The True Queen Read online

  “We’ll heal you,” I tell him. My eyes are stinging. This is so cruel. He’s dying before my eyes. I motion frantically for Raimo to join me, and Kaisa leads him toward the steps.

  “The Saadella,” he says.

  “I can only hope she survived.” My throat constricts even thinking of her. She’s not here in the plaza with us. She’s somewhere out in the city, beyond my reach for the moment. I pray her parents have kept her safe. “We have to find her. I’ll send people. . . .” For now, there is no one to send.

  “We’re all going to die,” Sig says, so quiet I barely catch it.

  “We won’t,” I snap. “I’m going to fix this.”

  He laughs, and it’s wet and tortured.

  I look back to the temple. Kaisa limps over with Raimo. Her short blond hair is standing on end, and as she nears I can read the despair in her bloodshot eyes. There are a few red patches on her face, but no other marks of the magic inside her—but only because she does not have nearly as much as Sig or Oskar. I imagine all the wielders in the land are hurt. Raimo looks like he can’t even stand on his own, but it seems as if the balance in his magic saved him from its worst effects.

  “My Valtia,” Kaisa says when she reaches me.

  I offer a sad smile. “We can drop that pretext now. You may call me Elli.”

  She shakes her head. “I . . . I’ve known for some time that you did not have the same kind of magic as the previous Valtia. But you are still a true queen.”

  Tears sting my eyes. I don’t feel like a queen. I feel exhausted and terrified and hungry for someone else to take over, to lead, to tuck me into a warm bed and tell me everything will be all right when I wake.

  There is no one to do that now, though. All the wielders in the land will have been injured, each according to his or her power, and the more of it, the more they will suffer. Oskar and Sig barely survived this quake.

  Even if I can summon the strength and balance I need to channel Raimo’s magic and heal them—without killing the old man himself—another tremor will probably end them. Determination is the iron in my spine, holding me upright under the weight of all the sorrow and death that threatens my land. “Then I will be the queen you need,” I say to Kaisa as I put my arm around Raimo and lower him to the ground next to Sig. I look up at the young apprentice. “Find the healthiest wielders we have left, and have them begin a search for Lahja. We must find her.”

  After Kaisa runs toward the temple, Raimo mutters, “I know what you’re thinking, and it might not work.”

  I take his face in my hands and wait for him to look at me. “We can’t wait any longer. We have to stop these quakes.”

  He nods weakly. “I know.”

  “What are you going to do?” Sig asks.

  “I’m going to demand that our strongest men come to me,” I say. “I’m going to have them carry the temple stores of copper here to the plaza.” I point to the crack in the earth.

  It is an open, hungry mouth. I know it is.

  “They will work all night. And in the morning, we’re going to give the land back what we stole.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Ansa

  After a sleep spent chasing Thyra through the dark woods, never quite able to catch or protect her, I rise before the sun touches our camp and wash in a stream. I can feel the fire and ice awakening inside me, and I’m glad. With the cuff of Astia, I’ll have some hope of controlling it, and I crave the moment when I stand before the impostor and do to her what Sig and the other wielder did to my Thyra. The fraud-queen will feel the ice and the fire as she dies, and I’ll feel the freedom that comes when a future meets its horizon.

  Kauko is guarded by his priests as I approach, and they rise, pushing their hoods away from their faces. “I’m here for my cuff.”

  Kauko sits up from his nest of blankets near the cold fire when he hears my voice. “You are very reliable, my Valtia.”

  I stick out my hand. “We’re going to have a problem if you aren’t.”

  He gives me a gentle smile. “I am on your side. Remember that we want the same thing. Death to the impostor, vengeance for what happened to Chieftain Thyra, safety and prosperity for our people. I am not your enemy, and I never have been.”

  “Stop talking and give me what’s mine!”

  He isn’t the slightest bit cowed by the harshness in my tone, or the fact that sparks leap from my mouth as I speak. His priests put their hands up, prepared to wield their various powers, but Kauko jumps to his feet with that startling agility of his. “She’s right!” He removes the cuff from his wrist and hands it to me, still smiling. “This cuff will help our Valtia as she reclaims our land and her throne.”

