“None of it?”
They licked their lips. “Many claims can be made, Your Grace, but I can explain them. To your satisfaction, I hope.”
I held up the paper Eirhan had cleverly noticed. “You signed this after Sigis arrived for the brideshow.”
Annika was as still as a hare poised to flee. “I had your father’s permission for that.”
“Can you prove it?” I said.
They didn’t reply. Nor did they look away. Their blue eyes turned pale and angry.
“Why do you want to depose me?”
“I don’t, Your Grace.”
“You want a parliament.”
Their words were measured. “You seized the treasury. You’ve arrested me. A parliament doesn’t mean you can’t be duke. It just means you can’t be an autocrat anymore.”
“You had no problem with my father’s being an autocrat,” I pointed out.
“Kamen has thirty years of experience in politics.” Their eyes dropped to their lap. “But he taught you more about fear than politics. I would have supported a parliament no matter who succeeded him. Perhaps it’s time for a change.”
“And supporting a parliament would make it easier for Sigis to marry into the family, wouldn’t it? The parliament could maintain control. In theory.” I doubted Sigis would make things any easier on a governing body than he would on me. “And what about Below?”
Annika raised a pale eyebrow. “I’ve never been Below.”
“Minister Olloi says otherwise.”
They snorted. “Minister Olloi hates me. He’s wanted to be minister of agriculture since before you were born.”
“Why is that? Why does everyone want a post that has no meaning on an ice-covered lake? Is it because you can make special deals with powerful kings?”
Annika lifted one shoulder in response. “Being minister of agriculture gives me a say in trade and imported goods. Olloi’s job is to guard a locked door.”
That was fair. “Being minister of agriculture means you can make lucrative agreements, too.” I examined the papers. “What did Sigis offer you?”
Annika was silent. I let the silence draw out. Their heel tapped on the floor, ice grips click-clicking in the silence. “I want to make a deal,” they said at last.
The side of my mouth twitched. “Offer me something.”
“Olloi arranged for Sigis to access untreated magic from Below. I don’t know who collected it, but Sigis has talked to everyone. I can tell you who supports him, who avoids him, and who’s undecided.”
“So tell me,” I said.
Annika wet their lips. “I want promises first. I want to maintain my seat on the council, and Kylma buys my produce before trading with foreigners.”
I narrowed my eyes. Annika should be begging for their life, not negotiating an agricultural agreement.
“More grain means a better life for citizens Above. The tax will enrich the treasury. You’ll have an ally on your council. There’s no drawback for you.”
I’d hardly call Annika an ally. “And how do I know you didn’t go Below?”
“I cannot prove that I haven’t been somewhere, Your Grace,” Annika said. “I can only tell you that Olloi has his reasons for framing me.”
Be Father. They didn’t fear me enough if they thought staying on my council would benefit them. “This is my problem, Annika. If you’re lying, I’m only handing you more power. Executing you would be cleaner and easier for me.”
Their hands clenched into fists. “My holdings would revert to Sigis, not you. You’d lose a valuable asset. I can help you.” Now I heard that hint of desperation. “I can give you names.”
I folded my arms. “So talk. And if your information is decent, we’ll talk about what you get to keep.” Their position, their agreements, their head—let them wonder what was on the line.
Their fingers twitched; then they forced them to relax. And they began to talk.
Reko sat at his desk, writing. When I entered, he glanced up, then scrawled his signature at the bottom of the page and set it aside. “How pleased I am that Her Grace has blessed me with her presence.”
Reko didn’t have to like me, but he did have to respect me. “Surely you would never have spoken that way to my father.”
“You are not your father,” Reko said.
There was a short, ugly silence.
“I’ll get to the point.” I took the armchair by the fire. “I’ve been speaking with Minister Annika. They had some interesting things to say about my council.”
Reko picked at a bit of invisible dust on his sleeve. “I’m sure they painted me the very picture of villainy.”
