He looked at Isaboe. ‘I’m breaking an unspoken confidence here, Your Majesty.’
‘There are many unspokens between you and Tesadora, Perri,’ she said firmly. ‘I’d advise you one day to speak them.’
He sighed and for a moment Finnikin believed Perri wouldn’t continue. But they waited.
‘Almost nineteen years ago, she was with child.’
Finnikin heard the sharp intake of Isaboe’s breath.
Perri nodded. ‘So we played a game of pretence that we lived a normal life. I spent every spare day with Tesadora in the forest. We started planting gardens and building a cottage. She told no one about the babe, of course. At that time she was estranged from her mother and from every Forest Dweller. They did hate Tesadora for her mixed blood.’
‘Why estranged from her mother?’ Isaboe asked.
He looked up at her, a rueful expression on his face. ‘Because Tesadora believed Seranonna loved the royal children more than her own half-Charynite bastard. They had a strange relationship, Tesadora and Seranonna, but she still grieves her mother today. That I know.’
‘And the babe?’ Isaboe asked quietly, her hand absently going to her swollen belly.
‘I came home to Tesadora one time nearing her ninth month and she told me there was no babe. She had bled and it was gone.’ He shook his head bitterly. ‘And I … I accused her of killing the child. The only thing that stopped me from harming her was a promise I made to the Captain that I would never strike a woman. I felt it so strongly. In my heart she hadn’t just killed our babe, she had killed the life I wanted with her. So I made sure I never crossed her path again … until six years later.’
The days of the unspeakable.
‘After the deaths of your family, my queen.’
Perri seemed to be in another place. Every Lumateran had their own horror-filled memory of that time.
‘Regardless of what I thought Tesadora had done, I couldn’t bear the idea of watching her burn like her mother, so I travelled out to the forest and found her in a hiding place. One only known to us. She had gone searching for any survivors and found the helpless novices of Sagrami.’
Perri had hidden them across the kingdom and close to the Sendecane border, the first of many to keep them safe.
‘We spent another ten years apart during the curse and for all that time, I still believed she had done something to that babe. That she didn’t want a child with my savage blood. But when we all returned here with Froi, the strangest thought occurred to me. It was during those times I’d take Froi out to the Forest Dwellers. His bond with Tesadora was strong, in a strange way. He had the same shaped eyes. More than anything I … I felt something strong towards him and I knew she felt it as well and I started to believe …’
‘… that he was yours?’ Finnikin asked.
Perri nodded. ‘Strange, but yes. I convinced myself that all those years ago she had given birth to a child and perhaps passed it on to a traveller. Eighteen years ago in this kingdom it wasn’t rare for the forest to be a path for foreigners. I didn’t know what to think with Froi, except I honestly believed he was ours.’
‘Until we interrogated Rafuel of Sebastabol in the spring?’ Finnikin asked.
Perri nodded. ‘When he told the story of their day of weeping.’
There was bitterness and self-disgust in his expression.
‘Tesadora had spoken the truth. And, of course, meeting Gargarin of Abroi and Lirah of Serker confirmed that Froi didn’t belong to us.’
‘And when you finally spoke of it, what did she say?’ Isaboe asked.
He shook his head with regret. ‘We never spoke of it. Now all I feel is shame and confusion. She would have been … broken after the loss and I broke her even more. At the time she lost the child, she had no one. I try hard not to speak ill of the Forest Dwellers. Most of them are dead and I’ll never forget the way they died. It took me a long while to get the stench of burnt flesh out of my head. But they treated her poorly all her life. Even before we were at war with Charyn, they hated the idea of tainted blood. Her mother made no apology about the foreigner she had taken as a lover. The way the Forest Dwellers saw it, Tesadora didn’t belong to them … she still feels it, and it pains me.’
He looked up at Isaboe. ‘I want her to be happy … yet I’ve never known her to be so confused and sad … and euphoric at the same time as she is now. And it’s all about you … and the Other.’
Isaboe stiffened. ‘You met her?’ she asked. ‘Quintana of Charyn?’
He nodded.
‘And?’
Perri retrieved an envelope from his pocket.
‘It’s for the Priestking … from Tesadora. It speaks of strange things.’
Isaboe stared at it and then retrieved an envelope from her pocket.
‘It’s the letter Finnikin gave me from Froi to the Priestking. I’m presuming no less strange.’
Perri handed his letter to Isaboe and she placed the two together.
‘Describe it,’ she said quietly. ‘You feel it, as well. Whatever Tesadora feels for the girl, you do, as well.’
Perri looked away.
‘I won’t judge you,’ Isaboe said.
He grimaced. ‘It’s a recognition of … I can’t explain. It’s as if I know her, not in the realness of our world, but in here,’ he said, pointing to his chest. ‘The way I believed I knew Froi.’
Isaboe stared at the letters, her fingers tracing the writing on both envelopes.
She looked up, and Finnikin saw tears in her eyes. He knew she missed both Froi and Tesadora.
‘I get a sense that the Priestking knows more than he’s let on,’ she said. ‘It may be quite a supper we have tonight.’
It was late in the night when Isaboe retrieved the two letters and handed them to the Priestking. They had enjoyed a simple meal with Abian and August, and Finnikin was grateful for their presence in his family’s life. With them, he and Isaboe weren’t the Consort or Queen. They were the children of people once loved by these friends. Tonight there had been talk of the dead King and Queen that brought a laugh, instead of tears.
‘We should go,’ Abian said, understanding that the letters meant palace business.
‘No,’ Isaboe said. ‘Stay. This concerns Froi … and Froi concerns you.’
The Priestking spent some time reading the letters while Jasmina slept in Abian’s arms and Perri and August found more candles to light the room.
Finnikin took the time to look around the house that once belonged to Beatriss. It was as if it was always meant to be a house of learning. Once or twice he had attended a lecture here with Sir Topher on rhetoric and dialectics. When Celie of the Flatlands was home weeks ago, Finnikin had accompanied her to an Osterian godling’s lecture on philosophy. But they had a long way to go in their plan to create lessons for the young. Their greatest obstacle was convincing Lumaterans of the worth of their children learning when they believed they were better put to use on the farm or in the quarry on the Rock. Neither Finnikin nor Isaboe wanted the school filled only with the children of nobility. It was not what they wanted for Jasmina.
Back in the solar, the Priestking spread out the parchments on the bench. Finnikin could see the markings copied from Quintana of Charyn’s neck and those from Froi’s skull. The words differed, but the lettering style was similar. They belonged together in a way that the lettering on Phaedra and the Charyn Princess’s nape didn’t.
‘Here are the similarities in Tesadora’s account and Froi’s,’ the Priestking finally said. ‘A woman travelling the same road as Froi tells him that the spirit of her half-dead child lives within him. Her husband makes mention that she bled a child on the day of their weeping.’
He pointed to Tesadora’s letter. ‘A woman in our valley is suffering melancholy because her connection with a young girl who travelled to the valley has been severed. We assume the girl was Quintana of Charyn. The woman, according to her husband, bled a child on the day of weeping.’
He looked at Perri. ‘Tesadora is told by Quintana of Charyn that the half-dead spirit of Tesadora’s child lives within her. Tesadora bled a child on the day of their weeping.’
Abian’s reaction was much the same as Isaboe’s. A sorrow for Tesadora beyond words.
‘Are they possessed?’ Abian asked when she was composed. ‘Tesadora and the women?’
The Priestking shook his head. ‘I need to look into this more, but no. I don’t think so. And it’s not just the
