The True Queen Read online

  “Bertel, Preben,” Jaspar shouts. And then the two old warriors are on me too, their expressions conflicted but their hands certain and hard, and I clench my fists because I promised Thyra. I promised her. She would never forgive me if I killed any member of our tribe, but especially these two, who have been loyal to her since the day she bested their comrade Edvin in the fight circle. When I find her on the eternal battlefield, she’ll turn her back on me if I so much as blister them. I hold my breath and arch and kick as they secure my hands behind my back, as ropes wind around my body, but I don’t lash out.

  “Leave one arm exposed,” orders Kauko. He turns to one of his priests. “The cup. Bring it here.”

  “No,” I scream. “Don’t you dare!”

  He is walking toward me with a knife. And Jaspar is still on the ground, cradling Carina against his body. He shakes his head when I call his name. “I believe you when you say you didn’t mean it,” he says to me. “But that means you are unstable—and that means you are a danger. We still need your magic, though. We must have it to defeat the impostor’s wielders. This is for the good of the tribe, Ansa.” He is looking at Preben and Bertel as he speaks.

  Kauko gives me an apologetic smile as I snarl and spit at him. I stare at his jugular and he coughs, perhaps feeling the cold. He says something in Kupari to the priests surrounding me, and then I feel the bite of their magic every place their hands touch me. I can’t think past it.

  Until I feel the slice of the knife, right through my sleeve. Kauko tears away the fabric and puts his mouth right on the wound, sucking hard. He comes up with a grin that shows bloody teeth. Preben and Bertel turn away, faces twisted with disgust, but they don’t stop him.

  No one stops him. They all watch as he deepens the cut—drawing the blade from my elbow to my wrist, a line of fire almost to the bone. He has his priests angle my arm just so.

  I shudder and struggle as I hear my blood dripping into the cup. I fight with all I have inside, but the pain makes it impossible to control the magic, as does the fear of hurting Bertel and Preben. Tears streak down my face as cold descends on me along with a heavy fatigue.

  Kauko strokes my hair. “You see,” he calls to Jaspar, who is blurry now. “She will rest.” He looks down at me. “Your magic is a gift, my Valtia. And I will use it well.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Elli

  By midnight I have Livius and his promised stone crews, though they are a few men short, as two did not survive the most recent quake. All the men are dusty and glassy-eyed from the destruction in town. One man has lost his entire family, but unlike the mob in the square, he is loyal to the Valtia, or at least believes I might have the power to set things right.

  The others just seem exhausted and wary, and when I tell them of my plan, they are incredulous. “Don’t we need the copper?” one of them asks. “My brother’s a miner who breaks his back each year to pull the stuff out of the earth!”

  “But that’s the problem,” I say. “He was too good at his job. We bled the land dry, and now it’s dying.”

  “Are you sure that’s the cause of these ground shakes?” This question comes from the grieving man, who has tear streaks through the gray stone residue coating his face. His question sounds like a plea.

  I look over at Raimo, who is leaning heavily on his walking stick as he stands next to the rim of stone slabs that bounds the giant, deep fissure in the plaza. The old man looks somber and pale. Weak. We spent a few hours trying to heal Sig and Oskar, but finally Raimo’s strength gave out, and now our Suurin are walking around wounded, still trying to control the vast unbalanced power contained within their increasingly fragile bodies. I think Oskar knew it was scaring me to look at them, because he took Sig down the path to the shore with some muttered excuse about wanting to be close to the water.

  Raimo stayed, of course. He is faithful and steady even when he’s horribly unsteady, as he is now. He hears the grieving stone worker’s question, and he sees my hopeful expression, and he looks toward the gash in the earth. “Our magic comes from that copper, so who knows what else grows from those roots? It seems the land itself depended on it. We ignored that possibility in our greed—and we assumed the supply was endless.” He chuckles. “We have made the same assumptions about the magic of the Valtia, that it will always remain here with us, that Kupari will always be its home. What if we were wrong?”

