The road to Sorel from Belegonia ran through ancient caverns said to be the dwelling place of the darkest gods in the land. Travelers preferred the ocean route between the two kingdoms despite the piracy on the open seas, and Finnikin could understand why. The journey through the caverns took most of the day. He was forced to stoop for the entire time and felt hounded by the carvings of grotesque forms, half-human, half-animal, on the walls around them. Yellow painted eyes tracked him, while outstretched clawlike fingers traced an icy line along his arm whenever he brushed against the jagged rock.
There was little reprieve when they reached the capital. Sorel was a kingdom of stone and rubble, its terrain as unrelenting as Sendecane. The dryness in the air caused them to choke each time they tried to speak, and rough pieces of stone cut into Finnikin’s thin leather boots. He could not help but notice the bloodied feet of the novice, and he cursed her for whatever it was that drove her on. Lately she had taken the lead, though when he thought back, he realized that she had done so since Sendecane.
Sorel had a darkness to its core, much like Charyn. But if Charyn was a knife that could slice its victim with quick and deadly precision, justice in Sorel was a blunt blade that dug and tunneled into the flesh, leaving its victim to die a long and painful death. Sorel had been Lumatere’s only competitor in the export of ore from its mines and had reveled in the catastrophe of the unspeakable, tripling export fees and bleeding the surrounding kingdoms dry. The king used the mines as a prison, and it was rumored that some inmates had not seen light of day for as long as Finnikin had been alive. Worse still were the stories of the slave children, forced to work in the mines during the day and locked up underground at night. For once Finnikin was grateful that he and Sir Topher and the thief were fair in coloring and even more grateful that the novice’s hair was shorn.
“Keep your head down,” he warned her at the heavily guarded border town. “They distrust those with dark eyes, and this is one place we do not want attention drawn to us.”
Finnikin passed through safely; not even the quiver of arrows he wore on his back and the bow that hung from his side drew the attention of the guards. But the novice did. They grabbed her by the coarse cloth of her shift, almost choking her. Finnikin lunged toward them, but she held out her hand to stop him. He watched as one soldier forced her to her knees, checking behind her ears for any marks of the phlux, which the people of Sorel believed the exiles of Lumatere carried in their bodies and spread across the land.
The soldier showed no emotion. Unlike in Sarnak, there was no hatred caused by hunger and poverty. There was nothing but a sense of superiority taught from an early age and a strong aversion to foreigners. When the same soldier forced Evanjalin’s mouth open and shoved his fingers inside, Finnikin’s fury returned and he made a grab for Trevanion’s sword, only to be pinned back by Sir Topher.
“You will make things worse!” his mentor hissed in his ear. “You’re putting her life at risk.”
The thief of Sarnak snickered with glee.
In the village, Evanjalin was sick at his feet. Finnikin suspected it came from the memory of the soldier’s filthy fingers inside her mouth. Without thinking, he held her up and wiped her face with the hem of his shirt. Their eyes met, and he saw a bleakness there that made him choke. Suddenly he wanted the power to wipe such hopelessness away. That moment in front of the guards, he had allowed emotion to cloud his reason. Yet he felt no regret. He understood, with a clarity that confused him, that if anyone dared touch her again, his sword would not stay in its scabbard.
She pulled away and gestured to an inn at the edge of the main square. “I want to wash my face,” she mumbled, walking toward it.
He went to follow, but Sir Topher’s voice stopped him.
“Finnikin. Give her a moment.”
Later, they set up camp at the base of an escarpment. While Sir Topher dozed and the thief from Sarnak swore from his shackles, Evanjalin began to climb the rock face.
“Stay here,” Finnikin ordered, but if he had learned anything about the novice, it was that she did as she pleased, and so he found himself climbing after her. Though cursing her inwardly, he could not help marveling at her fearlessness and the ease with which she ascended the rock in her bare feet.
When he reached the top, she was standing on a narrow ledge of granite that protruded over the camp below. But it was the view to the west that took his breath away, a last glimpse of Belegonia in the evening light.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, speaking in their mother tongue.
He stood silently, struggling with the pleasure he felt as she spoke their language.
“Say something,” she said as the sun began to disappear and the air chilled. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
With Sir Topher he spoke of strategies and dividing land between exiles and the best crops to grow and the politics of the country they found themselves in. They trained with practice swords, dealt with disappointing dukes, and quarreled with an ambassador obsessed with protocol. But in ten years, no one had ever asked what he was thinking. And he knew that the novice Evanjalin was asking for more than just his thoughts. She wanted the part of him he fought to keep hidden. The part that held his foolish hopes and aching memories.
“I miss hearing our mother tongue,” he found himself saying. “Speaking it. Sir Topher has always been strict about using only the language of the country we are in, but when I dream, it’s in Lumateran. Don’t you love it? The way it comes from the throat, guttural and forced. Speaks to me of hard work. So different from the romance of the Belegonian and Osterian tongues.”
