The Cursed Queen

by Sarah Fine

  “You want me to use the curse?” A wave of sick sits bitter on the back of my tongue. “I don’t know. . . . It’s not under my control.”

  “Nonsense! You craved Flemming’s death that day in the circle, and the flames wrapped around him like snakes, striking hard. It was thunderous and deadly and beautiful.”

  “I murdered your warriors,” I whisper, the memories rising now, the opposite of beautiful.

  Nisse leans close. “What if you could atone?” My eyes meet his, and he nods. “If you were to strike at the Kupari, at their queen, at their people, you would find forgiveness here. Deliver the warriors a victory, and you will be welcomed within this tribe.”

  My final memory becomes stark and bright in my mind. Thyra, tears running down her face as she begged me to stop. Even if her love was a lie, her fear of the magic—of what I had become—rang with truth. “Does Thyra know you’re asking me to do this?”

  “Given the nature of the truths I had to reveal, you can understand that she is not privy to all of it.”

  Because he has told me that she is the traitor. I don’t know if I can believe it. I don’t know what to believe, and the confusion is taking me apart. My entire body shakes with it. “I need to talk to her.”

  “Are you well, Ansa?” Nisse asks, his tone filling with concern. “You have become pale as the snow. Did that Vasterutian servant feed you adequately? Did she give you ointment for your wounds? Did she treat you with respect?”

  “Halina did a good job,” I say, knowing my answer might mean the difference between life and death for her. “I would not be standing before you if she hadn’t.” Except I’m not standing now. I’m slumped on the bench, my head throbbing, my body weighed down by the sickness of the last month and all I have heard in the last several minutes.

  “I thought I might never see your eyes open again,” Jaspar says. “Thyra hit you so hard we thought you might not ever wake up.”

  Nisse looks at his son, and they share a moment. “Perhaps that was her intention.”

  Jaspar gives him a curt nod. “It had occurred to me. I was trying to call off our archers and calm things down when Thyra hit Ansa.”

  “Thyra wouldn’t . . .” The protest dies on my tongue as they echo my suspicions. “I saved her,” I say lamely.

  Jaspar kneels in front of me, his blond hair glinting gold as he leans into a shaft of light. “And once again I must ask: How has she rewarded your loyalty?”

  I close my eyes. “I need to rest. Please.”

  They do not press me further. Nisse calls the guards but tells them to keep their weapons sheathed as they take me back to my chamber. Jaspar gives me a long, hard look before I go, wrapping his hand around my upper arm and stroking his thumb over the kill mark he gave me, as if he is drawn to it. “We’ll talk again soon, I promise,” he says.

  I cannot meet his gaze. I let Sander and the others lead me back down into the earth, the stone behemoth swallowing me down until I find its stomach, the little windowless tomb where I am to be kept. Halina is waiting when we reach it. She bows her head meekly and nods as Sander tells her to get me dinner and make sure I am comfortable.

  As soon as I sink onto my bed, though, she is pulling me up again. “Come with me, little red. Dinner is this way.” Her tone isn’t amused and joking as it was earlier, but nor is it meek and scared like it was in the hallway. Instead, it is urgent. Determined.

  “Where? I can’t be around the other warriors right now. They all hate and fear me.” If I am to win my way back into the tribe, it will require me to loose fire and ice on Kupari. I glance at my arms, where the scars lie red and silver beneath my sleeves. The curse would have eaten me alive that day. If I unleash it again, will it kill me?

  Halina has the door open and is peeking into the corridor. Evidently satisfied with what she sees, she comes back inside and pulls me by the wrist. “Stop your spinning mind and follow me,” she says. “You may find something that will nourish you.”

  Fatigue gnaws on my bones, but the desire to see the sky again brings me to my feet, along with the need to be in the open, out from under all this rock. I have no idea where she’s taking me, but the question temporarily silences the blizzard of knowledge and questions raging in my head. Grateful for the relief of curiosity and purpose, I trail Halina out the door and into the corridor.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  My wish for sunlight is crushed as Halina leads me through a recessed wooden door to a staircase that descends further into the earth. But when I balk, she tugs at me, relentless. “Come now,” she whispers. “Time is never our friend.”

