Froi could hardly breathe.
“Of course we know now that the oracle and the priestlings were not attacked by the Serkers.” Gargarin shook his head with bitterness. “To this day, I’ll never truly know what I would have done if fate had not stepped in.”
He looked at Lirah. “You were my fate, Lirah. First, because of your screams. I thought you were birthing your child, but now I know you were waking up with the oracle’s daughter in your arms instead of the son you had seen. Your pain penetrated those walls, and while the king and his guards left the chamber, I found myself alone with the child I was ordered to kill. Not a minute had passed when I heard a sound from the bed where the dead oracle lay beneath the sheet. Dead from childbirth. Unbeknownst to the king and his men, between her thighs lay a second girl whose first breath had been her last.”
Froi saw a flash of pain cross his face.
“There were three babes born in the palace that night. Lirah’s son and the oracle’s twin daughters.”
Quintana rocked back and forth. Lirah was too stunned to offer her comfort, and Arjuro looked so ill that Froi thought he’d throw up at any moment.
“And as fate would have it again, strange lonely Rafuel came searching for one lost kitten to add to the litter in his basket. So I took my chance and placed the living child among them. Into the hands of an eight-year-old boy who had never known love except for those damned cats. Then I carried the oracle and her dead child to the balconette and I gave the child a name. To my shame, I had no idea what the oracle’s name was. All I prayed for was that you managed to call out her name to the gods, Arjuro, from where they had shackled you on the opposite balconette to watch. So that her spirit could find her child at the lake of the half dead and take them both home.”
Arjuro shook his head. “Oracles didn’t have names. To call an oracle by her name would make her human, and we were never to see her as human.”
So the oracle queen and her dead child were to be separated for eternity.
Quintana’s face was transformed into an expression of sadness beyond belief. She shook her head. Froi couldn’t speak, could hardly breathe from knowing how close he had come to death the day he was born.
“What did you name her?” Lirah asked. “The dead babe?”
“Regina,” Gargarin said quietly. “The babe was the daughter of the oracle queen, so I felt she deserved the name of royalty.”
Froi heard Arjuro’s sharp intake of breath. The priestling’s eyes were fixed on Quintana with a mixture of horror and intrigue.
“You were born first,” Arjuro said quietly.
“My son was born first,” Lirah said. Froi noticed that both Lirah and Gargarin spoke about their son as though it were someone other than himself.
“But not to the palace,” Arjuro continued. “He may have been born in the palace, but not to it. The only children fathered by the king belonged to the oracle, the woman he violated the night he and his men slaughtered the priestlings and blamed it on the Serkers.”
Arjuro’s eyes were still fastened on Quintana.
“Two children would be born to the palace,” he said. “And the one born first would end his reign.”
Froi recognized the soothsayer’s words. The king’s dream.
“How did you kill him?” Arjuro asked Quintana quietly.
Froi saw Gargarin’s and Lirah’s confusion and felt his own. But Quintana seemed to know exactly what the priestling was asking, for she neither argued nor feigned innocence.
“The provincari said that the guard searched you thoroughly,” Arjuro continued.
“Arjuro?” Gargarin barked. “What are you saying?”
They waited and waited. But Arjuro refused to respond.
“The assassin taught us how to kill a man in five seconds,” Quintana said. “And the circumstances demanded that I did.”
“Sagra!” Froi said, stunned.
“Where did you conceal the dagger?” Arjuro asked. He stood and walked to where she sat upright against the wall and crouched before her. “Where?”
She leaned forward whispering, “I don’t want Lirah to hear this, blessed Arjuro.”
“Why not?” he whispered back, fascinated.
“It will upset her. We don’t want to upset Lirah. I believe that the last time Lirah became upset, her Serker blood helped curse the kingdom.”
“Arjuro will tell me anyway, Quintana,” Lirah said.
They waited, Arjuro still before Quintana. She looked past him to Lirah.
“There’s little that can upset me now. You know that,” Lirah prodded, but Froi could see she was lying. Lirah seemed frightened of what she was about to hear.
