and jumping and Froi was scared he'd crack one of the priest-king's ribs because the priest-king was skinnier than him. And Evanjalin sat and watched with her arms around her body to keep it warm and he knew by her shivers that she would be next. And when she looked at Froi's face she didn't pretend. She just bit her fist to keep herself from crying and then the priest-king stopped breathing for a moment and something inside Froi hurt in a way he couldn't explain. 'I fink you should use magic.'
Evanjalin's lips were dry and flaking and her skin looked a funny gray color and there was sweat all over her forehead that made it shiny. She looked almost dead, but she could still send him a look so evil that it made him flinch.
'I've told you before, Froi. I don't have magic!'
She coughed and it sounded like there was all this vomit in her throat and it made him sick to listen to it and more scared than he had ever been in his life.
'You're cursed,' he said. 'Him too. Survives the camps for years and years and survive everyfink else between. But it's fever you die from. Two days' ride from homeland.'
And she cried. He had seen her shout with rage and had seen tears in her eyes over and over again, but he had never seen her cry properly and it made her look pathetic and helpless as she bent and put her head in her hands, all the while coughing stuff out of her mouth.
'In Lumatere, the novices of Sagrami would mix herbs found in the Forest and bring people back from near death with the fever,' she told him.
'Then do somefink.'
'I don't know how,' she cried. And he didn't know what to say to make her feel right so he walked to the other part of the barn. And began to pretend.
Later, they both sat by the priest-king who grabbed Froi's hand in his, all oldlike, with its veins and scratchy skin.
'I dreamed last night, Froi,' he whispered through dried-up lips, 'that you were holding the future of Lumatere in your hands.'
'Only saying that 'cause you dying.' Froi scowled.
Evanjalin elbowed him to be silent. Then the priest-king closed his eyes, and she dragged Froi away to the corner of the barn where he could smell horse shit and he knew that if the captain or Finnikin or Perri were around they'd tell him to make himself useful and clean it up.
'When people are dying, you don't tell them,' she hissed angrily.
'What about the truf Finnikin always goes on about?'
'There are different types of truth, Froi. Let the priest-king tell you whatever he wants. So when he says you'll hold the future of Lumatere in your hands, nod. Agree.'
'We all be dead soon.'
She looked at him long and hard. Sometimes he thought he hated her the most because it was as if she could read inside his head. The others pretended that deep down he wasn't bad. That he didn't come from evil. But she knew. She saw the badness. She saw it now and she shivered. He didn't know whether it was because of the fever or because she knew what he would do, but there was an understanding in her look.
'Go,' she said tiredly. 'Save yourself. It's what you want to do. And if you have any heart, find Finnikin and Captain Trevanion and Sir Topher. Walk to the crossroads and wait for someone to come riding by to take you west to the inn on the main road to Sendecane. There's not much else out there, so you will find them. Tell them we have the fever.' She reached into her pocket and held out the ring. 'To save you the trouble of stealing it from me.'
He hated her for knowing he would.
'I have a plan. But if I fail, the priest-king and I will be dead by the time you return. Make sure we are buried. By Finnikin. At an altar made to the goddess complete. With his blood sprinkled on the rocks, which will guard me in death. Do you hear me, Froi? It's all I ask of you.'
She stumbled back to the priest-king and put her hand on his forehead. 'Hold him up,' she ordered as he moved behind the priest-king's head.
'A joy,' the old man murmured. 'To die in the arms of the future of Lumatere.'
Froi nodded. 'I agree.' He looked at Evanjalin to see if he had said it right, but she just whispered to the priest-king that she had a plan and the priest-king would need to stay alive.
Later, he watched from the window as she stumbled into the woods with a dagger in her hand and then he looked back at the priest-king as he slept, the death rattling his breath.
'Fink I would have liked to hear you sing that song,' he said, leaning over the old man.
Then he walked away. And as he went through that meadow where the grass grew to his armpits, he felt a strange feeling inside of him that he had never felt before. Like someone had punched him in the stomach and he was all mashed up in there.
He didn't believe in fate and destiny and gods and guides. He didn't believe in people or goodness or love or what was right. But he understood survival, and at the crossroads, where he thought he saw the sign to Belegonia he knew he could return to the towns they had passed, full of rich people careless with their coin purses and their goods. His life would go back to the way it was before he saw Evanjalin in that alley in Sarnak what seemed like a lifetime ago. But no one had ever taught Froi the difference between left and right and south and west, and later when he rode with the toothless man in his two-horse cart and realized he had taken the wrong turn, he tried to convince himself that maybe he would have made that decision to find the others along the western road. And when fate had the toothless man stopping at the inn where the captain and Finnikin and Sir Topher and Moss and Perri and three others sat, staring at one another as if they had seen things that made them dead inside, he blurted out the words. 'She ask me to come fetch you. To bury them.'
Perri stared at him as if he knew the badness that lurked in Froi because Perri was dark himself. But it was Finnikin he tried not to look at, except he heard something come from him that sounded like some wild animal and then Finnikin said her name and as long as Froi was alive he had never heard a word said with such pain and he knew he never would again. The captain told Moss and Sir Topher and the two other guards that they would meet in the valley where their people waited, while Perri and Finnikin and Froi traveled with him to bury the priest-king and Evanjalin. Froi liked the way the captain included him, so he did more pretending. Evanjalin said there were different types of truth, so he showed them the truth of what he could have been rather than what he was. He climbed onto Finnikin's horse and he clung on to him and sometimes he thought Finnikin would tumble off dead because it was as if he had stopped breathing for all that time. He heard Finnikin pray to the goddess that if she spared Evanjalin's life, he would always ask her for guidance. Never doubt her again. Lead Lumatere wherever she believed it had to be led. Finnikin's head was bent low over the horse and he kicked its flanks hard and Froi had never clutched the body of one who felt so much but it reminded him of the time when he had tried to take Evanjalin in the barn. Both times the touch of their bodies had burned him, but this time something entered his bloodstream.
Planted a seed.
And this is the way Froi of the Exiles remembered that moment they entered the golden meadow that hurt his eyes but made him dream of all things good. On one side of the path was a stone fence half-covered with overgrown weeds. On the other, olive groves with pomegranate and apple trees mixed. And there in the middle stood the priest-king like one of those ghosts who appear in dreams and Froi saw Evanjalin in the high grass, her face pale but not with death or fever. She wore flowers in her hair and Froi liked the way their stems fit into the bunch of hair beginning to stick out of her head. And when Finnikin grabbed her to him and buried his face in her neck and then bent down and placed his mouth on hers, the others pretended that there was something very interesting happening in the meadow. The priest-king even pointed at the nothing they were pretending to see. But Froi didn't. He just watched the way Finnikin's hands rested on Evanjalin's neck and he rubbed his thumb along her jaw and the way his tongue seemed to disappear inside her mouth as if he needed a part of her to breathe himself. And Froi wondered what Evanjalin was saying against Finnikin's lips when they stopped because whatever the words were it made them start all over again and this time their hunger for each other was so frightening to watch that it made Froi look away.
When Evanjalin almost fell down with weakness, Finnikin picked her up and carried her to the barn and he lay her down, all gentle-like, and then they listened to the soft tone of the priest-king's voice, which always made
