Froi of the Exiles (57 page)

‘Talk to Japhra, Tesadora,’ he said. ‘Her sharing his bed is madness.’

‘I can’t stop her any more than you can. She was sharing his bed long before now. Even before he took a knife to her throat.’

She secured the shawl around her shoulders, staring out into the darkness. Lucian had underestimated how hard she had taken the death of the Charynites. She’d been quiet these last days, more fragile. He had no idea what to do with a fragile Tesadora. He was even thinking of sending for Perri, but Lucian knew the guard was escorting Lady Celie to Belegonia where she would spend time in the royal court.

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ he persisted. ‘Japhra and Rafuel.’

‘Why should it make sense, Lucian?’ Tesadora argued, irritated.

‘Because Japhra was dragged out of her home and violated by his people.’

‘By one of our people,’ she said fiercely. ‘The impostor King was half-Lumateran. I think we all forget that sometimes.’

‘But why choose a filthy Charynite?’

Tesadora looked over his shoulder and he knew that Phaedra stood there at his cottage door.

‘Good night,’ Tesadora said, walking towards
Yata’s
home.

Inside, Phaedra was preparing her bed.

‘You still speak of us as if we’re animals,’ she said quietly.

‘You were listening to a conversation that had nothing to do with you,’ he said, his voice cool, placing more logs on the fire.

‘I’m one of those filthy Charynites,’ she said. ‘In what way has it nothing to do with me?’

Later they lay in the dark, Lucian in his bed and Phaedra in her cot on the floor. He wanted to speak. Perhaps tell her that of course he didn’t see her as a filthy Charynite.

‘Japhra told me,’ she said quietly as though she had waited half the night to speak. ’That Rafuel is the first person … the first man she’s encountered who doesn’t see her as broken. He sees her as gifted. In Charyn we call the gifted ones gods’ blessed. Lumaterans seem frightened by the gods’ touched, but Rafuel is in awe of her.’

Lucian was beginning to get used to hearing Phaedra’s small observations at night. Whether Lumateran or Charynite, people revealed things to her that they told no other. More than anything, he realised that he liked her voice in the dark. It made him feel less lonely. Only last night he had spoken to her about life in exile, and had found himself recalling memories cast aside since his father’s death.

And then there was cousin Jory who was experiencing a bout of puppy love for Phaedra that irritated Lucian.

‘Off home now, Jory,’ Lucian said for the fourth night in a row when everyone else had left.

‘We’re still talking, Phaedra and I,’ Jory said. ‘Don’t let us keep you up, Lucian.’

‘Go,’ Lucian ordered. ‘Home.’

Jory rolled his eyes. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow, Phaedra,’ he said.

Lucian shut the door behind the lad. ‘If he’s annoying you, tell him so,’ he said gruffly.

‘He’s very sweet,’ she said, standing to push aside the table where her bed was to be laid out. Lucian ushered her away and placed the table against the wall.

‘Without a word from me the other day I heard him make his apologies to Cora and some of the other women about his past behaviour.’ Phaedra laughed. ‘Except he decided to actually use the word for the body part he exposed, which I think horrified the women even more.’

‘What was the word?’ he asked.

She whispered it and he laughed, wincing.

‘The idiot. They’re a bit raw, our lads.’

One night when Perri was in the mountain, Phaedra came home from the valley, flushed with excitement.

‘I overheard a story today,’ she told Lucian and the others. ‘About the events that took place in the Citavita after the King was murdered.’

‘Was this Donashe in the capital then?’ Rafuel asked, his hands clenched. Lucian had noticed that the Charynite spent his day brooding with fury, wanting nothing more than to kill the men who slaughtered his lads.

‘Indeed he was there. They say he was one of the leaders of the street lords who stormed the palace,’ Phaedra said.

‘Who does he answer to?’ Cousin Yael asked. But Lucian could only think of Froi.

‘Have they seen our lad?’ he demanded.

‘And the Princess?’ Rafuel said.

‘Let her finish the story,’ Tesadora snapped at them all, nodding to Phaedra to continue.

‘It’s hard to believe any of them,’ Phaedra said, ‘but those closest to the King were hanged one by one each day in front of the Citavitans. On the last day the Princess Quintana was dragged out to the podium. A noose was placed around her neck and the Princess’s body did indeed swing.’

Tesadora shuddered. After watching her mother burn at the stake, Lucian imagined that any public execution horrified her, regardless of whether it was the enemy or not. Rafuel buried his head in his hands.

