"We enter Lumatere with a king," Trevanion acknowledged.
"Sir Topher?" the priest-king said.
Sir Topher stood, looking from Finnikin to the priest-king. "I pray to the goddess ... the goddess complete, that our heir will live to see the new day in Lumatere, but if that is not to be, our kingdom will have a leader and that leader will have a First Man." His eyes rested on Finnikin. "I accept."
There was a cheer in the room as people began to chant Balthazar's name. Finnikin felt as if his breath had been wrenched from his body.
Her blood will be shed for you to be king.
He had not prayed since that day in the Valley of Tranquillity, but as the others celebrated, he began his mantra. Be alive, Balthazar. Live forever, Sir Topher. He looked over to where his father was speaking to one of Lord August's men, Matin. The steward was showing Trevanion something he had retrieved from his pocket, and Trevanion, in a rare show of emotion, drew the man toward him in an embrace.
On shaking legs, Finnikin made his way across the room to where Evanjalin stood, tears in her eyes.
"Resurdus," she whispered to him. Her lips trembled and she held his face between her hands. Suddenly Sir Topher stood between them.
"Evanjalin is tired, Finnikin," he said firmly. "She needs to sleep. Let Lady Abian take her."
Later, the sounds of Lord August making love to his wife echoed through the house. Their cries were earthy and raw, and the
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paper-thin walls ensured that their guests heard each murmur and groan.
"What is it with the nobility?" Sir Topher muttered, putting a pillow over his face. "The queen and king were always at it like rabbits."
Moss groaned. "If they do this every night, I'd rather give myself up to the king's prison."
Froi shuffled where he lay under the window.
"Froi, if I hear one sound coming from you," Trevanion warned.
"Must I remind you that we have the priest-king of Lumatere among us?" Sir Topher said.
The priest-king chuckled. "I'm used to hearing people dying, Sir Topher. Why would I be threatened by the sounds of people living?"
But all Finnikin could think of was the scent of sandalwood soap and a golden face scrubbed clean, and with every thrust he heard, he imagined himself inside her until his body ached for release. And the evil within him that wished for the death of Balthazar, and the realization of the prophecy spoken to him in the forest alongside a doomed princess, rejoiced that if he were to be king, he would make her his queen.
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***
CHaPteR 19
Sometimes Froi of the Exiles thought he dreamed it, what happened at the crossroads. That it seemed like forever, not just a few days, and that the difference between left and right and north and west meant everything and nothing.
It began with tears when they left the home of the duke. His daughter was the worst, sobbing like a baby as she held on to Evanjalin, as if they had known each other forever rather than just two nights. She cried even more when Finnikin gave her the Book of Lumatere to keep safe. They were stupid like that, these Lumaterans. Not that he minded the duke's house. The fireplace always seemed to be working, and there was lots of food. But too much touching and kissing. Sometimes the duke's wife hugged Froi and he would try hard not to growl and shove her away, because when her arms were around him and her chuckles were in his ear, he felt calm. As if his blood wasn't beating hard all the time, urging him to fight.
Then they left and traveled north. To the crossroads. Nobody grumbled, because soon they would reach the valley outside the kingdom of Lumatere, which meant nothing to him really,
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because they still said, "Froi, make yourself useful!" and Evanjalin still made him practice his words with that look on her face that said she was in charge. Sometimes he would dare to look at the captain and his face didn't seem angry or hard like it usually did. It looked the way it did when he was looking at Finnikin, and it always made Froi feel strange in the stomach when he saw the captain look at Finnikin. It made him wonder if anyone had ever looked at him that way.
But things changed when they found one of the exile camps they were searching for and met one of the Guard who had been traveling with Ced. He was waiting for them, and he wasn't smiling like they had smiled when they were with the others in Pietrodore. Froi couldn't hear much about what was going on, but he saw the look on everyone's faces and he heard words like Moss's grave, which was strange because Moss was with them. And then he heard it again and maybe it was mass grave, but they were speaking too fast for him to understand. The captain, he walked away with his hands on the back of his head and he crouched by the river after that, and he kept his hands over his head for a real long time. When he stood up, there weren't tears on his face, because the captain wasn't one of the crybabies, but he looked like he wanted to kill someone, so Froi stayed out of the way and just made himself useful and looked after the priest-king. He could tell the old man wasn't traveling too well, and he was glad when Sir Topher said that they needed to find a safe place for the priest-king. Froi liked the priest-king because he treated him like he was as important as everyone else and when he taught him words in Lumatere he didn't laugh at the way he said them. He just showed him the right way.
And then they moved on, all quietlike, and reached a clearing with at least ten tracks heading in different directions, and Froi remembered looking up from the back of Perri's horse to see the
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sign. He knew this was the crossroads, and Finnikin explained that the border of Lumatere was one day's ride from here. There were so many arrows on that one signpost and so many words and Sir Topher read them out because they were written in Belegonian: east to Charyn/Osterian border; south to Belegonia; west to Sendecane; north to Lumatere, except someone had scratched out Lumatere as if it didn't exist, but Finnikin took the stick out of his pack and wrote the word again. The captain picked one of the arrows to follow that didn't have any words near it and Froi couldn't understand why he would pick an arrow to follow that hardly had a track, but nobody ever questioned the captain.
