The Winter Duke

by Claire Eliza Bartlett

  “Nothing to say about your military exploits?” Sigis raised a brow.

  “I was fourteen. I was not head of the Emerald Order then.”

  “Is this the wife you want?” Sigis asked me. “One who’s incapable of taking responsibility?”

  Inkar’s jaw worked. “Here,” I said, pouring cloudflower juice with honey in her cup. I floundered for something to say. “Um. What good are monks as hostages, anyway?”

  “The rich religious orders will pay sometimes. Otherwise, they make good tutors. I learned Drysian from monks,” Inkar said. Then she lowered her voice. “Though I often regret it.”

  “At least he doesn’t speak your native language,” I muttered back. “I’ll never get away from him.” Inkar laughed, and Sigis shot us a dark look.

  “You seem to have a problem with horses,” she added as our smoked caribou arrived. “Do you need a lesson in how to ride?”

  “On the contrary. I don’t consider them the only tactic in my arsenal, that’s all.” He tore a piece of caribou off his knife with his teeth. “For example, I can shoot and use a sword. Maybe I could give you a lesson.”

  Inkar’s hand went to her side, then came up again. “Do you think I wear axes only for show?”

  Sigis put his knife down and steepled his fingers. “That sounds like a wager. I’m interested.”

  Inkar smiled dangerously. “The Baron of Rabar will meet me for shooting tomorrow morning. Join us, and we will exercise a little.”

  “Done.”

  Eirhan put a hand on my forearm. “Your Grace could do something to prevent her wife and the King of Drysiak from killing each other tomorrow.”

  “Why don’t you step in?” I muttered back. “Sigis might actually listen to you.” Even saying it stung. If I had to be duke, I didn’t want to be known as the impotent and incompetent one.

  Course after course passed, with Inkar opining on the food and Sigis slinging barbs at both of us. I’d hoped he’d get drunk and render himself incoherent, but he was too smart for that. He switched from wine to cloudflower juice, and the only thing that seemed to happen was that he switched his attention from Inkar to me. “I’m surprised you’ve been able to provide fresh meat. Hunting treaties were on hold, were they not? By order of your father? But I suppose that’s a matter for your minister of the hunt.”

  Sigis knew Reko had reported discontent among the people. He knew that Annika had complained of low grain stores and that Yannush had pushed to increase the military budget. He knew everything, and I so clearly knew nothing. The only respite I got was when the meal was finally over and people began to move about. Even then I had one eye on Sigis, tracking him as he talked to my ministers. He charmed Annika, who let him kiss their hand. Bailli’s eyes flicked toward me during their conversation, and Itilya wore the same inscrutable coldness she’d always shown. Sigis was angling to win the will of the people out from under me.

  I followed the movements of my ministers around the hall. Yannush and Urso provided me with a welcome cup of coffee, then retreated to the sides of the room, talking only to each other and their secretaries. Annika and Itilya had a brief argument. Had one of them been Sigis’s companion in the law library?

  I was so busy following them I failed to notice my own prime minister until he was right next to my chair. “Your Grace,” Eirhan said, and I jumped.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked sourly. I’d forgotten to look after Inkar again, and she’d sneaked off to a knot of cheerful delegates.

  “I will have some men escort you to bed. Your Grace must be up in five hours, and we have a long itinerary tomorrow.”

  I noted the two men who stood next to him, all leather and steel. He wanted to keep me under a tighter watch. “Any chance I could make amendments to the itinerary?”

  Eirhan’s smile looked pained. “Your Grace is quite amusing.”

  “I thought so.” I pushed to my feet and took Aino’s hand. Eirhan’s guards flanked us, and my grip on her tightened involuntarily. Inkar joined us as we approached the doors of the hall.

  The trip to the royal wing was silent. I didn’t want to risk saying anything that the guards could take back to their master. When we arrived, the guards detached, nodded to Viljo and my other personal guard, and took up their posts on either side of the double doors. If I tried to leave through that entrance, they’d stop me or tell Eirhan.

  “We have adapted one of the rooms of the wing for you, Your Grace,” Aino told Inkar as soon as we were on the other side of the door.

