“It’s not that hard to do anything like a Charyn nobleman,” Froi responded, eyeing Feliciano.
“And your purpose in Paladozza?” the uncle continued.
“I travel with the princess, sir. I’m good with a dagger and a short sword and serve as her personal guard.”
“Well, I don’t believe your services will be required anymore,” the uncle said. “We have our own guards, and we’re hoping to take the Light of Charyn back to the island with us. No better place to protect a mother and her unborn child than an island.”
“We haven’t spoken about the princess leaving us, my lord,” De Lancey said.
The uncle removed an envelope from his pocket. “We’ve traveled for some time, De Lancey, and have obtained the signatures from every provincaro apart from yourself, Nebia, and our unfortunately plague-ridden Desantos friends. The provincari of Charyn have approved the marriage of my nephew and the queen.”
“Three of the provincari,” De Lancey corrected. He stared across the table. “If I could be so bold as to ask to see the document, my lord.”
The envelope was passed down the table, and Froi wanted to tear it to pieces when it reached his hands. Olivier, instead, dropped it in his soup, apologizing profusely while the uncle forced another smile. The document reached De Lancey, who studied it awhile and then nodded.
“Well, that is that, then,” De Lancey said quietly, looking at Quintana.
The uncle from Avanosh searched around the table. “And we were told Gargarin of Abroi was a visitor, De Lancey, yet he’s nowhere to be seen.”
Lirah placed down her fork. “He was feeling sick to the stomach tonight, my lord.”
The man stared at her, uncomfortable.
“Lirah of Serker,” she said. “Do you remember me? The king introduced us,” she added, her words weighted with hatred. The uncle from Avanosh didn’t respond.
Meanwhile Feliciano’s cousin Abria seemed to have taken a liking to De Lancey, her hand constantly at his sleeve.
“Someone should tell Abria that your father hasn’t been intimate with certain parts of a woman’s body since his mother birthed him,” Olivier whispered.
“Hush, Olivier,” Tippideaux said, giggling.
After dinner when they all got up, Froi moved around the table to reach Quintana, but Feliciano was closer and there before him.
“If you would join me in my compound, Your Highness,” Feliciano said. “My servants can have your items removed from your current room. My uncle will set a guard at every entrance of our residence.”
“The protection of the queen lies with me,” Froi said, leading Quintana away with a firm grip on her arm.
Tippideaux met them by the door.
“Aren’t they hideous?” she said, yanking at a piece of Quintana’s hair as though willing it to grow longer. “Froi said you would never believe the charm and lies,” Tippideaux continued. “You deserve better than that.”
“Lies?” Quintana asked, looking at Froi. “And what part was the lie? The sweet face or the pretty eyes?”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, feeling the need to choke the life out of Tippideaux.
The very annoying Feliciano was back between them, holding out a hand to her.
“My uncle insists that you enjoy our hospitality, Your Highness.”
Quintana caught Froi’s eyes and he shook his head, but he knew the damage was already done. He watched her place her arm on Feliciano’s sleeve.
Froi and the others stood beside De Lancey, watching the Avanosh party walk out of the dining room.
“What on earth did they give you in the box, Father?” Tippideaux asked. “When they arrived?”
“Sand,” he said. “From their island. Sand. As if we don’t have enough sand in our stone here.”
Froi’s mood was flat, his mind not able to get around Quintana and her consort alone in their residence. So later that night when Olivier suggested stealing out into the city below with a promise of ale, women, and good conversation, Froi readily agreed.
They found themselves in the bawdiest ale house in Paladozza, according to Grijio, who looked worried. He was recognized instantly as the son of the provincaro, and they were offered ale all night, although the offer always came with the words, “Perhaps a favor from your father, young Grijio.”
But the ale did nothing to alter Froi’s mood.
“You’re in love with her?” Grijio said quietly.
Froi didn’t respond.
“I don’t mean to give offense, Froi,” Olivier said, “but she’s not an easy person to like. One doesn’t always warm to her.”
“There’s more to her,” Froi said, not denying either of them. He wanted to explain it, hoping they’d understand.