  The stone workers gape at him, a new fear written on their faces. “You think the magic will abandon us now?” Livius asks in a choked voice. “Where would it go?”

  “If we don’t find the Saadella safe and alive, losing the magic is a certainty whether it wants to stay with us or not,” I say. Lahja is an ache that nothing but her presence can soothe. The longer she is gone, the more I fear someone else has her.

  “Even if we do find her, who knows?” Raimo replies. “The power may abandon us and go back to the stars, or to some other land where the people are more deserving.”

  The men frown and toss guilty glances in my direction. “Shouldn’t have doubted you,” one of them mumbles. I don’t recognize him from the courtyard where I nearly got my head bashed in, but he easily could have been there.

  “Apologies won’t heal our land,” I say. “But if you help me take this action to save it, all will be forgiven.”

  This promise seems to energize them. They follow Kaisa along a narrow path that will take them directly to the catacombs. “They’ll form a human chain and pull the rocks away, and then we’ll bring in carts to move the metal to that fissure,” Livius says as he watches them go. His brows are so low that I can’t see his eyes. “How much will you dump down that hole?”

  “As much as it takes.”

  He’s quiet for a while, his eyes on one of the torches that has been placed nearby. “It might be prudent to set some of it aside. We might need allies, Valtia, and the promise of copper will gain them faster than any desperate entreaty.”

  Especially because the elders refused to respond to desperate entreaties from other city-states. “We should never have been this isolated. We should never have believed we were sufficient unto ourselves just because we had magic. It was arrogant.”

  He rubs at the back of his neck as a shout from the crew indicates they’ve started their work. A rhythmic chant begins, men working as one animal, digging toward our salvation. “The old wielder was right. We always believed the Valtia’s magic was infinite, even though no Valtia ever was.” He grunts. “Like children, we’ve been.”

  “We’re all growing up very quickly,” I tell him, placing my hand on his shoulder. “I love our people, Livius. I will do everything in my power to ensure we go on.”

  “I believe you. And those who don’t?” He waves a thick-fingered hand. “They’re more interested in clinging to the past.”

  I smile. “I can’t really blame them. Sometimes I miss it too.” I miss feeling all that potential. I miss my serene belief in my destiny. I miss being protected. I even miss being told what to do, and being shielded from knowledge that would have scared me. “But that doesn’t mean I want to go back.”

  “Forward we go, then,” he says. “I’d best go get the carts.” He strides off toward the crumbled gates of what was once the pristine white plaza of the temple.

  Raimo limps over to me. “Livius is right that the copper could buy the help of allies against the Soturi. The Ylpesians are known for their horsemanship, and the Korkeans for their ironworks.”

  “What good will it do if the land is ashes and rubble when they get here?”

  “I know you want this to work, Elli, but there’s no guarantee that it will. The land may crave more than its mined copper.”

  I sigh impatiently. “As you’ve said to me before. Would you like me to dive into the hole too?”

  “No,” he murmurs. “I don’t think it’s you the earth wants.”

  “Are you suggesting it wants the Valtia?” My laugh is shrill. “You must be joking.”

 
; He tugs at his scraggly beard. “The texts I found in Kauko’s secret library were all about the power of blood. Some of it is his own writing, from centuries ago. When he first experimented with drinking the stuff.”

  I think back to that night in the cave where Raimo first revealed the brutal history of the temple. “You told me he knew the first Suurin. It was their blood he drank.”

  Raimo’s eyes are on the path to the shore, the one Oskar and Sig took. “Those Suurin were not unlike ours. Two young men, opposites in every way, and yet they understood each other in ways that no one else could.”

  I don’t want to think of the fate of those young men. I don’t want to think of how weary and pained my own Suurin looked as they walked away from me tonight. “There was only ever that one pair before Oskar and Sig. He can’t have known that much about them.”

  Raimo turns to me, and his eyes carry a sadness so ancient and deep that I can’t find the bottom of it. “He knew their blood carried their magic. And that, when fused with copper from the earth, it would create the most powerful tool a magic wielder could possibly possess. The cuff of Astia stabilizes. Balances. Magnifies. It allows a wielder to control and direct her power. It protects her from the strength of that ice and fire within her mortal body.”

