The Impostor Queen

by Sarah Fine

  I look up at Oskar. “You feel it here in the outlands?”

  He gives me a small smile. “Not nearly as much as in the city, I imagine. We have real winter out here, but she’s kept the harshest cold away until this year.”

  Guilt rises unbidden inside me. Oskar needs that warmth. He’s suffering without it. Aira stands up and approaches his other side. She rubs her hand down his arm. “Thank you,” he murmurs.

  I feel a twinge in my chest as I watch her fingers slide over his sleeve, wishing I could be offering him something too.

  “What if . . . ,” Aira begins. “What if the new Valtia died of grief? What if that’s why there’s no warmth?”

  “That’s another one of the rumors,” says Veikko, moving a little closer to Aira, like he’s hoping she’ll touch him, too. I think she’s a fire wielder, and she’s giving off heat, though I can barely feel it. “The people are demanding to know why there’s been no funeral for the old Valtia, and no coronation for the new one either. It’s not good—especially because there have apparently been sightings of longships off the southeast coast.”

  Luukas goes pale. “From Vasterut?” He shakes his head. “We’d better hope the Motherlake freezes soon. Those Soturi bastards haven’t given up. The Valtia may have destroyed part of their navy, but those weren’t the only forces they’ve got.”

  “How do you know?” I ask. “How big is their empire, and what do they want?” These were all questions the priests dismissed, telling me I would know when I was ready, when I truly needed the information.

  Luukas laughs. “What do they want? Copper. Grain. Meat. Slaves. Anything they can take. For the last fifteen years or so, they’ve been worrying our coastline, a few more raids every year, but nothing more than that. Until they took Vasterut, I would have said they were just a cluster of disorganized tribes, not an empire.”

  “But whatever they were before, now they have an eye for conquest,” I say quietly. I remember when the news arrived at the temple, reaching me through Mim’s clever ears and eyes—the Vasterutian envoy begged for the Valtia’s help, but the elders turned him away without giving him an audience.

  “Aye,” says Veikko. “We should have known they’d come for us next.”

  “But the Valtia laid waste to their navy.” I wiggle the sore fingers of my right hand within my sleeve, remembering the rolling waves and crashing thunder . . . and Mim, holding me through it all. “Surely that will make them think twice before trying again.”

  “Not if they realize we have no Valtia,” says Oskar, staring into the hearth.

  “With no Valtia, we might as well offer ourselves up as slaves right now,” Josefina wails, running her hands, coated with sticky brown dough, through her hair. “The priests won’t save us. They’ve only ever been out for themselves.”

  “And we have no army,” adds Luukas. He shakes his head. “I never thought I’d say it, but I hope the elders in the temple have a plan.”

  “Oh, they do,” Josefina whispers, her hair in matted clumps around her face. “They always do.” She begins to sob, and Maarika puts her arm around the forlorn woman and helps her to her feet, then guides her toward a small shelter near the front of the cavern.

  I swallow hard as I watch them go. Josefina’s right about one thing—the elders are in charge now. But the Kupari need a Valtia. With everything inside me, I wish I was her. I was supposed to be. And if I had been, the people, even these strange cave dwellers, would be safer.

  But I’m nothing.

  I take a few steps toward the back tunnel, desperation filling my hollow chest. “I—I need to—” Thinking of an excuse is too much, so I wave my arm toward the tunnel and blunder forward, my vision blurred with tears. I have to find Raimo. I need him to tell me what I can do. If I’m supposed to make a difference, what is it? I exist for the people—that was etched onto my heart every day I was the Saadella. Raimo insisted that nothing has changed. So how can I stand by while everything crumbles?

  Before I know it, I’ve run past the relief chamber, past the cavern that contains the freezing stream the dwellers use to wash their clothes and bodies, and turned the corner to reach the tunnel that leads to Raimo’s lair. Without torches, the way is dense and inky black. My slippers slide on wet rocks, and my panting breaths are harsh in my ears.

  “Elli!” Oskar’s voice echoes down the tunnel. Orange firelight beats back the darkness. “What in stars are you doing?”

