Froi felt studied. It was a habit these Charynites had. Lirah’s Serker stare was hard and vicious.
‘Olivier of Sebastabol,’ he said, bowing.
She gave a laugh of disbelief. ‘You have the eyes of a Serker, Olivier of Sebastabol.’
‘Those from Serker no longer exist.’
‘This one does and she recognises the eyes of a Serker lad.’
‘Between you and Gargarin and Quintana when she’s in a mood, I’m beginning to feel most unloved in Charyn.’
This time she flinched. Was it at the mention of Gargarin’s name?
‘In Charyn?’ she asked. ‘You speak as though you’ve just arrived in your own kingdom.’
‘I meant in the Citavita,’ he corrected.
Froi looked out. The battlements of his tower seemed close enough to leap across. But the towers he suspected to be the King’s were too far away.
‘Have you used force with her?’ she asked bluntly.
Froi bristled. ‘What makes you think I’m the sort who uses force?’ he demanded.
‘Because I grew up with Serker pigs such as yourself. It’s in the blood,’ she spat.
‘And is it in the Serker blood for the women to be whores?’ he taunted.
‘Oh, we’re all whores in Charyn, Olivier,’ she mocked in return. ‘In some shape or form.’
She went back to her planting and he watched her dig into the soil and press the roots of the plant down.
‘It will die, I tell you,’ he snapped. ‘I know the cratornia. It will not survive in so small a plot.’ She looked up, surprised, and after a moment she pulled it out slowly and deliberately, holding it up. He searched the garden and pointed.
‘By the bristle tree,’ he suggested.
She shook her head. ‘So he knows his bristle trees,’ she said, half to herself. But she refused to look up again. One would think she’d crave company, but Lirah of Serker seemed to want him to disappear.
‘You’d best be gone,’ she said, dismissing him. ‘I can imagine that the climb down is worse in the dark.’
Froi was kept prisoner until the next afternoon and on his release was confined to the chamber he shared with Gargarin.
‘Happy that you irritated Bestiano?’ Gargarin asked, not looking up from where he was scribbling furiously.
Gargarin’s sketches carpeted the floor and were strewn all over Froi’s cot.
‘You couldn’t come and release me?’ Froi grumbled.
‘Why would I want to do that when I had peace and quiet for at least a day?’
Gargarin discarded yet another page with frustration, dipping his quill into the ink pot to begin again.
‘You may as well tell me about them,’ Froi said. ‘You know you’re dying to.’
A moment passed and Gargarin looked up. After seeing Arjuro, Froi found it strange to face this man.
‘You know much about water, I presume?’ Gargarin asked. ‘Because a lad from the shipping yards of Sebastabol would be an expert.’
‘Ships? Water? There’s a strong connection in my mind. Anyway, what’s there to know? Charyn’s cursed. You either get too much rain and it floods the plains, or not enough, which causes drought.’
Gargarin studied him, eyebrow raised. ‘You? As in the rest of Charyn and not you, Olivier?’
‘Words,’ Froi scoffed. ‘Are they so important?’
‘Isn’t the Princess waiting for you?’ Gargarin said.
‘Which one? I’ve now met them all,’ he said, studying the maps and plans on his cot. Froi had never seen such a grand plan. Water meadows, larger than he had ever seen, and giant human-made rivers and lakes. He came around to where Gargarin sat and looked over his shoulder.
He pointed to an area beyond the planned water meadow. ‘What about these villages?’
‘The floodings of the last couple of years have crippled the farmers,’ Gargarin said. ‘Before that we had years of drought. The gods are determined that nothing is to grow in Charyn and I’m determined to challenge them on that. We need to find a way to harness this water in the rainy season so we can use it during the drier months. If we build troughs to collect the rainwater in the drier areas, the soil could stay moist all year long.’
‘So you send it in different directions.’
Gargarin nodded. ‘We set a water course. It’s in the books, Olivier. In the books the Ancients wrote.’ The man’s eyes shone with excitement. ‘They are hard to translate, but not impossible. If they could do it thousands of years ago, so can we.’
Froi thought of Lord August and his despair at the first year of too much rain.
‘What would make them easier to translate?’ Froi asked. ‘The books of the Ancients, I mean.’
Gargarin’s expression closed again.
‘The gods’ touched have a better chance. I can only understand so much.’
Someone such as Arjuro, the gods’ touched Priestling. Froi looked down at where the goose quill was twisted around Gargarin’s fingers.
‘You speak, I draw,’ Froi instructed.
They fought the whole afternoon. Gargarin spoke too fast and would change his mind the moment Froi drew his instructions, but Froi kept up and when they were finished, he had never seen plans with such ambition and … hope. He wanted to steal them away in his pack and return with them to Lumatere, place them in Lord August’s hands and say, ‘My gift to you for giving me a home.’
That night he couldn’t go through the ritual with Quintana of feigning impotence or listening to prophecies about seeds needing to be planted, so he remained in his chamber.
‘You spoke of a bond,’ Gargarin said in the dark as they both lay in their beds. His voice was soft, but there was a powerful resonance to his voice. It made Froi forget the limp and the awkward arm.
‘You don’t believe in them?’ Froi asked.
‘Not bonds drawn up by other men. I write my own bond.’
‘What if I trust those other men with all my heart?’ Froi asked quietly.
Gargarin sighed. Outside, the shadows played across the gravina onto the godshouse wall.
‘Dorcas was taken out of his province when he was thirteen. He’s been here eighteen years and knows nothing but how to follow a bond to his king and Bestiano. He trusts them with all his heart.’
There was silence for a moment.
‘I fear I’ll die at the hands of someone like Dorcas. A man with no ideals of his own, but another man’s bond to follow,’ Gargarin said.
‘I fear that I will do something to bring harm to those I love,’ Froi said. ‘So I follow their rules to ensure that I won’t.’
‘But what if you bring harm or fail to protect those you don’t know? Or don’t love? Will you care as much?’
‘Probably not.’
‘Then choose another bond. One written by yourself. Because it is what you do for strangers that counts in the end.’
The next morning, as Froi watched the ritual between the brothers across the gravina, he felt a fierce affection for the two fools.
He followed Gargarin for the rest of the day. He wasn’t in the mood to face Quintana and he decided to wait until Princess Indignant reappeared. That morning at breakfast, her stare had been cold, and after meeting Lirah, Froi understood where the coldness came from. He noticed that when the cold Quintana appeared, there was no upheaval over breakfast. Yet, apart from a snarl escaping her lips once or twice, no one seemed to notice the change. Except for him. It was that point, which he found unsettling. The Princess Indignant irritated him, amused him, exasperated him. But cold Quintana unsettled Froi. The beat of his heart would skip in her presence.
So he followed Gargarin, despite the fact that Gargarin did not want to be followed.
‘My duty was to bring you as far as the palace,’ Gargarin snapped when they reached yet another twisting flight of stairs that opened up to a small alcove. From there they could see up to part of the battlement of the next tower. Lirah’s prison. From this angle, Froi realised it was indeed an easy leap from their own tower to her garden.
