Froi of the Exiles

The Queen looked at Finnikin. Froi saw fear in Isaboe’s expression that sickened him. The Queen’s anxiety about a possible attack from the Charynites had grown tenfold since the birth of her child.

‘You go with your father and Perri,’ she said to Finnikin.

Finnikin looked torn. ‘The Sarnak Ambassador –’

‘I’ll speak to the Sarnak Ambassador,’ she said.

‘No!’ Finnikin shouted.

‘And what would you prefer?’ she asked him sharply. ‘That I travel up to the mountain and interview a potential Charyn assassin?’

‘I’d prefer that Aldron takes you and Jasmina back to the palace,’ Finnikin said. ‘I’ll speak to the Ambassador, shorten our meeting and then travel up to the mountain.’

‘And while you’re at it, why don’t you plough every field in the kingdom and check the nets in the river?’ she said, sharply. ‘Then go up to the Rock quarry and break your back working alongside your kin. And perhaps work in the mines after that.’

She was no different from Finnikin. Froi knew everyone in the room wanted to say that. Both the Queen and Finnikin refused to believe they had the privilege of palace life and both could be found at any time working alongside their people during their visits across the kingdom.

‘I don’t want you dealing with the Sarnaks, Isaboe,’ Finnikin said. ‘Don’t let me have to imagine how it will feel for you to be in their presence.’

‘And it feels any different for you?’ she cried. ‘You can’t be everywhere at the same time, Finnikin. I will take care of Sarnak. They are no threat to us. You take care of Charyn and perhaps sometime this week we may be able to pass each other on the road and wave from a distance.’

Finnikin sighed and Froi watched the Queen’s expression soften.

‘This is an attack from the Charynites, my love,’ she said. ‘Heed my words. This is the beginning.’

Chapter 2

Finnikin watched Isaboe from the entrance of the dining hall of the inn where she sat alongside Sir Topher and their Ambassador. Standing behind Isaboe was her guard Aldron and opposite was the Ambassador of Sarnak, his scribe and two of his Guard.

The atmosphere in the room was strained. The Ambassador of Sarnak was used to speaking to Finnikin about matters between the two kingdoms and Finnikin was used to keeping his wife from having to deal with Sarnak after what she had witnessed there in her fifteenth year.

‘Come, Finn,’ his father said quietly at his shoulder. ‘Lucian is waiting for us.’

Finnikin wanted to stay a moment longer. Isaboe had faced more hostile opponents since she came to power, but this was different.

The Sarnaks waited for her to speak. Finnikin imagined that her silence spoke of an arrogance to the visitors, a sort of play to show who had the power in these negotiations. But he knew what her silence meant.

She looked up and caught his eye. It wasn’t magic or curses, this thing that lay between them. It was more profound than that. He couldn’t even put it into words and at times it made him want to walk away and take refuge from the ties that bound them both.

I can do this, he read in her eyes.

You can do anything, he was saying in return. But I wish you didn’t have to.

‘My queen,’ Sir Topher prodded gently.

She nodded in acknowledgement. ‘Gentleman,’ she began, her voice husky but strong. She had a habit of changing her words moments before a speech. Today seemed like one of those times.

‘To be honest, these days I don’t know what to say,’ she continued. ‘You see, our daughter is almost two years old and she is speaking up a storm. I know the time will come when she’ll ask questions. And I won’t know what to tell her.

‘When she asks why we don’t sleep in the larger chambers of the palace, will I find the words to tell her the most heinous of stories? That thirteen years ago, when I was a child of seven, assassins came into those rooms and murdered my father and my mother and my precious older sisters. She’ll want to know how I survived and perhaps I’ll have to hide the truth. You see, my brother Balthazar and I were doing the wrong thing that night. The only truth I may be able to tell Jasmina is that her uncle would have been a great king if he had ever lived beyond his ninth birthday, but that he died saving me from the assassins who found us in the Forest of Lumatere.’

She stopped, unable to go on.

Look at me, Finnikin begged her with his eyes. Look at me and I’ll give you the strength.

‘She’ll be so sad, Jasmina will be,’ she continued. ’You see, she likes her stories to be magical. At the moment her favourites are about rabbits that speak and horses with wings that take her across the sky to her favourite friends in the kingdom.’

A ghost of a smile appeared on her lips as she looked at the Sarnak Ambassador across the table.

‘You have a grandson yourself, Sir?’

Finnikin watched the Ambassador nod.

‘They do love their tales of wonder,’ he chuckled.

‘But my tale has little such wonder,’ Isaboe said. ’I’ll have to tell her that I ran for my life and wasn’t there to see the days of the unspeakable that followed, but that her father recorded the events in his Book of Lumatere: stories of good people who turned their backs on their neighbours, because they needed someone to blame. Stories of how her pardu, Trevanion, was accused of treason and sent to a foreign prison, separated from her beloved father who was no more than nine at the time. She’ll weep for her grandfather and for the sorry truth of how he believed that his love, Lady Beatriss of the Flatlands, had died in a filthy dungeon giving birth to their dead child, moments before she was to be burnt at the stake.’

Finnikin heard the low intake of ragged breath from his father. Hearing his name and that of Beatriss would have told Trevanion enough despite his ignorance of the Sarnak language.

‘And then the hardest part will be explaining Lumatere’s curse, for curses are not the easiest things to explain to a child: how half the kingdom was trapped inside the walls, while the other half walked the land in exile for ten long years. She’ll have to speak to Lady Beatriss to hear the depravity of what took place inside these cursed walls. How the impostor King and his army, trapped by the curse themselves, forced themselves into the beds of our women, hanged the children of men who chose to rebel, and burnt down our land over and over again.’

The Ambassador bowed his head. He was a good man. Finnikin had come to realise that these last three years of negotiations. But goodness in a man was not enough when it came to appeasing a kingdom that had lost so much.

‘Both my king and I will have to tell our daughter what happened to our suffering people who travelled from kingdom to kingdom in exile. Begging for sanctuary.’

Her eyes fixed onto the Ambassador of Sarnak and Finnikin shuddered at the force of her memory. ‘Begging your kingdom for sanctuary, Sir.’

Her voice broke.

‘Give me the words, Ambassador,’ Isaboe pleaded. ‘Give me the words to explain to my child the fate of three hundred of our exiles from her grandfather’s village, who had taken refuge on your river bank. Although I was there to witness it, I still cannot find the words to explain what happens when a king turns his back and allows his people to do as they please. Give me the words to describe the mass grave her father saw at the crossroads of Sendecane. What a fever camp looks like where bodies are piled onto each other in a pit, as I witnessed in Sorel.’

The tears pooled in her eyes, but Finnikin saw triumph in them, as well.

‘Knowing Jasmina, she’ll make me repeat over and over again the story of her father climbing a rock to find me at land’s end,’ she continued, her dark gaze looking over the Ambassador’s shoulder and fastening onto Finnikin’s.