The lake floor was paved with more algae, and long, translucent bones jutted from the dark fronds. Vertebrae lay scattered among them like flowers, and ceratotrichia waved like hands, beckoning. More lights had been fixed to sconces in the sides of buildings. “What are they made of?” I asked, reaching for one before I remembered that a good grand duke kept her hands to herself.
“They are a type of fungus,” Meire replied. She smiled, and it was so strange—those pointed teeth were capable of rending flesh with a simple twist of the head, yet I did not fear her.
As we swam, I began to see the denizens Below fluttering between buildings, following us. I could spot an undulating shape, a flash of fin, but no more. When I stopped to get a better look, Meire pulled me onward.
She let me go when we came to a wide boulevard. Mushroom lamps had been placed at regular intervals to create a clear line of sight, past buildings that grew grander and grander the farther away they were. A current tugged on my wool shift.
This was the processional road. Meire had written of the market and the goods she bought here and the palace at its end. Today the road stretched empty before us, with the palace lurking like a shadow. To either side waited figures, half hidden behind the odd fungal lamps. Silver and blue and coral sparkled on wrists and throats. Wide, dark eyes regarded me as I passed. Mouths opened to reveal teeth like knives. I saw noses like dolphin snouts, and blank spaces with flat gills. Some bodies had scales that looked more like skin, and some overlapped like Meire’s, in a manner reminiscent of hair. They all had bifurcated trunks, as far as I could see, and I was trying not to look too conspicuous in my curiosity. They were naked and had mammalian sex and nursing organs. Did they lay eggs? Did they have one child at a time, as we did?
The figures said nothing as we passed. The only sounds I heard were the shifting of waters, the song of some mournful creature, and from far above, the creak of the ice.
My toes skimmed the tops of the algae. The tips became luminous, bright, and they seemed to stretch toward me. Intrigued, I reached for them—
Meire pulled me up. “Apologies. I should not have let you drift so far.”
“It’s beautiful,” I said, turning to look at the bioluminescent patch we left behind.
“It is carnivorous.”
My knees tucked up of their own accord. “Oh.”
The citizens Below thinned out, and soon we passed behind a low wall and out of their sight. We drifted past floating gardens, masses of seaweed and coral with blooms in purple and pink. The light there changed color, becoming softer and paler. Ahead lay the long, low palace of the duke Below.
The palace’s stones had been fitted with such skill that I couldn’t see their seams. Meire took me up to the gates, double doors of electrum wound about with seaweed and seaflowers. The guards at the front of it held halberds I recognized too well. The iron shafts were pitted with rust, and sharpened fish bones had been tied to the iron tips with seaweed. Below must have traded with us for them, and not recently.
The guards’ fins flicked, and they bowed to me. Then the wide, arched doors of the palace opened, and we were led inside.
The Grand Duke of Kylma Below had ascended to his throne when I was a child. I’d begged and screamed when Father refused to let me accompany him Below to pay our respects. Back then, I’d assumed he was spiteful and cruel. Those appellations weren’t untrue, but I’d later learned that it wasn’t his fault. The dukes of Below had strict invitations for those of us who stumbled around on the ice Above. Only the grand duke was allowed to visit, perhaps because only a grand duke could use magic. Even when Farhod had been permitted to dissect a citizen of Below, he hadn’t been able to collect the body; it had appeared at the entrance to Below with a waterproof note regarding ceremonies for their dead.
I never, ever thought I would go Below as a ruler in my own right.
The palace Below had surprising similarities to my own. We both had tapestries lining the walls, though seaweed poked through the back of theirs, and when I touched my finger to one, I could feel the wax coating over the thread. Another thing we must have traded with Below. The tapestries depicted a romanticized life of Above—processions of strange people in stiff dresses, scenic fights between hunters and bears, prowling wolves, stark mountains.
“We are here,” Meire said, and the guards bowed to me again. A new set of doors opened, and we entered a vast hall.
