“Inkar stays,” I said.
Sigis shrugged, then kicked his boots off and sat in front of the brazier. “Very well. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit? You might have invited me to the palace, for Your Grace’s comfort.”
I got to the point. “Minister Yannush is dead.”
Unease flickered over Sigis’s face. A few days ago, I would have missed it. Now it gave me the answer I needed most. “I’m sorry to hear it,” Sigis said. “You’ll have to remind me who Yannush was, though.”
“I don’t think I do,” I replied. “He offered you the chance to be grand duke, didn’t he?”
Another moment of silence. “A number of people think I’d make a better duke than you.”
“But Yannush was in touch with you before. He told you Father would be ill. He stood to gain from an alliance with you.”
Sigis shrugged. “Most people do, Ekata.” He rose, picked up a scroll and a clay carafe from his desk, shook the carafe experimentally, then took them over to the fire, sticking the carafe in the coals. “It’s what comes from being the most powerful man on the continent. But there’s a big step between courting my favor and committing treason.”
“There’s a lot I can’t do as grand duke, but I can extrapolate from evidence. Yannush spied for you. What did you offer him?” My traitorous voice shook. Inkar slipped her hand through mine.
Sigis laughed at that. “What did I offer him? He came to me. Kylma struggles with high taxes and low imports. No one’s been able to get the things they need, and your father was too obsessed with controlling his magic and fighting his son. Not to mention that annexation would be good for you. Tariffs would be all but demolished, trade would be simpler, and you’d have access to a wider range of nations. Face it, Ekata. Kylma is too small, and the world is too big.”
He drew a long, curved knife from his belt. Inkar stiffened, but he unrolled the scroll on his lap. It was a map of the North. He’d painted his conquests in red, radiating from Drysiak outward. He began to trace the tip of his knife over the new boundaries of his kingdom. “You think your frozen wasteland is the height of civilization, when in truth your army is fifty years behind mine in equipment and a hundred in tactics. Your people can barely subsist on the fish and meat they catch. If it weren’t for your magical friends Below, you’d be nothing at all. Your father was holding this place hostage. It could be a part of something better, but he was never willing.”
“So Yannush just wrote to you, offering an entire duchy.”
Sigis looked up, smiling blandly. “More or less.”
“And he didn’t want anything in return.”
“Of course he did.” Sigis picked up the clay carafe from the fire and poured amber wine into a wooden cup. “He wanted to be prime minister.”
I remembered Reko’s words. The man will do anything to maintain control. Clearly anything meant the murder of other ministers, but did it also mean treason? “And you didn’t see a problem with marching here and taking Kylma.”
Sigis took a sip. “Not really. It’s what I do.” He saluted me with his cup. “And I’d be better at it than your father, or your brother. Or, with all due respect, you.” Inkar narrowed her eyes at him. He leaned back and yawned. “Is that all you need to know? That Yannush begged me to save Kylma from your autocrat madman of a father? Or is there something else?”
“Did you know I’d survive the curse?” I hadn’t meant to ask, but my curiosity had gotten the better of me.
“Honestly, Ekata, it makes little difference,” Sigis replied, as if he could sidestep the question and I wouldn’t notice.
“So kill me now.” Inkar glared at me, wide-eyed. Why was I saying these things? “Win the coronation trials.”
Sigis only laughed. “Believe it or not, I’m not in the habit of killing royalty. If I do it, it’s only a matter of time before the commoners think that anyone can do it. And that’s hardly a good message to send.” He raised the knife, and Inkar leaned in front of my heart. “Make no mistake—if I must kill you, I will. But I have such fond memories of you, little Ekata. Besides, why kill you when there are other ways to achieve my goal?”
His eyes flicked to Inkar. “Reject the horsewoman, and marry me, instead. You can even keep your title.”
“I’d rather die the way Yannush died than marry you,” I said.
Inkar laughed her soft laugh.
Ugliness passed over Sigis’s face. “So be it. When I’m finished with you, we’ll see how willing to die you are.”
I stood. “You’re not really different from when you lived with us.”