“We never had a dagger,” Quintana said. “But we knew where Bestiano kept his hidden.”
“How?” Gargarin asked.
“Because when he came into my room those nights he would always remove the dagger before … but he would leave the scabbard. He never took it off. Never.”
There were tears in her eyes. “Never. And it chafed my skin each time and I’d say, ‘Bestiano, it hurts.’ ”
Quintana stared back at the only mother she had ever known, and Froi saw on Lirah’s face a look of fierce anguish. It spoke of heartbreak and guilt and rage, and Lirah shook her head, not wanting to believe, tears spilling down her cheeks. Her consolation for this strange daughter all these years was that the last-born males hadn’t hurt her or taken her by force. But she had never imagined the king’s adviser would believe he could father the first.
“I insisted on the guards searching Bestiano, knowing they wouldn’t. He saw the king most days, so why search him now? But the damage was done because I’d put doubts in the heads of the provincari who were witness to it all.
“And so I walked into my father’s chamber, shut the door, and to Bestiano I did what the assassin told me to do. Render a man useless with a knee between the legs. And then I grabbed his dagger from its scabbard and I walked to my father and I plunged it into his side.”
Froi saw the vicious little teeth clench in victory as she remembered the moment. “ ‘That is for my mother!’ I said, and then I twisted the blade. ‘And that is for Lirah of Serker.’ Then, in the third second, I cut him from ear to ear. ‘And that is for the people of Charyn!’ Only then did I cry bloody murder. ‘Bestiano has killed my father!’ ”
They all stared at her, speechless. Quintana gripped Arjuro’s hand.
“My mother is lost, blessed Arjuro, never to be reunited with her daughters,” she said. “The only place she’ll find us will be in our dreams.”
Arjuro pressed her hand to his lips. If there was one person he had adored in this world apart from his brother and De Lancey, it was the oracle.
“If it’s the last thing I do in this mortal world, Your Highness,” he said, his voice ragged, “I will find her spirit and call her home.”
Quintana leaned forward, her lips close to the priestling’s ear. “If the assassin comes near us or the little king, will you help me cut out his heart, blessed Arjuro?”
Arjuro turned to meet Froi’s eyes. “Yes, I think I’d have to.”
The next day, Froi returned from his surveillance to find Arjuro and Gargarin waiting for him in the outer cave. Today it had been too dangerous to venture close to the stream, and he had to be satisfied with berries as his pickings.
“She believes she’s with child and that you’ve been sent to kill the heir to Charyn,” Gargarin said tiredly.
“Yes, we’ve already established that,” Froi said. “Are you telling me you believe her?”
“I don’t know what to believe, except that the most useless girl in Charyn has managed to do something that most men have failed at, including the both of us. So I’m going to have to be less skeptical about her ramblings in the future.”
Froi couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He turned to Arjuro.
“So now you think she’s the answer to Charyn’s dreams as well?”
Arjuro shrugge
d. “There’s nothing like a bit of patricide and regicide to convince me of someone’s worth.”
“I don’t care what any of you think,” Froi muttered, preparing to crawl into the inner cave, “because the way I see it, when we get out of here, I’m taking her to the cloister of Lagrami in Sendecane. They’ll take care of her there for the rest of her life.”
Gargarin gripped Froi’s arm gently.
“We thought it best if you sleep in a separate place until we work out her state of mind. Lirah says —”
“Lirah?” Froi said bitterly. “Lirah would like me in a separate place? She weeps for her boy all her life, but the moment she’s faced with me as a son, it’s all too disappointing, isn’t it?”
Arjuro made a sound of annoyance.
“That’s not what she said at all,” Gargarin said. “Quintana is not of sound mind at the moment, Froi. Anyone can see that.”
Froi shoved him away and crawled into their cave.
Sitting up against the wall as she had since they arrived, Quintana stared up at him, her eyes swollen from the fatigue of keeping them open.
“Tell her to sleep,” he ordered Lirah.
Lirah stood and walked toward him.