  I lean against the rough, cool tunnel wall as he draws near, the flames from his torch making our shadows dance. “I need to find Raimo,” I say, my voice cracking.

  His brows draw together. “Are you ill?”

  I shake my head. But then I remember that I’m not supposed to tell Oskar anything about myself, so I nod.

  “Well, which is it?” He’s shivering in the dank air of this tunnel.

  “I—I—wanted to ask him . . . about my . . .” I hold up my right hand.

  He lifts the torch and peers at my palm. “The blisters?”

  I pull my hand back and gaze at the torn skin and toughening calluses. “No.” The pain of them is satisfying. It means I’ve worked hard. “It’s actually—” I gesture at my scarred knuckles and say the first thing that comes to me. “You’d think, once they’d been cut off, that they’d really be gone. That I wouldn’t feel them anymore. But the opposite is true.” My voice has become a strangled squeak. “They hurt me more now than they ever did when they were part of me.”

  I’m not just talking about my fingers, I realize. I’m talking about my life. Mim. Sofia. My future. My duty. All sheared away, all haunting me.

  Oskar’s eyes are dark as he moves closer. He offers his embrace hesitantly, like he thinks I might shy away. But I’m so wretched that I accept it, leaning my head on his chest and grimacing, my eyes squeezed shut, the pain of all my ghosts overwhelming me. He strokes my long hair and shushes me as if I were a child. “I didn’t know you were in so much pain,” he says quietly. “You seemed to be doing so well.”

  “I need Raimo.” My hands ball in Oskar’s tunic. I wish I could lay all of this across his broad shoulders, because I am so tired of carrying it alone. “Raimo sent me away too soon. He has answers that I need.”

  “You won’t find him now, Elli. He disappears every winter, and has for as long as I’ve known him. If I thought it was possible to find him, I’d take you to him myself.”

  I believe Oskar would do it. I can tell by the sorrow in his voice. I press my forehead to his firm shoulder, inhaling the scent of wood smoke and sweat and something cold and astringent. “I don’t know what to do,” I whisper. “Everything fell apart, and I can’t put it back together.”

  Oskar’s heart kicks hard beneath my hand. I look up at him, but his face is tilted toward the tunnel’s ceiling. “I know what that’s like,” he murmurs.

  His arm falls away from me, and I step back. “And what did you do?” I ask.

  “I went on,” he says. “I kept living.” He offers his free hand, and when I take it, he looks down at me. “I’m sorry it hurts.”

  It will always hurt. That’s what his eyes say.

  But what can I do? Fall apart? Scream and cry? No. I am meant for something. I’m not ready to stop believing that yet.

  I swipe my sleeve across my eyes and let out a long breath. “I suppose I’ll keep living, then,” I say, the words echoing down the tunnel.

  Oskar squeezes my fingers. With my hand in his, he leads me back to the main cavern.

  CHAPTER 12

  As the days grow short and the darkness stretches long, I keep living. But Oskar seems to die a little every night. He stays up late and stares at the fire, but eventually he nods off and the ice begins his nightly torture. Though it’s painful to witness, I can’t leave him alone, even though he hasn’t spoken to me since that day in the tunnel. I don’t take it personally—he hasn’t spoken to anyone else, either. It’s as if his whole self is focused inward.

  In the fortnight
since Freya and Maarika put an end to my hiding, I’ve ventured out every day, eating lunch with the women around the community hearth, bringing Oskar tea as he plays cards by the big fire in the evenings. I meet people’s eyes. I smile. Our conversations are about now—the best ways to oil boots to keep the damp from seeping in, how to angle a knife to more efficiently scrape fur from flesh, how much water to add to the cornmeal to keep us satisfied while stretching what we have left.

  But there’s a bigger now that won’t leave our minds. Every day we talk about whether the Saadella has been found, why her family hasn’t given her to the elders yet, how thick the ice on the Motherlake has become—and whether the Soturi would dare try to cross it on foot. I’m as hungry for answers as the rest, perhaps hungrier since I have so much to learn about this world and my place in it. But when the talk turns to the Valtia and why she’s abandoned us, I make my excuses and leave in desperate search of something else to do, my stomach churning with a bitter brew of failure and shame.

