Finnikin of the Rock

understand. Everyone but Evanjalin. The Yut girl came to administer oil to his sunburned skin. Her fingers were gentle and her smile warm.

When Froi entered, Finnikin knew that the thief had only volunteered to bring him food so he could enjoy a reprieve from the sun. 'Make yourself useful and bring Evanjalin to me,' Finnikin said firmly.

'Not moving,' Froi muttered.

'Who's in charge here?' Finnikin asked. 'Me or you?'

There was a sneer on the thief's face as he made himself comfortable. 'I fink she is.'

Finnikin dozed and awoke to see Evanjalin kneeling beside him, unwrapping the gauze from around his wound. There was an unbearable stench from the secretion, but she worked quietly. He could feel the warmth of her hand as she pressed the balm into his side, and although it stung, it was the type of pain he felt he could endure for as long as he had to.

But still there was not a word from her.

She spread the oil on his burned skin, but this time did so roughly, unlike the gentle Yut girl. Finnikin tried not to flinch, but inwardly he cursed her. When she went to stand, he gripped her wrist and pulled her back to him.

Her eyes met his for the first time since she had entered the tent, and he saw her fury. 'Let go of my arm!'

'Why are you angry?' he asked. 'It is not my fault that I'm wounded.'

'I'm angry because you are stupid.'

'Stupid?'

'Do you not understand the word?' she asked, and then repeated it in Sendecanese, Sarnak, Charyn, Osterian, Belegonian, Yut, and Sorelian, with a few dialects thrown in.

Now he was furious. 'Be careful who you call stupid. I wasn't the one who stood out in that clearing and put my life at risk! And by the way, you speak Sendecanese like an amateur. Everyone knows that the c is pronounced with a th sound.'

'Stupid,' she seethed slowly in Sendecanese, 'is when you climb the mast of a worthless cog when your father has told you to swim to the bank.' She pulled her arm away. 'It's not heroics we need, Finnikin. It's courage.'

'Stay,' he insisted.

'Perhaps the Yut girl can keep you company,' she said coldly. 'Sir Topher is eager for me to play the game of kings with him tonight, and I do not want to keep him waiting.'

'Sir Topher has always conceded that when it comes to the game of kings, there is no one better than me,' Finnikin boasted.

She stood, her expression haughty. 'I suggest you ask him if he feels the same way tomorrow.'

The next day, they continued their travels across the grasslands toward the first of the rock villages. Once or twice Evanjalin checked Finnikin's wound, and despite her aloofness, he found himself telling her stories of his own rock village. Although she said nothing, she stayed by his side, and a few times he caught her smiling. The Rock people were the most eccentric of Lumatere, and their close proximity to each other meant there were no secrets among them, although inside their homes, they hissed and muttered about their neighbors. When he relayed the story of his great-aunt Celestina's feud with the pig man over a recipe for pork pie, Evanjalin laughed openly. She, however, told no stories.

'Have you forgotten your childhood in Lumatere?' Finnikin asked quietly when the guide signaled they were close to the fort.

'No,' she said. 'I remember every single moment and will until the day I die.'

They entered the village early that evening. The fort had been built high on a rock face in an attempt to protect it from northern invasion. It was linked to four other villages that stretched for twenty miles along the Skuldenore River.

From the foot of the rock, between two village huts, a stone stairway ascended to the fort. They climbed until they reached a retractable bridge that led to the entrance, a large iron gate. As they walked single file along the bridge, Finnikin took in the lookout post above them, where two men stood, their bows trained on the group. Directly in front of him, he could see arrows protruding from rectangular slits in the gate. If they had been the enemy, he knew they would have been shot down before the first arrow was pulled from their quivers.

Their guide spoke, and the iron gate opened. They walked through the entrance and were led up more stairs of stone. Flies, thick and large, buzzed around their heads.

When they were face-to-face with the true king of Yutlind Sud and his son, Jehr, Finnikin was surprised by how ordinary they looked. There was always such worthless pomp and ceremony in the royal courts of other foreign kingdoms. The Belegonians and Osterians were the worst for pageantry. The boy smiled at him, his teeth startlingly white. Finnikin felt a sudden kinship and returned the smile. Jehr beckoned him to follow and Finnikin held out his hand to Evanjalin.

From the lookout post, Finnikin could see a cave at the far end of the rock face on the other side of the valley. Jehr began to speak.

'From that cave a watchman with a horn can hear the other watchman stationed in a lookout farther downstream,' Evanjalin translated. 'It's how they warn each other of danger.'

Jehr pointed to Finnikin's bow and arrow and then pointed to his own. He grunted something, and Finnikin looked at Evanjalin for an explanation.

'He wants to compete.'

Jehr muttered something else to her, and she rolled her eyes. 'Who can cast ten arrows first,' she said. 'Remember your wound, Finnikin.'

Finnikin nodded at Jehr, and despite his injury, they spent the rest of the evening competing, almost equal in their speed and skill. It came to an end when their fathers arrived and the king bellowed and knocked their heads together for wasting ammunition.

Finnikin and Jehr continued their rivalry by comparing the scars on their bodies.

'Turn the other way,' Finnikin said to Evanjalin, showing Jehr and Froi the scar on his thigh from his pledge with Balthazar and Lucian.

Evanjalin spent the rest of the evening refusing to translate.

Talk of rebels farther down the river forced them to stay in the rock village for a few nights. Throughout the day, Finnikin watched his father pace like a caged animal, prowling around the parameters of the village as if he were unable to get enough air. Finnikin spent his time with Jehr, Froi, and Evanjalin, perched on a flat wedge of rock jutting out over the river. Jehr taught Froi how to shoot an arrow, and among them all they chose a mark to see who could hit it first.

'I'll be king one day,' Evanjalin translated for Jehr. 'Of Yutlind Sud. I'll live down in that castle and your king will come to visit.'

Jehr looked at Finnikin and said something to Evanjalin, but she shook her head.

'What did he want to know?' Finnikin asked.

'If you were the heir. He thinks you are and that we're keeping it from them.'

The boy spoke again, and this time her face turned pink and she looked down and shook her head, again with no explanation.

'What did he say?' Finnikin asked.

'It is not important.'

Finnikin looked at Jehr, who was staring at her, watchful interest in his eyes.

'Did you tell him you belong to our king?' Finnikin snapped.

'I belong to no one!'

The anger simmered between them as Jehr glanced from one to the other.

'Ahh,' the boy said, nodding as if he had worked something out.

Evanjalin yelled a few words to the boy's father, who was leaning over the parapet nearby. Jehr groaned and failed to duck as the king grabbed both his head and Finnikin's and knocked them together. Jehr muttered something to Finnikin, and, whatever it was, Finnikin glared at Evanjalin and agreed wholeheartedly.

'Teach me their language,' he asked later as they lay in the dark cave alongside the others except Trevanion, who slept outside on the rock face. Finnikin could smell the mixture of cow dung and dirt that covered the ground near their heads.