The air was as thick as water. Was he threatening Aino? Inkar? Would he kill them to keep me in line? Should I let Eirhan act as grand duke for me if it meant he’d leave them alone?
Eirhan took my silence for compliance. “Good. I’ll have someone answer your letters of condolence; they’re already piling up. Now: the plan. We’ll make Below a counteroffer on their trade agreement. If they like it, they’ll help you win.”
I tried to clear my mind of its fog, to focus on what Eirhan said, and not on how much I hated him right now. “I have to win by cheating?”
“Don’t act so noble. Your throne is on the line, and Sigis will do whatever he can to take it. But if you win the trial Below, you’ll look stronger in the eyes of the court. You’ll have demonstrated strength and spine. That’s when you send Inkar home.”
He hadn’t looked at her, hadn’t given any indication that he was talking about her. But her eyes narrowed. She’d heard her name.
“I…” My stomach lurched, though I wasn’t sure whether that was from the guilt or the shock of Farhod and Father. I couldn’t look at her. “I guess.”
“No guessing. You can’t have her ruining what comes next. Because once you win the trial Below, you will make Sigis an offer of marriage, and he will accept you.”
“No.” It was a quiet plea, devoid of fire.
“Yes. Because if he refuses you, he demonstrates to the court that all he wants is power, and they’ll never choose him for that. But if he marries you, he has to make only small sacrifices.”
Like put up with me for the rest of my life. Like be the power behind the throne, instead of the power on the throne.
And what would I sacrifice? My everything.
“What are you talking about?” Inkar asked, looking from me to Eirhan.
He didn’t bother to answer her. In his mind, she was nothing. I was nothing. Part of the grand game.
Eirhan raised his eyebrows. “Are we clear, Your Grace?”
“We’re clear,” I said. And it wasn’t exactly a lie.
“Good. Meet with Sigis. We’ll get out of this.”
We? Did Eirhan truly expect me to think he was still on my side? As he scurried away like the weasel he was, I fought the urge to scream obscenities at his back.
Aino crouched next to my chair, putting a hand on my arm. Her blue eyes were full of pain for me, and puffy from crying. “I know things look bad now, with Farhod and your father,” she said. “But you can’t give in.”
“Why not?” My mind was so cold that I barely felt the first tear slide down my cheek and drip into my coffee. “What’s the point? I only stayed because I thought—” My voice cracked. “I thought I could fix things.” I’d been so sure that I could solve the puzzle. I’d assumed my father would sweep back into his role, that I could disappear south and my problems would melt in the warm sun. Now Eirhan planned to make a prison of my life.
To him I was a useful creature. Inkar’s doe, perhaps, ready to be caged. But does fled at the scent of danger, and so would I.
Aino rubbed my back as I cried. When I finally looked up, she wiped at my cheeks with a handkerchief. I took it and blew my nose.
“Can we still run?” I said.
Aino’s mouth fell open. It would have been funny under other circumstances. But she shook herself and said, “Our bags are packed. Come.” She took my hand. Inkar followed us, a bemused look on her face.
We didn’t speak again until we were in my chambers. “We’ll head to the mountains, but we can spend only one night in the safe house, if that. We’ll wind around to the east tomorrow. And from there”—Aino looked at me—“south?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t go south.” I went to my desk and began removing my papers. Hollowness grew in my stomach. South didn’t seem right anymore. I was leaving behind an unfinished puzzle and a half-drowned mentor. I was giving up.
Aino took me by the shoulder. Her blue eyes brooked no argument. “Ekata, you don’t need the cure for university entry. You don’t need to prove to the world how smart you are.”
Maybe I needed to prove to myself how smart I was. “We have to take Inkar with us,” I said to change the subject.
“Why? She’s the daughter of a prominent jarl. She’ll be fine.”
“She’ll have to pay for whatever mess I leave behind, and that’s not right.” She’d probably leave me the moment she realized I wasn’t grand duke anymore, but I didn’t care. “Get the jewelry.”
