The Impostor Queen

by Sarah Fine

  “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 leani
ng 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.

  He moves closer, until his hooked nose is only a few inches from mine. He smells of fish and wet fur. “I am going to ask you a question, and it is very important that you answer me truthfully. Your life depends on this truth. Understand?”

  I nod, though my heart is thumping madly.

  “Do you have a mark?”

  “Wh-what?” I whisper. “Why are you asking me that?” Panic swirls inside me. How could he know?

  He smirks as he reads the fear in my eyes. “You’re not strong enough to stop me if I want to search for it, but it will be easier if you’d just tell me where it is. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  I search for malice in his eyes, but I see nothing except ice. Cold, but not evil. I hope. “On my leg.”

  He wrenches the hem of my skirt up. I know the moment he sees it, because he curses. “It’s certainly hard to miss. Oskar—has he seen this?”

  “No.”

  “Does anyone outside the temple know who you are?”

  I think of Mim, but I refuse to expose her to more danger. “No.”

  “Good. No one can know. Stars, I’ve been waiting so long for this.” He moves back up to my head and takes my face in his gnarled hands. “You were born the day Karhu and Susi aligned, yes? Do you know?”

  “No . . .” But Kauko said the stars predicted my birth—was this what he was talking about?

  Raimo’s chin trembles as he smiles. “You might have secrets, but you’re terrible at keeping them. You’ve been a princess all these years, haven’t you?”

  My skin burns with shame, and I close my eyes.

  “You’re the one who was found,” he says. “They thought you were her. But you’re not.”

  A low sob escapes from my throat as he flays me with the truth. “How can you possibly know this?”

  He lets out a bark of laugher. “Because I am very good at keeping secrets. So—what happened when you didn’t inherit the magic? Did you run away, or did they cast you out?”

  “I ran. They . . . were going to kill me.”

  He grins as if I’ve given him wonderful news. “Ah, they never figured it out!” He claps his hands over his thighs, which are covered in a black robe very much like the ones the priests wear. “Well, you’ve complicated my evening. Try to keep breathing while I prepare a few poultices.”

  I frown. “But you were healing me with magic.”

  The shadows nest in the hollows under his eyes and make his face look like a skull. “I was trying. But as it turns out, that won’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  Something akin to delight deepens the rows of wrinkles on his gaunt cheeks. “Because you, my dear, are completely immune to magic. It won’t help you.” He raises his eyebrows. “But it can’t hurt you either.”

  I blink at him in confusion. “What are you saying?”

  “There are more magic wielders in this land than you could possibly know.” His gaze strays down to my leg, where my blood-flame mark lies stark and red on my exposed calf. “And to every one of them, you could be either their most powerful asset—or their worst enemy.”

  CHAPTER 9

  I draw my dry tongue across my chapped lips. “You’re saying I definitely have no magic?”

  “Not an ounce. Not a jot. Not a drop.” Raimo has moved from my side and is hunched over a wooden board, chopping herbs that fill the room with a fresh, astringent scent. “Not even a tiny little splinter of it. Not even a—”

  “I get it,” I snap, then cough with the effort. “Then why would anyone think I was dangerous?”

  “All people have some amount of fire and ice inside them. Even if it’s just enough to make them hot-tempered or easygoing. Even if it only makes them fit for ice-fishing or blacksmithing. Even in people not from Kupari, where the copper flows through our veins and enhances those elements in a few, causing it to manifest as magic.”

  “Copper . . . they locked me up in a box of copper. . . .”

  He rolls his eyes. “Of course they did. But you understand—copper is the source. It’s the reason the Kupari have magic when no one else does.” He snorts. “And the Kupari people love their magic—so long as the wielders are shut away tight within the temple walls. But never before has one such as you walked among us, completely devoid of fire and ice.”

  Shame fills me again. “Was I always like this?”

  He shrugs. “Before the Valtia died, you had no ice or fire, but you probably weren’t immune to its effects. You weren’t the vessel you are now, just like the Valtia is an ordinary girl until the magic awakens inside of her.”

  Perhaps his words explain the vast, shapeless void that’s opened inside me, the hollow thump of my heart. The numbness that radiates from my blood-flame mark. “How does that make me anything but useless? I’m a mistake.”

  “You shouldn’t even exist,” he comments as he picks up a wooden-handled pitcher from near the fire and waddles over to me again.

