Finnikin of the Rock

  "You fight well. Like the Yuts."

  "We lived in the grasslands for a year when I was fourteen."

  "And you needed to fight?"

  "They mocked my accent. And of course you can't have

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  hair my color and not learn how to fight in any kingdom."

  "Your mother had that hair. Would take my breath away every time I saw her."

  Finnikin was surprised to hear Trevanion speak of a memory so painful. He wondered about a man having lost not just one but two women in his life. Both having died giving birth to his children.

  "You'd be best to tie a kerchief around your head and keep your hair hidden. It draws attention."

  Finnikin's hair had not been cut for months and was beginning to snag and knot in wild tangles around his shoulders.

  Later, as they lay in the dark, he could feel his father's eyes on him and he wondered if he was just as much a stranger to his father as Trevanion was to him.

  "So are your new friends all in?" Trevanion asked dryly.

  "They seem to be. But I can't promise they won't snap our necks the moment they're free."

  "Tell them this. You will pick a fight with me to bring the guards as close as possible. If we are lucky, there will be five, like most days. Then I go for the guard with the keys, and at the same time you take on the second guard. The first few moments are crucial, so we need to be quick. Two swords, five seconds. The Yut at the end uses his hand chains--grabs hold of his guard's sword and makes himself useful. Do not trust the Charynite or the Sarnak with the keys or a sword. If worse comes to worst, use them as a shield."

  "The Charynite and the Sarnak? Human shields?"

  "They would do the same to us in the blink of an eye."

  "But you never use your own side as human shields."

  "This won't be a war, Finnikin," his father said coldly. "It will be an execution."

  ***

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  Sir Topher woke with a start. A muffled sound came from the corner of the loft. He listened for a moment, and when he was satisfied it was only Evanjalin tossing restlessly in her sleep, he closed his eyes with the same heaviness of heart he had felt these past four nights. Until he heard a scream, hoarse, as if the girl was fighting for air. He twisted out of his bedroll, and in the half dark he saw the thief from Sarnak astride the novice as she struggled under his weight. Stumbling toward them, he heard the sickening sound of a blow, but before a second could land, he had the thief by the neck and hurled him across the loft.

  "Sweet goddess," he muttered when he saw the girl's face.

  Clutching what was left of her shift, she gasped for breath as he placed a blanket around her shoulders. When he made an attempt to hold her, she crawled away, shuddering against the timber beams of their shelter.

  He heard a noise behind him and turned to where the thief was, on his feet, pulling up his trousers, a look of hatred in his eyes.

  "What are you?"

  "I just wanted a poke," the thief spat.

  Sir Topher pushed the thief hard, and the boy staggered again. It had been his decision to have the thief untied these past two nights, and for that he would not forgive himself.

  He grabbed the thief and tied him tightly with the ropes attached to the beams, catching a blow to his temple that almost sent him reeling. When he returned to the girl, he crouched at her feet and slowly reached over to lift her chin, startling her. She pressed herself farther into the wall, covering her head with shaking hands. He looked from one corner of the loft to the other. The thief was hurling abuse, spitting with fury and tugging madly at his ropes. Here was Lumatere's future, Sir Topher thought despairingly. Two wild animals with nothing but rage and hate.

  "Did he...He could not bring himself to say the words,

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  and after a moment she shook her head and looked up, her face stained with tears.

  "My shift is torn," she whispered. "I cannot wear it."

  Across her cheek was a purple bruise where the thief's fist had connected, and her lips were swollen and bleeding.

  "He knows no other way but ugliness," Sir Topher said quietly. "He was taught no other lessons but those of force. His teachers have been scum who live by their own rules. No one has ever taught him otherwise."

  "Am I to forgive him?" she said, her voice shaking with anger.

  "No," he said sadly. "Pity him. Or give him new rules. Or put him down like a wild animal before he becomes a monster who destroys everything he encounters."