“Nor are you. Better suited to books than to leadership, I think. And far too easy to get into trouble.” Sigis rose and pulled aside the tent flap. His eyes burned through the back of my coat as we walked out.
The cold nearly knocked my breath out of me. Inkar’s black-freckled eyes were serious as she pulled my scarf over my mouth and nose. She cupped my chin in her gloved hands. “You are very foolish,” she said.
“I know.” I waved at Viljo, and he rounded up the guards with a shout.
“You are also very brave.” Her brown eyes were warm with pride. “Are you certain you can win the coronation trials?”
“Not remotely.”
“But you need to win,” Inkar said. “He said he will take the whole city if you do not.”
“I heard him,” I grumbled. And I knew the ugly truth, too. If he lost, what was to stop him from attacking anyway?
“I am having a thought,” Inkar said that night as we prepared for bed.
Aino rolled her eyes in my mirror as she brushed out my hair. I returned her look with a stern one of my own and said, “What is it?”
“Sigis said he did not kill royalty. But what does he do with the kings and counts of the lands he conquers?”
How was I to know? “Exiles them?”
“That would encourage revolution. And I do not think Sigis would take kindly to revolution,” Inkar said.
Most leaders didn’t. “Maybe Sigis has a special dungeon where he locks them all up. Or maybe he does kill them.” Maybe he worked out coups with their ministers and got the kings killed that way.
“I wonder if there is a special reason he should not kill you,” Inkar said.
“Aside from my being the leader of a sovereign nation, you mean.”
“Yes. My cousin was the satrap of a small country Sigis conquered. He was hanged.”
“Oh.” I fumbled for words. “Sorry to hear it.”
But when I looked at Inkar, she waved a hand. She had changed into her nightgown and was untying the cord around her braid. “I do not cry for him. He was an unpleasant man.”
She had a point. Perhaps Sigis wasn’t convinced that he was enough of an Avenko to maintain our agreement with Below.
Aino put a hand on my shoulder. “You are ready, Your Grace,” she said in Kylmian. “Are you sure you don’t want me to send her away? I don’t want you to sleep badly.”
“I won’t. Inkar’s… helpful.”
Aino raised an eyebrow. I shrugged and focused on trying not to blush, at which I was a spectacular failure.
“Remember the trial tomorrow,” Aino said.
“How could I forget?” I tried to sound confident. Instead, my voice trembled, and my eyes suddenly blurred. I was tired of pretending that nothing would go wrong. I’d tried to do things the way I thought I should, and I’d only gotten myself into more trouble.
Her tone softened. “We can still do it.”
I knew what she meant—we could leave. I shook my head. Aino’s hand squeezed around my shoulder, then she left.
“What was that about?” Inkar asked.
“Nothing.” I didn’t want her to think me a coward. “It’s—I don’t really know how to say goodbye. Or deal with the possibility that I might—” Die tomorrow. I couldn’t say it. “I don’t know how I can win.” I felt the familiar bite of fear in my stomach. “I should have trained with you and the guard.
I’m not strong enough.”
“Ekata.” In her mouth, my name sounded like warm wine, like a chair by the fire. She held out a hand, and I couldn’t keep myself from taking it.
She pulled me gently until I sat next to her. I was close enough to count her eyelashes. “You will not defeat Sigis through strength,” she said. “You must outthink him.”
“Outthink the master strategist?” Yes, I was smart, but Sigis hadn’t gained control of the entire North by being unintelligent.
“You know more about Below,” she said. “You know what… strangeness… lies down there. You must use that to your advantage. It is not a matter of strength. You know the battleground, and he does not.”
“You make it sound easy.” I pulled away and climbed under the covers. Inkar slid in next to me.
The fire burned lower, and cold moonlight mixed with the orange-yellow of the flames. Her dark hair soaked it up, and the light streaks at the top took on a burnished sheen. I resisted the urge to run my hand through that hair, to see if it was as silky as it looked. A crescent of light shifted on her cheek as she swallowed. “It is simple. But that does not make it easy.”