  “How do you know our language?” I ask as I begin to follow her again, needing something to get my mind off the press of stone and dank air as we enter a tunnel so low that even though I’m not that tall, I must hunch to keep from conking my head.

  “I am good with language,” says Halina. “I know Kupari as well. And Korkean. Ylpesian, too. My father was a trader and he took me on his travels when I was little. As for Krigere . . . I learned fast out of a sincere desire to survive.” She tosses me a smile pulled taut by the ghosts in her eyes.

  I clear my throat. “Ylpesian? Korkean?”

  “The city-states of Korkea and Ylpeys lie west of here, through the Loputon Forest.” She looks back, and her gaze is cautious. “Allies.”

  “Does Nisse know of these city-states?”

  Her eyes linger on mine. “Well, now. I don’t know, little red. What did his big map say?”

  If she means his map on the table in the tower, the answer is no. The area to the south and west of Kupari was blank. Unpainted. “He’ll find out.”

  “Because you tell him?”

  I run my tongue along my teeth, uncertainty filling me again as all the revealed secrets of the afternoon stack on one another, high as the tower itself. “I don’t know.”

  Her eyes narrow. “Maybe I’ll help you figure it out. Best believe old Nisse is cautious, though. He doesn’t allow riders to leave the city, not since we sent an envoy to the Kupari to beg for help after the initial attack. No one in or out, save Krigere. That’s the way of it now. Vasterutians are prisoners in our own city.”

  But considering how easily we just departed my little prison chamber, perhaps things are not as locked down as Nisse hoped. “Where are we going?”

  “Not far now.” She skitters along the passage, raw earth held up with wooden posts, some still green. As if it has been newly dug and braced, though such an endeavor would take months. Months . . . perhaps since the early spring.

  I stare at her back with new suspicion. “Where do your loyalties lie?”

  “What a question.”

  “What an answer.”

  She lets out a grunt of laughter. “Loyalty is precious, little red. Hard won, hard lost. Easily given, easily betrayed.” She pushes through a door, and suddenly we are outside the tower, outside the stake-wall that surrounds it . . . and below the hill on which it sits. I’m in a narrow lane between two tall shelter buildings, ankle deep in snow that melts away from my boots as if afraid of me.

  Halina stares down at the retreating ice and whispers something in her own language. Or, who knows, perhaps Korkean or Ylpesian. She is full of surprises. “Ooh. Be careful there. Your tracks will be easy to spot.”

  I am outside the tower without permission, without Nisse’s knowledge. I smile down at the snow, a friendly, welcoming look, I hope. The frost stops fleeing from my ankles and nestles close, reforming as ice. Halina frowns. “And now they’re frozen. Great,” she says in a rueful voice. “I’m not going to regret this at all.” She jabs her finger at me. “Best remember that you have as much to fear from the Krigere as any Vasterutian.”

  “Just tell me where we’re going!”

  Her mouth twists. “My brother’s house. Because I often make risky decisions. Hopefully I won’t regret this one.” She grabs my hand and pulls me along the snowy lane. The air is crisp and bitter, but the walls are close and radia
te warmth. Somewhere inside one of these shelters, a baby is crying. Someone is singing. Others arguing. All in a language I do not understand, though I recognize the round honey sound as Vasterutian.

  Halina treks through a maze of these shelters until finally she stops in front of a rickety set of wooden steps leading up to the second level of a building. Light pours from within. “Up there,” she whispers before starting her climb.

  The stairs creak and rattle as we ascend, and a head pokes out of the doorway at the top, a wild spray of black curls framing a heart-shaped face. “Mama,” says the little boy, who is perhaps three or four and begins babbling in Vasterutian. Halina answers, her voice firm, and he disappears within once more. She purses her lips when she sees my surprised expression.

