The Winter Duke

by Claire Eliza Bartlett

  “I thought you were going to execute him.”

  “I still might.” He’d crossed lines that should never be crossed. “Father would.”

  “You keep talking about him as though he is everything that matters.” Inkar set the grammar book aside and drew up her knees, propping her chin on them and tucking a sun-streaked lock of hair behind her ear.

  “He—it’s difficult,” I muttered, trying to undo the button between my shoulders. I should have called for Aino, but I’d had enough of her sniping at Inkar and making snide comments in Kylmian.

  “I can help you.” Inkar slid off the bed, hissing as her bare calves touched the air. A few moments later, her fingers brushed the back of my neck. My skin prickled. She slid the first button free and began to work her way down my back. Each light touch made my breath hitch.

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said, struggling to focus. Father was far from everything that mattered, but he reached through everything that mattered. Like an illness that rooted in a specimen and spread through a population. His cruelty had become normal, and if I didn’t pretend I had it, I’d be torn apart. “I can either be him or be used by people who want to be him. If those are my only options, I know what I’ll choose.”

  She was silent for a moment as she finished unbuttoning my dress. Then she said, “My father often told me that I had to think about what kind of leader I would be. He said we would discover ourselves in battle. You have not been given many battles to discover yourself. But I do not think you will discover what kind of leader you are if you are always chasing after him.”

  Her hand appeared around my side, holding the long lace of my corset. I turned to take it and met her eyes. They were too close, too kind. No one in my family had eyes like that. I could see the soft fuzz on her cheek, and firelight tipped her eyelashes with gold. Her mouth was slightly parted, her brow furrowed in concern. How could she be so sincere? Among my family, such sincerity would crack us open, and the wolves would descend. I’d only been safely myself with Aino and Farhod.

  I took the lace and her hand, too. “I don’t have time to learn to be the right kind of leader.” Every misstep brought Sigis closer to winning the coronation trials, no matter what I learned from it.

  I felt Inkar’s soft exhale on my cheek. Goose bumps prickled down my neck. Her gaze fluttered over my lips. Then she retreated, getting into bed and pulling Aino’s quilt around her. “Perhaps your father was not the right kind of leader, either,” she said.

  I was tired of everyone questioning me. Nothing I did would ever be good enough. Suddenly, nothing my father had ever done was sufficient, either. “He has thirty years of experience, which is more than us,” I said, yanking on my corset. Only when I’d finished tugging it loose did I realize that I’d snapped. I glanced at Inkar. She sat cross-legged, picking at something on the quilt. Refusing to look at me.

  I put my dress away and got into my nightgown. Neither of us spoke. The longer the silence drew on, the harder it was to break it. I felt a flush of irritation—it wasn’t untrue, what I’d said. But beneath the irritation lay a deeper melancholy. I’d brought Father’s persona into my own room, and now there was nowhere I could truly be myself.

  Maybe this was how Father and Mother had become each other’s enemies. By trading cold, unfeeling comments, backed up with bitter excuses. Cut after little cut, until nothing was left but the hate.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, sliding into bed on the other side. “I didn’t mean to be angry.” Grand dukes didn’t apologize, but Ekata did.

  Inkar finally looked at me, and it was the same flinty gaze she reserved for Sigis. I nearly scrambled back out of bed. Inkar was a serpent, poised and ready. And I was the lowest of toads.

  “I am trying to help you. You may speak to me how you like, but I am not your servant, and I will not scrape to you.”

  This was the sort of argument Eirhan had wanted. But I was finished with Eirhan’s plan. I put out a hand, fingers splayed. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I’m listening.” Because a grand consort commanded grand respect, and there was one way I would never be like Father: I wouldn’t encourage my wife to hate me.

  Inkar contemplated me for a long moment. At last, our palms touched, sending an electric shiver up my arm. “Mercy can be a great thing. A mark of understanding and hope. And I have found that keeping your word is something many consider admirable.”

  “Mercy for a traitor who cursed my family?” I tried to make the words heartfelt.

