“She’s incorrigible?” Isaboe said.
Vestie giggled. “I don’t know what that means.”
Isaboe looked at her daughter, who loved nothing more than hearing her name. “Aren’t you incorrigible, beloved?”
Jasmina thought about it a moment and nodded emphatically, liking the word.
“What else are you, Jasmina?” Vestie asked, excited.
Jasmina thought another moment and everyone laughed to see her pensive face.
“Pwincess.”
The others laughed again at the joy of hearing her speak, and Vestie clapped with glee.
“Yes. Yes.”
Isaboe froze, the hair on her arms standing tall.
“Your friend in the valley is a princess?”
Vestie put a finger to her lips to silence herself, but nodded, giggling again.
“And does this princess have a name?” Isaboe asked.
Beatriss shook her head at the same time as Vestie’s nod. Beatriss stared at her daughter, surprised.
“You’ve not mentioned a name, Vestie,” she said, worry in her voice. “You said she didn’t have one.”
“It’s a secret.”
“Whose secret?” Beatriss asked, alarmed. “Who said it’s a secret?”
“She did. And so did Tesadora when I told her. Tesadora said that the Charynites have the biggest ears in the whole world and even if I told someone my secret in Lumatere, they’d hear it.”
Isaboe, Abian, and Beatriss exchanged looks.
“All these secrets,” Isaboe tried to jest. “Who said there were any secrets from me in Lumatere, Vestie?”
Isaboe bent down to her.
“You can whisper it to me. The Charynites will never hear. I’ll make sure of that.”
Vestie took the time to think and then leaned forward.
“It’s a strange name, Isaboe. I can hardly say it.”
“I’ll help you, my sweet.”
Vestie placed her lips against Isaboe’s ear.
“Her name is . . . Kintana. Kintana of Charyn.”
Arjuro insisted on escorting Froi for at least part of his journey. Their exit was through the cottage of a draper wed to one of the priests. It lay on the northern outskirts of Sebastabol, and as they crept out of the cellar into the early-morning blustery wind, Froi smelled a difference in the air, one that seemed foreign, yet still strangely familiar.
“The ocean,” Arjuro said. “We’re not even a half day’s walk from it to the east.”
The map Arjuro had drawn for Froi would take him across the center of the kingdom to Charyn’s border with Osteria. Froi knew they would pass Abroi in the morning and Serker later that afternoon. He thought of Finnikin and Lucian and the pride they felt in having come from the Rock and Mountain. Froi felt no such pride in the homes of his ancestors.
“Stop thinking about it,” Arjuro said to Froi, who had looked back over and over again after they passed north of Abroi.
“How do you know what I’m thinking?”
“I just know,” Arjuro said. “Shit to the south and killing fields ahead. You want neither in your life.”
The terrain south of Serker was a slush of melted snow and dirt, and above them was a whirl of filthy clouds that lay low all the day long. A wind whistled an eerie tune, and even the horses responded to the misery, tearing across the country as if they wanted to get as far from this place as possible.
“Do you ever think of traveling through Serker?” he asked Arjuro.
“Nothing we can do,” Arjuro said. “I have no chronicle of their names, so I can’t sing them home. Never have been able to.”
Which meant that Arjuro had tried. Froi pulled up a sleeve and rubbed his arm, shivering at the raised hair on it. Arjuro stared at him.
“The unsettled spirits are dancing on your skin.”
“I thought we only danced for joy,” Froi said.
“Not in Serker, they don’t.”
When it was time to say good-bye, they stood huddled by their mounts, fussing with reins and comforting the horses. Being with Arjuro these weeks had been Froi’s only relief from the torment of Quintana’s absence.
“You died twice in my arms,” Arjuro said quietly.
Froi looked up at him.
“It would have been the last thing I could have endured.” Arjuro said, his eyes filling with tears. “Your death would have been the very last I could have endured.”
Froi thought of those strange moments after the attack outside Paladozza. When he knew he was dying, he had heard the reginita’s voice ordering him away.