  I don’t want the throne. I don’t care about it at all. But I take the cuff and snap it shut around my wrist. Instantly, its heavy, warm weight relaxes my tense muscles and calms the brewing storm inside. I smile. This was how I felt as I aimed at Nisse’s jugular. I could finally control the power that is mine to wield, and with the cuff, I will be able to see Thyra’s vision through. “Thank you.”

  I turn and march away as the camp awakens and packs. Our wounded have all been healed by Kauko, and they smile at him as they go about their work. They are willing to accept magic when it is used to serve them, I suppose.

  Jaspar finds me and invites me to march with his inner circle. Carina stands near him, her braid of thick hair coiled at the base of her skull to keep it out of the way. I wonder if they are simply entertaining each other, or if she wishes she could be his mate. Or maybe she simply wants to be near the seat of power. She is clearly his wolf, and Jaspar relies on her to carry his orders throughout camp. Her gaze slides warily in my direction from time to time, but she’s not antagonistic. She never has been, not really. She simply knows who she serves and what her role is, and I think I envy her that.

  I serve a dead chieftain, and my role is to be hated and feared and mistrusted, apparently. I absorb the watchful stares of so many warriors as we pass their lines and start the march. They don’t dare whisper about me now because their chieftain, Jaspar, is at my side, but I know that tonight as they gather around their fires, they will.

  I hang at the rear of Jaspar’s group, keeping an eye out for Bertel, Preben, and the remaining warriors who were loyal to Thyra. Some of them seem glad to be back with the larger group, but others, including Preben and Bertel, seem more reluctant and suspicious. Thyra truly did win them over, and their loyalty is a heavy thing, not easily shifted or swayed. For Thyra, I owe them my all. But because of her, I am having trouble thinking past my need for the blood of those who stole her from us.

  In all, we are a thousand tense warriors marching a narrow path through the damp morning forest, winding north. The priests hike along near the front, keeping close to their elder. His steps are steady and graceful in his tattered robes, and he looks eager to return to his homeland.

  It’s my homeland too, but as we reach a part of the forest where the trees are bare and blackened, I feel the unsteadiness return. The feeling stirs deep in my bones, but I decide to ignore it. This will be different. I know to expect tremors, but I have experienced wielders to guide me. No surprises this time, and much less fear.

  Jaspar leads us on a curving path that for a while has the sun directly behind us, and it hits me that he has circumvented the meadow where Thyra died. “We’re almost to the border, I believe,” he announces, looking to Kauko for confirmation.

  The older man nods. “Those of us with magic inside us have felt it coming.” He gives me a curious look, and I nod, running my hand over the warm red runes of my cuff. The priests are unsmiling and seem tense, but they don’t appear to be suffering.

  Jaspar smiles as Carina joins us from running an order to the rear of the line. He wants them to catch up so we aren’t as stretched out once we clear the forest. “I see our destination up ahead,” he shouts. “We will not aggress toward the citizens of these outlands. This is not a raid. We march to the city and its t
emple to unseat a false ruler. Stay focused on that objective.”

  Kauko bows his gratitude. “You will be seen as a liberating force. They will be scared of you at first—so many terrible stories, understand. But once they realize you bring with you the true Valtia, ah!” He grins and claps his hands. “You will have the people on your side!”

  My heart thrums in my chest. What will they want from me? Jaspar once told me the Valtia provides for all the needs of her people, but I haven’t the faintest idea how to do that. I also don’t have the will or energy. I only have the will to finish my mission.

  After that, there will be a new Valtia, and she will be raised Krigere.

  We reach the edge of the trees, the place where the great forest ends abruptly, and are greeted by a vast, hilly expanse of grassland dotted by craggy hills. Seagulls spiral overhead, reminding us that the Torden surrounds this place on three sides.

