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 as 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 head shaking 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 were 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 laughed. “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 no place for being simple when blood has been shed and the people we love have been torn from us.” She took his hand across the table. “But forgiveness has to start somewhere, Lucian. It did start somewhere. It started with Phaedra. The Monts learned not to hate all of the Charynites because of her. I learned.” Yata had tears in her eyes. “Because you may not have seen it, my darling boy, but I hated with a fierceness I can’t describe. And do you want to hear something that was breaking my heart, day after day? I forgot the faces of my granddaughters in all that hatred. Hatred smothers all beauty. Beloved Isaboe has little resemblance to her older sisters, but your Phaedra — she made me remember those precious, precious girls, and I wasn’t angry anymore. I just missed them, and it’s the beauty in here,” she said, pointing to her chest, “that made me remember them. Her beauty.”
He could see the truth in her words.
“You know she lives,” he said softly.
Yata nodded. “Constance and Sandrine have sworn me to secrecy.”
He felt the strength of her hands.
“I don’t want you to take those sacks of grain,” she said firmly. “They’ll tie you to someone who will bring you regret and dissatisfaction all your life. It’s not what your father would have wanted for you.”
He swallowed hard. “I’ve made my decision.”
She made a sound of frustration, shaking her head, but he held up a hand to stop her. “I’m going to write a note to Lord Tascan and thank him for the grain, but explain that to accept it will compromise my role as a judge at the fair. I’m going to emphasize just how humiliating it may feel to him if anyone in the kingdom sees that I returned the grain, in case he doesn’t realize it’s humiliation he should be feeling, and then I’m going to suggest that I send the grain down to the valley where the Charynites are in need of it. I’ll promise him that no one in Lumatere will ever be able to say that flatland or river barley was consumed by a Mont judge, nor will they be able to prove that the grain existed in the first place.”
Yata smiled. “Oh, you’re a clever boy.”
“It’s not enough, of course,” he said. “The grain will run out eventually.”
“Then, we have weeks to think up another plan.”
He traveled to the valley with Jory, who insisted on coming along.
“Do you want to know what I think?” his cousin asked as they passed one of the farms midway down the mountain.
“No, I don’t actually, Jory. I want peace and quiet.”
“I don’t think Phaedra’s dead,” Jory replied. “And you know she isn’t.”
“Really.”
“Yes, really,” Jory said, imitating his tone. “’Cause sometimes I come up to your cottage, you know, Lucian. You hide up there, all closed up, and everyone wishes you didn’t. At first, I’d see that small shrine you had to blessed Lagrami and how you’d lay petalbane beside it every day. For Phaedra. Because petalbane is the flower for grieving the dead. But then weeks ago, after Cousin Isaboe left the mountain, you stopped. So the way I see it, something happened in the valley that day and you know she’s alive and you know that it’s bad luck to bring petalbane to the living, and you don’t want to curse Phaedra.”
“It’s been some weeks since her death, Jory,” Lucian said, his voice practical. “We all have to move on. That’s why I stopped laying the petalbane.”
“The mourning season for Phaedra ends midspring. I know that because Cousin Cece was seen drinking ale and Alda, well, she blasted him. ‘How dare you?’ she shouted.”
“Funny that all of a sudden Alda cares for Phaedra,” Lucian said.
Jory looked surprised. “I don’t think Alda cares that much for Phaedra. She hardly knew her. But Alda, she said to Cousin Cece, ‘You show respect for Lucian. He’s our leader.’ ”
Lucian had never heard one of the Monts acknowledge that before.
“You know what my father says?” Jory said. “He says you weren’t born to lead, Lucian. That you were made to. But regardless, Fa says Monts couldn’t have asked for a better man to get us through this time.”
Lucian stared at him, overwhelmed. “What are you all of a sudden?” he demanded gruffly. “An ancient wiseman?”
Jory pointed to himself.
“Look at me, cousin. Did ancient wisemen have shoulders like mine?”
The valley dwellers wept when they were told about the barley and crowded around Lucian and Jory as if they were gods. Lucian’s attention was on Harker and Kasabian. The men cut a sad picture working on the vegetable patch that Cora had planted. Jory worked alongside them for a while, and Lucian couldn’t stay angry at his young cousin for too long. Then they followed Kasabian to his cave, and Lucian saw Rafuel and Donashe watching carefully from their place by the rock face, Rafuel’s expression tense and questioning. Inside the cave, Lucian removed the bottle of ale Lord Tascan had given him from his pack and handed it to Harker to take a swig.
