“A custom to do what?” Froi snapped.
Dorcas was irritated in the way he was always irritated when Froi spoke. “To rid her of the curse. Best you go back to the palace. You ask too many questions.”
“Because you don’t ask enough, Dorcas, you fool. She’s scared.”
“King’s orders.”
From the tops of caves and the road above, the Citavitans stopped to watch. Their stares were bitter. “Whore!” one shouted, and threw a rotten apple at the carriage. “Demon!”
Froi followed the entourage farther down the road, watching the carriage totter close to the edge. It was too tight a fit on the narrow track, and he imagined both horses and carriage toppling over the side at any moment. But halfway down, they stopped at the entrance to one of the cave houses and Quintana was taken into the soothsayer’s cave under a pelt of rotten fruit and fury from above.
Outside the cave, the palace soldiers stood guard, their attention on the roofs above. Froi watched merchants pack up their goods nervously, whilst others stared from the street lords to the soldiers, tensely waiting.
“The carriage is blocking the road, friend,” one of the street lords called out to the palace riders. “There’s a herd of cattle behind you that don’t take too well to following orders.”
Although the street lords were few in number, the palace riders were smart enough to look wary. A moment later, the carriage jolted forward and it became impossible for the rider to see what was taking place on the narrow crowded road.
Froi heard cries from inside the soothsayer’s cave and then silence. Chants and then silence again. A warbling sound caused the horses of the carriage to lurch forward. Inside the cave, another cry was followed by silence. Froi could see the horses champing at the bit, and he moved close enough to the carriage to note the driver’s white knuckles gripping on tight. But the large herd of cattle was urged ahead by the street lords and began to push both horses and carriage to the edge of the cliff road.
“You’re going to have to let the horses go!” Froi shouted up to the carriage driver, who stood up to look behind and was jolted again. Froi leaped up beside him, stared back at the road, and saw the herd of cattle gaining on them.
Froi shoved the driver off the carriage before the fool was forced over the side into the gravina, carriage and all. He then climbed up to release the mounts as they tossed their manes with fury. The driver was back on his feet in front of the horses, working on the second harness. Less than a moment after the horses were released, the carriage went hurtling over the side, crashing against the rocks in the abyss below.
On this narrow stretch of rock, Froi watched cattle, soldiers, street lords, and horses jostle for space. Inside the soothsayer’s cave, there were screams and crashes, and the next moment, Froi saw a figure come racing out, her hair drenched and tangled. But Froi wasn’t the only one to see her. From the flat roof of a cave above, a street lord noticed her as well. The man leaped down and landed close to Froi’s feet. Without a second thought, Froi caught him with a fist to the temple, knocking him down.
As Froi raced down the winding road after Quintana, he caught glimpses of her hair, but bend after bend she would disappear, until he reached a stretch where she seemed to have vanished altogether. He imagined that she was either heading down toward the bridge of the Citavita or was inside one of the caves teeming with vendors who were taking refuge. But then, at the entrance of a cave beside him, Froi heard the rasp of heavy breathing coming from behind a trio of baskets overspilling with threads and fabric.
“Quintana,” he whispered.
The breathing stopped a moment.
“Olivier?”
He searched behind the baskets and found her there. Her hair was plastered to her face, the front of her repulsive pink dress damp. Froi crouched beside her.
“Couldn’t you have worn something less noticeable?” he muttered.
But she was too shaken and miserable to respond. He studied her closely, not knowing whether he was dealing with Princess Indignant or Quintana the ice maiden.
“What did she do to you?” he asked.
She looked weary, shaking her head. He settled beside her, hearing the sound of horses’ hooves hitting the hard ground outside the cave. After a moment, she placed her head against his shoulders and Froi felt a tenderness toward her.
“Sometimes . . . sometimes keeping alive is too tiring,” she whispered, wringing her hands.
Before he knew what he was doing, he pressed his lips against her brow. “Don’t ever say that. Ever.”
