Shadow Queen

by Unknown

  Dieter shrugged. ‘The fact that she wasn’t is your clue, Matilde. What we’re told is fact is not always so. When it comes to morals and rules, I dare say it’s almost never true. The Turholm is littered with illegitimate children, as are the holdings. They’re simply hushed over and ignored. I have one myself, you know.’

  ‘A child?’ I gasped, a hush from behind telling me I’d spoken too loud.

  Dieter snorted, pinning my arm closer to his side to quicken my lagging steps. ‘No. A bastard in the family. In my case it’s a brother.’

  My head was swimming. I’d spent years piecing together snippets of conversation and significant pauses, looks given and avoided, then for even more years I’d carefully hoarded the unspoken knowledge that Sepp was my cousin. Now, not only had I blurted it out, careless and casual, but I’d learnt it was no secret after all.

  As we drew level with the council chambers, I gripped Dieter’s arm. ‘Please don’t hurt Sepp,’ I implored him.

  He gave me a leaden look, and shook his head. ‘I’ve far more important concerns right now.’

  Really, to hear Dieter tell it, almost anyone could have overthrown my family. In a lot of ways I was lucky it had been him. I wouldn’t have liked my fate had the Somners been behind the coup.

  Grandmother muttered in the back of my head, too quiet and quick for me to catch her words, although her disgruntled tone was clear. It was the first time she’d stirred since the poisoning, and her return made me uneasy. Grandmother would not approve of my new circumstances and, once the poison and its damage had receded, I would hear more than half-formed mutters from her on the matter. I pushed the uncomfortable thought aside as we turned in to the council chamber together, my mercurial husband and I.

  We sat next to each other on a couch again, our backs ramrod straight. I folded my hands in my lap and did my best to look blank and meek. This was not the time for Sepp to get ideas.

  Once all the drightens had reassembled, Sepp and the Vestenn were marched in and pushed to their knees before Dieter, who let the silence stretch while he studied them.

  Sepp’s left eye had already swollen shut and his cheek was split, blood still trickling from the wound. Misery hung over him like a shroud.

  In contrast, the Vestenn’s fury was clearly sustaining him. Though he knelt, hands bound, chin smeared with the blood of a bitten lip, he fixed an angry gaze on Dieter.

  ‘Start with your name,’ said Dieter.

  ‘Start with the Lady Matilde’s status,’ the Vestenn countered. ‘Why does she walk free?’

  ‘Because I’m not in the habit of shackling her,’ said Dieter. ‘The sport’s better this way.’

  I stared at my lap and thought of winter winds and snow. Anything to keep the heat from my cheeks.

  ‘Your name,’ Dieter repeated. ‘It’s a simple enough question.’

  ‘Xaver,’ replied the Vestenn, his shoulders slumping a little, as though by admitting to his name he’d relinquished some of his power. Or his defiance.

  ‘That would make you the nephew of our missing Harald,’ said Dieter.

  Xaver made no comment.

  ‘You’re not his heir, though,’ Dieter continued, pushing for answers. ‘What happened to Alina?’

  ‘Dead with him,’ Xaver said quietly into a room hushed with suspense.

  Harald’s death wasn’t precisely news, of course. His absence had spoken of trouble, and the ragged and weary appearance of Sepp’s companions confirmed it. What was difficult to fathom was the reason for their suicidal attack.

  ‘When?’ asked Dieter, digging for details.

  ‘It can’t have been more than a week, I suppose. A fortnight?’ This last Xaver directed at Sepp, but he didn’t respond and Xaver fell silent.

  ‘What happened?’

  Xaver’s jaw clenched with anger and he spat. This earned him a crack across the ear, which knocked him to the floor. His shoulder took the impact with a thump. The soldier who’d delivered the blow then planted a fist in Xaver’s hair and hauled him back to his knees.

  ‘I’ll answer no more of your questions, Ilthean scum!’ Xaver panted.

  The words sent a buzz around the room like the aftershock of lightning, the drightens betraying their tension in the still, fixed way they watched Xaver as he continued talking.

  ‘I don’t know what hold you have over the Lady Matilde, nor what bargains you’ve wrought with the other drightens. But you couldn’t sway my uncle, and you can’t sway me. You may as well save yourself the trouble and kill me now.’

