The Winter Duke

by Claire Eliza Bartlett

  “Ah.” How did I stop thinking about this? “Yannush wants to talk to me.”

  He caught my elbow as I maneuvered from the throne to the open floor. “Careful, dear. I’ll think you’re stalling.”

  Call me dear again, I thought, but it was a hollow threat. Then, conscious of his eyes on me, I made my way to where Yannush conferred with Urso and Urso’s secretary.

  Urso noticed me first. “Your Grace.” He bowed. Yannush’s bulging eyes widened in a way that might have made me laugh if I were in a better mood.

  “What did Sigis think was so interesting at dinner?” I asked Yannush.

  “He was discussing the export of raw magic,” Yannush said, and I had no way to know if it was a total lie. “Everyone wants the secret to stabilization, of course, so that they don’t have to rely on your father to provide the more expensive, refined magic.”

  “How much raw magic do we export?” I asked.

  Yannush looked vaguely affronted; apparently, I ought to have known already. “We export far more refined than raw,” he said. “Though many who buy raw magic use it here. Foreigners believe that magic is more potent within Kylma’s limits than without.”

  That was interesting. “Is it?”

  “I wouldn’t know, Your Grace. I don’t use magic for frivolity.” He shut his mouth. His face took on a closed look, as though he’d said something he shouldn’t have.

  I knew magic lost power as it aged. But what if there was more to it? What if proximity to Below made it more potent, more stable? It had been grown and harvested Below, after all. What if the people Below could manipulate magic because it was in its natural element?

  What if I could find some way to re-create that natural element? Would that be enough to gain control, to refine the magic without knowing my father’s exact formula?

  “Your… Grace?” Yannush said. He was looking at me oddly, as if I were a fisherman and he were the eel on my line.

  “Yannush.” I put my hand on his arm. He tensed. “You might be brilliant.” And though I wanted to savor the look of shock on his face, I slipped around him and hurried for the servants’ door, Viljo close behind, praying that Eirhan’s back was still turned.

  I faltered outside Father’s rooms, though for once, it wasn’t Father I feared. I’d been cruel to Farhod, and unfair. He deserved better. Under normal circumstances, I’d have waited a few days, until we could both pretend this had never happened. But if I didn’t act immediately, Sigis might win the coronation trials before Father woke up.

  Grand dukes don’t apologize, I thought. All I had to do was march in and act like myself. All the same, it felt as if a barrier separated me from the door.

  The guards to either side of the door eyed me. Behind me, Viljo coughed. “I know,” I said irritably. “Open up.”

  The antechamber was much as I’d left it. My sisters and brothers stank and were soaked through with sweat. The door to Father’s bedroom opened, and Farhod poked his head out. “Ekata?”

  Something inside me broke loose. If he were still angry with me, he’d have called me something else—my lady or Your Grace. All the same, the air between us was stiff, like being outside on the cusp of a snowstorm.

  “Um.” I bit the inside of my cheek. Sorry rose on my tongue, but I quashed it. If I couldn’t think of a regal way to say it, I couldn’t say it at all.

  Farhod inclined his head, as though gracefully accepting my nonapology. “It’s late. Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine.” I took a deep breath. “I want to try something.”

  Farhod was careful not to look at me. “Something dangerous?” Something foolish?

  “Maybe. Unless you’ve made progress.” I knew he hadn’t. He’d have sent every servant in the palace to find me if he had.

  His hand went around and around his cuff. “Sometimes it takes weeks or months to find a cure, you know.” I could practically hear Farhod trying out arguments in his head. I knew he hesitated only because of our fight.

  “I don’t have weeks or months.” I had until the end of the coronation trials. And if Sigis won…“I’ve come up with a hypothesis.”

  “Oh?” He sounded relieved.

  “The environment of Below is conducive to magic. The people can manipulate it however they like. It’s not unstable. But you didn’t find any organ of magic when you performed the autopsy on the citizen of Below.”

  Farhod frowned. “Not that I could identify.”

  “What if the secret to magic is in the environment? In the water?” What else could it be? If I truly focused, I wouldn’t fail.

  “Have you tested this theory?” Farhod asked.

