Isaboe woke with a start. She had felt her again. She knew it was Quintana of Charyn who crept into her dreams.
I know you’re there!
Keep away from my son!
She had no idea which were her own words and which belonged to that insidious intruder. At times it seemed as if they were one.
Isaboe heard a sound. Thought she imagined it. But then Finnikin was out of bed, placing a dagger in her hand.
“Stay,” he whispered. “I’m going out onto the balconette. Someone’s in the courtyard. The moment you hear my shout, take Jasmina and hide.”
They were expecting no one tonight. Trevanion was in Fenton and Perri was on duty, and only Lucian and Yata had the authority to be in the courtyard outside the residence. But before Isaboe could imagine the death of any of her beloveds on the mountain or an assassin in their garden, Finnikin was back at the bed, relief in his expression.
“It’s the priest-king and Celie.”
“At this hour of the night?”
“Sefton let them in at the gatehouse, and they took a wrong turn and ended up in the garden, facing the end of Perri’s sword. They’re on their way up.”
She groaned, holding out a hand to him. “I need a catapult to get me out of this bed.”
The priest-king and Celie entered the residence, lugging chronicles in their arms, all apologies but flushed with excitement.
“How long have you been home without seeing me, Celie?” Isaboe asked, embracing her.
“I arrived not even two days past and have spent the whole time with blessed Barakah. Not even Mama or Father or the boys have seen me.”
“Blessed Barakah, you shouldn’t be out at this time of the night,” Isaboe said.
“Sit, sit,” the priest-king said. “We’ve worked it out.” His voice was full of emotion.
Perri joined them and then Sir Topher entered and they all sat around the long bench. The priest-king held a parchment out to Isaboe. Finnikin reached over to steady the old man’s hand. But it was excitement more than age that caused his trembling.
“The markings on the nape and skull are written in a language very few know about,” he said. “I searched everywhere. Had chronicles sent from Osteria and Sarnak, and Celie agreed to … deliver one home from Belegonia.”
“Deliver?” Isaboe asked Celie.
Celie and the priest-king were silent for a moment.
“Perhaps … smuggle would be the correct word,” Celie said.
Sir Topher buried his head in his hands, and Isaboe heard him mutter, “Augie.”
“And no one suspected?” Isaboe asked.
“Well … the castellan of the palace searched my room. He’s very suspicious. But I was clever. And I wept, of course. You see, he accused me of theft in front of the king’s men.” Celie looked pleased with herself. “My tears are very convincing. There was some quite pathetic sniveling.”
“Oh, so underrated, the sob and the snivel,” Isaboe said. “I wish I had been taught. I would have used them more often in exile.”
“If you had sobbed and sniveled when Sir Topher and I first found you in Sendecane, we wouldn’t be here today,” Finnikin said. “I would have left you behind.”
“Yes, because you had so much control over the situation, my love.” Isaboe laughed.
“Can we get back to why they’re here at this time of the morning?” Perri asked politely. “I almost tackled blessed Barakah to the ground.”
“Then, let’s begin with insanity,” the priest-king said. “All great curses do. Because you will always find some sort of genius in it. I found an interesting passage in one of my books from the Osterians. Three thousand years ago, there was a Yut touched by the gods. He was mad — those most touched by the gods are — and his greatest claim was remembering the moment of his birth.”
“Mad, indeed,” Finnikin said.
The priest-king shook his head. “You didn’t see your daughter come into the world, Finnikin. It’s our most savage entry into any place on this earth. One that killed your own mother. Imagine the state of one’s mind if they were to recall its details. All those months cocooned and then the onslaught of this ugly world. Light and noise and strangeness. It’s no wonder we scream with terror at our birth.”
“And you found all this in the Osterian chronicle?”
The priest-king shook his head. “Just a mention of the Yut and his theory. So I continued my search. What kingdom has profited most from Yutlind’s mess and has become the greatest hoarder and pilferer of its works?”
“Belegonia,” Sir Topher said.
“Although it could have been worse,” Finnikin said. “The great works of Yutlind could have ended up in the hands of the Sorellians. At least the Belegonians have a love for words.”
The priest-king nodded. “Thus Celie’s achievement in their spring palace.”
“I pride myself on being the greatest spy there is,” Celie said. “When I was in the Belegonian capital, I had no such luck finding any foreign chronicles. In the spring castle, however, I found exactly what we were looking for.”
“Celie,” Isaboe reprimanded. “I told you to find yourself a lover, not hide yourself in a library.”
“No, you said we could make these invitations to Belegonia work for us,” Celie said.
“Well, I don’t know what we would have done without her,” the priest-king said.
“Can’t you be both?” Isaboe asked. “Someone’s lover and our greatest spy?”
“I’ll try very hard to please you, my queen,” Celie said with a laugh. “But let me start as a spy. I searched the chamber of chronicles in the spring castle every opportunity I could. There’s a foreign section. We’ll speak later about what they’ve pilfered from Lumatere. Finally I came across the chronicles of Phaneus of Yutlind. Of course, I couldn’t understand a word of it. So I returned home with the chronicles. It had been a strange time in the spring palace, and I told the king that I was sick at heart and needed to be with my family. And here I am.”
“And you were able to translate it, blessed Barakah?” Finnikin asked, and Isaboe heard envy in his voice.
