What would Lucian’s father have done? About Orly’s prized bull? And the Mont lads running riot? And the Charynites in the valley? And the wife he sent back? And the fact that everyone in the kingdom had an opinion of what Lucian of the Monts was doing wrong? What would he have done about the loneliness that woke Lucian each day before dawn?
Except this morning, when it was Orly’s neighbors who woke Lucian before daybreak to tell him about the bull running riot across the mountain.
“Every night, Lucian. Every single night that blasted idiot of a bull gets out, and if I see it again, I’ll kill it,” Pascal said when Lucian managed to pull the animal out of Pascal’s wife’s rose garden.
“You’ll do no such thing, Pascal,” Lucian said with much patience. “I’ll speak to Orly.”
Splattered with mud and bleary-eyed, Lucian dragged the bull back to Orly.
“Do you honestly think I wouldn’t check and recheck the latch each night, Lucian?” Orly said as they studied the pen to determine how the bull could have escaped. “Do you honestly think this bull stood on his hind legs and unlatched the gate himself? Find the culprit and lock him up with that Charynite, or I’ll find him myself and cut off his legs so he’ll be running away from me on his stumps.”
“You’ll do no such thing, Orly,” Lucian said, looking from owner to bull. They strongly resembled each other, and Lucian didn’t want to cross either of them. He waved to Orly’s wife, Lotte, hoping to make a dash for it, but Lotte wanted to stop and talk.
“He’s awfully precious about that bull, Lucian,” she said with a sniff, as they stood outside the cottage watching Orly sing soothing words to the bull. “He won’t even allow my Gert to breed with his Bert. Enough is enough, I tell him.”
Gert was Lotte’s cow, and Lucian knew this because when both cow and bull went missing they would hear, “Gert, Bert, Gert, Bert,” hollered in a singsong through the mountains at any time of the morning; Lotte’s high-pitched Gert followed by Orly’s grunting Bert.
“Honest to our precious goddess, Lucian, if he doesn’t change his ways I’m going to pack up my things and go and live with your yata.”
“You’ll do no such thing, Lotte,” he said. “Orly wouldn’t know what to do without you.”
“Fix this, darling boy,” Yata said later, handing him a mug of hot tea. “Because if Lotte comes to live with me, I’ll pack up my things and move down into the valley with Tesadora and the Charynites.”
“You’ll do no such thing, Yata.”
“You know what I say,” Pitts the cobbler said as Lucian handed him a pair of boots to mend. Pitts waited for Lucian’s response, and despite the fact that Lucian didn’t think a response was required, he responded all the same.
“What do you say, Pitts?”
“I say, it’s one of those thieving, stinking, gods-less Chary nites down in that valley. Round them up, I say, and I’ll fix them all for you.”
“I’ll do no such thing, Pitts.” Lucian sighed. “And I think they have more gods than we can poke a stick at.”
Then there was the matter of the lads who snuck down the mountain for half the night and were too tired to work for their ma and fa most the day. Lucian had faced them all that afternoon and tried to look stern.
“We want to keep an eye on Tesadora and the girls,” his cousin Jory said. He was fourteen years old this spring, a thickset lad with a stubborn frown and the leader of the lads.
“And what is it you do down there?” Lucian asked. Jory was his favorite and showed great promise as a fighter.
“Make sure they don’t come up here and rape our women because theirs are so ugly,” another cousin said, and the lads laughed.
“Men don’t rape women because their women are ugly,” cousin Jostien said, but there was a protest at his words. “That’s what my fa said! He says that inside their hearts and spirits they are nothing but little men who need to feel powerful.”
“I’ll tell you what else about Charynite men is little,” another called out, and they all tried to outdo each other with their boasts about their own big ‘swords of honor.’ ”
There was something about the lads and their words that made Lucian uneasy, but lads were lads and he had walked away, firmly reminding them that work was not going to be done with all of them standing around.
Most days he went to see the Charynite, Rafuel. A calmer man he had never encountered, despite the circumstances of his imprisonment.
“Can I at least have something to read?” the Charynite asked.
“Strangely, we don’t have many Charynite books on the mountain,” Lucian said, sarcasm lacing his voice. “And we’re not here to make your life more comfortable.”
Usually he checked the prisoner’s shackles for infection around his wrist and ankle.
“You don’t have someone else to do this?” Rafuel asked. “One would think a Mont leader had better things to do.”
