Chapter Twenty-Two
As soon as he was clean, Finnvid returned to the entry hall where the Sacrati had been attacked.
At least, he tried to, but he found himself frozen on the threshold.
He thought of Theos, and Andros, and for the first time remembered that Andros had broken away from the other Sacrati as they’d entered the valley.
Andros was still alive. And Finnvid would find him, one day, and Andros would want answers. Finnvid needed to have them.
So he swallowed hard, once and then again, and forced himself into the room.
There were servants cleaning up, but the bodies were all gone.
So were the soldiers, Elkati and Torian alike, who’d witnessed the massacre.
Were the Torians already headed back to Windthorn?
What message would they bear? How would Theos’s mother react to the news?
Would she be resigned to her son finally finding the violent death she believed he’d been seeking?
But, no, she hadn’t said “violent”; she’d said “heroic.” And there was nothing heroic about what had happened in that hall.
“Where’s my brother?” Finnvid demanded of the nearest servant.
The woman blinked up at him, her hands stained red from the blood she was scrubbing at, and he recoiled as if she’d been a viper.
“The king,” he managed. “Or the queen mother. Or— Were there any men taken from this room? Any living men?”
She stared at him wordlessly, and for a moment he wondered if she was strange in her head.
Or maybe she was just as stunned by it all, just as horrified and torn apart and bewildered as he was.
Then he remembered that he was in Elkat.
Servants here might not be slaves, technically, but they were treated as barely human.
This woman, confronted with an angry prince, was almost certainly expecting a blow.
She wasn’t ready to give him any helpful information.
He crouched down, trying to ignore the blood on the floor, trying not to think if it belonged to someone he knew. “Did they take anyone away for medicine?” he asked in a gentler voice.
This time the woman nodded.
“Where did they go?”
She pointed her eyes in the direction of the Great Hall, and he stood quickly. “Thank you,” he said, then caught himself. Elkati princes did not thank servants.
That was what he was worried about, the propriety of it all? He’d been back in Elkat for such a short time, and already was falling into old patterns of thought. He nodded at her, then headed toward the Great Hall.
As he approached the ornately carved double doors, a scream rang from inside the room, and he stumbled to a halt. He reassured himself that the voice hadn’t been familiar, as far as he could tell by a scream. But shouldn’t he be hoping to recognize a voice? Even agony was preferably to death.
Finnvid made himself enter the room, and his nightmare changed from a frightening abstraction to something far too concrete and real.
There were bodies everywhere, most of them close together and being ignored, but a few spaced out far enough that people could crouch by their sides and tend to them. The many dead, and the few living.
This was too close to home, with the bodies laid out in the room he usually saw decorated for dances and feasts.
And Finnvid wasn’t a soldier; he’d seen death, but not often.
His mind was torn between the need to know and abject terror: it was all too much, and he sagged back against the doorjamb, trying to control himself before he ran from the room.
“Finn.” His brother’s voice wasn’t gentle, exactly, but it wasn’t cruel either. “Mother spoke to me.”
And Finnvid’s rage gave him strength. “You made a horrible mistake.” He spun and glared at his brother.
“The Sacrati are not the enemy. And Theos—one of the Sacrati—his mother is the reeve of Windthorn: the civilian leader. She was working with the reeves of Cragview and Greenbrook to ensure their support for peace. If you’ve killed her only son . . .”
Alrik shook his head. “We knew about her. It was in the letter the warlord sent. He said the reeves exaggerate their own importance, while the warlords are the ones who run the armies. Finnvid, we aren’t worried about the Torian women.”
“You should be,” Finnvid snarled. But this wasn’t what he needed to talk about. “Where are the Sacrati?” He made his voice calmer. “Did any survive?”
“Mother was right. She said you were more concerned about the enemy than about your own citizens.”
“My own citizens aren’t the ones I led into a trap,” Finnvid said through gritted teeth. “And I know you’ll take good care of them. So I’m worried about the Sacrati, yes.”
Alrik looked around, then leaned in a little closer and lowered his voice. “The warlord told us what they did to you. The Sacrati. He said the Sacrati who—the one who—who thought he owned you—the one who abused you—the warlord arranged for him to be sent on this trip. Is that right?”
