‘And what do others say? Others such as Rafuel?’
‘Who knows what Rafuel believes?’ Zabat muttered. ‘There is much he doesn’t tell us.’
Froi knew he was going to receive another tirade of self-pity.
‘I need more than that,’ Froi snapped.
Zabat shook his head, refusing to respond. Froi stepped closer, threateningly. ‘If you’re going to send me with him to do Charyn’s dirty work, then have the decency to tell me what he’s capable of!’
‘He’s a hermit. Refuses to align himself to the provinces. But they all want Gargarin.’
‘They all want him?’ Froi asked with disbelief. ‘A cripple?’
‘Every single Provincaro in this land. He’s designed waterways and was the architect of a cistern system in the province of Paladozza that helped them during the years of no rain. He knows the history of this kingdom and this land better than any Priestling. Stranger still is the fact that he is not gods’ touched.’
‘How is it that he’s not aligned to a province?’
‘He was born in Abroi. A place that no province will claim as theirs. It’s a wretched village between Paladozza and Sebastabol. The people there have been breeding with each other for so long because no one else will have them. A favourite saying in the kingdom is that a sheep turd has more intelligence. The only things of worth that Abroi has ever produced are the twin brothers, Arjuro and Gargarin. One was gods’ touched, the other an architect. Inseparable for the first half of their lives, enemies ever since.’
Froi couldn’t help but shudder each time he heard the word Abroi. After what Rafuel had said to him, was it too much of a coincidence that Froi’s name shared the same sound as a Charyn backwater?
‘I’ve heard that the names of Charyn men rhyme with the place they were born,’ he lied, fishing for some sort of truth.
Zabat made a rude sound again. ‘Are you a fool? Do we look like Osterians? They need to rhyme everything so they can remember which goatherd village they come from? Karlo from Sumario. Florence from Torence. Tinker from Stinker.’
‘You’re making that up,’ Froi scoffed. ‘There’s no such place as Stinker.’
‘What would you know?’
‘The Sarnaks are worse,’ Froi said, relieved that he was no Froi from Abroi. ‘They like to blend two names into one.’
Zabat looked at him, questioningly.
‘Jocasto from Sprie?’ Froi tried.
Zabat thought for a moment. Shook his head.
‘Casprie,’ Froi responded.
‘Ridiculous.’
Froi tried not to agree. It had taken him years to work out the strange logic of Sarnak name games.
‘Lester of Haybon?’ Froi continued. ‘Go on. You’ll never guess.’ He enjoyed the look of stupidity on Zabat’s face as he tried to work it out.
‘Straybon,’ Froi explained.
Zabat scowled. ‘Give me another. I’m beginning to see the pattern.’
‘Ah yes, a pattern.’ Froi lied this time. ‘What if our man Straybon was from the town Fletcher? The Sarnaks wouldn’t want to waste three words ordering a bow and arrow, would they?’
Zabat was lost, his face twisting as he tried to work out the puzzle.
‘Stretcher,’ Froi announced.
Zabat shook his head with disbelief. Froi nodded, solemnly.
‘He’s making a fool of you,’ they heard a voice say behind them.
Froi leapt to his feet. Gargarin of Abroi’s eyes were drawn to where Froi’s hand had reached for a weapon that was no longer there. Their eyes met for a moment before the man limped towards the stream.
‘Do you believe his Priestling brother betrayed the Oracle to the Serkers?’ Froi asked quietly, watching Gargarin.
‘It’s dangerous to believe otherwise,’ Zabat muttered.
Early the next morning, Zabat woke him.
‘It’s time for me to go,’ he said.
Froi yawned, thrilled to be leaving him behind.
‘Are you clear on the instructions, Lumateran?’ Zabat whispered.
Froi nodded.
‘In Rafuel’s letter, he says that your captain has reassured him that the kills will be clean. We’re not savages. But it’s important they are dead.’
Froi was suddenly confused. He sat up, his back aching. He tried to clear his head from sleep. ‘They? You mean, “him”. The King.’
Zabat cast his eyes down.
‘And her.’
‘And who?’ Froi snapped. ‘Who is her?’