There were no mushroom lamps in the hall; bioluminescent flowers wound about sconces set into the walls. Light bobbed in rotting iron lanterns. Seaweed brushed my feet, and some tiny thing nibbled on my toe. Around the hall stood ministers—well, I assumed they were ministers. They held electrum staffs, and some of them had brushed the scales on their heads with bright colors, just as some of us at court wore makeup.
The duke Below didn’t have a throne. He and his companion reposed within delicate silver cages attached to the ceiling. Winter roses looped around them, a pale offering in comparison with the bioluminescent blooms. The duke had an electrum staff not unlike my scepter, which had been set into a wire basket on the side of the cage. A little side table held a few notes fixed to a spike, and a bowl pale as ice, with something odd that shimmered beneath the water. Air, I realized—air Above. This was their messenger bowl for us.
The duke swam away from the cage, and the ministers around us bowed their foreign bows. I tried to imitate them, bringing my knees up to touch my forehead and scraping my skin against the wool of my shift. The skin of my arms and legs was corpse-like in the strange light of Below, and my fingers had begun to prune.
“Welcome,” he said, and I took that as my cue to straighten. The duke had a deeper voice than my guide. “And met with sorrow, Ekaterina Avenko.”
“Thank you,” I said, fumbling for the electrum ingots at my belt. A minister with darting eyes and an eel snout flitted forward to take them, quick and nervous as a minnow.
“We were disturbed to hear of your father’s troubles,” the duke Below said. The ministers flicked their fins, as though an electric current had passed through the water, and stared at me with their wide fish eyes. As though they expected me to throw my arms wide and laugh that I wasn’t sorry at all.
“I was, too,” I admitted. My heart flipped, and I rallied my courage. “My father isn’t ill, precisely. He was cursed. With magic.”
The room went still. The ministers lining the walls cocked their heads. I thought I heard a faint hissing, and when the duke Below swam forward, I nearly ducked. But Avenkos didn’t duck. “I don’t—um. Not that I think it’s you.” Keep it together. Grand dukes didn’t say um. “But if anyone knows how a curse is made, or broken, it would be you.”
Silence fell over the room for a moment, leaving my foolish words to hang in the water. If the duke Below was insulted, he could send me home without answers—and worse, without letting me investigate more of Below.
“We do not meddle in the affairs of Above, and we do not refine magic for it. Any curse that took place must have been developed by one of your own subjects, and that subject will have the cure,” he said. His voice was pleasant, but I heard the undercurrent of iron in it. I’d insulted him.
I didn’t know how to reply. Fortunately, the duke continued in a softer voice. “I do wish an elegant solution to your problems. And I wish you to know you are welcome with us, Ekaterina Avenko. Your father spoke of you often. We admired your curiosity together.”
That came as a surprise. I’d always assumed that Father had forgotten about me as much as he could. He had so many children to think about, and most of them wanted to try their hand at being grand duke. Being Princess Experiment hadn’t endeared me to him.
The duke Below tilted his head. He expected me to say something, so I did. “I am curious—especially about Below.” I touched a bioluminescent bloom, and my awkward, pruney fingers came away dusted with light. “This might be the greatest place I ever travel in my life.”
I heard a rustling from arou
nd the hall—the ministers, drumming their scaled fingers against their staffs. The duke Below smiled. His teeth were thinner than Meire’s but wickedly sharp. I resisted the urge to peer into his mouth. “They approve,” he said. “They like you.”
My heart swelled. It was the nicest thing anyone had said to me since this mess began.
“We are grateful to you for visiting us at what must be a fraught time,” the grand consort said. Her voice was soft, not harsh and biting like Mother’s. Nor exasperated, as Aino’s so often was.
“I’m honored to be received,” I replied. “Even though I hope my station is only temporary.”
The duke’s fins fluttered. “Hard to know what the future brings us. But our families have always been friends, and I extend this offer of friendship to you, Ekaterina.”
I tried not to gape. Yesterday I wouldn’t have dared dream of going Below. Now the grand duke was proposing friendship. I bowed again and tried to keep Eirhan’s warning at the front of my mind. The duke Below wanted me to solve his problems, too. “I hope that I may one day repay your kindness and hospitality.”