Finnvid stared. “No one— Do you mean rape? When you say ‘abused,’ is that what you mean? No one did that!”
“Of course,” Alrik said hurriedly. “Of course not. But the one who tried. Is he here?”
“If a Sacrati had tried to rape me, I’d have been raped. But none of them tried.”
“Finnvid, we know you were enslaved. Not just from the warlord; we’ve started questioning the men who were with you, and they’re confirming the story.
I understand why you’d want to deny it, and once we’re done with this you need never speak of it again.
But we know. And we will take revenge if we haven’t already. ”
Finnvid wanted to scream. “I wasn’t raped.
Ask the men what they actually saw. I was claimed from a chain of others, and those others .
. .” Finnvid didn’t really want to think about the fate of the others.
“They were intended for slavery, I assume of that sort. But Theos only claimed me as a way to rescue me. He never told me to do more than wash his clothes and train.”
“Train?”
“As a warrior. That’s how Sacrati measure manhood, so he was trying to help me become worth something.
If he’d been planning to hurt me, he wouldn’t have spent his time training me to defend myself!
” And with that, Finnvid was out of patience.
He pulled himself up straighter and said, “Did any Sacrati survive the attack?”
Alrik looked undecided, but finally nodded. “Yes. One.”
Finnvid’s entire body was tight, but he managed to make his voice sound almost normal. “Where is he?”
“You don’t need to see him.”
“Alrik. Where is the Sacrati?”
Another indecisive moment before Alrik jerked his chin in the direction of the back hallway, the one that led to the kitchen and storage rooms. Finnvid didn’t listen to whatever words of warning Alrik tried to give him; he couldn’t hear past the blood rushing through his veins.
Finnvid strode forward and didn’t stop or even slow down, not while his stomach clenched, not while this strange mix of cold and heat washed over him.
He reached the half-open door of a storage room and possibly he staggered a little from the sudden dizziness when he heard a mumbled, guttural curse in a voice that sounded like— No, he wouldn’t hide behind a dream. He had to know.
But then he heard his mother’s light voice and made himself freeze.
He needed to ensure that he didn’t make things worse.
He wasn’t a child, he was a man, so he needed to be strong, and responsible.
And until he convinced his family of his mental fitness, he needed to be very, very careful.
So he calmed himself and pretended he had no particular interest in the man lying in the storage room.
Whoever he was, he was just a fellow traveler.
Gunnald’s voice was low and close, as if he’d come over toward the doorway. “It’s a miracle he survived.”
“Not exactly.” His mother spoke a little louder than Gunnald, as if she didn’t care who heard her.
“He’s the one who made it up the gallery stairs.
At close range, the archers didn’t have the advantage.
The bastard killed half a flight of our best men before enough guards got in to stop him.
It’s good you’re back, Gunnald, because clearly our forces need your strong hand in training; this was supposed to be a precision attack, and instead the savages almost survived!
They were close to winning the battle, and then what would have happened, with a band of enraged Sacrati loose in our castle? ”
“They’re great warriors.” Gunnald didn’t seem grudging in his praise.
But he was more reluctant when he added, “And there are a couple hundred more of them in Windthorn. The conditions in that valley . . . I wish you’d waited to consult, your grace.
I don’t agree that the Torians will just believe the story you send back, and I’m not sure it would matter regardless.
If we’ve killed Sacrati, we’ve proved ourselves dangerous.
And Torians are not the sort to let a dangerous neighbor sit peacefully and get stronger. ”
“You forget your place,” the queen mother said sharply. “You’ve been away for too long. You need to trust your king, and his advisors. We know things about the Torian situation that you do not, and we have made our decisions based on our superior knowledge and understanding.”
Finnvid knew he should listen more and work out a plan, but he couldn’t wait any longer to know.
So he pushed away from the wall he’d been leaning on and eased the door open.
His eyes glanced over his mother, then he addressed himself to Gunnald.
“A Sacrati survivor?” He was proud of how level his voice sounded.
“Yes, sir.”
“Who?” Finnvid asked, trying to act as though the world didn’t depend on Gunnald’s answer.