They traveled for what seemed hours and Froi truly thought it was night because it was so thick with trees and no light crept in. But then he saw the shine in the distance and the forest turned into a meadow, that was the word Sir Topher used, and the meadow had the tallest grass with so many yellow flowers that it hurt Froi's eyes to look at. But he didn't look away because it was a different kind of hurt, one he hadn't felt before and he found himself walking through the long grass and yellow flowers just to see what they felt like against his skin. Behind the meadow, there was a barn with shutters hanging, deadlike, from its room in the roof. Inside it smelled of every animal that had ever been there and it was where they put the priest-king, in the barn, and then the captain spoke, deciding that this was a safe place for them, that nobody would find them here. And that Froi and Evanjalin would stay behind with the priest-king while the others traveled to where Ced was at an inn waiting for them on the western road to Sendecane where there was the grave that belonged to Moss or Mass. And everyone pretended everything was all right.
They did a lot of pretending, these people.
So when Evanjalin didn't complain about being left behind,
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Froi watched Finnikin pretend that he wasn't going to be bothered by the fact that Evanjalin looked tired and pale, and Froi got irritated and wished that someone would tell him to make himself useful so he didn't have to stand around through the good-byes.
Finnikin kept on saying that all they needed was a bit of rest, pretending there was nothing wrong with the priest-king, and Froi tried to tell them that it looked like fever and he had seen enough fever to know, but then Perri told him to make himself useful and fetch water from the stream, so Froi got his wish and was almost saved from watching Finnikin pretend he was leaning in to tell Evanjalin something important and then forgot what it was he had to say. Wh
ich meant that they both stood close to each other, their heads almost touching for a long long while.
And then the others were gone and things got worse.
On the first night they lay in the barn listening to the priest-king talk about Lumatere as if he wanted them to remember everything because he knew he was going to die soon. The priest-king told him about the Song of Lumatere and how he would sing it at the Harvest Moon Festival when everyone in Lumatere would sleep out in the open and they'd dance and sing and laugh and how it was bad luck to sing it outside the kingdom. Froi didn't see anything wrong with the priest-king singing it now because it wasn't as if they weren't used to bad luck. And during the night Froi stayed awake and tried to hold the priest-king down in that barn because his body was shuddering and jumping and Froi was scared he'd crack one of the priest-king's ribs because the priest-king was skinnier than him. And Evanjalin sat and watched with her arms around her body to keep it warm and he knew by her shivers that she would be next. And when she looked at Froi's face she didn't pretend. She just bit her fist to keep herself from
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crying and then the priest-king stopped breathing for a moment and something inside Froi hurt in a way he couldn't explain. "I fink you should use magic."
Evanjalin's lips were dry and flaking and her skin looked a funny gray color and there was sweat all over her forehead that made it shiny. She looked almost dead, but she could still send him a look so evil that it made him flinch.
"I've told you before, Froi. I don't have magic!"
She coughed and it sounded like there was all this vomit in her throat and it made him sick to listen to it and more scared than he had ever been in his life.
"You're cursed," he said. "Him too. Survives the camps for years and years and survive everyfink else between. But it's fever you die from. Two days' ride from homeland."
And she cried. He had seen her shout with rage and had seen tears in her eyes over and over again, but he had never seen her cry properly and it made her look pathetic and helpless as she bent and put her head in her hands, all the while coughing stuff out of her mouth.
"In Lumatere, the novices of Sagrami would mix herbs found in the Forest and bring people back from near death with the fever," she told him.
"Then do somefink."
"I don't know how," she cried. And he didn't know what to say to make her feel right so he walked to the other part of the barn. And began to pretend.
Later, they both sat by the priest-king who grabbed Froi's hand in his, all oldlike, with its veins and scratchy skin.
"I dreamed last night, Froi," he whispered through dried-up lips, "that you were holding the future of Lumatere in your hands."
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"Only saying that 'cause you dying." Froi scowled.
Evanjalin elbowed him to be silent. Then the priest-king closed his eyes, and she dragged Froi away to the corner of the barn where he could smell horse shit and he knew that if the captain or Finnikin or Perri were around they'd tell him to make himself useful and clean it up.
"When people are dying, you don't tell them," she hissed angrily.
"What about the truf Finnikin always goes on about?"
"There are different types of truth, Froi. Let the priest-king tell you whatever he wants. So when he says you'll hold the future of Lumatere in your hands, nod. Agree."
"We all be dead soon."
She looked at him long and hard. Sometimes he thought he hated her the most because it was as if she could read inside his head. The others pretended that deep down he wasn't bad. That he didn't come from evil. But she knew. She saw the badness. She saw it now and she shivered. He didn't know whether it was because of the fever or because she knew what he would do, but there was an understanding in her look.