  “My first raid was on a sheep farm on the eastern side of this peninsula,” says Preben, sounding wistful. “It’s strange to come at it this way, up from the south—and on foot.”

  Bertel lets out a grim chuckle. “At least we’re still on our feet, old man.”

  I look back at our rows of graybeards and silver braids, men and women who have lived two or three of my lifetimes and still manage to carry their weapons and supplies on their backs without complaint. “You are the strongest of us,” I murmur.

  Jaspar looks beyond them to his straight-backed, much younger warriors. Their andeners and children are staying at the forest edge until we determine it is safe for them to cross into their new homeland. “May all of mine live to see their silver years.”

  “They will,” I say. But I won’t. With every step I take, I am brought closer to Thyra, though, and that is why I march.

  “I think this land is quite pretty,” Carina says, surveying a little valley with a pond dotted with lilies and rushes. Little birds with humming wings flit by us.

  “I’d try to hit one of them with an arrow, but I don’t think it’d have much meat,” comments one warrior. Others laugh. The sunny day and absence of death have put them in a good mood.

  Even I smile as the warmth kisses my brow. It is nice to be beyond the reach of the trees, the stench of suffering that hangs in the Loputon. I am happy that I will never return there again. It is the place where Thyra’s body rests, but her spirit is my goal. Nothing here matters to me anymore.

  We don’t see a single living soul as we march north throughout the morning, but we see plenty of evidence of the recent quakes. Felled trees, long fissures exposing red dirt, empty lake beds where the water was drained into the ground through a tear in its skin. We follow the road for a time, until we reach a wide crevasse that traverses the land east to west. It takes us quite a time to climb through that and reach the other side—and we are forced to leave our mounts behind with a few who will try to find a way around it. But Jaspar says we will be all right without them, because Kauko assures him there is no army here, no fighting force of any kind, and certainly no horse warriors—but he also tells him there are plenty of mounts to be stolen in the city once we get there.

  I’m glad. I don’t want to sit and wait any longer. I am ready for the end game.

  Once we begin the march again, I let the buzz of conversation wash over me. The priests could talk privately among themselves too, as none of us speak Kupari, but they stay silent, maybe because they know it will arouse suspicion if they are babbling words the warriors cannot understand. Or maybe because they feel an echo of what I feel—an unsteady vibration in my body, one strong enough to make my breaths unsteady, one powerful enough that I must focus to keep all the power inside me under control. I concentrate on the cuff and let it do its work, but the further we move into the territory of the impostor, the more I sweat and shiver, and the more it hums.

  After several hours of steady quick-marching, we reach another large wood. “North woods,” Kauko tells us. “Past this is the city of Kupari.”

  “We’ll stop for our meal here, then, and be to the gates of the place before sundown,” Jaspar says. His warriors pass the message along the line, and relieved smiles stretch across weary, dust-coated faces.

  “I’ll be back in a moment,” I say, motioning to the woods. I might be the Valtia, but I still have to do my business like anyone else.

  “I’ll go with you,” says Carina, giving Jaspar a look. He nods and touches her arm as she strides by.

  I roll my eyes but don’t protest. If I wanted to run, Carina couldn’t stop me. We set off walking toward a scattering of boulders among the trees that will offer nice privacy. Carina clears her throat. “Jaspar is glad to have you back with us,” she says.

  “Because he believes I can help him get what he wants.”

  “He has always wanted you in his tribe, Ansa. You know that.”

  “And you?” I look over at her. She’s everything a warrior should be. Lean and strong and brave. I can’t hate her. “What do you want?”

  “I want things the way they were,” she says. “I want to raid and plunder. But I can’t have that, so I’ll take what I can get.”

  I think about that. “What if it’s not enough?”

  She shrugs. “I think sometimes getting through this life is about making what you have enough to sustain you.”

  “I always thought it was about fighting until you had enough, not accepting less.”

  “That warrior doesn’t survive very long.”

  “So true,” I whisper.

