The True Queen

by Sarah Fine

“That is true. Nor can we question the chieftain’s loyalty to you.”

  “Ah. And that’s what bothers you.”

  An impatient sigh bursts from his mouth. “Loyalty is a gift. But sometimes it is a blindfold, too.”

  “Are you really questioning her wisdom?”

  I see his eyes narrow and know it is a silly question. Of course he questions her wisdom. Though she’s the chieftain, tested in combat, daughter of the greatest warrior the Krigere have ever bred, she is eighteen years old—and Bertel has more than twice that number, as do most of the surviving warriors. The others have even more than that. “Bertel, her cleverness saved your life.”

  “Cleverness is not the same thing as wisdom.”

  “What do you call her decision to seek a land where we can make a permanent home?”

  “I will not speak ill of my chieftain,” he says, holding up his hands.

  “You already have,” I snap.

  “No. And I will say no more, except to ask you . . . to beg you, even . . . to look inside yourself. We all saw you in the fight circle the night Thyra battled Nisse’s warriors. We all saw the mad look in your eyes, the way you would have killed all of us to save her. And we saw it again last night as you sent winter gales swirling through the air and thick ice crawling along the ground like poison.”

  “I was trying to save you!”

  He leans forward, his gaze on me enviably steady. “We know. In the end, we are not sure how much your good intentions matter in the face of the power that hides beneath your skin. We wonder which is the wielder and which is the weapon.”

  “Are you saying you think I should leave? You do realize I may be the key to gaining us territory within the borders of Kupari, don’t you?”

  “Kupari has no army. It is possible we could carve defendable territory on our own.”

  A fierce, sharp kind of rage is growing inside me, like a blade of ice. “Kupari is mine,” I growl.

  He rocks back, and so do I, surprised at the animal sound of my own voice. The tremors are back too, sending ripples of heat and cold through my bloodstream. I close my eyes and concentrate on taking a slow breath. “What I meant is that they have magic wielders too, and you know that is a power that no Krigere should face alone.”

  “But it seems our ally could kill us just as easily.”

  My stomach is frozen and heavy inside me. “I’m not an ally. I’m your sister. I’m as Krigere as you are.”

  “I don’t deny it. But you are also something else. And you can’t deny that.”

  “So again I ask—what do you want from me?”

  “I—and so many others—only want to live, and to have a place to keep my family safe. I don’t care what I have to do to achieve that. I suppose what we want is for you to search your soul, and to be a true, loyal Krigere. If you are unstable in battle, you put the lives of your fellow warriors in danger. Then you are as much an enemy as the enemy herself.”

  Which is why the Krigere banish any warrior who cannot control his or her mind and mood. It always made sense to me until I thought about what it would be like to be deprived of the tribe—how can one be stable at all when everything you know and love is stripped away? “You cannot be asking me to banish myself, Bertel. What would Thyra say if she heard you?”

  “And this is why I am speaking to you in confidence. Because I care about my chieftain.”

  “Care is what you do for a child. Respect is what you give a chieftain.”

  “There are many kinds of respect.”

  I groan. “I am in no mood for philosophy.” My head feels like it is being ground between two stones. “I will always do what I think is right, Bertel. For Krigere, and for Thyra. I value both more than I value myself.”

  “That is all we can ask of you.” He regards me for a moment, nods to himself, and walks away.

  We follow one narrow path and then another, and by the time the beams of sunlight wither and disappear, leaving us in darkness, we realize we are lost.

  Actually, I have to be told, because I am in too much pain to realize anything past that. The cuff feels like an enemy now, humming constantly, a sound I feel but can’t hear no matter how I strain. Nothing inside me is still, not the magic, not my thoughts, not even my eyes in my head. I think I might be going mad.

  Thyra seems to know that I am not well, but she is quiet about it. She guides me to a fallen log and tells me to sit, then presses a waterskin to my lips. She casts impatient torch-lit glances over her shoulder at the others, and I know it is because they see her tending to me and wonder what it means. “We’re going to bed down here for the night,” she says. “We need better light to find our way out of this forest.”