“Until three years ago, I couldn’t read and write, I couldn’t ride a horse or shoot an arrow and didn’t know the difference between a turnip seed and grain. The men who have taught me everything back home, they often say to me, ‘Froi, what if all your talents were left undiscovered?’”
He looked up at them. “It’s the same with her. Imagine who she would be if we unleashed her onto the world. I think she would rip the breath from all of us.”
Froi drank more that night than he had ever drunk in his life. Drinking was forbidden by the Guard in Lumatere unless off duty, and even then it had to be in moderation. But Froi was sick of bonds. Sick of moderation. Sick of having to hold back.
The next morning, however, Froi wished he had held back. With little memory of what they had done the night before, all three of them were summoned to the provincaro’s library.
De Lancey was there to remind them of everything, fury in his expression.
“Exposing yourselves? To the locals?”
Froi vaguely remembered that part.
“Drunk? Singing bawdy songs about the gods of other kingdoms? Pissing in the prized gardens of Lady Orsa?”
Grijio looked shamefaced. Olivier pretended to. Froi’s head was spinning too hard for anything to make sense.
“The Avanosh puppets think this is a province of debauchery!”
Grijio looked up. “You’ve never cared what people say about us, Father. About the way we live.”
“But the rule has always been to conduct yourself with dignity, Grij. To have respect for others so you can demand respect back. There was nothing, nothing dignified about your behavior last night, or those women.”
Women? Why didn’t Froi remember women? How could he not remember women?
“What women?” he asked Olivier as they walked out.
“They want to meet us tonight,” Olivier whispered. “Are you in, Grij? Froi?”
“They are so much older,” Grijio said. “What do you think they’ll want from us?”
At the entrance to the courtyard, they bumped into Feliciano of the Red Tights, as Olivier insisted on calling him. Froi had a hazy memory of strands of a song they penned for Red Tights the night before at the inn. Words to suggest that Feliciano’s trousers resembled a sock and Froi was sure that the word describing Feliciano himself rhymed with sock.
“My betrothed and I would appreciate less noise when you arrive home,” the heir to Avanosh said pompously. “It woke us last night.”
Feliciano was pinned to the wall before Froi could count out his bond, a hand to the other lad’s throat. Olivier and Grijio pulled Froi away before his fist could connect.
The moment he could escape, Feliciano scampered down the stairs. Froi pulled free of the others and walked back to his chamber. The image of Quintana and that idiot together last night, today, and forever, made him want to kill someone.
Suddenly Lirah was at the top of the steps, her hand on his arm to stop him.
“Where have you been for sunrise these last days, Froi?” Lirah’s voice was always blunt, emotionless. “Gargarin says you’re not yourself.”
“Gargarin doesn’t know who I am,” he snapped, “so how could he possible know I’m not myself?”
“Well, he would like you to come visit,” she said, her voice calm. “He needs to speak to you urgently. This business with Avanosh is a worry.”
“I’m not his messenger boy,” Froi said. “He has you for that. A good deal for him, indeed,” he added spitefully. “He gets to bed you, and you run errands for him.”
She stared at him, a flash of anger and hurt in her eyes. She nodded, as though comprehending his words. “Well, there it is,” she said. “There’s the Serker male. Can only express pain through bitter words.” She let her hand drop and walked away.
Froi took a deep breath and turned back down the steps again. He was in the mood to find Feliciano again and tell him exactly what he thought of him. But outside in the courtyard, he could only find Olivier and Grijio.
“Tonight,” he said. “If you’re up to it again, I’m in.”
No matter how hard they tried, Froi and the lads were unable to lose De Lancey’s guards that night. The three had to settle for drinking in the ale house under close watch.
“I can’t believe that if I take a woman tonight, my guard will probably stand at the foot of the bed and give instruction,” Grijio said, forlorn. “I need to get out of Paladozza.”
Olivier laughed. “And there are those who would die to live here. Our lad,” Olivier explained to Froi, “is frightened that the princess will be the only girl he’ll ever have lain with.”