  We use the privacy of the boulders and begin to make our way back to the others. “Look—frost berries,” Carina says, jogging up the length of the boulders. Her bow and quiver rattle against her back as she runs. She gathers the little purple berries in her palms with a look of delight on her face. “Now this feels like a place that could be home.”

  She pockets several handfuls, making an absent comment about how Jaspar likes them too, and I wait. She offers me some, but nothing tastes good and I’m not tempted. When she’s plucked the bushes bare, we head around the biggest boulder.

  And come face to face with two Kupari women. They wear rough gowns and their hair is dark, almost black. The younger one is skinny with sharp cheekbones, and the older one . . .

  Her gray eyes go round when she sees my face. “Ansa?”

  I gasp at the sound of my name on her tongue, and the shape of her face and nose and eyes . . . and suddenly I am staring at my father’s empty gray eyes, and I can’t breathe.

  Carina draws a dagger, and the younger girl grabs the older one’s arm and yanks, wrenching the woman out of her shock.

  They run toward two horses that are tethered to a branch perhaps twenty yards away. They move like rabbits, swift and scared, and all I can do is stare as the woman’s voice echoes in my head.

  “Come on, we have to stop them,” barks Carina, but I don’t move, and the women are already on their horses.

  Carina draws her bow.

  The older woman, her dark hair flying around her face, reels her horse around. Her face is wild with fear and surprise. She says something to the young one in that trilling Kupari language and says my name again.

  “They know me,” I say in a choked voice.

  “All the more reason not to let them escape this wood,” Carina growls, nocking an arrow.

  I stumble forward. “No, you can’t—”

  She takes aim. I stretch out my palm as she lets fly, and something inside me erupts. It escapes me like thunder, a brutal, swirling wind that surrounds Carina, ice glittering brightly within the maelstrom. She lets out one harsh scream before going silent. I fall to my knees, my fingers burning with cold, and raise my head to find that the two women are gone. They escaped.

  But Carina . . . I crawl to her as the ground rumbles, and as I reach her I realize it is not another quake—it is perhaps fifty warriors answering their sister warrior’s terrified cry.

  They find me kneeling next to her. I look down at her face. Ice
melts in shards all around her, and she bleeds from cut after cut after cut. Her fingers tremble as she reaches for her throat, where at least three icy splinters have pierced her flesh like arrows. As they slip out of her warm skin, blood flows readily from the wounds they leave behind.

  Jaspar reaches us first and lets out a wretched groan. “Get Kauko. Now!”

  Two warriors take off running as he turns his green eyes on me. “How could you do this?” he asks as he drops to his knees and pulls her into his lap, cradling her as she gurgles. “She did nothing to you!”

  What am I to say? I killed her because I was protecting two Kupari?

  One of those Kupari knew me? And she had my father’s eyes?

  I look down at my hands. “I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t trying to kill her.”

  “Look at her,” he roars, rocking her as her eyes go blank. A little pile of berries has fallen from the pouch in her trousers. He crushes them with his knees as he tends to her, and their purple juice mixes with her blood.

  Kauko jogs into our midst, his brow furrowed.

  “Fix her,” Jaspar shouts. “Make her whole again!”

  Kauko kneels and touches her throat. “I cannot,” he says sadly. “She is already gone.”

  “Bring her back.” Jaspar’s voice breaks. “She was alive only seconds ago.”

  Kauko shakes his head. “When the spirit is gone, life is gone. There is no bringing it back.”

  Jaspar throws his head back and lets out a jagged noise of grief while warriors gather around us. When the sound dies, he bows his head. I sit numbly, knowing I can’t fix this, not able to feel anything beyond the confusion of the past few moments.

  “Ansa, you’ve betrayed me,” Jaspar finally says in a low voice. He gives Kauko a sharp look and a quick nod.

  The hard hands of the priests wrap around my arms and pull me from the ground. As my magic rises to defend its vessel, Kauko moves in front of me, his palms out. Quick as a snake, he pulls the cuff from my wrist and puts it back on his. Rage boils in my chest. I don’t care if I burn with him—I’m going to watch his flesh melt.