  “Meire—my liaison Below—said the secret to magic was within us.” Farhod’s frown didn’t abate, and I went on. “I can do this.” I needed to do this. “I’m grand duke.”

  “Being grand duke doesn’t automatically give you power over magic.” Farhod was trying to keep his tone gentle, still afraid to anger me.

  It didn’t work, but I did manage to squash the flash of frustration. “Has anything else worked so far?” I said.

  “No,” Farhod admitted. “No emetics, no remedies. At the university, we’d have tried a biopsy, but Kylma has no doctors trained for it.”

  “Surely cutting my family open isn’t better than trying my way,” I said.

  Farhod didn’t look as though he entirely agreed. “Why not try experimenting with the magic on me first?”

  “You’re not ill, for a start. And I have a time limit. Farhod, I can do it. What other options do we have?” Doctors siphoned fluid out of my family’s lungs. If Sigis won the coronation trials, he’d let them all drown.

  Farhod sagged. He looked so much older than he had a few days ago. His skin was dry and cracked, and his expressive dark eyes seemed dull. “Maybe… start with a sibling.”

  I went to Father’s table. The black messenger bowl sat unperturbed, still as the moat on a clear day. This was what I had of Below.

  The little jar of magical pearls was fetched from the laboratory. I dipped a cup into the messenger bowl, then popped the latch on the jar of pearls. They nestled, glistening, coated in ever-shifting color. I dropped a pearl into the cup, as the archimandrite had done. Then I crushed it with a pestle and let the magic disperse through the water.

  “Are you…?” Farhod didn’t say sure.

  Because I wasn’t. I looked around the room. Whom could the family live without? Whom could I live with, if I succeeded?

  I knelt next to Velosha, who lay on a cot at the foot of Father’s bed. Her venom wasn’t the worst, and I doubted my ministers liked her more than they liked me. I knelt before her, cupping one hand under her neck to raise her head.

  Grand dukes make grand decisions. No one else would do it for me. I leaned forward and let the cup moisten my sister’s lips. Her head moved a little, and the liquid flowed down her throat.

  I became aware of the small crowd standing behind me. Disapproval rolled off Munna. “What now?” they said.

  “We’ll have to wait.” I put two fingers to her neck, checking her pulse.

  “For how long?”

  Velosha’s pulse hammered against my fingers. Her eyes flicked open. I hissed in a breath. “It’s working—”

  She began to writhe. I was thrown to the side as Munna pushed me out of the way. They fixed a mask to her face and sucked at the catheter that slid up her nose. Water poured from Velosha’s mouth. They pulled her up by the shoulders, reaching one hand around her to slap her back.

  My blood was thorns and ice inside me. This was supposed to save me. This was supposed to work.

  This was killing her.

  “Ekata.” Farhod gripped me by the elbow. “Ekata, come. Get out of the way.” He pulled me up and tried to steer me toward the desk.

  I sagged in his grasp. “Maybe—it’s dispelling all the water. Maybe it induced vomiting.” Maybe the flow of water would stop, and instead of her burbling breath, it would be
her voice I heard.

  Then the others began to seize.

  Lyosha was the first. A doctor rushed to him, swearing. Then Svaro began, then Mother.

  Then Father.

  Farhod dropped my arm and shoved past me. He sucked hard on the catheter trailing from Father’s nose, spitting the fluid directly onto the floor. Father’s eyes fluttered. The room erupted in shouts. My mind faced a wall, as blank and smooth as ice. There had to be a solution to this. There had to be.

  You thought you had one, whispered part of my mind. I’d tried, but I wasn’t clever enough. I wasn’t capable enough. I couldn’t be grand duke, and I couldn’t be a scientist, either.

  “Lobelia,” Farhod shouted between breaths. “Ekata.”

  My mind turned over and over. Lobelia. A pale purple flower, imported dried. Emetic. A poison. Father had ordered that I should never touch it, for fear that I would use it on my siblings.

  Farhod slid off the bed. “Hold him,” he growled, and shoved me at my father.

