The Winter Duke E-Book

Claire Eliza Bartlett

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 507

Beschreibung

Once Ekata's brother is finally named heir to the dukedom of Kylma Above, nothing will keep her at home with her murderous family - not even Kylma Below, a mesmerizing underwater kingdom that provides her family with magic. But then they fall under a strange, incurable sleeping sickness, and in the space of a single night, Ekata inherits the title of duke, her brother's captivating warrior bride, and all the dangers of the throne.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Praise for the Winter Duke

Title Page

Leave us a review

Copyright

Dedication

The Winter Duke

One

Day One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Day Two

Seven

Eight

Nine

Day Three

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Day Four

Fourteen

Day Five

Fifteen

Day Six

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Website

PRAISE FOR THE WINTER DUKE

“Fresh and filled with magic and personality…Enchanting”

KIRKUS

“A feminist fantasy fraught with tension and political intrigue”

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“The twist-filled mystery and compelling characters will keep readers guessing…refreshing and unique”

SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL

“Twisty politics, strange magic, a tender love story – what more could you want? Ekata’s wry humour and determination in the face of murderous siblings, ministers and mer-people make her a Grand Duke to remember”

AK LARKWOOD

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The Winter Duke

Hardback edition ISBN: 9781789095364

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789095371

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First Titan hardback edition: October 2020

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

© Claire Eliza Bartlett 2020. All rights reserved.

This edition published by arrangement with Little, Brown and Company Books for Young Readers, a division of Hachette Book Group, New York, New York, USA. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

To my parents, who, unlike the parents inthis book, were unconditionally loving,encouraging, and supportive of a littlegirl who wanted to go far away and livestrange lives. I love you.

One

THE NIGHT could be worse, considering. The likelihood of a public death was low.

All the same, I kept my opulent coat buttoned up, despite how my neck itched in it. The more layers I had between me and my sister Velosha, the better. Last week she’d nicked our brother Kevro’s arm with a poisoned stiletto at Wintertide mass, and I wasn’t about to let her try her tricks on me. “Ekata,” she whispered. I pretended not to hear.

My favorite tutor said that other people’s siblings were noisy, argumentative telltales. My siblings tried to murder one another.

But not this night. Tonight we had a strict no-murder policy. Tonight we had a brideshow, and the world was watching us. And nothing said get out of here like an unstable, bloodthirsty family. I should know. I’d been begging my father for the chance to leave from the moment I was old enough to take a place at a university. He’d promised that when the brideshow was finally over, I’d be free to do it. Provided I lived so long.

The brideshow candidates stood on the long, narrow balcony that ran around the Great Hall—fifteen people who thought that marrying into our family was a good idea. Some of them giggled with one another. Some observed the floor, pointing out their delegates to the candidates next to them. More than one looked tired of waiting. A pretty girl with a dark ponytail and an emerald-and-gold riding suit covered a yawn with her hand, earning a laugh from the girl next to her. Her arms were bare, tan from the kiss of a foreign sun. A bold choice for a palace made of ice. But something about her seemed bold. When she caught me watching her, she raised an eyebrow. I rolled my eyes at the absurdity of it all. Her mouth twitched into a lazy smile.

My stomach lurched. I flushed, looking away before I could cause a scene. I had no desire to create an international incident, and she was here for my brother, not me.

Mother had sent written invitations to twenty empires, duchies, and kingdoms. Fifteen of the invitations had been answered with delegations, who now stood on the floor of the Great Hall and waited for the festivities to finally begin. Most eligible royals would be interested in a deal with Kylma Above and access to trade with the prosperous duchy Below. Kylma Below was the only source of distillable magic in the world, which meant that our cold, tiny country on a frozen lake commanded policy alongside kingdoms a hundred times our size.

Even so, it surprised me that fifteen people could be interested in Lyosha. That, more than anything, was a clear indication they’d never met him.

The restlessness was infectious. We’d been waiting for my father, mother, and brother for half an hour, and up on the royal dais, we didn’t talk. I glanced at my maid, Aino; she lifted her chin, and I did the same. Aino had never steered me wrong at a social function.

A door on the side of the Great Hall opened, but it was only Prime Minister Eirhan. He’d been prime minister longer than I’d been alive, and his oily demeanor left me with a sour taste every time I had to speak with him. That was happily rare; I preferred the study of bones and trees and the denizens Below to the study of politics.