  The soldier cocked his fist again, and Xaver flinched in anticipation, but Dieter checked the blow with a gesture.

  Tension thrummed through the silence, Xaver’s words echoing in every mind. Ilthean scum. The drightens were still, some watching Xaver, more watching Dieter, all of them waiting.

  My heart thumped. The drightens would tear us limb from limb if they believed Dieter was allied with the Iltheans. I thought of Renatas, hidden somewhere about the palace. Did you think the boy struck a deal only with you?

  ‘Interesting,’ said Dieter. ‘Do you use the epithet for all those you detest, or am I unique?’

  When Xaver didn’t respond, Dieter pressed further. ‘I’m being quite literal,’ he said breezily, as if the weight of lives didn’t hang in the balance. ‘Exactly why do you call me Ilthean?’

  ‘Your brother didn’t tell me you were a halfwit. How do you keep them all under control? Or perhaps he made the bargains. They must be powerful tempting ones,’ sneered Xaver before turning a spiteful glare over his shoulder at the drightens circled behind him.

  All the drightens watched Dieter intently, their allegiance ready to fracture along unpredictable lines. Helma licked her lips, eager for the downfall.

  I have one myself. A bastard in the family. In my case it’s a brother.

  Could his brother be Ilthean? Dieter certainly didn’t have the look of a white serpent, but perhaps his father had dallied with an Ilthean woman.

  She wasn’t a woman to be trifled with, Dieter had said of his mother. Although my father, may the ravens devour his canny soul, tried it anyway.

  ‘Fascinating as it is to watch a deranged mind at work, this is going nowhere,’ Dieter said, his voice sounding light enough to float away. I could feel the heat radiating from his side, however, belying his calm.

  He gestured at the drightens with a lift of his chin. ‘They’ve not decided one way or the other about me. Of course, if you insist on calling me Ilthean, they might believe you. Then they’ll decide against me. I have a lot of men here loyal to me, it’s true, but not enough to fight them all. So you understand, I hope, why I’m keen for you to drop this nonsense. I may not be of House Svanaten, but that doesn’t make me any less Turasi than you. In fact, if you’re looking for a pedigree, I can assure you that House Raban held the throne long before the Svanatens, with their penchant for goatherds. Plus, I married a Svanaten daughter,’ he added. ‘I’d call that impeccable lineage, wouldn’t you?’

  Xaver studied Dieter a moment, then turned to me for confirmation. ‘Tell me true, Lady Matilde – is he Ilthean?’

  I shook my head.

  Xaver looked back at Dieter, his face hardening again. ‘Your brother Sidonius –’

  ‘I have no brother,’ Dieter cut him off, gripping my elbow tighter, warning me to silence. ‘If I did, he would be Turasi, like me and my sister.

  ‘Yes,’ he said when Xaver frowned. ‘I have a sister, Amalia. Did this Ilthean “brother” neglect to mention her? She was raised with me, in the stronghold of Grabanstein. Quite a way from Ilthea and her conquered nations, I think you’ll agree.’

  Slowly, Sepp lifted his head and turned his weary, hopeful gaze on me. ‘He’s not Ilthean?’

  I held silent as he and Xaver stared at me, waiting, depending on me for their answer. Why would they trust my word? Didn’t they know I’d turned my back on my family and my House, not only wedding their killer to save my own shivering skin b
ut now also having the coward’s heart to esteem him? Their trust hurt. But Sepp was my cousin, and my closest friend since childhood. I met his gaze squarely. ‘He’s not Ilthean. I’d never turn my people to the Iltheans.’

  No need to add that even if Dieter had been Ilthean I wouldn’t have hesitated to act the same way I had back at Aestival. What was a little lying, for a woman who’d committed adultery and betrayed her House and family?

  ‘Now,’ said Dieter, drawing all eyes back to him. ‘Let’s get to the bottom of this Ilthean brother business, shall we?’

  Xaver slumped, the tension leaking from his muscles, so Sepp took up the story.

  ‘The Lady Helena arrived at Aestival,’ he said, his head hanging. ‘She claimed she was visiting her family. Lady Beata was suspicious of her intentions. She sent me south that afternoon, to investigate the Ilthean army gathered on the border.’

