The air rang with strange voices from both sides of the river. Bloodcurdling wails. Some seemed like taunts. As if the Yuts were playing cat and mouse with them. Not even in his ten years of captivity had Trevanion felt so trapped. He despised his own helplessness in not being able to move his party to safety and away from this muddy, insect-infested circle of swamp.
The thief looked away from Finnikin's shuddering body, his hands covering his ears to block out the taunts around them. 'Don't you know magic?' he asked Evanjalin accusingly.
But Trevanion knew that their only hope was to wait.
'Do you think they've given up?' Sir Topher asked.
The voices had stopped, but the silence that followed was more alarming than Trevanion could have imagined. He shook his head and pointed to a copse of trees in the distance. The scraps of metal the Yut natives wore around their wrists and ankles flashed and winked in the sunlight.
'They want us to know we are surrounded,' he said quietly, pointing to another group to the left and then another across the river.
'I can speak to them in Yut, Sir Topher,' Finnikin murmured feverishly. 'Tell them... we come in peace... acknowledge their right to Yutlind Sud ...'
Sir Topher hushed him. 'You'll tire yourself out, Finnikin.'
Trevanion watched his son's labored breathing. Finnikin sat half-upright, supported by Sir Topher. Crouching had become too painful, so they now sat in the shallow water, at the mercy of mosquitoes and water rats that bit with vicious frequency.
'These people are not speaking common Yut,' Evanjalin said. She was staring at the arrow in Finnikin's side. Her eyes met Trevanion's, and he placed his hand against the stem.
'When they visited Lumatere in the past,' Finnikin gasped, refusing to surrender to the pain, 'for an audience with the king ... you said ... you said he promised to recognize ...'
'But these were not the people who visited us, Finnikin,' Sir Topher said. 'These men are spirit warriors. They speak the old language of the first inhabitants.'
'They belong to one of the tribes that guard the entrance into the kingdom from the south,' Evanjalin acknowledged. Her face was chalk-white and strained. 'They have done so since the time of the gods. Their customs and language are different, but they consider themselves kin to Yutlind Sud and mortal enemies of those in the north. They have lost many of their tribe to the merchant ships that enter the river and capture their people, selling them as slaves up north in Sorel.'
'What do ... they want from us?' Finnikin croaked.
Trevanion stared at her, shaking his head in case she dared reveal the answer to the question. What they wanted was his boy, with hair the color of the sun as it set.
'Do you trust me?' she whispered.
Finnikin's eyes rolled back. Trevanion had no idea whether it was from the pain of the arrow or the nausea from the filthy water he had swallowed. The girl placed her arms around Finnikin as her eyes issued a silent order to Trevanion.
'Talk to me,' Finnikin slurred. 'Don't let me sleep, Evanjalin.'
'Perhaps I should tell you a story. So you can record it in the
He chuckled, and Trevanion chose that moment to wrench the arrow out of his son's body.
Finnikin bit so hard into Evanjalin's flesh that he tasted her blood on his lips. And for a while the flames of fever chased him into dreams and memories. Where he saw the stake. Wood piled around its base. Set alight. And he was nine years old again, watching with horror the executions of the Forest Dwellers. Children of Sagrami. Around him people were sobbing. They had already taken his father, but he needed to be here for Beatriss. So that he, the son of her beloved, would be the last thing she saw. But Seranonna was there instead, her hands drenched with blood, flames crawling up her body as she cursed. And then he was in the tree. The one he had sat in with Balthazar and Lucian and made plans to trap the silver wolf. The tree of his childhood. That day, hidden in its branches, he pulled out his dagger. He aimed as his father had taught him.
And caught Seranonna in the heart.
Chapter 13
Trevanion watched the tremors wrack Finnikin's body as he slept. It was dark now, but he still felt the presence of the Yuts. Voices rang through the night sky sporadically, and he could hear the girl muttering as if in prayer. 'Sir Topher,' he said quietly.
'Take them.' Sir Topher leaned forward.
'Is he...' He could not bring himself to finish the question.
'Take them,' Trevanion repeated. 'Continue on the east bank and head toward the grasslands. Hopefully, they will not follow, for you have nothing they want. You know where to find my men. Tell Perri that his captain has passed on the greatest honor a guard of Lumatere can be given.'
'Trevanion—'
'Tell him the girl will lead you to our king and our people.' Trevanion looked at Evanjalin but could not read her expression. 'If my boy dies, I die protecting him.'
There was silence for a long moment.
'It's not right,' Sir Topher said. 'That it happens in this order. That a man should outlive his—' Sir Topher's breath caught in his throat. 'Don't let them take him alive. Promise me that.'
'Why do the men of Lumatere always speak of dying for the kingdom and for each other?' Evanjalin asked, irritated.
In the dim light of the moon, Trevanion could see her face. Her body had taken a battering on the boat, and she looked weak from fatigue. Yet there was still a glint in her eyes. She tried to rise, but he pulled her back down. 'Where are you going?'
'I cannot promise that I will make sense to them, but I know enough of their language to get by.'
'You have nothing to offer them,' he said. 'They will kill you the moment you step out in the open.'
She shrugged free of him. 'Never underestimate the value of knowing another's language. It can be far more powerful than swords and arrows, Captain. I've listened to them long enough to understand a little. Among them is their leader and his son. One has been on this side of the river, one on the other. And do you know what the father has promised the son? The honor of lighting the pyre to sacrifice Finnikin.'
'There is nothing you can do,' Sir Topher said. 'You will only put your life in danger.'
She looked at him sadly. 'Sir Topher, do you honestly believe we are not all marked for death anyway? We entered their land illegally on a cog that has taken away their people in the past. But I may know how to convince them to trust us.'
'How?'
'When the slave traders steal the young in Yutlind Sud, they sell them to the mines of Sorel.' Her eyes met Trevanion's. 'I knew a slave girl there who told me stories of her people.'
Trevanion held her stare. He had heard about what happened to the children forced to work in the mines, tales so gut-wrenching that even the most hardened prisoners would shudder at hearing them. If Evanjalin had been in the mines, it would explain why she knew the terrain of Sorel so well, although he suspected that she was not telling them the full truth.
'When I heard their voices over our heads, it was clear to me, Captain. The chieftain is a father. There was such love and pride in his voice when he called out to his son.'
'I didn't hear that love in the voices taunting us, Evanjalin,' Trevanion said harshly.
'Because you don't understand the nuances of their language. We hear the grunts and the guttural sounds, and we believe them to be something worse than hate,' she said.
Finnikin stirred beside them. Trevanion watched as his son reached out and gripped the girl's hand, trying to stop her from leaving. The girl gently untangled her hand and crawled away, but Finnikin grabbed the cloth of her shirt, pulling her back against him.
