This time when he tiptoed into the room, he felt an arm come around him instantly, the tip of a blade under his chin.
“See, now you’re irritating me,” he snapped, pushing her away. “Wrong place for the blade! All it will do is make a hole. Did I not tell you that already?”
She refused to look at him. “One more time?” she suggested, her eyes downcast.
“Are you pretending to be meek?” he asked.
She looked up at him, pleased, and nodded. “Did it not work?” she asked in her practical tone.
“No.”
“We were trying to impersonate Aunt Mawfa when she looks at Sir Gargarin. We’ve not seen that look on her face before, so there’s been little time to practice.”
“You practice being Aunt Mawfa, do you?” he asked.
“Oh, all the time. It’s very important for us not to be noticed, and no one notices Aunt Mawfa.”
Back in Froi’s chamber, Gargarin looked up at him when he entered.
“You’re making me dizzy,” he muttered.
“That would be the dagger wound. I’m going to insist that you sleep on the bed tonight. I’ll take the floor.”
The next time Froi crept into the princess’s chamber, she had improved slightly and managed to draw blood.
“Again?” he asked. She went to nod and then shook her head.
She walked to the bed and lay down, as she had the night before, and lifted her shift to the top of her thighs. Froi lay beside her, contemplating how many nights he would have to go through this charade.
“You need to be atop of me,” she instructed.
Froi sighed and shifted himself closer to her.
“You need to remove your trousers.”
Froi thanked her politely for the instruction. The moment his body touched hers, she did as she had the night before. Her hand left her side and reached over his head. Froi twisted away from her to study the shape on the wall. It made him think of Bestiano capturing her hand.
“What is that?” he asked quietly.
“A bird.”
He rolled away from her and lay back, staring at the ceiling.
“You can do what you have to do at the same time,” she said quietly. “It won’t interfere.”
She shivered.
He reached over and smoothed her nightdress down past her thighs and pulled a sheet over their bodies. “Why can’t they put a fireplace in here for you?” he asked. “It will only get colder in the weeks to come.”
“Bestiano says it will teach me to be strong,” was all she said.
“Bestiano needs to be taught a lesson.”
She looked surprised by his words and he had to remind himself that he was Olivier of Sebastabol and not Froi of the Exiles.
“Show me how it’s done,” he said, holding up his hand to the wall, trying to imitate the image she had made.
Quintana made a clicking sound of irritation and reached over to adjust his fingers. “Or else it will look like a rabbit,” she said, and he heard exasperation in her voice.
“Oh, we couldn’t have that.”
He practiced for a moment. “I saw a low cave at the bottom of the gravina with the prettiest picture of a fan bird etched on it,” he murmured, trying to give his bird a tail like that of a fan.
“Do you want me to show you a bull?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Let me think of how to make one myself.”
He looked at his hands in the shadows and thought for a moment, hiding his middle fingers. She reached up and tried to alter them, but he slapped hers away, irritated. He tried another movement. She made a sound of approval. But then a light flickered across the gravina and she leaped out of bed, creeping to the window.
“What is it?” he asked, grabbing his trousers and beginning to dress.
She peered out. “It means Gargarin’s on the balconette.”
From where they stood, Froi couldn’t see Gargarin next door, but he saw the dark shape standing at the godshouse balconette across the gravina, the priestling illuminated by a lantern he held in his hand.
“It’s what the brothers did last night, and you’ve seen them first thing in the morning. One comes out first and then the other. They don’t speak. They haven’t for such a long time, you know.” She opened the balconette door. Gargarin was exactly where she said he’d be.
“Sir Gargarin, is it true that my mother Lirah took a dagger to your chest today?” she asked, as though it was the most natural thing to ask.
A woman knifed Gargarin. Froi was intrigued and impressed.
“True indeed,” Gargarin said.
“Thankfully she missed your heart.”
“Many have said it’s in the wrong place anyway, so it was a blessing for me,” Gargarin said.
“Poor Lirah.” Quintana shook her head with dismay. The way she said the words was very dramatic, as though she was in pain.
“Poor Lirah? What about poor Gargarin?” Froi said. “How did this happen?”
“Gargarin went to see my mother, Lirah, who’s imprisoned just there across the way,” she said, pointing up to the prison tower beside them. “Lirah managed to retrieve a dagger from her guard and plunged it into Gargarin’s chest.”
Quintana’s tone was as matter-of-fact as the one she used to instruct Froi on how to make shadow puppets.
“Never thought you were the type to summon such passion from a woman, Gargarin,” Froi said.
But Gargarin wasn’t listening, and Froi followed his gaze across the gravina.
“Blessed Arjuro!” Quintana called out with a wave, as if greeting a neighbor. “Blessed Arjuro,” she called out again, just in case he hadn’t heard her holler the first time. Blessed Arjuro was either deaf or rude.
She sighed with disappointment. “I call out to him each morning, Sir Gargarin, and he gestures with his finger but won’t say a word.”
“Gestures?”
Quintana imitated what she saw, and Froi laughed.
“That’s not a gesture,” Gargarin said. “That’s just Arjuro.”
