Farhod looked up at me. His eyes were impossible to read in the shadows of their sockets. “I won’t be long,” he said quietly. “But I must finish.”
I swallowed and lifted my foot.
Farhod checked my reflexes, my temperature, and the color of my phlegm. He bent me toward the fire and peered into my eyes. He examined my fingernails. The longer he worked, the quieter my room became. As if the people who’d forced their way in were trying to melt into the shadows and become one with the ice.
At last, Farhod squeezed my hand and turned to Prime Minister Eirhan. “It is my medical opinion that Her Grace is in the peak of health.”
The room let out a sigh. I, for my part, wanted to scream. Instead, I did the one thing I knew would get their attention: I acted like my mother. I drew myself up, tilting my chin, channeling her ice and silk, her venom and wrath. “What. Is. Going. On.”
It worked. Around me, ministers and servants straightened out of habit. They didn’t see that I was clenching my fists to keep my hands from shaking, that my hair was damp with sweat, and that my fur-lined robe covered a nightgown. They saw the daughter of a man who could break ministers with a word, of a woman whose ire could melt the ice beneath their feet. And perhaps it was only that moment of power, but none of them looked so grand to me. Most of them wore nightclothes and slippers, with a coat to stave off the palace’s eternal cold. Others, like Eirhan, looked as though they might fall asleep on their feet. Yet they’d dropped whatever they were doing and hurried to my room. To see me.
Prime Minister Eirhan sank to his knees, bending his head, and placed his right hand on the floor. His motion sent ripples around the room and out the door as everyone followed suit. Even Farhod knelt. Even Aino, though she looked as bewildered as I felt, and she still held the poker like she was ready to kill.
No one in the room, aside from Farhod and Aino, had ever shown more than the barest courtesy to me. But no one contradicted Eirhan, who spoke clearly and confidently into the silence. “Long live Her Grace, the Grand Duke of Kylma Above, Guardian of the City and Its Boundaries, Blessed of Kylma Below, Ruler Supreme, Beloved of the Gods.”
“Long live Her Grace,” the impromptu court chanted.
Impossible, impossible. I was a middle child of thirteen. Even the littlest, Svaro, would be happier as grand duke than I. Not to mention Father, Mother, everyone else who ought to stand in the line of succession ahead of me. “Where are my parents? Has my father died? Lyosha should be grand duke.” Unless he’d bungled his coup so spectacularly that he’d killed himself in the process.
Eirhan fixed Farhod with a shrewd eye, and Farhod cleared his throat before saying, “The rest of your family is…” He shook his head, bewildered.
“What? What happened?” I demanded.
The congregation was silent again. Then Farhod admitted, “We don’t know.”
We don’t know. I had seven living sisters and four living brothers. Two parents in the peak of physical health. Brothers who still played with toy soldiers. “Even Svaro?”
Farhod swallowed. “Yes, Your Grace.”
Eirhan spoke from the floor where he knelt. “Your Grace, in this time of uncertainty, we must do what we can to preserve the safety of the duchy and the government. Will you accept your role?”
I couldn’t do that. I had to go study medicine and write treatises on the volatility of magic. I couldn’t do that if I was stuck in Kylma Above.
But… we were Kylma Above. If something really had happened to the rest of my family, the right and responsibility of rule fell to me. I had no choice. I had a duty.
I focused on the pain of my nails as they dug into my palms. Father always said we were born to rule. Even though I’d never wanted to, even though I’d planned to leave, I was born to this. I had to bear responsibility, and I had to find out what had happened.
Maybe Aino had the answers. But she looked as lost as I felt.
“I accept,” I said.
“You are the throne, and the throne is yours,” Eirhan said.
“Long live Her Grace,” the court intoned.
Aino hurried me into my best dress, a heavy velvet contraption the color of deep water under a layer of ice. Winter roses had been embroidered in white and silver silk, and pearls clustered between their leaves. Eirhan had the coronation regalia fetched and handed me the scepter that only the heir-elect and the grand duke were supposed to bear. The cold iron burned against my fingers.