“I promise it wasn’t easy,” the priest-king said. “Phaneus of Yutlind’s writing rants and states that we all speak one tongue before we’re born.”
“I don’t understand,” Isaboe said.
“There’s no Lumateran, Charyn, Yut, Sorellian, Sendecanese, Osterian, Belegonian, Sarnak,” Celie said, excitement in her voice. “He called it the tongue of the innocents.”
The priest-king glanced down to where Isaboe held a hand on her belly.
“I listen to you speak to the babe, Your Majesty. But according to Phaneus of Yutlind, that babe does not understand a word of Lumateran. All it understands is the universal language of the innocents. Untainted by life.”
“Why can’t we remember it, then, according to this Phaneus?” Finnikin asked.
“Oh, Phaneus doesn’t have the answer to that. He was barely lucid at times. Dearest Celie had to witness some unmentionable sketches before we reached the pages of the unborns.”
“Unmentionable,” Celie said, her cheeks pink at the memory.
“How unmentionable?” Isaboe asked, intrigued.
“I’ll tell you later,” Celie said. “Among other things.”
“Celie, you have taken a lover,” Finnikin said. “Why is it that Isaboe gets to hear everything and I get nothing but Phaneus the mad Yut?”
Sir Topher made a sound with his throat that meant he was irritated by the chatting.
“Go on, blessed Barakah,” Isaboe said.
“My guess would be that we don’t remember the language because we don’t remember birth. Perhaps the shock wipes it from our memories. Who knows?”
The priest-king swung the chronicle around and pointed.
“The mad Yut’s tongue of the innocents,” he said, pointing to the strange but familiar lettering.
Isaboe recognized one or two symbols with stems and curves that she had seen in the letters sent by both Froi and Tesadora.
“I found a strange code that matched every symbol to Yut characters I recognized, and then I tried to translate Yut into Lumateran, but the Yut words on both Froi’s and the Charyn girl’s bodies didn’t seem to exist.”
The priest-king retrieved the two parchments with Froi’s and Quintana’s lettering.
“Until I did this,” he said, placing them together. They all moved closer to study the words in Yut. “Half of the message was with Froi. The other half with Quintana of Charyn.”
“We are incomplete,” Finnikin translated.
Isaboe felt her breath catch.
“Is this saying that they’re incomplete without each other? Froi and that savage?” she asked.
The priest-king didn’t speak for a moment.
“I think it’s something even more powerful than that,” he said quietly. “It’s the spirits of the unborn babes that spoke.”
Perri was on his feet, pacing the room, and Isaboe felt the tension from them all.
The priest-king laid Froi’s letter out on the table. “We have to go back to the events of the night of our lad’s birth. A strange, horrific night when a mother and her son are wrenched apart, a man loses the love of a brother, another man loses faith in his king and himself, a babe loses her mother and twin sister. All those involved, the oracle among them, were so powerful that their loss and pain and fury and grief became a splinter in the soul of a kingdom. We know it’s referred to as the day of weeping, when every Charynite woman who carried a child bled it from their loins.”
Isaboe held out a hand to Perri and he sat, his fists clenched.
“Look at what Seranonna did to Lumatere,” the priest-king continued. “All that rage and anguish. That wasn’t planned. It wasn’t conjured up in a spell. It came from in here,” the priest-king said, pointing to his heart. He flicked through another of the chronicles. “Two hundred years ago, it also happened in Sendecane. A young girl’s passion destroyed the kingdom, and it is still a wasteland today except for the cloister of Lagrami. Five hundred years ago, it happened to an island north of Sarnak, a place that no longer exists. Never underestimate the power of our raw emotions.”
Sir Topher was a man of logic, and even he looked spellbound.
“So the two babes and two brothers, and Lirah of Serker and the oracle cursed the kingdom much the same way as Seranonna did?” Isaboe asked.
The priest-king shook his head.
“No. They didn’t curse the kingdom. They cursed a day and created the weeping.”
“Destroyed only one day?” Finnikin said.
“Then, who cursed the next eighteen years?” Sir Topher asked.
The priest-king looked at them all, his eyes finally settling on Perri.
“I believe the spirit of those bled babes had nowhere to go. Some were days from birth. They had no name, and no way of being called to rest. So they searched for the source. The vessels.”
“Froi?” Perri said.
The priest-king nodded. “And the princess. Two vessels more powerful than we can ever imagine. Come to me. Come to me, they would have called out, hearing the cries of their lost brothers and sisters. All they wanted to do was protect them. And the spirits did come to them but were splintered.” He looked at Perri. “Part of the spirit of your unborn child went to Froi and the other part went to Quintana of Charyn.”
The priest-king paused a moment, looking at them all. “It’s what takes place during chaos, whether in this known world or that yet to be born. Look at what happened to us here all those years ago. Lumatere was divided in two. Those who were trapped and those in exile.
“And the spirits of those babes have been full of fury and despair all these years. They’ve wanted the part of them that was lost returned. And now, finally, each has become one again, united in the babe that Quintana and Froi created. Let’s pray that it’s born, dear friends. Let’s pray that it stays safe in its mother’s arms.”
“Mercy!” said Finnikin.
Mercy indeed, Isaboe thought, placing a shaking hand on her belly. The kingdom of Charyn had not been cursed by evil. It had been cursed by innocence. By the power of the unborn.