Eirhan spoke to a guard next to the door. The guard, dressed in ceremonial silver and blue, struck his iron-tipped halberd on the ground. The guards lining the hall took up the movement, creating the iron tempo that announced my father.

The hall went dark, and whispering began. A dark hall heralded magic, for magic did not work well with fire. The candles burned low in their sconces, reflected like diamonds by the ice walls.

Light descended from above, instead, in round pearls that fell like feathers. They glittered as they drifted, shimmering blue one moment, orange the next, clumping together like the thick pollen that blew in from the mountains during what passed for summer in Kylma Above. There was a great intake of breath from the hall, and I tilted my face up to catch some of the pearls as they fell. My father was the only man in the world Above who could refine magic and control how it manifested, and it never failed to mesmerize. It was his declaration of wealth, his declaration of power, and it reminded the rest of us what magic could do, if we only had the imagination for it.

The pearls turned into flower petals, filling the air with a sweet scent. Rosaeus brumalis, I thought, breathing in the faint smell of winter roses, the only kind that grew here. Before they kissed our faces, they burst apart again, showering us with needled points. I covered my face with my sleeves. A few of the delegates shouted. A crack shook the palace walls, and dark wings snapped above us. An enormous eagle winged around the top of the domed ceiling, golden eyes flashing in the dark. Its cry made my ears throb, and its wingbeat nearly blew me into Velosha.

The eagle pulled its wings in and hurtled to the ground. Delegates stumbled out of its way, and even I, who’d seen my father’s displays at least twice a year, flinched. With a screech, the eagle raked its talons across the floor, leaving deep gouges that would stay long after the bird had disappeared. The power of magic: It was temporary, but the effects were permanent. And only my father had the secret to it.

I hated him for that more than I hated him for other things.

The eagle launched back into the air, knocking over the nearest delegates, and sped toward the ceiling. I was certain it would slow down or disappear—but instead, it crashed through the dome. Ice shattered and plummeted toward us. We ducked again, but the ice slowed and spun, turning into snowflakes that dusted our shoulders like sugar. Wind howled through the cracked dome, but winter roses grew over the cracks, smoothing the wall; ice climbed toward the starred sky. The hole became smaller and smaller until the last of the roses knit together, leaving us with our ice dome and sealing us off from the elements once more.

Light flared. The room became golden and warm. The show was over, and the grand duke stood before us. Everyone knelt.

That was Father’s grand trick for our guests. Show them the power of magic—its constructive, destructive, and transformative glory. Because magic was our most exported resource, Father wanted the wealthy delegates to imagine what they could do with it. They could impress kings. They could bring down city walls. With the correctly refined pearl, they could change the world.

My father’s very presence demanded silence. I’d feared him for almost as long as I could remember. Where he walked, the air seemed thin and sparse, as if his broad shoulders and fur coat pushed it out of a room. As if it tangled in his snow-and-stone beard or got bitten off by his sharp teeth when he smiled. As if his brown eyes could pin it down.

Mother stood next to him in a dress of white doeskin. She and I shared the same pale hair and skin, the same gray eyes, the same pointed chin and nose. I hadn’t managed to inherit her elegance, but I made up for it by being less abhorrent. And on Father’s other side stood Lyosha—eldest brother, heir-elect, and groom for the brideshow—who had Father’s height and dark hair and pale skin, but still looked like a weasel in a coat. Unlike the rest of us, he wore the brown-and-white wool that was spun from the shaggy goats we kept at the base of the mountains, eschewing the bright colors and fine-spun cottons that could be purchased from abroad. Lyosha liked to consider himself a man of the people—provided the people wanted nothing from him.

My father motioned for the hall to rise. I straightened reflexively. As Father began his welcome speech, I kept my hands clasped in front of me; I knew if Lyosha caught any of us fidgeting, he’d have harsh words and harsher actions for later. As subtly as I could, I let my eyes and mind wander over the motifs on the walls. They told the story of the duchies—the duchy Above, and the duchy Below. Our duchy, which sat on a frozen lake, and the land that thrived beneath the ice. More than anything, I wanted to see what truly lay Below. But I would never get the chance. Only Father was allowed to enter that realm.