“When I was removing those barbs,” Arjuro said, “and your thoughts and words were feverish, you wept and wept from the memories . . . from the horror of your memories in Sarnak.”
Froi saw the rage in Arjuro’s eyes, his clenched fists.
“If I could find the men who did those things to you as a child, I would tear them limb from limb.”
Froi embraced him.
“One day,” Froi said, clearing his voice of emotion, “I’ll introduce you to my queen and my king and my captain; and Lord August and Lady Abian, who have given me a home; and the priest-king and Perri and Tesadora and my friend Lucian; and then you’ll understand that I would never have met them if you hadn’t journeyed to Sarnak all those years ago, Arjuro. And if the gods were to give me a choice between living a better life, having not met them, or a wretched life with the slightest chance of crossing their path, then I’d pick the wretched life over and over again.”
He kissed Arjuro’s brow. Finnikin called it a blessing between two male blood kin. It always had made Froi ache seeing it between Finnikin and Trevanion.
“I’d live it again just to have crossed all of your paths. Keep safe, Arjuro. Keep safe so I can bring your brother home to you.”
Froi felt an acute loneliness the moment Arjuro mounted his horse and rode away. The sleet half blinded him, and the cold brought a new sort of pain to his bones. But he traveled all day and night, not wanting to rest in a place where he couldn’t shelter from the malevolence of nature. This was ancient land, filled with spirits, and apart from his journey to Hamlyn and Arna’s farm, Froi hadn’t been alone since his days in Sarnak. He fought the need to weep, but blamed it on his aches.
On his second day alone, he saw lights from afar and knew he had reached the Charyn River and the road south to the Osterian border. He couldn’t bear another night of sitting in the saddle with only the horse and his fleece for warmth, and the lights promised everything. They delivered little but a rundown inn that was full to the brim. Froi’s heartbeat quickened when he saw the sign to Alonso. How easy it would be to change direction and take the road home to Lumatere. But there was something about De Lancey’s news that made him uneasy. Gargarin was no fool, yet if there was a lesson Froi had come to learn from living with Lord August’s family, it was that the Belegonians could not be trusted.
So he paid a coin for a corner in a crowded stable a mile south of the inn. It was mostly filled with Citavitans who had not found refuge in Jidia and were heading upriver to Alonso. Froi knew how their journey would end. Alonso would turn these people away, forcing them to travel to the Lumateran valley. As he watched these desperate, landless people, he couldn’t fight the crippling fear that Quintana was somewhere out there on her own with no coins to trade, cold to the bone.
“Any news from the Citavita?” Froi asked the couple beside him. He had watched the husband tie their pack around his waist in case someone tried to steal their possessions.
“I was there when the street lords took the palace, and fear for the lives of friends,” Froi continued, eyeing the bundle of food tied up in an apron.
“Street lords are gone,” the woman told him. “Nothing left to take. The gods only know who has control over the palace. Every week, a different story.”
“If Bestiano’s a smart man, he’ll return now,” a bearded man close by said. “Best thing for Charyn.”
“How ca
n you say that?” another called out from his bedroll. “He’s a killer of kings.”
“But strange that the moment the king was killed, there’s news of an heir to be born,” the bearded man continued. “Perhaps the answer all along was to rid ourselves of the king. Bestiano could be the hero of this kingdom.”
Count to ten, Froi. Count to ten.
“They say Bestiano is the father of the future king,” a woman called out.
The bearded man made a sound of approval. “If he’s smart, he’ll take the poor mite out of that mad-bitch Quintana’s hands the moment it’s born.”
Froi flew across the space, landing heavily on the man, pounding his fists wherever he could land them. He felt arms drag him away, their fingers pressing deep into his wounds, and he pulled free.
“You dare talk about the princess in such a way,” he raged. “I challenge you to speak those words when the future king grows to be a man. I dare you to say that about his mother to his face!”
The bearded man cowered away. “Who are you, with your fancy talk?”
