The True Queen

by Sarah Fine

  And that does it.

  “I’ll wait here,” he grumbles. “Don’t be too long.”

  “It takes us longer than it takes you,” I tell him. “We have to be careful with our skirts.”

  He sighs. “Fine. Just get it done!” He shivers. “It’s chilly out here.”

  “Of course,” I say. “Thank you for your consideration. We’ll be back shortly.” With Lahja’s hand in mine, I march around the next dune, my feet slipping in the soft sand. It’s slower going than I’d like, but our footsteps are mere whispers.

  “I don’t really have to go,” Lahja says quietly once we’re out of sight.

  “I’m glad,” I whisper. “Because we must run now. Can you?”

  The moon is reflected in her wide eyes, the only part of her face I can see clearly. She nods. And then we begin to jog. I have no idea how long Osten will wait, but probably only a few minutes. My head swivels as I try to retrace the route Jaspar took as he brought me here, but there are no tracks in the cursed sand. I pause, only knowing I need to head away from the shore, because eventually we’ll meet the road. But right now I’m just surrounded by dunes on every side.

  “Hey!” comes the shout from behind us, and then I know our direction. As far from the sound as we can make it. My heart pumps terror through my blood as I pull Lahja along, our breaths huffing. I glance over my shoulder to see Osten’s dark form barreling toward us.

  Lahja screams and tenses, and I loop my arm around her belly and scoop her up. But my feet sink in the sand, and we’re too slow. As Osten closes the distance between us, I whirl around to see him with his hands up, preparing to hurl his magic. I shove Lahja behind me and face him as the air around me turns cold. It’s so easy for wielders to forget that I’m immune to their power.

  And even fewer realize I’m dangerous.

  “Nice try, impostor,” he says, panting, as he stops in front of me. I take a step back, looking over my shoulder to see Lahja standing ten feet away, shivering and petrified. “Did you really think you were going to escape?”

  “We are going to escape,” I tell him.

  He laughs. “You’re pathetic. I always thought you were a little brat, always asking questions and demanding answers as if you were already queen.”

  I take another step back and turn, pretending to run. Osten grabs me around the waist—and that is exactly what I want him to do. I clap my hands on his face and pull his magic with everything that’s in me. From across the fire, it was a gossamer strand, but here, with my palms clamped to his narrow face, it is a gushing spring, and I am a basin ready to be filled. Osten gasps and tries to pull away, but I wrap my legs around his hips and continue to steal his magic. He doesn’t have even a fraction of what Oskar and Sig had, but I can still feel the fire and ice bright and sparking inside me. He begins to punch at my middle.

  “Help us,” I say to him, clenching my teeth against the pain. “If you do, all is forgiven.”

  “Kauko is going to get what he wants,” he says with a grunt, trying to pry my legs from his waist. But I’ve crossed my ankles and am holding fast. “He’ll bleed the Soturi girl and have her power, and there will be no stopping him.”

  “You’re wrong,” I say. “But either way, I take no pleasure in this.”

  I release him, knowing I have but a moment. As he staggers back, I raise my arms, and from my hands flow a storm of ice. Osten disappears in a cloud of glittering frost, and when it swirls away, he still stands there, his face frozen in a look of horror, his hands clawed and stiff and still.

  I whirl around, understanding Oskar’s heavy mood after he was forced to freeze one of his former friends. It does not feel good to end a life. “I offered him a choice,” I say to Lahja.

  “I heard you,” she says in a small voice full of doubt. Tears are shining in her eyes.

  I drop to my knees in front of her and take her hands in mine. “I’m going to tell you something that my Valtia once told me, something I will never forget. Are you ready to listen?”

  She nods.

  As I speak, I can hear Sofia’s voice in my ear, a sweet echo of memory. “Sometimes you are chosen, and sometimes you must choose. I just took a life, but I don’t regret that choice. I know it was ultimately to protect our people.” I take her face in my hands. “You will one day face these choices, Lahja. When that time comes, you’ll do what you need to do. Never doubt.”

  “Never doubt,” she whispers.