“He was imprisoned here when I was a child,” she explained to them both. “When I was six years old, they took him out of the dungeons and chained him to a leg of my father’s table.”
“Where is your father?” Froi asked boldly. “I’ve not seen him at all. An introduction would be most appreciated.”
“Some say my father’s not even in the palace,” she said, nodding at his surprise. “There are assassins everywhere,” she added in a whisper, but her attention was back on the priestling, Arjuro.
“Back then, Arjuro was needed to translate the words from the Book of the Ancients. My father and Bestiano believed it could break the curse of the last borns. I’d come to visit often in the days they allowed me to see my father.” She waved to Arjuro again but was ignored. “I don’t think he remembers me, Sir Gargarin.”
“I can’t imagine him forgetting, Princess,” Gargarin said gently.
Froi stared across the gravina. If Arjuro of Abroi had been chained to a desk in the king’s study, he would know the chamber intimately. He could be the best chance Froi had to get inside. Below where they stood, Froi could see a piece of granite, a natural extension of the stone wall, jutting out from the palace, extending almost halfway across the gravina, as though a hand were reaching out to touch the godshouse wall. As dangerous as it looked, Froi knew it wasn’t impossible to leap from the granite and catch hold of the trellis opposite. But Froi also knew that he would never be able to attempt such a leap in the dark. He would have to wait for the early morning.
Back in the princess’s chamber, Froi lay down beside her and blew out the candle. “Don’t feel much up to anything tonight after all this excitement of Gargarin being knifed by your mother.”
“My mother, Lirah,” she corrected.
“Yes, that’s what I said.”
“Then it’s best you return to your room. We’re not used to waking up with someone in our bed.”
&nbs
p; Froi thought of Bestiano outside. Was he waiting for Froi to leave so he could enter?
“Might just stay here for a while.” Froi knew it would change little. Bestiano would still come to her chamber long after Froi had left the palace.
The princess didn’t argue and he heard her shallow breathing and realized that she was asleep.
He woke to a hand splayed across his face and a quiet little snore. He picked up the hand and placed it back on her side of the bed, only to notice a white jagged line across her shoulder. He reached over to touch it, and she flinched, suddenly awake and moving away.
“What happened there?” he asked, trying to ignore the fact that he was facing the mood of Quintana the ice maiden and not Princess Indignant.
Her stare was hard, her eyes no longer a strange brown, but the color of basalt.
“Dagger,” she said.
He tried not to show his surprise. “It’s a pretty impressive wound. Want to see mine?” He began to pull up his shirt.
She made a face of irritation. “You’re not trying to show me something I don’t want to see, are you?”
He revealed the scar on his chest that he received the year before when one of the traitors attacked. She stared at it and then shrugged and showed him an even more impressive scar on her upper thigh.
“Clumsy girl,” he reproached, reaching out to touch it. She gripped his fingers and twisted them, nearly breaking one.
“Let go or you’ll force me to say ouch,” he said calmly.
“Not clumsy at all,” she said, letting go, and this time she sounded insulted. “Out of the sixteen assassination attempts, only eight managed to leave a scar,” she added. “Although I do swear that my hearing hasn’t been the same since the ninth assassin hollered, ‘Long live Charyn,’ in my ear. You’d think that if someone is going to kill you, they’d be quiet about it.”
He waited for the laugh to tell him that it was all said in jest. But there was none. The ice maiden did not have a sense of humor.
“Sixteen?”
She showed him the remaining scars quickly, practically, and in the order they were received.
“Were you scared?” he asked some time later, after a pathetic attempt to match his scars with hers had failed. Quintana of Charyn’s body was a map of hatred.
This time she stared up at him. “What a question to ask. Of course we were scared, you fool. How can one not be scared facing death?”
Froi saw anguish in her expression.
“It’s not in us to be brave. We’re not the bitch queen of Lumatere whose people worship her for her bravery. But I’ll tell you this, Olivier. If the gods can keep us alive until we birth the curse breaker, then we will die without shame. What is it you called us on Sir Gargarin’s balconette? Useless.”
He was suddenly uncomfortable at the memory of his cruel words, but he had no idea how to apologize for them without being ripped apart by her stare.
Instead, he leaned on his elbow and looked down at her, not quite sure how to speak his next words.
“Does … Bestiano believe that the last-born male will provide the seed?”
She didn’t speak aloud, but he caught a grimace and her lips curled with hatred. “I’m trying. I’m trying,” he thought he heard her mutter. It was as though something or someone was in control inside her.
“Or does he believe any man can break the curse?” Froi persisted. “Last born or not?”
He marveled at her resolve not to look away, and his heart began to batter against his chest because there was something so dark in her stare. Froi would always, always be drawn to darkness.
“Bestiano is a man,” she said, her tone frigid. “And no man we have ever encountered in this palace believes that another can best him.”
He ignored the “we.”
“So Bestiano believes … that perhaps he can sire the firstborn if you are indeed the …” He shrugged, not knowing the word to use.
“Vessel,” she contributed. She studied him.