There was a soft smile on her face and for a moment he forgot they were on this cliff, staring across at the stone and rubble of Sorel. “I miss the music of the voices in the crowded marketplace in my Rock Village, or in the king’s court, where everyone talked over the top of one another. I can’t tell you how many times I heard the king bellow, ‘Quiet! Too much talking!’ And that was just at the dinner table with his wife and children.”
She laughed, and the sound soothed him.
“I swear it’s true. The queen, she was the loudest. ‘Is it my curse to have the worst behaved children in the land? Vestie, you are to apologize to Nurse, or I will have you cleaning the privy for the rest of the week! Balthazar, you are not the ruler of this kingdom yet, and even when you are, you will eat at the table like a human being.’ ”
Evanjalin’s laughter was infectious, and he continued with the mimicry. He had loved his life in the Rock Village, but not as much as life in the king’s court. In the palace, there were Balthazar and the beautiful spirited princesses, and most of all Trevanion. His heart would burst with pride whenever he witnessed his father’s importance. Sometimes, deep in the night when on watch, Trevanion would take him from his bed and they would sit on the keep and stare out at the world below. Often Lady Beatriss would join them, shivering in the night air, and Trevanion would gather them both in his embrace to keep them warm.
He could feel Evanjalin’s eyes on him as the sun before them disappeared at a speed beyond reckoning. “Then I will demand that you speak Lumateran when we are alone,” Evanjalin said, interrupting his thoughts.
“Will you?” he mocked. “And why is that?”
“Because without our language, we have lost ourselves. Who are we without our words?”
“Scum of the earth,” he said bitterly. “In some kingdoms, they have removed all traces of Lumatere from the exiles. We are in their land now and will speak their tongue or none at all. Our punishment for the pathetic course of our lives.”
“So men cease to speak,” she said softly.
Men who in Lumatere had voices loud and passionate, who provided for their families and were respected in their villages. Now they sat in silence and relied on their children to translate for them as if they were helpless babes. Finnikin wondered what it did to a man who once stood proud. How could he pass on his stories without a language?
“And how Lumaterans loved to speak,” Finnikin said. “Shout from hilltops, bellow in the marketplace, sing from the barges on the river. I had a favorite place, the rock of three wonders at the crest of my village. I would climb it with Balthazar and Lucian of the Monts. You would have known him, of course, being a Mont.”
She nodded. “Son of Saro.”
“We had a healthy dislike for each other. He would call me ‘trog boy.’ Repeatedly.”
“And how would you respond?” she asked with a laugh.
“By calling him ‘son of an inbred.’ Repeatedly. Balthazar would judge who could come up with the worst insult. I would win, of course. Monts are such easy targets.”
“They are my people you’re speaking of,” she said, trying to sound cross.
“How was it that your family became separated from them?” Finnikin asked. “You are the first Mont we have ever met on our travels.”
Evanjalin was silent for a moment, and he wondered if she knew where the Monts were hiding. “Saro moved the Monts just days after they killed his sister, the queen, and my mother and siblings and I were among them. But my father was in Sarnak, and my mother refused to leave the day Saro took our people away from the Valley. She insisted that we wait. She believed there was still hope, and that if we stayed in the Valley, my father would travel from Sarnak to find us.” She looked up at him. “Do you remember those days?”
“Only too well,” he said quietly. “We all waited for at least a week. After the curse, Saro sent two of his men out to access the kingdom from the other borders, but days later only one returned.” Finnikin fell silent. He remembered the Mont’s words to Saro. That at each border, an unseen force had held them back, until the Charyn border when his companion pushed his way into the tempest. The Mont had watched in horror as the tempest spat his kinsman back. Splintered bone by splintered bone.
“And then everyone began to leave,” Finnikin continued, “needing to feed their children and to survive, arguing whether it was better to go to Charyn or Belegonia or Sarnak. I stayed close to my father’s men until I was placed in the care of Sir Topher. We were the last to go.”
The wind was strong on the cliff, and it whipped his hair across his face. Suddenly her hand reached out to hold it back. When he felt her fingers, he flinched; he had not been touched with such gentleness since his childhood. He was no stranger to women and had felt their hands on all parts of his body, but her touch made him feel like he belonged someplace.
“I remember the abandoned children wailing by the side of the road,” she said. “Some as young as two or three. People were forced to put their own survival and their family’s above anything else and left other people’s children to die. It’s the only reason I can feel any sympathy for the thief from Sarnak.”
He nodded. “Part of me believes there is little hope for those like him, who have become as base as the men they associate with. But there’s another part of me that will search this land high and low once we are settled in our second homeland and bring them back to us, where they belong.”
He felt her stare but did not turn and look. Did not want those eyes reaching into him.
“So you are destined to spend the rest of your life scouring this land? Who are you, to deserve such a curse?” she asked.
One who has an evil lurking inside of me, he wanted to say. An evil that Seranonna of the Forest Dwellers recognized that day in the forest as he played alongside Isaboe.
Her blood will be shed for you to be king.
“What is it you want, Finnikin?” Evanjalin persisted.