“Actually, they said you’d refused all of Sigis’s attempts to sway you. They said you were the only one.”
Reko raised an eyebrow. “I’m loyal to Kamen. Don’t confuse it with being loyal to you.”
Anger flared in me again. Well, he’s honest. Something that no one else on my council seemed to be. “It means we’re on the same side.”
Reko snorted at that.
“We are. We both want my father back. And I think we can help each other.” I folded my hands. “You help me, I look for the cure. My father returns, things go back to normal.”
Reko’s mouth twisted as though he were amused at my trying to be an adult. “Let’s say you’re right. Do you really think things will go back to normal?” He shook his head, as though I honestly couldn’t be that stupid. “This reckoning has been coming since before you were born. We need a representative parliament, whether or not your father recovers.”
“I can’t—” I stopped myself. Grand dukes could do anything. “Surely if I declare a parliament, that looks as though I consider myself to be grand duke permanently, not merely provisionally. Something you’ve been against from the beginning.”
Reko folded his hands and tapped his forefingers together. “Here’s the deal I want. Call for a representative parliament immediately. I’ve drafted preliminary documents, which you can present to the council. Once you’ve decreed it—publicly—I’ll help you.”
“That’s not the way this works,” I said, feeling my temper start hot in my belly. “You don’t tell me what the deal is. I tell you, and you obey.”
“If you want my help, Your Grace, you’ll have to give me a parliament. And I think you need my help.”
“I don’t need anything,” I snapped. “I don’t have to give you anything, either. I was willing to overlook your outburst in the hall, but if you won’t cooperate, I’ll have to think about what my father would do in these circumstances.”
A strange look crossed Reko’s face. At first, I couldn’t place it, then I realized—it was grief. Pain and anger, too, but more grief than anything else. “Your father was my friend.”
“Well, I’m not. And I’m grand duke if I don’t find a way to cure him. Think about that before you refuse me again.” I got to my feet.
I expected him to say something—to tell me to wait, or to fling some insult after me in defiance. But Reko merely tapped his fingers and watched me, and the longer I waited, the harder it was to speak.
I left his chambers. I ought to storm somewhere dramatically, but his refusal had put me at odds with myself. If I couldn’t inspire fear in Reko, I didn’t yet have what it took to control my court. I was still vulnerable. I needed to do more.
But I wasn’t sure what.
I thought I’d be able to contemplate Reko’s insistent treason at my council meeting and ignore my ministers as they had ignored me. But the moment I stepped into the room—five minutes early—I saw them sitting straight-backed and nervous, and I knew I wouldn’t like what they had to say.
I took Father’s seat next to Eirhan. The room was quiet: shuffling papers and cleared throats and slurps of coffee. I focused on the tapestries and their flora: cloudtree, wolfthorn, galanthus. The fauna: lepus arctos, canis lupus nixus, ursos isabellinus. When Rafyet finally arrived, on time and blinking in confusion, I’d identified a
bout a third of the tapestry.
I waited for Eirhan to call the meeting. But he simply picked up his coffee cup and turned to me. “Okay,” I said. “I suppose we should start.”
I looked from minister to minister. But not all of them looked to me. Itilya, Bailli, and Urso turned slightly toward Yannush. Yannush set down his own cup and took a breath. “What’s the point in starting, Your Grace? We can’t discuss the Avythera agreement without the minister of agriculture present. The minister of Below should be arranging your coronation trials, but he’s confined to his rooms. The rest of us walk in fear that we’ll be next.”
“And why is that?” I asked.
I’d meant to sound sardonic, as though they clearly had something to hide. But Yannush leaned in and said carefully, “Because Your Grace arrests everyone who irritates her.”
“That’s ridiculous. Eirhan’s still here, and he’s been irritating me for days.”
No one smiled, not even the pained smile of We-Have-to-Laugh-at-Her-Grace’s-Jokes.