I focused next on a hunting scene with a former grand duke and a cornered bear. I recalled bones, starting with the bear’s nose. Nasal, premaxilla, maxilla. When ground, stabilizer for liquids that tend to curdle. Incisors, canines. Amulets for strength with no demonstrable benefit.

I was nearing the ilium when the patter of applause interrupted me. The speech was over. I joined in, lifting my chin so that I could look properly impressed. Father offered Mother his arm, and she took it with barely a sneer. They stepped down from the dais together. The brideshow had formally begun.

Prime Minister Eirhan came forward and bowed perfunctorily before murmuring something in Father’s ear. Father nodded coldly to the Kylmian ministers, who clustered off to the side. It was no secret that Father and Lyosha fought over the ministers; they fought over everything. Lyosha couldn’t mount a successful coup without the majority of the ministers on his side, but Mother’s support lent him strength; a coup had been rumored for years. My maid, Aino, had been predicting it once a night for weeks. After all, it was the traditional way for Kylmian children to inherit the dukedom. Poor Aino had taken to double-locking my door each night, and she spent hours fretting right inside it. As though I’d be the first one slaughtered in a coup.

It doesn’t matter anyway. The coup wouldn’t take place in the next five days, and after that, I’d be down south at the university, where the world was civilized and people didn’t kill their relatives as a matter of course.

As the brideshow candidates filed down from the balcony, the first of the guests began to greet my father. King Sigis of Drysiak approached, and I slunk behind Velosha. Sigis was an observer, not a delegate, but in my opinion, he was more of a royal pain than anything else. He’d oiled his golden beard to catch the lamplight, and aside from a scarlet-and-diamond pin that signified his own colors, he wore our family blue. He’d fostered with us for five years, learning to swagger like Father and manufacture “accidents” leading to broken legs and broken skulls among more than one sibling. Father favored Sigis over any natural-born child of his own, and he had taught him the worst of his tricks. Maybe it was the cruelty they had in common. The Gods knew arrogance was something we all shared.

Sigis embraced Father, and Father clapped him hard on the back. “Welcome, as always.”

“As always, I am honored to be welcome,” Sigis said. I didn’t snort at that. I didn’t want to attract attention. But Sigis’s politeness was always an act. He always made me think of a bear—except he lacked the bear’s manners. “I was surprised by the size of the magic display.”

“It’s only the preliminary night,” Father said. “I’ve saved a more impressive show for when the rest of the delegates arrive.”

Sigis’s eyes glinted strangely. “I look forward to it.”

As he moved away, Father leaned over to speak in Mother’s ear. “I could have gotten him to stand up in the brideshow.”

“Sigis doesn’t like boys,” she replied out of the side of her mouth.

Lucky boys, I thought.

Father rolled his shoulders. “I could have done it.”

“Maybe you should have given him a daughter when you had the chance.” Mother sneered. Father shot her a murderous look in response. How those two stayed in the same room long enough to make thirteen children, I’ll never guess.

My dress itched in a number of awkward places, and the noise that bounced off the ice walls threatened to give me a headache. But I had to stay until each of the brideshow guests had been greeted and we’d been dismissed from our formal duties. I curtsied to the first candidate, a blushing, stuttering boy. He muttered a name too soft for me to hear, though I ought to have known it from the crest on his shoulder, a wheel flanked by rearing horses. Father and Mother treated him courteously; Lyosha dismissed him with a curled lip. I didn’t know much about the candidates, but I did know this: My parents and my brother each had a favorite, and it wasn’t the same person.

“Show respect,” said Father as the boy retreated. His voice was soft—dangerous.

Lyosha’s lip curled. “Why? Omsara is a paupers’ kingdom. We don’t need them.”

“The point of the brideshow is to strengthen friendships, not create rifts,” Father said. “I asked you to think about that when you started considering your choices.”

The next candidate came up, a girl who was graceful and tall, brown-skinned and wide-eyed, and dressed in a white-and-green shift dress. It looked loose and free compared with the tight bodices we wore under our coats. She dipped a curtsy to each of us, smiling. I stifled a sigh as I curtsied back and pressed her hand. This was going to take hours. I could be spending the time packing, or studying, or making my university portfolio. Maybe I could persuade Aino to claim I was ill. Anything would be better than pretending I cared about a brother who thought I’d be more convenient dead and about the poor person who was about to marry him.

