The True Queen

by Sarah Fine

  “I don’t care!” I flinch at the shrill sound of my own voice and close my eyes. After a slow, careful breath, I continue. “In the catacombs, under the sections that have collapsed, lies a huge portion of the copper we have pulled from the land. We could use that. We can also gather it from the townspeople—”

  “Ha! It doesn’t take a prophecy to know that you’ll have a full-scale revolt on your hands if you try. You may even if you don’t.”

  A rare kind of rage has sparked in my chest, searing me with its heat. “So what shall we do? You think I should just toss Sig and Oskar into a hole instead? Are their lives so cheap?”

  Raimo is very still. “I never said their lives were cheap. But this problem? It comes with a very steep cost.”

  “Forgive me if I’d rather offer it all my wealth instead of casually discarding the lives of the Suurin!” I am pacing now, because otherwise I think I might burst into flames on the spot. My skin feels flushed, feverish. “Besides, if the Soturi attack us, I cannot hold them back on my own! I need Oskar and Sig if we want to have any hope of protecting our people.”

  I hold up my hands, one whole, one scarred, both shaking with frustration. Over the last few months I have grown resigned to my utter lack of magic, and it does not ache the way it used to. But now that grief is on me full force—without other wielders, I am nothing. I am ordinary and weak and powerless.

  “You’re right, of course,” Raimo admits. “And if Sig is correct, there’s a large force of Soturi out there, aligned with Kauko. If that’s true, then they will surely come for us, because the elder thirsts for the throne of Kupari even more than he thirsts for the blood of wielders. He’ll use anyone and any trick to regain it.” Raimo leans on his stick. “The war could be just that. An actual war.”

  “And the land? Could giving it back its riches pacify it?”

  He looks into my eyes. “There is nothing in any prophecy that suggests otherwise, but there is nothing to support the idea, either.”

  I glance at the copper lacing the walls, the ends of the scrolls, the knobs of the doors, the thread in my dress, the heavy crown on my head. I reach up and pull out the pins that hold it in place, then lift it from my hair. “The land is hungry,” I say. “And in our greed, we’ve starved it. We must feed it again.”

  Raimo watches me lay the crown atop the crumpled parchment. “This will make you a most unpopular queen.”

  “Better to be the unpopular queen of a living people than to rule over a dead realm.”

  Raimo’s brow furrows and he tilts his head. “You . . .” He chuckles weakly. “The Astia with a will of iron, as foretold by the stars. Right again. Always right. It’s a curse, I suppose.” He is still cackling as he shuffles from the room.

  I can’t follow. My eyes have filled with tears again.

  Those words should make me feel better. Proud and ready to face the future. But instead, all I feel is dread.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Ansa

  My racing footsteps carry me across a clearing glittering with ice and scarred by fire. It is a battlefield of magic, and it has claimed its prize. On the air, there’s a familiar scent, one that fills my mouth with sour bile. I swallow it back and run to the figure lying on a patch of blackened grass. I am heedless to any danger, but none stalks me. The night only carries one sound.

  Thyra is gasping for breath.

  I fall to my knees as soon as I reach her, but I don’t know where to touch her. Her left side is burned, blistered, and charred, half her hair gone, half her face as well. Her other side is white with frost, though some of it has begun to melt. One eye is swollen shut with burns, the other is open and frozen and blind.

  A sob escapes my mouth.

  “Ansa,” she whispers when she hears, a ragged, barely there sound.

  “I’m here.” I touch her chest, over her armor.

  “Hold me?”

  “Anything.” I lie down next to her, my face soaked with tears. I gently stroke the cold skin of her right cheek. A million thoughts are trying to crowd into my skull, but there’s no room. There’s only her.

  “Thought I could catch . . .” Her lips are stiff, mangling her words.

  “I’m sure you would have. And we will, as soon as you’re better.”

  “Blind,” she whispers, and I hear the fear in her voice.

  “I’ll be your eyes.”

  Her breath rattles. “Can’t move.” Her dagger lies melted by her scorched right hand.