Yannush bared his teeth ever so slightly, then worked his mouth into a neutral expression. “We have to face the facts. Your Grace is overwhelmed. Your interference in your family’s health nearly killed them, and your paranoia is destroying this council. We can’t make the decisions we need to make.”
Anger rose in me like a tide. Paranoid? Someone tried to curse me last night, and I was paranoid for wanting to find out who it was? “You don’t make decisions,” I reminded him. “You’re my advisory council.”
“And we advise you to step back,” Yannush said.
Step back. And let Sigis win the coronation trials without trying? And let Eirhan be grand duke in my name?
“My father would kill you for saying such a thing,” I hissed.
There was silence around the table. My stomach curdled with cold knowledge. None of them cared, because I wasn’t my father. My edges weren’t hard enough. Grand dukes commanded respect, and I didn’t.
The water in the messenger bowl began to swirl. Eirhan reached forward, but I swatted his outstretched hand, standing to take the green-tinged note myself.
You are cordially invited Below, where answers are to be found for your questions.
Eirhan peered over my shoulder. “What does that mean?”
I folded the note. “It means this meeting is over.” My heart began to patter. The note couldn’t have come at a better time. “If you want to do something useful, you can keep Sigis from winning the coronation trials.” Assuming, of course, that the council hadn’t arranged his coup in the first place.
The palace Below was hung with color and light, a riot of lamps in more shades than I would have guessed could grow here. I wanted to press my hand against them, but Meire held my wrist tight and swam without speaking to me, her crest flat against her head.
Instead of leading me to the throne room, Meire took me through a low arch and a winding, open corridor until we reached a bare courtyard. A wire cage stretched up and over our heads, keeping us inside and the yard exposed. There was no decoration here; the space was lit only by a few deep-blue lamps. Everything looked stranger in their light; Meire’s skin took on an obsidian sheen, and my own looked dead and bloodless.
“What is this place?”
Meire did not look at me. Her eyes were dark, and the gills at her neck flickered like a panicked heartbeat. “It is a tribunal. It is why you are here.”
I frowned. “Am I on trial?” And for what? For taking too long to sign some agreement?
“Of course not,” the duke Below said from behind me. I turned around and bowed, and he nodded to me, taking me by the hand. His hands were larger than Meire’s, multijointed and silver at the tips. One of his hands could have enveloped both of mine. “You may think of this as a gift, if you like.”
Behind him swam a shadow, and at his nod, the shadow flipped backward and disappeared under a dark arch. When it returned, it solidified into the shape of a fishman holding a thick seaweed rope who tugged three bound figures after him. With a sinking feeling, I recognized the fishwife who’d given us the accounts. She did not look at me; none of the three did. None of them struggled. They let the official drag them by their bindings through a door in our cage and into the courtyard’s desolate center.
“These are the citizens who broke the law and consorted with an unfit citizen from Above,” the duke Below said. “We gathered evidence, and I tried them by my own hand. Now I present their execution to you as a gift.”
A gift of execution. The concept curdled my stomach. But I looked at his flashing teeth and nodded.
“We have come to tensions in recent times,” the duke said. “It is something for which we blame your father, not you. And it has turned some of our citizens desperate. Desperation is no excuse for lawbreaking. We still hope for good relations between Above and Below. On that faith, do you wish to speak with them before their sentence is exacted?”
I wrapped my fingers around the wire mesh that separated us. “Who? And why?”
The citizen on the right flashed their crest, fanning it out in bravery or defiance. “One man can halt the trade that built us? It is not right.”
“One man can make us weak and defenseless without paying a price? It is not right,” said the second one. They’d clearly rehearsed.
“Who helped you?” I said again. This time, their jailer jabbed at the fishwife with his spear. The dull, rotting tip scraped against her scales, denting them. I flinched.