I spotted Farhod, my alchemy tutor. Like me, he tried to eschew major functions; unlike me, he usually had more success. I rolled my eyes for his benefit. He shook his head reproachfully. His dark, wide eyes were uniquely suited to disapproval.

“I like her,” Lyosha said as the snowdrop girl retreated. “She can be considered.”

“Not so obviously, my love,” Mother warned him. “Everyone needs to start off on equal footing.”

“They’re not equal,” Lyosha replied. “And I don’t see the point in wasting my time.”

“Then perhaps I should select a different heir,” Father replied. “Being grand duke is a balance, not a life of doing whatever suits you, and when.”

Lyosha stiffened, as though he’d been hit by a blast of cold wind. Rage gathered around him like lightning waiting to ground on something. “The future of the duchy is mine. My choice. I don’t have to run it as inefficiently as you have.”

The next candidate faltered. Father motioned them forward with a gracious sweep of his hand, but I couldn’t blame them for moving with reluctance. They introduced themselves in a hurry and retreated as soon as they could.

“Come, now.” Mother touched Lyosha’s shoulder, on Father’s side for the first time in years. “There are many considerations to be met. We can’t afford to offend anyone before we know what they’re offering for the marriage.”

Lyosha sulked. “You just don’t like her because she’s not your choice.”

“We talked about this,” Father said.

Lyosha spoke in a voice not quite low enough, not quite practiced enough to reach only our ears. “You talked about this. You didn’t bother to ask.”

“This is a political endeavor—” Father began.

Lyosha’s voice rose. “I have my politics. I make my choices.” A small circle of space began to grow around us. “And if I can’t make my own choice, I’ll make no choice.”

“You are jeopardizing years of statecraft,” Father growled.

“The duchy doesn’t need outdated relics deciding statecraft,” Lyosha choked out. “And neither do I.” His words slid through the air like a red sword. The brideshow candidates stared. The tan, dark-haired girl in the emerald-and-gold riding suit no longer smiled. Lyosha’s anger crackled, so palpable I could almost see it. “This isn’t your brideshow.”

“This isn’t your duchy,” Father replied. He sounded almost contemplative. “And the more you try to take it, the more I think it never should be.”

The whole hall was silent for a breath, waiting for Lyosha’s lightning to finally ground.

“The brideshow’s off,” Lyosha called, his voice bouncing off the hard ice walls.

Noise rippled across the hall. Father grabbed for Lyosha’s arm, but Lyosha had spun on his heel and was already striding through the candidates, who scattered and regrouped like a herd of animals.

Father clapped his hands. In response, the guards around the hall slammed their halberds against the ground with a crack. In the silence that followed, he said in an impossibly calm voice, “The brideshow will resume tomorrow. Please enjoy yourselves.”

By the time he was finished, most of the foreign delegates had begun to shout.

“Excellent,” Velosha murmured beside me, and I shuddered. If Lyosha lost the title of heir-elect, she’d look to win it through a process of elimination—specifically, by eliminating her sibling rivals. Half the court ministers disappeared; the rest decided to settle the matter by arguing at the top of their lungs.

A hand gripped my elbow and yanked me sideways. Aino. She was supposed to stand at the edge of the hall as a lesser lady, but she’d squeezed her way over to me. “Come on,” she said, pulling me toward a side door. She elbowed past the minister of the people, and I tripped over the minister of trade’s robe. He stumbled past me, steadying himself by putting a hand on top of my head for balance. Had it been a normal night, I would have confronted him for his rudeness.

Aino dragged me past anxious servants to the corridor, barely letting me get my feet under me. The flickering lamps set into the walls caught the red in her auburn hair, and her knuckles were white around my arm. We hurried past officials and servants who rushed the other way, alarmed, no doubt, by the noise. “Slow down,” I protested, tripping over the heavy hem of my coat. Aino didn’t answer. “Aino!” She wrenched me around a corner, nearly dislocating my shoulder. The iron grips on the bottoms of my shoes dug into the ice.

She didn’t slow down until we reached the royal wing and passed beyond the guards there. We scurried down corridors carved with the scenes of my family—grand dukes battling with enemies, treating with the duchy Below, choosing brides from their own brideshows. Winter roses twined above us, their ice petals stretching into a two-thirds bloom.

