‘It’s the Captain,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m safe, Samuel.’
She waited for Trevanion to dismount and without a word he followed her into the house.
‘Was it him?’ he asked, and she heard the barely contained rage in his voice.
She sighed, pouring him a cider and cutting him a slice of cake.
‘And what are you going to do to him if it was?’ she asked.
‘Kill him,’ he said through clenched teeth.
‘No, you won’t,’ she said gently.
Trevanion kicked the stool out of the way and it bounced off the wall and splintered. ‘I’ve killed traitors before, Beatriss. It’s my job. In what way would this be any different?’ he asked.
Beatriss calmly picked up what was left of the stool. ‘Because you don’t have proof. Nettice was smart in that way. He would come to this house often in the early days to talk about the soldiers and his hatred for the impostor King. Later he’d tell me he was lonely. His wife kept a cold bed. I would send him away each time. And then suddenly he was a guest of the impostor King in the palace. A fact I knew because I was dragged down there often enough.’
She caught Trevanion’s wince of pain.
‘Nettice would tell all who would listen that his visits to the palace were to make life easier for us, but the only families who had an easy life were those who collaborated.’
She swallowed, trying to keep down the bile that always rose when she thought of those years.
‘He must have made a deal with the impostor King and somehow I became part of that bargain because the King and his men didn’t touch me again. And do you want to know the truth, Trevanion?’ she asked. ‘I felt relief. Each time he came up that path, I felt relief. Better a demon I knew, better one man than any of the others in the palace. Relief,’ she cried. ‘Nothing more. Nothing. And that relief shamed me and he knew, trading on that shame all these years.’
Trevanion closed his eyes, his expression so pained that she wanted some kind of magic to take away all their suffering. But that type of magic didn’t exist.
‘He stopped the visits when I was carrying Vestie and then of course there was Tesadora. Nothing frightened those cowardly men more than Tesadora. Her friendship saved my life. It saved my spirit.’
Beatriss began to clear away the plates and cakes. She looked away, so she wouldn’t have to see his face. Would there be judgement? Had it been easier for him to love Vestie knowing that the father was nowhere in their lives?
Trevanion stayed, his silence frightening. And there they sat opposite each other, two people who had grown older without the comfort of the other. She wanted to weep for the lost opportunities. But deep in the night when she thought there would never be words between them again, he spoke.
‘The reason I couldn’t ask questions all this time, is that I feared I’d have to respond to yours in return.’ His voice was low and hoarse. ‘That I’d have to speak of being imprisoned in the mines and my first months there and what I let them do to me and how I couldn’t save those two brothers from the Rock who came to join me there.’
He looked away, the tears biting at his eyes.
‘We didn’t let them do anything to us, Trevanion,’ Beatriss said fiercely. ‘They did it without our permission.’
She walked to where he sat and placed her arms around him. He turned and buried his face against her waist and she thought she felt a sob against her and they stayed wrapped around each other, bathed by the sounds of this house that had seen the worst and best of times. But all Beatriss had to hear was the sound of his breathing and her child mumbling in sleep to know that perhaps for tonight alone all was good in her world.
‘Do you remember the day three years ago when we spoke at the babe’s grave?’ he asked. ‘Do you remember your words? Has anything changed? About how you can never go back to the way things were?’
She took his face in her hands. ‘I only remember the words that haven’t changed, Trevanion.’
She pressed her brow against his.
‘I still wake with your name on my lips every morning.’
Chapter 41
Froi’s only consolation as they crawled through the underground caves of Paladozza was that the tunnels were too narrow and long to allow an army to invade. And in that way, Gargarin and Lirah would stay safe in Paladozza. Try as he might, he couldn’t get their faces out of his head and already felt a strong sense of loss knowing he might never see them again.
They rested that night close to the stone that would take them out into the hills of the north. The space was too small for comfort, but Quintana curled against him, asleep in an instant. Froi couldn’t help thinking of Isaboe when she was carrying Jasmina in her belly. The way everyone in the palace fussed over her. How Finn would prop her up against him and knead her shoulders and back while she gave Sir Topher instructions on how to deal with the merchants in the main village who refused to work with some of the Flatland lords. Froi couldn’t count the amount of times he’d ride from Sayles to the palace on an errand for Lady Abian, who insisted that the Queen have the best apples their orchard had to offer, or the days he had accompanied Finn to the mountains because the juiciest berries in the kingdom were grown there and Isaboe deserved the best.
‘You are all becoming tiresome,’ she’d complain. ‘I’m carrying a child, not dying of an ailment.’
And Froi wanted all of that for Quintana. He wanted to hear her complain how tiresome they all were with the attention they were giving and how she was sick of resting and sick of taking warm baths and sick of her people waiting on her hand and foot. Yet here Quintana was, crawling through the bowels of a city for a kingdom of people who would never truly understand what she had sacrificed for them.
Hours later he shook her awake gently and their journey continued.
‘I’ll hurt the babe,’ Quintana said, as they used their elbows to crawl along the jagged contours of the ground beneath.
‘It won’t be for too long, Your Highness,’ Olivier gasped. ‘My mother told me often that she took a tumble a time or two on the docks of Sebastabol when she was carrying me.’
‘That’s no comfort, Olivier,’ Froi said. ‘You’re an idiot most times.’
The tunnel finally spilled out into a larger cave and soon they’d be out in the hills. Froi felt the breeze come through the cracks in the stone and he smelt their freedom. His eyes met Quintana’s and he saw hope there. The hills would be a safe enough refuge and in days to come they would be back with the Turlan mountain goats. It made Froi laugh to think of it.
‘When we get to Turla, Olivier, do not try to prove your manhood,’ he said, as they followed the lastborn.
‘I’ve never really been one to do that,’ Olivier said.
‘Then you’ve not met the Turlans,’ Quintana said.
They reached the last stone and pushed it aside, shielding their eyes as light poured into the cave. Crawling out first, Froi could see they were in a small ravine with a stream between them and the hills on the other side. He climbed up to the cave top they had come from and saw the woodlands further north.
When he jumped back down, he took Quintana’s hand and they walked further along the stream, ready to cross where the water was a trickle. Quintana looked up in the distance and the rare smile she gave Froi lit up his heart.
‘To the hills we go,’ she said. He pressed her palm to his cheek.
The arrow took him by surprise and he grunted from the pain as it ripped through his thigh. Froi pulled Quintana down to him, crawling behind the closest rock. Olivier followed, and Froi could hear his ragged breath. He stole a look over their hiding place and his blood ran cold. Men were scattered across the stream and throughout the hills with their bows cocked, pointing down at them. At least fifty. Neither unprepared nor surprised. Waiting. Some were dressed in the uniform of the palace riders and Froi knew that Bestiano’s men had been waiting. They had been betrayed.