  Inkar blinked. “I am not going into another room.”

  Aino’s voice turned sharp. “You aren’t staying with Ekata.”

  “That choice is not for a servant to make,” Inkar said. She turned to me. “Am I to go home to my father and tell him that you used me as a pawn? That you have endangered our relationship with Kylma?”

  “That’s not what I’m doing.” The lie sounded weak.

  “Prove it,” Inkar said, and this time that challenging smile, the one she turned on Sigis and Eirhan, was for me.

  I knew what Father would do. He’d always called Mother’s bluff. But Inkar could cause me far too much trouble, and she was more useful as my ally than as my enemy. I was tired of everyone fighting around me. And I had to get up in five hours. “You’re my wife. You choose where you sleep.”

  We walked to my door together, and Inkar remained in my antechamber as Aino and I retreated within. Aino undressed me in silence and brushed out my hair as I wiped my face clean with a warm cloth. “Just because she’s nice to you doesn’t put her on your side,” Aino said at last.

  “I know.” But a dozen people could depose or kill me. Inkar wanted to keep me around.

  Inkar came in and slid under the covers with a contented groan. Aino doused all the candles but one and banked the fire. “If you need anything,” she said, her eyes flickering to Inkar.

  “I’ll call for you.” I leaned in and pressed my cheek to hers. “I promise I’ll be fine.”

  My bones hurt; my body ached. My eyes felt as though I’d dipped them in the water Below and popped them back into their sockets. But Inkar’s presence was a thread unraveling my attention. Her hair splayed over the pillow like a corona, and her dark eyelashes were like a smudge of ink against her cheeks. She looked soft, as though she’d taken off a piece of invisible armor. As though she needed me to protect her.

  No. Inkar didn’t need me, and I certainly didn’t need to have mushy thoughts about her. I went into my antechamber and sat at my desk, lighting the candle under the inkwell and picking up Farhod’s technical drawing of a fishman’s heart. With a sluggish hand, I began copying the labels. My eyes fought me every step of the way, and my hands began to shake with cold.

  After ten minutes or so, I heard the covers pull back. A moment later, Inkar appeared in the doorway. “Are you truly so afraid of me?” she asked, and I could tell the invisible armor was back.

  I cupped one hand around the ink candle for a tiny bit of warmth. “I’m not afraid of you. I…”

  “You merely married me to avoid marrying him.”

  I nearly dropped my pen, catching it by the nib and smearing ink over my palm. I muttered a curse as I set it down. “That’s not true,” I said in a voice that convinced no one.

  Inkar cocked her head. “Then why did you do it?”

  The seconds stretched. Eirhan was going to eviscerate me. Inkar blinked. My cheeks began to heat, and I scrambled for something to say. “I like hearing people complain about fish?”

  Inkar laughed. There was something in that laugh—it wasn’t pompous, like Bailli’s, or nervous, like Urso’s, or arrogant and demanding, like Sigis’s. It was nice that someone thought I was funny. “Do not fear him. I would fight him for my wife’s honor.” She dropped her eyes to the floor and laced her fingers together. “Provided you truly wish to be my wife. Provided you meant your offer, and I don’t have to write to my father.”

  I stifled a groan. It was too ca
lculated a statement to be innocent, and her sly smile only confirmed it. “Of course I meant my offer,” I said, and I didn’t really care whether I sounded sincere or not. “May I escort you to bed?” I couldn’t deny I was exhausted. Besides, I’d survived one night with her. I could do so again.

  We lay down. I edged away from Inkar until my shoulder hung off the side of the bed.

  “You do not have to be so awkward with me.”

  That was a fine thing to say after she’d all but coerced me to keep up this ruse. “Maybe I’m an awkward person.”

  Inkar was studying me, but not in the way Sigis did. I got the feeling she was trying to understand something in me, not strip me down until she found the right way to use me.

  My heart began to skip again. But this time it wasn’t accompanied by the fear of a stranger in my rooms.

  “You are not awkward with Aino,” she said.

  “Aino is different,” I replied.

  “You care about her.”

  “Obviously.”

  Inkar turned onto her back. Finally, she said, her voice tentative, “Perhaps it would be of benefit to show some of that compassion. In public.”