He looked back to the entrance cautiously. A woman stood stirring a large pot with a paddle. Froi smelled saffron. He watched the woman drop a piece of cloth into the dye and retrieve another that had been soaking. On flat stones behind her, he could see a basket of cotton tunics, waiting to be dipped into the pot.
“Wait here,” he said.
While the woman had her back turned, Froi grabbed one of the tunics and a scarf, and crept back to where Quintana was hiding.
He helped her remove the hideous pink dress.
“Close your eyes,” she said.
Froi stared at her, bemused. Sharing beds and lifting her shift to her thighs and dropping his trousers to his ankles was normal, yet here she was, bashful.
He closed his eyes, and when she was dressed, he wrapped the scarf around her head and took her hand, leading her into the cave.
“It’s best we stay here for a while.”
Quintana was much too intrigued by her surroundings to complain and accepted the circumstances with her usual aplomb. If her eyes weren’t prone to squinting, she would have almost looked wide-eyed with fascination. In a corner, a woman sang a song so pure that it made something inside Froi ache.
“What is she singing?” Quintana stood transfixed, her hand close to her ears, as if she wanted to capture the sound in her fist.
“I don’t recognize the language,” Froi said. “But it’s a pretty melody.”
She looked at him, surprised.
“What would you know of such things?” she asked.
“Well, if you’d really like to know, I can sing a pretty melody or two.”
Froi wanted to cut off his tongue for saying the words. Except for when working alone on the Flatlands where no one could hear, he hadn’t sung out loud since he was a child in a Sarnak marketplace.
He pulled her away. They were still too close to the cave entrance and not far enough away from the fury of those outside. But Quintana had seemed no safer with the palace riders. Was she any safer with Froi?
Farther along, a man juggled three apples, taking a bite from the same one at intervals until it was nothing more than its core. Quintana studied him with a sort of wonder beyond anything Froi had seen on her face before.
But she was drawn away by the cries of a woman in the folds of the cave. Froi followed her to where a couple embraced, the man’s body pressing his lover to the wall, his hands concealed under her dress. Froi held out a hand to pull Quintana away, but he heard a snarl from her and suddenly she leaped onto the man’s back, grabbing him by the hair, pounding his head once against the stone wall. The woman screamed, and the man twisted and turned to throw Quintana from him. But she held on tight, and Froi saw her face, saw her small, slightly crooked teeth, savage in shape.
He grabbed her around the waist and forced her from the man’s back, only to feel a painful kick to his shin by the woman.
He took Quintana’s arm, and they escaped through the labyrinth, choosing paths randomly.
A tunnel led down to a lower level of the caves, and Froi dragged her toward it, climbing down first, his feet and hands pressing into the indents of the narrow space to keep his balance. When he reached the ground, he held up his hands, then clasped her around the legs and settled her before him.
“Are you a madwoman, Quintana?” he whispered furiously after they both had caught their breath.
She pointed up the tunnel. “Did you not hear he
r crying?”
Froi looked around guardedly. Men stared from small dank corners and music rang in the distance through the pocket holes of the cave.
He leaned forward to whisper, “She was crying from pleasure.”
Quintana shook her head fiercely. “That’s a lie.”
“No. It’s the truth. People enjoy touching each other. Holding each other. Mating. Since the time of the Ancients, lovers have enjoyed it.”
Even in the half-lit space, he saw her expression of disgust.
“Is that what you tell yourself, Olivier? To make yourself feel better about what you’re doing to a woman. Do you convince yourself that she’s enjoying herself?”
Froi bit back his fury. And his shame.
“And what of you?” he said coldly. “Lifting your nightdress in your chamber, convincing yourself that it’s a sacrifice for Charyn when it’s nothing more than a need to ease your loneliness because no one in this godsforsaken kingdom cares whether you live or die!”
He regretted the words the moment they left his mouth. She stepped away and he tried to hold out a contrite hand to her, but she would have none of it.
“Ease my loneliness?” she asked bitterly. “If I wanted to ease my loneliness, Olivier, I would have asked my father for a kitten, not whored myself for Charyn.”