“If I lose—if I don’t come back—” I said.
Inkar’s brows drew in. “You will.”
“—help Aino. Nobody else will protect her.”
“You will come back,” Inkar said. Her fingers found mine and slotted between them. Something in my heart squeezed.
“What if I don’t?”
Inkar’s large eyes swept my face, down to my collarbone and back again. “What kind of power do you think I will have to help anyone if you do not?”
“You’ll still be the twenty-fifth daughter of Bardur Erlyfsson. No one will be after your head.”
Her ankle hooked around mine, and her other hand came up to my shoulder. Her touch left a burning trail on my skin. For a moment, I forgot what we’d been talking about. I forgot the coronation trials. Her knee pressed against my thigh, and her hair fanned across the space between us. “I am more interested in what happens if you win.”
“You’ll still be grand consort.” That was starting to seem like less and less of a problem.
“That is not what I mean.” Her eyes were serious. “If you win, you will be grand duke. What does that mean for you?”
I wanted to make some quip that would turn her mouth, scrunch her eyes. But her question unfolded in my mind. “Things have to change.” I’d thought about it, sitting in Reko’s rooms, hammering out preliminary agreements until I wanted to squeeze my brain like a wet rag. But I hadn’t really thought about it. What it meant for me.
If I won the coronation trials, I would turn around and give that power away. Not so much that it broke our spell with Below, but enough. “I can’t be him.”
“Your father? Your brother?”
“Both.” I met Inkar’s gaze. Her dark eyes seemed to drink me in. “I’ve spent these past days trying to live up to something I never could. Because pretending to be my father was easier than trying to be me and failing so miserably. And—” The only person I hadn’t wanted to fear me was Inkar.
“I wish I hadn’t tried to be him from the start,” I said instead. “I’m going to die tomorrow, and I didn’t even do any good for the duchy.”
“You will not die.” Inkar said it gently.
“It doesn’t matter what advantages I have. Sigis wouldn’t have risked challenging me if he weren’t sure he would win.”
“You will live a long and prosperous life, and everyone in Kylma will love you,” Inkar said. I snorted. “I mean it. When you are being yourself, you are…” Her hand moved from my shoulder to my jaw. My breath caught. One finger traced the line of my cheek, and her eyes followed it. The touch was feather-soft, the skin of her fingertips velvet.
“What am I?” I said.
Her mouth curved in that eternal smile. “Interesting.”
Her palm cupped my cheek. I could nearly taste my heartbeat. Slowly, as if I were trying to touch a wild hare, I rested my free hand on her hip, adding my weight fingertip by fingertip until I could feel the crest of her pelvis under her nightgown. Muscle and sinew shifted beneath her skin.
“If I die, help Aino,” I whispered again. For the life of me, I couldn’t say it louder. I didn’t have the breath. “Help Aino, and she will help you.”
“Aino hates me,” she replied in the same whisper. Her nose brushed mine. For a moment, I thought she would lean in, close the gap between our lips. But she seemed to be waiting for something.
“Aino does what I say. And I say you’re my consort, and everyone must obey you.”
“Everyone?” Her voice was rich and low, on the brink of laughter. Her nose slid against mine and brushed my cheek. Her lips were softer than I’d imagined, pressing first into the corner of my mouth, then against the whole of it. Her hand slid up into my hair. Suddenly, more of her was pressed against me: her knees, her stomach, her chest. I gasped against her mouth and pulled her in. Her kiss became surer. Her hand moved to my neck, brushing from my jaw to my collarbone. She smelled of sweat and cloudflower.
I didn’t know what to do.
I started to shake. First, it was my calves and thighs, but when my spine went rigid, Inkar pulled back. Her eyes were dark wells. Part of me wanted to lean in, to see how long it might take me to get to the bottom. But another part of me—
“Are you all right?” Her hand moved up to cup my cheek.
“I’m afraid.” I hadn’t realized it until I said it. But I was afraid. Afraid of tomorrow. Afraid that I’d kiss Inkar now and hate her later, and afraid that she’d hate me. And I was afraid of myself.
