Finnikin raised himself and saw the faint glow of hundreds of pale bodies surrounding them.
“They guard you until your body has rid itself of the evil spirits you consumed in the river.”
“So the evil didn’t come from the arrow in my side?” he asked dryly.
“Your wound is superficial. The infection, however, would have killed you within a day.”
She wiped his brow, and he found himself fighting the urge to slip back into sleep. “Tell me about the slave girl,” he said drowsily.
Evanjalin was silent, and for a moment he thought she was not going to repond.
“When I was ten,” she said finally, “I was separated from my people and spent more than a year shackled to her under the floorboards of a house. We were the slaves of a rich merchant who bought and sold people as if they were grain or trinkets. By day we worked in the mines, and at night we were returned to him. But she kept me safe. ‘Little sister of the light earth,’ she called me. It was as if goddess had sent her to protect me. At night she taught me her language and I taught her mine. Her skin was strangely pale, like these people, and so were her eyes. It’s why they are fascinated by the red-gold of your hair, Finnikin.
“She told me about many of the Yut traditions. That when one died away from Yutlind Sud, the person’s name was to be taken back to the kingdom by the last person to hear the deceased’s voice. To be shouted out for the ghosts to capture in their mouths and blow back into the land. Their spirit would never truly rest until that happened. We knew we would never see our homes again, so the Yut girl decided that if we could not plan for life, we would plan for death.”
In the silence he heard her breath catch.
“One day Majorontai placed a flower in my hand. It was so rare to see something of beauty in that place that it brought a tear to my eye. But it was a highly poisonous plant, procured by one of the household guards in exchange for things she would not discuss with me. ‘Tonight we see our kingdoms, little sister,’ she said. ‘Promise me you will put it to use this night, for I cannot leave you behind in such a place. Promise.’ And so I did.”
“And last night you returned her name to her kingdom for the ghosts to capture?” he asked.
She nodded, and they fell silent for a while.
“I’m relieved that you didn’t honor your promise to take the poison,” he said quietly, “but did you ever feel guilty?”
“I have no guilt to reckon with,” she said, and he could hear the steel in her voice. “I honored my promise. Oh, I made sure the poison was taken, Finnikin. By someone who deserved it.”
When Trevanion shook Finnikin awake, it was morning and the spirit warriors were gone, all except one.
“When did they go?” he croaked, holding a hand to his eyes to block out the blinding sunlight.
“Two days ago.”
“Two days? I slept for two days?”
“And you look no better for it,” Trevanion said. “But we need to move on.”
Finnikin stumbled to his feet, but the quick movement caused a shooting pain through his side and then Evanjalin was there holding out a hand to him. Although he felt weak, he ignored the gesture, watching as her hand dropped to her side.
“It’s best you eat something, Finnikin,” Sir Topher said, filling Froi’s pack with berries and salted fish.
Finnikin caught the spirit warrior staring at him. “Are we his prisoners?” he said.
“You’ll have to ask Evanjalin.”
But he could not look at her. In the harsh light of day he had seen the strain on her face and the way exhaustion had bruised her eyes. All from risking her life for him.
“The spirit warrior stays with us as far as the first sentinel beyond the grasslands,” she said quietly. “As our guide.” She walked over to where Froi was lazing against a tree, eating berries from one of the packs at his feet.
Trevanion handed Finnikin a bowl of cold stew, and he wolfed it down hungrily, watching as his father gathered up his pack. “We are three days’ walk from the first rock village. The guide will take us through the grasslands rather than up the river. Too many rebel tribes to contend with otherwise.”
Three days’ walk from Trevanion’s men. Finnikin wondered how he would feel if he were only days away from seeing Balthazar or Lucian. Most times he couldn’t remember what his friends looked like, but he heard their voices now more than ever. Snatches of their conversations haunted his sleep.
He tried to take his pack from his father, who refused to hand it over. “I can carry it,” Finnikin argued.
Trevanion sighed. “She was right about the stubbornness of one whose blood is a mix from the River and the Rock.”