She turned and ran, and he caught her shift, hearing it tear. “Don’t draw attention to yourself,” he said, but she pulled free.
He lost her twice, each time catching a glimpse of her in another nook or alcove.
At last, when he believed he would never find her, there she was in a huddle of musicians.
The music they were playing was accompanied by a wailing sound that seemed to beckon all that was untamed and buried deep within. Strange instruments twanged with every pluck of the strings, accompanied by the flicker of fingers across a hide drum. The man’s voice was rich, reverberating off the cave walls. Froi could tell he told a sad tale. But then the music changed in tempo and a woman with wild eyes spun and spun again, her arms raised high, and Froi was dizzy with the speed and the beat and the wails and grunts until the woman collapsed to the ground, a mass of sweat and deep breaths.
He saw Quintana then, her eyes bright with excitement. Perhaps it was the Serker in her that sang to him. Lirah’s Serker blood. Whatever it was, it seemed to awaken something in Froi that he couldn’t understand. That he didn’t want to understand. Not with Quintana.
And then the woman on the ground rose and the music was all things enticing. In the small crowd, she caught Quintana’s eye and held out a hand, and then the princess or reginita or savage, or whoever she was, danced. It was as if she knew this dance in the deepest core of her, and when she opened her eyes, Froi saw the Quintana who had sat on the piece of granite between the palace and godshouse that day he had watched with Arjuro. The savage in her was a beacon to all things raw and base inside Froi. Her hips swaying, her eyes closed, her hands slowly twisting and turning above her head. It was as Rafuel had said. It was a dance of seduction, and somehow in this dank cave with the half-mad princess of the enemy, Froi was seduced. He walked between the dancers and took her face in his hands and kissed her, his tongue sparring with hers for only the slightest moment before he heard the snarl escape her lips and felt a sharp pain. He wiped the blood from his mouth where she had bitten hard.
“Do that again and I’ll make sure you bleed like a stuck pig,” she hissed.
He clenched his fist. Remember your bond, Froi, he said to himself. He counted to ten.
The music slowly strummed to nothing, and he felt bereft without it. Saw that she did too. Caught the tremble in her body as she came back from wherever she had been in her head. Froi reached out a gentle hand and drew Quintana to him, pressing their brows together.
“In a kinder world,” he whispered, “one I promise you I’ve seen, men and women flirt and dance and love with only the fear of what it would mean without the other in their lives.”
She was silent for a moment, but stayed with her head pressed to his.
“Lirah says it’s a sport of blood,” she said. “A dance between men and the women they own. What cruel lies you tell, Olivier of Sebastabol.”
He took her hand and they traveled deeper into the cave’s core, following the sound of cheering into a small crowded space.
Froi sat down beside a group of men playing cards, pulling Quintana down beside him. This was a game he knew, one he had mastered on the streets of the Sarnak capital.
“You in?” a man barked, half his teeth missing, which was always a warning not to join a game.
Froi pointed to himself and then shrugged, nodding.
The man with thinning hair snapped his fingers and held out a hand, and Froi fished a handful of coins from his pocket. The man dealt, and Froi studied the cards he held in his hands.
“Sir,” he heard Quintana speak.
Froi turned to her, a finger on his lips, but Quintana was staring at the dealer, creases furrowing her forehead.
“You forgot your card, sir.” It was Quintana the Indignant.
There was a hiss of fury from the other players. Froi tensed, then relaxed when he realized Quintana was not in danger. The men were staring at the dealer.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about!” the dealer said.
“There,” Quintana said, confused that he was unable to see. She reached over to touch the dealer’s sleeve.
The other players stared at her. Was it a game this creature was playing, pretending innocence and confusion at the sinister workings of the world?
They threw their cards down in disgust.
“You’re out of play, Aesop. Out!”
Someone pushed the coins toward Quintana.
“They’re yours, miss.”
