The Impostor Queen (15 page)

The trail leads out of the woods and across a stretch of grassland, strands of gold waving in the cool breeze. I've never seen such a wide-open space. It's like looking out over the Motherlake, only instead of water, there's land. No walls, no buildings. Oskar hikes like he carries people on his back all the time, frequently turning his face to the bright sun. He doesn't offer any information about himself, and neither do I. Even though we're not in the city, I would never tell anyone who I am.

Or really: who I
was
.

I'm so ashamed that I wish there was a way to remove my blood-flame mark, to scrub it from my skin. It's been a point of pride for so long, but now even the thought of it makes me cringe. Have I deprived the people of their true Valtia? Will the Kupari fall because of me? It doesn't matter that I didn't have a part in this fraud; I still feel responsible.

Something else I feel responsible for: Mim. Did she make it to our meeting spot and find me gone? Is she looking for me, worried out of her mind? Or worse . . . was she caught somehow?

The farther we go, the more the grass gives way to craggy stone capped with wigs of scraggly weeds. Soon our path is bounded on either side with walls of rock, and we seem to be descending deeper into the earth. Even through the haze of pain, I feel a twinge of anxiety. “Where is this medicine man?” I finally ask.

“Where no one can threaten or harass him,” Oskar says in a hard voice. “Same as the rest of us.”

His tone, so different from his casual, joking words before, shuts me up. After several more minutes on an increasingly narrow trail, he stops, his feet skidding in loose rock. “I think this'll go more smoothly if we pull the sack over your head. It's not a great time to bring a stranger here. Sorry.”

Without waiting for my approval, he reaches back and pulls the edges of the sack up, then ties it over the top of my head. I tense as darkness engulfs me.

Oskar begins walking again, and only a few minutes later, I hear someone shout his name. “Oy, Jouni,” Oskar calls out in response. “Any trouble?”

“None,” says a deep buzz of a voice from somewhere above us. “We've been on watch all day. I expected the new Valtia to be at our doorstep by now.” He chuckles. “Or at least a horde of constables.”

My anxiety grows into a stab of fear.

Oskar lets out a growl of displeasure and begins to walk again. “Don't let down your guard. Sig's actions will bear consequences.”

There's a grunt as boots impact stone, and then footsteps shuffle right next to Oskar's. “I'm thinking the elders and city council are dealing with other troubles now,” Jouni says. “Between the Soturi threat and the fall of the Valtia, the death of a few miners seems a petty concern.”

“Now a human life is a petty concern?” Oskar mutters something about hypocrisy, and his pace quickens.

My arm throbs with pain, but my head throbs with knowledge: Oskar has brought me to the thieves' caverns. And he's talking to this other man like he belongs here.

I must squirm, because Jouni makes a sound of surprise. “What did you bag today? Beaver?”

Oskar snorts. “Wolverine.”

Jouni laughs. “And you're carrying it on your back while it's still alive? I'm all in favor of fresh meat, but . . .” I hear the hum of metal being freed from a sheath. “Do you want me to put it out of its mis—”

Oskar pivots suddenly, swinging me away from the sound of Jouni and his knife. “No,” he says sharply. “It's not necessary,” he adds, gently this time. “The creature is mostly dead anyway.”

“Let me know if you need help skinning it,” says Jouni. “I'll check in later.”

His voice is already fading as Oskar continues on his way. “Hey,” he says in a hushed voice. “Keep still until I tell you to move.”

“These are the thieves' caverns,” I hiss, out of patience and plagued by hurt.

“I'm terribly sorry,” he says evenly. “You would have preferred to bleed to death honorably in the woods?”

I have nothing to say to that, so I huddle within his bag. Wherever he's brought me, it's getting colder. Oskar shivers, and his footsteps falter for a moment—but only for a moment. The needle pricks of daylight that reach me through the bag grow dim and gray, then disappear, replaced by the dull glow of several small fires. All around me, I hear people, laughing, arguing, discussing how best to season the stew, who's next up for guard duty, who would like to join a game of Ristikontra, who's stolen the only complete deck of playing cards . . . so many conversations . . . and the laughter of children. Children—in the thieves' caverns! And their mothers, who scold them for straying too far!