Finnikin glanced over to where Evanjalin was reprimanding Froi by the tree. “No Mont has the right to accuse anyone of bullheadedness.”
They made their way out of the jungle, sweat causing their clothes to cling to their bodies in the humidity. Finnikin could hear the rasping breath of Sir Topher behind him. Tiny insects mingled with the perspiration pouring down Finnikin’s face as he tried to keep up with their guide, a young man covered in decorations made from human teeth. The spirit warrior had promised them they would reach the Yut leader’s rock village by the next afternoon.
“The leader of Yutlind Sud, you say?” Sir Topher asked, stopping to catch his breath.
“I believe we are being taken to the southern king’s troglodyte fort,” Evanjalin explained, tipping water from her flask into her hands and patting Sir Topher’s face. She had not spoken to Finnikin since his rejection that morning. Each time he looked at her, he could only see her standing in the clearing at the mercy of the spirit warriors. Begging for his life.
“He says there are only four rock villages in Yutlind Sud. All are fighting posts. The captain’s men could be working for the south’s cause,” she continued.
“Excellent idea to involve ourselves in a ten-thousand-year-old war that makes no sense even to those fighting it,” Trevanion muttered.
Their exit from the thick vegetation provided little relief. Beyond the jungle the vast expanse of grassland, which would take them to the center of Yutlind Sud, was empty of any trees or shade. Finnikin remembered little of the journey except for the blinding heat and the fever that came and went and came again, until he feared that whatever infection had crawled inside him would never leave.
Late in the afternoon they stopped at a village of nomads. Finnikin couldn’t help but think how different this tent city was from those built by the Lumateran exiles. Perfectly rounded canvases dyed the colors of the rainbow were scattered across the grassland. Women sat sewing pieces of horsehide together and cast shy glances at their visitors.
Trevanion walked toward the men of the village, who circled the settlement on horseback. Their horses were fine specimens, powerful and beautiful. Trevanion’s admiration was clear, and after a moment, one of the patriarchs issued an order to a younger man, who dismounted and handed Trevanion the reins. The patriarch hit the flanks of his horse, and it took off at great speed, with Trevanion’s mount close behind.
In the evening, they were fed yak milk and maize cake. As they ate, a young girl with a bronzed face and eyes the color of honey cooed at the sunburn appearing on Finnikin’s skin. She touched his hair, running it between her fingers, speaking to him in the guttural language of the southern Yuts.
“What is she saying?” he asked Evanjalin.
“That real men don’t have hair your color,” she said, walking toward Froi. She snatched a cake out of the thief’s hand and gave it back to Sir Topher.
When Trevanion returned, he helped Finnikin to his feet. “They have allowed us the use of one tent, Finn. It’s no use traveling farther if you are still weak and in pain.”
Finnikin did not argue. It was a relief to lie on a woven mat out of the glare of the sun. The tent was tiny, and when Sir Topher and his father entered, they were forced to crouch down beside him.
“Try to get some sleep
,” Trevanion said, checking the cloth around Finnikin’s wound. “We’ll see what we can do for the pain. It’s the fever that weakens you.”
“Evanjalin will know what to do,” Finnikin said in a low voice.
“She is resting, but was kind enough to make up this paste for your aches and pains,” Sir Topher said cheerfully, crouching beside him. “Can you sit up?”
Finnikin found it impossible to rest, with the steady flow of visitors to his tent. If it wasn’t his father or Sir Topher, it was their guide, the spirit warrior, who insisted on speaking to Finnikin in a language he could not understand. Everyone but Evanjalin. The Yut girl came to administer oil to his sunburned skin. Her fingers were gentle and her smile warm.
When Froi entered, Finnikin knew that the thief had only volunteered to bring him food so he could enjoy a reprieve from the sun. “Make yourself useful and bring Evanjalin to me,” Finnikin said firmly.
“Not moving,” Froi muttered.
“Who’s in charge here?” Finnikin asked. “Me or you?”