“We thought you were sent for one purpose,” she said, “but now we realize you were sent for another and, as per usual, the gods refuse to give us warning of their plans in advance. So if you are asking me whether I believe the last will make the first, then yes, I do. Now more than any other time. You and I are the last. It’s written all over you. It would make matters much easier if you did what you had to do.”
“And the other lads?” he asked awkwardly. “Before me.”
“What about them?”
“Were they kind?”
She thought for a moment. “Well, you know them all except for the third, from Nebia, but we don’t talk about him.”
“Why?”
A strange expression crossed her face. “They say he’s in a madhouse, you know.”
“Because he was frightened by the palace?” Froi asked.
She shook her head. “Not the palace,” she said quietly.
Was the insipid last born from Nebia frightened by the princess abomination of Charyn? Froi read it all there in her expression. Not self-pity, but self-loathing. Is that what she thought Froi’s reluctance was about?
“I’m not scared,” he said, refusing to look away.
“Nor was Tariq.” Her expression softened. “He was my betrothed and my first. He was supposed to be the one and only last born to share my bed. His father was my father’s heir if a son was not produced, but then Tariq’s father died suddenly when we were fifteen and the people on his mother’s side smuggled him out of the palace. They suspected someone was trying to poison him.”
She gave him a bitter smile.
“That’s how a whore was born,” she said. “Without Tariq to fulfill the prophecy, you last-born lads of the provinces had to do.”
“I know the lads feel that they let you down,” he said, not knowing any such thing. Rafuel had mentioned that the last borns were acquainted and corresponded.
“Grijio constantly writes about it,” Froi lied, “and Satch goes on and on every time I see him and Tariq —”
“You’ve seen Tariq?” she asked, surprised.
Froi gave himself a mental beating. Of course, you haven’t seen Tariq, you idiot. He’s in hiding.
“I’m only imagining what Tariq thinks through his letters …”
“To Grij?”
He nodded. “Grij passes on everything Tariq writes. You know what he’s like.”
“Very discreet, as I remember,” she said.
“No one’s discreet when it comes to me,” he boasted. “I could charm the truth out of the goddess of secrets.”
“There’s no such thing as the goddess of secrets.”
He prayed to the goddess of fools that it was the end of the conversation.
“You’re the last of four lads,” she said, her eyes piercing into his. “So, yes, Olivier, she does know what they think of her out in the provinces,” she added coldly, repeating his words to Gargarin on the balconette.
“Eavesdropping is rude,” he said.
She stared and he matched it, refusing to look away.
“I’ll make a pledge to you, Princess or Reginita or whoever you choose to be today,” he said. “Let’s call it a … bond. That when you invite me to your bed, for reasons other than a curse or someone else’s demands, then perhaps I will — what is it we Charynites like to call it? — plant the seed.”
“Tariq and Grij and Satch warned me of you,” she said bitterly. “ ‘Everything is a jest to Olivier,’ they said. But they promised me a lad of worth. ‘You can trust him with all your might, Princess,’ they told me.”
She shook her head and Froi saw sadness.
“Oh, to go a day in my life not lied to by the gods or so-called friends.”
When the sun rose, he wasted no time. The moment Gargarin and his brother completed their morning ritual of staring at each other across the gravina, Froi crept out of Quintana’s bed.
He climbed over the balconette and grabbed on to the protruding gr
anite, one hand at a time on the ancient stone, his legs dangling. When he reached the end of the stone, he took a moment to survey the distance between himself and Arjuro of Abroi, who now stood at the balconette of the godshouse, watching. Froi stared into the abyss below and shuddered. Slowly he lifted himself, his mind trying hard to control the shake in his legs until he was standing on the thin piece of granite. Before he could lose his nerve, he leaped across the gravina and gripped the ledge at Arjuro of Abroi’s feet.
The priestling seized him by the scruff of his neck and pulled him over the latticework of the balconette, and Froi lay there for a moment. When he looked up, he saw Gargarin’s face with an unkempt dark beard. It seemed even stranger in contrast to the fair skin both brothers shared.
“I’ve never seen two men with the same face.”
The priestling grabbed Froi’s hair and pushed back his head for a closer look. His breath reeked of ale, and Froi could see it had been some time since he had bathed. But before the other man could hide it, Froi saw the same expression of horror he had witnessed on Gargarin’s face.
“Where did they find you?” Arjuro of Abroi rasped.
“Depends on who you think I am.”
“You’re shit from Abroi.”
“Charming,” Froi muttered. “It’s a pleasure meeting you as well.”
Arjuro’s intense study of Froi was done in silence.
“You know what they say about you over at the palace?” Froi asked slowly, raising himself to his feet, although his heart was still pounding from the leap.
“Couldn’t care less what they say about me over at the palace.”
“You’re a fool to return to the Citavita and dangle yourself in front of the king.”
A sinister smile curled Arjuro’s lips. “I knew something was coming. Didn’t want to miss it for the world.” He gave Froi another appraisal before walking inside.
The room was large and rectangular. On the far side was another window that allowed in an abundance of light. Froi had heard it was called the Hall of Illumination and he could understand why. Through its brilliant light, he could see that the walls were covered with strange writing that did not resemble any lettering known to Froi. The black of the ink was a stark contrast to the white of the wall.