  Father wasn’t so terrifying now, with spit and salt water dripping down his chin, snot hanging from his nose, eyes staring at nothing. His graying beard and hair were matted, his cheeks hollowed and waxy. For a moment, I was amazed I’d tried to save him. Would he thank me when he woke? Give me the chance to travel south? Or would he always hate me for seeing him like this?

  His body convulsed. More water slid from his nose and mouth. I fumbled for the catheter.

  Farhod crouched beside Velosha, crushing lobelia in a mortar. For a moment, my fog lifted as a fresh wave of fear hit. “Don’t,” I said. He looked up. “Let me do it. If you accidentally…”

  If he accidentally killed her, his own life would be over. Whereas I was practically expected to do my family in.

  A glaring doctor handed me a long syringe. I took the mortar from Farhod and filled the syringe. Then I leaned over Velosha and put a few drops down her throat.

  She stilled for a few moments. Then her abdomen spasmed as she reacted to the poison. She coughed one dry cough—then it poured back out. Sweet salt water spattered my dress, stained pink and as warm as my sister’s feverish body. Magic sparkled, feathering into capillaries that bled into the cloth like little red trees. Velosha’s body shook.

  She flopped like a fish for over a minute. When she finally stilled, her breathing seemed less labored, but it rasped as though her insides had been scraped raw. Magic still fizzed on the front of my dress. And behind me, I could hear the rest of my family begin to breathe as normal.

  I choked on a hysterical laugh. To think of this as normal.

  I let Velosha fall back to her cot. “Thank you,” I muttered as I stood. “I’ll go now.”

  I pushed past the doctors, through the antechamber, and out into the cold hall, where I leaned against the wall and slid to the floor. I drew up my knees and made a cradle for my head. I didn’t care that I was covered in questionable fluids. I didn’t care that the soaking hem of my dress was turning stiff and freezing to the ice floor.

  I’d been so sure my idea would work. Because I was clever, and because grand dukes had grand solutions. Because I thought Below could solve my problems. Because I thought magic could solve them.

  The door opened with a quiet click. Farhod sat next to me, stretching out his legs along the floor. For a long while, we said nothing. Tears rose again, and this time I let them come. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have thought this would help?

  Nothing else did, whispered that little voice. But it could shut up. All it did was give me stupid ideas and then tell me how foolish I’d been.

  “Ekata, it happens,” Farhod said.

  “Does it?” I asked flatly.

  “Yes. To doctors and to grand dukes. You make decisions with the information you have, and sometimes those decisions are wrong. Sometimes you haven’t slept enough, and you haven’t eaten enough, and things seem clear right up until everything falls apart.”

  I forced myself to look at him. He did look as though he meant everything he said.

  “You need to get some rest,” he said. “In the morning, you’ll have to convince the council that you were trying to help, not hurt.”

  I shook my head. If he thought I could manage to sleep…

  He caught my hand and squeezed it. “Ekata, I know it’s bad. These are the kinds of days you’ll have as grand duke sometimes. But I’ll stand behind you. This will pass.”

  The problem was, this wouldn’t pass. The council would swing favor toward Sigis, and he’d win the coronation trials. Then it wouldn’t matter what I’d been trying to do.

  Footsteps clicked down the hall. The bottom of Aino’s dress came into view, and Farhod led her away, murmuring. I put my head back on my knees and tried to forget it all.

  Gentle arms tugged me upright. Aino kissed me, featherlight, on the cheek. “Poor Ekata,” she murmured. “Come sleep.”

  Aino led me to bed and made me drink a soporific, and Inkar pulled my quilt up to my shoulders. For once, they didn’t snipe at each other, but I couldn’t care enough to be grateful. I slept unwillingly, and the dark that pulled me down seemed deep and hopeless.

  I was suspended, with darkness below me and light somewhere far above. It filtered through to me, white to blue to gray.

  I couldn’t breathe. My heart pounded, and my lungs spasmed. As I flailed and choked, I spotted my hands—corpse-gray, speckled with shadow from something far above. Frost burst over my skin in sharp crystals, all thorns. It wound about my wrists, binding me. Dragging me down.

  I screamed. Water filled my mouth, salty-sweet. The thorns tightened. Frost crept up my arms, blooming into my shoulders. It dug into my skin. I couldn’t make a sound. I thrashed; I wouldn’t go quietly—

  I woke up just as I spat a mouthful of water onto Inkar’s face.

