity to . . . see her. Each time you visit.”
“An arrangement that would work for us all,” Finnikin said with a shrug. Froi shook his head, wondering if his king would ever understand.
“That’s very easy for you to say, my lord,” he said in an even tone. “You’re married to the woman you love, and your daughter sleeps between you.”
“Well, if you’d really like to know, she’s getting used to her own bed now, and I wish everyone would stop going on about it,” Isaboe said.
“Froi —” Finnikin said.
But Froi stood. He needed air.
“Sit,” Finnikin ordered. Gently.
Froi sat.
“So you get half the dream, Froi,” Finnikin said. “You can’t have the whole thing because they won’t let you. Not us. So why the anger toward Lumatere?”
“I’m not angry at you, Finn,” Froi said, frustrated. “But you can’t go around expecting me to spy and be happy with halves and whatnots while you get the whole dream.”
“I don’t get the whole dream,” Finnikin said. “My whole dream is that my wife wakes in the morning and doesn’t have to worry about an entire kingdom. That all she has to worry about is — I don’t know — looking after her husband and child.”
Isaboe choked out a laugh.
“Or her husband looking after her, then,” Finnikin said.
“Wonderful. I get reduced to either a slave or a helpless idiot,” she said with a smile toward Finnikin. But then she was all seriousness. “In the games of queens and kings,” she said to Froi, “we leave our dreams at the door and we make do with what we have. Sometimes if we’re fortunate, we still manage to have a good life.”
She thought about her own words for a moment and smiled.
“We don’t want you in the Charyn palace to spy, Froi,” she said. “Regardless of what you think of the situation with Celie, she is in Belegonia to provide us with an opportunity to talk. Without talk between past adversaries, we don’t stand a chance.”
“If you want peace, you begin with the valley, then,” Froi argued back. “You begin at the foot of your mountain, Isaboe!”
“But there’s more to all of this than the valley, Froi,” Isaboe argued. “If Gargarin of Abroi is as smart and noble as I’m sick of hearing he is, why has the man not written to us? To you?”
Why indeed? Froi wondered angrily.
“When the time comes, will you travel to Charyn and begin talks between the kingdoms?” she said.
“When?” Froi asked.
“Not now. Let’s take the time to get the treaty right. As you said, perhaps we speak his language first. Water and land and how we can learn from each other. In the meantime, you can write Gargarin of Abroi a letter —”
“No,” Froi said.
They all stared at him. Regardless of Froi’s fury and betrayal, it had been Gargarin’s order not to make contact with any of them, and Froi’s pride demanded he honor that.
“I’ll write the letter,” Finnikin said. “Let it be seen that Lumatere was the first to make contact.”
In the weeks that followed, Froi found himself traveling to almost all corners of the kingdom. In the forest of Lumatere, he attended a remembrance ceremony with Tesadora and the novices of both Lagrami and Sagrami. During his first year in Lumatere, Froi had spent much of his time with Perri guarding Tesadora, the priestess, and the girls. He had accompanied them when they moved their cloister back to the forest of Lumatere after ten years near the Sendecane border. Froi knew back then that he had earned trust from these women at a time when he was desperate for it, and each year when they had the remembrance ceremony, they invited Froi along.
The tree of remembrance had been planted in honor of the Charynite who had smuggled the Lagrami novices out of the palace village. It meant more to Froi now, knowing that Arjuro had been part of the escape. That morning, he stood with the priestess watching Perri carry earth to the separate plots surrounding the cloister. The novices had grown a spectacular garden of healing, and Froi knew that Lumaterans from across the kingdom came to these women to cure their ailments.
“Tesadora says you’re acquainted with the Charynite holy man who took us to her,” the priestess said.
Froi nodded. “His name’s Arjuro,” he said. “He never spoke of his time in Lumatere.”
“Yes, well, who can blame him?”
“What happened?” Froi asked.
The priestess held out her hand and he took it, escorting her for a walk around the gardens.
“We met him through John, the Charynite soldier who smuggled us out of the village,” she said. “The lad was working as a scout for the impostor king and heard of the heinous plans in the barracks. They wanted women in the palace as their . . . playthings, and what better girls to have than those of the Lagrami cloister, who were close by in the palace village and not protected by fathers and brothers?”
“How did this . . . John make Arjuro’s acquaintance?” Froi asked.
