The True Queen

by Sarah Fine

  Sig curses. “That’s not a sign of peace. It’s a signal.”

  Ansa stumbles and falls to the side as all of us run forward. I blink at her in horror—an arrow perhaps three feet long is protruding from her shoulder. Oskar shouts at Sig. The settled dust in the plaza comes to life in a towering twister that barrels toward the square. The barbarian shouts are thin and faint within the roar of the wind. I kneel by Ansa’s side, relieved to see the arrow has not pierced her chest. Her teeth are gritted as she reaches up and clasps the shaft.

  It turns to ash beneath her touch, but blisters are forming on the back of her hand. They burst as the wielders pass me, forming a line between me and Ansa and the oncoming enemy. With the arrowhead still deeply embedded in the meat of her shoulder, Ansa tries to rise, but she’s so shaky that she falls forward. I catch her, pulling her chaotic magic into myself. It feels like swallowing broken shards of pottery.

  I am just wrapping my arms around her and bracing to pull her up when we are blown backward by a force that lifts me up off my feet—magic shouldn’t affect me, but it does affect Ansa, and I am carried with her. I land on my back with Ansa on top of me, but she rolls off a moment later, her skin red, swollen, scored. Confusion racks me as I realize I am surrounded by wielders, all crumpled against the slabs of the plaza. I shake as I watch my own clothes fall from me, smoldering and floating away in flakes of ash.

  And when I raise my head, Kauko is walking along the road to the plaza. He’s almost parallel with the council building. The cuff of Astia is copper-red on his wrist. He is smiling. But his hands shake as he raises them. “If I drop a marble slab on you, will you die?” he calls to me. “Something tells me you won’t be immune to that. What if I pull the temple down on top of you?”

  “Elli,” Oskar gasps. He is sprawled against the edge of the crevasse, his face white. His fingers twitch as he stretches out his arm to reach for me, offering me the magic he’s too weak to wield.

  Sig lies next to him, but he is offering his blistered hand as well, his eyes bright with determination. “Kill him, Elli,” he says with a wheeze.

  Ansa is convulsing next to me, making terrible high-pitched noises. Was the arrow poisoned?

  I begin to crawl toward Oskar and Sig, but their eyes go wide as a huge chunk of marble crashes to the ground between us. I fall back with my hair blowing around my face. Kauko is laughing. “You aren’t so hard to kill.”

  He stumbles back as he’s hit with a spinning ball of ice. Raimo is leaning against one of the upturned slabs, his finger pointed at the old priest. He ducks behind the slab-shield when Kauko sends a flurry of fire toward him. I wait for him to rise, but he doesn’t. “Raimo?”

  “Can’t,” he says. “I can’t . . .”

  I find my feet again. My Valtia is severely injured. My Suurin lie just feet away but out of reach. And Kauko has risen, and is grinning once more.

  “Who are you without your wielders, impostor?” he taunts.

  I lunge for Oskar and Sig, but a thunder of wind hits my back. It doesn’t do more than buffet me, but Sig and Oskar shout with pain as they’re dragged along the edge of the crevasse. They lie in a heap as the gale continues, but both of them have their hands outstretched, still reaching.

  Their faith in me, their need of me, constricts inside my heart. Kauko’s laugh turns the feeling to iron. I reach for them, stretching my body across the slab, the tips of my fingers just inches from those of my Suurin.

  I am not touching them, but like before, in the woods, I feel the kiss of their magic against my skin. I latch on to the feeling. And I pull.

  Like a dam breaking, their magic rushes up my arm, crossing the narrow space between us and roaring into me. Still reaching for them, I turn toward Kauko, who has a massive fireball growing over his head, which he looks prepared to hurl into the courtyard.

  There is only one thing I can do to save everyone. I turn the massive power spiraling inside my chest toward the symbol of order and wealth of the Kupari. The magic bursts from my palm in a vicious pulse of fire and ice and charged air. Lightning explodes upward.