“A Mont leader does have better things to do,” Lucian murmured, not looking up from his task, “but every man and woman on this mountain who volunteers to check your shackles is usually armed with a dagger and my queen is very particular about who gets the pleasure of stringing you up if Froi doesn’t return, Charynite.”
And then it was late afternoon and the day had passed with nothing really being accomplished. That was Lucian’s problem. It’s what plagued his thoughts as he traveled to check on Tesadora and the girls. Lucian hadn’t spent three years failing. He had spent three years accomplishing nothing.
But the journey down the mountain calmed him, despite his day. As a child, Lucian had traveled with Saro to the closest Charynite province of Alonso no more than three times, but the valley between them had always fascinated him. Lucian caught sight of the gorge below. On the side where the mountain met the stream was woodland and a world that looked easily like Lumatere. But on the other side of the stream was a strange landscape of caves perched high. Thousands of years ago, when there were no such things as kingdoms named Lumatere and Charyn, travelers from Sendecane had settled here and carved their homes out of the granite made soft by rainwater over the ages.
But then for hundreds upon hundreds of years, the valley was uninhabited. The settlers either moved west to Lumatere, or east to Charyn. Because the stream belonged to the mountains, the valley was said to belong to Lumatere, and the boundary between both kingdoms was determined farther downstream, where the water became a trickle.
In the accounts collected by Tesadora and the girls in their chronicles, most of the cave dwellers claimed that they had once belonged to the smaller provinces of Charyn. These provinces had been all but destroyed during the years of drought and plague. Some of the larger provinces had gone as far as building a wall around their region. It was to protect their people from both the king and the threat of being overcrowded by their landless neighbors.
Now here these people were, living off the fish in the stream and supplies sent grudgingly by the province of Alonso and weekly bread sent down from Lumatere. Lucian knew the provincaro of Alonso kept these people fed so they wouldn’t return to his province and cause him more misery among his people. But he also knew that his father had enjoyed a strange friendship with the provincaro. Would he have helped Sol of Alonso in spite of everything?
“What would you have done today, Fa?” Lucian whispered, because sometimes he truly felt his father on this mountain slope. “About Orly and especially the lads? Would you have backhanded them with their talk of rape and women? Or are they just lads being lads?”
Lucian tied up his horse at Tesadora’s campsite, where a large tent was pitched between a thicket of trees. If not for the branches, those in the caves would be able to see where Tesadora and her girls slept at night. It made him furious just to think of what the men could do by merely crossing the stream.
He reached the stream and could see the Charynites up in their caves looking down at him suspiciously or lining up to have their details recorded by Tesadora’s girls. Farther along, Phaedra of Alonso was bent over in what looked like a vegetable patch and was speaking to a man and a woman.
“Tell them not to plant their seeds, Phaedra,” Lucian barked out. “They’re not here to stay, so there’s no need for scattering them.”
Phaedra and the couple stood up for a moment, and he watched as Phaedra spoke to them. They crouched back down again. Cursing, Lucian crossed the stream, knee-deep in water. When he reached them, Phaedra stood there, cowering as usual.
“Luci-en, this is Cora and her brother Kasabian.”
Cora and Kasabian seemed the same age as his father had been when he died.
“Lucian,” he corrected with irritation.
Cora gave Phaedra a shove, and Phaedra retrieved a piece of parchment from her sleeve and passed it to Lucian with a trembling hand. He read it, shaking his head.
“You want grain? Why, when we give you bread?”
“We’d like to make our own bread, Lu-cion … cien … shen.” She turned away miserably, and the woman nudged her again. “Yours is strange and round. Ours is flat. And if we could grow our own herbs to make pastes, we’d be most appreciative. Your food is making us ill. All those turnips.”
“It’s fine for a Mont,” he said. “And how many times do I have to say no planting!” he snapped as he watched a number of others squat at the vegetable garden that looked a ridiculous mess anyway. These people knew nothing.
“They’re not planting,” Phaedra said. “We had set up a number of vegetable patches along this stretch, but …”
She stopped a moment.
“But what, Phaedra?” he said. “Speak. It’s as though I’m talking to an idiot!”
The man, Kasabian, spoke quietly. Just one word.
“What did you say to me?” Lucian asked, stepping forward and towering over him.
“What I said was, ‘Enough,’ ” Kasabian said quietly. “Enough.”