“To my wife and my daughter,” Harker said, his voice a hoarse whisper. Lucian winced to think of what he kept from him. Harker handed the bottle to Kasabian.
“To my sister Cora.”
The flask was back with Lucian, and the men waited. Lucian realized he was to drink to the memory of his wife. Jory watched him questioningly.
“To Phaedra,” Lucian said.
Jory held out a hand, and Lucian reluctantly gave it to him. The lad took a confident swig, but then choked, not so grown-up after all.
“Arm us,” Harker said quietly.
Lucian sighed.
“I can’t do that, Harker. You know that. Whatever happened to the women was not at the hands of Donashe.”
Harker’s stare was hard. Lucian had come to realize that this man would have been a leader much like his own father. The type of man born for it.
“My actions are not determined just by my sorrow,” Harker said. “Donashe and his murderers are going to bring a bloodbath to this valley. I’ve seen this before.”
As if they knew they were being spoken of, Rafuel and Donashe and a third man entered the cave. There was an arrogance in the way they stood in Harker and Kasabian’s dwelling, but Lucian and the others refused to acknowledge their presence.
“I mentioned to Donashe that I didn’t trust you here, Mont,” Rafuel finally said. “And that I’d question what you were doing.”
“My valley. My cave,” Lucian said with a shrug. He knew Rafuel feared what Lucian knew about the fate of the women.
“I was hoping to convince Harker and Kasabian to go hunting with me,” he added. “As well as this grain, I’m willing to allow one or two of you on my side of the stream to catch an elk.”
“I’d say it’s a better idea if you take Matteo,” Donashe said. Lucian noticed the bitter jealousy in the expression of the third man watching the exchange between Donashe and Rafuel. “These two are useless old men,” Donashe added, dismissing Harker and Kasabian with a sneer.
“Get out of my cave,” Harker said.
“This moping and silence of yours are dampening camp spirits.”
Harker leaped to his feet, and it took Lucian and Jory and Kasabian to hold him back.
“We don’t need lessons on how to move on,” Harker cried. “Those lads you slaughtered and the deaths of our women have crushed this camp’s spirit.”
Rafuel stood between Donashe and Harker, pushing Harker back.
“Let’s accept the offer to hunt for elk, Donashe. Before these fools force the Mont to take back his words. It will feed us for days.”
Donashe kept his stare on Harker, but Harker was not a man to look away.
“When it’s time for the hunt, Mont,” Donashe said, “Matteo here will accompany you across the stream.” Donashe clasped Rafuel’s arm before leaving the cave, his lapdog following.
Lucian felt the full force of Rafuel’s stare.
“You’ve turned into a hard man, Rafuel,” Jory said. “Don’t you trust us anymore?’
“Rafuel?” Harker’s head shot up in surprise.
Lucian sent Jory a warning look.
“Matteo,” Jory muttered.
“Rafuel was the name of the leader of those poor slaughtered lads,” Harker said.
A muscle in Rafuel’s cheek twitched with emotion.
“You have a good memory for names, Harker,” Jory said.
“And you have a tongue that needs to be cut off,” Lucian said to his cousin.
Lucian could see the confusion on Kasabian’s and Harker’s faces. Jory held the bottle out to Rafuel, who hesitated, but then took a swig and passed it on.
“Phaedra’s alive, isn’t she?” Jory asked, barely able to contain his excitement.
Rafuel stepped closer to them all. “Quintana of Charyn is hiding downstream,” he whispered.
Kasabian and Harker stared at him, stunned. Lucian could tell even Jory couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
Harker gripped Rafuel’s coat, his fists clenched and trembling.
“Did my wife and daughter die to keep the spawn of that wretched king alive?” he asked.
“Well, the spawn of our wretched king is going to spawn another hopefully not-so-wretched king in less than three months… .”
Lucian heard their intake of breath. He could see that Kasabian and Harker didn’t seem to know what to believe. He took the flask from Rafuel and raised it.
“To the women … and whoever it is they’re protecting.”
“Yes!” Jory hissed, lifting Rafuel off his feet.
“My sister Cora is alive?” Kasabian asked, tears in his eyes.
Lucian nodded.
Kasabian clenched a fist and pressed a kiss to it, a thanks to the gods.
