The Impostor Queen (40 page)

“I hear them,” Sig says, kicking his horse into a gallop.

Raimo curses and does the same, and Oskar and the other wielders follow close behind. I hold on tight to the skinny old man in front of me, both of us puffing with the exertion of trying to stay in the saddle. We're nearly to the square, and already I can see the crowds, arms waving and hands fisted, all pressing up the northern road that leads to the temple. “It looks like we're not the only ones who decided to storm the temple,” Oskar calls.

We ride to the outskirts of the main square, which is full of enraged citizens bearing whatever weapons they've been able to find—mostly the tools of their trade, scythes, bows, hammers. The Kupari have never had an army. We've never needed it, never wanted it—all because the elders didn't want anyone challenging their rule, so they convinced us that the Valtia would take care of us forever.

And now, without her, we're helpless.

“Oy!” Oskar shouts as he reins in his mount near the back of the crowd. “What's happening?”

A stout man with curly blond hair and a wind-chapped face gives us a puzzled look. “Where've you been in the last day? The priests have locked themselves and our new Valtia inside the temple, and we want to see her! The barbarians are coming one way or the other—overland or by the lake, and we want to know what she'll do about it!”

“Let us through,” Sig shouts.

The red-cheeked man looks at him like he's crazy. “You think I can magically move thousands of people out of your way?”

Sig's eyes glow and he lifts his hand, tongues of flame dripping from his fingertips. “No, but I can.” A ball of flame bursts forth from his palm, and he hurls it over the heads of the mob.

Oskar lets out a frustrated sound and swipes his arm through the air, his movements in synchrony with Raimo's. Extinguished by their magic, the fireball disappears just before it lands in the middle of the crowd. “You arse,” Oskar hisses. “You could have killed dozens.”

Sig's grin is pure war. “That's what I came here to do, brother.” His pale arms are tense as he spurs his horse forward. But the crowd merely shouts and heaves, too packed in and confused to move aside. My stomach clenches—if they panic, we'll have a stampede, and innocent people will die.

Raimo pulls his walking stick from the back of the horse and pokes the stout man, who is gaping up at Sig in silent terror. “You're going to help us. Because I have the true Valtia right here. She'll get the priests to open up.”

The man tears his eyes from Sig. “What?”

“What are you doing?” I whisper.

“You won't recognize her without her ceremonial makeup, but look closely,” says Raimo, amusement in his voice. “Coppery hair, pale-blue eyes.” He elbows me in the belly. “Show them the mark.”

A few other people have turned toward us, and the noise of the crowd has quieted a bit. My lips barely move as I speak right into Raimo's whiskery ear. “You know as well as I do that I'm not—”

“Ah, she's a modest thing. Didn't want be seen without her makeup and fancy dress,” Raimo shouts to the crowd.

More people are peering at us. I have to look away from Oskar when I see the raw worry in his eyes.

“Do you want to get through this mob without hurting them, or do you want Sig to burn the whole city down?” Raimo whispers. “Show them the mark, and I'll take care of the rest.”

My hands shake as I pull my skirt up and clamp my three fingers over it as I slide my stocking down my left leg. It's an odd, intimate thing to do in front of a crowd of gawkers, and my heart slams against my breast as my blood-flame mark is revealed. The gasp rolls through the entire square, followed by a flurry of anxious muttering.

“Was that other Valtia an impostor?”

“We thought her magic turned on her—but was it all fake?”

“Who is this girl? Could she really be the lost—”

“Let us through!” Sig shouts again. “I got your Valtia right here! Let us through!”

Oskar edges his mount close, like he's prepared to kill anyone who makes a grab for me. But already the crowd is stepping aside, offering us a path. Waves of bitter cold flow from my ice wielder as we move forward.

“Keep it up and you'll kill your horse,” Raimo says to Oskar as we weave our way among the scythe-wielding citizens, all the way to the north end of the square. Atop the Valtia's platform, the burned remains of her ceremonial paarit remain, copper solidified in oozy dribbles along its sides, riveting it to the stones beneath it. I stare at it to avoid the eyes of the citizens, who are looking at me as if I'm their salvation. It kills me to offer them a second false Valtia in as many days, especially when I hear the jubilant whispers. “It really
is
her! She's come back! Stars save us, she's returned.”

They chatter about how they recognize me, even though some of them probably kicked mud in my face when I was banished from the city. They wonder aloud where I've been, whether I really did go mad as the rumors said. They talk about me as if I can't hear them, and I'm happy to pretend that's true.

Sig is on my right, Oskar on my left. Both of them have set jaws and fierce looks, and the oddest thing is happening around me—the air swirls with wisps of cold and hot, sliding across my face and gusting my hair. “On my signal,” Raimo says quietly.

“On your signal, what?” I whisper.

“I'm not talking to you,” he mutters.

As I look between the two buildings that bound the northern road, I can see our path to the ceremonial gates. The constables and the councilmen mill about several yards away, their brown cloaks pulled tight around them as they argue in urgent tones. They've always depended on the elders to tell them how the Valtia wants the city to be run, and in exchange for their cooperation, they've grown rich and fat—and indecisive.

The head of the council, a man named Topias who I've watched on several harvest days, passing his requests for favors from the Valtia to the elders while they all dined on venison and grilled trout, notices our arrival and stalks forward. “What's this I hear about the Valtia?” he says in a rumbling voice, his thick brown beard brushing his heavy copper councilman's medallion as he speaks. “We know citizens want action, but we're trying to negotiate with the elders—”

“You don't have to, since I have the true Valtia right here,” Raimo replies, slapping at my calf until I hold it out and show the councilman my mark.

“If you're really the queen,” says Topias, removing his embroidered velvet cap and smoothing his hand over the few wiry strands of hair on the top of his head, “you'll have to prove it.” He gives me a cautious look.

