The Impostor Queen

  “And here’s the main cavern,” Oskar says in a low voice, leaning against a rocky ledge and sweeping his arm across the scene. “Otherwise known as the den of thieves. Don’t they look vicious?”

  Several of the cavern’s inhabitants have noticed our entrance. One by one, they stop what they’re doing to stare at me. “They don’t exactly look friendly,” I mutter, taking a step back.

  Oskar’s large hand closes over my shoulder. “They know you’re under my protection,” he says, waving at a stout, brown-bearded man standing near the big fire. The man raises his hand to acknowledge Oskar, then returns to tossing split logs onto the flames. “Newcomers make them wary. Mind your own business, and—”

  “Oskar!” cries a piping voice. A young girl, perhaps ten years of age, comes darting out of a shelter on our left. Two braids of dark hair on either side of her head flap as she runs. “Is this her?” she huffs as she stops in front of us.

  “No, this is the other girl I rescued from a bear trap.”

  She slaps Oskar’s fur-covered arm. “You are so grumpy when the cold comes.” Her green eyes are full of energy as she turns to me. “Why is your dress on backward?” she asks, looking at my awkwardly high neckline. Raimo strikes again. “And what’s wrong with your hair?”

  My left hand rises to my kerchief. “I . . .”

  “Her hand is injured, and she hasn’t had the benefit of a mirror for several days,” says Oskar, saving me from revealing my ignorance. “Or of female company. That’s where you come in.” He gestures at the girl. “This little bandit is Freya.” He reaches out and tugs one of her braids. “My darling sister and a budding master thief.”

  “Thief?” The girl scowls. “What in stars are you going on about—”

  “Of course you’re not a thief,” I say, glaring at her big brother, who merely looks back at me with challenge in his eyes. “It’s nice to meet you, Freya. I’m Elli.” I give her a curtsy, as I’ve seen Mim do so many times.

  Freya snorts and imitates me, confirming that I’ve done something stupid. “All right, Elli, come on. My mother wants to meet you, and Oskar needs to go kill some furry woodland creatures.”

  Oskar touches her shoulder. “Freya, if the alarm is sounded—”

  She lifts her chin. “I know what to do. I can take care of myself and her, too.”

  Oskar grins, his whole face brightening, and he tugs Freya into a quick, fierce hug. She disappears into the folds of his cloak and emerges with her hair mussed and a big smile on her face. “I’ll be back in a few hours,” he says.

  Freya grabs for my right hand, but Oskar knocks her arm away just in time. “Remember what I told you about her hand!”

  “Oh! Right,” Freya says, then grabs my left and begins to pull me toward their shelter. I look over my shoulder for Oskar, but he’s already striding toward the exit to the main cavern like he’s glad to be rid of my company. I push down a strange twinge of disappointment and follow Freya, flashing a smile at anyone who’ll meet my eyes. Most of them offer hard stares in return. I’m relieved when we duck into a shelter, which is sectioned into three small areas separated by walls made of animal fur. There’s a wide space at the front containing a small loom, a grinding stone with a pestle lying on top of it, a fire pit, and a large pile of tools, many I don’t know the names for. I’ve never seen such things outside the pages of the books used for my studies, and part of me wants to go over and pick each one up, just to see how they feel in my hands. The rest of me realizes that would only make me look more foolish than I already do.

  The front chamber of this shelter is large enough to allow two tall men to lie head to head, and deep enough to allow one tall man—like Oskar—to lie straight. The fur walls, which are made from several different animal pelts stitched together with burlap string, are rich brown, glinting in the light of the small fire in the stone-bounded pit.

  A woman about my height, her light-brown hair knotted into a bun on the back of her head, emerges from one of the smaller areas, moving aside a thick, furry pelt that’s been nailed to the tall wooden frame. She looks like she’s in her midthirties, her forehead creased and weather-worn. Her gray eyes focus in on my clearly ridiculous hair arrangement, and her lips press together. “You must be Elli.”

  “I am, and you . . . ?”

