Froi of the Exiles

‘What is it?’ he asked, grabbing his trousers and beginning to dress.

She peered out. ‘It means Gargarin’s on the balconette.’

From where they stood, Froi couldn’t see Gargarin next door, but he saw the dark shape standing at the godshouse balconette across the gravina, the Priestling illuminated by a lantern he held in his hand.

‘It’s what the brothers did last night, and you’ve seen them first thing in the morning. One comes out first and then the other. They don’t speak. They haven’t for such a long time, you know.’ She opened the balconette door. Gargarin was exactly where she said he’d be.

‘Sir Gargarin, is it true that my mother Lirah took a dagger to your chest today?’ she asked, as though it was the most natural thing to ask.

A woman knifed Gargarin. Froi was intrigued and impressed.

‘True indeed,’ Gargarin said.

‘Thankfully she missed your heart.’

‘Many have said it’s in the wrong place anyway, so it was a blessing for me,’ Gargarin said.

‘Poor Lirah.’ Quintana shook her head with dismay. The way she said the words was very dramatic, as though she was in pain.

‘Poor Lirah? What about poor Gargarin?’ Froi said. ‘How did this happen?’

‘Gargarin went to see my mother, Lirah, who’s imprisoned just there across the way,’ she said, pointing up to the prison tower beside them. ‘Lirah managed to retrieve a dagger from her guard and plunged it into Gargarin’s chest.’

Quintana’s tone was as matter-of-fact as the one she used to instruct Froi on how to make shadow puppets.

‘Never thought you were the type to summon such passion from a woman, Gargarin,’ Froi said.

But Gargarin wasn’t listening and Froi followed his gaze across the gravina.

‘Blessed Arjuro!’ Quintana called out with a wave, as if greeting a neighbour. ‘Blessed Arjuro,’ she called out again, just in case he didn’t hear her holler the first time. Blessed Arjuro was either deaf or rude.

She sighed with disappointment. ‘I call out to him each morning, Sir Gargarin, and he gestures with his finger but won’t say a word.’

‘Gestures?’

Quintana imitated what she saw and Froi laughed.

‘That’s not a gesture,’ Gargarin said. ‘That’s just Arjuro.’

‘He was imprisoned here when I was a child,’ she explained to them both. ‘When I was six years old they took him out of the dungeons and chained him to a leg of my father’s table.’

‘Where is your father?’ Froi asked boldly. ‘I’ve not seen him at all. An introduction would be most appreciated.’

‘Some say my father’s not even in the palace,’ she said, nodding at his surprise. ‘There are assassins everywhere,’ she added in a whisper, but her attention was back on the Priestling, Arjuro.

‘Back then, Arjuro was needed to translate the words from The Book of the Ancients. My father and Bestiano believed it could break the curse of the lastborns. I’d come to visit often in the days they allowed me to see my father.’ She waved to Arjuro again, but was ignored. ‘I don’t think he remembers me, Sir Gargarin.’

‘I can’t imagine him forgetting, Princess,’ Gargarin said gently.

Froi stared across the gravina. If Arjuro of Abroi had been chained to a desk in the King’s study, he would know the chamber intimately. He could be the best chance Froi had to get inside. Below where they stood, Froi could see a piece of granite, a natural extension of the stone wall, jutting out from the palace, extending almost halfway across the gravina, as though a hand was reaching out to touch the godshouse wall. As dangerous as it looked, Froi knew it wasn’t impossible to leap from the granite and catch hold of the trellis opposite. But Froi also knew he would never be able to attempt such a leap in the dark. He would have to wait for the early morning.

Back in the Princess’s chamber, Froi lay down beside her and blew out the candle. ‘Don’t feel much up to anything tonight after all this excitement of Gargarin being knifed by your mother.’

‘My mother, Lirah,’ she corrected.

‘Yes, that’s what I said.’

‘Then it’s best you return to your room. We’re not used to waking up with someone in our bed.’

Froi thought of Bestiano outside. Was he waiting for Froi to leave so he could enter?

‘Might just stay here for a while.’ Froi knew it would change little. Bestiano would still come to her chamber long after Froi had left the palace.

The Princess didn’t argue and he heard her shallow breathing and realised that she was asleep.

He woke to a hand splayed across his face and a quiet little snore. He picked up the hand and placed it back on her side of the bed, only to notice a white jagged line across her shoulder. He reached over to touch it and she flinched, suddenly awake and moving away.

‘What happened there?’ he asked, trying to ignore the fact that he was facing the mood of Quintana the ice maiden and not the Princess Indignant.

Her stare was hard, her eyes no longer a strange brown, but the colour of basalt.

‘Dagger,’ she said.

He tried not to show his surprise. ‘It’s a pretty impressive wound. Want to see mine?’ He began to pull up his shirt.

She made a face of irritation. ‘You’re not trying to show me something I don’t want to see, are you?’

He revealed the scar on his chest received the year before when one of the traitors attacked. She stared at it and then shrugged and showed him an even more impressive scar on her upper thigh.

‘Clumsy girl,’ he reproached, reaching out to touch it. She gripped his fingers and twisted them, nearly breaking one.

‘Let go or you’ll force me to say ouch,’ he said, calmly.

‘Not clumsy at all,’ she said, letting go, and this time she sounded insulted. ‘Out of the sixteen assassination attempts, only eight managed to leave a scar,’ she added. ‘Although I do swear that my hearing hasn’t been the same since the ninth assassin hollered Long Live Charyn in my ear. You’d think that if someone is going to kill you, they’d be quiet about it.’

He waited for the laugh to tell him that it was all said in jest. But there was none. The ice maiden did not have a sense of humour.

‘Sixteen?’

She showed him the remaining scars quickly, practically, and in the order they were received.

‘Were you scared?’ he asked some time later, after a pathetic attempt to match his scars with hers had failed. Quintana of Charyn’s body was a map of hatred.

This time she stared up at him. ‘What a question to ask. Of course we were scared, you fool. How can one not be scared facing death?’

Froi saw anguish in her expression.

‘It’s not in us to be brave. We’re not the bitch Queen of Lumatere whose people worship her for her bravery. But I’ll tell you this, Olivier. If the gods can keep us alive until we birth the cursebreaker, then we will die without shame. What is it you called us on Sir Gargarin’s balconette? Useless.’

He was suddenly uncomfortable at the memory of his cruel words, but he had no idea how to apologise for them without being ripped apart by her stare.

Instead, he leaned on his elbow and looked down at her, not quite sure how to speak his next words.

‘Does … Bestiano believe that the lastborn male will provide the seed?’

She didn’t speak aloud, but he caught a grimace and her lips curled with hatred. ‘I’m trying. I’m trying,’ he thought he heard her mutter. It was as though something or someone was in control inside her.

‘Or does he believe any man can break the curse?’ Froi persisted. ‘Lastborn or not?’

He marvelled at her resolve not to look away and his heart began to batter against his chest because there was something so dark in her stare. Froi would always, always be drawn to darkness.

‘Bestiano is a man,’ she said, her tone frigid. ‘And no man we have ever encountered in this palace believes