  “I miss Halina,” I say, because it is the loudest of my racing thoughts. “She would know which way to go.”

  “Indeed she would. But we must find our own way. Tomorrow.” She takes my face in her hands. “Ansa, you’re getting worse. I don’t know what to do for you.”

  “This land is making me sick.”

  She stares at the ground. “Or maybe the land itself is sick. I wish it could hold steady for us.”

  “What if this is happening because of me, though? Maybe this broken magic inside me is the sickness,” I whisper.

  “Stop it.” She pulls my head against her stomach, wrapping her arms around me to hold me there. “You are still our best hope and defense in Kupari. You hold the only legitimate claim to the land, and our people need you. You’ll see. Tomorrow we will emerge from this forest, and then you’ll feel different. This darkness would drive anyone mad.”

  I glance at the torch in her hand, and it flares. She holds it a little further away from her body but closes her eyes as she feels the warmth on her face. I watch the play of shadow and light across her cheeks and brow, dazzled and dazed until I hear one of our warriors shout, “Fire!”

  Thyra turns at the sound of his terror, and my eyes go wide as I catch a whiff of thick smoke. Goose bumps rise on my arms. My cuff hums. I swear it sounds like whistling.

  “Preben,” Thyra calls, “go—”

  The fireball lands in the middle of our camp, blinding me with brightness and heat, stealing my breath. Thyra and I end up on the ground behind the log, but we are not in darkness now. The trees rain fire upon us, making the chaos easy to see. Warriors scramble like prey animals to get away from the flames, to shield themselves from the heat.

  The ice rises in me like a reflex, pouring outward. I raise my hands, directing it above our heads instead of toward my people. Thyra is shouting even as shards of ice begin to fall on us. “Is that you?”

  “No!” Because they disappear into rain and steam as they fall. My magic holds it back. “It has to be another wielder!”

  “Sig?”

  “That’s ice,” I yell. “He can’t do that.” I catch her eye. “It has to be Kauko.” My head throbs as I swivel it, trying to spot the source of the attack. “Or an army of Kupari wielders.” Maybe Sig betrayed us after all?

  An orange glimmer draws my attention back to Thyra. She has drawn a dagger, and there is a deadly look in her eyes.

  “What are you doing?”

  She squats next to me as I try to shield our warriors from the death that falls from the sky, knives of ice and the killing kiss of fire. “I’ll find Kauko, or whoever is attacking us. They won’t see me coming.”

  I would grab her arm, but I’m afraid I’d freeze the blood in her veins. My magic is making my whole body shake, dangerous and unsteady inside me. The pressure against my rib cage is building, as if it wants to burst free and lay waste to the entire forest. The only thing I can do is keep it aimed upward, where it naturally fights whatever descends on us. “Thyra, please. It isn’t safe.”

  She laughs. “And this is? Stay here and keep the worst of it off our warriors.”

  “No, I’ll come with you! You can’t fight the enemy alone!” I start to rise, but she aims the blade right at my face.

  There is no laughter in
her eyes now. Only ferocity. “If you abandon them, I will banish you.”

  “Please,” I say, my voice cracking. “I’m your wolf.”

  “Yes, you’re my wolf to command. And I command you to protect our warriors. Disobey me and you are my wolf no longer.” Her eyes are bright, maybe with tears. “I’ll keep my word, Ansa. I told you how it had to be.”

  I can tell by her expression, by the steady hand that holds her weapon, that she’ll do it. She won’t relent. It only makes me love her more. “We’ll be a lost tribe without you.”

  “I can kill one fat old man, magic or no.”

  “And if there’s more than one enemy?”

  “I’ll kill whoever I find. Stealth is a weapon all its own. They think they’ve pinned us down, but they’re wrong.” She draws her shoulders up to her ears as another fireball whistles down through the trees, and as another falls on us, her eyes follow the path. She smiles.