“We didn’t actually lie with each other,” Grijio said. “She made me leave the moment it was over, and believe me, it was over in the blink of an eye. She was very particular about not sharing her bed. Wasn’t she, Froi?”
Froi looked from one to the other. “What impression have I given either of you that I want to hear or discuss anything about the princess and last borns and consorts?” he said, anger lacing his words. He was fighting with all his might not to think of Quintana and that idiot Feliciano.
Olivier called for another round of drinks, and the subject of Quintana was finished with. But after a pint or two, Olivier leaned forward and ushered them toward him.
“I don’t trust the Avanosh lot. Why would the provincaro of Sebastabol not have sent that note through me?”
“The seal was there. My father saw it,” Grijio said.
“I still don’t trust them.”
Froi studied the last born. “What are you thinking, Olivier?”
Olivier looked over their shoulders to where Froi knew De Lancey’s guards were standing watch.
“We do what you and I and Satch and Tariq set out to do in the Citavita, Grij,” Olivier said. “We save Quintana.” His eyes caught Froi’s, and he winked. “We give her a chance to unleash herself onto the world.”
Froi stared at him.
“When?”
“This is going too fast, lads,” Grijio said.
“Not fast enough,” Olivier responded. “Yesterday they met. Today betrothed. Tomorrow she’ll be gone and we will not be able to protect her.
“Maybe Avanosh is the safest place for her,” Grijio said, regret in his voice.
Froi would never believe that to be true.
“Maybe,” Olivier said. “But maybe they’re under orders from Sorel and one day we will be part of that heinous kingdom of prison mines and slavery.”
Froi was on his feet. He could hardly breathe at the thought of his son and Quintana in Sorel with no one to protect them. Olivier grabbed him by the sleeve and yanked him back down.
“You can take Quintana through one of the caves that lead up to the central hills,” Olivier whispered. “I can lead you, Froi. I know the way.”
“Then I’ll come too,” Grijio said.
“No, you need to stay here, Grij,” Olivier insisted. “To give them false leads. They need to think we’ve traveled south or east.”
“Just say . . .” Grijio began, looking at Froi cautiously.
“Just say what?” Froi demanded.
“Just say Quintana may not believe she needs saving?” Grijio said. “I saw her with Feliciano today, and she seemed charmed, alarmingly so.”
Froi had noticed too. Quintana was a tamer person in the presence of the Avanosh lot.
Olivier sat up straight, and suddenly a grin appeared on his face.
“We’ll speak of this again later,” he said. “The women are approaching.”
A moment later, Froi felt a hand run through his hair and then he saw a pretty face and lips painted red.
“This one is mine,” she said, pulling him to his feet. He looked into her eyes, warm and laughing eyes, but not those he wanted to be looking into. Not the face. Not the body with the round belly and strange scars. Not Quintana.
“I’m bonded to two women,” he blurted out because it was the ale speaking and Froi was coming to realize that he was very stupid under the influence of ale.
“Well, aren’t we the intriguing one?” she whispered in his ear.
Back in Quintana’s room, he saw the empty bed for the second night in a row. He stared at it a moment, fury clenching his hands. He locked her door, wanting to throw away the key, to stop himself from tearing through De Lancey’s compound and finding that idiot from Avanosh. He didn’t want to count to ten and remember his bond. He wanted to feel the anger, and with every image that came to his head, Froi’s rage grew and grew.
Later he heard the doorknob rattle, and he grabbed his dagger and leaped to his feet. But whoever it was knocked, and he opened the door to see Quintana standing in the hallway, dressed in her nightgown, trying to peer over his shoulder. He stepped in front to block her way.
“What are you looking for?” he asked coldly.
“Who are you hiding back there?” she asked, trying to push past him until he felt the pounding of her heart against his own chest and the sound of her breathing against his ear.
“What makes you think I’m hiding anyone?”
And when he saw her mouth curl into a snarl, his blood began to beat into a frenzy of excitement and he matched her heartbeat, breath by breath. She stepped to his side, trying to get into the room, and he blocked her again and again and again until she clenched her fists and pounded his shoulder.
