Jory looked back to the Charynite camp again, as if willing Phaedra to walk through the trees.
“So now they’re downstream and Phaedra said that each day she’ll write a message outside a cave wall up high with an ochre stick, the writing big and bold.”
“Write what?” Lucian asked, horrified. But he didn’t need to hear the answer.
Phaedra would write the numbers of the dead.
Despite Jory’s pleas to keep away, Lucian crossed the stream and approached Rafuel, who was standing in a huddle with the rest of the camp dwellers. Lucian grabbed him, shaking him hard.
“How many of them are there?” he asked.
“Six.”
“Take me to her.”
“And what?” Rafuel spat. “Get yourself killed? Have you ever seen plague, Mont? I doubt that, in your cozy Osterian hills. If I take you to her cave, Lumatere will be annihilated within weeks. I was there six years ago. I lived through the last plague we had.”
Rafuel turned to the others. “I say this to you all. The first man or woman who travels past me to that cave downstream will catch an arrow to the heart. The first man or woman who does not report a sign will catch an arrow to the heart.”
“Are you camp leader all of a sudden, Matteo?” Lucian demanded.
Donashe stepped forward. “We stand by Matteo’s threat,” he said.
Rafuel stared at Lucian. “If you cross the stream again, then you’re a bigger fool than I thought you were, Mont.”
Lucian stayed with Jory on the Lumateran side of the stream for days. When he saw Yael coming down the mountain on the third day, he called out to his cousin to stay away. Although he strongly suspected that he and Jory were not in danger, he couldn’t take the chance. The only good news was that none of the cave dwellers had reported symptoms, although there were those who, according to Rafuel, reported anything from a sneeze to an itch.
But on the fourth day, the true horror began. Downstream from where the women had moved, two markings on the outer wall of one of the caves appeared. Two dead. Lucian held his vigil with Jory. Across the stream he saw Harker and Kasabian and the husband of the lazy girl Ginny, waiting. Two days later, Rafuel reported two more markings on the cave walls. On the seventh day, Rafuel traveled to the caves with his body wrapped and every part of him covered but his eyes. Lucian and the world of the valley prayed, dreading the news. And later that afternoon, they all saw the flames from a distance.
“Not good,” Kasabian muttered. “Not good.”
Rafuel returned, and Lucian crossed the stream with Jory, to join Kasabian and Harker. He could see that Rafuel’s face was ashen, his eyes everywhere but on the men who stood before him.
“Matteo?” Kasabian asked. “Speak, Matteo.”
And the moment Rafuel’s eyes met Lucian’s, he knew.
“All of them?” Harker asked, his voice broken. Rafuel nodded. He looked around to where a crowd was gathering.
“But not Phaedra?” Lucian said.
“All of them, Mont.”
Lucian shook his head, not wanting to believe.
“I want to see her,” he said, pushing past Rafuel.
“You can’t. The corpse of a plague victim carries disease. I had to burn them.”
Jory grabbed Lucian, trying to drag him back.
“Mont, don’t risk our lives,” Donashe ordered.
The cries of fear and grief stopped Lucian.
“You had no right to do that,” he accused Rafuel. “She was my wife. You had no right.”
“I had every right in the world, Mont,” Rafuel shouted. “What were you going to do? Bury her in the ground. We don’t honor our dead in such a way.”
“She was my wife!”
“She didn’t belong to you anymore,” Rafuel said. “She didn’t belong to her father. She belonged to this valley, and I had every right in the world. These people are frightened. They’ve lost Phaedra, and they believe your queen will exile us for fear of spreading the plague.”
“I want to see my wife,” Harker said. “I want to see my daughter! Take me to them!”
Rafuel went to walk away. “You know that’s not possible.”
Harker leaped on Rafuel, beating him with a rage beyond anything Lucian had seen among these people. It took four men to drag him from Rafuel and they tied his hands and legs. “You had no right to take them from me,” Harker moaned. “No right. I want to see my Florenza. I want to see my Jorja.”