  “You must do what you think is right. I do not know much about your father, but I have spoken with delegates who do. He is a hard man, and not many people love him. Is he how you wish to be?”

  Being loved wouldn’t make me a good ruler. But neither would being harsh. Good rule had to come from knowledge and experience. And since I didn’t have those—maybe sincerity would see me through.

  You don’t have to sit on the throne for years, I reminded myself, tightening my grip on Inkar’s hand. You only have to sit until tomorrow. If Yannush kept his word.

  “Sleep,” Inkar said. “I will watch over you until it is Aino’s turn.”

  I lay down. I didn’t want to sleep, but exhaustion was a beast that I couldn’t escape. “Don’t leave me,” I mumbled, pulling the quilt up to my nose.

  She laughed softly. “Not today.”

  And I slept, dreaming of rage, of blood billowing in the water and Yannush weeping for his life. I dreamed I was surrounded by a cage of winter roses, and every time I touched them, another part of me turned to ice. I dreamed murky things until Aino shook me awake, pulling my hand free of Inkar’s. “Breakfast?” I mumbled.

  “No.” Aino’s voice trembled. I blinked, and I saw the tears that swam in her eyes. “Your father died in the night.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  That’s not possible,” I whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” Aino said, and I thought I saw something in her eyes—guilt? Fear?

  Inkar sat up, rubbing her face with one hand. The other still held tightly to me. “What is wrong?”

  “He can’t be—” I didn’t say it. Yannush had promised me a cure. Tremors ran up and down my arms, and nausea settled in my belly. I pulled away from Inkar, who looked from me to Aino.

  “What are you doing?” Aino said as I reached for my robe.

  “I’m going to see him.” I slid into my shoes. I didn’t wait for her or Inkar. My insides felt hollow, though my brain was awash with noise. Impossible.

  “Who knows?” I asked in a rusty voice.

  “A doctor reported it,” Aino whispered, tiptoeing after me as though afraid to disturb the silence of the royal wing. “I don’t know who else knows.”

  I headed toward the corridor, picking up speed. I heard the clank of Viljo following me, the click of the door as Inkar shut it behind her.

  The sick feeling in me doubled. What if Yannush had used Farhod to kill Father?

  You promised, I thought, and I couldn’t think of anything else. He’d promised.

  Sounds began to break through the haze in my brain. Rapid commands, the rumbling undercurrent of many people in one place, muttering things. I began to notice people being herded in the opposite direction. Their hair was unkempt, their robes and coats covering nightclothes. Many were running. Some looked back, faces full of fear.

  A servant grabbed my arm. “Don’t gape; bring more water!”

  Viljo ripped his hand off me. The servant practically threw himself to his knees when he saw what he’d done, hard enough that I heard the crack of them as they hit the ice. “I’m sorry, Your Grace, I didn’t realize—”

  And I didn’t care. “What’s happening?”

  He swallowed and lifted his head, staring intently at my stomach. “Fire. In the foreign minister’s room.”

  I pushed into the thickening crowd, leaving Viljo, Aino, and Inkar to make their own path behind me. Despite the early hour, ministers lingered in the hallway. As I drew closer, I saw the light t
hat flickered from Yannush’s open door.

  I recognized the broad shoulders and bald head that stood in front of me, and I tapped Minister Bailli on the shoulder. “What?” When he turned and saw me, his face drained of color, and he performed a hasty bow. “Your Grace, I beg your pardon.”

  “Who’s in there?” I said.

  Bailli looked as though I’d asked him who was the Grand Duke of Kylma Above. “No one, Your Grace.”

  I shoved past him and headed into Yannush’s rooms. Smoke seared my throat. Yannush’s room wasn’t technically on fire—his desk was. Papers had been piled on top of it, and tapestries had been torn from the walls and set alight. A puddle had formed beneath them.

  Eirhan stood in the middle of the room, holding a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. Of course. His guard scoured the place, overturning every stick of furniture that hadn’t been set on fire. “Where’s Yannush?”

  Eirhan removed the handkerchief from his mouth, presumably so that I could experience his full surprise that I could ask such a stupid question. “He’s killed himself.”