“Did you bring a woman back here?”
“Did you share his bed?”
Suddenly Olivier and Grijio and Lirah and Tippideaux appeared in the hallway.
“Answer me,” she shouted.
“Answer me!”
“You’re drunk!”
“Did you let him touch you?”
Quintana cried with fury. “You dare to accuse me of such a thing when you come back to my room with the smell of a woman on your stinking body.”
“Did you let him swive you?”
She threw herself at him, and it took both Olivier and Grijio to hold her back.
Froi snarled and clenched his fist.
“Do it. Do it!” she cried until Lirah came between them, grabbing both their hands.
“Enough,” Lirah said calmly, and she held them both to her. Quintana was sobbing, “I don’t understand this, Lirah. I don’t understand,” and Froi wanted to sob the same words.
“Because matters of the heart are not there to be understood, brave girl,” Lirah said as Tippideaux led them away, fussing like a mother hen.
The lads stared toward where the women disappeared and then exchanged looks.
“I must say I found that . . . quite exciting,” Olivier said.
Grijio nodded. “Feel my pulse.”
Later, Froi lay in his cot on the ground, hating her. Hating. First opportunity he got, he wasn’t going to take her through the cave with Olivier. He was going to go on his own and travel back to Lumatere and he was going to ask for a Flatland girl’s hand in marriage and live on a pocket of land for the rest of his life and never leave Lumatere again. No. A River girl. He’d marry a River girl because they were wilder, but still not savage one moment and ice-cold and vicious the next.
He heard a sound at his door and sat up, and he saw her there in the shadows, holding a can
dle and staring down at him.
“I took no woman,” he said, forgetting every vow he had just made never to speak to her again. “Allowed no woman to touch me.”
“The guard said the women were like flies on you all.”
“But I was thinking of another and I couldn’t bear their touch.”
And he saw it in her eyes. Still. The belief that there could be someone other than herself. You, he wanted to shout. You. No one but you. Stupid, stupid girl.
And when she didn’t leave his door, Froi pulled back the blankets and shuffled over to the wall. He held out a hand, and he saw in her expression that she wrestled with the savage inside of her, but Froi’s hand stayed outstretched. She would never trust easily. Never. But he would make it his bond to ensure that one day she would trust him without hesitation.
And then she was lying there beside him.
“My feet were cold in their part of the compound,” she muttered.
“Well, we can’t have that, can we?” he said, warming them against his and tucking the blanket over her body.
“I heard the Avanosh aunt say, ‘She should grow her hair to hide that pointy chin and pointy nose.’”
“If I see that pointy chin and nose hidden, I’ll have to hurt someone.”
“You’re supposed to say I don’t have a pointy chin or pointy nose,” she said, somewhat dryly.
“But you do,” he said. “And you also have pointy eyes,” he added as he kissed both lids, “and a pointy mouth,” he teased, pressing his lips against hers, “and a pointy tongue.” His body covered hers as he held her face in his hands and captured her mouth, the silk warmness of her tongue matching his, stroke by stroke. Then he felt the sharp nip of her teeth as his mouth dared to leave hers, traveling toward her throat, fleetingly tracing the scars from the noose. “And a pointy, pointy heart,” he murmured, feeling the powerful beat that her enemies had tried to crush from the moment she was born. One hand cupped her breast as his other hand lifted the folds of her nightdress and drew her closer.
“Does the queen of Lumatere have all those things?” she asked quietly.
Froi didn’t want to talk about the queen of Lumatere. He didn’t want to talk about anything. His need for Quintana was fierce. It had been a long time since that last night in the palace. He fumbled at the drawstring of his trousers, loosening them, then taking her hand and pressing it against him. Still, she stared with a question in her eyes. Froi knew she wanted more from him and although he ached for her, he fought hard to control his desire. Counted to ten in every language he knew. Counted to ten again. And again. Until his breathing was less ragged and his hand linked with hers. Finally he sighed and placed his arm around her, drawing her close.