'Take me with you,' Finnikin whispered, his breathing shallow. 'We can do this together.'
'Your wound is infected. You should rest rather than fight it.' She turned to Trevanion. 'What a stubborn nature the mixing of blood from our rock and our river produces, Captain.' It was almost an accusation.
She managed to pull free of Finnikin, but this time Trevanion gripped her. 'You risk his life by holding me back, Captain!' She said. 'I know how to rid him of the poisons in his blood, but only if you let me convince them to allow us to remove him from this swamp.' She looked to Sir Topher, her eyes pleading. 'You are the king's First Man, Sir Topher. Order your captain to let me go.'
Sir Topher looked torn. He knew that sending her out to the clearing meant she could be dead from hundreds of arrows before she spoke her first word.
'Let her go, Trevanion,' he said at last.
His words were met with silence.
'Promise them that Lumatere will acknowledge the south's rightful claim to the throne of Yutlind Sud, but not of Yutlind Nord,' Sir Topher said quietly. 'It may help. Our king made no secret of the fact that he believed the claim on Yutlind Sud was illegal, and in time he would have made this view public. It may not be enough to keep them from attacking, but it's something.'
Trevanion stood and pulled Evanjalin to her feet, holding her close to his side. 'You don't step away me from me,' he ordered. 'Is that clear?'
'Captain, you don't understand. I know their language—' Trevanion cut her off.
'All I need to understand is the unwritten law of warriors,' he said firmly. 'And women and children are never sent to do our work without our protection.' He pointed to the trees, emphatically. 'That's the language I share with them.'
As Evanjalin and Trevanion walked into the clearing, Finnikin heard her shout out a word, loud and clear. In their filthy hiding place, he tried to sit up, watching her flinch as if she expected an arrow to come flying toward her at any moment. His father's eyes were like a hawk's as they searched the trees around them.
After a brief pause she stood facing east. Each time Trevanion tried to protect her body, she stepped around him, and when finally he gave up and stood by her side, she began to speak.
Sometimes her lone voice in the jungle suggested she was retelling a story, a history that seemed to have no end. Other times there was vehemence in her tone, husky in its broken delivery of an epistle to those who had guarded the entrance of this land for so long. But she continued speaking through the night until Finnikin heard her voice slur from fatigue and watched her body slump against Trevanion's.
Evanjalin was hardly recognizable in the morning light. Mud caked her shirt, and her face was swollen from the mosquitoes that had feasted on her during the long hours squatting in the river. She had scratched some of the bites to their bloody core, and even her scalp looked raw from the ordeal. Then Finnikin saw her body stiffen, her eyes on the figures that began to appear through the trees. They were like ghosts: their eyes pale and their faces and torsos so white that at first he thought they were painted. They came from every direction of the jungle. Too many to count.
The chieftain stared at Evanjalin, his face expressionless. The two men who stood before her were indeed father and son, yet unlike Finnikin and Trevanion, they were almost replicas of each other. When the chieftain gripped Evanjalin's arm, Trevanion made a move forward but she gently held him back. And then the chieftain spoke, the words blunt and almost hostile, but Finnikin knew enough about the rhythms of language to understand that she was not in danger.
The chieftain barked out an instruction, and Finnikin watched as two of the warriors walked toward their hiding place in the reeds. They pushed past Froi and Sir Topher and grabbed Finnikin's face. While one of the warriors forced open his mouth, the other brought a flask to his lips. He drank the water in great gulps, almost choking with relief, his head rolling back. And then the warriors picked him up and carried him away.
'Evanjalin?' he heard Sir Topher ask in alarm.
Suddenly Finnikin was in his father's arms. Trevanion placed him gently on the ground. Evanjalin's face appeared above him, and then the chieftain's.
'They mean you no harm,' she said quietly.
One of the warriors handed her the flask of water. The chieftain continued to watch them all, though his gaze kept returning to Trevanion and Finnikin.
'The slave girl told me the southern Yuts have always been criticized by the northerners for their weakness,' Evanjalin said. 'You see, the northerners would kidnap the warriors' sons and keep them as hostages, and instead of defending the kingdom and fighting for the crown, the southerners always went searching for their sons. Some see it as a weakness to give up the security of your kingdom and throne for the sake of your child. I told them the story of the captain of the King's Guard who confessed to treason and was imprisoned in the mines of Sorel to save his son, who ten years later freed him.'
'You said a word over and over again. 'Majorontai'.' Finnikin gasped as she cooled his brow with some of the water.
'The slave girl,' she responded quietly.
'She belonged to them?' Trevanion said.
'No. Perhaps another tribe,' Evanjalin replied. 'But she was from these parts and was stolen by the merchant ships and taken to Sorel by the traders.'
The chieftain spoke, and Evanjalin nodded. 'They want us to follow them and get some rest,' she said.
'Can we trust him?' Trevanion asked.
'If they wanted to kill us, they would have done so by now.'
'What did you tell them, Evanjalin?' Finnikin asked.
'I told them the truth,' she said quietly, turning to Sir Topher. 'Make sure we honor Lumatere's recognition of autonomy in the south, sir.'
'But who's in charge in the south?' Sir Topher asked.
'I have a feeling we will find out soon,' she said.
Finnikin fought hard to keep his eyes open. The face of a young spirit warrior appeared above him, beside Evanjalin. The warrior spoke and handed her another flask, and she nodded before turning her eyes away from Finnikin's.
'Hold him down. Don't let him go,' he heard her say quietly.
He couldn't keep count of how many hands held him down as Evanjalin poured a thick substance into his mouth. It gurgled as his body thrashed and convulsed, wanting to reject it. Then one of the warriors reached over and pressed his fingers hard into the wound at his side until finally he slipped into unconsciousness.
When he woke, it was dark. Finnikin knew he was no longer lying in the clearing. He could hear the sounds of the nocturnal world combined with the spirits of the past as they screeched and moaned and possessed the night. They were not the familiar noises of the woods of the north. This was old country. Finnikin felt the icy breath of its ancestors on his face.
'Evanjalin,' he whispered, his lips dry. He heard a rustle, and then she held a flask of water to his mouth.
'Are you in pain?' she asked.
'More nauseous than anything,' he murmured. 'How long have I slept?'
'All day and half of this night. Sir Topher and Froi are sleeping.'
'My father?'
'Pacing.'
'And the spirit warriors?'
'Watching you. This is their settlement. Their women and children are upriver.'
Finnikin raised himself and saw the faint glow of hundreds of pale bodies surrounding them.
'They guard you until your body has rid itself of the evil spirits you consumed in the river.'
'So the evil didn't come from the arrow in my side?' he asked dryly.
'Your wound is superficial. The infection, however, would have killed you within a day.'
She wiped his brow, and he found himself fighting the urge to slip back into sleep. 'Tell me about the slave girl,' he said drowsily.
Evanjalin was silent, and for a moment he thought she was not going to repond.