The Impostor Queen (5 page)

T
he square erupts into worried muttering. A few people race for their homes, but most of the crowd seems riveted in place, still gaping at us. I stand stiffly on my paarit as the Valtia touches the cuff of Astia and turns to me. “You must go back to the Temple on the Rock,” she says. Her perfect white makeup is chipped and cracking around her mouth, and the hair at her temples is damp with sweat. “Aleksi, take her.”

For a moment I allow myself to be pulled backward by the elder, but then a wave of pure urgency crashes over me. “What are you going to do?”

She gives me a small smile, but her pale-blue eyes glint with ice. “I'm going to bury their ships at the bottom of the Motherlake.”

The fishermen look up at her in awe. “Valtia,” says the old one, his voice hushed, “there are so many. It will take more than a cold wind to throw them off their chosen course.”

She gazes down at him. “I know.” Her eyes meet mine again. “Go. You belong in the temple.”

Something about the way she says it makes my entire body clench. “Take me with you,” I blurt out. For some insane reason, I feel like I should go. Like I
must
go.

Her brow furrows, further cracking her formerly perfect shell. “Darling, there's nothing you can do. Someday this will be your duty. Today, it's mine.”

Because today I'm a powerless, ordinary girl. An empty vessel, waiting for the magic to fill it. Aleksi's fingers close around my upper arm and guide me to my chair. “My Saadella, you'll be safe in the temple.”

“Safe?” I blink at him. There is worry in his eyes, and it makes me want to slap his smooth, round face.

His cheeks turn red as if I already have, and he bows to me. “The Valtia will keep us all safe, but her mind will be more focused if she knows you're well protected,” he says in a tight voice.

My Valtia regards the elder coolly, then steps forward and takes my hand. “Tonight we'll dine together, just like we planned.” She squeezes my clammy fingers and sends warmth flowing along my skin. “Elli,” she says quietly. “I'll see you very soon.”

Even though I don't want her to go, fierce pride beats within my breast as I look at her. “I can't wait for that moment, my Valtia.” I will my voice into steadiness, just like hers. “And I'll keep watch from my balcony so I can see you return in victory.”

Her smile brightens. “Until then.” She lifts my palm to her lips, laying a tender kiss there. It leaves a smear of red on my skin. Then she lets me go and takes her seat. “Quickly now,” she says to the bearers.

They carry her away from me. A moment later, my own bearers lift my paarit from the platform and whisk me down the steps. The acolytes and apprentices press the citizens back to give us a path. The jubilant mood has been siphoned away, replaced with brittle fear. Their faith is weak. Their doubt so easily overwhelms them. It's pathetic. The Valtia can raise infernos with her fingertips. She can wield icebergs with her thoughts. She creates a dome of warmth over our city that lasts from the end of fall to the beginning of spring. What other people in this cold climate can grow fruits and vegetables in the frigid winter months? What city can build any time of year because the ground never freezes? Only us! All because of her power, which she uses only to serve them.

And yet, they seem cowed and uneasy as they look up at me. Suddenly this paint on my face feels like a prison. I want to scrape it from my skin and burst forth, vengeful and shouting. Instead I sit placidly as my bearers jog up the road to the temple, which sits at the northernmost tip of the peninsula that juts like a giant, curving thumb deep into the waters of the Motherlake.

I hold my head high as we move. I want everyone to see that I, for one, am not scared. I'm not. I'm
not
. Yes, my heart is beating like a dragonfly's wings. Yes, my palms are sweating over the armrests of my grand chair. But that's only because I'm hot and frustrated. Not because I'm scared for my Valtia. She'll crush those Soturi. I saw the promise in her eyes.

She doesn't break her promises.

The bearers mount the steps leading up to the temple. The blond young man at the right front side, the one who tried to steal an extra peek at my face, stumbles halfway up. My paarit lurches forward, and I grit my teeth to hold in the scream. But before I topple off the chair, the corner jerks upward. Kauko—who always remains behind to guard the temple on ceremony days—stands in the pillared entrance to the domed chamber, his fist raised as he commands the swirling icy-hot air around my paarit. The elder releases his grip only when an apprentice rushes forward and grabs the pole. As the blond bearer stammers his frantic apologies, more apprentices and acolytes crowd around, helping the bearers heft the weight of my paarit and my dress and my useless, as-yet-unmagical body. We move up the steps again.

A few minutes later they've put me down and disappeared, leaving me alone in my own corridor, waiting for my maids. More than anything, I need Mim, and it's all I can do not to call her name. But before I reach my breaking point, she's at my side, taking my arm and guiding me off my paarit and into my chamber.

“Do you want the others to come help?” she asks me.

“No. Please. Can you just do it?” Right now I couldn't stand to have all the maids quivering with anxiety and whispering gossip as they work on me.

She gives me a quick nod and undresses me with practiced fingers. She huffs with strain as she lifts my dress from the floor and strides to the door with it. I close my eyes as I listen to her giving the other maids orders to put it back in its special case in the catacombs below the temple. She's gone but a moment and then I feel a cool, dripping cloth on my chest, wiping the lead paint from my skin. “Please hurry,” I say, my fists clenching and unclenching.