  I snorted softly. “My father never showed compassion. Compassion makes greedy people reach for more. It makes hard people think you’re soft.” He would always rather be seen as hard than weak.

  Inkar was silent for a moment. Then she said, “You do not like your father.”

  “Not at all,” I said.

  “Then why do you wish to imitate him?”

  Defensiveness flared up in me. Father had ruled the duchy well. “I—he’s my father. He was successfully in charge of an entire country. He must have been doing something right.”

  And he’d infuriated someone so much they’d decided to destroy us.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I woke from dark, heavy dreams full of ice and roses. The night outside had cleared up; the moon had set, and the sky was a deep blue, with stars dotting it like snowflakes.

  “What time is it?” I whispered.

  I expected Aino to answer, but a stranger loomed over me. I jerked away, adrenaline rising. One of my sisters had sneaked in; one of them was going to kill me—but then she shifted, and I saw the dark waterfall of her hair, and I remembered all that had happened.

  “I am sorry,” Inkar said, and for a moment, I thought she was sorry for marrying me. “I agreed to the shooting contest this morning. I did not mean to wake you.”

  “Well, you did.” I tugged on the blanket. My eyes felt as if I’d opened them in salt water, and my skin was slick with sweat.

  I heard the soft thuds of her slippered feet as she went over to her trunk. “You may come with me, if you like.”

  “I’d rather go back to sleep.” My pounding heart might make that difficult.

  Aino opened the door a crack. “I thought I heard you,” she said in her steel-cold, for-Inkar voice. “Good. A grand duke’s schedule starts before dawn.”

  “No, thank you,” I muttered.

  “Eirhan’s already here,” she continued, as if I hadn’t said anything at all. “He has your order for the day.”

  Of course he did. Precisely defined by him, determined by him. He had my schedule fixed from the moment I rose to after I should collapse in my bed. And I had no say in it whatsoever.

  I turned to Inkar. “I’d love to watch you shoot.” And Inkar’s grin, conspiratorial and triumphant, gave me the flash of warmth I needed to ignore Aino’s pursed lips.

  The training yard was a patch of ice on our western side, maybe thirty-by-thirty feet, packed over with snow and circled by a low wall. A guardhouse, more decorative than anything else, held weaponry and targets that the weapons master hauled out and propped against the wall. Kylma Above’s standing army was a joke compared with the monstrosity that lined the lake’s edge, but our soldiers took pride in their work. And Below gave us the advantage we needed in times of siege.

  As I sat on a bench with my coffee, Inkar handed her overcoat to Viljo and went over to the weapons master, rubbing her arms. She’d braided her hair into a long, silken rope that highlighted the length of her neck. She shook the weapons master’s hand.

  The Baron of Rabar arrived in a magnificent yellow cloak embroidered with red and blue poppies. He approached and knelt before me, smoothly enough that I almost missed the surprise on his face. “Your Grace honors us with her presence.”

  “I want to see what my wife can do,” I said. I didn’t mention the pleasure I got from defying Eirhan. It didn’t seem like ducal behavior. “And how is your wife this morning?”

  The baron’s face clouded momentarily. “She is well, I assure you,” he said. “She wished to travel, but she’s resting after the birth of our son.” He got to his feet, crunching snowpack.

  I’d seen the baron with a pretty woman in velvet. “I…”

  “You must take Her Grace’s greetings home with you,” Eirhan said, coming up behind us. “Please, don’t let us interrupt your match.”

  The baron went to join Inkar. Inkar clasped his hand and said something that made him chuckle. As they took their bows from the weapons master, Eirhan said quietly, “The young lady the baron brought with him from Rabar is not his wife.”

  “I gathered that,” I said.

  “You have insulted him by inferring that he ought to have brought his wife.”

  “I’ll be extra complimentary at dinner,” I offered.

  He sat on the bench next to me. “I told you to remember who brought their mistresses.”

  “You tell me a lot of things, Eirhan.”

  “Perhaps you understand why, Your Grace.”

  I didn’t answer. For a while we watched Inkar and the baron as they nocked arrows and let them fly. The baron’s struck right on the line between the center and the closest ring. Inkar’s was almost dead in the middle.