  “Never doubt. We must get back to our Ansa. She needs me to use her power to protect the Kupari and set things right. She can’t do it without our help.”

  “My help too?”

  I nod. “You are most important of all.”

  “I don’t know her.”

  “But you do, in your heart. And she knows you. It’s because of that bond that she’ll stay with us and help us. It’s because of you that she knows who she is, and she needs that. She is hurting inside.”

  Lahja blinks at me, her huge blue eyes almost luminous in the darkness. “I’ll help her, then.”

  I smile as tears well in my eyes. “You are very brave, Lahja, and I am very proud of you.”

  Hand in hand, we hike away from Osten’s frozen body as the night wind blows our hair. We don’t speak, and I am sure Lahja’s little head is full of fear and sorrow, but the ancient magic marked her as its future home for a reason. Her steps are light and sure, and she doesn’t complain. We make it to the road, and I hate that we’re out in the open, but I know it’s the only sure way back to the city. I can only hope the people haven’t turned on the wielders of the temple, and that they’ll be pleased at my return. There’s so much confusion about who I am and about Ansa, and they’re so frightened, and those two things are like dry tinder near an anvil. One stray spark will grow to a ravenous blaze in an instant.

  By the time the sun begins to glow at the horizon, preparing the sky for its ascension, we are well on our way, and my heart soars. I escaped a Soturi camp guarded by traitor priests! I used a rogue’s magic against him. I still can’t pull it from an unwilling wielder from a distance, but I swear I’m getting stronger. I—

  The distant thunder of hooves sets my heart scampering, and I wheel around to see dust in the distance behind us. “Oh, stars,” I murmur, pulling Lahja into a sprint. “You see those woods up there?” I say to her, leaving the road to cross the few hundred yards between us and the northern wood that still smells of smoke.

  “I don’t want to go in there,” she says in a high, panicked voice. “Mama died in there.”

  I want to curse at the top of my lungs. “You must, unless you want to be at the mercy of those barbarians and priests.”

  The riders have come into view. There are three of them, bodies pressed low to their mounts, and for a sparkling moment, it looks like they might ride past as if they are racing toward the city and not trying to run us down. But then the one in front turns his mount toward the woods. The horse leaps over a ditch and charges toward us.

  “Run,” I scream, pushing Lahja ahead of me. “Run and hide!”

  “But, Elli—”

  “Go!” I give her one last boost over a low hill, and then I run as fast as I can away from her.

  I’m the bigger target. And sure enough, the lead rider changes his path to intercept me, ignoring Lahja for the moment. I glance over as I flee and am grimly happy to see my Saadella disappear into the darkness of the woods. Happy because she has a chance.

  Grim because I don’t.

  The man leaps from his horse. It’s Jaspar, the leader of the Soturi, and his green eyes gleam with the thrill of the hunt as his powerful legs destroy the distance. He hits my back and takes me to the ground, pressing himself on top of me as I struggle, all jabbing elbows and kicking legs. He grabs my wrists and slams my palms to the ground, and his breath puffs against the side of my face. “No run,” he says. His weight lifts from me for a moment as he calls to his fellows, and to my horror, I watch them ride into the woods after Lahja.<
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  It’s too much, and a sob bursts from my mouth. Jaspar pulls me up, holding my wrists behind my back. “Kupari,” he says in that horrible singsong way of his. He spits on the grass.

  I fight him with every step as he drags me back to his horse. He pulls a length of rope from a saddle back and binds my wrists, then does the same with my ankles. I stare at the woods, waiting for the riders to emerge with Lahja, ready to put on a brave face for her, but minutes pass without sight or sound of the others.

  Muttering to himself in his ugly language, Jaspar lifts me over the saddle, the edge of it digging into my ribs as my arms hang down. I squirm, and he slaps my bottom, hard. Rage and hatred rise inside me, and suddenly I wish I could hold on to magic longer than a few seconds, because if I had any of Osten’s left, I’d set this barbarian on fire.

  I am struck by the bloodthirstiness of my own thoughts.

  “Kauko want you,” Jaspar says, his accent guttural and awful.