When Zabat didn’t answer, Froi snarled ferociously enough for the man to step back.
‘The King’s spawn,’ Zabat said.
Froi stared at the man. ‘The Princess Quintana?’
‘You are squeamish about killing a woman?’
‘It’s not part of my bond.’
‘She’s to die,’ Zabat whispered. ‘She cursed the kingdom.’
‘I said it’s not in my bond,’ Froi said firmly.
‘Then you misunderstood your bond. Do you honestly believe your queen wants Quintana the whore to live? After what her father the King ordered thirteen years ago, when he sent those assassins into Lumatere.’
Froi thought of Trevanion’s words. Not to bed the Princess, but to do what was to be done. Is this what he had meant?
‘Rafuel said nothing of –’
‘There are many who agree that Rafuel does not give orders,’ Zabat said.
They both turned at the sound of Gargarin of Abroi shuffling out of his cave house.
Zabat held up a hand in a wave. ‘I’m off now, Sir Gargarin,’ Zabat called out.
‘Devastating, to say the least,’ Gargarin muttered, looking up at the grey sky.
Zabat stared back down at Froi. ‘I will say it again, lad. You misunderstood your bond. Your queen and her consort want Quintana the cursemaker dead.’
Chapter 7
It took almost two days to climb the ravine to what was called Upper Charyn. It had taken longer because Froi was slowed down by Gargarin of Abroi’s limp and half-dead arm. Most of the time, Froi would reach higher ground and wait, taking in the walls of stone that seemed to close in on him from the opposite side. He understood flatlands. He understood forests and rivers and mountains, even rock villages. What he didn’t understand was how anyone would want to live in the base of a ravine, except for the purpose of fishing in a stream. But, then again, as he watched this half-crippled man tackle the climb, Froi was beginning to suspect that Gargarin of Abroi was no ordinary sane man.
The path up the gravina was marked with surprises. Stones that infrequently became steps to their destination would disappear into a backbreaking climb. Near the top, at its steepest point, Froi gripped a ledge and held a hand out to Gargarin, yanking him up by the cloth of his undershirt, dragging him over the jagged stone until they both lay face down, catching their breath.
‘You tore my shirt, idiot,’ Gargarin muttered, wincing from pain, his dark hair matted to his forehead.
‘Pity. Never seen a finer piece of woven cloth,’ Froi gasped.
When he stood, Froi was breathless to see the great depth they had left below. Up so high, the jagged walls of the gravina looked unrelentingly cruel and there seemed nothing to soften the greyness of the stone. But somehow Froi saw a beauty to it that was different from the monotony of the flatland that now surrounded him. At least caves and gorges brought an aspect of intrigue. Here in Upper Charyn, he was back in a world of unrelenting tufts of dull-brown grass, gnawed to its edges by overgrazing such as he had seen on the road from Alonso.
He watched Gargarin hobble to the side of the road and feel the dry earth in his hands. Moments later, Gargarin stood and threw the dirt to the ground in anger.
‘Idiots,’ he muttered. ‘Idiots.’
It was the only word Froi would hear for the rest of the day. They travelled in silence and Froi’s dislike for Gargarin of Abroi increased with every step the man stumbled.
That night they set
up camp under a star-speckled sky, one that Froi felt he could almost reach out and touch. He’d not seen anything like it since his time with Finnikin, Isaboe, Trevanion and Sir Topher in the grasslands of Yutlind Sud. With Gargarin of Abroi sitting silently before him, he missed those moments of their journey more than ever.
‘Do you think it was the Serkers?’ he asked Gargarin abruptly when the silence almost forced him to break his bond and strangle his companion.
Gargarin looked up. Through the flickering flames, Froi could see there was no question in Gargarin’s eyes. He knew exactly what Froi was asking – whether it was the Serkers who had killed the Oracle Queen and Priestlings. He merely looked annoyed.
‘You’re bored, are you?’ Gargarin asked. ‘You don’t have Zabat to play word games with, so now you’re going to riddle me about the past?’
‘Actually I am bored and it’s not a riddle,’ Froi said. ‘It’s a question I have every right to ask if I’m going to travel to the Citavita and break a curse that began with the Serkers.’