Rafuel shoved Jory away with affectionate irritation.
“And this is why they couldn’t know,” he said, pointing to Harker and Kasabian. “Look at them. Do they look like grieving men?”
Harker caught Rafuel in an embrace and Lucian watched as Rafuel held the older man in his arms, tenderly. “I’ve lost them twice,” Harker wept. “I sometimes wake in the night and can barely breathe.”
“We’ll have to tell that idiot Gies,” Kasabian said. “He’ll want to know that his Ginny is alive.”
Rafuel shook his head emphatically.
“Gies has become one of Donashe’s men. We cannot trust him. I need to go now. Trust no one.”
The men embraced again.
“It may be some time before you see the women,” Rafuel said. “I beg your patience, friends. Nothing gets in the way of Quintana of Charyn’s safety. She is the only hope we have left in this kingdom, and she is as helpless as the babe she carries.”
Phaedra watched as Quintana waited and then pounced, saw the satisfaction on their strange princess’s face as she removed the writhing trout from her spear and tossed it onto the ground. Phaedra tried next and almost succeeded, but it was always Quintana who caught them.
“I almost had it,” Phaedra said.
“Almost isn’t enough, Phaedra,” Quintana said.
The women had joined them today, much to Quintana’s annoyance, but all seemed well behaved. Florenza showed a great talent for trout spearing, and by the end of the afternoon, she was looking as savage as Quintana. Ginny, on the other hand, did little to help.
“Is there anything you’re good at except for complaining and pining for men?” Cora asked Ginny as she scaled the fish with one of Quintana’s sharp stones.
“Well, if you really must know, I’m a great seamstress,” Ginny said.
“Oh, good, good. Much needed at the moment,” Jorja said. “When we get invited to that feast at the Nebian ambassador’s home, you’ll be the first person we have in mind, Ginny.”
“Why would you move from your village if you had such a talent?” Phaedra asked, trying to grip a wriggling fish in both hands and failing. It hit the water with a plonk, and she dared not look at Quintana.
“Because I’m not privileged or born last, Phaedra,” Ginny said, spite in her voice, as if speaking to a fool. “I had the misfortune of living in a village where the girls closest to me in age were last borns. Five of them. Five!” she said, as if the disbelief of it all was still raw. “Most villages had one, maybe two. But five?”
“Five, you say?” Quintana murmured, not looking up. Phaedra hid a smile.
“If you weren’t a last-born girl in my village, you were nothing,” Ginny continued, oblivious to Quintana’s mockery. “They were given gifts all the year long. Even the privy cleaner’s daughter was considered better than me. The privy cleaner’s daughter! When they turned ten, the village threw the grandest of celebrations. I played with the last borns every day of my life and was given nothing.”
Quintana seemed genuinely confused.
“I’m not quite sure what your point is, Ginny,” she said. “Were you poisoned? Were you pinned under the heaving body of a man who smelled of pig fat and onions? Was your head held under water so the half dead could clamber for your spirit?”
They stared at Quintana, horrified. Was she speaking of her experiences or those of others?
“It’s very easy for you to be so offhand, Your Majesty,” Ginny said. “When there were those of us in Charyn who truly suffered while you enjoyed a privileged life in the Citavita.”
“But you haven’t actually come to the point where you’ve suffered yet,” Quintana said. “Apart from not getting as many presents when you turned ten. So I’m getting quite bored, Ginny, and I’m going to be tempted to slice off your tongue any moment now.”
Quintana was gutting the fish with savagery, and Phaedra thought she would surely carry out her threat.
“I was good with dyes, if you must know,” Ginny continued. “What I could do with fabric was a gift from the gods. My mother was an alchemist who worked with colors, and one time I made a dress of indigo.”
Florenza, who loved pretty things, seemed the only one interested.
“What color is that?” she asked.
“A much richer shade than the sky. The darkest of blue.”
Florenza liked the idea of it.
“If we ever attend a feast again, Mother, I’ll have Ginny make me a gown.”
“You crawled through shit, Florenza,” Ginny said, her voice nasty. “Do you honestly think the nobility is going to invite you anywhere ever again?”
Florenza began to gag, and they all sent Ginny scathing looks. Apart from what the memory of the sewers did to Florenza, it was a sickening sound to listen to. Jorja placed an arm around her daughter, fussing quietly.