“I am, Elli,” she replies in a strained voice. “I know this is hard. I know you're scared.”

“I'm
not
scared!” I shriek, so abruptly that she stumbles back. “How dare you suggest that? Your doubt is probably weighing heavy on her, right when she most needs her strength!” My voice breaks over the rocks of my rage. I can't get the sight of the Valtia's bandaged arms out of my head.

Mim's eyes are round as dinner plates. “S-s-aadella,” she stammers, “I'm so sorry.”

The shock on her face brings me so much shame that it burns. Tears start in my eyes and overflow in a mere second. “Apologies,” I whisper. “Please continue.”

She approaches me as if I'm a wounded bear, and I feel like I'm going to be sick. But I hold everything inside as she finishes cleaning my chest and neck and face. She gingerly removes my copper circlet, then draws my arms through my nightgown and pulls it down over my head. “Would you like something to eat?”

“I'll be eating with the Valtia when she returns.” I take a step backward. “Until then, I'll be on my balcony.” I whirl around, and she races ahead of me to pull the heavy wooden doors open. I stride through them. “Please don't disturb me.”

Her only reply is the sound of the doors closing behind me. Reeling with the loss of the cheers, the thrill of the day, and my precious, rare time at the queen's side, I move to the railing. In the distance, the tiny silhouettes of three sailing vessels float away from our peninsula and into the open water of the Motherlake. The sun draws its yellow tongue along the surface of the waves, rendering them golden and sparkling. It's slowly sinking into the west, casting the boats' shadows long as they cut through the lake, moving north. The oars move steadily and in perfect synchrony. The sailors know they carry the queen, and they know what's at stake.

I stare at the northern horizon. Somewhere beyond it lies the seat of the Soturi empire. They're coming for us, planning to take us over right at the harvest, just before the winter descends. No other people has dared to test us before, but these barbarians are different, descending from the far north and spreading southward like a plague. Until now, they have been satisfied with small-scale raids, killing and looting, burning what they can't steal. It happens at least a dozen times each year at various spots along the coast, and each year there are a few more than the last. But this summer they took the entire city-state of Vasterut, and now they've set their sights on Kupari. What has changed?

At the point where lake meets sky, the water has turned dark and spiny. My breath catches in my throat—it's the masts of the Soturi longships. There are so many of them that they seem to take up half the Motherlake.

I grip the stone railing and lean forward. “Your boots will never touch our shores,” I say, my voice dripping with menace.

Because I can see it now, the swirl of clouds over the Motherlake. And I know what my Valtia is going to do.

“Would you like me to make you a storm?” she asked as we ate roasted sweet potatoes and parsnips in her chambers, lounging and relaxed after a long harvest ceremony.

“Inside?” I asked. “How is that possible?”

Her eyes flashed with mischief. She rose from her pillows, her cream-colored gown flowing around her body as she moved to the carved stone bathing pool in the corner of her chamber. I followed, fascinated by the flex of her fingers, by the power I could already feel in the air. She gazed down upon the smooth surface of the water. “It's not that hard. Watch.”

She flattened her left palm high over the water and moved it in a slow circle. “Cold air up here,” she told me. Then she scooped her right hand into the water and raised it slowly, turning it to steam before it could drip from her fingers. “And lots of warm, wet air down here.”

I stared in awe as she kept moving both her hands in those unhurried rotations, as the air began to swirl and crackle. And then, clouds of vapor burst from nothing. She grinned when my mouth dropped open.

As the first droplets of rain hit the surface of the bathing pool, I started to giggle. “Amazing!”

She winked at me as she contained the tiny storm, as she made it hail and rain. And then she made all of it vanish in an instant. I laughed with delight. “Did one of the elders teach you that? I wish they'd teach me about magic. I'm so tired of reading about agriculture and constellations and the life cycle of a cow and—”

“They want you to understand our world before you wield magic that can change it.” She looked down at the water dripping from her fingers. “And as for your first question, no. They didn't teach me that trick. My Valtia did,” she said quietly, drying her hands on a cloth. “And someday, maybe you'll show it to your Saadella.”

“Assuming I'm ever that good,” I said, unable to contain my awe of her—and my own uncertainty.

She nudged my chin up. “When you are the Valtia, you'll be better than good, Elli. You may doubt anything in this world, but never doubt yourself.”

My eyes fix on the churning clouds as they roll chaotically in the sky, spreading outward. A distant crack of thunder splits the quiet. “Never doubt,” I whisper.

As the storm takes shape, the three boats disappear into the darkness like they're passing through a veil. The sky roils, turning purplish green as lightning flashes down in jagged, bright blades. I picture the bolts stabbing the Soturi longships, breaking them in half, sending barbarians tumbling into the waiting mouth of the Motherlake.

May she grind their bones in her watery jaws.

I cheer when I feel drops of rain on my face. The storm is so massive that its edges lick at our city, spitting pellets of ice. I can only imagine what it's doing to the barbarians. I wish I could see what's happening, especially when the first waterspout erupts, rising so high that it kisses the raging, swirling thunderclouds. It goes on and on, the wind becoming an animal roar in my ears.

There's a crash behind me, and Mim grabs my shoulders. “Come inside!” she shouts over the gale.