When it was finally over and Trevanion stared into the face of the impostor, he wondered how such a pitiful human being had created such despair in all their lives. It had been his order to keep the impostor and nine of his men alive, but he fought hard against the urge to plunge his sword into this man's heart.
'Trevanion,' Finnikin said quietly as one of the guards threw the prisoners into the back of a cart, their mouths gagged, their hands and feet chained. Trevanion knew that every member of his Guard itched to snuff the life out of these bastards.
'Don't worry, Finn. They'll get there alive,' he said soberly. 'Perhaps just not in one piece.'
When he returned to the palace village, the dead and dying had been dragged into the main square. Villagers tended the wounded, and Trevanion suspected they had emerged from their cottages in the darkest part of the night, when the battle had raged at its worst. Now the world was silent, but for the sounds from those who lay dying. This was no place for triumph or celebration.
'Captain, you wounded,' Froi said, following Trevanion as he weaved his way toward Perri.
'How many lost?' Trevanion asked Perri.
'Too many,' Perri muttered. 'The impostor king?'
'Imprisoned in the palace with the rest of his scum,' Trevanion said, looking at the wretchedness around him. When he asked about the queen, he could sense Froi's anxiety, almost as if the boy had stopped breathing.
'With those from the cloister of Sagrami,' Perri said quietly.
'We need to count them,' Trevanion said, gesturing to where the dead had been laid out at the edge of the square.
Froi's expression was one of acceptance. 'I know. Make myself useful and count the dead.'
Trevanion grabbed his arm. 'A sorry task. Mine, not yours. Return to the Valley of Tranquillity and tell Sir Topher that Lumatere is free from the impostor king. Then find the priest-king and bring him home.'
Trevanion looked over to where August of the Flatlands sat with his head in his hands, between the body of his sister's husband and Matin, one of Augie's men. He remembered the excitement that night in Augie's home, the bantering and the fierce friendship between these kinsmen. The key Matin had showed him. 'It is the key to my house in Lumatere,' he said. 'I keep it in my pocket at all times as a reminder that I will return one day.'
Trevanion had seen Saro fall, as well as Ced, one of the younger guards. Ced had been the first into the palace grounds and the first of his men to die. Ced, the last of a bloodline. Already Trevanion felt their absence from the earth. In the makeshift morgue, he closed the eyes of one of the men they had rescued from the Charynites on the river not even seven days past.
And then Trevanion saw her. When the sun began to appear in the blood-red sky as Lumatere continued to burn. She stood with fresh linens in her arms at the edge of the square. Between them lay rows and rows of corpses and the wounded she had come to tend.
A child was by her side, a miniature Beatriss, with eyes the color of the sky.
He thought of the child they had created together, the child who had died in the palace dungeons where the impostor king was now imprisoned. His face reflected the rage and hatred he felt toward those who had taken so much from him.
And Beatriss of the Flatlands saw the fury as he looked at her child.
Saw the hatred.
And quietly she covered the child's eyes and walked away.
Later, Trevanion returned to the foot of the mountain, where the Monts were collecting their dead. With a sickness in the pit of his stomach, he went searching for Finnikin. He found him with Lucian, sitting alongside Saro's body, their heads bent with exhaustion and grief. Both stood when he reached them, and Trevanion placed his hands on Lucian's shoulders, kissing him in the Mont tradition of respect.
'The last thing we spoke of, Saro and I, was how blessed we were as fathers, and the joy and pride we felt in our sons, Lucian.'
Lucian nodded, unable to speak.
'I need to take my father home,' he said finally.
'I will have the Guard take care of that, Lucian.'
'No. I will carry my father home now. So I can lay his still warm body on our mountain. It's all he spoke of these past ten years. Returning to his mountain.'
Finnikin crooked an elbow around Lucian's neck and pressed the Mont's forehead against his face. Then Trevanion stood by his son as they watched Lucian tenderly lift his father's body and carry him away.
'Will you come with me to the river?' Trevanion asked. Most of the Monts, except those tending the dying, had left.
Finnikin nodded listlessly. He was numb as he followed his father. In the morning light, villagers had appeared as if from nowhere. It was eerie to see so many faces, yet hear no sound. They looked different from the exiles. No better or worse, but damaged all the same. He wanted to feel a sense of home, as he had always dreamed he would. Lumaterans were connected to the land, yet he feared the dislocation for him would last forever. He had once read in a book from the ancients that one could never truly return home after years of absence. Was he cursed with such a fate?
He swung onto the back of Trevanion's horse, and they rode through their smoldering land, following the waterway that wound through the Flatlands, where the blackened stumps and leafless trees looked like skeletons, specters of death. Cottages were burned to the ground, and the barges on the river were nothing more than black pieces of timber floating on stagnant water. Finnikin sat on the banks with his father. Above them in the Rock Village, Lumaterans emerged in the hundreds.
'Tell me,' Trevanion said, his face blackened with ash and streaked with blood. 'At the gate with Evanjalin? What took place?'
'Isaboe,' Finnikin corrected quietly. He rubbed his eyes, wondering when everything would stop looking blurred. 'She lied.'
There was silence before his father spoke. 'The queen omits rather than lies, Finnikin. For a purpose. One that will humble us each time. I feel shame that I can hardly remember the child who grew up to be the novice Evanjalin. I remember the older princesses and Balthazar, but not the little girl.'
'She omitted. Walking the sleep was not the only part of the gift. Or curse.' Finnikin laughed bitterly. 'Oh, to have such a gift. To sense the pain every single time a Lumateran suffers. She feels every death, every torture, every moment of grief. And when she walked the sleep of those inside, it was not just that of our helpless people.' He looked at his father. 'She walked the sleep of the assassins,' he whispered, his voice catching. 'Those of the impostor King's Guard who were Lumateran.'
Trevanion cursed.
'The king died last. They made him watch, and what they did to those princesses and his queen I will never repeat as long as I live. But Isaboe knows, for she walked the sleep of a monster who was witness to it, and if I could have
Trevanion watched Finnikin, unable to offer any hope. That men could conquer kingdoms and fight armies of such power and might, yet not be able to offer comfort to one so beloved. Where Finnikin's wish was to have the power to remove the ugliness of memory, Trevanion's was to have the gift of words needed to bring solace to his son.
'Finn, look,' he said after a while. 'The river's beginning to flow.'
As Trevanion and Finnikin rode back into the palace village, the first exiles from the Valley entered Lumatere through the main gate. Froi was leading the priest-king, and the silence of those walking into the kingdom seemed strained.
Lumaterans stared at each other as strangers. Those who had tended the injured within the palace grounds walked to a nearby hill and watched the procession of exiles coming toward them. Finnikin and Trevanion swung off their horse and made their way between the villagers. Finnikin could hear Trevanion's name being whispered. And his. They must have looked frightening with their knotted hair and blood-soaked clothing. Beside him, he heard a sharp cry, and a moment later he was jostled out of the way by one of the women. She stood on her toes, her neck outstretched as she searched through the exiles coming their way.