Aino dug out a key and unlocked my door with trembling fingers. Then she shoved me inside.

The fire was out. The ice walls of my rooms glowed blue-white in moonlight that streamed through thin windowpanes. Aino dumped firewood into the metal basin that served as the fireplace, then started the fire with dry moss and a flint.

The fire basin sat on a thick stone shelf to protect the ice floor beneath, and white and blue tiles lined its chimney. A bearskin rug lay in front of the fire, and I sat in the oak chair there, shifting a blanket to one side. I slid my feet out of my wooden shoes and dug my socks into the rug. A tightness began to uncoil in me. No siblings to murder me, no Father or Mother to examine me, balancing my usefulness and irrelevance against my potential as a threat. I pulled diamond-studded pins from hair that had Mother’s paleness but not its curl.

My rooms always meant safety to me, but not to Aino. She locked the door, slid the bolt, and heaved a chair from next to the door until it blocked the handle. Then she went to lock the door to the servants’ corridor.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Making sure no one separates your head from your neck in whatever happens tonight.” Aino’s braid had come undone, and she pinned it back up with thin-lipped determination. “This is a coup, and Lyosha and your father are in the middle of it. You don’t have to be. How packed are you?”

“Fairly packed.” My trunk sat in a corner of the room, stuffed with all the things I thought I’d need at the university—clothes, books, sketches of the biology of Above, a few plates with detail on flora from Below sent up as a sample and gift to Farhod. I was still working on copying his dissection report, a recent—and generous—gift from the duchy Below to expand our academic knowledge.

“Good. We’ll set out tonight, and we won’t come back until one of them is grand duke and one of them is dead.”

No one could boss me around like Aino could. She was more of a mother to me than Mother. She was shorter and slimmer than our family, with wide blue eyes that always looked alarmed and a nose made for poking into my business. She knew the intrigues of Lyosha and my parents before I did, and she made sure I was always well dressed for events of the court, well versed in what to say, and well protected from the worst of my family’s wrath. She tasted my coffee every morning and ran her fingers along the seams of my new clothes to check for razors my siblings might have slipped in. Worrying for my safety lined her mouth and forehead and streaked her hair with gray before its time. In recent weeks, she’d looked more and more worn out as she updated me on which minister backed which family member and how many siblings were trying to get involved in the imminent coup.

I didn’t pay much attention. I cared less for Lyosha’s political ambitions than I did for a vial of wolf urine. At least I could learn something interesting from wolf urine. And as long as my chief interests were the flora and fauna of Above and Below, I doubted any ministers or ambitious family members cared about me. All the same: “I can’t leave yet.” Even if I had no interest in the duchy, I had a duty. Our family was Kylma Above, and we had responsibilities to uphold. Father had stipulated that I could go south when the brideshow was over, not before. If I violated his order, he might find some way to prevent me from going at all.

I went over to my desk, skipping across the floor in my wool socks. “What are you doing?” Aino asked.

“I might as well get some work done.” I pulled a stack of papers from the middle drawer of the desk. I was copying and annotating Farhod’s technical drawings of a dissected citizen Below, and I had to finish the project before I went south. They’d be part of my university portfolio and application. Farhod had warned me that gaining admittance was hard, even for the daughter of a grand duke—but detailed dissection notes of a creature never seen before was sure to catch the attention of scholars and professors.

“You ought to rest.” Aino checked the door, then paced back to the fire, dispersing the logs with a poker. “We shouldn’t have lit this. What if someone realizes you’re here?”

I rolled my eyes as I lit the little candle under my frozen inkwell. Aino was back to her favorite hobby: fretting. “No one can see me, and no one’s going to care. Fetch my robe, won’t you?”

She stomped off, muttering about ungrateful brats and coups and heads. I was restless, too, and opened the window next to my desk, leaning out to let the cold air sting my cheeks.

The palace was quieter than usual. Maybe we really were on the cusp of a coup. Or maybe the brideshow was canceled, and nobody wanted to celebrate. From here, I could just see the bridal tower, and I wondered if the candidates had retreated to it. The girl in the riding suit didn’t seem like the type to retreat from anything.

