Quintana of Charyn

‘Can you keep us informed of the “somethings”?’ Gargarin said sharply.

‘I reveal information when it needs to be revealed,’ Froi responded.

‘There is no army for us here,’ Perabo said, and Gargarin gave a sound of frustration. ‘But I can take you to one.’

‘Where?’

‘North,’ Perabo answered. ‘Two days’ ride beyond the great lake of Charyn.’

Chapter 22

When five sacks of barley arrived on the mountain on a horse and cart from Lord Tascan’s river village, it caused more interest than Lucian cared for. At first, one or two of the Monts stopped their midday work to watch the sacks being offloaded outside Yata’s residence, but then Lucian’s kin began arriving in clusters of interest and intrigue, and by midafternoon there was no more work to be done on the mountain, just a whole lot of observations and opinions and rubbish.

‘Enough now. Back to work,’ Lucian ordered.

‘It’s a dowry,’ Jory said.

‘A what?’ Potts asked.

‘A dowry.’

Everyone turned to look at Jory, who was nodding with certainty, his stare fixed on Lucian.

‘Lord Tascan is offering you five sacks of grain as a dowry for Lady Zarah. That’s what this is.’

‘And what do you know about a dowry?’ Lucian asked, irritated because suddenly everyone was fascinated by what Jory had to say.

‘Phaedra,’ Jory said. ‘She explained them to me. The way I understand it is that if I want to betroth myself to a girl, her family will offer me something to take her off their hands.’

Lotte sniffed. ‘Oh, sweet Phaedra,’ she lamented.

‘Which I didn’t understand really, Lucian,’ Jory continued, ‘because wouldn’t Phaedra have been enough of a gift?’

Was there a challenge in his young cousin’s stance? Had Lucian been as obnoxious and bursting with all that thumping boy-blood energy when he was fifteen? He was sure he hadn’t. All that pent-up emotion that pointed down to one area of a lad’s body. Thankfully spring was coming. The Mont boys had been confined too long.

‘He’s right,’ Cousin Alda said.

‘I’m going to have to agree,’ Lucian’s uncle said.

Hmm. Yes, yes. Everyone had to agree. Everyone. Nothing better than a good death to create such affection for a Charynite.

‘Enough,’ Lucian snapped, well and truly sick and tired of it. All this talk of Lady Zarah and the two visits she had paid to the mountain had driven him to madness. Or was it Phaedra in the valley who had driven him to madness?

‘Let’s just agree that Phaedra was a gift and maybe I could have treated her better and kept her on this mountain and taken care of her like she deserved to be taken care of, the way men take care of women in all … ways, but the past is the past and we move forward!’

The Monts were gaping. Even Yata. Had he revealed too much?

‘No, I mean I agree about the fact that the sacks of barley are Tascan’s attempt at a dowry,’ Alda said.

Lucian watched Jory hide a smirk.

‘You can’t accept the barley, Lucian,’ Yata said practically. ‘Finnikin has chosen you as judge of the crop for market day and to accept five bushels of barley at this point from one lord over another will cause a feud.’

Wonderful. Now Lucian was going to be responsible for civil war in Lumatere.

‘But sending it back will seem an insult,’ Potts pointed out. Potts always pointed out facts with no good solutions.

‘A humiliation of Lord Tascan,’ one of the aunts said. ‘Imagine the sacks arriving back on his doorstep for the whole kingdom to see. The river lot don’t know how to keep their mouths shut.’

‘True, true,’ Lucian said, ‘and the gossip will spread like plague.’

‘Sweet Phaedra,’ Lotte cried. ‘Taken from us by a plague.’

‘Lucian! Respect.’

Perhaps a wrong choice of word.

‘If Lord Tascan is insulted, there goes our exchange of pigs for crops,’ Alda said, irritated. ‘Don’t ruin this, Lucian!’

Everyone agreed that Lucian would ruin this.

‘Diplomacy is needed,’ Jory said.

‘You know what that means, do you?’ Lucian demanded. It was Jory who had started all this talk of dowries.

‘I didn’t,’ his young cousin said, ‘until Phaedra told me about it. “Diplomacy is better than war,” she would say.’

‘Phaedra’s not here!’ Lucian shouted.

Lotte cried into her apron and Lucian was the target of much headshaking and disgust.

The sacks of barley and Lotte’s crying and Jory’s smugness haunted Lucian all the night long.

‘So what would you do?’ he demanded out loud, as if Phaedra was in the room.

I’d be diplomatic, Luc-ien. And I’d do the right thing.

He fell asleep to those words and woke to them the next morning and found himself at Yata’s, where the sacks of grain were exactly where he had left them in the courtyard. He fought himself not to kick them hard for being the cause of a sleepless night.

From her kitchen, Yata knocked at the window and beckoned him in.

‘You are so hard on yourself, lad,’ she said when he was seated at her table drinking warm tea.

He could see outside the window where the mountain looked sublime with its crawling fog. On the slope close to his cousin Morrie’s home, Lucian saw a goat’s black face among the sheep. Beyond that were Leon and Pena’s vineyards. Sometimes Lucian forgot the beauty of his mountain, but here in Yata’s kitchen he truly understood why his ancestors had built the compound on this slope. So they could see their people.

‘Every decision I want to make hurts someone I love,’ he said. ‘Every decision I don’t make hurts someone I love. Fa never had doubt. Never.’

Yata sat before him. ‘On the day Saro decided to take us down that mountain and outside the kingdom walls during the five days of the unspeakable, he wept at this very same place you’re sitting now. Some of the Monts were furious. They weren’t going to leave their homes and Saro had to decide whether to stay or leave them behind. I asked him what his heart said and he didn’t hesitate. “Keep the Monts together, regardless of anger and resentment. Keep them together.”’

And his father did just that.

‘What does your heart say, Lucian?’ Yata asked. ‘You’re not torn about the barley. It’s more than that.’

Lucian and Isaboe and any of the cousins would agree, they could hide little from Yata. He sighed.

‘Half of my heart says it would be so simple to share what we’ve got here with the Charynites in the valley. But the other half of me says I don’t want to share it with the enemy and then I have to work out who the enemy is. I mean, look at what we have,’ he said, pointing outside at the lushness of their mountainside, even in this winter haze. ‘And look at how little they have down there. And why don’t I care?’

Yata gave a laugh. ‘Well, from where I’m sitting, it looks as if you do care, Lucian,’ she said. ‘Too much in one place, not enough in another, and wouldn’t it be simple if we shared? It’s that way across this land and it’s been that way since the beginning of time. Yes, it would be so simple to share. But there’s