In the mountains when Lucian and Jory returned, the Monts were waiting for them. Yael and his wife were there, overjoyed to see their son alive and well.
“Where’s Phaedra?” Tesadora asked, and Lucian saw tears in the eyes of a woman he had believed would weep for no one.
“Lucian!” Japhra and Constance and the novices grabbed at the fleece of his coat as he walked toward his cottage. “Where is she, Lucian?”
He continued walking, leaving behind their cries.
Later, Yata and Tesadora came with supper and they ate it quietly.
“Foolish girl,” Tesadora said. “Foolish girl.”
Foolish man, Lucian thought, who took a year to realize he loved his wife and never said the words to her.
“Tomorrow you go to Alonso,” Yata said quietly. “Her father needs to know.”
As Lucian set off the next day, Jory and Yael were waiting for him outside Pitts’s cottage.
“We thought we’d come with you, Lucian. To keep you company, cousin,” Jory said, and Lucian thought how young he looked. Still a boy.
They traveled all day on horseback in silence. As they passed the caves where Phaedra died, he saw the four bold red lines marking the four out of six deaths. He wondered who died last with her. He hoped it was Cora. They would have been a comfort to each other in the end. He wondered if she had thought of him. If she’d realized that Lucian had grown to love her and that he had planned a bonding ceremony among the Monts unlike the one in Alonso, through which she had wept. He wondered if she imagined that Lotte and the fool Orly would build a shrine for her in his paddock and that Yata had the entrance of her house adorned with the shroud of grieving, refusing to accept visitors. And that Alda had her sons leave a posy of mountain wildflowers on the Charyn side of the stream and that Lucian had slept in her cot with her shawl clutched in his hands, the scent of her consuming his small cottage.
In Alonso they identified themselves at the gates and were escorted to the provincaro’s house, where Lucian met Sol of Alonso. The provincaro would have read the sorrow on their faces. Lucian knew the moment the man understood what they were doing there, but he spoke the words out loud regardless.
Phaedra was dead.
And for the second time in days, he saw the grief of a father for his daughter and he heard the fury spat at him as every man in the room tried to hold Sol of Alonso down.
“You were supposed to protect her! On your mountain! Your father pledged! Your father pledged he’d take care of my Phaedra! He pledged!”
Lucian realized the truth with bitterness. She had lied to the provincaro. Had led him to believe she was still living happily in the Mountains with her Mont husband since their bonding ceremony in Alonso. Did she not say that in her letters home each month? She had lied to all of them. Her father would never have refused to take his daughter back into his home. It had been Lucian’s ignorance that had allowed him to believe that only a Lumateran father would not forsake his daughter.
And as they left the province walls, he heard the wails, the crying from the people grieving their beloved last born.
Phaedra of Alonso is dead.
When they arrived back at the valley, Lucian was numb. He didn’t stop but kept on riding past Kasabian, who was on his hands and knees in the vegetable patch he had lovingly restored with his sister, Cora, after the Mont lads had destroyed it. Before Lucian or Yael could stop him, Jory dismounted and walked to the man and knelt in the earth beside him. Lucian watched his young kinsman reach out and embrace Kasabian, a
nd for the first time since his father’s death, Lucian wept.
In the palace meeting room on the day of his father and Beatriss’s bonding day, Finnikin stood with Isaboe and stared at the object placed before them.
“Just tell me he’s alive, Sir Topher,” Isaboe said. “That’s all I want to hear.”
Sir Topher stared at the ruby ring. “This is all there is to prove he was alive in early autumn. The man who brought it to us claims it was given to him as a trade during the events in the Citavita. He thought we might want it back. For a price.”
“And?” Isaboe asked.
“Perri and Trevanion are interrogating him as we speak.”
“Mercy,” Finnikin muttered. “That’s all we need. My father turning up to his bonding ceremony splattered in blood.”
