The Impostor Queen (19 page)

“How old was your Valtia when she died?” I'd been trying to gather the courage to ask her all night, and now we were waiting for my sedan chair to come and take me away from my Valtia until the planting ceremony, a whole winter away.

The Valtia put her hand on her stomach and took a step back, but when I rushed forward, apologies already falling from my lips, she put her hands up. “It's all right, Elli,” she said, her voice thick with sorrow. “She was thirty-two, I think.” Her smile was full of pain. “I wasn't ready to say good-bye.”

She opened her arms to me, and I slid into her embrace, desperate to soothe the sadness that I had caused. “Why did you ask me that?” she whispered.

“I don't understand how someone so strong could fade so young.” And I was terrified to think of when I would lose my own Valtia. She was fast approaching the end of her twenties.

“Our lives aren't ours, darling,” she murmured. “We are only the caretakers of this magic. We don't use it to protect ourselves—we use it only to protect the Kupari. They call us queens, but what we really are is servants.” There was no bitterness in her voice at all. But then again, she was only repeating what I'd been told at the beginning of my daily lessons for as long as I could remember.

“It's not fair,” I mumbled into her shoulder. I could hear the footsteps of the acolytes coming down the hall. My time with her was ending. What if I never saw her again? My fingers curled into her sleeves.

She kissed my hair. “We were made for this. You and me. And that means we're strong enough to bear it.” She gently pried my hands loose and clasped her fingers over mine. Her pale-blue eyes were fierce with determination. “You're strong enough to bear anything, Elli. That's why the stars chose you.”

I raise my head.
Nothing has changed,
Raimo whispers in my memory. I might not be the Valtia, but if the old man is right, I was chosen all the same. I grit my teeth and reach for the pestle again. “Everything is different,” I whisper. “But
nothing
has changed.” And then I find it within myself to chuckle. “Except that now I really am a servant.”

The fingers of my right hand are too clumsy and sensitive to grip the corn, so I hold each cob clamped between my ribs and my elbow as I use my left to strip the kernels, and then to grind them into meal. Maarika comes out after a while and tells me it's not fine enough, so I pour the bowl of crushed kernels back onto the grinding stone and return to work.

My left palm is blistered and the bandage on my right is dotted with blood by the time Oskar returns with a brace of pheasants. He glances down at me, hunched over the grinding stone. His eyes flick to my hands. And then he disappears into the back and has a murmured conversation with Maarika, so quiet I can't hear.

Freya returns and we have a quick meal, after which Oskar disappears to play cards. Freya takes me to a small side cavern and shows me where the relief chamber is, a deep hole one must carefully squat over as she does her business. When it's my turn, I spend several moments eyeing the pit, once again torn between a fit of giggles and a bout of tears. I wish I could ask Freya to hold my skirt, but she relieved herself without that kind of assistance a moment ago. It takes a few awkward minutes, but when I manage to do my business without falling in or ruining my dress and stockings, I count this as a true success.

The massive cavern is awash in noise and music and laughter throughout the evening, but I'm so tired I could sleep through anything. I lie on the pallet of fur that Freya sets out next to her own in the other small, curtained-off area at the rear of the shelter. “Why did Oskar tell you I was a thief?” Freya murmurs as she snuggles up under her blanket.

“Oh, he was making fun of me. I was told these caves were full of bandits.”

She leans forward. “They are,” she whispers. “But not all of us are criminals.”

My heart kicks against my ribs. “Doesn't that scare you?”

Freya giggles. “Oh, no. I can defend myself, and even if I couldn't, no one would bother me. They won't bother you, either.”

“Why?”

“Have you taken a good look at Oskar? Would
you
want to mess with anyone he cared about?”

“I see your point.” And though he doesn't care much about me, Raimo said he was honorable, and knowing what little I do about Oskar, I believe it. With that reassurance, I sink into black, empty sleep without regard for anyone or anything around me.

I jerk awake to the noise of a groan. Tense and wary, I sit up as I hear it again—the sound of suffering. It beads my skin with cold sweat, awakening memories of the days I spent clinging to life and wishing for death. The cavern is mostly dark, and Freya is breathing deep and slow next to me, clearly asleep. But in a crack of open space between the pelt and the wooden frame, I see that the fire's still burning in the front chamber. A flicker of movement draws me to the space to peek out.

Oskar lies wrapped in fur next to the fire, so close to it that I'd think he'd be sweating. But instead, he's shivering violently. I push the pelt aside and crawl closer, wondering if he's hurt or sick. But then he rolls onto his back.

His breath puffs from his parted lips in a frigid white cloud. His eyeballs move rapidly beneath his closed eyelids, and he moans like he's having a nightmare. I scoot forward a few more inches and then freeze in place.

As Oskar lets out a pained sigh, ice crystals grow along his dark eyelashes, turning them white.

F
reya stirs and mutters in her sleep, so I slip back to my pallet, my mind reeling with what I've just witnessed. While Oskar's dreams held him prisoner, a thin crust of frost covered his skin, spreading along his cheeks, turning his short, scraggly beard white like an old man's. His jaw flexed and his face twisted into a grimace, temporarily melting the ice, but a few minutes later, it had formed again.

