He didn’t have to. The tunnel led to another cave that was darker by far, but it was a safer place for them to hide.
In their new home, Arjuro built a small fire. Quintana had returned to her indignant self, except when Froi dared to look at her, which produced a savage snarl.
‘Lirah mentioned that you managed to smuggle the assassin out of the palace all those years ago, Sir Gargarin,’ she said at one point during the night when they were trying to get some sleep. ‘Rather than toss him into the gravina with my first mother, the Oracle.’
It took Froi a moment to realise he was the assassin she was referring to. There was an uneasy silence at the bluntness of her words.
‘Who was it?’ Arjuro asked Gargarin, when no one spoke. ‘The babe who died that day?’
‘Later,’ Gargarin muttered from his bedroll, turning away.
‘Now,’ Arjuro said. ‘It’s been too long. I need the truth. So does Lirah.’
‘Now you need the truth?’ Gargarin said bitterly. ‘Later, I said.’ He stole a look at Quintana.
‘Are you waiting for us to sleep before you speak of it, Sir Gargarin?’ she asked, indignantly. ‘Because we can’t, you know. Sleep that is. Not with the assassin here, threatening us and the little King.’
‘Us? The little King?’ Froi said, looking at the others with disbelief. ‘Are you all hearing this?’
Lirah closed her eyes as though she had heard it one too many times.
‘The Princess claims … believes,’ she corrected herself, ’that she carries the first.’
Quintana made a clicking sound of annoyance with her tongue. ‘I explained to you, Lirah. I’m actually the Queen of Charyn. I was wed to King Tariq in his compound before they slaughtered him. When one is wed to the King they are given the title of Queen regardless of how powerless they remain. I do love a title.’
There was another uncomfortable silence. This time her attention was on Gargarin.
‘Is it true you murdered my first mother, the Oracle?’ she persisted.
Answer her, Froi wanted to shout. So they didn’t have to hear her guileless voice speak of death and carnage.
When it was clear that there would be no sleep for any of them, Gargarin sat up.
‘I was handed a child that night said to have been birthed by the Oracle,’ he said.
‘It was the King who placed him in my arms. Told me that the babe would bring Charyn to its knees if he lived. That if I loved my king and believed in the gods, I would do as instructed. First, I was to toss the babe over the balconette into the gravina and then dispose of his dead mother in the same way. Better the people of the Citavita believe that the Oracle plunged to her own death than know she was defiled by the Serkers and died giving birth to an abomination.’
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. Firstly, 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 amongst 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 was someone other than Froi.
‘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 recognised the soothsayer’s words. The King’s dream.
‘How did you kill him?’ Arjuro asked Quintana quietly.
Froi saw Gargarin 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 lastborn males hadn’t hurt her or taken her by force. But she had never imagined the King’s Advisor would believe he could father the first.