I sit straighter in the saddle behind Raimo, even though my fear is making it hard to breathe. His cold hand closes over mine, and I feel the pulse of his power magnified by my own. “Very well,” I say in a high, quavering voice.

“Gates,” Raimo breathes.

I lift my left hand and point at the gates.

They glow and crackle. I can feel Raimo tugging more power from within me, and I don't fight it. The councilmen dive away from the solid copper slabs as they undulate with heat. And then a sudden burst of ferocious, icy air whooshes forward. The gates explode inward.

The crowd cheers. “She's returned! We're saved!” the councilmen shout.

“Nice work, Valtia,” Raimo says, looking over his shoulder at me.

He turns to the front in time to be hit in the face with a blast of ice. As councilmen scatter in panic, Raimo collapses against me, giving me a view of the white plaza through the shattered gates.

It's filled with at least a hundred black-robed acolytes, hands outstretched, ready to defend the temple to their last breath.

I
catch a glimpse of the priests and apprentices pouring from the temple entrance before Sig yanks me from the saddle. I grab for Raimo—the old man is so fragile that the fall could kill him—but he's already disappeared over the other side of our horse.

“Oskar has him,” Sig says, then holds my hand tightly and sends a horrific blast of flame straight through the gates. The screams of the acolytes jitter down my spine as Sig drags me to the side, behind a marble pillar on one side of the destroyed gateway. A terrible, gut-wrenching noise behind me signals that at least one of our horses has been hit by ice or fire. The wielders who came with us are on either side of the gates, their backs against the low stone walls. Aira's pale-green eyes are alight with fear. Veikko's hands are shaking. Oskar presses in next to me a moment later, panting, Raimo in his arms. “Elli,” he says, but I'm already reaching for the old man. I grab his limp hands to siphon the excess cold.

Raimo's pale eyes flutter open. “You'll have to get through them. Or convince them to join us.”

The acolytes are battling for the very men who plan to drink their blood. It's so twisted, but as the blasts of fire and ice come shooting out from the white plaza, I'm not sure how to make them listen to us.

“We have to show them the Valtia's power,” Oskar says, looking down at me. “If we want to get through without killing, you have to make them believe.”

“I'm all right with killing a few,” snarls Sig, but I jerk my hand away as he reaches for it, unwilling to let him use me until I have a chance to figure this out.

“You'd rather eliminate our one advantage?” he asks. “That's what happens if we're separated. Raimo said we were supposed to fight together!”

I peer around the pillar and watch a small acolyte stumble over his own too-long robe at the bottom of the steps. And when he throws back his hood, I see that it's Niklas, the little boy Aleksi brought to the temple all those weeks ago. “Maybe this isn't the war Raimo prophesied. I'm not sure fighting is what we're supposed to do right now.”

Sig lets out a sound of pure frustration. “Go on, then. Just remember—you might be immune to magic, but that doesn't mean they can't hurt you.”

Oskar touches my sleeve. “He's right.”

I let out a long, slow breath. “It's worth the risk. If we shock them, maybe they'll stop long enough to hear us out. And if they won't, I trust you to get to me in time.”

“Oskar, use the fountains. Can you?” Raimo asks.

Oskar, strands of his dark hair skimming along his cheeks, looks toward the two massive fountains in the plaza, each burbling with water year-round because the temple is heated with magic. The twin statues of the Valtia tower above them. “I can try,” he says quietly, tossing me an anxious glance. “My control—”

“I'll help you,” says Raimo wearily. “You have the power, but I have the technique.”

Oskar nods, but he looks worried, and I can't blame him—Raimo's breaths are shallow and unsteady, and he can barely hold his head up. “We can do this, but then you're staying back,” Oskar says to him. “If you go in there, you'll die.”

Raimo seems too weak to argue.

“I'll cap it off,” says Sig, as if he already senses what they're going to do. “They need to see both ice and fire together.”

“And I'll look the part,” I mumble.

“Move your hands,” says Oskar, “so they think it's coming from you.”

“Sig could sense that the magic wasn't coming from Mim. Will they—”

“We don't want to give them time to,” says Raimo. “Make this quick.”

Sig gives me a little push, and I step from behind the pillar. The acolytes grit their teeth and the air warps around me. Sig curses, and I walk forward quickly to draw the heat away from him. The acolytes' eyes go wide as I stride into the white plaza, my arms rising from my sides, my coppery hair flying about my face. The water in the fountains glitters with ice that suddenly spirals into the air. It's as if the frozen column is drawing the liquid straight up from the Motherlake, growing thicker and whiter as it builds on itself, forming an arch over the marble slabs of this plaza, higher than the towering statues, nearly as high as the dome of the temple. The acolytes around me and the priests and apprentices on the steps stare as the ice shifts and shimmers, creating an intricate lattice over my head.

And then it shatters and melts, raining down—but turning to steam before a drop touches the ground. The acolytes lower their hands and look at me, shock etched on every face.

“I've come back to claim my throne,” I say, praying to the stars that only I can hear the unsteadiness of my words. “The elders and priests have lost their way, but I can set things right.”

One of the acolytes steps forward, and the spots on her face stir my memories. “Valtia,” Meri says in a broken voice. “Is it you?”

I smile at her. “It's me, Meri.” She was a ray of kindness in a storm of cruelty. I hold out my hand to her.

She pushes her black hood back and walks toward me, her face alight with joy. But her smile becomes a scream as her robe bursts into flame. The acolytes around her stagger back as she shrieks in pain, the flames devouring her, smoke billowing into the air. I look across the plaza, toward the steps leading up to the temple, and spot Armo the former apprentice, his face twisted and his hands clawed as he burns Meri down. My eyes narrow as rage pulses through me—she was his
friend
.