“If she’s out here and not locked up in the barracks, I’ll know,” he said. He took a deep breath and whistled.“You share a whistle?” Trevanion said in disbelief.“Do you have a problem with that?” Finnikin asked.“I have a few whistles,” Lucian murmured. “Very confusing sometimes.”“Whistles are meant for combat,” Trevanion said. “Not wooing women. Women do not understand whistles.”

“All right, silent dark bear with angry frown, tell me more about your land.”He settled back down, picturing it. “I would tend to our land from the moment the sun rose to when it set and then you ...she would tend to me.”He laughed at her expression again. The world of exile camps and the Valley felt very far away, and he wanted to lie there forever.“Let me tell you about your bride,” she said, propping herself up on her elbows.“Both of you would cultivate the land. You would hold the plow, and she would walk alongside you with the ox, coaxing and singing it forward. A stick in her hand, of course, for she would need to keep both the ox and you in line.”“What would we...that is, my bride and I, grow?”“Wheat and barley.”“And marigolds.”Her nose crinkled questioningly.“I would pick them when they bloomed,” he said. “And when she called me home for supper, I’d place them in her hair and the contrast would take my breath away.”“How would she call you? From your cottage? Would she bellow, ‘Finnikin!’?”“I’d teach her the whistle. One for day and one for night.”“Ah, the whistle, of course. I’d forgotten the whistle.”

“Finn, listen!" Trevanion said, his voice raw. "I prayed to see you one more time. It's all I prayed for. Nothing more. And my prayers were answered. Go east, I'll lead them west.""We have a dilemma, then," Finnikin said fiercely. "Because I prayed that you would grow old and hold my children in your arms as you held me. My prayers have not been answered yet, Trevanion. So whose prayer is more worthy? Yours or mine?”

“Trevanion wrapped his arm around his son's neck like shepherd's hook and dragged him along playfully. when he let go, Finnikin thought he would have liked his father to hold on a moment longer.”

“Are you calling us pigs?’ Froi asked, watching as Rafuel winced for the tenth time at the formality of Froi’s Charyn.Rafuel thought for a moment and then nodded.‘Actually yes, I am. Pig-like.’Froi turned back to Trevanion and Perri, who were discussing the need for longbow training in the rock village.‘What is it?’ Perri asked Froi.‘He said we eat like pigs.’Trevanion and Perri thought about it for a moment and then went back to their conversation.”

“Up in the distance the whistle of the wind sang to her from the mountain. From Lucian’s mountain. It beckoned and taunted and she wanted to run towards it. To be enveloped in its coat of fleece and to hear its safe sounds.”

“All I need to understand is the unwritten law of warriors," he said firmly. "And women and children are never sent to do our work without our protection." He pointed to the trees, emphatically. "That's the language I share with them.”