The Winter Duke

by Claire Eliza Bartlett

  “You never fight with your mother?” I replied, wiping my face.

  Inkar smiled at that. “Perhaps I should braid your hair instead of letting her.”

  She ran her fingers over my scalp. It was a strange combination of soothing and electrifying. We had to hurry; we had to counter Svaro and Urso, and maybe even Sigis. All the same, I couldn’t bring myself to rush her.

  “I should not have let them lock me out so quickly,” Inkar said.

  For a moment, I didn’t know what she meant. Then I thought of the family library and reached behind me. She took my hand. “It’s not your fault,” I said.

  She sighed through her nose. “Sigis was right. I am soft. Too slow. I saw she was nervous, but I thought…”

  “You’re not going soft. She tricked all of us.”

  “It was a foolish trick, and I was a fool to fall for it,” Inkar said. Her quick fingers tied her red ribbon at the bottom of my braid. Then they strayed up to my neck, resting in the hollow of my throat, where my heart beat all too quickly. “You need a necklace. Shall I get one for you?”

  I swallowed, reveling a little in the pressure of her fingers and relieved that Inkar had offered so I wouldn’t have to face Aino again. “The diamonds. The biggest ones you can find.”

  A grand duke dressed to impress, after all.

  We arrived at the doors to the Great Hall with Saljo behind us. “Are you certain Aino will be all right?” Inkar asked in an undertone.

  “If she stays put,” I replied. If I could keep my grand duke status a little while longer, I could protect her until she went into exile. And I had no doubt that exile would be her kindest punishment.

  Two soldiers guarded the doors to the Great Hall. They gaped at me as if I’d come back from the dead. “Aki,” Inkar said. One of them bowed. “I am so sorry,” she said. “About Viljo.”

  Aki looked at me, and for a moment, I thought I was still wearing my blood-soaked coat. Her eyes were red-rimmed but dry. “You are very kind, Your Grace.”

  They still thought of Inkar as the consort. That was a good sign. “Would you like to know who killed him?” I asked.

  The guards hesitated, then nodded, and at my order they opened the doors to the Great Hall.

  The hall was crowded with delegates and ministers, as it had been the night of my own coronation. Svaro sat dwarfed by my father’s oak throne, huddled in his ermine cloak, blue eyes wide. Eirhan stood next to him. Either the coronation regalia had yet to arrive or they’d just finished the ceremony.

  “What does a grand duke have to do around here to get a good view?” I asked.

  The Baron of Rabar turned, and at the sight of me, he stumbled back so violently I was afraid I’d stopped his heart. His antics caused the Prince of Palaskia to take notice, and she swore loudly enough that several people twisted around to see.

  That was all it took. The crowd parted as though answering my inaudible command, leaving me standing, once more, at the head of a clear path to my father’s throne.

  I began to walk, twisting at the caps on the vial and the jar, tapping out ingredients onto my fingers without drawing attention to my hands in my sleeves. Not that anyone was looking at them. They stared at me, at the whole of me—the grand duke who, for once, commanded a grand presence.

  Eirhan’s face drained of blood. I would never tire of astonishing that man. Next to him, Urso turned a particular shade of green I’d only seen Below.

  “I’ll make this brief,” I said. “Svaro, get up.”

  Svaro’s face twisted. “Get out. You’re not grand duke anymore.”

  “Oh, I am,” I replied. I looked around. Sigis wore his rage like a coat, and the hate in his eyes made me shiver. But beneath it I saw shock—and fear. As though he were realizing, for the first time, that he might lose. Annika, Reko, Itilya, and Bailli stared. It was so silent I could hear the soft plink of a winter rose petal dropping to the floor.

  Sigis recovered his wits fastest. “What sort of strange game is this?” he said. “Did you pretend to die so that you could avoid the last trial?” His eyes flicked to Urso, who was doing his best to impersonate an ice statue.

  “Well, I did drown. But my health has greatly improved,” I said.

  To his credit, Sigis did not roar at Urso’s utter incompetence. He merely said, “Then the coronation trials are not finished.”

  “Yes, they are. I’ve won.”