Perhaps Gargarin of Abroi was bored as well because he chose to respond.
‘Pick a province that the rest of Charyn despised because of their arrogance, and use them as the scapegoats. Every kingdom needs a scapegoat for one reason or another. The Yuts have their southerners and the Lumaterans had their Forest Dwellers.’
Froi flinched to hear his homeland named.
‘The Forest Dwellers were murdered by … the man they refer to as the impostor King, the way I hear it,’ he muttered.
‘Because the Lumaterans allowed it to happen,’ Gargarin said flatly.
‘If you say the Serkers are scapegoats then you’re implying that the Serkers were not capable of brutality?’ Froi said.
‘I’m not implying that at all.’
‘The Provincari say –’
‘The Provincari will believe anything that will keep their provinces safe,’ Gargarin interrupted coldly. ‘Why would they want to believe anything else but that the Serkers murdered the Priestlings and tortured the Oracle? What’s the alternative? Believing the attack came from the palace?’
‘They’re dangerous words you speak, Sir Gargarin,’ Froi said.
‘Truth is dangerous and I’m not a Sir.’
The next morning they continued on the path that ran alongside the edge of the ravine. The walls of it had widened until Froi could barely see the other side. He felt as though he and Gargarin were the only two people left in the land, that at any moment they would topple off the edge of their world, never to be seen again.
Throughout the day, he tried again and again to make conversation with Gargarin, but the man refused to speak.
‘Did I do something to displease you in another life?’ he finally asked.
Gargarin continued walking. When Froi reached out and gripped his arm, Gargarin swung around, breaking free viciously and stumbling. Froi went to grab him and they both toppled to the ground. As they lay there a moment, Froi felt the man’s eyes bore into his. I know you, the stare seemed to say. I know the evil of your core.
‘I don’t care what you think of me, cripple!’ Froi said. ‘I answer to a more powerful bond. To people I respect.’
‘A bond? Men with bonds are controlled by the expectations of others,’ Gargarin said, his cold tone cutting. ‘Men with bonds are slaves.’
Froi jumped to his feet, counting again and again. ‘Be assured that once inside the palace I won’t breathe in your direction,’ he snarled.
‘Good to hear,’ Gargarin said, struggling to stand. ‘Because my promise to your Provincaro was that I would only escort you into the palace. I’ve given enough to this kingdom.’
The road to the capital dipped and rose and then dipped, and when it rose again, the Citavita appeared before them across a long narrow timber bridge. As Rafuel had promised, the walls of the ravine came into view again, mightier in height than Froi had seen on their journey so far. They travelled across the bridge of the Citavita, with its planks swinging and swaying. Through the mist, Froi saw a tower of uneven rock in the distance, but as they travelled closer he realised he was looking at a cluster of dwellings carved out of the stone, perched atop each other precariously as if about to spiral into the chasm below.
Against the dirty-coloured capital was the white of the castle. Froi saw turrets higher than any he had ever seen before. But looming even higher over the castle battlements was another rock.
‘What is that?’ Froi asked.
‘The Oracle’s godshouse,’ Gargarin responded.
‘What’s keeping it from toppling down?’ Froi asked, trying not to sound aghast, but aghast all the same.
He heard Gargarin of Abroi’s ragged breath. ‘That would be the gods.’
After they stepped off the bridge and onto the more solid ground of the Citavita, they began the steep climb up a winding road that wrapped around the rock of dwellings. Froi couldn’t tell where one home began and another ended and realised that the roofs of the houses were the actual path to the palace.
Lining the winding path, people worked silently selling their wares, but it was a cluster of men, their heads bent low in whispers, their eyes promising malevolence and spite, that Froi noticed the most. These men were no different from the street thugs he had answered to on the streets of the Sarnak capital. In Sarnak, these men had, in turn, answered to no one. Froi could tell that the Citavita’s street thugs were armed and he could have pointed out every concealed weapon. He itched for his own.