  One day Maarika sends me off to mind Kukka while Senja bakes. The little girl delights in her magic, luring icicles from cracks in the rocks and making them grow like fragile twigs right before my eyes. “Mommy taught me,” she says, giggling, making me wonder what Kupari would be like if magic wielders lived like everyone else, had families like everyone else. If magic was taught as naturally as children learn to speak and behave—under the watchful eyes of their parents instead of in the temple, under the strict guidance of the priests. Would we be stronger as a people, or weaker? Would we have more magic among us, or less?

  When Senja returns, I go back to the shelter and find Maarika building up the fire. “Oskar will be home soon,” she murmurs.

  I squat next to her and begin to pile flat stones at the edge of the pit—when he comes in gray and shivering, he’ll be able to spread a cloak over them and have a warm place to sit. Maarika’s gaze takes in my movements, and she presses her lips together. “I always wonder if today will be the day he doesn’t make it home,” she says.

  The stark admission makes me fumble one of the rocks, and it topples off the edge of the pit and lands just a hairbreadth from my toes. Maarika lets out a quiet breath of laughter and helps me pick it up again. “I think it every day, but I rarely say it.”

  And now I’m thinking it, and I don’t like the way it makes me feel at all. “Oskar seems very strong.”

  She shrugs. “I know. But people are lost in an instant in the outlands. It has always been that way.” She sits back to let me continue my work, a haunted, faraway look in her eyes.

  “You’ve lost someone.” My voice is hushed—I’m afraid to scare away her words, because Maarika shares so few of them.

  “My husband, many years ago.” Her eyes flick to mine and then away. “A hunting accident. And before that, my brother and his entire family. They lived on the shore, in the house where I was born, where my parents died.” She throws a bit of stray bark onto the flames. “We used to visit them often. My brother’s daughter, little Ansa . . .” She smiles and leans over quickly, her rough fingers stroking at the ends of my hair before falling away. “She had hair like yours, and it gleamed in the sunlight. She and Oskar used to race each other up and down the dunes, and she would always beat him.”

  My brows rise as I start to chuckle. “Oskar’s legs are very long—she must have been fast.”

  Maarika blinks several times and looks away. “Oh, yes. Very fast. She was a tiny fierce thing. Freya is a bit like her.”

  I place another stone on the rim of the pit, waiting.

  “It was the Soturi,” Maarika finally whispers. “They came up from the Motherlake one night. They stole everything of value and burned the place to the ground. One day my brother had the perfect life, a family, a beautiful daughter, and the next, all of them were gone. Ashes and cinders. It makes you wonder why we ever believe in tomorrow, why we assume we have the next minute, and the next, and the next.”

  “But you do,” I say, gesturing at the fire, the rocks, the shelter. “And you believe Oskar does as well.”

  She gives me a flickering smile. “Oh, yes. I have hope.” She touches a warming stone. “And I will protect it to my last breath, with whatever strength I have, however small it may be.” Her eyes meet mine, and I read the message there. Oskar is her hope. Her family is her life.

  She is trusting me—and warning me. Does she know that Oskar is a wielder—and does she suspect I know as well? I want so badly to ask her why he’s hiding, why he suffers like he does, but I have too many secrets to keep myself.

  “If I had a family of my own,” I say slowly, “I would protect them, as you do.”

  Her gaze is unwavering. “But right now, we are your family.”

  “Then this is the family I will work to protect. Even if all I can do is heat stones by the fire.”

  Maarika squeezes my arm and then disappears back into her private area, and I stare at the place where she was, hoping I passed the test she just set before me.

  The next afternoon I go down the trail into the dark rear caverns with Freya, where the underground stream sends icy water rushing through a wide trough before disappearing under the rock again. We peel off our stockings to wash. “Does Oskar seem all right to you?” I ask, haunted by my memories of his tortured sleep the night before.

  Freya shrugs. “He’s always grumpy in the winter, but it’s definitely worse this year.”

