Froi of the Exiles

shook his head with bitterness. ‘To this day, I’ll never truly know what I would have done if fate had not stepped in.’

He looked at Lirah. ’You were my fate, Lirah. Firstly, because of your screams. I thought you were birthing your child, but now I know you were waking up with the Oracle’s daughter in your arms instead of the son you had seen. Your pain penetrated those walls and while the King and his guards left the chamber, I found myself alone with the child I was ordered to kill. Not a minute had passed when I heard a sound from the bed where the dead Oracle lay beneath the sheet. Dead from childbirth. Unbeknownst to the King and his men, between her thighs lay a second girl whose first breath had been her last.’

Froi saw a flash of pain cross his face.

‘There were three babes born in the palace that night. Lirah’s son and the Oracle’s twin daughters.’

Quintana rocked back and forth. Lirah was too stunned to offer her comfort and Arjuro looked so ill that Froi thought he’d throw up at any moment.

‘And as fate would have it again, strange lonely Rafuel came searching for one lost kitten to add to the litter in his basket. So I took my chance and placed the living child amongst them. Into the hands of an eight-year-old boy who had never known love except for those damned cats. Then I carried the Oracle and her dead child to the balconette and I gave the child a name. To my shame, I had no idea what the Oracle’s name was. All I prayed for was that you managed to call out her name to the gods, Arjuro, from where they had shackled you on the opposite balconette to watch. So that her spirit could find her child at the lake of the half-dead and take them both home.’

Arjuro shook his head. ‘Oracles didn’t have names. To call an Oracle by her name would make her human and we were never to see her as human.’

So the Oracle Queen and her dead child were to be separated for eternity.

Quintana’s face was transformed into an expression of sadness beyond belief. She shook her head. Froi couldn’t speak, could hardly breathe from knowing how close he had come to death the day he was born.

‘What did you name her?’ Lirah asked. ‘The dead babe?’

‘Regina,’ Gargarin said quietly. ‘The babe was the daughter of the Oracle Queen so I felt she deserved the name of royalty.’

Froi heard Arjuro’s sharp intake of breath. The Priestling’s eyes were fixed on Quintana with a mixture of horror and intrigue.

‘You were born first,’ Arjuro said quietly.

‘My son was born first,’ Lirah said. Froi noticed that both Lirah and Gargarin spoke about their son as though it was someone other than Froi.

‘But not to the palace,’ Arjuro continued. ‘He may have been born in the palace, but not to it. The only children fathered by the King belonged to the Oracle, the woman he violated the night he and his men slaughtered the Priestlings and blamed it on the Serkers.’

Arjuro’s eyes were still fastened on Quintana.

‘Two children would be born to the palace,’ he said. ’And the one born first would end his reign.’

Froi recognised the soothsayer’s words. The King’s dream.

‘How did you kill him?’ Arjuro asked Quintana quietly.

Froi saw Gargarin and Lirah’s confusion and felt his own. But Quintana seemed to know exactly what the Priestling was asking, for she neither argued, nor feigned innocence.

‘The Provincari said that the Guard searched you thoroughly,’ Arjuro continued.

‘Arjuro?’ Gargarin barked. ‘What are you saying?’

They waited and waited. But Arjuro refused to respond.

‘The assassin taught us how to kill a man in five seconds,’ Quintana said. ‘And the circumstances demanded that I did.’

‘Sagra!’ Froi said, stunned.

‘Where did you conceal the dagger?’ Arjuro asked. He stood and walked to where she sat upright against the wall and crouched before her. ‘Where?’

She leaned forward whispering, ‘I don’t want Lirah to hear this, blessed Arjuro.’

‘Why not?’ he whispered back, fascinated.

‘It will upset her. We don’t want to upset Lirah. I believe that the last time Lirah became upset, her Serker blood helped curse the kingdom.’

‘Arjuro will tell me anyway, Quintana,’ Lirah said.

They waited, Arjuro still before Quintana. She looked past him to Lirah.

‘There’s little that can upset me now. You know that,’ Lirah prodded, but Froi could see she was lying. Lirah seemed frightened of what she was about to hear.

‘We never had a dagger,’ Quintana said. ‘But we knew where Bestiano kept his hidden.’

‘How?’ Gargarin asked.

‘Because when he came into my room those nights he would always remove the dagger before … but he would leave the scabbard. He never took it off. Never.’

There were tears in her eyes. ‘Never. And it chafed my skin each time and I’d say, Bestiano, it hurts.’

Quintana stared back at the only mother she had ever known and Froi saw on Lirah’s face a look of fierce anguish. It spoke of heartbreak and guilt and rage and Lirah shook her head, not wanting to believe, tears spilling down her cheeks. Her consolation for this strange daughter all these years was that the lastborn males hadn’t hurt her or taken her by force. But she had never imagined the King’s Advisor would believe he could father the first.

‘I insisted on the guards searching Bestiano, knowing they wouldn’t. He saw the King most days, so why search him now? But the damage was done because I’d put doubts in the heads of the Provincari who were witness to it all.

‘And so I walked into my father’s chamber, shut the door, and to Bestiano I did what the assassin told me to do. Render a man useless with a knee between the legs. And then I grabbed his dagger from its scabbard and I walked to my father and I plunged it into his side.’

Froi saw the vicious little teeth clench in victory as she remembered the moment. ‘ “That is for my mother!” I said, and then I twisted the blade, “And that is for Lirah of Serker.” Then in the third second I cut him from ear to ear, “And that is for the people of Charyn!” Only then did I cry bloody murder. “Bestiano has killed my father!” ’

They all stared at her, speechless. Quintana gripped Arjuro’s hand.

‘My mother is lost, blessed Arjuro, never to be reunited with her daughters,’ she said. ‘The only place she’ll find us will be in our dreams.’

Arjuro pressed her hand to his lips. If there was one person he had adored in this world apart from his brother and De Lancey, it was the Oracle.

‘If it’s the last thing I do in this mortal world, Your Highness,’ he said, his voice ragged, ‘I will find her spirit and call her home.’

Quintana leaned forward, her lips close to the Priestling’s ear. ‘If the assassin comes near us or the little King, will you help me cut out his heart, blessed Arjuro?’

Arjuro turned to meet Froi’s eyes. ‘Yes, I think I’d have to.’

The next day, Froi returned from his surveillance to find Arjuro and Gargarin waiting for him in the outer cave. Today it had been too dangerous to venture close to the stream and he had to be satisfied with berries as his pickings.

‘She believes she’s with child and that you’ve been sent to kill the heir to Charyn,’ Gargarin said tiredly.

‘Yes, we’ve already established that,’ Froi said. ‘Are you telling me you believe her?’

‘I don’t know what to believe, except that the most useless girl in Charyn has managed to do something that most men have failed at, including the both of us. So I’m going to have to be less sceptical about her ramblings in the future.’

Froi couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He turned to Arjuro.

‘So now you think she’s the answer to Charyn’s dreams as well?’

Arjuro shrugged. ‘There’s nothing like a bit of patricide and regicide to convince me of someone’s