Inkar frowned at me as Aino bustled off. “What is happening? Are you all right?”
“We’re leaving,” I said in Drysian, tapping the edges of papers on my desk until they all aligned.
Her eyebrows drew closer together. “Why?”
“Because my father is dead. Because no one wants me to be grand duke.” Not even me.
She took my hand in hers. It was cold, cracked at the knuckles from windburn, and a warmth spread through me at the touch. How could it seem so different from when Sigis had seized my hand? “I want you to be grand duke.”
Aino snorted softly from the bedroom. I said, “That’s—” Irrelevant. Self-serving. Obvious. “—kind of you. But when it comes to me and my ministers, you don’t have much influence. Sigis does. And Eirhan does. And if they want to wield that power so badly, they can stop trying to wield it through me. It’s time to give the people what they want.” I smiled humorlessly.
Inkar’s hand tightened around mine. “This is not what people want. This is what you want. You cannot run, Ekata.”
“Why not? If I cure my family, Lyosha will kill me, and things will go back to the way they were. If I leave, Sigis will take over, and things will go back to the way they were.” Or he’d wake up a sister and marry her. Either way, it made no difference to me.
Inkar’s dark eyes searched my face, and I couldn’t decipher her expression. “That sounds… terrible.” Her dark hair fell over her shoulder as she tilted her head. “Everything that happened, happened because of the way things were. You took responsibility for what happens now.”
“And look how well I did,” I said bitterly.
“Ekata.” Inkar looked down at where our hands linked. “You have fled your problems for five days. Fleeing again will not fix them. It will take them longer to find you, but it will be worse when they do. A good leader does not run. A good leader talks to her ministers and—”
“I don’t want to be a good leader,” I said with a force that made Inkar stiffen. I tugged my hand away from hers and made a fist until it stopped shaking. “I’m sorry if it means you don’t get to be consort, but I won’t let this be my life.”
A fire burned behind her eyes, the same fire she used on Sigis. A chill started in my spine, moving outward as I noticed how her jaw had tightened and her hands had clenched. “Do you think this is about my being grand consort?”
“I just meant—” But I wasn’t sure what I meant.
“This is about your responsibility. You took it, even if you did not want to. Now you have to face it. And if you do, I will stand with you. But if you run, I will not go. I do not follow cowards.”
“It’s too much,” I shouted. The responsibility had driven my family mad. It had made us greedy and complacent. It had turned even the children murderous. My father had hoarded secrets and goods, and no one could stop him. He’d thought to increase the power of an already powerful duchy, and instead, he’d brought us to the brink of destruction. “My family doesn’t deserve this power. We shouldn’t have it.” Power in the wrong hands had ruined us. And where my family was concerned, there were no right hands.
Inkar wouldn’t look at me. She turned to my desk and picked up the inkwell, turning it over and letting the frozen brick of ink fall out into her hand. “Maybe that is true,” she said. “What are you going to do about it?”
Run. But that wasn’t the answer she wanted. And it would solve my problems, but not the problems of the duchy.
We needed the Avenko family to keep the connection betw
een Above and Below. But that didn’t mean we should hoard all the power. Father had done that, and where was he now? All the same, I could hardly trust my ministers enough to delegate to them. At least one more was in on the conspiracy to betray me, and the others thought Sigis would make a better ruler than having no ruler at all. The only minister I could count on not to be a complete traitor was Reko, and he—
The laugh started in the back of my mind, growing until I couldn’t help but let it out. A giggle turned to hysterics, taking the rage and the sorrow and the fear that had coiled inside me with nowhere to go, and turning them into fuel. “What did you do to her?” Aino said.
“I—I do not know.” Inkar sounded concerned. That only made me laugh harder.
I wished I’d been less foolish, less adamant. More clearheaded. But grand dukes could be grand fools.
“I know what I’m going to do about it,” I said. Inkar looked as though she regretted everything she’d said in the past five minutes. “But first, I need—”
I hesitated, then knocked on Reko’s door before I opened it. Grand dukes showed at least mediocre courtesy.