The curve of Inkar’s lips turned down. She shifted back, leaving a cold gap of space between us. But her hand stayed on my cheek, and her legs still curled between mine. “I will do nothing if you do not want it. Do not be afraid of me.”
I ran my thumb over the hair above her ear. It really was as soft as it looked. I leaned in and kissed her, a feathery touch of mouths before I could turn coward and freeze. “I’m not. I won’t.”
I thought she might try again. Her hand ran from my cheek to my waist and rested there. But she didn’t move in. She said, in the softest voice I’d ever heard from her: “Are you sorry you married me?”
“I’ve never once been sorry,” I replied. And though that wasn’t such an achievement for a five-day courtship, she laughed, and that was enough for me.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The morning of the trial Below bloomed cold and cloudless. Aino woke me when the sun was a red fire on a smoky horizon. As I slid out of bed, Inkar stirred. “Go back to sleep,” I said, tucking my head so that Aino wouldn’t see how I blushed.
“No.” She was already sitting up. “I must be ready, too.”
“For what?” muttered Aino. She was as pale as I’d seen her the night of my haphazard coronation, and she discarded over a dozen items from my closet until she settled on a coat—velvet the color of the night sky, lined with ermine and dotted with tiny diamonds like stars. “And the white dress to go with it.”
“I’m only going to take it all off again,” I said.
Aino shot me her classic motherly glare. “You are the grand duke, and you have to look like it.” Inkar nodded in agreement.
So on went the dress, with two petticoats and a crinoline underneath. On went the coat, with a tasseled hood and velvet gloves. Aino set my braid and pinned it in a crown about my head, fixing it with studded pins and clasps. As Aino dressed me, Inkar dressed herself in the green of her father and the Emerald Order, with a vest over her black leather tunic and trousers. She pinned up her hair to mirror mine and slid my enormous sapphire ring over her gloved hand for everyone to see. Last came her axes, gleaming like sunlight solidified. I wanted to kiss the freckles on her nose, but the thought of doing it in front of Aino set my ears on fire. I settled for taking her hand.
The kennel master waited with our sled. “They’re all out there, Your Gr
ace.” Though grand dukes made grand entrances, I still wasn’t used to them. Maybe I never would be.
There’s still a chance. To wrangle the cure out of the duke Below. To save my family from our ministers and from each other.
All of Kylma had turned out. They lined the road to the gate, their faces peering out of hoods and scarves like little moons as we drove past, solemn and silent. The sun turned everything blindingly bright. The dowager’s mansion and the hunting lodge became crystal and gold. The white wall of the city rose up, giving way to sky, as though nothing lay beyond it. And then the gates slid open, and I faced the whole world in miniature.
Every delegate had come out to see the trial, sporting their colors and packed together for warmth. My entire ministry, Reko included, stood at the edge of the moat. All of them had dressed in the family colors and held white roses. I could only hope that meant something good for me. The moat rippled, each little wave tipped in gold, and behind that stood Sigis’s army. They gleamed in red and black, brass buttons and helmets catching the sun.
“Are you ready?” Eirhan said.
I nodded. I didn’t really trust myself to speak. Inkar held me up on one side, Aino on the other. I contemplated throwing up all over the bottom of Eirhan’s coat.
“Sigis will arrive soon,” Eirhan said. “I suggest trying to look somewhat regal while you wait.”
I was beyond tired of letting Eirhan tell me what to do. One battle at a time. First, I had to win the trial Below. Then I could work on firing my prime minister.
Sigis’s army let out a roar. A thousand arms pumped in the air. A gap appeared in the lines, and Sigis swaggered through, decked in a fur robe I swore I’d last seen on Father. A beaverskin cap covered his head. Diamonds glittered on both ears and in rings on his gloved fingers. Though his sword remained sheathed, it sat in a prominent place on his hip, and his hand lingered there before he raised it to the swelling of the crowd. His cruel smile played about his lips as he looked around, until, at last, his eyes found their target: me. The smile fixed, broadened, and then his hand sliced through the air. The noise cut to silence.
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