Several people greet Oskar by name as he passes them by. A few joke with him about what's in his bag. He gives a different answer every time—a wild pig, a few dozen squirrels, a coyote, a nice fat goose—and I stay very still and play dead so no one else offers to turn my pretend into a reality. One high-pitched voice, that of a child, asks him when he'll be home, and Oskar says he's not sure yet. A woman asks him where he's going, and he says he's taking his kill to Raimo because the man's too skinny for his own good. I hear so many things, but I don't learn much. Especially because my head is pounding, and my eyeballs are so hot that it feels like they're going to burst like cherry tomatoes held over an open fire.

The voices fade after a while, and Oskar is hiking a dark, slippery path. Water plinks and thunks into puddles. Oskar shivers and curses and splashes and growls. He sounds a bit like old Nectarhand the bear in a bad mood. It makes sense—Oskar's nearly the size of a grizzly too.

“Please tell me you're still alive back there,” he finally says, breathing hard. “You haven't moved in far too long.”

“You told me not to,” I say, my voice cracking.

“Stars, you sound awful.”

“So many compliments,” I whisper. I'm not sure he hears me. He clumsily makes his way along, and then comes to an abrupt halt.

“Raimo!” he calls out. His gruff voice echoes off cavern walls. “I'm coming in. Don't try anything.”

From perhaps twenty feet away, there comes a reedy cackle. “Why, boy, would you actually defend yourself?” The voice is clearly that of an elderly man, but his tone is full of challenge.

Oskar lets out an irritable sigh and moves forward again. “I've brought you a patient.”

“I'm busy.”

“You're playing solitaire.”

“I'm at a very tricky point.”

Oskar is silent. After a few moments, Raimo lets out that creepy cackle again. “Such a fierce glare. One would think you're actually dangerous. Well, where is this patient—is he here? I'm not hiking all the way to the front cave.”

“She's right here,” Oskar says, and by his movements I know he's untying the ropes around his waist and chest. They fall away one after the other, and then he lowers himself to his knees. My world cants crazily as he slides the straps of the game bag down his arms, and then I'm on my side on a cold, rocky floor. It feels good. I'm burning from the inside out. Oskar opens the bag and pulls it away from my face. I can't focus my eyes. All I can see is the dim glow of a fire and shadows dancing on wet rock walls.

“Try a waltz,” I murmur. Mim taught me once, and we spent all evening giggling and twirling, and the world is spinning like that right now. Thinking of her makes my throat so tight that it's hard to breathe, and I let out a choked sob.

Oskar places the backs of his fingers against my cheek and curses. “She's got such a fever.”

“I haven't seen this one before,” Raimo says.

Oskar is staring at someone just out of my line of sight. “Found her in the north woods, maybe an hour's hike from the city.”

Raimo makes an annoyed sound in his throat. “And what will you give me in return for my help?”

“Full beaver pelt,” says Oskar.

Raimo scoffs, “You insult me.”

“Two, then.”

“Take her away, boy. My cards await.”

“The next bear I take down,” Oskar snaps. “Meat and pelt.”

“You know that's not what I want.”

“The answer is no.”

“Then take. Her.
Away.
”

“She'll die!” Oskar shouts, his voice ringing through the cave.

“People die every day, boy, especially here. You have to stop collecting strays.”

“I recall you saying the same thing about Sig at first.”

“That kind of lightning doesn't strike twice, as has been proven every time you've brought some other lost, sickly soul here to foist upon me. It's been at least one each year, and you used up your allotment this past spring when you dragged Josefina in from the marshes. That mad old bat was a handful—and not an experience I'm eager to repeat, at any price.” He's quiet for a moment before adding, “Except one.”

Oskar crosses his arms over his chest. “I'll do it,” he says from between clenched teeth. “Just me, though. Not Freya. And you'll stay quiet about it, or . . . I'll kill you.”

Raimo's laugh echoes loudly, making me wish I had the strength to cover my ears. “I have no interest in your sister, and you have no idea how silly you sound. But you have my word. It stays between us until you decide otherwise—or necessity dictates.”