“Someone who knew them,” Froi said. “Knew the heir Tariq of Lascow. Knew that he sacrificed his life to keep Quintana of Charyn safe. I defy you to dishonor his memory by claiming Bestiano a better man.”
The words felt like rough parchment in Froi’s mouth, but there was silence all around.
“They breed good men in Lascow,” the husband from the Citavita said. His wife stared at Froi. “Tariq of Lascow would have made a just king if he had lived,” she said.
Later, the wife held out a dry strip of meat to Froi, and he ate it, shamed that whether she had given it to him or not, it would have somehow ended up in his belly. She looked at him closely, confused. “You remind me of someone. I don’t know who,” she said quietly. She reached over and he flinched, but her hand touched his face gently.
When she was asleep, Froi felt her husband’s eyes on him. “She doesn’t usually take to your kind,” the man said.
“My kind?” Froi said coolly. Who wasn’t it safe to be now? A Lumateran assassin? A Serker lad? A defender of the princess?
“A young one,” the man said. “My wife . . . she usually turns away. She bled on the day of weeping. It was close to being born, our child was. She bled it and has spent the last eighteen years turning her eyes away from last borns or the young.”
The man looked down at his wife, but then back at Froi. Then he smiled. “It’s not your face. It’s something else. It’s in your spirit. I feel it as well.”
Froi relaxed for the first time since he left Arjuro, and lay down on the straw. Although he had been taught not to take chances, he had a sense that the couple beside him were not a threat.
“How many inns are on the river border across this stretch heading toward Osteria?” he asked the man softly in the darkness.
“Three. One is closed for the winter, though. You’ll be lucky to get a bed. But I would not head that way, lad.”
“I’ve no intention of returning to the Citavita,” Froi said.
“It’s not the Citavita you need to fear,” the man said. “There’s talk that the Osterians have allowed the Belegonians to camp across the river. If they decide to cross, there’ll be nothing left of us. It’s why we’re heading toward Alonso. Don’t head south, lad. Come north with us.”
Froi sighed. Oh, to head north to Alonso. It would be so easy to follow these people. He was closer to Lumatere than he had been for the past five months, and all night his dreams beckoned him home.
But in the morning the reality hadn’t changed. Quintana was still somewhere out there, and he needed to find Gargarin and Lirah. The three of them had a better chance of finding her if they joined forces.
When Froi walked his horse out of the stable, south to everyone else’s north, he felt the wife stare at him.
“Are you gods’ blessed?” she asked.
He shook his head, not meeting her eyes.
“Do you know what I dreamed last night?”
Froi didn’t want to know. People’s dreams frightened him. But he looked up at her all the same.
“I dreamed of my ma, who died long ago. Her words are still singing in my ears.” The woman’s smile was gentle. “She said, ‘The half spirit of your unborn child lives in that lad.’”
They arrived at the border of Osteria and Charyn five days after setting out from Lumatere, having stopped to meet with their ambassador in the kingdom of Osteria. Finnikin couldn’t help but think of the last time they were at this exact place. Isaboe . . . Evanjalin had been out there somewhere. With Froi. She had walked away from Finnikin because he hadn’t trusted her. Froi had followed. “She and me. We’re the same,” Froi had said. Finnikin could hardly remember the boy Froi had been, except for his ability to let fly his emotions whenever they rose to the surface. Froi as a lad was easy to control. Froi as a man threatened Finnikin. He had restraint and an ability to play with his opponents. He would make a formidable enemy.
“You’ve been quiet these past days,” Trevanion said. “Are you going to tell me what the . . . exchange of words was about?”
“Who said there was an exchange of words?” Finnikin asked with irritation.
“When a woman says ‘I hope you fall under your horse’ and ‘catch your death, then see if I grieve you,’” Perri said, “then there’s been an exchange of words.”
Finnikin glared at him.
“In my humble opinion.”
“It’s no one’s business but ours.”
“Understandable,” Trevanion said. “Although the entire Guard and palace village heard it.”
“Perhaps the south of the Flatlands, as well,” Perri concluded.