“She claims you will kill her and the child if she dares to sleep,” Lirah said quietly. “It’s why she ran from you both times before.”
“Her delusion about this child will get her killed, Lirah. Speak to her.”
Lirah shook her head. “I pledged to take her somewhere safe. When she came to me that day in the inn and told me you were in Charyn to assassinate her, she was inconsolable. Not just about the carnage in Tariq’s compound, but over fear of what you would do. ‘He’ll kill the little king,’ she cried, ‘and Charyn will be cursed for eternity.’ ”
There was anguish in Lirah’s eyes. “I owe her this and regardless of whether I believe she is imagining this child, I need to be with her.”
“Why is she so certain?” Froi asked.
“She claims the gods wrote it all over you. She is mad beyond reasoning, and we did this to her. I did. The king. You. The whole of Charyn. We created that,” she said, pointing to where Quintana stared from her corner.
Froi pushed past Lirah toward Quintana, but her savage hiss of fury and ragged breaths of fear filled the cave. Froi felt himself being dragged back by Arjuro and Gargarin while Lirah went to Quintana, murmuring words in the mad girl’s ears.
“Tell her to sleep, Lirah,” Froi begged, pulling away from the others.
But the sound of Froi’s voice was Quintana’s undoing and she cried out hoarsely, “Please, Lirah. Please, I’m begging you. Make him leave.”
Lirah turned, and Froi saw it in her eyes. She wanted him gone as well. Shaking free of Arjuro’s arms he walked away and crawled back into the outer cave.
He spent the week playing cat and mouse with Bestiano’s riders, watching them search the larger caves each morning. Some days Froi made sure he left a false trail, which had them whispering with feverish excitement. Most days he returned with food and placed it in the tunnel between the outer and inner cave for the others to eat.
They came to the outer cave often, except for Quintana, but Froi barely spoke.
“We can’t stay here,” Gargarin said a week after Froi had been banished from Quintana’s presence.
Froi practiced some weapon drills, ignoring him.
“Either we find a way out past their camp or give her up to Bestiano’s men,” Arjuro said.
Froi stumbled a moment, his short sword falling from his hand.
“If they believe she is with child, it buys her time,” Arjuro said. “What did you say about buying time? Each moment provides … blah, blah, blah.”
If Froi chose to speak to them, he’d say it was a bad idea. And what would Bestiano and the riders do after they discovered Quintana had been telling lies when her belly failed to swell. But he didn’t choose to speak, and soon they left.
Later, Lirah came to visit.
“Gargarin says you’re sulking,” she said coolly. “And Quintana’s still not sleeping, so perhaps you should return and sit in a corner away from her.”
“I don’t sit in corners, Lirah.”
“This is not helping anyone.”
“Is there food in her belly?” he snapped, pointing a finger to her face. “In all your bellies? If not, get out of my cave!”
With a hand, she shoved him back. “You listen to me, you little Serker savage —”
“Your Serker savage, Lirah,” he mocked viciously, stepping closer. “His.”
She shoved him again and he felt fury in the push. “You were sent to assassinate her, Froi. What do you expect? Regardless of everything, everything,” she spat, “Quintana was placed in my care, and for so long I was the only one she trusted when cowards tried to kill her time and time again. Do you want to know the first time it happened? Have you ever seen a four-year-old child retch over and over again, trying to purge herself of the poison they put in her food, begging me to stop the pain?”
He thought of all those times Quintana tried to eat from his plate and from the plates of those around her.
“I would never have done it,” he argued.
“Why not? It’s part of that wretched bond of yours to those revenge-seeking Lumaterans. It’s the code you live by. Why would I think any different?”
Because you’re my mother, he wanted to shout.
“I stay here,” he said, turning his back to her. “Go back to your cave and don’t bother me again.”
Arjuro accompanied him outside one day, regardless of whether Froi wanted the company or not. The stream was the best source of food, but it was guarded day and night, all the way to the northern wall of the gravina. After a good bout of rain the day before, Froi watched one of the riders collect a bounty of fish and eel, placing them in a sack that writhed with life.