  She held me by my shoulders, her dark eyes wide in shock. Her hair was wet. “Aino!” she screamed.

  I was wet, too—every single part of me. My nightgown was as soaked as if I’d tossed it into the moat. Water dripped from my hair, and the inside of my mouth felt slimy. My legs slicked against each other. Aino burst in and shoved Inkar aside, grabbing me by the shoulders, then leaning me forward and slapping my back hard enough to leave a handprint. I choked on fluid and indignation. Warmth and pain burst inside me. But the next breath I took was free. “What happened?” I gasped.

  “I thought you were having a fit,” Inkar said. Her carefree smile was gone. Her mouth was dark in the light of the stars, surrounded by the pale moon of her face.

  “Are you all right? Are you well? What happened?” Aino said.

  “How should I know?” I looked from Aino’s serious face to Inkar’s petrified one. My face burned. All I remembered was fear, but now that I was awake, things didn’t seem nearly so real. “It must have been a bad dream.” I wiped at my soaking front, feeling foolish.

  Aino looked at me for a long moment. “Yes,” she said slowly. “Let’s get you into something dry.” She rubbed at my still-wet arms. “Inkar, won’t you excuse us?”

  “No.” Inkar slid off the bed to stand on the bearskin rug at the foot of it. She knelt before the fire, and I heard steel on flint.

  I needed to calm down. I wanted to forget the frost blooming all over me, the depths dragging me down.

  I coughed. Water sluiced over my chin, and I put a hand up to my mouth. Inkar and Aino stared at me. I felt small, suddenly, childish and immature and repulsive. “I’m sorry,” I said, bringing my knees up and tugging my sodden nightgown away from my chest. “I must have… I don’t know.”

  Inkar returned to the bed and ran a finger down my bare arm. She brought it up to her nose. “It does not smell like sweat.” Her tongue darted out. “It does not taste like sweat.” Her hands went to the hem of my nightshirt, squeezing. “It did not look like a nightmare. Not the kind I have seen. It looked like…”

  She frowned, but it wasn’t the disgusted frown I’d expected. It was a puzzled one. I was a
mystery she needed to solve. “When I woke up, I thought you were drowning,” she said.

  Drowning.

  Aino trembled as she pulled the soggy gown over my head. I ran my tongue around the inside of my mouth again, tasting this time. I’d smelled this sweetness once before. And the salt of the water—it wasn’t sweat.

  It was lake water.

  Inkar was right. I had been drowning, like the rest of my family. Which meant that whoever cursed them was trying to curse me, too. A flash of memory ignited, the sense of cold and damp, the image of frost in my mind. Three nights ago, I’d had this same nightmare. Only it wasn’t a nightmare.

  I’d already made so many mistakes in my young reign, but this might be the biggest. I was the mistake. My ascension to the dukedom was a mistake. I should be lying next to my father, slowly drowning.

  Aino and Inkar bundled me into a new nightgown and robe and set me before the fire. Aino fetched new bedclothes, and she and Inkar fitted them while I sat and shivered. Aino moved as if her joints had aged ten years in the night. But she worked without complaint, and in silence.

  “You may go,” Inkar said when they were done.

  “Excuse me?” Aino said in a voice like cut glass.

  “We are finished. You may sleep.” Inkar’s voice was brisk and neutral. As though Aino were beneath her anger.

  “Someone just tried to kill her. I’m not about to leave.”

  “I will watch her.” Inkar sat cross-legged on the bed. “I have kept watch before. On campaign. You and I will take three-hour shifts to ensure one of us is always wakeful.”

  Aino glared, thin-lipped. “She has a point,” I said, and nearly recoiled when that glare turned on me. “I mean—wouldn’t taking shifts be better?” If I could sleep at all. “We all have things to do tomorrow.”

  “We can’t trust her,” Aino said in Kylmian.

  Poor Aino, always so worried for me. I took her hand. “No matter what she wants, she won’t get it if I die. Let her take a watch. You can rest.” She needed it. Her eyes still swam with tears, and she looked as if she hadn’t slept since I’d become grand duke.