There was a sneer on the thief’s face as he made himself comfortable. “I fink she is.”
Finnikin dozed and awoke to see Evanjalin kneeling beside him, unwrapping the gauze from around his wound. There was an unbearable stench from the secretion, but she worked quietly. He could feel the warmth of her hand as she pressed the balm into his side, and although it stung, it was the type of pain he felt he could endure for as long as he had to.
But still there was not a word from her.
She spread the oil on his burned skin, but this time did so roughly, unlike the gentle Yut girl. Finnikin tried not to flinch, but inwardly he cursed her. When she went to stand, he gripped her wrist and pulled her back to him.
Her eyes met his for the first time since she had entered the tent, and he saw her fury. “Let go of my arm!”
“Why are you angry?” he asked. “It is not my fault that I’m wounded.”
“I’m angry because you are stupid.”
“Stupid?”
“Do you not understand the word?” she asked, and then repeated it in Sendecanese, Sarnak, Charyn, Osterian, Belegonian, Yut, and Sorelian, with a few dialects thrown in.
Now he was furious. “Be careful who you call stupid. I wasn’t the one who stood out in that clearing and put my life at risk! And by the way, you speak Sendecanese like an amateur. Everyone knows that the c is pronounced with a th sound.”
“Stupid,” she seethed slowly in Sendecanese, “is when you climb the mast of a worthless cog when your father has told you to swim to the bank.” She pulled her arm away. “It’s not heroics we need, Finnikin. It’s courage.”
“Stay,” he insisted.
“Perhaps the Yut girl can keep you company,” she said coldly. “Sir Topher is eager for me to play the game of kings with him tonight, and I do not want to keep him waiting.”
“Sir Topher has always conceded that when it comes to the game of kings, there is no one better than me,” Finnikin boasted.
She stood, her expression haughty. “I suggest you ask him if he feels the same way tomorrow.”
The next day, they continued their travels across the grasslands toward the first of the rock villages. Once or twice Evanjalin checked Finnikin’s wound, and despite her aloofness, he found himself telling her stories of his own rock village. Although she said nothing, she stayed by his side, and a few times he caught her smiling. The Rock people were the most eccentric of Lumatere, and their close proximity to each other meant there were no secrets among them, although inside their homes, they hissed and muttered about their neighbors. When he relayed the story of his great-aunt Celestina’s feud with the pig man over a recipe for pork pie, Evanjalin laughed openly. She, however, told no stories.
“Have you forgotten your childhood in Lumatere?” Finnikin asked quietly when the guide signaled they were close to the fort.
“No,” she said. “I remember every single moment and will until the day I die.”
They entered the village early that evening. The fort had been built high on a rock face in an attempt to protect it from northern invasion. It was linked to four other villages that stretched for twenty miles along the Skuldenore River.
From the foot of the rock, between two village huts, a stone stairway ascended to the fort. They climbed until they reached a retractable bridge that led to the entrance, a large iron gate. As they walked single file along the bridge, Finnikin took in the lookout post above them, where two men stood, their bows trained on the group. Directly in front of him, he could see arrows protruding from rectangular slits in the gate. If they had been the enemy, he knew they would have been shot down before the first arrow was pulled from their quivers.
Their guide spoke, and the iron gate opened. They walked through the entrance and were led up more stairs of stone. Flies, thick and large, buzzed around their heads.
When they were face-to-face with the true king of Yutlind Sud and his son, Jehr, Finnikin was surprised by how ordinary they looked. There was always such worthless pomp and ceremony in the royal courts of other foreign kingdoms. The Belegonians and Osterians were the worst for pageantry. The boy smiled at him, his teeth startlingly white. Finnikin felt a sudden kinship and returned the smile. Jehr beckoned him to follow and Finnikin held out his hand to Evanjalin.
From the lookout post, Finnikin could see a cave at the far end of the rock face on the other side of the valley. Jehr began to speak.
“From that cave a watchman with a horn can hear the other watchman stationed in a lookout farther downstream,” Evanjalin translated. “It’s how they warn each other of danger.”