Another man began to shuffle and deal, and he had a new admirer in Quintana, who watched him carefully, grinning a crooked smile each time he stared down and winked at her.
“Did you see what he did with his eye?” she whispered in Froi’s ear.
“He likes you,” Froi said.
When each man had their cards, Froi felt her at his shoulder, studying the hand. He tried to push her away, wary of what she would reveal to the others by her reaction.
“What’s your name, lad?” one of the players asked.
He hesitated, realizing he couldn’t use Olivier in case someone knew of the palace visitor.
“Froi,” he responded, knowing it was safe to use the name here.
“Well, Froi. A good game is a fast game.”
The men grunted in agreement.
“That means he’d like you to be quick in placing down your card,” Quintana explained.
He looked at her and then laughed.
“What would I do without you?” he said.
Later, Froi led her through the caves, quickening his step when he realized they were being followed. When he pushed Quintana into a crevice and turned to face whoever it was, he saw it was a woman.
“I know who she is.”
Froi ignored her.
“You’re a fool to have her out here,” she said. “You know the most base of men will soon come for the last-born girls and use them as whores to produce the first.”
Quintana stiffened beside Froi.
Froi tried to push her behind him again. The woman thought Quintana was a last born, not the princess.
“It’s against the law,” Quintana said coldly. “The prophecy says that only the reginita can break the curse. Only her. Not the innocent.”
The woman clicked her tongue with regret.
“And what happens when Her Royal Uselessness comes of age?” she asked. “I tell you, they’ll come for the last borns.” She turned to Froi. “You take care of your girl.”
“Always,” Froi murmured, grabbing Quintana’s hand and turning away. Suddenly they faced another — a man bigger in build than any Charynite Froi had ever seen.
“I’ll smuggle her out of the Citavita,”
the man said fiercely. “What have you been waiting for?”
Froi felt Quintana take a quick breath beside him. She stepped away from Froi, but he pulled her back.
“And who are you, sir?” Quintana asked.
“I’m Perabo. The keeper of these caves.”
The man held out his hand to Quintana. “You know it’s safe to come with me.”
“She knows nothing of the sort,” Froi said, “and if you don’t step back, I’ll break that hand in places you didn’t think there were bones.”
Quintana stared from Froi to the man and then to Froi again, and there was sadness in her eyes.
“It’s not my time to go, sir,” she said to the keeper of the caves. “Not yet.”
The man’s eyes bored into Froi’s.
“There are those of us who treasure all last borns,” the keeper hissed. “If something happens to her because of you, I will feed every bone of yours that I break down your throat.”
It was late when they reached the palace entrance, and this time there was no need for calling out. The drawbridge was lowered, and two of the soldiers approached, then dragged Froi back with them. The courtyard was illuminated by torches. Gargarin stood behind Bestiano and the rest of the advisers and riders. Dorcas’s face was swollen, either a gift from the street lords or punishment from the palace for losing the princess. Bestiano approached, and his backhand caught Froi across the face.
Gargarin pushed past the advisers, and one of the riders pulled him back and Froi saw him wince in pain.
Count to ten, Froi. Your work here is yet to be done. You’ve not even had a glimpse of the king.
“The palace risks a war with both Sebastabol and Paladozza if anything happens to the last born,” Gargarin called out, a warning in his voice.
“What makes you think anything will happen to him?” Bestiano said pleasantly before turning to Dorcas.
“I think a night in the dungeon should arouse him enough to be of service to the princess tomorrow.”
Later, on the hard cold ground of the cell, when the world seemed so still that it was as though Froi felt the heartbeat of every man and woman in Charyn, he heard the soft singing coming from the opposite tower. It wasn’t the high-pitched purity in Quintana’s voice, nor the fact that she recalled every word to a sad song she had heard only once today in the caves of the Citavita, sung in a language she had never known. It was that he knew that voice, had dreamed it over and over again in a lifetime of rot and misery, and Froi wanted to weep. For he knew he would break his bond to his queen not just with his body but also with his heart.