“You have the prettiest face in Charyn,” she reassured Florenza. “The Lumateran nobility won’t be able to resist you when they let us in.” But Florenza began to retch again, and Jorja held her daughter’s hair from her brow. Phaedra wondered how long it would take Jorja to accept that the queen of Lumatere was never going to allow any of them into her kingdom.
“You people of privilege understand nothing,” Ginny said.
“I thought last borns understood nothing,” Quintana said, but her attention was on Florenza, who was still retching.
“All of them. The privileged. The last borns. The hags who could never get a man,” Ginny added, looking at Cora.
“Yes, well, I curse the gods every day for that one,” Cora said, her tone dry.
“The tailor’s sister was a hag,” Ginny continued. “When the day came for the tailor to choose his apprentices, guess whom he chose. A last-born girl. Our precious ones,” she mimicked. “I hardly existed until Gies came traveling through the village last autumn. Some men don’t care whether you’re last borns or not.” Ginny looked smug. “Not when they enjoy the pleasure you can bring to them. If you ever get the Mont back, Phaedra, I’ll teach you a thing or two about how to hold on to him.”
Phaedra’s face smarted, but she watched Quintana get to her feet, one hand on her belly, the other on her back. The princess walked to where Florenza was still retching and weeping. When Jorja noticed Quintana approaching her daughter with the spear, she put a shaking hand on Florenza’s shoulder to quiet her. No one spoke as Quintana bent before Florenza, gripping the girl’s face with one hand, studying it hard.
“Our spirit is mightier than the filth of our memories, Florenza of Nebia. Remember that, or you’ll be vomiting for the rest of your life.”
Florenza stared up at Quintana, and something passed between them as she nodded solemnly and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
“And Tippideaux of Paladozza, the provincaro De Lancey’s daughter, has the prettiest face in Charyn,” she continued to inform them all. “Not you. So don’t believe a word your mother says.”
She stood up and looked down at their bounty of fish, satisfied.
“If we can build a fire tonight, we’ll eat well,” she said. “Phaedra and I will collect the kindling.”
“Do you think that’s wise?” Cora asked. “You’re beginning to waddle with that load.”
“Waddling helps me clear my head of your voices,” Quintana responded. “It lessens my need to kill you all.”
“Then, off you go,” Cora muttered. “Keep an eye on her, Phaedra.”
Quintana was up to something. That Phaedra knew. All the same, she followed her into the undergrowth, picking up anything that could pass as kindling. There was plenty to choose from, and Phaedra hummed as she worked, pleased with what she was able to collect.
“I’m getting good at this,” she said to Quintana, holding up her bundle of twigs for emphasis.
They reached a steep slope that afforded them a view of a lower clearing.
“Put it down,” Quintana ordered. “Let’s go.”
Phaedra stared at her stash. “Go where?” she asked.
Quintana was already gripping a vine and half sliding down the incline. Phaedra dropped the kindling and quickly followed.
“You’re going to hurt yourself!”
“He’s down there,” Quintana whispered when Phaedra caught up with her, both of them hiding behind a waterberry tree.
“Who?”
“He’ll arm us. I know he will.”
“Who?”
Quintana pointed down. In a deep, narrow gully, Tesadora was bent over, tugging at the exposed roots of plants growing around its edges. But it was her lover, Perri, that Quintana was pointing at. He sat with his back against a tree, in some sort of contemplation. Quintana started to step out, but Phaedra dragged her back.
“If you dare mention what I saw them do, I will —”
They both heard a sound and looked up to see the Lumateran on his feet, alerted to their presence.
Tesadora noticed them as well and climbed to where her lover stood, whispering to him, her eyes on Quintana with unbridled love.
“You there, Lumateran,” Quintana called out. “You’re to make me a few scabbards.” Phaedra cringed, listening to the demand spoken in Charyn as if the queen’s guard would understand every word.
Quintana walked closer, handing Phaedra her spear to hold.
“Like the ones you made him. Here. Here. And here.” She pointed to both wrists and her shoulders. “So when they come to attack, I’ll …”
And then she did a quick show of what she’d do. Phaedra was quite enthralled. Perri studied Quintana, and then a chuckle escaped from his lips. Quintana reached him, and he held out a hand to gently touch her face. “What have we got here?” he said in strange wonder.
Tesadora’s eyes filled with tears. “Tell her,” she urged her lover. “Tell her about Froi. She’ll want to know.”