  Sepp looked up and cast me a glance of appeal that I couldn’t decipher, then dropped back into his dejected pose. ‘Getting there was easy enough. Lingering nearby to scout them out was more difficult. Getting back …’ he paused, unable to continue.

  ‘Was nigh impossible,’ said Xaver, taking up the story once more. ‘They’d crossed the river at the foot of the Sentinels, where it bends north in an ox-bow, which left their bulk in between my uncle’s holding and the Turholm.’

  The Iltheans had built a half-dozen pontoon bridges to secure their lines of supply and retreat. Nureya was their main base, just as Helena had claimed. She’d failed to mention how many legions had gathered there: a full ten, Xaver told us, and more on the way.

  Xaver had been captured while scouting, and it was then he had met Sepp, captured several days earlier under similar circumstances. Sepp had kept his head because the general took a liking to him and claimed him; Xaver they kept alive for the ransom. Freedom for both arrived in the form of a Vestenn raid to retrieve Xaver; they had escaped through a combination of luck, the Vestenn men’s superior knowledge of the land, and Vestenn lives spent to buy them time.

  Xaver’s gaze snapped back to the here and now. ‘My uncle’s land follows the line of the river. Generations of blood and battle have made it the official boundary. Unofficially, however, the lands on both banks are of … nebulous allegiance. My uncle always cultivated the support of the rustics as a way of recruiting informants.’

  ‘A canny man,’ said Dieter.

  ‘A vulnerable man,’ Xaver corrected. ‘With Ilthea to the south and the Morvingen to the west, it would take little to pen him like a weasel traps a hare in its burrow.’

  ‘The Iltheans made alliance with the Morvingen?’ asked Dieter.

  ‘There was no way out. My uncle tried to head north. A longer route, but it would see us arrive safely, if late,’ said Xaver, his eyes hazed with the memory of blood and battle.

  ‘What happened?’ I prompted, impatient.

  Xaver made to speak, but Dieter answered instead. ‘They held the north as well.’

  ‘The Iltheans? Or the Morvingen?’ Fear fluttered against my ribs. Was every land angling for my throne?

  ‘Both,’ said Xaver. ‘The Morvingen have always hankered after my uncle’s lands. They let the Ilthean army march north to outflank us, then swelled those ranks with their own men, hiding behind Ilthean livery.’

  The drightens were all stiff with tension now, their indecision burning away like mist beneath a rising sun.

  ‘And why would the Iltheans wish to detain your uncle?’ Dieter asked.

  ‘He knew the size of their force. He knew of their stronghold on Turasi lands. He knew the legions were marching on the Turholm.’

  His words were followed by indrawn breaths and wide eyes, the drightens baited and hooked. Maja looked to be already calculating, while Merten had his eyes squeezed shut.

  ‘Marching here,’ said Helma.

  ‘Scarce a week behind,’ Xaver answered.

  ‘Who leads them?’ asked Maja. ‘Which of the Ilthean generals seeks glory this time?’

  ‘His name is Sidonius,’ said Xaver, cutting a glance at Dieter, though it was Sepp who reacted with a shudder. Xaver put a hand on Sepp’s shoulder and finished, ‘He’s better known as the slave-born general.’

  And there it was: the crisis point.

  Sidonius. The emperor’s prized slave-born general had reputedly never lost a battle, never allowed a land he invaded to escape the conqueror’s yoke. He had brought swathes upon swathes of land under the empire’s dominion.

  What they had heard stilled the drightens, eddied through the minds of each. Divided, they hadn’t the force to withstand the snakes. United they might. There was a man already at their head, awaiting only their decision to pledge to him.

  My accidental poisoning had threatened to topple everything Dieter had garnered. Where one Svanaten failed him, however, another saved him. Sepp and Xaver’s news dissolved all uncertainty. This Sidonius might bring war in his wake, but in his bow-wave the threat of him brought unification – under Dieter’s rule.

  It was obvious to me that Dieter realised it. He’d run the numbers through his head, but the gathering of his dark brows, and the throbbing beat of the pulse at his temple and throat, didn’t speak of equanimity. Perhaps he strove not to appear too victorious too soon.

  He caught the eye of a soldier and nodded towards Sepp and Xaver. ‘Unbind them. Then let them supp.’