‘But listen,’ Phaedra continued, ‘they say a barrage of arrows flew from one of the trees above, maiming the street lords who stood guard. Then a lad charged through the air, capturing Quintana’s body and freeing it from its noose.’

Phaedra stared around at them all, a feverish excitement in her eyes. ‘Both the Princess and her rescuer have not been seen since.’

‘Froi!’
they all spoke at once and then laughed when they realised they had.

‘But why would Froi waste his time saving the life of someone whose father he was sent to assassinate?’ Lucian asked.

‘I think most people were trapped inside the Citavita after the street lords took over,’ Phaedra explained.

Perri was not convinced. ‘I know the lad. It would have to be something powerful to trap him there.’

‘Or someone,’ Tesadora said with a sigh. ‘They must have formed a bond. Our idiot boy and the Princess. What’s he got himself into?’

Perri shook his head. ‘Not possible. Froi has a bond to his queen.’

Rafuel made a rude sound of amusement. Lucian didn’t like his expression.

‘Deep down,’ the Charynite said, looking at Perri and speaking Charyn slowly, ‘you don’t honestly believe Lumateran blood runs through his veins, do you?’

Phaedra translated his words nervously to Perri.

‘I understood exactly what he said.’ Perri’s tone was ice cold and deadly.

‘Did you really believe that I travelled through five provinces and failed to find a Charynite lad capable of impersonating a lastborn and killing a King?’ Rafuel asked.

Perri leaned forward, his face less than an inch away from Rafuel’s.

‘I’m not going to have to kill you, am I, Charynite?’ he asked quietly. ‘Because I’ll do it in a heartbeat, regardless of who sits at this table.’

‘What is the truth, Charynite?’ Yael asked. ‘What is it you know?’

‘Froi wasn’t impersonating a lastborn,’ Rafuel said.

Lucian was confused now and he could see the others were, as well. Except for Phaedra. He saw the realisation on her face.

‘He is a lastborn,’ she said, stunned.

‘Not just one,’ Rafuel said. ‘He’s the very last of them, I’m sure of it. He could easily be the one to break the curse.’

‘You believe all that talk,’ Lucian scoffed, ‘about lasts and firsts? It’s the talk of a mad Princess.’

‘As I’ve said before, I believe it in the same way you believed that your queen could walk the sleep of her people trapped inside your kingdom,’ Rafuel said.

‘How did you find him?’ Tesadora asked.

Rafuel had the good sense not to look away when speaking to her.

‘I knew that the lastborn was smuggled into Sarnak as a child. I knew his name was Dafar.’

‘But here we are in Lumatere,’ Perri said. ‘And our lad’s name is Froi.’

‘It’s all fate, and hunches,’ Rafuel said. ‘I was a soldier, you see. Forced into the army. Placed at … what did you call it, Mont, that day three years ago when my lieutenant took your people hostage at the Osterian border? The arse-end of the land.’

Perri was quick, his hand around the Charynite’s neck.

‘Let him speak!’ Tesadora shouted, peeling Perri’s fingers from where they gripped Rafuel.

‘You were on the Charyn border when we rescued Froi from the barracks there?’ Lucian demanded, but the answer was on Rafuel’s face. Worse still, Lucian remembered the comfort of that day, the knowledge that his father was walking down that Osterian hill to save the exiles. A week later his father was dead.

In an instant, his fist connected with Rafuel’s face and the Charynite was on the ground. Lucian grabbed his father’s sword hidden against the leg of the table and swung it above his head, ready to strike. He felt Phaedra’s trembling arms around him, holding him back. ‘Please Luci-en. Please,’ she wept.

‘Lucian,’ Yael said quietly.

Phaedra’s hand pressed against the thump of his heartbeat. A small hand, but strong.

‘I fell into the hole they dug into the ground,’ Lucian said, ‘where our people would have been buried. Forgotten. Do you remember, Perri? You and Trevanion helped Finnikin drag me out that night.’

Lucian’s eyes bore into Rafuel’s. The Charynite’s mouth was bleeding.

‘You were going to slaughter our people,’ Lucian said. ‘You were one of them.’

‘Perhaps,’ Rafuel replied. ‘Perhaps I would have followed orders. Perhaps I would have walked away and caught an arrow in my back for deserting my post. I’ll never know. You all turned up and I thought the gods were smiling in the favour of good men for once.’

Lucian could still feel Phaedra’s trembling arms around him. He remembered what she had witnessed days before in the valley. He lowered the sword.

Rafuel sat up, wiping the blood from his mouth.