  “I’ll be your arms and legs.”

  “Ansa.” It’s a plea, and I feel it close like a fist around my heart.

  “I’m always that. And always yours.” I swipe my cheek against my shoulder to dry the tears, then press it to hers. “I’ll keep you warm too.”

  “Don’t let me go.”

  “I could never. Even if you asked me to.”

  Her open blue eye stares at the sky, though I know she sees nothing. “You must lead them now.”

  “No, you’ll do that. You’re the chieftain.”

  “Please, Ansa. Promise.”

  “I’ll carry you,” I tell her, sorrow nearly strangling me. “I’ll heft you on my back. I’m strong enough. And I’ll feed you. I’ll hold you at night. I’ll be your voice. I’ll—”

  “Promise.”

  “Please don’t make me.” Because if I do . . .

  “Ansa,” she says, her voice merely a rasp. “Do this for me. And then I can go with peace in my heart.”

  “I won’t let you go, though. You’re going to stay with me, and we’re going to live through this together. And then we’ll make our new home, and I’m going to sleep next to you every night. We’re going to love each other until we’re old, and I don’t care that we’re both warriors, because I’ll kill anyone who objects. You’re mine. You’ve always been mine, and I’m yours. That’s how it is.” I touch my forehead to hers. “And you have to be here for that to happen.”

  “Wish I could,” Thyra says. “Because you . . . always made me . . . feel alive.”

  It takes her way too long to say those words, and they seem to steal all her air. The sound of her last battle with her own body slices the selfishness right out of me. “All right, I promise,” I say. “If I must carve a border with my bare hands, if I have to kill every single Kupari, if I have to offer my own life in exchange—I will make a new home for our warriors. They will sleep safe with their families and raise their babies to dominate this earth. Blood and victory, always.”

  Her mouth twitches, and I think she is trying to smile. “Blood and victory, my sister. My love.”

  My love. Words I have craved for so long. And they are the last she ever says. Thyra’s spirit slips free of her destroyed body as I kiss her lips. I swear I feel it brush past me in its fierce flight to the eternal battlefield, to join her father and sister and Sander and all our valiant warriors who died before her.

  Leaving me looking down at her body. Her body.

  I stare at Thyra, the anchor of my future. The chain that binds our hearts has been torn away, taking a bloody chunk of me with it.

  In the empty, desolate space left behind burns an icy fire that roars through my veins and muscles, seeking freedom. The magic. I hate it. I hate where it has brought us. I hate what it is and what I am and she is gone and there is nothing left. Dimly, a promise echoes in my bleeding mind, but then it flies the way of her spirit and is gone.

  When the pain is more than I can bear, I throw my head back and scream it to the heavens, past caring who or what I destroy, including myself. As if it shares my grief, the earth shudders and then explodes with fury.

  I welcome it as it swallows me whole, offering the relief of quiet, black death.

  When the pain comes back, I know mercy is not mine to have in this life. We were always taught neither to expect it nor offer it, but I was still desperate enough to welcome it when it kissed my cheek. And desperate enough to cry, as I do now, when I realize I was foolish to think I could hold on to
that mercy of death, to think it would stay at my side.

  Like Thyra.

  The memory of her charred and frozen face flickers in my mind before it goes dark again, extinguished by hurt. It’s all I’m made of now.

  “I think she’s waking.”

  I go still at the sound of a female voice nearby. I recognize it. While the thick fog of confusion still swirls in my skull, my ears collect the clank of iron, the snuffling of horses, the low rumble of conversation. I work to open my eyes, but they are crusted over. When I try to reach up to scrape the remnants of my grief and sorrow away, I find I cannot.

  My wrists are shackled.

  A warm, wet cloth is pressed over my eyes. “This will help,” says an accented male voice. Another I recognize, one that sends a cold drop of horror down my throat and into my belly.

  Kauko. I try to say it, but my throat is so tender and swollen, my lips so cracked and dry, that I am mute. The cloth slides across my cheeks, and my eyes open to the view of the leafy canopy above me, slits of sunlight peeking through. The elder leans over me, his thick lips pulled into a gentle smile. “The earth tried to swallow you, but Jaspar reached you just in time.”