“Oskar,” I whisper. “It's all right.” I have no idea what he's offering in exchange for Raimo's help, but it sounds like it's killing him.

“Where do you want her?” he asks, ignoring me.

“Over there. What's wrong with her?”

Oskar lugs me across the cavern. He sets me down on something soft, making sure to place me on my side instead of on my back. “Lost two fingers in a bear trap. But she wasn't in good shape before then. She'd been whipped, I think.”

“You think?” Raimo's voice is much closer now, and it makes me shudder.

“I didn't strip her naked and check,” Oskar says drily. “But she'd bled through, and I know what lash marks look like. I assume she was a servant in the town. Her dress is plain but well-made, and she's got some meat on her bones.”

“A runaway maid. How romantic,” says Raimo. “Well, take your bag and go. I should have her fixed up by morning.”

By morning?
As nice as that would be, I think it's going to take longer than that.

But Oskar doesn't seem surprised—he tugs the bag loose and carefully folds my ruined hand over my chest, then straightens my aching legs. His strong fingers close right over my blood-flame mark, and it pulses another wave of numb through my body.

“So you'll help her,” he says, sounding hesitant. “You'll do your best for her.”

“No, boy, I'll butcher her and make myself a nice stew. Get back to your mother. Oh, and tell her thank you for the rye loaf, by the way. It was delicious.”

Oskar leans over me. His face is smeared with grime and sweat. “Raimo's going to fix you up, Elli,” he says softly. “I'll check on you later.” He touches the back of my left hand, his fingers cool, his voice kind.

I doubt I'll see him again. My mouth is filled with the copper-iron taste of blood, and I think that means I'm going to die. I want to tell him thanks for trying, but I'm too tired to speak. He gets up and walks out. His footsteps fade soon after.

Another face leans over mine. Bald except for two tufts of white hair above his ears. Sunken cheeks. A prominent chin, from which hangs a stringy white beard. A long, hooked nose. Clever, calculating ice-blue eyes. “Name?” he asks.

“Elli,” I whisper.

“All right, Elli the runaway maid.” He clucks his tongue. “Let's see the hand.”

I drift while he unravels the brown wool, then cry out as he peels it from my wound. I try to pull away, but his grip on my wrist is relentless. “Pity,” he says as he looks at my grotesquely swollen hand and the empty space where my pinkie and ring finger used to be. “What made you desperate enough to reach into a bear trap?”

I don't answer, and I don't think he expects me to. He disappears for a few moments and returns with a wet cloth. I roil with bubbling pain as he cleans the raw, bloody meat of my hand. His pale eyes meet mine. “I'm going to heal this, and then I'll do your back.” He says it with confidence, as if I weren't hovering on the precipice of death.

He takes my hand between both of his and stares intently at it. I feel faint flashes of heat, then cool.

Magic.
This medicine man is a wielder. Here, in the outlands. In the thieves' caverns.

And he is a
healer
. No one with that much magic could have escaped the elders' notice—they would have found him as a child and brought him to the temple to serve like all the rest. They'd never have left him in the outlands to molder in a cave! For a moment, all my questions about who Raimo is and how he came to be here sharpen my mind and drag me back from the shore of oblivion. But then the old man moves my hand and another bolt of pain scatters all of them.

A deep wrinkle appears between Raimo's bushy white eyebrows. He peers with even more intensity at my wound. More flashes of cold, then hot, then cold again, but I feel them only vaguely, like the idea of temperature instead of the reality.

And now Raimo is scowling.

He mutters to himself, then matter-of-factly unbuttons the back of my dress and pulls it down my arms. The action tugs at the bandages over my flayed back, and I writhe helplessly. Once again, I feel wisps of hot and cold, this time across my backbone. I have no idea how long it goes on, but when I'm jerked into solid awareness again, Raimo is leaning over me.

“You're keeping secrets, my dear.” He uses the pads of his thumbs to lift my eyelids wide. “Ice-blue,” he says. He coils a lock of my hair around his finger. “And burnished copper.”

My heart skips unsteadily.