She looked at me, and her eyes seemed sorrowful. “We met them at the top of the ice. Not at the moat, where many might be watching. While they kept guard, I traded. Iron and wax and electrum, spears to hunt the deep things. The pale king did not come into the water. But his servant did.”
“What did the servant look like?”
Another silence, this one longer. At last, the middle one answered. He had a red-and-orange pattern on his scales, a sunset of color. It broke my heart a little. I’d spent my life wanting to observe these people, their culture, their customs. Not their executions.
“He said he was a powerful man.” Eirhan. “He said he spoke with all foreign nations.” Yannush. “He said he cared for the plight of all people.” Reko.
“What was his name?”
“He sits on your council,” the fishwife said. “He is pale of skin, and his hair is dark on his head and on his chin.”
Rafyet. But that was laughable. Why would Rafyet brag about knowing foreign nations?
He wouldn’t. Yannush had a beard, too. Yannush, my foreign minister. Yannush, who had argued with Sigis last night and tried to depose me this morning.
Something uneasy touched at the back of my mind. “Wait. You can see my council room?”
The duke Below nodded to the jailer, who jabbed the fishwife in a clean, brutal move. This time, the pitted iron dug through her flesh and tore a hole in her shoulder. With two powerful kicks, the jailer swam out through the opening of the cage, dragging his spear behind him. Red billowed from the fishwife. The duke Below latched the cage again.
The fishwife began to twist against her bonds. The gills along the side of her jaw fluttered frantically. Her coconspirators trembled, and muscles bulged in their scaly arms as they pulled against the seaweed rope with no success.
I didn’t notice the first shark until the fishwife’s head hung by a thread, mouth opening and closing uselessly. Her knife-sharp teeth had done nothing for her in the end. Another little shape darted back and fastened its teeth around her shoulder until something made a popping sound.
Farhod’s autopsy report of the citizen Below had contained cross sections and technical drawings. I’d seen intestines on paper, the muscles of the arms and legs. But it was so terribly different to see these parts spilling out into the water. The other two prisoners threw back their heads and began a keen that boiled through the water; the keening turned to screaming as the sharks set upon them, ripping a leg free at its knee, pushing their snouts into the hole of a bell
y.
And then the screams stopped, and that was somehow worse.
I looked down, watching the hair on my legs rise as the sounds of ripping things faded. The sharks moved silently, cutting through the water and the ropes and the meat, shaking the pieces of their prey.
Meire took my hand. “You are disturbed.”
“You aren’t?”
“This is the reality of our world.” A shadow passed over Meire’s face. The scent of blood had drawn larger predators, sharks that made the duke Below look slim and small. So many things here. Suddenly, our cage seemed scant protection.
“It is done, and we have seen it.” The duke Below offered me his arm, and I released Meire’s hand to take it. “We do not take pleasure in it, but this is how we rule. It is how we keep our rule.” He gave me a calculating look. “I sympathize with my people, and I feel grief and shame with their families. We fight and control the things of the deep, and we cannot do that without your assistance. People have become desperate now.”
He led me to the edge of the palace compound, and we bowed to each other. When Meire tugged on me to go, I resisted. “I have to ask,” I said, but words failed me. Despite the whole world being made of water, my mouth was dry.
The duke Below brought his head forward, listening.
“My family. Can they be cured with magic?”
The duke tilted his head. “That is not a question I can answer, Your Grace.”
“It is a magical curse,” I pointed out.
If I was hoping to make him feel guilty enough to give up the secret of magical dominance, I was disappointed. “A magical cure could be attempted. But citizens Below cannot travel Above, and no citizen Above can use magic as the citizens Below can.”
“My father can.”
“The grand duke is given special dispensation.” The duke Below turned his staff around in his long, thin fingers. “It is only natural that you would wish for it.”
“Ah.” I was hoping to get around to that part a little more diplomatically.
“I relish the sharing of this knowledge. But you are not grand duke yet.” His fins flipped. “You must win the coronation trials.”
The Winter Duke Page 23