It seemed painful. Exhausting.

Magical. There's nothing else it could be. And I remember what Kauko said about the terrible dreams:
It is a burden the most powerful wielders must bear.

When I finally hear Oskar rise from his place by the fire, I close my eyes not a second too soon. He pulls back the pelt-curtain between us. “Elli?” he whispers.

I yawn and stretch like I'm just waking up. “Yes?”

“Can I talk to you?”

I get up off the pallet and follow him into the front chamber. Outside the fur walls, people are moving about, starting their day. “Is everything all right?” Fear makes my stomach churn. If he asks me to leave, I'll have nowhere to go.

“Everything's fine.” He rubs at his face. The ice is gone, but he looks tired. “I just want to make sure you know enough about what's going on here to stay out of trouble.”

“Trouble,” I echo, remembering all Raimo's warnings, especially what he said about me being a weapon or an asset in the hands of any wielder. “Trouble is the last thing I want.”

He nods. “I know you have contempt for magic. Many people in the city feel the same.”

“It doesn't seem that way on the ceremony days.”

“Maybe not for the magic itself, then . . .” Oskar shrugs. “But some are mistrustful of
people
who can do magic. I'm just saying I understand it if you feel the same. If you mention that around here, though, some will take offense.”

“Are they so loyal to the Valtia and her priests?” The idea is terrifying—what happens if they find out about me? Will they give me up?

Oskar scuffs his boot along the rocky floor. “No,” he mutters. “It's not that.”

I meet his inscrutable gray eyes. “It's because some of the people here are magic wielders too.”
Like you.

He gives me a small smile, like he's happy I understand. “Exactly. It's best not to talk about it, though. Not to call attention to it if you see it.”

“I think I get what you mean.” I clench my jaw to keep the questions from bursting forth.

He's picking up his hunting tools now, fixing some of them to the leather belt around his waist. “Nonmagical people get along fine here if they leave everyone else in peace. People aren't looking for a fight.” His eyes narrow for a moment. “Well, most of them, at least.”

I'm dying to ask why none of these wielders are at the temple where they should be, especially because it brings the guarantee of education and three meals a day, of safety and belonging, but I manage to hold back. “So nonmagical people like me should keep their mouths shut.”

He pats my shoulder. “And like me. Just do as I do—you don't have to keep your mouth shut, but don't pry into people's business.”

I stare at Oskar, turning his bold-faced lie over in my head. If I call him on it, he might toss me out of his home—especially because he didn't want me here to begin with. “Thanks for the advice.”

He pulls his cloak over his shoulders. “I have to hunt.”

I watch his boots shuffling toward the exit to the shelter. “I won't keep you.”

He's quiet for a moment. But then—“Elli? My mother said you did an excellent job with the corn yesterday.”

My head bobs up, but he's already gone. Even so, the strangest sense of accomplishment floods my chest. I'm not useless. I can grind corn, and put on stockings, and tie a kerchief, and relieve myself without an attendant holding my gown up for me. All things I'd never done before yesterday.

Over the next week, I learn to be useful in other ways. Maarika teaches me how to use the loom. She puts me to work using a thick copper needle to stitch a few pelts together. I chop herbs and pluck pheasants and patch holes in the elbows of Oskar's heavy winter tunic, eager to stay busy in the shelter and avoid the mistrustful stares and general notice of the other cave dwellers. What if the elders are searching for me, as Raimo feared? Would they ever think to look here?

Maarika peeks in on me often, her gray eyes somber and fathomless. She never smiles, but she doesn't scold, either. If I make a mistake, she merely shows me how to do it right, and she is careful with my damaged hand, patient when I can't quite manage something. I put all my gratitude into my work. Every night I fall onto my pallet exhausted and hurting but relieved; I wasn't a burden today. I was useful.

It is a livable life. I think of Mim every day, but the ache grows more bearable. The same is true of the realization that I will never be queen, that I will never feel the magic awaken inside of me—that I am already all I will ever be. Sometimes it even feels like I'm less, especially when my hand burns like it's been dipped in molten iron, when it's so sensitive to touch that the slightest brush against it forces me to stifle a scream. But I learn to endure that pain as well. I am scarred, and I will never be what I was before, but I'm growing stronger.

Oskar seems to be doing the opposite, though. He comes in from days of hunting with his sled piled high with field-dressed game, enough to make the other men grumble with jealousy, but his lips are gray with cold and it takes an hour in front of the fire for him to stop shaking. He's grown his beard while many young men go clean-shaven. He eats his soup boiling and it's never hot enough for him. And the nights are the worst. He tosses and turns, his racked breaths huffing from him in a glitter of ice crystals. As the days pass, colder and colder, he grows silent and weary.

I lose count of how many times I almost cross the room to lay a hand on his shoulder, in the quiet hope that I could offer him some comfort. There is something about him that tugs at me. I find myself wanting to put my hands on either side of his face and tell him that I know what he is, ask him how I can help. But the only time he looks at me is in the morning as he leaves. He always turns back right before he steps out of the shelter.

“Elli? You did a good job with the patching.” He raises his elbow and wobbles it in front of me, showing off my somewhat clumsy job. “Like new.”