Gargarin was silent.
‘Ah,’ she said nodding, ‘You’re testing me. You want to hear it from me first, in case you think I’m influenced by your words.’
‘Perhaps we’re testing ourselves,’ Arjuro said. Even after a day or two, his eyes were bloodshot and swollen from having read the words of the gods in their purest form.
Quintana tilted her head, studying Arjuro’s face.
‘It doesn’t hurt so much to read if you go like this,’ she explained, squinting fiercely. Froi heard Arjuro chuckle.
‘Wish I had been told that long ago,’ he said.
This time it was Quintana who was silent.
‘What did you see written, Princess?’ Gargarin asked again.
She looked up at Lirah who nodded with encouragement.
Arjuro and Gargarin let out ragged breaths in unison. Gargarin placed his head in his hands.
‘I didn’t know you were bastard twins,’ Froi said, confused.
‘We’re not,’ Arjuro said. ‘You are.’
‘What?’ Froi was on his feet, staring at Quintana, horrified. ‘We’re twins?’
‘Calm yourself,’ Arjuro said condescendingly. ‘The Princess is the bastard child of the Oracle and the King. You’re the bastard child of these two. Born almost at the same moment in the same palace.’
Froi was still confused. ‘I don’t understand what it means by “when the bastard twins are one”.’
‘And if you don’t understand it, fool, I’m not explaining it to you,’ Arjuro said.
‘Joined,’ Gargarin explained instead. ‘
‘Oh,’ Froi said, his face flaming again. ‘You mean when we …’
‘Swived,’ Quintana said. ‘I do remember the exact moment when we became one because I –’
‘No need for detail, Quintana,’ Lirah said. ‘Remember what I told you. If you talk of such things, you’ll only be judged by strangers.’
The atmosphere in the cave changed the moment Quintana did. Her stare towards Lirah was bitter. Froi could see the others were uncomfortable with this Quintana. They liked the indignant Princess and she knew it.
‘We’re judged by strangers now, Lirah,’ Quintana said coldly.
Arjuro moved closer to her. ‘May I?’ he asked. She nodded and he sat before her. ‘Do you know where she is?’ he asked quietly.
He was speaking of his beloved Oracle.
‘When I was a child I told Lirah that I knew a way to see my mother and for Lirah to see her beloved boy waiting for us in the lake of the half-dead. So I ordered Lirah to cut our wrists in the tub.’
‘Gods,’ Gargarin muttered. Lirah looked away, the memory so painful.
‘But Lirah saw nothing and came back half-mad, so they placed her in the tower.’
‘And you?’ Arjuro asked, hopeful. ‘You saw the Oracle?’
Quintana looked up at him and shook her head.
‘No. She never reached the other side. Sir Gargarin told us that he didn’t know her name, so how could she find her way?’
Her eyes stayed on Arjuro. ‘But we sensed a part of her across the gravina, blessed Arjuro.’
‘Is that why you wanted to throw yourself in?’ Arjuro asked. ‘So you could be with her?’
‘Throw ourselves in?’ she asked, astonished. ‘Why would you think such a thing? We wanted to enter the godshouse. We sensed our mother’s happiness there. Her scent. Her voice. It’s where she dreamt and those dreams still hovered in the air. We tried over and over again to speak to you about allowing us in, but you didn’t seem to hear us. Sometimes, we’d try to get as close as possible to the godshouse across the gravina, but we were afraid to leap.’
Arjuro looked down, shamed.
‘But when I visited the lake of the half-dead that time with Lirah, we did return with a spirit. I didn’t realise who that was until you told us the story of our day of weeping, Sir Gargarin.’
She didn’t speak and they all waited, desperate for more answers.
‘Princess?’ Gargarin prodded, gently.
Froi recognised it clearly. There was talk in her head. He recognised it in the way her face twitched and flinched. She mouthed words, but they heard nothing.
Lirah reached out a hand to touch Quintana’s mouth.
‘Don’t let this kingdom turn you into a voiceless fool, brave girl,’ she said. ‘Speak.’
Quintana’s eyes refused to meet any of theirs. Was it her madness that she was trying to conceal?
‘One of us returned,’ she whispered, ‘with the spirit of the sister who died.’
Froi saw his own confusion reflected on Gargarin and Lirah’s face. But not Arjuro’s.
‘Which of you is Quintana and which one is the sister?’ the Priestling asked.
She shook her head.
‘I don’t know any more,’ she said. ‘I don’t know who I am without her and she doesn’t know who she is without me. We don’t know who came first. All we know is that we share … we share …’ She leaned forward to whisper. ‘We share the one who may have cursed the kingdom. Lirah says they called us the little savage in the years before she drowned us and that everyone approved of who came back from the dead, because we were tamed.’
Arjuro was entranced with the story. ‘Go on,’ he said, with a reverence Froi had never imagined he would possess for anyone, let alone the daughter of a hated King.
Quintana thought for a moment. ‘We came back with the words I wrote on the chamber wall. That the last will make the first. And I waited all these years for the one to plant the seed and sire the cursebreaker and future king.’ Her eyes met Froi’s over Arjuro’s shoulder. ‘He arrived in the form of an assassin from an enemy kingdom. When I woke up that next morning after he had planted the seed, I knew that the King had to die.’
‘Do you honestly think that I would bring a child into that palace after everything my father allowed to happen to me?’
‘Smart girl, my love,’ Lirah said.
‘I tried to tell the street lords in the Citavita that day of the hanging. But no one would believe me. Except for Tariq and the people of Lascow. It was his idea that we wed. He said it would protect my son’s right to the throne even more.’
She looked up at Gargarin. ‘I’m the Queen of Charyn, Sir. A powerless Queen except for what I carry in my belly. In less than seven months time I’ll give birth to the little King. Tariq said you, Sir, are to be my son’s First Advisor. Until then, he’s mine to protect and whatever part I took in cursing Charyn at my birth will not compare to what I’ll do if anyone attempts to destroy me before then.’
She directed those words at Froi with venomous certainty.
He couldn’t think and he needed to count because Froi’s bond to Lumatere was that he’d destroy anything that was a threat to his kingdom. She was a threat. The child she carried was a threat. His child. His seed.
In an instant, he shoved the others aside and was there before her, dagger in hand.
‘Use it!’ he hissed, grabbing her hand and closing it around the handle of the dagger. He pressed the blade against his throat. ‘If I’m a threat, use it the way I taught you.’
‘Froi?’ Gargarin barked. Lirah and Arjuro tried to drag him away, but he shoved free of them, a wild animal.
‘Do it,’ he whispered hoarsely, his face close to Quintana’s. ‘Do it if you fear me!’