  Sepp, and Xaver’s men with him, were to be offered rooms and refreshment. Xaver would now represent House Vestenn. He looked dazed by the sudden change in his fortunes. It was one thing to be the last surviving Vestenn; it was another to be acknowledged as such.

  Struck bone-weary by politics and manoeuvring and the inevitable, I followed Sepp’s shuffling feet from the room. The political currents were settling before I’d reached the door. The drightens had much to discuss. Dieter would be ratified by the end of the day.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  BRIGHT-EYED, EARNEST, AND only two years my junior, Sepp had been my closest friend for as long as I could remember. Most of my early life had been spent in his company – hunting frogs by the river, helping him herd the geese on summer days, stampeding through the thralls’ runs.

  In later years, when we left childhood games behind us, his time had been monopolised by an apprenticeship with the master of horses, while mine had been swallowed by Grandmother’s strictures. We still stole every moment we could together, precious times in the kitchen, where I learnt the intricacies of cooking, or in the stable, where he taught me how to nurse a colicky horse, his touch sure and deft. My favourite times with him had been when we took the ferrets into the kitchen cellars. In the dim and cavernous depths we would set the ferrets free to hunt the rats while we sat, perched on barrels containing apple cider or oil or brine for pickling, and simply talked, free and unguarded and ungoverned.

  We had shared our thoughts on everything, from Grandmother’s mercurial treatment of Sepp to the marriages she was considering on my behalf, from the progress of my father’s breeding program with the horses to news of the latest stirrings among the nations bordering our lands.

  Although Grandmother’s manner towards Sepp was never warmer than indifference, and was often far colder, still he had stood apart from the common thralls. He’d learnt politics in his apprenticeship with the master of horses, and through his friendship with me. These factors, combined with his collar and his unspoken ties to House Svanaten, made it no surprise that Grandmother had included him in the party sent to investigate the Ilthean threat. A horse-handler would be ignored or dismissed, and thus have the opportunity of employing his sharp eyes and political acumen where others would not.

  But now, walking beside me, was a creature entirely changed from the Sepp I knew.

  Privation had stolen the flesh off his frame, and strain and nervous exhaustion were etched into his face. Worse, though, was the way he slumped, like a candle in its last moments.

  ‘What happens now?’ he asked, his monotone voice ex
pressing as little interest as his posture.

  ‘The drightens will ratify Dieter as Duethin,’ I replied, taking the opportunity of guiding him around a corner to touch his forearm, though he didn’t appear to notice. ‘They’ll send for aid. Then it’ll be a race to see who arrives first, the Iltheans or the support,’ I said.

  He stared at his feet, and I dared not disturb his silence.

  ‘Did they all … everyone?’ he asked.

  ‘Most,’ I said, then corrected myself in the next breath. Sepp’s ‘everyone’ had never been the same as mine. ‘Most of the court, that is. The majority of the thralls are still alive. Still working here, too, although none with a high opinion of me, as a rule.’

  I offered a smile, but he didn’t look up and the smile slid off my face, sickly and pale as a stillborn.

  ‘Aunt Helena didn’t survive,’ I said hesitantly. ‘Her son, Renatas, did – Grandmother wouldn’t have him at the celebration.’

  Sepp said nothing, and we lapsed into silence as we walked. At last, as we neared our destination, he spoke.

  ‘You married him,’ he said.

  Despite the flatness of his tone, a lot rode on my response.

  I showed him into his room, grateful for the chance to prevaricate. There were too many layers in his statement, too many reminders of the person Sepp had known. Too many choices had turned me further and further from that ingenue who’d stood on her tiptoes, eager for a glimpse of her infamous aunt.

  Stopping inside, Sepp glanced around, taking in the luxury of the room before turning an enquiring glance on me.

  ‘You’re my friend, and you need to rest. You can’t do that in a stable loft,’ I said.

  ‘I always managed fine before,’ he said.

  ‘Sepp,’ I started, but he shrugged me off, shuffling across to the window, where he stood, clutching at the sill and staring out into the snatch of garden it revealed.

  He needed to know why, of course, and how I’d come to marry the man who’d wreaked havoc on our world, but it wasn’t something I could proffer with ease, or without pain.