“I want to be left alone to do what we’ve always done,” he said vehemently. I want to go searching for my father, he longed to shout.
“And what is that? Wandering the empire? Collecting names of the dead? Where would you like me to leave you, Finnikin?”
In the numb peace we lived with before you came into our lives.
He stared at her, and she held his gaze. “I took great comfort in your vow of silence,” he said at last.
After a moment her mouth twitched. “Really? I do believe you’re lying.”
“It’s true. I miss it terribly.”
“I think you’re dying to tell me what you shouted from your rock. With the inbred and the heir.”
He laughed in spite of himself. “We were convinced of the existence of the silver wolf. Legend had it that only a true warrior could kill it, and we’d build traps in the forest and play out its capture. Balthazar was the warrior, and I was his guard; Lucian the wolf, Isaboe the bait. Then we would travel to the rock and practice our sacrifice of it to the gods, shouting our intentions and faith. We’d pledge our honor to each other. We even vowed to save Lumatere.” He shook his head, thinking of the last pledge they had made together, mixed with the blood of all three.
“I would love such a rock,” she said. “It would loosen my tongue and give me the courage to say all the things I’ve never dared say.”
“And what would you say, Evanjalin? Would you damn the impostor, curse those who placed him on the throne?”
She shook her head. “I would speak my name out loud. Evanjalin of the Monts!” Her voice echoed and its volume took him by surprise. He walked to the rock’s edge, wanting to listen to it until the last echo disappeared, wanting to capture it in his hands.
“Finnikin of the Rock!” he roared, and then turned back to where she stood, her eyes blazing with excitement. “Son of Trevanion of the Lumateran River people and Bartolina of the Rock!” He beat his chest dramatically.
She laughed and stepped closer to him. “Mortal enemy of the bastard impostor!” she yelled.
He thought for a moment, then gave a nod of approval. “Trusted servant of the king’s First Man, Sir Topher of the royal court of Lumatere!”
“Follower of our beloved Balthazar!”
“Son of a man who once loved Lady Beatriss of the Lumateran Flatlands!”
“Daughter of those slaughtered in innocence!”
“Brother of one taken away before she drew her first breath!”
“Sister to those who loved her with all their heart!”
She had moved too close to the edge of the rock, and with a sharp intake of breath, he grabbed her around the waist, the strong band of his arm pressing her back into his chest. “Foolish girl,” he said almost gently, his lips close to her ear. “You could have gone over the side.”
A shudder passed through her, and then she pulled away. “We should go,” she murmured.
“Trust me, Evanjalin,” he said, holding out his hand. Trembling, she took it, and they made their way down the rock face in silence. But already he missed her voice, and when he helped her over the last of the stones, he found his finger tracing the bruise around her mouth.
“Finnikin!”
Within the hollow rock he could see the anxious figure of Sir Topher.
“We’re here, sir.”
“Don’t wander too far. You know how strange a place this is.”
At supper, Finnikin and Evanjalin ate their bread and cheese in silence while Sir Topher watched them carefully. Even the thief seemed subdued. Later, as Finnikin wrote in the Book of Lumatere, he glanced over to where she stood, distanced from them, her hands clenched at her sides. He tucked the book under his arm and walked toward her, suddenly feeling awkward, his pulse beating at an erratic speed.
“Join us,” he said quietly. “Sir Topher is telling stories of his journeys with the king.”
There was a hint of a smile on her face.
“What?” he asked defensively.
“When you speak Lumateran, your accent sings like those of the River.”
“It was either that, or rrrumbling like those from the Rock.”
She laughed, but it turned into a sob and she covered her mouth. He stepped forward and lifted her chin with his finger.
“Bend to their will, Finnikin,” she whispered. “And keep yourself alive.”
“Whose will?” he murmured, leaning his head toward her.
“Finnikin!”
The anxiousness in Sir Topher’s voice snapped him out of his trance at the same time as he heard the horses’ hooves. He turned toward the camp and saw five Sorelian soldiers riding toward them, flame sticks in their hands.
“Where is the traitor who claims to be the dead prince of Lumatere?” the one in the lead asked, dismounting.
Finnikin was stunned. Sir Topher turned to him in confusion, and in the dancing firelight Finnikin saw a trace of fear on the older man’s face. The thief from Sarnak had paled. Thieves across the land knew to keep out of the mines of Sorel.
Finnikin’s first inclination was to protect the girl, and he was relieved that the soldiers were looking for an impostor of Balthazar rather than someone who knew where the heir was.
“There is no impostor among us,” Sir Topher said pleasantly. “We are Belegonian merchants eager to trade in a kingdom so rich in bounty.”
“Why accuse us of such a thing?” Finnikin asked, but the soldiers looked straight past him to where Evanjalin stood.
“Is this the one?” the soldier asked.
“She is no one,” Finnikin said firmly, blocking his path.
Then the soldier nodded and Finnikin turned, bewildered, his blood running cold.
For the novice Evanjalin had lifted her hand and was pointing a finger.
Straight in his direction.