  “Kauko is a snake,” I snap. “And when he’s got what he wants, he’ll kill you and all your people.”

  Jaspar laughs, and it is in that moment that I realize he understands more than he’s been letting on. “I kill Kauko,” he says, and then grins. “But not yet.”

  A smart barbarian, then. The worst kind. “Don’t underestimate him.”

  He just keeps smiling, but the joy drains from his face as his two riders emerge from the forest empty-handed. He shouts at them, and they shrug and babble, sounding like animals, while I lie like a grain sack over the back of Jaspar’s horse, my hope growing by the second.

  Lahja did it. She’s evaded the barbarians.

  But then Jaspar jabs his finger at the woods, and the two turn their mounts around and head back in. He swings himself into the saddle behind me and takes the reins. The horse carries us back over the meadow to the road, and Jaspar leans over me and spurs the animal to a gallop. The motion jars me, knocks the breath out of me. I fight despair, and the only weapon I have is Lahja, and the slim chance she could stay free. But she’s still a five-year-old alone in the woods that killed her mother, woods that are home to bears and wolves and all manner of animal that would be delighted to come upon a helpless child. I pray to the stars that I didn’t send my beautiful, brave girl to her death alone in the dark.

  Despair has the upper hand.

  The ride back to the camp is depressingly short. We pass the place where I froze Osten with his own magic, but he’s no longer there. When we arrive at the shore, the barbarians cheer.

  Jaspar dismounts and pulls me off the horse, then holds me up when my legs nearly give out. He doesn’t untie me, merely turns me toward Kauko while the priest approaches with a nasty look on his fleshy face. “So willful and naughty, Elli,” he says, his voice gentle and amiable as ever. “You turned Osten’s ice against him. He was a good apprentice. It was a waste.”

  He sounds so calm, and only the slight tremble in his hands warns me of his rage. When those hands produce a knife from the folds of his cloak, my stomach drops. “I have no magic,” I say, hating the crack in my voice.

  He grins. “But you have something else, my dear. And I think it’s time to taste it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Ansa

  By the time we reach the gates of the city, we have drawn a crowd. People gather along the streets between piles of rubble, straddling cracks in the earth, some offering stale bread and eggs and dried meat, some joining our group, hefting pitchforks and improvised shields made of broken planks hastily nailed together, tongs and iron meat skewers and axes.

  We have perhaps two hundred as we cross the threshold into the place they call the outlands. Most of my patchwork militia are men, but there are a few women—the stout, red-cheeked one with the large rolling pin, and the stringy older woman who carries a knife with a large rectangular blade. They have kept their determination as we march through the city, and I know the food and faith of their fellow citizens put iron in their spines.

  None of them are ready for what they’re going to face.

  When all of us have passed through the gates, I put a hand on Raimo’s shoulder. “I have to warn them,” I say to Raimo. “This could be a slaughter.”

  Raimo watches my mouth move, and his eyes narrow as he translates. “You say,” he finally replies, “and I tell.”

  I nod, and then turn to face these Kupari. My eyes settle on a man with dark hair and a thick beard. Something about him looks so familiar, and as I gather my words, I realize he reminds me of my father in the few hazy memories I still possess. My throat goes tight. If the Krigere had not stolen me, I would have grown up here. I would know them and speak their language. But even though I don’t, there is something in them that is mine to protect.

  “I know you are here to rescue your Valtia and her Saadella,” I tell them, pausing to let Raimo translate. “But facing the Krigere on an open field will mean death for you. We must find another way.”

  The one called Livius raises his shovel and says something to Raimo, and the dark-haired man who reminds me of my dead father chimes in. Raimo looks toward the woods. A smoky fog hangs over them in the early morning light. He nods before turning to me. “He say we go in woods. We know these woods. Soturi do not.”

  It may be our only chance. “Let’s see what we can do to lure them in, then.”

  We reach the edge of the woods, and some of the Kupari jog ahead and hack at the brush with long knives, carving a path. They move so quickly that soon they are far ahead, and then they diverge, two small groups heading in opposite directions, calling back and forth to each other as they work. Livius joins us and talks with Raimo as we push deeper. My muscles are tight with grim anticipation and pent-up magic. When I wield it, I will likely be killed, and so I’m going to wait and take down as many enemies as I can as it happens.