  “Minister Urso is meeting the delegate of Avythera,” Eirhan said as Inkar and the baron shook hands and trooped to the targets to retrieve their arrows. “He’ll join us shortly.”

  Avythera wasn’t the largest country in the North, and it wasn’t our neighbor, but it did have important trade routes. And Sigis wanted it. He’d prattled at me for ages about it the night before last. It said something about us both that I couldn’t remember the details.

  “Why not bring out the rest of the council?” I said. “We can have our meeting right here.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” Eirhan said. “Anything to get Your Grace to sit still.”

  Urso trotted up to us, pulling his scarf down and bowing low. “Your Grace. I’m sorry I’m late.” He cast about for a suitable place to sit, but when he saw the only option was on the bench next to Eirhan, he elected to stand, clasping his hands together and bouncing on the balls of his feet. “The delegate from Avythera was… eager to speak on the matter of our agreement. And passionate.”

  “And what did he have to say?” Maybe that would clue me in as to what the agreement was actually about.

  “He was, ah, interested in striking up an independent relationship with Your Grace.” Urso gulped. “As opposed to with her father.”

  Urso looked at me. Eirhan looked at me. I tried to look clever. Eirhan took a deep breath. “The Avythera agreement was a free-trade agreement between Kylma Above, Drysiak, Avythera, and Solarkyet. Your father withdrew from the agreement when Solarkyet revolted, and imposed a restriction on the number of foreign goods Kylmian traders can purchase. He wishes them to spend their money at home.” Eirhan smiled pointedly at Urso. “And I suppose the delegate wishes us to spend it abroad.”

  Urso shifted from foot to foot as he tried to find some way to sweeten his words. “Very much so,” he finally said.

  I ran over what he said twice more in my head. “Why not trade abroad? Won’t it be better for our standing?” I asked.

  Urso’s head bobbed. “Your Grace is correct, naturally. But your father had his reasons. And Sigis has made us a counteroffer to make exclusive
trading agreements with Drysiak instead.”

  I looked at Eirhan. “Any special requirements to that counteroffer?”

  “I’m sure Sigis would adjust his offer if your relationship was… of a closer nature than trade partners,” Eirhan said. He turned back to Urso, who was trying to cover his confusion by inclining his head. “Is Avythera aware of Sigis’s counter?”

  “They have threatened to declare war if the agreement is not ratified,” Urso said, drawing his shoulders in as though he expected me to shout at him.

  War in my first week sounded about right for the way things were going. But Eirhan laughed. “What a ridiculous notion.”

  “Which agreement do you think is best? Sigis’s, theirs, or ours?” I asked Urso.

  Eirhan cut in before he could answer. “Your father destroyed whatever good faith we had with them. Consider Sigis’s offer carefully—and don’t make him angrier.” He flapped a hand at Urso in clear dismissal. “Have a copy of the agreement sent to Her Grace.”

  Urso hesitated. I opened my mouth to tell him he could stay. But I took too long, and he bowed deeply and hurried off.

  Some grand duke I was turning out to be. I sighed, watching my breath puff out. “I wanted his opinion, not yours,” I grumbled.

  He snorted. “Why? The only opinion he’d offer is the one he thinks would make you happiest.”

  That was probably truer than I’d like. “Fine. Now what?”

  “The day’s order, naturally.” He produced it and handed it over. “We can discuss it as you relax and… enjoy yourself?”

  Truth be told, my fingers and toes were feeling the bite of the cold, but inside meant more conversations I didn’t understand, conversations that Eirhan could use to manipulate me and to push me toward Sigis.

  First: breakfast. I rolled my eyes. Next, a meeting with the delegate of Avythera, which I’d missed. I had a council meeting soon, then some ceremony to thank the rejected delegates of the brideshow. More meetings, more arguments, more everything. I scanned the list a couple of times before handing it back. “I was hoping to spend time with Farhod.”

  Eirhan pursed his lips. “There’s simply no time to spend. You have to put your scientific interests on hold, for now.” And possibly forever, he didn’t say, but I heard it all the same.