He stared out the window to where their people were setting up the trestle tables. There would be many absent faces today, especially from the Monts. Lucian’s grief was fierce. The loss of his Charyn wife was felt across the mountain, and even Yata had declined to attend Trevanion and Beatriss’s bonding day out of respect for the days of mourning. Finnikin was torn between his joy for Trevanion and his sadness for his friend. He had noticed during his last visit to the mountains that Lucian’s feelings for the Charynite girl had changed. It was in the way the Mont’s eyes had blazed with pride when Phaedra spoke with such ease to those around her and flashed with jealousy when she spoke about the handsome provincaro of Paladozza.
The death of Lucian’s wife had come at the same time as the arrival of a Charynite through the Osterian border claiming to have a ruby ring belonging to the queen. The moment Finnikin and Isaboe had heard those words, they had suspected the worst.
“Have you heard news from the envoys, Sir Topher?” Finnikin asked. “About events in Charyn?”
“Only Celie. She’s returned for the wedding. The Osterians are saying that the king’s First Adviser has taken control of the kingdom with the Nebian army. The Belegonians are saying that a man named Gargarin of Abroi is holding the queen hostage with Paladozza’s blessing. The Sorellians are saying that a Lumateran nobleman has kidnapped the queen. The Sarnaks are saying that she is in the hands of rebel priests in the Turlan mountains.”
“Is anyone saying the same thing?” Isaboe asked.
“Yes,” Sir Topher said. “Everyone is saying that the princess of Charyn is with child. Bestiano, the former king’s First Adviser, has made contact with the Belegonians asking for their acknowledgment of his right to lead the heir. He claims the queen of Charyn is carrying his babe and that she has been kidnapped by Gargarin of Abroi. He says that the last thing Belegonia and Lumatere want is for Gargarin of Abroi to take control of the palace.”
“As opposed to Bestiano, who was the savage king’s First Adviser for ten years?” Isaboe asked bitterly.
“Yes, but appointed after the events of Lumatere, not before,” Sir Topher said. “And that is where our interest lies. According to Bestiano and the Belegonians, Gargarin of Abroi was in the palace eighteen years ago. He was the king’s brightest adviser.”
Finnikin sat before Sir Topher.
“What is he implying?”
“That Gargarin of Abroi was the mastermind behind the attack on Lumatere. That it was years in the planning.”
“Eighteen years ago?”
“Belegonia believes it to be true. Because what did Charyn need eighteen years ago more than anything else in the land?”
Finnikin and Isaboe exchanged looks.
“Women who could give birth,” Sir Topher said. “Gargarin of Abroi, according to Bestiano, believed the curse lay with the women and not the men. What better way to prove that than to invade Lumatere and take its women?”
“Too ridiculous,” Isaboe said. “And heinous.”
Finnikin shook his head. “Not so ridiculous. There was widespread rape here, Isaboe,” he reminded her quietly. “Despite the fact that it led to no births among us.”
“Thank the goddess for the smallest of favors,” she said.
“And you believe this Gargarin is staying in Paladozza?” Finnikin asked Sir Topher.
“According to the Belegonians, yes.”
Isaboe stood and took Finnikin’s hand. “What say you, my love? That it’s about time we go in and get our lad back?”
He thought for a moment and nodded. “And we set a trap for Gargarin of Abroi.”
They walked out into the main hall, where their people awaited them beyond the courtyard doors.
“We’ll speak of this later,” Isaboe said. “I will not have Beatriss and Trevanion’s day ruined.”
Jasmina burst through the doors dressed for the celebrations and they both knelt down and held out their arms to her.
“We do what needs to be done,” Isaboe said quietly before Jasmina reached them. “We kill Gargarin of Abroi.”
Somewhere in Charyn, Froi woke to see Gargarin sitting beside his bed. Amid all the horror, he felt a sense of joy to see him here. After everything Froi had said to Gargarin and Lirah, his father had come to be with him.