  That didn’t make sense. I’d granted him immunity. Maybe he knew I told a lie, I thought. But how could he? Even I didn’t know the truth yet.

  “He seems loyal to his coconspirators, even in his death.” Eirhan gestured to the burning documents. “We’ve gone through every unburnt scrap and rescued what we could. But we’ve found nothing.”

  “I want to look anyway,” I said. It was too convenient that Eirhan arrived before I had.

  Inkar appeared in the doorway and made for the inner door of Yannush’s bedroom. “I don’t recommend it, Your Grace,” Eirhan told her. “It’s not a nice sight.”

  Inkar gave him a contemptuous look and pushed on the door. I followed, hesitating as I caught sight of one slippered foot dangling over the bed. Then I hardened my resolve.

  Yannush lay on his bed. His sheets and quilt were one dark stain. For a moment, I pushed aside my empty panic and pressed one hand to his forehead. Pallor mortis and algor mortis had begun to set in, but I doubted Yannush had been dead more than half an hour. His skin was slick, almost slimy, and his beard was strung with droplets. I brought my fingers up to my nose and sniffed. I dabbed at the fluid with my tongue.

  It was a taste I recognized too well. But had he died from the curse or from the bone-handled knife that stuck out of his chest?

  Next to his bed, a wide chest of drawers bore the blackened scars of a recently extinguished fire. I heard footsteps as Eirhan joined us. Inkar’s hand slid into mine, and I gripped it as though it was the only thing keeping me standing. “He killed himself?”

  “Who else would have done it?” Eirhan said, and his voice was higher than it should have been. “You were the last to see him alive, were you not?”

  Suspicion pricked at me. “Other than your guard, I assume.”

  Eirhan waved his hand. “The staff saw no one enter or leave around the time of his death.”

  But… “Why?” I said. I’d seen the man devoid of all pride, begging for his life in front of my court. He’d been given the chance to save himself. It made no sense. And where was Farhod?

  “He was obviously mad, Your Grace. His display in the Great Hall was enough to prove that.” Eirhan’s greasy face was pale, and his eyes shifted around the room. Searching for something? Avoiding me?

  The guards would have told Eirhan I’d been to see Yannush. Eirhan could easily have slipped in to kill Yannush and used them as an alibi.

  If Eirhan had murdered Yannush, he’d murdered my father, too. The knowledge was a hot knife in my belly. And he couldn’t have done it alone.

  Eirhan was frowning at me. “Is Your Grace all right?” He took my elbow. “You don’t need to see this. My guard will escort you back to your rooms and cancel the morning order.”

  “What’s the point?” I said, too weary to try to pretend. Too weary to try to cross him.

  “You still have to prepare for the trial Below. It’s unlikely your father will be better by then, and—what?”

  He spoke so naturally. As though my life hadn’t changed forever half an hour ago. “You don’t know?”

  Eirhan’s face drained of color, and the sinking feeling in my stomach was back. Your life just got a lot more complicated, said the detached part of me. Or maybe Eirhan was a better actor than I’d believed. “Know what, Your Grace?”

  The smell hit us like a wall as we entered Father’s antechamber. I pressed my hand over my nose and kept moving, though I heard Aino cough in the doorway. The chamber was strewn with my siblings, all lying motionless. “Are they…?” I said through my fingers.

  “Alive, Your Grace,” said Munna.

  I passed them and went into my father’s bedchamber. There the smell was worse, and my empty stomach flipped. I focused on the table at the side of the room, overfilled with Farhod’s herbs. Wormwood, lobelia, mountain poppy, seathorn root. Herbs to purge, to clear airways, to reduce swelling. If I looked at the herbs, I didn’t have to look at my father.

  Eirhan walked past me to the bed. Mother’s chest rose and fell shallowly. Next to her, Father was terribly still. “What’s going on? What exactly happened?”

  “It began around three,” Munna said. “Everything was as it had been, then… his lungs filled faster than we could drain them. It was as though he drowned.”

