What needs to be done.
He felt an elbow to his face and heard the crunch of bone, and the fires of hell danced a death march inside his head. He reached for the boy’s neck and pulled him toward him, both heads colliding, blood spraying from his mouth. He tasted it on his tongue mingled with the boy’s, and the taste made him roar.
But the boy would not give up. What he lacked in strength he made up for in skill and endurance. Finally Trevanion had him on the ground, a hand to his throat, his face an inch away so he could see the white fear in the boy’s eyes. So he could whisper a word he had trained himself never to say again, for the sound of it brought hope and an ache so intense it could kill a man. And every lowlife who had ever entered this godsforsaken prison knew that hope had no place in the mines of Sorel.
“Finnikin.”
The boy stared in shock. He was half blinded by sweat and grime and blood, but for a moment he caught a good look at his enemy. Hair knotted, the stench of the rot that lived within it, potent. A face blackened by the dirt of the earth beneath them.
“Trust me.”
And with that Trevanion’s fist came down on his son.
When Finnikin woke, a foul odor filled his nose and he gagged, his body heaving. He started in shock when he saw the bear of a man standing over him, and suddenly everything from the night before flooded back.
The last time he had seen his father, Trevanion had been standing on a makeshift judging post in the main square of Lumatere. He had watched as the impostor’s Guard forced his father to his knees. He remembered how Trevanion’s men bit their fists with rage and how it took ten of them to hold back Perri the Savage.
Then they cried out the punishment for Beatriss and Trevanion: “Death for the traitor! Banishment for the accomplice!”
In that moment, his father looked up and found him in the crowd, the bleakness in his expression so great that it became the blanket Finnikin placed over his face for years to come. Even as he knelt, Trevanion of the River had looked like a giant. His hair, black and cropped to his skull, his skin the color of bronzed oil, every bone in his face perfectly placed.
The man before him now was a total stranger. Hair covered his face, dark and tangled in knots, spliced with gray. Trevanion’s eyes had no light or warmth. Finnikin had to remind himself that this was the same man who had carried him as a child, high and safe, on his broad shoulders. The same man who had lain beside Lady Beatriss, gently kneading her tired fingers, whispering words in her ear that softened her face.
“Father?” It felt strange to speak the word.
Trevanion nodded. “Can you stand?”
Their prison cell was a cave, cold and damp. There was little room for one body, let alone two.
“Tell me about the girl,” Trevanion said.
“The girl?”
“Spawn of the devil.”
The cell was dark and the flickering torch outside gave only minimal light. Finnikin moved closer to Trevanion. “How do you know about her?”
“Visited the night you arrived.” There was urgency in the way Trevanion spoke, as if wary of the sudden appearance of a guard.
“Here?” Finnikin said. “In the prison?”
“Is she friend or foe?” Trevanion asked.
“Who can tell? We inherited her from the cloister of Lagrami in Sendecane.”
“You went to the end of the earth,” his father muttered.
“She claims to walk through the sleep of those inside.”
“Lumatere?”
Finnikin nodded. “And that she has made contact with the heir. With Balthazar.”
“Sweet goddess,” Trevanion said. “What wickedness is she planning with such a lie?”
“And you say she visited?”
“She has horses waiting for us in a ravine beyond the shrine of Sagrami.”
“Horses!” Finnikin snorted, and Trevanion quickly covered Finnikin’s mouth with his hand.
“Quiet!”
“We have one horse,” Finnikin hissed. “What does she think we will do? Walk out of here with the blessing of the prison guards?”
“I need to get you out of here. I can’t look after us both.”
Finnikin was already shaking his head as his father spoke. “We both need to get out of here, and I don’t need looking after.”
“In here you do!” Trevanion snapped.
“Don’t expect me to go without you.”
Trevanion did not respond.
“It’s either both of us, or I stay here and you —”
Trevanion grabbed him by the cloth of his prison garb, his expression furious. “You do what I tell you to do. You never question me again, do you hear?”
Finnikin pulled away, shaking his head emphatically. “I go nowhere without you, sir.”
Trevanion sucked in air. “I’ve seen them drag out the dead bodies of boys your age, and you do not want to hear what they’ve done to them.”
Finnikin wanted something more from his father than this. More for the ten years of longing. He stared at this stranger, his father, straight in the eye. “I. Go. Nowhere. Without. You.”
Then he turned and curled up as far away as possible, understanding with bitterness that he had walked straight into Evanjalin’s plan.
From the window of the stable loft, Sir Topher watched. The novice stood at the gate outside the dilapidated cottage. He knew she would stay there until the moon rose, as she had done each day since Finnikin’s imprisonment.
“They will come,” she said firmly when he joined her.
“And if they don’t?” he asked. “I understand what you are trying to do, but your methods could get him killed.”
“The captain will not let any harm come to his son.”
“Sometimes fathers can’t protect their children, Evanjalin. Did yours save you from harm?” Sir Topher asked, knowing the question was cruel.
“No,” she responded fiercely. “But my father would warn, ‘Be prepared for the worst, my love, for it lives next door to the best.’ And for that I thank him each day of my life.”