“I’m sorry,” Froi croaked, reaching out to take his hand. “I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry for losing her.”
Gargarin gripped Froi’s hand, a gentle smile on his face.
“We’ll do it your way, Gargarin. All of it. I’ll never doubt you again.”
Froi tried to sit up, but pain shot through almost every part of his body. Gargarin gently laid him back down, and Froi held on to him with a fierceness that spoke of never letting him go.
“Where’s Lirah?” he whispered. “I want to see my mother. I want her forgiveness.”
Gargarin cleared the emotion from his throat.
“You’re in the mountains of Sebastabol, Froi. Someone left you here. Someone who didn’t want you to die, no matter how many of their arrows pierced you.”
Gargarin’s voice was so tender it made Froi weep.
“I don’t know where Lirah is, lad. Nor Gargarin.”
Arjuro. Froi reached out a hand and touched his face. The priestling’s hair was cropped and his beard not so wild and his eyes more lucid than Froi had ever seen.
“You’re in a bad way, beloved ingrate,” his uncle said. “But we are going to put you back together.”
In the Flatlands of Lumatere, Beatriss and Trevanion walked home with Vestie between them. She swung their arms as if she had not a care in the world. Beatriss had never seen her child so happy, but despite it all, she knew that Trevanion would leave soon and she already felt the day’s sadness.
“Are you going to go searching?” she asked quietly, having heard talk that day of Charyn.
“I have to,” he replied. “I sent him, Beatriss, and I won’t rest until he’s returned to us.”
“Who?” Vestie asked. “Are you going somewhere, Trevanion?”
“Father,” he corrected gently.
Beatriss brushed hair out of her daughter’s eyes. “The Guard has lost its . . . dearest pup, Vestie, and they’re very sad without him, so Trevanion will travel soon to bring him home.”
Trevanion lifted Beatriss’s hand to his lips.
“You’re stretching my arm, silly,” Vestie said, giggling.
“We can’t have that,” he said, and lifted her into his arms.
Up ahead, Beatriss could see the family of Makli of the Flatlands approach on a horse and cart. They now had a future together, and although it would be a long while before she would forget Makli’s harsh words, she had come to respect him. But as they rode by, Vestie poked out her tongue at Makli’s boy.
“He’s my father!” she bellowed, pointing to Trevanion.
“Vestie!” Beatriss said firmly, stopping to stare up at her. “I’ll snip at that tongue if I ever see it in such a way again! Trevanion, speak to her.”
Vestie hung her head, shamefaced.
“Vestie,” he said, his voice still gentle.
“Yes, Father.”
“Shout it out louder, my love. S
hout it out louder.”
In the valley between two kingdoms, she sat on the rock face and waited for the day to begin. It was always at this hour that she thought of him and wondered how those they loved were faring. But she knew they had made the right decision. That what they were doing was for the greater good of Charyn, no matter how much heartbreak it brought.
“Do you think it will rain again?” a voice asked from within the cave.
“No,” Phaedra of Alonso said, turning with a smile. “You should all come out. It’s beautiful. I think I see the sun.”
There’s a babe in my belly that whispers the valley, Froi. I follow the whispers and come to the road. And I travel for days on the back of a cart with the lice and the filth, and the swill of the swine.
But once in the valley, those pigs of the city sit high on their horses, not with a noose, but with swords at their sides. And still so forsaken, I rage at the gods, and I turn from the faces of those who take charge.
I keep to myself, but I find they are watching. I clench both my fists; I’ll kill in a beat. Your words pound my brain, Froi; if they dare try to touch me, a knife to the side and a slit ear to ear.
Those in my cave, they grab and they drag me. They want me to bathe, but they’ll soon know the truth. And the fear on their faces speaks loud of their awe, and I capture the crying and tell them what’s true — that the men with the swords, who once held the noose, will cut out my king and leave me to die.