  When he went to move away, she grabbed his sleeve.

  "I think they are all dead."

  A chill went through him. "Finnikin?"

  "No. All the young girls," she said in a small broken voice. "Inside Lumatere."

  "What are you saying, Evanjalin?"

  "Tonight I walked through the sleep of one who mourned the death of a neighbor's daughter, cursing an ailment that seems to be taking the young girls of his village these past five years. I remember another sleep six months back when a young tanner grieved for a girl who could have one day been his sweetheart."

  "You are not yourself, and your sleep was troubled."

  She shook her head. "No, Sir Topher. We need to return to Lumatere. Our lifeblood is dying, and we need to set them free."

  The next day, they traveled on foot to the closest village, hoping to secure a second horse. They took the thief from Sarnak with them, his hands bound by a rope attached to Sir Topher's waist. The

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  moment they stepped into the crowded marketplace, Sir Topher heard the novice gasp in anger and then she was pointing to where their horse stood among four others. "Are you sure?" he asked.

  "Of course, I'm sure. They must have come across it in the ravine where we left it for Finnikin and the captain."

  "Evanjalin, they are the slave traders," Sir Topher warned as she hurried toward them.

  But Evanjalin could not be stopped, and Sir Topher followed, dragging the thief with him.

  "That's our horse!" she shouted to one of the men. When he ignored her, she poked him and repeated, "That's our horse."

  "Do you have papers?" he asked pleasantly.

  "We need that horse," she said, her voice shaking with emotion.

  "Then you may have it," the man said, twisting his lips into a sneer. "For ten pieces of silver."

  Evanjalin swung around to stare at Sir Topher, gripping her head in anguish. They both knew that without the horse, Finnikin and Trevanion would be caught as quickly as they escaped.

  "We have five pieces," Sir Topher said.

  "Then I would suggest you find yourself a peddler and buy this girl a pretty dress," he said, looking down at Evanjalin, who was dressed in Finnikin's trousers and jerkin.

  Then the man's expression changed. He stepped closer to Evanjalin and grabbed her face. "She would make a fair exchange. Even with the bruises. The traders of Sorel have a great need for sturdy young things."

  "She's not for sale," Sir Topher said quickly.

  Evanjalin shook free, a shudder passing through her body. She pushed the thief from Sarnak in front of the trader. "But how much would you give us for him?" she asked.

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  ***

  With each day of his imprisonment, Finnikin's frustration grew. Fearing that their work outside the mines would come to an end and all hope would be lost, he challenged his father constantly. But it rained for days, and Trevanion argued that to escape in such conditions would hinder them the moment they were free.

  "Why not now?" Finnikin whispered to his father on their first day without rain for a week. "Today's guards are a lazy lot."

  "Keep silent and do not question me," Trevanion said sharply.

  So yet another day passed, and that night in their cell when Trevanion transferred his rations to Finnikin's bowl, Finnikin felt his rage and frustration boil over.

  "Do not treat me like a child to be fed and kept alive," he hissed, shoving the food back into Trevanion'
s bowl.

  "Then do not act like one. Eat!" Trevanion ordered. "We will have only one attempt at this, Finnikin. If it fails, you will grow old alongside me in this cell, and at this moment I have two desires. One is to see my son free, and the other is to choke the life out of the witch who put him here. But we are at the mercy of patience, luck, and timing, and today is not the day for all three."

  "And what if you are wrong?" The moment the words escaped Finnikin's mouth, he regretted them.

  "On the third day of the first week of each month," Trevanion continued as if Finnikin had not spoken, "the Sorelian palace guards make their journey to the mine. If we had escaped, they would have passed us on the road to land's end."

  Finnikin could not meet Trevanion's eyes. "I will never question you again, sir."

  When he looked up, he saw the slightest twitch play on his father's lips.

  "I'm sure you will," Trevanion said. "I'm counting on it."