With a withering look, Lucian made sure the man knew who had won this round. He walked away, toward Tesadora and the girls. While two of their companions recorded the names of those standing in line, Tesadora and Japhra beckoned the people to where they could be checked for illness. The Chary nites were cautious and looked frightened.
Lucian held out his hand for the Charynite chronicle of names and particulars. He counted two hundred and forty-four people so far, and knew that each day more would arrive, looking haggard and weary, not a smile among them. Most had found a cave and kept to themselves, including Rafuel of Sebastabol’s men.
“Does he look suspicious to you?” Lucian asked Tesadora, who was quietly studying the weathered face of an old man who stood before her. Tesadora was said to know the symptoms of almost any ailment by looking in someone’s eyes and at their tongue.
“Well, I’m not sure what suspicious looks like,” she said bluntly. “Sometimes when you come down the mountain and stand behind those trees, you look suspicious.”
“Are you aware these people can almost look into your campsite, Tesadora?” he said. “From up there.” He pointed to their caves.
“Almost,” she murmured, looking closely into the man’s eyes. “But not quite. It’s why I chose that particular tree to pitch our tent under at the beginning of summer, so —”
“So you don’t trust them, after all,” he said, feeling slightly victorious that the stubborn Tesadora was admitting it to him.
She pointed to her mouth and poked out her tongue, and the man in front of her did as she instructed.
“So I wouldn’t have to hear you or Perri or Trevanion or anyone else tell me that these people can see into my campsite.” She looked at him. “And still you stand here and waste my time.”
“What about Rafuel’s men?”
“They can’t see into my campsite either.”
“I mean, have they come out yet?” he said, quickly losing his patience.
“No, and I’m not climbing up to them. If you want to know anything, speak to your little bride. She’s quite the popular one in this camp. If she was any more cheerful, she’d make us all ill.”
Tesadora turned her attention back to the old man before her.
“Give him a blanket, Japhra,” she said quietly. Japhra placed a blanket around the man’s shoulders, and he walked away.
“Do you give everyone a blanket?” Lucian asked, watching as Japhra had to almost drag the next woman to Tesadora.
“Just those who are dying,” Japhra said when it was obvious that Tesadora had already dismissed him.
Lucian was livid. “If he’s contagious, he can’t stay in the valley,” he hissed.
Tesadora’s stare was hard. “The only thing contagious around here at the moment, Lucian, is fear and ignorance. The Chary n ites are afflicted with one and the Monts with the other.”
She waved him away with irritation. He added her to the list. What would his father have done about Tesadora in the valley? Would he have ordered her back to where she belonged, in the Forest of Lumatere? Would he have spoken to Perri and said, “Take care of your woman; she shouldn’t be down here among these strange people”?
“It’s getting dark,” Lucian said to Tesadora. “Finish up what you are doing here and meet me on our side of the stream.”
He walked away. “Phaedra!” he barked. Still the idiot girl stood with the brother and sister at the mess of a vegetable patch. She looked up, and Lucian pointed to the other side of the stream. “Now.”
Phaedra stood, brushed the dirt from her hands and dress, and walked toward him. Kasabian followed, and Lucian stared at him with irritation.
“Mont,” the man called out. “Can we ask?”
“No,” Lucian said. “No grain. We hardly have enough for ourselves. I can’t promise you anything.”
The man shook his head.
“No, lad —”
“And I’m not a lad,” Lucian snarled. “I’m the leader of the Monts.”
Kasabian took a moment to think and then nodded. “Then you are just the person I need to speak to. As the leader of your people, could you please ask your lads to refrain from stomping through our vegetable patches?”
Lucian looked over Phaedra’s shoulder to where a woman joined the sister, Cora, and bent beside her to work.
Kasabian’s eyes were stony. “And could you ask your lads to refrain from relieving themselves in the stream? It’s your stream, I know, but it is also a stream used by our women. We mean no disrespect because it is probably not an insult to do so in front of your Lumateran women, but to have men relieve themselves in front of a Charynite woman is an insult for us. Your lads frighten our women, Mont leader. All I ask is that you speak to them.”
The man’s voice was soft, much in the way of Rafuel’s. Maybe it was a weapon to speak in such a way. All his life, Lucian had never heard his father raise his voice. He didn’t have to.
And because Lucian was shamed, he walked away.