Finnikin dismounted, and they led their horses to the river. There was little teasing here. They stayed quiet, remembering the day three and a half years ago when they faced Sefton and the village exiles held by the Charynites. They knew now that Rafuel of Sebastabol had been one of the soldiers, and if Finnikin closed his eyes, he could imagine just where Rafuel had stood. Perhaps if he had looked at the soldiers and not their leader, he’d have seen fear and shame on their faces.
“Let’s go,” Trevanion said quietly.
Gargarin of Abroi had instructed the Belegonians that he would be waiting in an inn five miles north of the Charynite barracks. It was the only ale house for miles upon miles and was frequented by the Charynite soldiers guarding the border, as well as people from a cluster of isolated villages. Finnikin had been advised by the ambassador that the Belegonian army was camped farther upriver on the Osterian side with Osteria’s blessing, a sign of great intimidation and provocation to Charyn. Would the Belegonians be so ready for attack if they had received Gargarin of Abroi’s letter asking for an alliance? Instead, that letter had been intercepted by Celie and passed on to Finnikin. In trapping the man who had planned the slaughter of Isaboe’s family, had Lumatere inadvertently triggered a Belegonian invasion?
Finnikin stayed focused and thought over the instructions given by Gargarin of Abroi. The man would carry a walking stick as a means of identification. He would greet them with the words, “You’re a far way from home.” He would set out a treaty between Charyn and Belegonia that would acknowledge him as the one who would return the true heir to the palace. Finnikin remembered the words in the note. The Lumaterans need not know of our alliance. We’ll talk later about what to do with them. Leave it to me, for I have a plan for Lumatere that will eliminate them as a threat.
Finnikin’s blood chilled just to think of it again.
As they guided their horses through the trees, he found himself back in the past. He thought he heard a whistle, and imagined the sight of her: Evanjalin of the Monts. Her hair cropped short, her arms hacked from her need to bleed so she could walk the sleep. He cursed himself for his weakness, because what he felt for her then paled in comparison to how he felt now. Despite the fury at her speaking another man’s name that carved at his insides, Finnikin had never desired his wife as mu
ch as he did this moment.
Suddenly Trevanion held up a hand and they slowed their horses. Finnikin watched his father dismount. The smell of horse shit was overwhelming. Whoever had stopped at this place had not traveled alone.
“A small army has been here, it seems,” Trevanion said.
“Could the Belegonians have already crossed?” Perri asked.
Trevanion shook his head. “No. The Belegonians are on foot. This group has horses.”
“The barracks are close by,” Finnikin said.
“This was a rest stop for someone traveling a distance.” Trevanion looked up at them. “At least twenty. Pity whoever it is they’re after.”
They tethered the horses and set up camp in a clearing some distance from the inn. Quietly Finnikin changed his clothing. Trevanion and Perri would wait here, concealed, until Finnikin returned with the man, but Finnikin would have to look the part convincingly. The Belegonians wore their clothing more fitted, and bolder in colors.
“Cover up, Finn,” his father said, and Finnikin pulled the cap over his head, covering every strand of his berry-colored hair. If anything would give him away, it would be his coloring. He had to be careful. He had to steady his hand so Gargarin of Abroi would not see it shaking.
“When the time comes, you don’t have —” his father began to say.
“It’s my duty,” Finnikin interrupted. “What these people did to Isaboe’s family will haunt her for the rest of her life.”
He walked the trail to the inn. Charyn afternoons were eaten by an early darkness, lit with a strange moonless hue. Closer, he heard the voices and knew that soon enough he’d reach the isolated inn. This is where he would kill a man tonight. He’d lead Gargarin of Abroi back to this very place and slit his throat. And regardless of everything, he’d do it for her.
There were the usual stares as he walked in. But with the threat of Belegonia invading, the inn was frequented by travelers rather than soldiers. So the stares were not for long. And then Finnikin saw a man with a walking stick enter alongside a woman of great beauty. Every man in the room stared.