Quintana heard the name and clenched her fists so tight that Phaedra found herself dropping the spear and gripping both the girl’s hands, loosening her fingers.
“You’re going to draw blood. Stop it.”
And blood she drew, but not her own. Quintana’s nails dug deep into Phaedra’s hands.
“Let Phaedra go,” Tesadora ordered gently. “You’re hurting her, Quintana.”
But she didn’t let go, and Phaedra fought hard not to cry out in pain. And then Quintana was a heap on the ground before them as if she had willed the breath inside her to stop. Tesadora and Phaedra fell beside her. Perri didn’t speak, but when Quintana looked up to him, his smile was bittersweet.
“So you’re the one Froi is running around Charyn searching for?”
“Did he say my name?” she asked, her voice cold. But Phaedra had learned to listen to the words and not the voice. The words craved love. The words were those that Phaedra thought over and over again at night. Did Lucian say her name? Did he think it or murmur it in his sleep like she did his?
Phaedra translated the queen’s words, but Perri understood them well enough.
“Did he have to?” he asked Quintana. “When your name is written all over his heart?”
A smile appeared on Tesadora’s face. “Ah, you’re getting soft in your old age,” she said to him, pressing a kiss to his shoulder. Perri held out a hand to Quintana and helped her to her feet, inspecting her wrists, as if measuring them for the scabbards.
“You too, Phaedra,” Perri said, and her face flushed at the sound of his saying her name. She hadn’t even realized he knew who she was, despite the nights he had come up to the mountain and shared her table with Lucian.
He made a gesture with his hand, asking them to turn around.
“I don’t know how to use a weapon,” Phaedra said over her shoulder.
“You’re a Mont’s wife,” he said gruffly. “So you better learn.”
She heard an intake of breath and turned to watch as he traced a finger along the lettering on Quintana’s nape. He then traced along the marks on Phaedra’s.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“The mark of the last borns,” Quintana said.
“I thought they were supposed to be exactly the same,” he said to Tesadora in Lumateran.
Phaedra felt Tesadora’s coarse fingers on her neck.
“They got it wrong,” Tesadora insisted, surprise in her voice. “Those fools copied the same lettering onto every last born, but it’s different from yours, Quintana. Yours has stems on some of the letters. And a strange mark or two that seems nothing more than a dot.”
Phaedra thought of all those years when the priests and her father’s advisers had tried to work out the meaning of the strange lettering. “It makes no sense,” they’d say. To think that Quintana’s differed from hers and those of the rest of the last borns frightened her. It made the princess seem even less of this world.
“On my thirteenth day of weeping, when they grabbed me and tried to keep me down to copy the lettering, I was a snake,” Quintana said. “I squirmed and I squirmed and I bit any man who dared come close.” There was glee in her voice at the memory, her sharp little teeth showing. “I knew what they’d do to the last-born girls, so I made a decree.”
Her stare was suddenly on Phaedra, blazing fiercely.
“Did I keep old men from your bed of innocence, Phaedra of Alonso?”
Phaedra couldn’t speak. She remembered the women in her father’s residence. How they wept and wept at the thought of what would happen to her after she was marked. She shivered just to think of those awful days.
“I remember it well,” Phaedra said. “And then it was decreed that you and only you would give birth to the first and that any man or last-born girl who tried would be punished by the gods. The women in my father’s residence thanked the gods that you were delusional.”
But there was nothing delusional about her. Phaedra stared at her in wonder. Quintana of Charyn had insisted on the decree to protect the last-born girls. And in return, they mocked her madness.
“You’re not going to start crying, are you, fool?” Quintana asked bluntly. “It irritates me.”
Tesadora made a clucking sound of annoyance.
“What did I tell you?” she said to Quintana in a reprimanding voice.
Tesadora’s lover continued to study Quintana, and in return, she appraised him with arrogant curiosity, except for the flash of pain that crossed her face.
“Did I imagine Froi’s arrows?” she asked quietly. “I dream of them every night. I feel them.”
“Where do you feel them in your dreams?” he asked gently.
Quintana touched her head, her arm, her belly, her side, her shoulder, her thigh, her breast, and her ankle.
Perri exchanged a look with Tesadora.
“You remember exactly where they struck him?” he asked, surprised.
Quintana didn’t respond, and Phaedra caught her shudder.
“She has a very good memory for detail,” Phaedra said.