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  ***

  The more time Finnikin spent with his father, the more he became accustomed to the long periods of silence between them. Sometimes they lasted for hours, and then he would hear Trevanion's voice deep in the night.

  "I will ask you this once and then I never want it spoken of again," his father said quietly at one such time.

  Finnikin knew what his father was going to ask and waited for the question. When it didn't come, Finnikin turned to face him. "It was a girl child. Tiny, they said, no bigger than my palm. Seranonna delivered the child and went to the stake with your child's blood on her hands, mingled with Isaboe's. They said it was a blessing that Lady Beatriss and the babe died together."

  But Finnikin did not speak about the post where they had tied up the midwife and the healer and the young girl with smiling eyes who had once given him a tonic. Nor did he say that he would never forget their deaths for as long as he lived. The smell of burning flesh, the screams of agony that seemed to go on forever. Then the silence. He could not tell his father the truth about that day. How in the village square at the age of nine he had his first kill. He had used a dagger, its point heavy for a quick, clean, long-distance lunge. The type of dagger that would fly better, sink deeper. Kill with precision.

  By the time Sir Topher and Evanjalin returned the horse to the ravine, it was late in the day. They continued down the path to the ruined cottage, where Evanjalin immediately took up her post at the gate, her body slumping with exhaustion. Nothing Sir Topher said could convince her to move. Sometimes her faith disarmed him and he truly believed that Finnikin and his father would come walking down the path toward them. Other times, he would lose his temper with her.

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  "The captain of the King's Guard was the mightiest warrior in our kingdom," he told her sharply when she would not return to the loft for sleep that night. "If he could not escape from the mines of Sorel, what makes you think he will be able to set both of them free?"

  "Because the mightiest warrior of our kingdom has been missing one major incentive to escape, sir. Necessity," she said firmly. "It is a powerful motivator, and no one in this land will be more desperate than Trevanion to have his son free. But most important, he has a weapon now, more powerful than these," she said, clenching her fists. "A sharp mind, full of knowledge and skill. Do not underestimate the value of what Finnikin has learned from you, Sir Topher. He is not merely the son of the captain of the King's Guard. He is the ward of the king's First Man, who many say is the smartest man in Lumatere."

  That night, Sir Topher prayed to his goddess for a sign, but in the morning there was still no Finnikin and Trevanion. But there was the novice Evanjalin. Waiting at the broken gate in the same place Sir Topher had left her the night before.

  And this time when he reached her side, he stayed and waited.

  In the middle of the second week, they took their chance. The sun was high overhead when Trevanion gave the signal.

  "Why now?" Finnikin asked. "They'll have the daylight to track us down. Should we not wait until later?"

  "We won't be leaving anyone behind to search for us," Trevanion said in a low voice. "And by the time the party fails to return at the end of the day, we will hopefully be on horseback."

  Finnikin threw the first punch, taking Trevanion by surprise.

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  "You enjoyed doing that, didn't you?" Trevanion muttered from the ground, rubbing his jaw as the rest of the men chained to them joined the tussle. "Squeamish?" he asked Finnikin as the guards approached.

  "No. Why?" Finnikin asked.

  The first guard was dead before he hit the ground. Trevanion grabbed the guard's sword and threw it to Finnikin before tossing the keys over the heads of the others to the Yut. The Yut was vicious in his attack, and the guard standing closest to him did not stand a chance. Finnikin understood why they were considered the savages of the land.

  Finnikin felt weighed down fighting with one hand while chained, but thankfully the guards were not soldiers and knew little of swordplay. He watched Trevanion work the sword in his hand as if it had been a part of his body all his life. Trevanion's speed and endurance had always put him a class above everyone else, and ten years in prison had not changed that.

  "Lead with the point of your sword, Finn," his father shouted above the clashing of swords and the bellows and grunts. "And you bend your elbow at an awkward angle."

  "Because it's half-broken," Finnikin shouted back, irritated, ducking as the blade of the guard's sword swung across his head.