The procession to the Great Hall felt like a dream. As we left my rooms, I ran scenarios through my head. My family had been murdered. (All but me? Unlikely.) My family had murdered one another (more likely than I wished). A plague had struck, and the others were ill (possible, but I didn’t have enough information). The rest of my family were the victims of some kind of sorcery (but why had I been spared?). I gripped Aino’s hand. Aino held me like a lifeline, too, and that frightened me even more.
We halted in front of the Great Hall. Its closed double doors were engraved with the family crest: a winter rose in full bloom. A line of ministers blocked our way.
One minister stepped forward. I recognized him as Reko, minister of the people. He was a thin, sallow-skinned man, who wore rough robes of turned-out sheepskin, peasant garb that even Lyosha hadn’t lowered himself to wearing. He looked like a disgruntled fox trying to hide among the herbivores. His frown deepened as he saw the crowd that surrounded me. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Eirhan mirrored his movements, coming to stand in front of me. “We need someone to lead us.”
“We have someone to lead us,” Reko replied. “We have the grand duke.” That counted out a few of my theories. But why was I so necessary if my father or brother was still alive?
“The grand duke and the heir-elect can hardly be expected to lead in their current state.” Eirhan’s proclamation sent a ripple of murmurs through the growing crowd behind us. “We need a representative of strength, and we need it now. If it is Her Grace, so be it.”
I pulled back my shoulders and shifted my grasp on the scepter. I was an Avenko, and ruling was in my blood. My family held the balance between Above and Below, and that made me the most necessary person here.
“You advocate treason,” Reko challenged Eirhan. The delegation behind him bristled. I tried to attach titles to faces. I recognized Bailli, minister of the treasury. I thought of him as the walrus because of his bald head and the twin scars that slashed from the corners of his mouth down to his chin. He held the rest of my coronation regalia—the orb, the ducal ring, my father’s crown.
“Admit it, Reko,” Eirhan said softly. “You don’t care about her. You’ve been trying to dismantle the autocracy for years. If there’s no duke sitting on the throne, he can’t reject another proposal for a parliament, can he?”
Reko’s face turned ruddy. “How dare you—”
Mousy Minister Urso scurried between them. Over the years, he’d tried to be the peacemaker between Father and Mother, appealing to decency, dignity, and whatever else he could dredge up as motivation. I’d always considered him a fool for butting in on family arguments. Now I was glad that someone had dragged him out of bed. “Please, Reko,” he said. “I was of the same mind as you at first.”
“That mind seems to have wandered off,” Reko replied.
Eirhan hissed his disapproval, but Urso continued, hunching his shoulders. “The first night of the brideshow was a disaster. The delegates will continue to arrive throughout the week, and now we have no heir-elect to present to our allies. How many will remain our allies if they see we have no leader?”
I tried to cut in. “I’m not really—”
“They can treat with the ministers. They have no need to see our grand duke,” Reko said.
“I don’t need—” I said.
“The whole point of the brideshow is to be visible,” Eirhan said over me.
All my life, these men had ignored me. It had never bothered me until now. Grand dukes didn’t le
t their subordinates push and belittle them. Lifting the scepter, I used it to shove bodies out of the way until I stood at the front, facing Reko. “Stand aside,” I said in the best grand duke voice I could muster.
Reko bared his teeth, and ice skittered up my back. But I wasn’t about to show my fear. Fear was the enemy of my family. Fear was a demonstration of weakness. “The proper address is ‘Your Grace.’” I punctuated this with a swift poke of the scepter. Reko grunted as it hit him in the midriff. I shoved past him and pushed on the rose-relief doors.
Eirhan rallied behind this new development. “Ministers, Her Grace will have our attendance.” He swept in behind me. The others followed.
A sudden clang made me turn. A soldier stood in front of Aino, holding his halberd at a not-so-friendly angle. “Ministers only,” he said.