Aino, furious that I’d refused to run after all, had stayed in my rooms. Inkar stood behind me, dressed in the blue and white of the royal guard. The helmet she’d borrowed was far too large. Inkar said something that made one of the guards snort and then stood at attention as though she were meant to be there.
I went in alone. Reko sat at his desk, staring. Baffled. “To what do I owe the”—his mouth turned down—“pleasure?”
He was probably expecting threats. Or a promise of execution. I took a chair near his fire. “You said you have a preliminary proposal for a parliament.”
His dark eyes flickered to the door, as though he suspected the guard to burst in and burn everything down. “What do you want with it?”
“I want to save my family from ourselves.” I wondered, briefly, if anyone had told Reko about Father’s death. Now wasn’t the time to find out. “I will grant you a parliament if you support me in the final coronation trial. And if you agree to be the parliament’s first prime minister.”
Reko’s lips pulled back. “You must be joking.”
At first, I thought that he didn’t believe me or that he wouldn’t support me in the trial. But then he said, “Openly oppose Eirhan? You might as well execute me and save him the trouble.”
“What do you mean?”
He sat back. “The man will do anything to maintain control. He’d kill anyone.”
Anyone. “Even my family?”
Reko leaned forward. “Anyone,” he said, and his eyes fastened on me, saying what he didn’t say:
Even you.
If I wanted to outsmart Eirhan, I’d have to make him think he still controlled me. So I went back to my rooms and prepared my best trading arguments and my most queenly garb, and prepared to meet with Sigis.
“Eirhan doesn’t think you should come with me,” I told Inkar as Aino helped me into my father’s massive cloak. Her lips were still pursed, her movements angry.
Inkar waved a hand. “He dislikes my cavorting with your guard, or with you. But he does not command us.”
Easy for her to say, with her powerful jarl of a father. But her tone warmed me. She hadn’t changed from her guard uniform, though she’d removed the helmet. She was all dazzling white and blue. Her axes hung from a belt tooled with the family roses, and more roses were stamped into her breastplate. “Are you sure you should wear that?”
“Of course. I must protect you from bears, after all.” She flashed me a knowing smile. “And the guard has made me an honorary member.” The smile turned sly.
I ducked my head so she couldn’t see the color rising in my cheeks. Her smiles could be an undermining tactic, an attempt to gain control of my household and make it impossible to break the engagement. But my stomach fluttered stupidly, and I fought the urge to laugh.
“I want to look like someone who protects you. Your ministers mutter when they think I do not notice. They think I only want to rise above my station.” She frowned, and for the first time since I’d met her, she looked unsure. “But I do not want to distract from your real purpose. Is it all right?”
“I think it’s perfect,” I said. Inkar was useful in a fight. And dressed in our Kylmian uniform, she looked both like herself and like one of us.
Sigis had taken up residence with his army again, presumably so that he could give the order to attack at any moment. Viljo frowned when I told him we’d be leaving the city. “I don’t approve, Your Grace. We might be on Kylmian territory, but we’ll still be disadvantaged if he decides to hold you hostage. Or other things. Why not invite him here?”
Because then Eirhan would be listening. “We have to do it outside. I’m sorry.”
Viljo considered this for a moment. “I will put a regiment together and contact the kennel master.”
“No regiment. A few men you trust.” When Viljo opened his mouth to object, I fixed him with my mother’s favorite look.
“It shall be as Your Grace commands.…” Viljo shifted uncomfortably. “My old guard’s master warned me that dukes make foolish moves, at times. I think this is one of those times.”
“You can consider your duty accomplished and your words noted,” I replied. But perhaps it was good to have Inkar with me. If Sigis made a move, he’d bring himself into conflict with both our countries.
“Dogs.” Inkar sighed as he set off. “Maybe I do not want to go.”
Viljo’s idea of a few trusted men was two sleds of guards riding before us and two behind. We left the palace gate and made for the edge of the city. The dogs set out at a trotting pace, tongues lolling, enjoying the exercise.