  “Hardly.” Sigis’s fists clenched. “You’ve only won two out of three. If I can—”

  I brought my hands out. No one noticed the empty vial that I dropped, because every light in the Great Hall went out.

  Magic pooled and pulled, growing between my fingers, sparking across my hands as it reacted to my touch, my thoughts. My borrowed blood.

  Transformative, constructive, destructive. Links formed, white and cold as ice, stretching in a chain from my hand. They shot out to coil around Urso, around Eirhan, around Sigis. I took a deep breath, and when I spoke, my voice boomed as though a hundred of me spoke at once: “I am grand duke.”

  Urso hissed as the chain burned his bare skin. Sigis broke his with a grunt, but I knit it back together with a thought. Fresh magic was almost too willing to obey. I sent another chain flicking toward Svaro. Father’s throne cracked beneath him with a sound like thunder.

  Then I pulled the magic back. The links burst into a charm of hummingbirds. They fled to hide among the winter roses. “I am grand duke,” I repeated more softly. “For the next thirty minutes. Then I will sign papers of abdication, drawn up by Minister Reko”—I nodded to Reko, who seemed too shocked to respond—“in favor of a parliament operating as a joint governing body with my brother Lyosha Avenko.”

  There was complete silence. Then Svaro leaped up to stand on Father’s broken chair. “You can’t do that.”

  “I can do what I want. I’m an autocrat.” For thirty more minutes.

  He drew a knife from his belt and hurled it at my head.

  The knife spun wide to bounce hilt-first against the chest of a stunned delegate. All the same, the hall erupted. Inkar leaped in front of me, jerking her ax out of its loop. Everyone began to shout.

  I put a hand on Inkar’s arm before she could do something reckless. “Have him removed,” I shouted over the din. Aki started forward.

  “Don’t.” Eirhan held up a hand imperiously. “Everyone stays where they are until we work this out.”

  I had the satisfaction of seeing him utterly bowled over for the second time as Aki ignored his orders, pinning Svaro’s arms to his sides and lifting him from the chair. She grunted as he kicked at her legs, and another guard stepped in to help. “It’s not fair,” Svaro screamed as they wrestled him down to the doors, watched by over a hundred aghast faces. “I’m grand duke. I’m grand duke.” His tantrum echoed down the corridor long after the doors closed behind him.

  Sigis came forward. Inkar turned to face him, too. He moved his shoulders first, as if to remind me how massive he was. “Impressive display, little Ekata. But what does that mean, exactly, with my army at your door? Is it worth the risk, not to let me finish what I started?”

  “You’d never get across the moat,” I replied easily. “The duke Below will never let you.”

  Sigis smiled, a dangerous flash of white in the dark. “The duke Below tried to kill you.”

  I held myself tall—not like Father or Mother, but like myself. Drawing my confidence around me to be my cloak. “Revenge was my father’s vice. It seems that mine is compromise.” Because Below did deserve amends, for my father’s actions and for mine. Grand dukes commanded grand respect, and I’d forgotten that my counterpart Below was as grand as we were.

  The guards, taking their cues from Inkar, moved in and stood to either side of me. Not as my oppressors, but as my protection. They moved forward, crossing their halberds so that Sigis had no choice but to fall back. His face twisted. “I hope you’re ready for a siege, little Ekata,” he spat around their shoulders.

&nb
sp; “I’m not,” I replied cheerfully. “Luckily, Inkar’s father is ready to break one.”

  His expression was even better than Eirhan’s.

  I raised my voice to compete with the growing hubbub. “Urso, consider yourself under arrest.” The last arrest I’d ever make. “And, Prime Minister—when my brother is well, he’ll no doubt want to murder every one of us. It might be useful if he didn’t have the absolute power to do so.”

  I was grand duke for many more hours, as it happened. Even with Reko’s extensive plan to guide us, the matter of even a proclamation of a parliament had to be debated and redebated. But no one liked the idea of facing Lyosha after their multiple complicities—not without the option of being exonerated by their peers. Only Bailli complained, and nobody much cared.