Heat swept through me. Using the scepter as a knife, I sliced through the crowd. Ministers fell away from me like meat peeling from bone. “Aino goes anywhere,” I told the guard, and he leaned away from the rage in my voice. “You will refuse her nothing.”
He stepped back, and she hurried through the door. Our hands clasped.
The Great Hall was still decorated for the brideshow. Our family crest hung on a two-story banner behind my father’s throne, and around the hall, smaller banners were hung for each brideshow delegate. Winter roses wound up the slim ice pillars that held the balconies aloft. This time, I ignored the scenes that lined the walls, and I tried to push recipes and serums and amulets out of my mind. I moved toward the throne, flanked by Eirhan and Aino. But as I walked, the events of the night solidified into weight that dragged at the hem of my dress.
I’m an Avenko, I tried to tell myself. I was born to this.
Besides, I only had to be duke until I found out what was going on.
I sat. Aino squeezed my hand, then retreated. The ministers fanned out around me, both those who had marched in my procession and those who stood against me. Minister Reko, glowering, held one hand to where I’d hit his stomach with the scepter.
The doors opened again to reveal my most unwelcome guest yet: King Sigis, foster brother and all-around undesirable. I frowned at Eirhan. What had happened to “ministers only”? But Eirhan bowed low as Sigis came up to us.
“I hear there is cause for condolences.” Sigis had a rich, smooth voice that others no doubt found soothing and attractive. He paired it with his most charming face and a royal red coat. Each silver button on the coat was in the shape of a wolf’s head. He wore two medals pinned to his chest and one around his neck, as if we’d forget how important he was if he didn’t constantly remind us. He drew back as he saw me, surprise flickering over his features. “Ekaterina. Are you truly your father’s successor?”
It occurred to me that I should answer him, but Sigis had already begun speaking to Yannush, the foreign minister. Yannush’s wiry brown beard, clipped to a crisp point, bobbed as he replied. I heard the phrases “grand duke,” “heir-elect,” and “rest of the family.” Yannush sounded as though he had a firmer grasp on the situation than I did.
I beckoned for Farhod. I wanted to bring Aino forward as well, but when I glanced at her, she shook her head. A servant did not stand next to a grand duke. “Give me the full story,” I said.
We ought to have spoken in private. I was too aware of the way my ministry pressed in. And Sigis, as a foreign king, shouldn’t have been involved at all. But Eirhan cleared his throat before I could suggest it, and the hall fell silent. “It began after two, Your Grace,” he said. “Her Grace your mother was found in a state of—” He licked his lips and looked back at Farhod. The entire hall seemed to lean forward.
Farhod swallowed and bowed to me again. I almost laughed, though that might have had something to do with the onset of panic. Farhod had yelled at me, lectured me, patted me on the shoulder when I’d done well, taken away my experiments when he thought I was going to blow up the palace. Now he had to treat me like a duke. “Her Grace was found in a motionless state and could not be roused.”
I parsed the words out in my mind. “Is my mother dead?”
Whispers flurried through the hall. Sigis’s blue eyes grew thoughtful, and Farhod raised his voice. “A maid checked on her after hearing strange sounds. Her Grace was asleep and could not be woken, and Doctor Munna was called for. When guards were sent to notify His Grace, they found him in the same condition.”
“And my sisters and brothers are like that, too?”
Farhod hesitated. “The entire royal family,” he said. “Except you. No one else. I have never seen an illness like it.”
Murmuring rose around the hall. Sigis leaned back, cocking his head; Reko and his delegation surged forward. Eirhan motioned to the guards stationed around the room. A dozen flanked the throne, halberds at the ready. The tips could punch through boiled leather, and my father had decreed that the ax blades be sharp enough to remove a man’s head with a single blow.
“This is as good as a confession,” Reko barked. “It’s obvious that she or one of her allies orchestrated the entire event. How else would a middle daughter have a shot at the grand duchy?”
I almost laughed at the idea of allies, but Farhod was the one who replied. “You’re assuming she aspires to the post. Perhaps because that is what you would do in her place?”
Reko’s face splotched with red. “In the name of the real grand duke, arrest her!”