The duke laughed at that, a warm and indulgent sound that puffed out water around his gills. “Not your father’s daughter, I think. He would never have offered so openly.”
I pressed my lips together. What should I say to that? Should I try to take back my own words?
The duke Below continued as though he hadn’t noticed my hesitation. “We must first arrange the coronation trials. It is not precisely condoned to share plans with a contestant…” His smile gleamed again, pointed as thorns.
“I won’t be having coronation trials,” I said.
Around the hall, heads cocked again. Had I said something wrong?
“Are you not the Grand Duke of Kylma Above?” the grand duke Below asked.
“My father is,” I replied.
The duke’s fins fluttered again, and his ministers imitated him. I tried to decipher their emotion. Nervousness? Unhappiness? “Ekaterina Avenko, you must have the coronation trials. An Avenko must hold the throne,” the duke Below said.
I tried to explain. “I am holding the throne. It’s only temporary—”
“You know of the bargain our families made three hundred years ago,” the duke said.
I nodded. Three hundred years ago, my ancestors had been the first to speak with the citizens Below. The Avenkos had been the first to refine magic, the first to make Kylma something more than a frozen wasteland everyone avoided. And they’d been the first to discover that magic was temporary, but its effects were permanent. So they’d cast magic over our frozen city. They’d arranged for our walls and our palace and our markets to thrive without cracking the ice sheet. And as long as an Avenko kept the throne, we held the secret as well.
“This agreement is delicate in times of succession. If you lost your position…”
“To whom?” To Eirhan? To one of my other ministers? When he didn’t reply, I tried a different tactic. “Maybe you can just give me the secret. I won’t tell anyone.” Not even Farhod, who would probably bargain away years of his life to know. “I can cast the magic I need, and—”
And try to ignore that I knew something spectacular? Try to never use magic again? That was probably the most obvious lie I would ever tell.
The duke held up a hand for silence. For a moment, I wondered if I’d offended him. But then he gestured, and a servant came forward bearing the ice bowl. The duke dipped his long fingers in, drawing out a note of creamy paper with ink that quickly feathered.
His dark pupils widened. “Your father left you in a state indeed.”
I swallowed. “What do you mean?”
All stilled around us. Heads bent as the court Below turned one ear up, listening.
“It seems there is an army on the ice,” the duke Below said.
Meire led me back through the city. I had no chance to admire the architecture, the merchants who flitted past with baskets of wares hanging from their shoulders, the hunters who returned from the lake hauling fish that rivaled me in size. I wanted to see it all. I wanted to see the lowliest hovel. I wanted to see the place of their god. I wanted to see them fight and build and try to sell me something. I wanted to stay until my eyes grew round and luminous, until my pale skin sloughed off, leaving scales behind. I wanted to see if magic obeyed me now.
But Meire’s powerful legs pumped, and all too soon she was brushing the green lamps aside, taking us back into the dark of the middle of the lake. This time she didn’t draw magic on my hand, and it didn’t glow. “I apologize that your visit has been cut short,” she said. “The guards will be called to our stations at the moat. We will be ready to assist you.”
“I’ll be watching for you,” I said. And I didn’t say the private, foolish hope that I would be back soon to learn the rest of what I did not know.
The water grew lighter as we approached the ice. The white expanse should have called to me—it was my home, after all—but dread weighed me down and dragged me back. I knew nothing about politics. In all likelihood, my ministers would rather kill me than teach me. And now I had an army to contend with.
You are the throne, and the throne is yours. The thought hardly reassured me.
Meire stopped at the jagged edge of the ice. “I wish you well.” She bowed again, fluid and flawless. I resisted the urge to bow back. “And much prosperity between our peoples. We will help in the coming days, where we can.”
She pressed her webbed fingers to my mouth.
My lungs burned. I clapped a hand over my nose to keep from inhaling. Dots started to pop in my vision. With a final bob of her head, Meire flipped around and swam away.