  “And Kauko is out there somewhere, and apparently he has it.”

  “The cuff is not our concern right now. The way it was created is.”

  I hug myself against a sudden chill. “If you’re suggesting what I think you are, the answer is no.”

  “Elli—”

  “No!” I wave my arms and walk away from him. “You are being careless with their lives, old man, and I won’t allow it.”

  “You are being careless with our entire land simply because of your feelings for Oskar!”

  I round on him. “How dare you!”

  “I warned you,” Raimo says, his hands shaking as he grips his staff. “I warned you that you would regret this love you’ve allowed to grow between you. Did you think I was merely playing with you?”

  “You refused to tell me what you knew, so yes!”

  “It would have been cruel, Elli. You were facing so much.”

  “It’s cruel now,” I yell. “But of late my life has contained plenty of cruelty.” I hold up my scarred hand. I gesture at my own magicless body as a sudden wave of disgust rolls through me. “I can’t save the people I love,” I say with a gasp. “No matter how hard I try.” My eyes narrow and I glare at him. “But I will not surrender yet. Their lives are precious. We need them to fight. You cannot convince me that—”

  “We leave you for but a short while, and look what we come back to,” Sig calls. He and Oskar lean on each other as they enter the plaza. “You look like you want to toss Raimo into the crevasse!”

  I put my hands over my mouth and Oskar frowns. “What’s gone wrong now?” he asks, looking from me to Raimo.

  Raimo leans forward, whispering, “Do you want to tell them about this possibility, or shall I?”

  “Neither of us will,” I snap, praying the sound of the men’s chanting drowns out our words. “Until it is a certainty, I refuse to even entertain the idea.”

  “Elli—”

  “I am the queen,” I say. “Magic or not, it falls to me.” If I did have magic, though, I think Raimo would have been reduced to ash by the heat of my glare.

  He bows his head as if he realizes it. “You’re the queen.”

  We turn back to Sig and Oskar, and I smile, though it doesn’t smooth the wrinkle of concern in Oskar’s brow. “How are you feeling?”

  The two Suurin enter a patch of light near the rim of the fissure. Raimo lets out a humorless laugh. “Hopefully better than you look.”

  Sig smirks, and it seems to hurt, because then he grimaces. “We’re still prettier than you, old man.”

  It’s all bravado. Raimo isn’t covered in barely healed blisters like they are.

  “Once we get the copper into the ground, you might feel better,” I say cheerfully. “More stable.”

  “How long will it take them to pull it out of there?” Oskar asks.

  I tell them about the crew’s work and the carts. “Hopefully by morning we’ll begin returning it to its rightful place in the earth.” I don’t look at Raimo. I don’t want to see his expression.

  “The Saadella,” Oskar says. “Any news?”

  I shake my head as my eyes sting with tears. “Some of our temple wielders are searching for her.”

  “What if her parents have succeeded where they failed before?” asks Sig. “They could have smuggled her out of the city.”

  Oh, stars. “Let’s hope they have more sense than that,” I say, trying not to choke on my fear for her.

  “Enough talk,” Raimo says, “Kaisa has marshaled the surviving kitchen staff and should be nearly ready to hand out cups of bone broth to the citizens. Suurin, go have some and rebuild some strength.”

  The city is a ruin, and all we have to offer the people at the moment is broth and a wild plan. Their Valtia is pitching their wealth into a crack in the ground, and their Saadella, their hope for the future . . .

  “Kaisa plans to ask about Lahja as she ladles,” Raimo says as he reads the despair on my face. “Warm food is the best way to get people talking.”

  “Would I know if she were dead?” I murmur.

  “The connection between the Valtia and the Saadella is a mysterious one,” says Raimo. “And in the history of this land, the death of a Saadella has never happened. The elders protected her with every scrap of their power and cunning.”

  But now she’s out there, somewhere within the maze of rubble and teetering buildings—or in the wild outlands beyond. “If she dies, our magic is gone, isn’t it? It dies with Ansa, wherever she is.”