  When the meeting was done, most of the ministers hurried from the cabinet room as if they expected me to cackle that grand dukes made grand jokes and kill them all on the spot. Only Eirhan stayed behind, scratching at correspondence. At last, he put down his pen, blew out the candle beneath the inkwell, and looked at me. Shadows lingered under his eyes. “Why, Your Grace?”

  “Technically, I’m not duke anymore.” I waved at the papers that a secretary gathered from the table. I knew what he asked. Why hadn’t I arrested him, too? “I realized why you never defected to Sigis. You were afraid he wouldn’t gain the confidence of the ministers. So you helped me until you thought I couldn’t win. You like to slither, Eirhan. As long as you look after yourself, the rest of us can die as we like, can’t we?”

  “I don’t entirely agree with Your—with my lady’s assessment.”

  “I don’t really care.” I made a show of examining my fingernails. “The truth is, I’ve done you a favor. You owe me.” I pointed to the parliamentary documents. “You will keep me alive until that goes into effect.”

  Eirhan didn’t blink. “Or?”

  “Or Inkar will tell everyone the part you played. They’ll find the story in my notes, or diaries, or secret places you won’t think to set on fire. Some way, Lyosha will find out. And even if he’s the one who kills me, he’ll think he has to make an example of you.”

  Eirhan considered this. “I do hope my lady’s university days come with haste,” he said at last.

  Inkar and I left the cabinet room together. “This has been a day,” I muttered.

  “Also a night,” Inkar said, pointing to a low-burning candle clock.

  “At least I don’t have to wake up early tomorrow.” Or for the rest of my days, I hoped.

  Inkar was quiet on our way back to our rooms. I thought she was being watchful for Svaro or other murderous siblings, but when we were inside, she sat on the bed and spoke hesitantly. “My father will be here in a few days.”

  “The mysterious Erlyfsson.” I flashed her a grin as I reached behind me to unclasp the top of my dress.

  Inkar wasn’t smiling, for once. “I have decided to reject your offer of marriage.”

  To my credit, I paused only a moment before tugging the dress off my shoulders. “Okay.” I tried to ignore the strange feeling in my belly, as though I’d lost something and wasn’t sure whether I wanted to cry or not. I’d known Inkar for a week. I didn’t even want to be married. I could hardly fault her for feeling the same way.

  Ironic, really. I’d gotten what Eirhan wanted, and now it was irrelevant. And I shouldn’t be surprised, I thought as I finished unbuttoning and stepped out of my dress. She’d held her title as long as I’d been grand duke. Now I was back to being no one, and that wasn’t what she’d agreed to.

  “Ekata,” she said gently, and I heard the bed creak as she got up.

  “It’s fine.” My voice was calm. Bright, even. “Really. Thank you for coming to the brideshow.” I winced. I sounded resentful and childish, not like a grand duke at all. And while I wasn’t technically duke anymore, I didn’t want Inkar’s last memory of me to be full of petulance and pouting. I hung my dress, then turned to her. Don’t run away from your problems. “Thank you for standing by me. And saving my life. I couldn’t have done this without you, quite literally, and—” I forced myself to think of my parents, locked in an eternal battle of fury, who’d never traded a kind word in my living memory. “I understand.”

  She smiled, and I hated myself a little for thinking how beautiful she was. “Ekata.” She ran a finger down my wrist. Her hands were so small; how could they raise goose bumps up my arm where they hadn’t even touched? “I am rejecting the offer because my father… he will try to get what he can. And if I have agreed to be grand consort, he will demand that I remain consort-elect.” Her hand drifted down until her fingers rested in my palm. “I do not want to marry Lyosha and stay in Kylma Above. I want to go where I wish.”

  “Like where?”

  Inkar laughed softly and looked up at me through her eyelashes. “I hear south is where the clever people go.”

  My heartbeat pulsed in our caught hands. I felt dizzy. “So… you’re rejecting me so that you can stay with me?”

  “Maybe.” She dipped her head so that I couldn’t read her expression. “Do you need help with your corset?”

  We finished dressing for bed and lay down, knees touching, ankles crossed, hands clasped. The shadow of night turned her eyes dark, bottomless, like some creature from Below, and I shivered.