  It strikes the council building, sending rocks hurtling down into the square and onto the road in front of Kauko, forcing him to stagger back—only a moment before the entire building topples to the ground. The earth shakes beneath my feet as I am deafened by a catastrophe of rock and mortar and dust. I fall to my knees, the magic inside me gone, my breaths blasting from my lungs, happiness and pride and relief welling up.

  I just pulled down a building with magic, and I wasn’t even touching a wielder. The triumph is expanding inside me, forcing out a laugh, and I look around, wanting to share it with Oskar, Sig, and Raimo.

  But all three of them are convulsing now, just like Ansa, and the other wielders are writhing, their fingers flexing. I feel the puffs and coughs of their magic in the air as I watch the wounds appearing on their bodies.

  “We gave the copper back to the earth,” I murmur just before confusion chokes me.

  In the second before the earth tears itself open once more, I understand a terrible truth—I haven’t healed the land at all.

  I have enraged it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Ansa

  My muscles try and fail to wring the magic from my bones, and by the time they give out, I am once again helpless and on my back. This time, the sun shines down on me, a warm kiss from the sky. The roaring in my ears fades, and as it does I hear other sounds—sobbing. Groaning.

  I open my eyes to find a changed, upside-down world. Where once a pale green dome blocked the light, there is now open sky. Where once a set of marble steps led up to a monster of a temple, there is now only fractured earth.

  I turn my head and see Elli on her stomach, coughing and crying. She looks at me with red eyes and begins to crawl toward me. “You’re alive,” she says hoarsely. “Thank the stars.”

  “What—” The last thing I remember was turning the arrow to ash. I gaze toward the gateway where Bertel stood, waving that pale cloth of parley . . . the one that apparently signaled an archer hidden in one of the nearby buildings to let fly. I was so happy to see his face after being surrounded by trilling strangers, and now I know he was sent to be the herald of my death.

  Now all that remains is rubble. The buildings on either side of the road have collapsed, leaving a two-story-high wall of debris between this plaza and the square beyond. I have no idea what happened to the Krigere. All I know is that they have completely forsaken me.

  I am truly a queen without a people.

  Elli has been talking, but I haven’t been listening. She’s looking at me as if she expects me to react. “What?” I say again. “What happened?”

  She offers a curious, worried expression. “The temple is gone.” She looks beyond me, to the fractured earth and the crashing waves of the Torden.

  “How can it be gone?”

  “The earth opened up and swallowed it,” she squeaks. “Now all that’s left is that.” She points.

  The crevasse that split this white plaza of marble has widened, and heat gushes up from it. Molten orange earth flows toward the waves that lick the torn shore, sending up billowing clouds of steam. Beneath me, the earth rumbles again, and I feel its vibration deep inside my body, where the magic hides. “It’s not over, though,” I say, gasping as the ground moves against me.

  “Can you rise?” she asks.

  I don’t bother answering her. She’s already yanking me up. I scoot my feet underneath myself and cling to her for balance. I feel weak, and I am shocked at the steadiness in her soft body. She smells warm and salty and I have the strange urge to cling to her for safety. It reminds me of Thyra, and my chest wells with grief.

  My arms fall away from her and I brace my hands on my thighs as I look around. The small group of magic wielders who kidnapped me from the Krigere camp lie scattered amid overturned marble slabs and exposed earth. “Did you kill Kauko?” I ask. “Are the priests dead?”

  S
he turns toward the massive mound of rubble that cuts us off from the rest of the city. I can hardly hear what’s going on beyond it—the hissing of steam and the pounding waves of the Torden make it impossible. “They are surprisingly adept at surviving,” she says, frowning. “What will the warriors do?”

  “I don’t know. If any of them survived, they might pull back outside the city walls. We are more accustomed to open fields and the cover of forests, not buildings and roads.”

  “That is fortunate, if so,” she replies.

  “Either way, you cannot hope to hold them back.” Wielders are stirring, some getting up, most looking a lot better than I feel. Except for two—Oskar and Sig. They lie side by side at the edge of the crevasse, neither moving.

  Elli is on her way over to them. She falls to her knees between them and bows her head. Her sobs are quiet, but her sorrow echoes inside me. I make my way over there as well, but on considerably less steady legs. “Are they dead?”

  She shakes her head. “Not quite.”