  “It’s more than grumpiness,” I say, wincing as the soles of my feet touch the water. I only wash with my left hand, because my right is fearfully sensitive to cold now, something I discovered the hard way the first time I dipped it into the stream. It took hours for it to stop hurting, and the whole time, I thought of Oskar, how pained he looks when he comes in from the icy marshlands. “Do you think he might be sick?”

  I’m so eager for her reply that I forget to be careful.

  “Hey,” she says when she spots the blood-flame mark on my calf. “What’s that?”

  I quickly yank my gown over it. “Just a scar,” I say, my voice loud and creaky. “Once when I was little, I got too curious around the fire and burned myself with a poker.”

  Freya cringes. “That must have hurt terribly,” she says quietly. “Burns are the worst.”

  I thank the stars that she believes me. “Yes. I’ll never do something that stupid again.”

  After we wash, me shivering from the frigid water and Freya oddly seeming to enjoy it, we return to the shelter and retrieve two baskets, then head out to gather twigs for kindling. I wrap my right hand in three layers of wool to try to protect it from the chill wind and sorely wish I owned a pair of gloves. As we exit the cave, we meet Aira and her father—Ismael, who has a bushy black beard, a scar that slices through one of his eyebrows, and, I recall, the ability to coax fire from damp leaves. Aira’s carrying a saw, and Ismael’s hauling a string of fish. Both are wearing light cloaks despite the bitter cold.

  Veikko is with them, wrapped in a thick cloak of fur and wearing heavy gloves on his hands. “—got in through the front gate this time,” he’s telling them. “There’s a shortage of vegetables in the city, so when I offered the constable a bag of potatoes, he let me right in!”

  Ismael scowls. “Worse and worse,” he says. “Soon the city dwellers will be coming out here and raiding us!”

  Veikko looks down at the string of fish. “Most citizens have no idea how to fend for themselves. They’re used to things being easy. Spoiled by the warmth and plenty. Now that it’s gone, they’re like orphaned baby birds.” He raises his eyebrows. “They’d better hope a hungry weasel doesn’t find the nest before their mother returns.”

  “If that weasel has longboats and broadswords,” Aria scoffs, “it might not matter.”

  Freya and I meet them in the middle of the wide-open area in front of the cavern, surrounded by the high, steep stone walls of the hills that hide this cave entrance from view. Aira smiles at me. I believe she’s noticed how Oskar doesn’t tr
eat me differently than he treats others, and she no longer considers me a threat to her romantic hopes. I smile back, despite the now-familiar ache in my chest every time I think of him. “If there are food shortages, is the temple sharing some of their surplus with the citizens?” I ask them. “They have food aplenty from their own gardens, and all the magic they need to keep things growing.”

  “The temple’s not sharing a thing.” Veikko frowns. “It’s shut up tight now. Only the elders dare show their faces in town.”

  “Because the people are afraid of them.” I remember how they made way as Aleksi and Leevi passed. I used to think it was awe and respect, but now I wonder if I was wrong, as I was about so many things.

  “Aye,” says Ismael, scratching at his beard. “No one dares approach them. But as people get hungrier, their desperation will outweigh their fear.”

  “It’s already happening,” says Veikko. “There was a riot in the market over food prices yesterday, made worse by a rumor that the priests have been hoarding copper in the temple that could be used for trade. A few people were shouting that they should raid the temple.”

  I shake my head. “The elders are worried about a copper shortage.”

  “But why would the priests care so much?” asks Aira. “Seems like the city council should be more worried.”

  “Because copper is—” Suddenly I realize I’ve stepped out onto some of the thinnest ice imaginable. Aira, Ismael, and Veikko are giving me equally curious looks. “I . . . was in a bakery fetching buns for my mistress’s breakfast and overheard one of the temple scullery maids saying that copper is the source of the Kupari magic.”

  “Heard Raimo say as much once,” says Ismael, nearly making me sag in relief as the others turn their attention to him. But then he adds, “But how do you know the elders are worried about a shortage, Elli?”