“If you could get that stash, it would last us days,” Arjuro whispered from where they hid in a small ditch behind a cluster of reeds.
They waited for most of the morning, and when the rider was satisfied with his catch, he picked up the sack and walked away, disappearing into the copse of poplar trees that led to the Chary nites’ camp.
“Stay here, and whatever you do, don’t move until I return,” Froi ordered.
He followed the rider, leaping across stepping stones to avoid using the dirt track, which could easily alert the others to him. The Charynite stopped soon after and placed the sack on the ground, standing against a tree to relieve himself. Perri always said that there was an advantage in attacking a man with his pants down. Most men went to protect their private parts before anything else, and if a pursuer was to give chase, it would also take a moment for the victim to pull up his trousers. So Froi came up from behind and knocked the man across the temple with the handle of his short sword before grabbing the sack of writhing fish and eels, and then he bolted.
“He’s here!” he heard the rider bellow. “This way.”
At the stream where Arjuro was hidden, Froi forced the sack into the priestling’s hands.
“Run!” Froi hissed. “I’ll lead them away.”
Without waiting for Arjuro’s response, Froi raced back the way he had come and found himself face-to-face with the first of the riders. He leaped up and gripped the tree limb above, one boot each pounding in both men’s faces. He jumped back onto the ground and took the path that circled the riders’ camp, knowing it would draw them away from Arjuro and their cave.
He reached the wall of the gravina heading north and saw the tunnel through the thick stone that he had traveled through Zabat on their journey to meet Gargarin. It would take him to the road leading him to Alonso and then Lumatere. Home, he thought. Home. And the fury he had felt in the caves toward Quintana and Lirah and Gargarin and Arjuro, and the knowledge that they would be left with a small bounty of food, steered him to take the path home.
Without looking back.
Chapter 26
&
nbsp; Aldron arrived one morning with instructions from the palace. Although Lucian knew he had the full support of his cousin Isaboe, it still shamed him that he could not restore order among his people. There had been a week of hostility on the mountain, and he had begun to wonder if it was best to send Yata down to the palace to keep her safe from the bitter words and simmering unrest.
“If you’re here to guard the prisoner, Aldron, we’ll help you,” Jory said, strutting to where Aldron was dismounting outside Lucian’s cottage. Everyone knew Trevanion and the Guard were keeping an eye on Jory, and he was the envy of most Mont lads his age. Usually he would receive a friendly cuff to his chin from one of the Guard in response to his remarks. Except for today.
“I’m not here to guard the prisoner,” Aldron said coldly. “I’m here to protect him.”
Aldron’s order was to take the Charynite down to the valley and shackle him to a tree on the Lumateran side of the stream. It was a safer option than keeping him up on the mountain.
Later that day, Lucian and Aldron escorted the prisoner through the crowd that had gathered outside. Tension was rife, and under the watchful gaze of most of the Monts, even Aldron looked uneasy. “What’s going on here, Lucian?” he asked quietly.
“The Monts being Monts.”
From where he sat, on a horse tethered to Lucian’s, Rafuel of Sebastabol caught his eye.
“You honestly don’t think they’re going to ride down that mountain and come for me,” he said. Lucian repeated his words to Aldron.
“Tell him I have orders to keep him alive,” Aldron said. “So if my orders are to keep him alive, he stays alive.”
Lucian translated.
“And if his orders are to kill me?” Rafuel asked.
“Rest assured that you’ll be dead before you have time to give it a second thought,” Lucian said.
When they reached the valley, there was no one to be seen on their side of the stream. Lucian climbed up the oak that shaded the camp and saw Tesadora and her girls chatting with Phaedra and Cora in the vegetable plot that the Mont boys had once destroyed. Chatting. Lucian had noticed that ever since Lady Beatriss had sent down the clay cooking pot, his wife and her people had become friendlier to one another, but chatting to Tesadora and the novices was something new, and Lucian was determined to put an end to it.