“Hold on, and enjoy the view,” I advised Inkar.
“That is impossible,” Inkar informed me, gripping the sled so tightly that the leather of her gloves creaked. I scooted closer.
We avoided the main roads, driving instead down side streets and smaller trade avenues, winding to the edge of the city with few people to witness our departure. When we came to the main gate, Viljo stopped and spoke briefly to the guard there. The guard nodded, and the gate opened.
A few feet beyond the gate, the ice ended and the moat stretched. Our guards used tridents to break up ice as it formed on the water’s surface. On the moat’s other side, a thousand men stood, silent. Watching.
Viljo dismounted his sled and crunched toward me over new snow. “I don’t like this, Your Grace. They’re ready for an attack.”
“We’ll be fine. Lower the drawbridge.”
I hopped off my sled and helped Inkar down. She gasped as she sank up to her knees in snow. Across the moat, I saw the line of soldiers stand a little straighter. None of them looked directly at me, but they were watching. Waiting.
The bridge came down from the outer wall with a thud.
Viljo started across. A figure with a star on his coat met him at the other end, one hand on his sword. They leaned toward each other for a few moments, then Viljo motioned for us. The other figure turned and called, “Inform His Majesty that the grand duke and her consort have arrived.”
Inkar straightened. Our hands found each other.
As we crossed, we looked down at the waters of the moat, blue and still. I wondered if Meire was down there patrolling. The idea of it comforted me. I leaned in to Inkar on the pretext of steadying her. “If things go wrong, come back to the moat,” I whispered. “The citizens Below will help you.”
Inkar touched her axes. “No one and nothing will make me run from a fight.”
Sound buzzed, low and rumbling, from the other side of the camp. As a soldier led us through the clusters of white tents, the rumbling increased to a dull roar. This was the kind of party we didn’t have in the banquet halls.
A bonfire burned high and angry, blinding and smoky from an excess of wet wood, overlaying the smell of horses and unwashed men. Sigis sat in front of it, in a chair far too grand to be something he haul
ed around on campaigns. He didn’t wear mourning colors, but rather the uniform of his army: red and black, with a gold sash that showed off his numerous military achievements.
He wore a smile, too, which I dearly wanted to wipe off his face. His men stared at us frankly, amused, sneering at Inkar. Their eyes scraped over me until I felt naked and raw. I pretended my spine was electrum, my skin gold. Grand dukes didn’t turn tail and run.
Sigis slid off his throne and walked over to us. “What can I do for you, Your Grace?”
I swallowed. “I want to talk to you,” I said, and my voice was only a little higher than normal.
Sigis spread his arms. “Talk, then.”
“Alone,” I said.
His army shifted and murmured, and Sigis’s smile turned clever and arrogant and suggestive. I held my tongue. Saying not like that would only embarrass me further.
“I can refuse Her Grace nothing, of course,” he called, and the men around him cheered. Someone whistled.
“I think this was a bad idea,” Inkar whispered.
“We’ll be fine.” He can’t kill me now. He can’t kill me now.
“This way, my dear,” he said. The party silenced as we walked through it, then rumbled to life again behind us. “What do you think of our wake for your father?”
“I appreciate your kindness,” I lied.
He brought us to a tent like all the others, with the exception of a guard out front. “After you.”
I nodded to Viljo, who stepped back unhappily. Then I ducked inside with Inkar at my heels.
The interior was smaller than the suite we’d offered Sigis at the palace, but no less grand. Fur lined the inside of the tent. A brass brazier had been placed in a pit on the floor, and a wooden desk and chair sat to one side; a bed, to the other.
“Didn’t you want to speak alone?” he said in Drysian, eyeing Inkar. She pushed back her hood, and he smirked. “Have you demoted your so-called wife? The uniform suits her. Maybe the next time we meet, her battle skills will be as good as she says they are.”
“I—” Inkar looked at me and fell silent.
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