"Go," she said tiredly. "Save yourself. It's what you want to do. And if you have any heart, find Finnikin and Captain Trevanion and Sir Topher. Walk to the crossroads and wait for someone to come riding by to take you west to the inn on the main road to Sendecane. There's not much else out there, so you will find them. Tell them we have the fever." She reached into her pocket and held out the ring. "To save you the trouble of stealing it from me."
He hated her for knowing he would.
"I have a plan. But if I fail, the priest-king and I will be dead by the time you return. Make sure we are buried. By Finnikin. At an altar made to the goddess complete. With his blood sprinkled
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on the rocks, which will guard me in death. Do you hear me, Froi? It's all I ask of you."
She stumbled back to the priest-king and put her hand on his forehead. "Hold him up," she ordered as he moved behind the priest-king's head.
"A joy," the old man murmured. "To die in the arms of the future of Lumatere."
Froi nodded. "I agree." He looked at Evanjalin to see if he had said it right, but she just whispered to the priest-king that she had a plan and the priest-king would need to stay alive.
Later, he watched from the window as she stumbled into the woods with a dagger in her hand and then he looked back at the priest-king as he slept, the death rattling his breath.
"Fink I would have liked to hear you sing that song," he said, leaning over the old man.
Then he walked away. And as he went through that meadow where the grass grew to his armpits, he felt a strange feeling inside of him that he had never felt before. Like someone had punched him in the stomach and he was all mashed up in there.
He didn't believe in fate and destiny and gods and guides. He didn't believe in people or goodness or love or what was right. But he understood survival, and at the crossroads, where he thought he saw the sign to Belegonia he knew he could return to the towns they had passed, full of rich people careless with their coin purses and their goods. His life would go back to the way it was before he saw Evanjalin in that alley in Sarnak what seemed like a lifetime ago. But no one had ever taught Froi the difference between left and right and south and west, and later when he rode with the toothless man in his two-horse cart and realized he had taken the wrong turn, he tried to convince himself that maybe he would
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have made that decision to find the others along the western road. And when fate had the toothless man stopping at the inn where the captain and Finnikin and Sir Topher and Moss and Perri and three others sat, staring at one another as if they had seen things that made them dead inside, he blurted out the words. "She ask me to come fetch you. To bury them."
Perri stared at him as if he knew the badness that lurked in Froi because Perri was dark himself. But it was Finnikin he tried not to look at, except he heard something come from him that sounded like some wild animal and then Finnikin said her name and as long as Froi was alive he had never heard a word said with such pain and he knew he never would again. The captain told Moss and Sir Topher and the two other guards that they would meet in the valley where their people waited, while Perri and Finnikin and Froi traveled with him to bury the priest-king and Evanjalin. Froi liked the way the captain included him, so he did more pretending. Evanjalin said there were different types of truth, so he showed them the truth of what he could have been rather than what he was. He climbed onto Finnikin's horse and he clung on to him and sometimes he thought Finnikin would tumble off dead because it was as if he had stopped breathing for all that time. He heard Finnikin pray to the goddess that if she spared Evanjalin's life, he would always ask her for guidance. Never doubt her again. Lead Lumatere wherever she believed it had to be led. Finnikin's head was bent low over the horse and he kicked its flanks hard and Froi had never clutched the body of one who felt so much but it reminded him of the time when he had tried to take Evanjalin in the barn. Both times the touch of their bodies had burned him, but this time something entered his bloodstream.
Planted a seed.
***
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And this is the way Froi of the Exiles remembered that moment they entered the golden meadow that hurt his eyes but made him d
ream of all things good. On one side of the path was a stone fence half-covered with overgrown weeds. On the other, olive groves with pomegranate and apple trees mixed. And there in the middle stood the priest-king like one of those ghosts who appear in dreams and Froi saw Evanjalin in the high grass, her face pale but not with death or fever. She wore flowers in her hair and Froi liked the way their stems fit into the bunch of hair beginning to stick out of her head. And when Finnikin grabbed her to him and buried his face in her neck and then bent down and placed his mouth on hers, the others pretended that there was something very interesting happening in the meadow. The priest-king even pointed at the nothing they were pretending to see. But Froi didn't. He just watched the way Finnikin's hands rested on Evanjalin's neck and he rubbed his thumb along her jaw and the way his tongue seemed to disappear inside her mouth as if he needed a part of her to breathe himself. And Froi wondered what Evanjalin was saying against Finnikin's lips when they stopped because whatever the words were it made them start all over again and this time their hunger for each other was so frightening to watch that it made Froi look away.
When Evanjalin almost fell down with weakness, Finnikin picked her up and carried her to the barn and he lay her down, all gentle-like, and then they listened to the soft tone of the priest-king's voice, which always made Froi feel dreamy and warm, and Evanjalin slept. Froi bit into a pomegranate and felt the juice soak his chin as the priest-king told them that one day he would sing a new Song of Lumatere. Her song. Of the one named Evanjalin who walked the sleep and took the child's hand in hers. Knowing she and the child could not hear each other speak, Evanjalin prayed