‘Our squad leader at first believed your lad was the lost heir of Lumatere,’ Rafuel said. ‘Because of the ruby ring and the words he was shouting. Our men beat him up enough to discover that he was no one but a Sarnak thief named Froi.’

Rafuel looked at Tesadora.

‘A thief with strange un-Sarnak eyes and a very un-Sarnak name that reminded me too much of Dafar of Abroi, the lastborn of Charyn, known only to the Priests and those who smuggled him out of danger on the first day of weeping eighteen years ago.’

‘But you did nothing when they beat him,’ Perri said. ‘We found him black and blue and tied up like a dog in your barracks.’

‘There was nothing I could do,’ Rafuel said. ‘But I swore on my life that he’d be rescued that night. Do you Lumaterans honestly believe it would have been that easy to enter the barracks undetected?’ There was a certain look of victory in Rafuel’s eyes. ‘You got him out of there alive because I allowed it to happen. You killed two men on guard and our squad leader because I let it happen. And when I wrote to the Priests of Trist afterwards, they allowed you to have Dafar of Abroi for all of these years because we hadn’t found his purpose yet. We knew he’d be safer with you.’

Perri stared down at the Charynite. ‘You have no idea what you’ve done confusing that boy’s bond,’ he said. ‘If his corpse is returned to us because of the danger you’ve put him in, I will slice you from ear to ear.’

Rafuel gave a rueful smile.

‘Do you expect me to have regrets?’ he asked. ‘When it’s you Lumaterans who speak an unwritten law that makes the most sense to me.’

‘And what is that, Charynite?’ Tesadora asked.

‘What needs to be done.’

O
livier of Sebastabol arrived a week later, riding into the courtyard of the Provincaro’s compound with a flourish that Froi had failed to capture during his time in the palace impersonating the lastborn.

‘How can someone travel three days and still be in good cheer?’ Grijio asked, laughing up at his friend. Olivier dismounted and Tippideaux was picked up off the ground and swung three times, giggling with delight. She and Olivier could have passed as siblings with their wide blue eyes, but there was a way Tippideaux flirted with Olivier that told Froi she wanted more than a brother’s affection from Sebastabol’s lastborn.

While the Sebastabol guards gathered Olivier’s belongings from one of the pack horses and disappeared inside the compound, the lastborn hesitantly held out a hand to Froi, who willingly shook it.

‘What is the news?’ Grijio asked as they walked inside, noticing the envelope in Olivier’s hand.

‘We’ve heard that Bestiano has a large army camped outside Nebia,’ Tippideaux said. ‘Tell us it’s not true, Olivier.’

‘Perhaps Bestiano is not so bad for Charyn at the moment,’ Olivier said. ‘I sense a more potent enemy at our gates.’

He glanced at Froi questioningly as they crossed into the visitor’s quarters.

‘Then who is the enemy if not Bestiano?’ Froi asked coldly, not liking the implication of his look.

‘The moment Charyn falls into civil war, the surrounding kingdoms will invade as retribution for Lumatere,’ Olivier said. ‘The Belegonian army has gathered outside their borders with Osteria and Lumatere and waits for word from both kingdoms to join them.’

Tippideaux paled and her brother placed an arm around her, sending a warning glance to Olivier, but the lastborn of Sebastabol was oblivious.

‘Most of the people I’ve come across in my travels through Charyn are going underground, fearful of rape and pillage,’ he continued. ‘The Lumaterans will exact their revenge.’

Froi grabbed Olivier by his vest, slamming him against the wall. ‘You dare to say such a thing, Charynite? No Lumateran soldier would take a woman by force.’

Grijio pulled Froi away from Olivier and an uneasy silence settled around them.

‘But will the Lumaterans invade, Froi?’ Grijio asked quietly.

Froi had come to respect this even-tempered lad. ‘I’m not privy to the business of my kingdom,’ he said honestly, ‘but invading Charyn was never part of the plan.’

Froi bent to pick up Olivier’s cap and handed it to the lastborn. Olivier took it, a solemn expression on his face.

‘Pray that you know your queen and her consort well, Lumateran,’ Olivier said. ‘A war between our two kingdoms is the last thing we all want.’

In the drawing room of the guest compound, Olivier was reintroduced to Quintana. His eyes roamed around the room surreptitiously before returning to her stomach.

Tippideaux patted Quintana’s dress around the waist, proudly. Froi saw Quintana’s lips curl. He had taught her a counting exercise the night before so she could control her savage rage when provoked. Froi could tell today that Quintana only made it as far as the number four before twisting Tippideaux’s fingers away.