‘Sarnak,’ Froi lied. ‘I’m a messenger for the Queen. I know the language well.’
It was the story Trevanion had instructed him to use. He looked Lord August squarely in the eye and wondered if he knew the truth. Lord August shared a strong friendship with Trevanion.
‘You know where your home is,’ was all Lord August said before walking away.
Lady Abian kissed his cheek. She said little for once, but he saw tears in her eyes.
‘When you return, we will choose that day to celebrate your eighteenth birthday,’ she said.
He nodded, his throat tightening with emotion. A birthday. What did the Charynite call the day their Princess was born? The day of weeping.
‘I’ll count down the days,’ he said.
He went to see the Priestking next. The old man was teaching some of the younger Lumaterans in the front garden of his hovel. Froi waited for them to leave, pulling out thistles from the herb patch he had planted for the Priestking that spring. Oregano, garlic, chives and rosemary were dwarfed by creeping thistles.
‘I’ve told you before, blessed Barakah,’ Froi said when the youngsters left. ‘Pull them out the moment you see them or you’ll be slurping the blandest of soup.’
‘But they’re so beautiful in colour,’ the Priestking mused, getting to his feet and straightening his back with a groan.
‘And what happened to the chair I made you?’ Froi asked, frustrated, looking around at the hovel. When Rafuel spoke of the godshouse of Charyn where the Priests and Priestlings once lived and learned, Froi could not help comparing it to this shack in a meadow. Once, the Priestking of Lumatere lived in a grand shrinehouse in the palace village, but the blessed Barakah claimed to have been another man back then.
‘You need to move to a bigger home. Did you know that in Charyn they used to have schools for Priestlings, taught by those less powerful than you? They’d learn about the Ancients, become the scribes of the people, learn how to be physicians.’
The Priestking chuckled and beckoned Froi to him so that he could lean on his shoulder. ‘Let’s walk a moment or two, lad,’ he said.
Froi propped up the old man, frustrated by his stubbornness.
‘Anyway, I thought you said learning was a waste of time,’ the Priestking said.
‘We don’t want the Charynites being better than us.’
They walked an overgrown path through the small meadow that looked over the outskirts of Lord August’s village. Even if the Priestking agreed to build a larger house, the land surrounding it would be too small to make a proper impression. Froi knew Finnikin’s dream, but he usually fell asleep while Finnikin was speaking about it over and over again. Finnikin dreamed of a library filled with the greatest books Lumatere ever saw in a school where holy men and scholars from Belegonia and Osteria would come to teach as guests. It was the Queen’s dream as well. ‘We’re going to lose our smart ones like Celie to Belegonia,’ she said. ‘We need a school for them.’
Froi felt the Priestking’s stare. He knew the time was coming for him to say his goodbye. He didn’t want the Priestking asking where and why he was going. Then he’d have to lie again and this blessed man was the first person to treat Froi as an equal.
‘Can you sing me the Song of Lumatere?’ Froi asked quietly.
There was a ghost of a smile on the Priestking’s face. ‘I’ve said it once and I will say it again, there is a song in your heart, Froi. You must unleash it or you will spend your days in regret.’
‘I’ll sing for no one,’ Froi said stiffly. ‘And if you don’t want to sing it, you just have to say!’
The Priestking leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Froi’s brow. A blessing. ‘Stay safe, my young friend.’
Froi gently placed his hands on the fragile man’s arms. ‘I will see you in less than a fortnight, blessed Barakah, and we’ll do something about this garden.’
In the palace courtyard, Perri fitted him with scabbards for his daggers and short sword.
‘This was made especially for you,’ he said, placing one of them across Froi’s shoulder blades. ‘A beautiful hide, indeed. Look.’ Froi saw his own name engraved in the leather and whether it came from Perri or Trevanion, or the King or Queen, it made Froi feel proud. Apart from Isaboe’s ruby ring, Froi had never owned anything in his life.
‘You mightn’t be able to get weapons into the capital, but keep it safe.’
Froi looked up to see Isaboe standing alongside Sir Topher, watching from the parapet. Even from here he saw sadness in his queen’s eyes. A sadness of spirit. He knew Finnikin would be feeling exactly the same.
Later, Finnikin walked with him until they arrived at the gates of the palace village. ‘Do you ever think of that day with the slave traders of Sorel?’ Finnikin asked quietly.
‘I think of it all the time,’ Froi said.
‘I was going to kill you,’ Finnikin said, a catch in his voice. ‘You were begging me, remember?’
Froi couldn’t speak. In his whole existence, it was the only time he had ever lost hope. He would have preferred to die that day rather than be sold as a slave in Sorel. He had counted on Finnikin being accurate with his dagger from a distance. But he had not counted on Isaboe wanting him to live. Not after what he had tried to do to her.
He sensed Finnikin’s sadness and didn’t want to leave Lumatere with the memory of it.
‘Then you both argued,’ Froi grinned. ‘About my name.’
Finnikin chuckled. ‘Your mouth was split. I was sure you were calling yourself Boy.’ He feigned a grimace of displeasure. ‘Did she have to be right?’
‘She did have a point. Who’d name a babe a nothing name like Boy?’
Froi looked back up to the palace and then at Finnikin. ‘Why won’t she see me? I can’t leave without her blessing.’
‘She’s afraid to bid you farewell. You mean everything to us, Froi.’
‘I do this for you and her. I will do anything for my king and my queen.’
Finnikin smiled sadly. ‘But Isaboe and I are just two people, Froi. You need to want to do it for the kingdom.’
Froi saw tears in his king’s eyes and they embraced.
‘Kill this beast who has brought so much despair and come home to us safe, my friend.’
It was Perri who accompanied him to the mountain that night. From there, Froi would travel through the valley and pass the province of Alonso where he would meet Rafuel’s contact. They would travel for days and at the foot of the ravine outside the capital, they would be introduced to a man named Gargarin of Abroi, who had answered the request of the Provincaro of Sebastabol to travel to the palace with the lastborn.
When they began their ascent, Froi heard the beauty of the Priestking’s voice across the land, and the song inside Froi that he refused to sing, ached to be let loose. What had frightened him most about Rafuel of Sebastabol was that his stories had made Froi’s blood dance. They had given him a restlessness. A need to be elsewhere to search for a part of himself that was lost. But what he feared was that the search to find answers would take him away from this land of light. That once he left, he would never find his way back home.
In the Flatlands of Sennington, Lady Beatriss heard the song and sowed seeds into a dead earth that refused to yield. Her beloved daughter Vestie sat on the verandah waiting for Trevanion, who had kept away these past days. In the distance, she saw two more of her villagers take leave with all their possessions for the more fertile land of their neighbours and a loneliness and dread gripped Beatriss more fiercely than in those wretched years when the kingdom was torn apart.
In the valley between Lumatere and Alonso, the wife Lucian of the Monts had sent back camped in a cave between her father’s province and her husband’s mountain. She recorded the names of her people, and learnt the ways of the Lumateran healers. Most nights her shame burnt bright and she longed to return home. But she pledged to herself and the goddess she had chosen to be her guide, that one day Phaedra of Alonso would be something more than the object of the Monts’ ridicule and Alonso’s failure.