Finnikin spent his first days in prison adjusting to his surroundings. He knew that to survive, he had to think rather than just react. The inmates stared in the same way they had the day he arrived, but they kept their distance and he understood why. Trevanion was like an unleashed animal, and those around him, including the guards, feared the consequences of coming too close.
“You work outside this week,” the guard told Trevanion as they were taken back to their cage. Trevanion grabbed Finnikin and pushed him in front of the guard’s nose.
“He stays behind,” the guard said flatly. He was the least sadistic of the guards, which made him one-quarter human.
But Trevanion refused to move or to relax his grip on his son. He shook him in front of the guard again, and Finnikin felt like a rag doll, like some kind of toy at the mercy of everyone around him.
“Not taking the chance,” the guard spat. “The Osterian prisoner cut out the throat of the Belegonian translator. No interpreter. Can’t afford surprises.”
“I speak five tongues,” Finnikin said calmly in Sorelian, though he felt anything but calm. “I can be your translator.” Trevanion pulled him away, but Finnikin broke free, his face an inch away from the guard. “I speak five tongues,” he said, and then repeated the statement. Five times in five different languages.
The guard stared from him to Trevanion and then pushed them along. “Make sure you keep him on a leash,” he warned through gritted teeth.
When they were alone in their cell, Trevanion looked at him questioningly. “Five languages?”
Finnikin shrugged, cracking his knuckles. “I lied. It’s seven. If you count the grunting of the common Yut and those ridiculous sounds made by the Sendecanese.”
“Who taught you?” Trevanion asked.
“Sir Topher insisted I learn about the culture of each kingdom we visited. He said it was the only way they would begin to accept us and off
er us assistance.”
“What else did he teach you?”
Finnikin was confused by the force of the question. “You have nothing to fear,” he assured his father. “Sir Topher made sure he always honored your profession. I have trained with the royal Guard of almost every kingdom in the land.”
“No one in my Guard speaks seven languages.”
Finnikin did not respond.
“Do you know where the priest-king is?” Trevanion asked after a moment.
Finnikin shook his head. “He does not want to be found, but rumor has it that he’s on this side of the land.”
“The dukes?”
“Five are in exile. Two we believe were left behind. Three are dead.”
Trevanion stiffened. “Is Lord Augie . . .”
“Alive. Still works for Belegonia. Has some ridiculous obsession with breaking you out of prison so you can lead us back to Lumatere. Why didn’t Ambassador Corden tell him you were here?”
“Probably because he knew that Augie had some ridiculous obsession with breaking me out,” Trevanion said dryly. “And if anything frightens Corden, it’s not following correct protocol.”
“Sir Topher calls him the monster of propriety,” Finnikin said. “I call him a painful boil on the arse. But he does fund our journeys sometimes. Convinces the king of Osteria we can be of use if we are traveling around the land unnoticed. I trained with their Guard in exchange for information.”
“You are spies?”
“We collect information.” Finnikin propped himself on his elbow, facing his father. “Do you get much news from outside? From your Guard or the ambassador?”
Trevanion shook his head. “Not in the past seven years. My decision, not theirs.”
“What is your theory about the impostor king?” Finnikin asked.
“Puppet to Charyn,” Trevanion replied.
“Good.”
He caught a hint of a smile on Trevanion’s face.
“I’m glad I have your approval.”
“It’s just that we’ve always suspected it,” Finnikin said, all of a sudden wanting to talk. “But it’s only been lately that we’ve heard it spoken aloud.”
He went on to explain to Trevanion their plans for the second Lumatere. He tried to convey the extent of the suffering experienced by the exiles, but could not quite find the words. The slaughter in Sarnak was the hardest to explain. It had been the biggest of the river camps. They suspected that two hundred of their people had died.
“Do you ever wonder if they’re better off inside Lumatere?” Finnikin asked.
Trevanion shook his head. “When I first chose to challenge the king about his Guard and the dragonships, it wasn’t only because of the former captain’s weakness, Finnikin. It was because of his baseness. I’d heard stories of what he allowed to happen in the palace prison. What he instigated himself.”
And then there was silence. Finnikin studied the hard outlines of his father’s face.
“What of the Monts?” Trevanion asked.
“We’ve seen no trace, but we have a strong suspicion Evanjalin knows where they are.”
“Evanjalin?” his father asked.
“Spawn of the devil,” Finnikin reminded him.
Trevanion grunted. “When did you last see the Monts?”
“In the Valley of Tranquillity,” Finnikin said quietly. “Saro moved his people out there in the days before the curse. Almost the moment they heard the queen was dead.”
He thought of the horror of that day. Of the grief of the queen’s mother, the yata of the Mont people, wailing, “My pretty babies. Where are my pretty babies?” Many had walked away or pressed their hands against their ears to block out the sound of her anguish, but Lucian had not left his grandmother’s side. And from a distance, Finnikin had kept his vigil with the Mont.
Trevanion spoke only once more that night.
“The girl,” he said.
“Evanjalin?”
“She has my mother’s name.”