  My throat is so tight that I cannot breathe. “Come back.”

  She lowers her blade and extends her fingers but does not touch me, probably knowing that right now such a thing is deadly. The ice and fire spiral along my arms and into the air. “I will sleep by your side tonight.”

  She turns toward the source of the fireballs and lopes into the darkness of the wood.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Elli

  I clutch the edge of the table as I feel the earth tremble yet again. It’s happened a few times this morning, and every time, from all around me, I hear people crying out with fear. My own response is to be silent, and to brace for the world to fall apart again, but these are smaller tremors and end much more quickly than the first time.

  Across from me, Topias, the leader of the town council, is white with anxiety as he clutches his long brown beard, as if it were a rope that could pull him to safety. Truly, it’s a comical picture, but I have no laughter left inside me.

  When the ground is still once more, I lean forward to draw his attention. “You were saying?”

  He lets out a stuttery little hiss. “I was saying that the people need to hear from the temple, Valtia. They want their queen to tell them how she will keep them safe.”

  “I have fire and ice,” I say. “I do not control the earth.”

  He glances around at his fellow council members. “We are threatened by more than the shaking ground, Valtia. I thought you knew.”

  “We will continue to prepare for any incursion by Soturi forces—”

  “That’s not what we’re talking about at all.” Agata, the dressmaker, steps forward. “Don’t you feel it?” she asks, peering at my face. “All the other wielders seem to. An unsteadiness. A loss of control.”

  Heat blooms across my skin and I hope I am not blushing. “My priests and acolytes at the temple felt it as well. That something was off with them. But I . . .” I offer as serene a smile as I can muster. “Perhaps it is the balance of my magic that protects me from this feeling.”

  “There have been accidents,” Topias says. Now he is stroking his beard as if it were a nervous pet. The council medallion of heavy copper shines dully on his chest, and it is a reminder that we may have done this to ourselves. “Wielders have . . . done damage.”

  “Please be specific,” I say. “Let us be straight with each other.”

  Agata puts her hands on the table, and I gaze down upon her spindly fingers and the glittering rings that decorate them. “An ice wielder killed the child she was minding this morning. Froze him in her arms.”

  I put my hand over my mouth and swallow back a wave of sick. “How horrible.”

  “It was the youngest son of Yrian, the blacksmith. The wielder—her name is Ivette—she claims she did not know she was a wielder until that moment, but no one believes her.”

  I bite back a comment about how I could not blame her if she were hiding her ability. Until several weeks ago, wielders either escaped to the outlands—or were taken to the temple to serve. No one had much of a choice. Very few wielders have revealed themselves to their fellow citizens, who cannot always suppress their fear and suspicion. To them, wielders belong in the temple, unseen, toiling in the service of their people. “Is she safe?”

  “Is she safe?” Agata folds her arms over her bosom. “What about the boy she killed?”

  “That is a tragedy, but I cannot raise him from the dead. It sounds like a tragic accident—and I’d like to make sure there is only the one victim.”

  “Then control your wielders!” The words burst from Topias in a spray of spittle, and he uses his velvet sleeve to wipe it from his lips. “Appear in the town square and tell them to reveal themselves! Invite them to the temple or figure out some other way to bring them to heel!”

  “I can appear before the people, but I will not ask frightened wielders to step forward in the midst of a potential mob,” I say, taking care to keep my voice steady. “That is not the way to quell anyone’s fears. Magic will spring forth to protect the wielder—the last thing we need is our people attacking each other. It wouldn’t go well for anyone.”

  “Is that a threat?” Topias asks quietly.

  I stand. “I would never threaten the people I rule and care for. Those with magic and those without. I love you all equally, and I will not participate in your proposal to single out wielders for suspicion.”

  “They are dangerous!”