Jehr pointed to Finnikin’s bow and arrow and then pointed to his own. He grunted something, and Finnikin looked at Evanjalin for an explanation.
“He wants to compete.”
Jehr muttered something else to her, and she rolled her eyes. “Who can cast ten arrows first,” she said. “Remember your wound, Finnikin.”
Finnikin nodded at Jehr, and despite his injury, they spent the rest of the evening competing, almost equal in their speed and skill. It came to an end when their fathers arrived and the king bellowed and knocked their heads together for wasting ammunition.
Finnikin and Jehr continued their rivalry by comparing the scars on their bodies.
“Turn the other way,” Finnikin said to Evanjalin, showing Jehr and Froi the scar on his thigh from his pledge with Balthazar and Lucian.
Evanjalin spent the rest of the evening refusing to translate.
Talk of rebels farther down the river forced them to stay in the rock village for a few nights. Throughout the day, Finnikin watched his father pace like a caged animal, prowling around the parameters of the village as if he were unable to get enough air. Finnikin spent his time with Jehr, Froi, and Evanjalin, perched on a flat wedge of rock jutting out over the river. Jehr taught Froi how to shoot an arrow, and among them all they chose a mark to see who could hit it first.
“I’ll be king one day,” Evanjalin translated for Jehr. “Of Yutlind Sud. I’ll live down in that castle and your king will come to visit.”
Jehr looked at Finnikin and said something to Evanjalin, but she shook her head.
“What did he want to know?” Finnikin asked.
“If you were the heir. He thinks you are and that we’re keeping it from them.”
The boy spoke again, and this time her face turned pink and she looked down and shook her head, again with no explanation.
“What did he say?” Finnikin asked.
“It is not important.”
Finnikin looked at Jehr, who was staring at her, watchful interest in his eyes.
“Did you tell him you belong to our king?” Finnikin snapped.
“I belong to no one!”
The anger simmered between them as Jehr glanced from one to the other.
“Ahh,” the boy said, nodding as if he had worked something out.
Evanjalin yelled a few words to the boy’s father
, who was leaning over the parapet nearby. Jehr groaned and failed to duck as the king grabbed both his head and Finnikin’s and knocked them together. Jehr muttered something to Finnikin, and, whatever it was, Finnikin glared at Evanjalin and agreed wholeheartedly.
“Teach me their language,” he asked later as they lay in the dark cave alongside the others except Trevanion, who slept outside on the rock face. Finnikin could smell the mixture of cow dung and dirt that covered the ground near their heads.
She started with a few simple words and phrases, and he repeated them. Sometimes she laughed at his pronunciation and he made sure he did not make the same mistake again.
“How come you’re so smart?” he asked quietly.
“Because I had to be,” she said. Sir Topher began to snore in harmony with Froi. Finnikin feigned his own exaggerated snore, and she shook with laugher against him.
“Jehr has never been off this rock,” she said after a long moment of silence. “They won’t allow it. They need to keep him safe.”
“It’s not a way to live,” Finnikin murmured. “Should we be worried that our heir hasn’t seen enough of the world? That Balthazar’s locked up for protection somewhere?”
She stared at him gravely. “Have you ever wondered . . . if he’ll survive?”
“Balthazar? Being king?”
“No. Actually entering Lumatere.”
He was stunned. “Why would you say such a thing when you’ve always been so certain?”
“We do not know what will happen in the Valley of Tranquillity. There’s never been a promise that the heir will survive. Just that he is needed at the main gate to break the curse.”
Finnikin swallowed hard. He had just gotten used to the hope of Balthazar being alive. She had given him that hope.
“What are you thinking?” she asked quietly.
“I was envious of him as a child, you know.”
“Balthazar?”
“Every day he would go off with Sir Topher to learn the languages of the land and be instructed on the politics of the surrounding kingdoms. I used to spend afternoons having to play with the youngest princess. Balthazar learned the secrets of our royal courts, and I learned the names of each of Isaboe’s dolls.”