A week after his arrest, Finnikin spent his first day in the outside world. It was a relief to be able to breathe, despite the fact that he was shackled to five of the most vicious humans he had ever encountered. The guards saw to it that every inmate who worked outside the mines was a foreigner. If escape became a reality, the guards knew the prisoners would be at the mercy of a kingdom that despised outsiders and would soon find themselves back in the mines. Or, worse still, hanging from a tree.
When the head guard gave Finnikin an instruction to pass on to the others, he was instantly confronted with snarls and bared teeth.
“They despise with a passion those who interpret,” Trevanion murmured. “They consider them spies for the guards.”
And so Finnikin endured one of the longest days of his life. The menacing prisoners attached to him took every opportunity to tug the chain around his neck, causing it to chafe his skin. Or to drop rocks of considerable weight on his feet. Or yank his foot shackles so he found himself flat on his face on cold hard stone. When he picked himself up for the tenth time, he was shaking with rage.
The moment they reached the caves and his shackles were removed, Finnikin launched himself at the Osterian prisoner until both had blood pouring from their noses. The three hundred pounds of pure ugliness and fury held Finnikin’s head under his arm, while the guards stood by and watched. If there was one thing they enjoyed, it was the sight of the inmates trying to tear each other apart. Then Trevanion become involved and suddenly blood flew in every direction.
“I can handle this,” Finnikin hissed, jumping onto the Osterian and pressing the side of the man’s face into the wall as hard as he could. When the Osterian looked like he was ready to pound a fist into Finnikin’s temple, Finnikin remembered how Trevanion had bitterly recounted Evanjalin’s words. What needs to be done.
“We’re going to break out,” he whispered into the man’s ear in Osterian, before he bit part of it off and spat it out. “Interested in joining us?”
By the time the guards dragged the inmates off each other, Finnikin had also recruited the Yut, the Sarnak, the Belegonian, and the Charynite. Although there was no honor among these men, there was a hierarchy of hate, and they despised the Sorelians first and foremost.
“You’re making my hair turn white,” Trevanion muttered later, when they were alone in their cage.
“That would be your old age,” Finnikin replied, trying to stretch out the aches and pains in every joint in his body.
“You fight well. Like the Yuts.”
“We lived in the grasslands for a year when I was fourteen.”
“And you needed to fight?”
“They mocked my accent. And of course you can’t have hair my color and not learn how to fight in any kingdom.”
“Your mother had that hair. Would take my breath away every time I saw her.”
Finnikin was surprised to hear Trevanion speak of a memory so painful. He wondered about a man having lost not just one but two women in his life. Both having died giving birth to his children.
“You’d be best to tie a kerchief around your head and keep your hair hidden. It draws attention.”
Finnikin’s hair had not been cut for months and was beginning to snag and knot in wild tangles around his shoulders.
Later, as they lay in the dark, he could feel his father’s eyes on him and he wondered if he was just as much a stranger to his father as Trevanion was to him.
“So are your new friends all in?” Trevanion asked dryly.
“They seem to be. But I can’t promise they won’t snap our necks the moment they’re free.”
“Tell them this. You will pick a fight with me to bring the guards as close as possible. If we are lucky, there will be five, like most days. Then I go for the guard with the keys, and at the same time you take on the second guard. The first few moments are crucial, so we need to be quick. Two swords, five seconds. The Yut at the end uses his hand chains — grabs hold of his guard’s sword and
makes himself useful. Do not trust the Charynite or the Sarnak with the keys or a sword. If worse comes to worst, use them as a shield.”
“The Charynite and the Sarnak? Human shields?”
“They would do the same to us in the blink of an eye.”
“But you never use your own side as human shields.”
“This won’t be a war, Finnikin,” his father said coldly. “It will be an execution.”
Sir Topher woke with a start. A muffled sound came from the corner of the loft. He listened for a moment, and when he was satisfied it was only Evanjalin tossing restlessly in her sleep, he closed his eyes with the same heaviness of heart he had felt these past four nights. Until he heard a scream, hoarse, as if the girl was fighting for air. He twisted out of his bedroll, and in the half dark he saw the thief from Sarnak astride the novice as she struggled under his weight. Stumbling toward them, he heard the sickening sound of a blow, but before a second could land, he had the thief by the neck and hurled him across the loft.
“Sweet goddess,” he muttered when he saw the girl’s face.
Clutching what was left of her shift, she gasped for breath as he placed a blanket around her shoulders. When he made an attempt to hold her, she crawled away, shuddering against the timber beams of their shelter.
He heard a noise behind him and turned to where the thief was, on his feet, pulling up his trousers, a look of hatred in his eyes.
“What are you?”
“I just wanted a poke,” the thief spat.
Sir Topher pushed the thief hard, and the boy staggered again. It had been his decision to have the thief untied these past two nights, and for that he would not forgive himself.
He grabbed the thief and tied him tightly with the ropes attached to the beams, catching a blow to his temple that almost sent him reeling. When he returned to the girl, he crouched at her feet and slowly reached over to lift her chin, startling her. She pressed herself farther into the wall, covering her head with shaking hands. He looked from one corner of the loft to the other. The thief was hurling abuse, spitting with fury and tugging madly at his ropes. Here was Lumatere’s future, Sir Topher thought despairingly. Two wild animals with nothing but rage and hate.