Finnikin of the Rock

thinking.'

With Sir Topher he spoke of strategies and dividing land between exiles and the best crops to grow and the politics of the country they found themselves in. They trained with practice swords, dealt with disappointing dukes, and quarreled with an ambassador obsessed with protocol. But in ten years, no one had ever asked what he was thinking. And he knew that the novice Evanjalin was asking for more than just his thoughts. She wanted the part of him he fought to keep hidden. The part that held his foolish hopes and aching memories.

'I miss hearing our mother tongue,' he found himself saying. 'Speaking it. Sir Topher has always been strict about using only the language of the country we are in, but when I dream, it's in Lumateran. Don't you love it? The way it comes from the throat, guttural and forced. Speaks to me of hard work. So different from the romance of the Belegonian and Osterian tongues.'

There was a soft smile on her face and for a moment he forgot they were on this cliff, staring across at the stone and rubble of Sorel. 'I miss the music of the voices in the crowded marketplace in my Rock Village, or in the king's court, where everyone talked over the top of one another. I can't tell you how many times I heard the king bellow, 'Quiet! Too much talking!' And that was just at the dinner table with his wife and children.'

She laughed, and the sound soothed him.

'I swear it's true. The queen, she was the loudest. 'Is it my curse to have the worst behaved children in the land? Vestie, you are to apologize to Nurse, or I will have you cleaning the privy for the rest of the week! Balthazar, you are not the ruler of this kingdom yet, and even when you are, you will eat at the table like a human being.''

Evanjalin's laughter was infectious, and he continued with the mimicry. He had loved his life in the Rock Village, but not as much as life in the king's court. In the palace, there were Balthazar and the beautiful spirited princesses, and most of all Trevanion. His heart would burst with pride whenever he witnessed his father's importance. Sometimes, deep in the night when on watch, Trevanion would take him from his bed and they would sit on the keep and stare out at the world below. Often Lady Beatriss would join them, shivering in the night air, and Trevanion would gather them both in his embrace to keep them warm.

He could feel Evanjalin's eyes on him as the sun before them disappeared at a speed beyond reckoning. 'Then I will demand that you speak Lumateran when we are alone,' Evanjalin said, interrupting his thoughts.

'Will you?' he mocked. 'And why is that?'

'Because without our language, we have lost ourselves. Who are we without our words?'

'Scum of the earth,' he said bitterly. 'In some kingdoms, they have removed all traces of Lumatere from the exiles. We are in their land now and will speak their tongue or none at all. Our punishment for the pathetic course of our lives.'

'So men cease to speak,' she said softly.

Men who in Lumatere had voices loud and passionate, who provided for their families and were respected in their villages. Now they sat in silence and relied on their children to translate for them as if they were helpless babes. Finnikin wondered what it did to a man who once stood proud. How could he pass on his stories without a language?

'And how Lumaterans loved to speak,' Finnikin said. 'Shout from hilltops, bellow in the marketplace, sing from the barges on the river. I had a favorite place, the rock of three wonders at the crest of my village. I would climb it with Balthazar and Lucian of the Monts. You would have known him, of course, being a Mont.'

She nodded. 'Son of Saro.'

'We had a healthy dislike for each other. He would call me 'trog boy' Repeatedly.'

'And how would you respond?' she asked with a laugh.

'By calling him 'son of an inbred.' Repeatedly. Balthazar would judge who could come up with the worst insult. I would win, of course. Monts are such easy targets.'

'They are my people you're speaking of,' she said, trying to sound cross.

'How was it that your family became separated from them?' Finnikin asked. 'You are the first Mont we have ever met on our travels.'

Evanjalin was silent for a moment, and he wondered if she knew where the Monts were hiding. 'Saro moved the Monts just days after they killed his sister, the queen, and my mother and siblings and I were among them. But my father was in Sarnak, and my mother refused to leave the day Saro took our people away from the Valley. She insisted that we wait. She believed there was still hope, and that if we stayed in the Valley, my father would travel from Sarnak to find us.' She looked up at him. 'Do you remember those days?'

'Only too well,' he said quietly. 'We all waited for at least a week. After the curse, Saro sent two of his men out to access the kingdom from the other borders, but days later only one returned.' Finnikin fell silent. He remembered the Mont's words to Saro. That at each border, an unseen force had held them back, until the Charyn border when his companion pushed his way into the tempest. The Mont had watched in horror as the tempest spat his kinsman back. Splintered bone by splintered bone.

'And then everyone began to leave,' Finnikin continued, 'needing to feed their children and to survive, arguing whether it was better to go to Charyn or Belegonia or Sarnak. I stayed close to my father's men until I was placed in the care of Sir Topher. We were the last to go.'

The wind was strong on the cliff, and it whipped his hair across his face. Suddenly her hand reached out to hold it back. When he felt her fingers, he flinched; he had not been touched with such gentleness since his childhood. He was no stranger to women and had felt their hands on all parts of his body, but her touch made him feel like he belonged someplace.

'I remember the abandoned children wailing by the side of the road,' she said. 'Some as young as two or three. People were forced to put their own survival and their family's above anything else and left other people's children to die. It's the only reason I can feel any sympathy for the thief from Sarnak.'

He nodded. 'Part of me believes there is little hope for those like him, who have become as base as the men they associate with. But there's another part of me that will search this land high and low once we are settled in our second homeland and bring them back to us, where they belong.'

He felt her stare but did not turn and look. Did not want those eyes reaching into him.

'So you are destined to spend the rest of your life scouring this land? Who are you, to deserve such a curse?' she asked.

One who has an evil lurking inside of me, he wanted to say. An evil that Seranonna of the Forest Dwellers recognized that day in the forest as he played alongside Isaboe.

Her blood will be shed for you to be king.

'What is it you want, Finnikin?' Evanjalin persisted.

'I want to be left alone to do what we've always done,' he said vehemently. I want to go searching for my father, he longed to shout.

'And what is that? Wandering the empire? Collecting names of the dead? Where would you like me to leave you, Finnikin?'

In the numb peace we lived with before you came into our lives.

He stared at her, and she held his gaze. 'I took great comfort in your vow of silence,' he said at last.

After a moment her mouth twitched. 'Really? I do believe you're lying.'

'It's true. I miss it terribly.'

'I think you're dying to tell me what you shouted from your rock. With the inbred and the heir.'

He laughed in spite of himself. 'We were convinced of the existence of the silver wolf. Legend had it that only a true warrior could kill it, and we'd build traps in the forest and play out its capture. Balthazar was the warrior, and I was his guard; Lucian the wolf, Isaboe the bait. Then we would travel to the rock and practice our sacrifice of it to the gods, shouting our intentions and faith. We'd pledge our honor to each other. We even vowed to save Lumatere.' He shook his head, thinking of the last pledge they had made together, mixed with the blood of all three.

'I would love such a rock,' she said. 'It would loosen my tongue and give me the courage to say all the things I've never dared say.'

'And what would you say, Evanjalin? Would you damn the impostor, curse those who placed him on the throne?'

She shook her head. 'I would speak my name out loud. Evanjalin of the Monts!' Her voice echoed and its volume took him by surprise. He walked to the rock's edge, wanting to listen to it until the last echo disappeared,