  "You're throwing your whole body in," Trevanion said critically as he plunged the sword into the third guard's gut. "Stop watching me!" Finnikin yelled. "You're fighting like a Charynite!"

  Finnikin hissed in reaction to the insult. Charynites fought with no skill and pure adrenaline, and Trevanion had always been scathing about their methods when he taught Finnikin as a child. Finnikin thrust the sword to the hilt into his guard,

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  muttering furiously. It wasn't his fault that his education in swordsmanship had been conducted in at least five different royal courts.

  "Why aren't these chains unlocked?" Trevanion shouted, pummeling the last guard in the head.

  "Yut!" Finnikin yelled, looking over to the man whose chains were wrapped around a guard's head. "Dead is when their heads are half off and their eyes are wide open, so let go, you halfwit. He's dead!"

  The Yut let go of the mangled body and unlocked the leg shackles of the six men before leaping over the dead guards and disappearing beyond the quarry. One by one the others followed him. There would be no bond among the prisoners, and Finnikin wondered how they would fare without horses or language, but the moment his father was free, the fate of the foreigners was swiftly forgotten.

  "Take the chain," Trevanion instructed as he dislodged a pickax from the ground.

  "Won't swords be enough?" Finnikin protested.

  "Not for what we want to do."

  Finnikin stared at the bodies of the guards that littered the road. Hardly recognizable. Despite everything he'd witnessed, he felt sick to know that so much damage could be done with swords and a chain.

  "Let's go."

  There were two paths open to them, one that led to Bateaux and the other west to the coast. Trevanion took neither, but instead pointed back toward the mine caves. Finnikin bit his tongue to stop himself from asking what in the goddess's name Trevanion was thinking. Surely his father knew that all the caves were connected and they'd end up back in the prison mines.

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  "The road to Bateaux will be the obvious route taken by the others," Trevanion said as they raced toward the caves. "The soldiers and prison guards will search there first."

  "But to go through the mines?"

  "Not through." Trevanion pointed up. "Over. We climb, and then walk over the caves. The shrine to Sagrami is past the last cave before the mountains. We climb back down again into the ravine and there we find the horse."

  The rock face before them looked almo
st impossible to climb. Its surface was smooth, with no jagged ruts to provide footholds. Trevanion took a step back, then grabbed the chain from Finnikin. He secured the pickax to the chain, once, twice, three times, and then swung the pickax over his head and launched it toward the top of the cave with a grunt. It missed, and they both jumped back as it landed with a clunk at their feet. Trevanion tried again, but his throw had less power this time and he yanked the pickax back before it became lodged too low. Finnikin tried, but each time, the pickax would flatten against the rock and come clanking down.

  Suddenly they heard a sound from the direction of the town of Bateaux, one that chilled them. Dogs barking. Someone had raised the alarm.

  "So soon," Finnikin cursed.

  "Probably the brainless Charynite," Trevanion muttered.

  "We can take one of the river caves," Finnikin said. "Our scent will end where the water begins."

  But Trevanion was shaking his head. "I would be leading you to your tomb, Finn. It's too soon after the rains."

  The hounds were closer, their barks growing louder and more ferocious. Trevanion turned toward the sound and then back to Finnikin. There was sorrow and resolution in his eyes.

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  "No. Absolutely not," Finnikin said. "Listen to me--"

  "No!" Finnikin shouted. "If you use yourself as bait, I will follow you and both of us will end up torn to pieces or back in that cesspit."

  "Finn, listen!" Trevanion said, his voice raw. "I prayed to see you one more time. It's all I prayed for. Nothing more. And my prayers were answered. Go east, I'll lead them west."

  "We have a dilemma, then," Finnikin said fiercely. "Because I prayed that you would grow old and hold my children in your arms as you held me. My prayers have not been answered yet, Trevanion. So whose prayer is more worthy? Yours or mine?"