  I grimace when I see their wretched faces and hear their rattling breaths.

  “I don’t understand,” Elli says, looking over her shoulder at me. “We were supposed to stand together and fight whatever threatens Kupari.”

  Oskar whispers something to her.

  “We didn’t defeat them, though. All we did was that!” Elli points to the wall of rubble. “And I have no idea what lies on the other side, but I have no hope that it is our former enemies, now prepared to surrender peacefully.” Her shoulders shake. “I have no hope left at all.”

  As if mocking her, the ground shivers, and I retch as it moves inside me, too. Sig, his eyes swollen and streaming tears, moans.

  “I don’t understand what we did wrong, Ansa,” Elli is saying, stroking Oskar’s messy hair away from his ravaged face. He tries to give her a smile, but he seems too tired to make it work. He keeps speaking to her, soft and comforting, but she is inconsolable.

  The grizzled old man named Raimo crawls on hands and knees toward the three of them. He murmurs something that causes Elli’s head to jerk up. She snaps at him in Kupari, but I don’t understand her because she is not talking to me. I can translate the rage in her words, though. She doesn’t like what he has to say. Not at all.

  Oskar reaches up with a trembling hand and strokes her hair, his voice shredded with weakness and hurt. Elli takes his hand and presses it to her cheek. She is arguing with him, with the old man, and maybe even with Sig, who is muttering something from between his horribly cracked lips. Her voice reaches a fever pitch, and I feel her desperation in the knot in my stomach. When her blue eyes meet mine, I feel as if I might be sick.

  “What are they saying?” I ask.

  Tears stream down Elli’s face. “Raimo says the earth is not satisfied with our copper. He says it wants something else.” Her face twists. “Something much more precious.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Elli

  Something is very wrong inside my head. I hear Raimo’s voice, and Oskar’s, and Sig’s, and Ansa’s, but I can’t wrap my mind around what they are saying. “No,” I say, and realize I’ve been chanting it.

  Oskar is shushing me, and even that quiet sound appears to be draining his energy. I clamp my lips shut to save him more effort.

  “Elli, you have no choice in this,” says Raimo. “I’m sure now that this is the only way.”

  “You can’t be sure,” I say, my voice hitching.

  “I’m sure,” says Oskar. “This is our battle to fight. This is what was always meant to be. Nothing else can save Kupari now.”

  “Sig,” I plead, wanting to clasp his hand, his arm, but finding no part of him unblistered. “Sig, you don’t want to do this. You want to fight. You want war!”

  “Seems that war has come to me,” he mutters between wheezing breaths. “I have nothing left, Elli.”

  “You are made of fire,” I shout. “Has that abandoned you?”

  He groans. “How I wish it had.”

  I sit back like he’s kicked me. As long as I’ve known him, Sig has been only his magic and nothing else. “What will you be without it?” I want him to be defiant. Angry. Himself, in other words.

  “Elli,” he says gently. “I’d be at peace.”

  I collapse over Oskar, my fingers digging into his sides. “Oskar, you can’t. Please.”

  I glance around the courtyard and find Maarika and Freya, holding each other tightly. “You can stop this,” I call to them.

  Maarika’s jaw is set as she looks back and forth from her son to me. Freya’s face is buried in her mother’s chest. Maarika holds her daughter’s head there firmly as she shakes her head, tears pouring down her face. “Enough,” she mouths.

  Oskar slowly places his one good hand on my back, holding me to him. “If I don’t do this, we’ll all die, Elli—including my mother, Freya, and everyone I love. I couldn’t live with that.”

  “This is wrong.”

  Raimo, who is weak and unsteady, but not blistered or frostbitten like my Suurin, pats my leg as I lie on Oskar’s chest. “Right and wrong are human concepts, Elli. To the stars and the earth, those things are meaningless. There is only what was, what is, and what is meant to be.”

  “But you, a man, are interpreting what is meant to be.”

  His watery eyes focus on my face. “The first Suurin gave their lives to forge the cuff of Astia. The power of that artifact is indisputable.”