  I close my eyes. “Then let me die.”

  “Not a chance.” Warm water pours over my back, and he begins to peel away the bandages Mim wrapped tightly around me. “Nothing like you has ever existed, Elli. I was starting to believe I’d been wrong all along. But your arrival marks the beginning of a new era for the Kupari. You’re going to change everything, for better or worse.” He makes a sound of disgust as he tosses a bloody strip of cloth away. “Assuming you live out the night, that is.”

  “How could it be anything but worse?” I croak. “The Kupari need a Valtia.”

  “Oh, she’s out there.” He pulls away the final strip of gauze. The cool air of the cave bites at my broken skin, but then he spreads something sticky over the lash wounds. It smells like sage and onion, honey and slippery elm. “In fact,” he says as he works, “she’ll be immeasurably powerful.”

  Like the stars foretold. “How do you know?”

  “Because if she wasn’t, the cosmos wouldn’t have created you to keep the balance.”

  “But the Valtia is balance.” This is a truth embedded in my bones.

  His eyes meet mine. “Not this time.”

  “How do you know so much?” The elders and priests guard their knowledge closely, which has always been incredibly frustrating. And Sofia once told me that most citizens have only the barest understanding of the magic, which makes sense, since the children who reveal themselves as able to wield it are taken to the temple as soon as they’re discovered. Except for this man, apparently. Which could mean only one thing.

  “Were you a priest?”

  His smile glistens in the flickering firelight. “Not during your lifetime.”

  It’s not a denial. “Why did you leave?”

  One of his bushy eyebrows twitches like a living thing. “Let’s just say I found my fellow priests to be a bit bloodthirsty.” He takes my ruined hand and lays it on a clean scrap of brown wool. “This is still oozing. I’m going to have to cauterize it.”

  I shiver. “You said fire wouldn’t affect me.”

  “I said magic wouldn’t affect you. Ordinary flames made from ordinary fuel are a different matter entirely.” He moves close to the fire. I hear the clang of metal. My stomach clenches.

  “What will happen if it’s not cauterized?”

  “You’ll bleed to death. Or possibly die of blood poisoning.”

  Neither of those sounds terrible at the moment. Perhaps Raimo senses my thoughts, because he looks over his shoulder at me. “You were raised as the Saadella, were you not?”

  “I was,” I whisper.

  “So you were brought up with the understanding that you exist to serve the Kupari.”

  I look away from his gaze.

  “Nothing has changed,” he says, his voice right next to my ear. His hand clamps over
my wrist. I feel a flash of heat and then a pain so bright that it lights me up, arches me back, fills the cave with the scent of my burning flesh and the sound of my hoarse screams. White flames burst before my eyes, and I pray to the stars for release that doesn’t come. By the time he’s finished, I’m wishing for death, but he reminds me over and over of my purpose, of my duty, awakening all my memories of my lessons from the elders. My life is not my own. My body belongs to the people. My magic is for them, not for me. Magic. Magic.

  If I could laugh, I would. Raimo is so wrong. Everything has changed.

  I wake with a jolt, tightly encased up to my neck, warm and unable to move. My body feels like it weighs a hundred stone. My eyelids are too heavy to lift. But my ears work perfectly, and now I hear what wrenched me from the void: arguing.

  “Why didn’t you just do it while she was asleep then?” It’s Oskar, his deep voice as sharp as the blades that hang from his belt.

  “You would have me violate the wishes of a young woman simply because she’s vulnerable enough for me to force my will upon her?” Raimo asks. His voice is full of teasing amusement. “My dear boy, I never thought I’d hear such a suggestion from you.”

  Oskar makes a growling sound of pure frustration. “If her wishes were the product of a bigoted, fever-addled brain, then—”

  “Oh, she was quite lucid. Her desires were perfectly clear. No magic. Only the ordinary means of healing.”

  I never said that, did I?

  “Did you explain that she could have been well by now? Did she understand that those ‘ordinary means’ would amount to days of pain and—”

  “Give me some credit. She’s stubborn as a stump.” Raimo’s voice rises in quavering, high-pitched imitation. “ ‘Don’t come near me with that sorcery! I won’t have it!’ ” He cackles.

  Oskar sighs. “If I’d known she felt that way . . .”

  “You’d still have brought her here. And you did the right thing. She’s already better. The fever has broken. She’s going to live, and we should all be thankful for that.”