  “I’m sorry we couldn’t bring Ansa back to you,” Oskar says. “The elder set the perfect trap.”

  Sig shifts uneasily. “If Kauko has manipulated her to his side, I shudder to think of what they can do. Not to mention the thousand warriors who follow behind.”

  “One catastrophe at a time.” I smooth a lock of my hair back and square my shoulders. “If we can stabilize the land, we can prepare the people for what comes next, and the wielders will be better able to help us defend the city if it comes to that.”

  A clatter of hooves makes me turn toward the gate to the plaza. I expect to see Livius there with his carts, but instead, two cloaked figures trot toward us. The horses’ flanks are heaving and they’re lathered with sweat. The two figures slide from their mounts. One of them is very small and skinny.

  “Freya!” Oskar shouts, and the girl throws her hood back and runs to him, her face so pale it glows in the darkness.

  Maarika follows her, but instead of going to Oskar, she comes straight for me and Raimo. “We were in the north wood this afternoon gathering berries,” she says, panting. “And . . . she was there.”

  My heart leaps. “You saw Lahja and her family?”

  Maarika frowns. “No. Ansa.”

  Oskar squints at his mother. “Alone?”

  “No—the Soturi are camped south of the city,” says Freya.

  “Did they see you?” Raimo asks.

  Freya shakes her head. “Well. Ansa and the other woman did. But then Ansa killed her.”

  Sig’s brow furrows. “Ansa killed another Soturi?”

  “Perhaps she has gone mad in her grief,” Oskar says.

  “I think she was stopping the woman from killing us,” says Maarika. She shakes her head. “We circled back to see what was happening. The other warriors came to see what the commotion was. And they seized Ansa. The elder was there. Many priests, too.”

  “So they’ve aligned themselves with the Soturi,” says Raimo. “That’s one way to regain the temple.”

  “But what did they do to Ansa?” I ask. “Is she all right?”

  Freya shakes her head. “I don’t think so,” she says in a small voice. “We fled when some of them spread out to scout,
but when we rode away, she was still screaming.”

  My throat constricts. “No. No. We have to save her.” My eyes meet Oskar’s.

  “I won’t fail you this time,” he says quietly.

  “If what they say is true,” says Raimo. “You’ll be up against a thousand barbarians and a few dozen well-trained enemy wielders, including old Kauko. You might be Suurin, but . . .” He gestures at their weary, hunched forms.

  Freya lifts her chin, all defiance. “It’s not as if they’ll be alone.”

  As she says that, a small horde of riders gallops into the plaza. Veikko’s lean form is easy to spot, and Aira alights next to him. Both look haggard, but neither appears injured like the Suurin. “We saw the signal.”

  Freya bounces on her heels as she looks up at Oskar. “We have signals.”

  He snorts. “Your idea?”

  She nods. “Flashes of fire at night. Smoke in the daytime.”

  Veikko rolls his eyes. “She made us all memorize them.”

  Aira smoothes her hand over Freya’s head. “And it’s been dead useful.”

  The other wielders have dismounted and gathered around. Some of them, like Tuuli and Usko, clasp hands with Sig, careful of his blisters. Others, probably nomads from the outlands recruited by Oskar, incline their heads toward my Ice Suurin.

  “So what’s happening?” asks Aira. She sweeps her hand across the destroyed plaza. “Apart from the obvious, that is.”

  “We have a mission,” Oskar says. “One that may mean the difference between victory and defeat.”

  They all exchange glances. “We knew it was only a matter of time,” Veikko says. “We’re at your service.”

  “Good,” says Sig, “because we need all the help we can get.”

  “We need you to go to the north woods,” I say. “Without being seen or detected by the thousand Soturi warriors who squat there, waiting to attack us.”

  Tuuli whistles out a long breath that fogs cold with the ice magic inside her. “And if we happen to succeed?”

  Raimo taps his stick on the ground. “Then you’ll creep past the priests and elder who have allied themselves with those warriors.”