“Earlier th
at month, John had been sent on a scouting mission by the impostor king’s captain to check the rest of the kingdom. The Charynites were hoping that the Sendecane and Sarnak borders were free of the curse. Your friend the holy man was camping close to the Sarnak border when John came across him. Despite the distance to the cloisters on the Sendecane border, Arjuro took John to meet Tesadora, for no other reason than that the holy man had read an instruction in his dreams to lead the boy to the novices. It would be a most symbolic meeting between them all because weeks later John of Charyn made a decision that would cost him his life. He smuggled us out of the village, for he had found the perfect place to hide us. He took us to your friend the holy man first, but the palace riders had followed and we had little time for further acquaintance. The man we now know as Arjuro of Abroi drew us a map to where Tesadora was hiding the Sagrami novices, and then he and John became the decoys. We never saw them again. John of Charyn was seventeen years old when he died. Strange to think he’d be a man of more than thirty today.”
Froi looked out at the garden so similar to Arjuro’s on the roof of the godshouse.
“Well, Arjuro survived. He’s a brilliant physician,” Froi said, “and if there’s ever peace between Charyn and Lumatere, he’d welcome some of your girls as his students of healing. Your novices are smarter than the collegiati I came across in Charyn.”
Tesadora and Japhra joined them soon after, and the priestess took Tesadora’s hand. Two very different women stood before Froi, but the respect between them was fierce.
“Are you ever going to allow him a bonding ceremony?” the priestess asked shrewdly.
“Who? Froi?” Tesadora asked, and Froi laughed.
“You know who she’s talking about,” he said, looking over to where Perri was working.
“She asks you every year,” Japhra said, her voice soft.
“I don’t need a ceremony,” Tesadora said.
“And what if a child comes to your union?” the priestess asked.
Tesadora sent her an annoyed look, but the priestess persisted.
“The end of the curse for Charyn means the end of the curse for you, Tesadora,” she said.
“I’m past the age,” Tesadora said. Japhra made a sound of disbelief.
“My mother birthed me at the same age as you,” the priestess said. “And the queen’s beloved mother gave birth to her fourth and fifth children well past your age. He’s very virile, Tesadora.”
As if Perri suspected he was being spoken about, he looked across at them from where he was digging.
“If you allow that man into your bed, be prepared to hold a child at your breast one day.”
“Remember what John of Charyn said, Tesadora,” one of the novices joined in. “That his mother was a midwife and women came to her at all ages.”
“Yes, and his father was a man of horses, and old mares dropped dead when they were carrying,” Tesadora said, her tone tart. “Enough. All of you.”
Froi accompanied Tesadora and Japhra and two of their girls back up to the mountain that afternoon, his mind going over the talk of the day. There were names and facts he couldn’t get out of his head for some reason.
Japhra was quiet, and when they were well ahead of the others, he asked her about Rafuel.
He had spoken to Japhra about Rafuel, the last time he was in the valley and she had introduced him to Quintana’s women of the cave.
“Do you love him?” he had asked. “Rafuel?”
“Does it matter?” Japhra said. “My heart belongs here with Tesadora and my work, and his heart belonged in Charyn with the priests and their work.” She smiled. “But he helped me heal, and one day I want to do something to repay him.”
Down in the valley, he was taken again to the women who once shared Quintana’s cave. Froi always found it hard to believe Quintana had bonded with these three: two who grumbled and argued, one who giggled and preened. But Cora, Jorja, and Florenza loved his girl, and they had taken care of her. If there was any reason to spend time with them, it was that. More than anything, he loved the valley. Because the valley was Lumatere and Charyn. Forest and rock and mountain.
“If I write a letter to the palace,” he said quietly to Cora, “will you sign your name to it?”
“Why can’t you sign your own name to it?” she demanded, making a rude sound any time he attempted to take a blade to one of the weeds in her vegetable garden that now lined the path along the stream.
“Because I promised I wouldn’t,” Froi said.
Florenza of Nebia nudged Cora.
“Of course, you’ll do it, Cora. Or I will. I want to write to Phaedra, anyway.”
Cora grumbled.
“Don’t you go upsetting our little savage,” Cora warned. “That’s all you men are good for. Upsetting women.”
“What’s the letter about?” Jorja asked.
“It’s just a story I heard that may interest them,” Froi said. “About a young man named John. John of Charyn.”
I start my day counting. And it slows down the rage. And only then, when the rage is a melody, do I go see the little king, so he’ll hear a hum of joy the moment I speak. He knows me, this strange little creature. And it feels good to be known this well. It makes me less lonely. Because I think I’ve lost my song to Froi. It was taken when the spirits of the unborn babes went away. I miss them. I miss blaming them for the rage and my cold, cold heart. In the end, the sum of my vices is all me. I was sired by a tyrant and a gods’ blessed. Sometimes, I’ve no idea which part of me is more frightening.