  “I do not want promises,” she said in a rich, sleepy voice. “I will not give them, and I will not take them. Maybe next week we will part ways. But this week… would you not prefer to be with me for myself, and not for politics?”

  “You’ll have to learn to get along with Aino,” I warned her.

  If Inkar was surprised to hear I’d still be taking Aino south, she didn’t show it. “I like to think I can be charming.” She wiggled forward to touch her forehead to mine. Her breath kissed my cheek. I had to angle my face only a little for our mouths to touch lightly.

  “For some people,” I said against her lips. She made a soft sound and pressed in. She tasted like warmth and sun and promises, like the South, like freedom. She tasted like someone who kissed me because she wanted to.

  We fell asleep with our foreheads touching, with our breath aligned, while the moon shone full and the winter roses furled into tight buds over my window.

  EPILOGUE

  The hall below us was packed. The old Grand Theatre on the processional boulevard had been refitted so that the seats were arranged in a semicircle, and the stage held a podium and two tables opposite each other. It was one of the few buildings in Kylma Above that had a wooden interior, and it shone a strange, soft gold in the light of an enormous chandelier.

  More than one head craned in our direction. The boxes had been reserved for the royal family and guests, and we were the source of no small speculation. My reign was the second-briefest in Kylmian history, just longer than some ancestor who’d been poisoned his second day—yet I’d made one of the biggest marks. After three hundred years of autocracy, Kylma would have parliamentary representation.

  “Are you proud?” Inkar asked. She wore a green wool coat and a serpent pin that glittered like shards of ice. Her hair was half up, half down, the way she wore it when I first saw her at the brideshow six months ago.

  “I didn’t have much to do with it.” After making the decree, I’d left the implementation of a parliament largely up to Reko, who’d refused to be prime minister in the end. I’d endured some screaming from Lyosha, and Eirhan’s personal servant tested everything I ate and checked my freshly washed clothing for hidden needles or burrs. But the archimandrite had publicly thrown her support behind me—in return for a seat. That had helped to reduce murder attempts, and now we were down to one a week or less.

  “It’s still something to be proud of,” Farhod said. He had a proper seat as a minister, but he lingered in my box, smiling. The sleeves of his coat were stained with new experimentation. Magical power no longer belonged solely to the grand duke, and Farhod was in charge of discovering the true extent of its properti
es. I’d examine it, too, in my first year’s study at the university.

  Aino had gone south to secure rooms for me and live away from the angry reach of Kylma Above. It was going to be strange, seeing her again. Hopefully, a good kind of strange. And strange, too, to see what life was like in places where snow never fell.

  The guard at my box bowed, and Lyosha and Mother stepped inside, wearing matching looks of distaste. Lyosha wore the royal colors in a grand suit and elbow-length cape. Mother wore black fur from her ankles to her neck, as she had every day since Father died. For someone who had despised him, she certainly reveled in her widow status.

  Inkar moved automatically to stand between them and me. “Are you pleased, little sister?” Lyosha asked in his cold voice.

  “Do you even think this experiment will work?” Mother added.

  It was still hard for me to speak up around them. I cleared my throat and said, as casually as I could, “Maybe. If you try. But if you make everyone mad and get cursed again, there won’t be much I can do from down south.”

  “Yes, yes.” Lyosha rolled his eyes. “Ekata the hero.”

  “When is it you’re set to leave?” Mother asked.

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  She sighed. “So soon. And yet not soon enough.” She turned and drifted out.

  “I suppose you should write,” Lyosha said ungraciously. “Science is a noble enough calling, and we may well need you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go open a parliament that some brash idealist decided was a fantastic idea.” He rolled his eyes once more, then followed Mother out.

  Inkar shook her head. “They do not understand.”

  I squeezed her hand. “I don’t need them to.”

  The archimandrite approached the stage, leaning on her iron staff. Slowly she mounted the stairs, and silence fell. When she had crossed to her place in front of the podium, Lyosha emerged. Applause broke out; white roses were waved in the air. His reign was off to a good start. You’re welcome, I thought.

  Inkar pulled me to the chair at the front of the box, and together we sat to watch the show.