  “My husband was one of the king’s guards. Old Nisse’s raiders cut his throat from ear to ear. The day the Krigere came to Vasterut was the day I became a widow. I do whatever I have to do to stay alive—for that little boy in there.” She doesn’t look away from my gaze as she lets her words sink in, and then she enters the shelter with me on her heels.

  The chilly room is tiny and cluttered with wooden toys and cooking implements. A low table and a stool are the only furniture. Three figures hunch by the fire, covered in patched cloaks with hoods drawn up. The boy has withdrawn to a corner, his feet wrapped in thick cloth, wearing an ill-fitting, filthy wool tunic. He’s crouching next to a basket containing a baby, rosy cheeked and sleeping. Both children have round faces and earth-brown skin.

  Halina gestures toward the fire and says something in Vasterutian, and two of the cloaked figures, a woman and a man, toss back their hoods. One of them is the man with the shaved head and black beard who was serving with Halina in the great hall. The other woman doesn’t look familiar, but she, too, has a round face and curly black hair, though hers is tamed and pinned against her head.

  “This is my brother, Efren,” Halina says. The bearded man nods. “And his partner, Ligaya.” The woman gives me a wary jerk of her head.

  I glance toward the third hooded figure and arch an eyebrow. “And . . . ?”

  The third figure pushes back her hood with pale fingers. My breath catches in my throat and I stagger back as Thyra turns to me, looking worried and thin and anxious. “We won’t hurt you, Ansa,” she says quickly. “You must stay calm. These people mean no harm.”

  “What are you doing?” I whisper.

  Her blue eyes are deep and sorrowful. “Whatever I have to, like I always do.”

  Her words send a pang straight through me. Today Nisse told me of a Thyra different from the one I thought I knew, one who framed him as an assassin after he caught her plotting to poison her own father. A clever, ruthless Thyra.

  Exactly the kind of person who could use someone’s love and trust against them. “I’ve heard a bit about what you have had to do.”

  Her lip curls. “I know who’s been whispering lies in your ears.” She looks up at Halina and says a few words in halting Vasterutian before adding, “For bringing us here.”

  “You’re welcome.” Halina pulls an offered cloak over her own shoulders. “But I didn’t do it for your benefit alone. Now I want to talk about how we help each other.”

  Thyra gives me a sidelong glance. “Give us a moment?”

  Halina’s nostrils flare, but she says something in Vasterutian to Efren and Ligaya, who step away from us. The three of them turn to the corner where the children are, talking in low, round tones. When I look back at Thyra, she is nearer to the fire, staring into the flames. “You’re too skinny,” she says quietly.

  “Weeks lying flat on one’s back with a cracked skull does cause a person to shrivel.”

  She bows her head. “I had to do it, Ansa. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Do what?” I ask lightly, even as the curse-fire awakens in my chest, cinders glowing and stinging. “Try to kill me?”

  She presses her forehead to her clasped hands. “If our positions were reversed, I’d hope you would do the same.”

  I look at her in shock. “I would never hurt you.” I leave the rest unsaid, but it hangs ugly between us—she hurt me. So badly I can barely breathe now that she is so near. I was in her arms. I thought she loved me. And her heart was cold as stone as she slammed her hilt into my skull.

  The fire in the hearth swells with my resentment, snaking tentative tendrils over the stones as if waiting for my command. Thyra scoots back. “Our warriors are in danger,” she says. “A great number of them fled the tower the night I was challenged. They were joined by the warriors outside the walls and have barricaded themselves in a group of shelters at the eastern edge of the city.”

  “Displacing a good number of our people in the process,” Efren growls from the corner.

  Thyra gives him a troubled look. “I am working to correct all that has gone wrong.”

  Ligaya tosses her hair and makes a skeptical clucking noise with her tongue, but then the Vasterutians return to muttering among themselves.

  I frown as I consider the plight of our tribe. Nisse did not mention any of this when we met this afternoon. “Nisse values warrior lives.”

  “He values his army.” Thyra scoffs. “If he valued their hearts and souls, he would let me speak to them. Instead he keeps me locked away for my own protection.”