“That is an act of treason!” Eirhan snarled.
Their axes were less than a foot from my neck. If they turned those axes on me, I could watch my life spill out, melting the floor for a few seconds before my brain stopped forever. “Wait,” I croaked. “You said it may be an illness. Have they had it for some time? How quickly does it set in?”
“I’m not sure, Your Grace,” Farhod said, putting a slight emphasis on my new title. “Munna and I suspect a matter of hours.”
“Is it fatal? Is it contagious?”
“I do not know,” he said.
Reko’s face went from scarlet to ashen. And in that moment, I knew what would make me look better than him. “The palace must be quarantined until Farhod and the physician figure out whether this can spread. The first priority is protecting the duchy.”
Eirhan, for once, looked as though he sympathized with Reko. “What about us—I mean, what about Your Grace?”
“I have some knowledge of chemistry and biology,” I said. Farhod’s lips twitched at my false modesty, while Aino rolled her eyes. I made a mental note—declare it treasonous to roll your eyes at the grand duke. “I’ll assist with the cure. Maybe you’d like to help as well. Otherwise, you can conduct your duties from inside the palace.”
“Surely Your Grace understands that it’s dangerous to confine all the heads of state in a plague house,” said Bailli in a gravelly voice.
I glared at him. “Do you think it’s good to endanger the rest of the city just because you hope you haven’t caught it yet?”
Bailli’s cheeks reddened, and his eyes flashed with something darker than anger. I’d made my second enemy as grand duke. My reign was off to a bad start.
“It’s not only a matter of us, Your Grace,” said Minister Yannush, pointing to the delegates’ banners that hung from the walls behind him.
“It would be… unwise in the extreme to hold our foreign visitors against their will,” Eirhan added.
“I disagree.” This came not from any of my ministers, but from Sigis. He smoothed his beard and smiled. Although his native tongue, Drysian, was the business language of the North, he addressed the court in Kylmian. He always liked to show off.
He strode past the guards before they could decide whether he was allowed to do so. His crotch was face height as I sat on the throne, and I tried to lean away without making it obvious that I was leaning away. He smelled of musk, as if he’d been purposefully wrestling a belligerent sheep before coming to see me. “It’s simply a matter of the way you say it. I personally find that with the right leverage, you can
get anyone to agree to almost anything.”
“That sounds like a threat,” I muttered.
“It’s not a threat, Ekata.” Sigis propped his arm on the back of Father’s throne. “An experienced politician could get the delegates to agree to the quarantine. That’s all.”
Yannush whispered something in Urso’s ear. “Perhaps an… interim regent could provide some stability?” Urso said. He sounded anything but sure.
I gripped the arms of Father’s throne. “No.” If Lyosha thought he could be grand duke, then I could be grand duke, at least for a few hours.
Eirhan stepped in front of me, like a shield. “The Avenko family has been on this throne since the foundation of the duchy. They hold the balance between Above and Below. We cannot select another to sit in their place.”
Reko crossed his arms. “For once, we agree. Let the throne stay empty.”
“Impossible,” Eirhan said.
Reko’s lip curled. “Why? What will she bring that we lack? Experience? Ability?”
“Is that how you speak to your grand duke’s face?” I spat, channeling my mother’s venom. Reko’s mouth twisted in contempt, and my anger rose to match his disdain. Maybe I didn’t have the experience or ability of my father, but I did have the iron will.
I deliberately turned away from my ministers, ignored Sigis, and focused on the guards who surrounded me. The nearest was shaking, and beneath his helmet, he looked hardly older than me. “What’s your name?”
He practically rattled in his ceremonial regalia. “Viljo, my—Your Grace.”
Viljo. I focused on his face. Before tonight, I hadn’t cared to remember many names. But that would have to change. Father remembered everyone, and so would I. “Viljo, take some men and make sure every palace exit is guarded. No one goes in or out, not unless Farhod or the doctor confirms it. And place guards outside the bridal wing. No one can leave until it’s safe.”
The Winter Duke Page 3