  I glance down at myself. I am wearing an overlarge tunic and loose breeches. My feet are encased in warm stockings. But my ankles and wrists are chained to the cot on which I’m lying, at the base of a towering oak. A sweep of my eyes around me reveals a sprawling camp. Carina, whose voice I heard earlier, is poking at the contents of a stew pot over a fire.

  I have been found by the rebel warriors. And that means . . .

  “It’s for your own safety, Ansa,” Jaspar says as I start to struggle against the restraints. The traitor moves to Kauko’s side, and I take in the face I used to think was one of the more handsome I’d ever beheld. Now his cheeks are hollower than they were several weeks ago. But he still looks strong. And dangerous. Hatred for him burns inside me, the flames of my magic awakening from their slumber.

  “You,” I try to say. You wanted her dead. And now she is.

  His brow furrows. “Don’t do this to yourself again,” he pleads.

  Kauko leans close. “So many burns. I have healed you many times already.”

  Thyra is dead. I don’t care if I’m reduced to ash on the wind.

  His hands float over my body, palms down, and another hard shock rolls through me. He is wearing the cuff of Astia. Fear and rage singe my lungs, and I gasp with the agony.

  “More of the sleeping draught,” Jaspar yells to Carina, his voice rising with urgency.

  I wish for fire. I wish for the world to burn.

  Frigid magic flows hard from Kauko’s hands as pain devours me. Without the cuff, the magic inside me is not controllable. But worse than that, I’m so weak that I can’t even raise my head. It’s not just the chains that hold me to this cot. It feels as if I’m held here by a thick blanket of sand, heavy and impossible to fight. I’ve never felt this powerless.

  My eyes meet those of the elder. “You are safe,” he says.

  “Liar!” It bursts from me like the screech of a crow. Sparks fly from my mouth. I’m going to kill them all. I don’t care if I die too. I want to be dead. I want this pain to end.

  Thyra’s gone. She’s gone, gone, gone, and without her I am no longer a wolf—I am a storm, and I must rage and then fall apart. There is no reason to go on.

  Promise, Thyra whispers in my mind. You promised.

  “No,” I say with a moan as Carina comes over with a wineskin. Jaspar takes it from her, his fingers straying over hers in an overfond way, and presses it to my parched lips.

  “Ansa, I know you’re confused and hurt, but you must believe me—you’re safe, and among Krigere.” Jaspar strokes my jaw and tries to coax my mouth open, but I grit my teeth and turn my face away. My skin crackles with hurt as my magic bursts through in blisters and the bite of frost. Kauko is muttering to himself as he holds his hands over my body, probably trying to counteract the curse inside me, which is uncontrollable because he has stolen what is mine.

  Everything that is mine has been stolen. A harsh scream is all I have left to offer the world. But as my mouth opens, Jaspar moves like a snake and pours the pungent liquid from the wineskin right down my throat. I cough and choke on it, then swallow reflexively, unable to stop my body from trying to keep breathing and living. I writhe, but it is a feeble effort. I spit at Jaspar, but it only results in a dribble of saliva down my cheek that he gently wipes away. His eyes are full of pity and concern, and I want to melt his skin right off his face.

  “Get back,” says Kauko before he continues muttering. “Her magic is still so strong.”

  Jaspar steps away from me, the wineskin dangling from his fist. “We won’t abandon you, Ansa. You’re not alone. I’m going to keep saying it until you believe me.”

  Dizziness steals over me, and I close my eyes against the feeling that I’m falling down a deep hole.

  “She will rest now,” I hear Kauko say. “Much safer.”

  I imagine a spear of ice piercing his heart, and I feel the cold inside me start to rise up before it is swallowed by a wave of heavy warmth. I don’t know if it’s coming from him or me, but I’m drowning in it, too tired to swim. My tense muscles go loose. Darkness pours into my burning thoughts, extinguishing the flames. I try to hold on to my understanding of where I am—an enemy camp, tied up and helpless, my one ally on the wrist of a man who once drank my blood, my one love dead and gone, but nothing makes sense, and I am having trouble summoning anything but numbness.