  After that, it will be up to Elli. She will be the true queen, the final one standing, and she and the others can take care of the little girl. The princess’s face is etched onto my brain, so clearly that I can picture her easily. “The princess,” I say to Raimo. “Lahja. Will they hurt her?”

  Raimo shrugs. “Many ways to hurt.”

  This does not make me feel better. “We need scouts,” I say abruptly. “We need to know exactly where they’re camped out. All I know is it’s somewhere south of these woods.”

  “Agree.” He leaves my side to go confer with two men, one of whom is holding a metal hook and the other of whom carries a heavy net. Their skin is brown and weathered, and their cheeks wrinkle as their mouths move. After a few minutes, Raimo returns to me. “They know land and lake,” he says. “They find.”

  The pair heads back for the road. They’re fishermen, I realize, probably accustomed to steering their boats along the shore. And our people do have a habit of camping along shorelines, a good source of water and fish. I hope the fishermen know a thing or two about staying out of sight.

  While the Kupari work to slice trails through the woods, presumably to join them up with existing trails, I let their trilling language wash over me. I’ve started to recognize a few words, but it’s still a mystery. It doesn’t matter, either. I won’t live long enough to learn to speak it.

  My boots are almost silent as I tread over rotted leaves, through the narrow gash cut through the underbrush. To my right, the west, is the burned swath of forest, which appears to be in the center of a large depression in the earth, like a shallow crater. The ground slopes down until it seems to disappear, and then I see only the tops of trees. I slowly make my way toward the blackened branches to find that a massive sinkhole has opened. This must have been caused by one of the final quakes, because I don’t recall it being there as I was carried away from the Krigere toward the city.

  It simply looks as if someone cut a huge circle in the crust of ground and let it fall perhaps thirty feet into the hollow of the earth. Some of the trees in the depression are still standing amid jumbles of boulders. Across from me, on the far side of thi
s hole, I see several Kupari talking animatedly and gesturing first at the hole, then at its southern edge. One of them imitates a rider plunging over it, and I realize they are trying to set a trap.

  It’s an intriguing idea, Jaspar at the bottom of this hole, his bones dashed against rocks, his warriors at the mercy of the Kupari. But then I imagine Thyra’s warriors falling in as well, and the satisfaction fades. I would be breaking my promise to her if I let any of them die.

  I would be breaking my promise to Elli and to my own soul if I left the little princess to her fate, or Elli herself for that matter.

  There can be no way for me to save all of them, to make sure only the evil die while the rest are protected. No matter what I do, I’m going to fail. And although it is tempting to end it now by simply allowing myself to fall into this hole in the ground, I know that would be a failure too, and one that would bar the way to the heavenly battlefield forever.

  I hike along the edge of the hole, mapping its southern edge, until I hear the strangest sound—crying? Is there an animal in this wood that can make such a noise? I search for the source and end up at the base of a tree.

  I look up and at first believe I am imagining things. “What are you doing up there?” I ask the princess.

  She is crouched in the crook of a branch high above me, her coppery curls tangled and full of bark and pine needles, her face dirty and tearstained. I clutch my short sword and turn in place, knowing the Kupari aren’t the only ones who can set a trap.

  “I’m stuck,” she says. “I ran away and now I’m stuck!”

  “And it’s really you?” But then I laugh. It must be her; I understand what she’s saying as if she were speaking Krigere. “Hang on. I’m going to help you down.” I can hear the eagerness and laughter in my own voice as I walk around the tree, trying to figure out how on earth this little girl got herself up that high.

  I find a knot in the wood and use it as a foothold, and after a few tries, during which my admiration for her agility only grows, I make it up to her. She immediately throws her arms around my neck, and for a moment I know what it means to be a mother, to hold something exquisite and fragile to your chest and to know you might not be enough to keep it alive, to know if it dies, then you will die too, even if your heart still beats.