When they finally stood in front of the castle gates he understood why no one had ever entered uninvited. Isaboe’s castle in Lumatere was built to provide a home to the royal family. It was only recently that Finnikin and Sir Topher had sat with Trevanion and an architect from the Lumateran rock village to discuss the extra security measures required for their young family and their kingdom.
But this castle was built for defence. Froi stared up at the soldiers with their weapons trained on them. They stared down at him. Up close he could see the castle was built on its own rock, a fraction higher and separate from the rest of the Citavita. Although it was a narrow space between the portcullis and where they stood, there was no moat surrounding it, instead there was a drop into the gravina separating them that seemed to go on forever. Rafuel had given him a strange description of how the gravina narrowed in a serpentine fashion past the palace and godshouse of the Citavita.
‘Gargarin of Abroi?’ a voice rang out towards them.
Gargarin raised his hand in acknowledgement. The drawbridge began to descend across the space, stopping short of where Froi and Gargarin stood. Once on the bridge, it was a short but steep climb up to the gate. On each side a thick braided rope provided a place to grip firmly. Gargarin’s staff fell to the steel beneath their feet and he struggled once, then twice, to retrieve it.
Waiting for them at the gate stood a man of Gargarin’s years, his hair longish around the ears, his mottled skin covered with a coarse, fair beard. He was all forced smile and Froi caught a gleam of pleasure in his eyes as Gargarin continued to struggle for his staff.
Froi picked it up instead.
‘Put your arm around my shoulder,’ Froi ordered, and for the first time since they had met, Gargarin didn’t argue. Froi wondered what it did to a man of Gargarin’s age to be hobbling like an old man.
‘Welcome back, Abroi’s Gargarin,’ the man at the portcullis greeted. There was mockery in the way he spoke the words. Froi remembered what Zabat had said. That Abroi had produced nothing of worth but Gargarin and his brother, the Priestling. Perhaps this man’s words were a reminder to Gargarin of where he came from.
‘May I present to you, Olivier, lastborn of Sebastabol. Olivier, Bestiano of Nebia, the King’s First Advisor.’
Froi held out a hand. But Bestiano’s attention was already drawn back to Gargarin. Lastborns seemed insignificant to the King’s Advisor.
‘The King wept when I told him the news, Gargarin. That the brilliant one who l
eft us too soon is back in our midst.’
‘When one hears there is a price on their head, they tend to feel quite uninvited,’ Gargarin said politely.
Bestiano made a scoffing sound. ‘You exaggerate.’
Gargarin held up the scrolls. ‘I come bearing gifts. Perhaps my way of buying forgiveness for my long absence.’
‘Only you would consider words on parchment a gift,’ Bestiano said smoothly. ‘Eighteen years is a long time. You may have to offer him your firstborn if you truly want his forgiveness. Or your brother.’
Froi watched Gargarin stumble, saw the flicker of emotion on his face.
‘Then it’s true that he has returned to these parts?’ Gargarin asked flatly. They entered the barbican and, up above, Froi saw at least ten soldiers standing beside the murder holes just as Rafuel had described. On the ground, four soldiers approached and searched them thoroughly. Froi noticed they were more careful with Gargarin. They studied his staff and patted his entire body.
‘I could bend over if you prefer,’ Gargarin said, his voice cool, staring at one of the men. ‘Perhaps you weren’t thorough enough.’
Froi was beginning to feel better about Gargarin. The man seemed to dislike everyone, not just him.
Bestiano led them into a bustling courtyard, past the barracks where soldiers trained with practice swords. Two men carrying large vats pushed past them and disappeared into a doorway to their left. Froi imagined it must lead to the cellar, according to the sketches Rafuel had shown him in Lumatere. There was bellowing from kitchen staff – between the cook and one of the serving girls by the sounds of things – and when Froi wasn’t competing with servants for space, or tripping over the young man sweeping the courtyard grounds and the not-so-young page handing Bestiano a message, he found himself surrounded by livestock.
‘Your brother took up residence in the Oracle’s godshouse a year ago and refuses to meet with the King,’ Bestiano said, watching Gargarin closely. ‘It is the King’s greatest desire that there is peace between the palace and the godshouse after all this time. It’s what the people of the Citavita want.’
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