And most days we’re fine, the little king and me. Phaedra is by our side. “Because I’ll never leave you,” she says, and she fusses and loves, but I hear her sadness deep in the night. There’s sadness all around. During the days, I watch Gargarin write and talk and fight and limp from one tower to the other. Those provincari parrots are the bane of our lives. He goes to appease, to convince, to plan, to build, to try the guilty and release the innocent. Because the trials have begun and there’s death in the air. The provincari have sent a judge from every province to assist Gargarin in sentencing the Charynites who acted dishonorably, or worse. They want to try to execute them on palace grounds, but I don’t want their cries heard by my little king, because the cries of the wretched always find a way to wedge themselves deep in the marrow of one’s spirit. I don’t want that for my boy. And Gargarin wins this first battle and we adopt the Lumateran ways. Our traitors are executed out of plain sight of those from the Citavita.
Olivier of Sebastabol does not become one of those condemned to die. Much to my despair. The provincari pardon him. Brave, brave Olivier, they say. But I remember the eight arrows that pinned Froi down to that rock outside Paladozza. And when he’s a free man, Olivier kneels at my feet and tells me he’ll spend the rest of his life in my service, even as a lowly soldier. Last borns don’t play soldier, I say. They play nobleman. They play merchant. They play landowner. But Olivier will do anything to prove his worth, he tells me.
“Where do you want him?” Perabo asks.
“In the dungeons,” I say. “Because everyone knows the dungeon master is as much a prisoner as those he guards.”
And weeks pass and a letter arrives from Cora. It’s traveled from the valley to Alonso and to Jidia and then it reaches us. The scribe reads it aloud in the great hall because there are to be no secrets from the provincari in Charyn. It’s the story of a lad named John of Charyn, hanged as a traitor fourteen years past. Hanged by his own men for saving the lives of twenty-three Lumateran novices. It’s a letter requesting that the mother and father of such a lad be told of their boy’s courage. But I see the letter, written in penmanship so alike to Gargarin’s that I know it’s Froi’s, and later I show it to the little king so he’ll know his father’s hand. And I see the names of John of Charyn’s kin and I shudder at the power of the gods who steer our paths.
“Do you believe in fate?” I ask Arjuro when he comes to visit and reads the letter with watery eye
s. He laughs, shaking his head.
“You ask that of me?”
And more weeks pass and nothing changes, except Phaedra’s cries in the night are more muffled, hidden by her love for Tariq and myself.
“Are you happy here, Phaedra?” I ask one day.
And she looks up from loving Tariq’s perfect face, and I see the fierceness in her eyes.
“I will never leave you,” she says.
“It’s not what I asked.”
And most nights there’s no sleep to be had. There are too many things keeping me awake. Tariq’s cries. The shadow on my balconette that makes my heart leap with one name on my lips. And the cells where the traitors are imprisoned. I wish I could keep away, but I can’t.
Olivier of Sebastabol tells me he knows why I’m there, hovering in the bowels of the palace. He sits at a bench with no more than a flicker of candlelight, recording his facts, his once-handsome face pale and thin.
“Don’t read my mind, traitor.”
“You’re here about the girl, Ginny,” he sighs, looking up. “She cries for you often.”
“Ah, you know her well,” I mock. “She’s knelt at your feet, has she?”
“She’s condemned to hang a week from now,” he says. “That’s all there is to know.”
But they gnaw at my sleep, these two, and I travel there each day before dawn, hovering at the entrance, praying to the gods that Ginny will batter her head against the stone so her death will be at her own hand and not mine.
“This is no place for you,” Olivier of Sebastabol says.
“Do you think your concern for me is going to change my mind about you?” I demand to know.
“No, but I’ll still express it,” he says. “Whatever has happened, my actions will always be determined by my need to keep you safe, my queen.”
“I’m not a queen.”
“You were Tariq’s bride,” he says. “Tariq was a king. You are his queen in my eyes.”
Olivier stands and lights a lantern. “Come,” he says quietly. “You need to say your piece before her death, or it will haunt you for the rest of your life.” And I let him guide me through the damp darkness. It’s a place to get lost, this labyrinth of misery. But I know the way because I’ve been here before. Waiting for a noose. I know the terror that taunts, and the piss that stains your legs from fear. I know the stench wedged deep in the stone. I know the sounds of the rats scurrying, the touch of their whiskers on your skin.