  “Maarika.” She’s much paler than Oskar, who clearly spent the entire summer in the sun, and her appearance is neat, not a hair out of place, the opposite of Oskar’s disheveled roughness. But they have one thing in common—they are both very difficult to read.

  I curtsy again, because I have no idea what else to do, but Maarika only frowns at me. “Thank you for taking me in,” I say. “I’d like to do anything I can to—”

  “Can you grind some corn for me?” she asks. “I’m trying to make Oskar a new tunic to replace the one he shredded last week, and Freya’s needed to fetch the water.” She doesn’t say it in an unfriendly or harsh way. It seems like she’s simply informing me of the reality of their lives. “Well?” she asks when I hesitate. “Can you?”

  I blink at her, stiffly moving the fingers of my right hand within the long sleeve of my dress and trying not to wince as the raw flesh rubs against my bandages. “Ah . . . yes. Of course.”

  She bobs her head. “Wonderful.” She points to a pile of dried-out corncobs, their husks pulled back, sitting in a basket woven from green twigs. “Corn’s there.” She points to a wooden bowl sitting next to the grinding stone. “Put it there when you’re done.”

  She disappears back into the small, torch-lit chamber at the back of the shelter. I slowly move toward the corncobs, my heart thumping. I’ve read about this vegetable, how it’s planted and harvested, how it’s an important crop for our people. But . . . the only time I’ve actually seen real corn is when it’s been served to me on a plate, kernels roasted and plump and sweet. I know it can also be dried and ground into meal—and I also know that the pestle and grinding stone are used for that purpose. I smile. I can do this. It can’t be that hard. I kneel, pick up a cob, and place it on the grinding stone. The moment I reach for the pestle, I hear a giggle from behind me.

  “Who taught you to do it that way?” Freya kneels by my side. She picks up the cob and strips the kernels off with strong, confident strokes of her thumbs. The tiny golden nuggets fall with little plinks to the grinding stone. When she’s finished, she piles kernels into the shallow depression, picks up the broad pestle, and crushes them with quick, decisive twists of her skinny wrist. She offers me the pestle. “Like that.”

  I blow out a breath through my pursed lips. “Of course. Like that.” I accept the pestle. It’s heavier than it looks, rough against my thin, untested skin.

  She tilts her head and gazes up at me. “Your kerchief really looks silly.” Without asking permission, she unknots it, then folds it on a diagonal so it forms a triangle instead of a long rectangle as I had done. I feel like such a fool, but am grateful as she flattens it over my head and ties it at the nape of my neck, beneath my thick locks. Next, she tugs on my sleeve. Seeing what she intends, I pull my arms in, and she turns my dress around so that it’s no longer backward.

  “Thank you so much,” I whisper.

  “I’m sorry about your fingers,” she says, looking down at my bandaged hand as it emerges from the sleeve. “Does it make you very sad?”

  I bow my head so she doesn’t see the tears starting in my eyes. Missing two fingers feels like a drop in the Motherlake compared to all the other things I’ve lost. “Not too sad,” I say, trying to weave a bit of cheerfulness into my tone. “I’m glad to be alive.”

  “I’m glad you’re alive too.” Freya gets up and grabs a large wooden bucket from the corner. “We can always use an extra pair of hands, even if one of them has only three fingers.” She ducks through the curtain of fur.

  I stare after her, fighting the crazy urge to laugh and cry at the same time. A fortnight ago, I was the someday queen, and now I’m an eight-fingered girl with a
back full of scars, whose only worth is in doing things I have no idea how to do. I used to be loved by an entire people, and now the only person in the entire world who cares about me is Mim, and I’ve lost her. She might even be punished because of me. At the very least, I’ve left her worried sick. I rub my hand over my chest, which feels like it’s being squeezed in the grip of a giant. What I wouldn’t give for her to appear and wrap her arms around me.

  I swipe my sleeve over my eyes, and then my body buckles, unable to withstand the weight of my grief for another second. I wrap my arms around myself and lay my forehead on the cold grinding stone. I’ve lost everything.

  “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.

  CHAPTER 11

  Freya 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 terr
ifying—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.”