  “Yes, but—”

  His fingers tighten over my calf. “And it was in their sacrifice that Kauko himself rose. He has driven the draining of the earth. He was the one who secretly hoarded the copper in the catacombs, all in the hope of harnessing the power. But he never really understood the give and take of magic and blood and earth. And now, to stop the damage he has done from destroying us all, we must ask another pair of Suurin for the same sacrifice.”

  “This is barbaric,” I say.

  “Our magic is in our blood,” Oskar says. “Magic fed by copper. Copper that was then stolen from the earth. You might have given it back, but our blood is the only thing that can complete this transaction and heal the wound.”

  “Elli,” a voice says quietly. I turn to see Ansa, looking pale except for the blisters and patches of frostbite dotting her forehead and cheeks. She looks like she’s aged a decade in the last hour.

  “Look at her, Elli,” Raimo says. “She’s dying. If the earth moves again, it will likely kill her.”

  Ansa doesn’t look scared, though. Her blue eyes are filled with sadness as she looks from Oskar to me. “It can have my blood,” she says.

  My mouth drops open. “What?”

  She tries to push herself up, but isn’t strong enough. “I have ice and fire. The earth can have me.”

  She almost looks eager.

  “What’s she saying?” asks Raimo.

  Sig sighs. “Ansa is offering herself in our place.”

  I stare at my Valtia, the most unlikely queen I could ever have imagined. She is small and fierce and her hair is cropped short and her fingernails are nubs crusted with grime. She’s uncouth and violent. She tried to kill Oskar just this morning. The only reason she was helping us was to get Lahja back and to get revenge on Kauko and Jaspar. “Why?”

  Our eyes meet as Sig reveals his theory: “She probably thinks that if she dies, she can see Thyra again.” He says something in Soturi to Ansa.

  She shakes her head. “That’s not why,” she says to me. “I don’t even know if Thyra would welcome me now.” She swallows and bows her head. “I have lost my love. She is gone forever.” She raises her gaze to mine. “But you do not have to lose yours.”

  I am caught. I don’t know what I want.

  Raimo clears his throat. “That’s a lovely and noble offer, but it won’t work anyway,” he says. “If we were to let Ansa sacrifice herself, her magic would find the Saadella. It wouldn’t flow into the earth.”

  Under the stones of the plaza, the entire peninsula
rumbles. Ansa, Sig, and Oskar all cry out in pain. Oskar’s breath bursts from between his lips in a spray of ice shards flecked with blood, while Sig breathes fire and then coughs up a grisly pink foam.

  “They’re dying anyway,” Raimo says, his voice taking on a new urgency. “You can only save one of them, Elli, and that’s your Valtia.”

  “I can’t save anyone,” I say. Unable to look at my ravaged Suurin another minute, I start to get to my feet. “I am not even a part of this. I won’t be a witness to it.”

  “You must stand with them.” He points a tremulous, gnarled finger at me. “And I would be shocked if you were willing to walk away from them now just to spare yourself pain. Is that who you are?”

  “Elli,” says Ansa. “Let me do this.”

  “You can’t,” I say. “It wouldn’t work. It’s not right.” I glare at her, needing a target for my rage. “You’re in luck.”

  Her expression hardens. “How fortunate I am.”

  I collapse to the ground. “I’m sorry.” Despair is threatening to drown me, but I won’t allow it. Raimo is right; I cannot walk away, not when my Suurin need me. Not when they are all that stands between us and doom.

  The ground shifts and rocks clack and shudder all around the courtyard. Steam hisses from the point where molten rock slides its tongue into the depths of the Motherlake. The wielders around me moan and cry in their agony.

  “Elli,” says Sig. “It’s time to fight this final battle with us.”

  It had better be final, because after this I will have nothing left. I nod, my tears drying. “Tell me what to do,” I say to Raimo, my voice dead.

  “Are you two sure you are prepared to do this?” Raimo asks.

  Neither of them answers immediately. They are looking at each other, a silent question passing between them. Sig’s jaw clenches. I watch him, expecting him to rise and offer to throw Raimo into the crevasse instead, but he doesn’t. He simply tenses and starts to push himself up. “I’m going to do this on my terms.”