Sir Topher rubbed his eyes. 'Froi, make yourself useful and get this fire going.'
Froi grunted, not wanting to leave the comfort of the bedrolls, but was nudged out by Sir Topher. They wrapped themselves in every bit of clothing they had and drew their bedrolls closer to the fire, while Froi stoked the embers, muttering.
'Three nights ago I walked through the sleep of the baker, who was laughing,' Evanjalin said.
'I cannot imagine any Lumateran inside or outside the gate doing such a thing,' Finnikin said flatly.
'Yet the cook's apprentice mourned the death of the baker's daughter not three weeks earlier.' Evanjalin's forehead was creased with lines of confusion, and Finnikin felt an urge to smooth them out.
'Evanjalin, you're not making sense.'
'What kind of man would be laughing three weeks after he had laid his child to rest?' she asked.
'Get to the part where you claim to have worked something out,' Trevanion said gruffly.
'I need to go back, then. About a year. When the child and I walked through the sleep of one of the impostor's men who was thinking of a girl from the Flatlands who had died that day. He did not share the grief of the mother and father, but her death was enough to make him think. He was doing his sums and he worked out that twenty young girls had died over the past four years.'
'Twenty?' Sir Topher gasped.
Evanjalin nodded. 'But I need to go back even further.'
Finnikin made a sound of disbelief, but she held up her hand. 'Listen. Eighteen years past, the queen of Osteria presented the queen of Lumatere with a cherry blossom plant. It was a peace offering after decades of mistrust between both kingdoms.'
'Evanjalin, you are not making—'
'But I will. My mother told me the story often. About the queen deciding where to plant the tree.'
'She searched the kingdom high and low for the perfect spot,' Sir Topher said, smiling at the memory. 'Drove us all insane. But she was with child. Her youngest, Isaboe. The child was never meant to be and the pregnancy was cursed with illness from the beginning. The queen was sure that if she planted the cherry blossom and made a dedication to both the goddess Lagrami and the goddess Sagrami, then the child would live.'
Evanjalin nodded. 'And although many Lumaterans were not happy with her decision to sacrifice to Sagrami, the queen found the perfect spot.'
'A beautiful story, but I cannot see the connection,' Trevanion said.
'There is only one cherry blossom tree in Lumatere. At least a day's ride from the palace, at the old cloister of Sagrami near the Sendecane border.'
'But that cloister hasn't been used for centuries,' Sir Topher said. 'What are you suggesting, Evanjalin?'
'That during the five days of the unspeakable, the novices of Sagrami who lived at the edge of the Forest were taken to safety inside the kingdom walls through the east gate.'
Sir Topher was shaking his head. 'You are wrong, Evanjalin. The priestess of Sagrami was the first to be burned at the stake. She was captured along with Seranonna and three other mystics and healers.'
'Then the novices would have been on their own,' Finnikin said. 'Surely the impostor's men would have attacked the cloister in the Forest first?'
'It would have been a slaughter,' Trevanion said. 'The oldest of the girls was no more than seventeen.'
'And they had no one to turn to?' Finnikin asked.
Sir Topher opened his mouth to reply and then stopped.
'Sir Topher?' Finnikin asked urgently.
'There may have been one,' he said in a hushed tone. 'Someone who had lived in the Forest cloister as a child. Tell me about the other who walks the sleep with you, Evanjalin. The one who is there for the child.'
'Whoever it is, they have a great knowledge of the dark arts. I sense their connection with the dead. With spirits.'
'Only Seranonna had such knowledge,' Trevanion said.
'No, there was another,' Sir Topher said. 'One who was under Seranonna's instruction.'
Trevanion frowned and then realization dawned on his face. 'Tesadora? Seranonna's daughter?'
Sir Topher nodded. 'Did you know her?'
'No, but Perri did. They were mortal enemies. It was one of the few stories Perri would tell me of his childhood in the River swamp. From a young age, his father taught him to inflict as much pain as possible on those they considered inferior.'
'Was Perri ashamed?'
Trevanion sighed. 'It was not a confession, just a fact. I remember his words. 'How different our childhoods, Trevanion. You sailed your raft down the River and collected tadpoles and eels, and I held down the heads of Forest Dwellers in swamp water to see how long they could stay under without breathing.'
'Perri told me Tesadora once stayed under for five minutes,' Trevanion continued, 'and still had enough breath inside her to spit in his face when it was over. His father thrashed him for allowing a Forest Dweller to get the better of him. So next time Perri made sure she didn't have enough strength to even stand. They were both twelve at the time. On opposing sides, but both victims of hate.'
'By the time Tesadora was little older than you, Finnikin, she lived the life of a hermit in the Forest,' Sir Topher said. 'But she spent her childhood in the cloister of Sagrami, and apart from her mother, the novices were her only contact with the world.'
'Were the Sagrami novices mystics?' Finnikin asked.
'Healers,' Sir Topher answered. 'The best apothecaries I have ever encountered. The herbs and plants they grew in the Forest cloister were spectacular. If the priest-king had them in the fever camps, half our people would still be alive.'
Evanjalin leaned closer, her eyes alight. 'The novices are now inside the kingdom walls, and they are hiding the young girls of Lumatere in the old cloister. And three days ago, the baker traveled in secret to see his daughter and picked cherry blossoms along the way.'
'You have no proof of that,' Finnikin said. 'Even if Tesadora did survive and save the novices, do you think the impostor and his men would be so ignorant as to not work it out? Would they not have found their hiding place by now?'
'Perhaps they don't need to hide. No matter what the impostor king decreed when he put the Forest Dwellers to death, he would fear the wrath of the gods if he stormed a temple of Sagrami,' Evanjalin said. 'Remember, the novices worship a goddess that has cursed Lumatere, and the impostor king is just as much a prisoner of the curse as everyone else inside,' she argued.
'And if the novices are the apothecaries I think they are, they could easily find a way of sending the girls close to death,' Sir Topher said.
'These Lumaterans you speak of—the baker, the other fathers and mothers of the girls—are they worshippers of Sagrami?' Trevanion asked.
Evanjalin shook her head. 'They worship Lagrami. Yet somehow both cloisters, Lagrami and Sagrami, are working together to protect the young girls of Lumatere.'
'How?'
She looked at them for a moment. 'There are parts of this story ... all of you might find... difficult.'
Finnikin stared at her in disbelief. 'Evanjalin, Trevanion has spent seven years in the mines of Sorel. Sir Topher and I have seen everything there is to see in our travels.'
'But there are some things ...'
'Evanjalin,' Sir Topher said firmly. 'Finnikin is right. There is nothing we cannot endure.'
Evanjalin sighed. 'The cook's apprentice who mourned his friend had blood on his mind the night she died. The impostor's guard dreamed of blood. Each time these girls 'die,' there are dreams or memories of blood. I believe they 'die' of the bleeding. They supposedly bleed to death. That's what the impostor's men and the rest of the kingdom think happens to the girls. Imagine. The impostor's men come to the home of a family who has just lost their daughter. They demand to see the dead child. There she lies. Still. Perhaps in the way Sir Topher has suggested, due to the cleverest apothecaries in the kingdom. The impostor's men demand to know what has taken place. They do not care for the dead girls or their families, but smell a conspiracy among the people. The women are clever. They begin to speak of the curse that visits young girls each month, for they know that the impostor and his men would pale with such talk of blood flowing from the loins of young girls like torrents of—'