  Finally, I surrender, and sleep claims its victory.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Elli

  What you are suggesting is nothing short of madness!” Topias paces in front of the wooden table that my attendants carried from the damaged temple this morning. His soft leather boots squish through the muddy grass just outside the menagerie fence, where we have erected a canopy to shade us from the sun. After last night’s quake, it seems too dangerous to have the city’s leaders gather under a roof that could collapse on us all.

  Right now, though, I cannot help the wicked wish that a clump of broken brick would hit this stubborn, shortsighted man right on the top of his velvet-covered head. “Think about this, please,” I say, looking from him to Agata to the rest of the assembled council, who all wear identical looks of horror. “We were informed that our last copper mine had been emptied out only a few weeks ago, and suddenly our entire peninsula, which has lain still as a corpse for centuries, is crumbling into the Motherlake. How can this be a coincidence?”

  “Our written history does not extend so far, and the land was here long before we made it our home,” says Agata, sounding as if she is lecturing a child.

  I press down my anger. “Although that is true, we must agree—when you hollow out a mound of earth, it is more prone to collapse. We have emptied the veins of Kupari. Why are we pretending that has nothing to do with its illness?”

  “That is a theory and nothing more. You have no proof.”

  I stand, unable to sit quietly anymore. The council goes still, perhaps afraid I will strike them with my magic. If only they knew.

  I’m so glad they don’t.

  I tuck my hands into the silk folds of my skirt to show I mean no harm. “We must do something,” I tell them. “How can we look our citizens in the eye if we sit back and do nothing while they lose everything, including their lives? If Kupari falls under my rule, it will not be because I did not try to save it.”

  “But your proposal will destroy us too! You ask us to pour our wealth into a grave. How will we survive without our copper? We’ll be peasants—starving peasants at that.”

  I look out on the Motherlake, easily visible from this lakeside plateau that was long ago built for the temple’s gardens and menagerie. “The soil is rich. We can save enough copper to trade with Ylpeys for seed if we need to. We can—”

  Agata snorts. “And that’s it? What will the people do when they have no coins to pu
rchase things they need?”

  “They can trade with each other! Is having coin more important than breathing?”

  “You make it sound so certain that sacrificing all our wealth is the answer. But you’ve already admitted you don’t actually know.” Topias snatches his cap from his head and runs his hand over the few strands of hair that were hiding underneath. “I for one cannot support this.”

  “Nor can I,” says Agata. “You’ve already sheltered a known murderer. And now you want to demand people give you all their hard-earned wealth so you can toss it into a hole. I cannot stand by you any longer, Valtia. I am sorry.”

  She doesn’t look sorry. A few others do, but it doesn’t stop them from murmuring their agreement with her betrayal.

  “So you all feel this way. You are against me now?” I wish I could slow the frantic beating of my heart as my thoughts whirl with words. I need to figure out which ones will win them back, because if they speak against me, it will only enflame people’s doubts. They’re already scared enough as their homes collapse and rumors about imminent Soturi invasion persist. I was hailed as a hero for driving the elders and priests from the temple, but now I know they wonder if things should have remained as they had been. If the council speaks against me, that could be the final weight that collapses my roof.

  “What if . . .” I secure Agata’s skeptical gaze. “What if the temple sets an example? Our stores are buried in rock, but with help, we could unearth it. What if we were to use that as an offering to the land? Surely, if I am right, it will at least lessen the intensity of the quakes. If that happens, you will know the missing copper was the problem. And if it doesn’t end the quakes, then we can ask the people for more. The temple will assume the risk and sacrifice. I will toss my own crown into the ground if that will make it happy.”

  Topias slides his cap back on and straightens his copper council medal. He exchanges glances with Agata, and she shrugs. “We do not control the temple coffers—only the city treasury,” he says. “If you wish to toss away your copper, we cannot stop you.”