  “And yet, here you are. Free within the city.”

  Thyra smiles and glances toward the three Vasterutians in the corner. “There is help within the tower, offered at great risk.”

  “For those who defy Nisse,” I guess. “What are you doing? If he finds out—”

  She jabs a finger toward Halina’s back. “If he finds out, they will be gutted in the square, and their children left to starve, assuming they aren’t killed as well,” she whispers harshly. “Is that what you want?”

  “I don’t want more warriors killed. I want our tribe to be strong again.” But I can’t help glancing toward the little boy in the corner. I can’t help thinking I was about his age when my family was destroyed.

  Thyra’s fingers tighten over her knees. “You sound like Sander. Does it matter what the price is, Ansa? Will you follow anyone?”

  My throat constricts. “I followed you until I realized what you were capable of. You cast me aside and almost ended my life, and still you demand my loyalty?”

  Thyra gives the fire a nervous glance. Its tendrils are growing like a vine straight out of the hearth, fingers of flame seeking someone to embrace. “I didn’t want to hurt you, Ansa. I had to stop you, though. Can’t you understand that? Do you remember anything about that night?”

  “I remember Jaspar trying to stop the archers and you . . .” Pretending to care about me so you could sneak inside my guard.

  “You saved me,” she says, reaching to touch my cheek.

  I lean back out of her reach, unwilling to be snared yet again.

  Her hand falls back to her side. “I was trying to do the same for you.”

  “Jaspar definitely was,” I say. “He stood between me and the danger.”

  “You were the danger.” Her expression turns hard. “Has it occurred to you that he was trying to save them? You were about to kill those archers.”

  “You didn’t have to hit me!”

  “I had no idea how to stop you. There were flames in your eyes, and your arms were on fire, your tunic burning black and falling right off your body, even as you juggled knives of ice. You didn’t even seem aware that the magic was devouring you.” She shudders. “I don’t regret what I did.”

  She still sees the monster when she looks at me, I can tell. “Why did Halina bring me here, then? You seem to wish I’d never risen from the ground where you left me.”

  Her eyes flare with surprise and pain, and she presses her lips together. She turns back to the fire, as if to confront it directly as it tries to caress her. She says nothing to defend herself, nothing to stave off the flames. She merely stares at them, as if daring them to touch her. And the sight remi
nds me of that night in the fight circle, the way she faced Nisse, and instead of begging for her life, she told him to respect her warriors. Not the act of sacrifice I would expect from a traitor.

  The flames pull back, as confused as I am.

  She glances at me from the corner of her eye. “I need you to get a message to our warriors. They will not emerge from their enclave if they do not hear from a member of our tribe—if they do not trust the words come from me. They are rapidly running out of supplies, and Nisse has assigned a heavy guard to block all access to them. But I can trust y—”

  “Now you suddenly trust me again?”

  She flinches at the sharp snap of my words. “I’m sorry, Ansa. I regret some of the things I said to you.”

  “Is that only because you need me right now?”

  “No. It’s because I’ve had plenty of time to think about it while held prisoner by a man who is only keeping me alive until he figures out how best to use me.”

  “So you’ve hit upon the best way to use me—as your messenger. I’m seeing a family resemblance.”

  Her mouth is tight, as if she is trying to hold her words captive. Finally she says, “My uncle needs our numbers if he’s going to invade Kupari. We comprise nearly a quarter of the warriors within this city. But if Nisse invades Kupari while the snow is thick on the ground, our warriors will emerge from their exile only to die. Imagine what the witch could do with all that ice and cold.”

  “She might be dead. They may have no ruler.”

  “Yes. Nisse has sent someone to find out.”

  Now I know he spoke the truth when he said he had kept her informed. “If the witch has fallen, we could take them over.”

  She waves her hand toward the Vasterutians. “Like he took them over? You see what he has done here? He’s sowing the seeds of our destruction and he doesn’t even recognize it because he believes so strongly in our superiority. He is blinded by arrogance.”