  I didn’t look at my father’s pale hands, at the gray cast to his skin. I didn’t look at his soaking clothes, at the fluid that still dripped from his chin, from the side of his ear.

  “We tried what we could. But… it was difficult when the alchemist fell, too,” Munna said.

  “What?” My hand flew away from my mouth, and I nearly dry-heaved as I gasped in the full acrid stench.

  “Interesting,” Eirhan said.

  Interesting? I would kill him. I would obliterate everything that had ever been his.

  Not Farhod. Not one of the only people who believed in me.

  “No one else has fallen to the curse since it took hold. Why him?” Eirhan said.

  “Where is Farhod?” I interrupted. Munna nodded to a corner, darker than the rest. I’d been so fixated on my father I hadn’t stopped to count the number of shapes sleeping on the floor.

  Farhod’s brown skin had grayed. When I touched a finger to his neck, I could barely find a pulse. A catheter dangled from his nose.

  “Why was I not immediately informed?” Eirhan demanded of the guard in a low voice.

  “We sent out messengers to alert Her Grace and the council—”

  “That’s not how things work around here. I am told first. You don’t determine whether to interrupt Her Grace’s sleep or what the council needs to know. You tell me when there’s a development.”

  “Her Grace would have wanted to know,” Aino said.

  “Her Grace is under too much pressure as it is,” snapped Eirhan. “Look at her.”

  I lifted the blanket and tugged it gently under Farhod’s chin. Then I drew in a breath to sob, and my stomach revolted. I leaned over the bedpan next to Farhod and noisily threw up.

  Aino and Inkar installed me in the family library and gave me a cup of coffee to warm my hands. Breakfast sat untouched on a silver tray. Snow fell, turning the world to a gray palette. Fitting, really. Gray was the color of mourning.

  Messengers had been sent out to cry the news among the people. On the horizon, a bright dot burned—a bonfire set by Sigis’s army to celebrate the dead duke or the living king, or to proclaim that they were still there. I imagined Sigis and Eirhan together, wearing identical smirks, watching their plans come to fruition. My blood fizzed.

  The winter roses twined in the corners of the room, reaching out with blue-tinted petals. They seemed to crowd me. I pulled my knees up to my chest.

  The door clicked, and Eirhan came in. “My condolences, Your Grace.”

  “Thank you,” I replied without much attempt at sincerity.

  He took a breath, as though he wanted to say somet
hing. Then another. I should have felt victorious for making Eirhan uneasy. But I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything. Finally, he spoke in Kylmian. “I realize it’s a difficult time, but we need to plan your next move.”

  I shrugged. I looked at the messenger bowl, silent in its corner. Did Below know? Did the faintly rippling water provide them with something more than a portal for notes and lost earrings and other useless things? “What’s the point? I only wanted to stay until Father woke up. And now—” Now he was dead. And one of my only allies might as well be.

  “Stop whining.” Eirhan’s voice was full of venom. I looked up, too surprised to say anything. Eirhan began to pace, tapping his pale fist against the air as if he held a conductor’s baton. “The trial Below is tomorrow. Your father’s death means that no one will trust Lyosha to wake. If Sigis wins the trial, your ministry won’t think twice about making him duke instead of you. And what do you think will happen then? Will Sigis send you off to live in exile? Will he let you study at the university or make you stay in the palace? Right now, you have three choices: win the trials, marry Sigis, or die. And if you lose the trials…”

  Grand dukes got grand weddings. Or grand deaths.

  “You can’t speak to her like that,” Aino said coldly.

  “When Her Grace starts acting like an adult, I’ll start speaking to her like one,” Eirhan replied. “You’ve had five days to impress the court, and what have you done? Insisted you should find the cure for the uncurable, failed to broker relations with any of the delegates, and married the worst possible bride.”

  Inkar followed the exchange with a wrinkled brow. “I do not understand what he says. But I do not like it,” she said to me in Drysian.

  “I never wanted to be grand duke—” I began.

  “Well, you are,” Eirhan snarled. “Are you willing to do what it takes to survive? Are you willing to do what it takes to keep the people around you alive?”