  I lock gazes with Agata. “So are you.” I step away from my chair. “I am returning to the temple now. I will send guards to bring Ivette to the temple. And I would ask each of you to remember the greater good over your own fears and prejudices. We all must work together to rebuild and to defend this city.” I turn in place, taking in the fissured stone walls of the council chamber, the spills of rock in the corners, the crack in the ceiling, and then all the council members themselves, bedecked in dust-streaked robes and gowns that were possibly pulled from the rubble of their fine houses. “Wielders are critical to our protection. Attacking them will only divide our society at a time when we should be most united. See how we have worked together these past weeks? This is how it always should have been.”

  “The elders and the Valtia used to take care of everything!” says one man who stands near the doorway, looking ready to run if the ground shakes again. “Now we must do more than we ever have.”

  I tilt my head. “Thank the stars for that. We were sorely deprived of your gifts until now. Think of what we could have accomplished had you been required to use them sooner.”

  He looks at me as if he cannot tell if I am sincere or mocking him. In truth, it’s both.

  “I will appear in the square tonight,” I continue. “I will reassure our people and offer safe haven to wielders who are unsure of their magic, for it is clear that the unsteadiness in the ground and in the magic are linked.”

  “Are you saying that magic is causing our land to tear itself apart?” Agata asks.

  “Not at all.” My patience is wearing thin, but I keep a smile on my face as I glide toward the door, where my guards await, ready to carry me on my paarit back to the temple. “I am saying that the unsteadiness in both is connected, and we at the temple are searching the texts to uncover a remedy.”

  I have already thought of one: I can only hope, if the cause of the temblors is indeed that the copper has been drained from the land, that there is a simple way to offer it back to the earth, but I do not say this to them. Right now it would cause them to panic—I’d be telling them to throw their wealth into a deep hole, something they will not right now be willing to do. I first have to be sure—and then I have to find a palatable way of feeding it to them. “For today, though, let us focus on keeping peace. The townsfolk will be looking to you for an example. Please be your best selves.”

  I walk quickly to my paarit. My guards, disciplined as always, wait until I sit on my chair. Then they raise me into the air. As I float several feet above the road, dipping and tilting as my guards carefully avoid the tears in the ground at their feet, I watch smoke curling
into the air, several columns between the temple and the city wall. I don’t know how people in the outlands fared—I can only hope that none of the old mines collapsed, as that is where so many find shelter.

  I wave to our citizens, who cry out to me and lift their arms, beseeching. I do not call out to them, because I think it is best to hold my words until tonight, when I address all our people. Rumors spread like sickness in times like this, and one careless promise could be fatal.

  When we reach the white plaza, I have the guards let me down and walk the rest of the way. It’s pointless for them to carry me when I can walk perfectly well—the only reason I ride in the paarit is to reassure the citizens that not that much has changed, even though so very much has changed.

  Raimo and Oskar are in my chamber when I stride in, and I feel the magic swirling in the air as I cross the room to my ice wielder. He sits on a chair at the table, his dead white hand resting on its surface. I look away from it as guilt snaps its jaws closed over my heart. “There are wielders out in the city who are losing control,” I say as I lay my hand on Oskar’s shoulder, needing to feel his cool and solid presence.

  Raimo, who has been standing by the fireplace, turns. “And I bet the town council is howling about it.”

  “An ice wielder killed a child this morning.”

  Oskar flinches. “Her own child?”

  “No, but one in her care. I am having her brought here.”

  “She’ll be lucky if she makes it in one piece,” says Raimo. “People will need someone to blame for this catastrophe.” He nods at me. “You will be lucky if they do not blame you.”

  “I am appearing in the square tonight. They need to hear my voice.”

  Oskar puts his arm around my waist. “It doesn’t sound safe, Elli. If they riot . . .”

  “They’ll riot if their queen abandons them in their time of dire need,” I say firmly. I look down at him. “Oskar. I know how to do this. I was raised to do this.”

  “You were raised to wield magic that never came to you,” he says, his gray eyes fierce. “And without it you are vulnerable. I’ll go with you tonight.”