CHAPTER FIVE
Aino and Minister Olloi helped me out of the water and hurried me toward the warmth of the steam room. My arms and legs trembled, and I weakly snatched for the towel Olloi proffered. As I squeezed out my braid and wiggled into a fresh shift, I told Aino about the army. She did up my dress with quick fingers, and we set off toward the study at a rapid pace.
Eirhan looked up as I flew in. His demeanor was as calm as ever, and for a moment, I wondered if the duke Below had been wrong about the army. “I suppose he wanted to discuss the trade agreements and the coronation trials?” Eirhan asked.
I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes. Of course he would ask about that first. “We got a little distracted. What’s on the ice?”
Eirhan smiled without humor. “It’s Sigis.”
“What?” Sigis ought to be sleeping after inserting himself into last night’s excitement. “The palace is under quarantine. He can’t leave.”
“He hasn’t left.” Eirhan’s smile twisted sourly. “His army has simply come here.”
“So he’s invading?” It made no sense to stay in our palace and leave his army out in the cold. We could take Sigis hostage.
“I expect he’ll use it as a bargaining tool,” Eirhan said.
“Bargaining for what? He only came for the brideshow.” Even as I said it, I realized how wrong I was. I stared at Eirhan, waiting for the same realization to cross his face, but his expression remained impassive. I went on. “Sigis was dressed in new clothing when he came to the coronation ceremony.” He’d been wearing his rings and medals. He’d looked like a king. “He planned this, didn’t he? He planned for my family to fall ill so he could sweep in and annex us.”
“You cannot claim the head of a sovereign nation has deliberately targeted your family. You’ll bring us to war.”
“He’s got an army at our door. What am I supposed to do?” Show no fear. “The walls of Kylma Above have never been breached. The army of Below is ready to help us.”
“A siege is not our first and best option,” Eirhan bit out.
“What is?” I snapped. If Eirhan wanted to rule the country for me, the least he could do was provide answers.
“We need to see what Sigis wants, exactly,” Eirhan said.
The duchy, no doubt. If Eirhan didn’t realize
that, maybe he wasn’t such a formidable political enemy after all.
Eirhan, Viljo, Aino, and I went out in four layers of fur, with our hoods pulled up and our mittens wrapped snugly into our sleeves. My braid froze stiff as we hit the cold air, and I thought I heard Eirhan mutter a curse. A high wind whistled in the gaps between the peaks to the west, and the air smelled wet, clean of smoke, promising storms. By nightfall, it would be the kind of wind that drove a man to his knees and kept him there till he died.
The palace’s outer walls gave us a view of the houses of the city, half-timber structures lined with rubble fill and ice. Their roofs puffed woodsmoke and slanted to keep the snow from piling too high and heavy. Far beyond, the city walls rose, cutting across the lake and veering up into the mountains. Our border faded somewhere in the peaks beyond, but no one had ever invaded from that direction. Our enemies always came from the plains on the other side of the lake. Just as they did now.
A long, dark smudge wound toward the moat. Thousands upon thousands of men trudged toward us, lining up when they reached the moat’s edge. I had never been so glad for the waters, wide and dark, and the ice walls that protected us. They came with horses, they came with tents, they came with cannons and turtles and war machines—
“Can we consider this an act of aggression yet?” I said.
“Why don’t you ask him?” Eirhan turned, and behind his furred bulk I saw another shape, standing at the end of the walk, whose bright red coat seemed garish against the blue-white of the city. Sigis.
I swallowed and moved forward. Eirhan put a warning hand on my arm. “Your Grace cannot make an enemy of this man.”
“I know,” I said.
Drysiak had been a rotten empire when I was younger, riddled with rebellions and fraudulent bureaucrats, hamstrung by weak leadership. Father had predicted its fall in ten years and had accordingly refused when Sigis offered to marry one of the daughters of Kylma Above. Then Sigis took his father’s Drysian throne through bloodshed, and now he went to war with a new kingdom every year—and he won.
The Winter Duke Page 6