A lone figure hurried across a decorative wall, and four stories beneath me lay the thick ice sheet that separated Above and Below. I wanted to crack that ice so badly that it split my heart to think about it. Beneath that ice swam undulating bodies with serpentine legs, vague shapes I could nearly recognize when I walked on the lake’s frozen surface. The duchy Below was our closest ally and our dearest friend. It was the only political matter I had any interest in. It was the greatest thing Father had denied me—and denied me, and denied me.

Aino draped my robe around my shoulders. “Shut the window,” she said, reaching past me to do it herself.

I pulled my head inside. “No one’s going to shoot me from the palace walls.”

“Honestly, Ekata. If there is one night my worrying might save your life, it’s tonight.” She cinched the robe around my waist. “You’ve never been the sweet, obedient type. Humor me.”

“I’ll keep the doors and windows locked.” I forced myself not to roll my eyes again. “But don’t call for a sled. And let me work for a few hours before bed. There’s nothing unsafe about sitting at my desk.”

“You can work for half an hour, then I’m dousing the fire. And if anyone knocks, say nothing. You’re not here.”

I shook my head and tucked my chin to hide a smile. “All right.”

I didn’t hide it well enough. “Don’t treat this like a joke, my lady,” Aino snapped. She only used my lady when she was really cross. “I’m concerned about your life, and all you can think of is livers and cross sections.” She curled her lip at the sheet on my desk, on which Minister Farhod had painstakingly drawn a number of internal organs in a hand so fine they still seemed to glisten.

I licked the nib of my pen. “Aino, relax,” I said. “The kitchen boy’s more politically involved than I am. Whatever occurs tonight, it’s hardly going to concern us.”

As it happened, I was wrong.

Two

MY DREAMS were cold and lightless. Frost bloomed at the edges of my mind, turning into petals as delicate as spun sugar. The dark squeezed my lungs, my ribs. A presence loomed above me, but when I twisted to see it, my movements were unhurried, pressing through air as thick as honey. I knew, suddenly, that something was going to happen, something I didn’t want—but I couldn’t stop it. Far beneath me came a tapping, the crystalline sound of a pick on ice.

A hand gripped my shoulder. I opened my mouth to scream. The dark pushed into my lungs, filling me, drowning me—

I wrenched my eyes open. I lay in my bed, covered in the down quilt Aino had given me for my last birthday. I’d kicked the bearskin overlay to the floor sometime in the night. The fire burned low in its grate, but orange flickered around the edges of a charred log.

Aino leaned over me, her fingers digging into my skin. I tried to swallow my leaping heart and pushed myself up. My nightgown was damp, my skin slick. My eyes felt raw and scraped, and when I reached up, I touched wet cheeks. The faint smell of sweat and roses lingered in the air. I grimaced, but at the sight of Aino’s face, I forgot my own disgusting state. Her eyes were wide, and her face even paler than when she’d hurried me out of the Great Hall earlier tonight.

“It’s just a bad dream,” I told her.

“No. Something’s happening.” She let go, leaving me anchorless. For a moment, terror seized me, as if the dark could leap out of my nightmare and swallow me again.

I slid to the edge of the bed and stuck my feet into my slippers. “What do you mean?” As my dream receded, my mind started putting together the puzzle pieces, slotting them in place like muscles that made up the working limb in a technical drawing: shouts from the corridor. Panicked tones. Slamming doors and rushing feet. The royal wing was normally silent in the middle of the night. Servants slipped like ghosts from place to place, wary of waking their masters. No one charged through it as if the whole palace were melting.

I grabbed my robe and followed Aino into my antechamber. Moonlight tangled in the corners, catching in the whorls and crevices of the winter roses. The shouting drew closer, then receded, like a wave. I strained to make out voices I recognized. Though they pricked at the corners of my mind, I could match none to a name. I hated going to court, and even when my parents made me attend official functions, I could always stand at the back, wondering about ursine skulls and the toe-fins of Below.

“Check every room!” someone shouted from the end of the hall. Doors banged as they were flung open up and down the corridor. Soon enough, they’d get to me.

Aino’s blue eyes filled with fear. She grabbed my wrist. “Come,” she whispered, tugging me toward the door on the other side of the antechamber, the one that led to the service corridor.

“Where?” I asked.

“We have to leave.”

I swallowed. If we left the palace now, where would we go?

“Any luck?” said a voice from right outside my door. This time, I did recognize the voice. Farhod, minister of alchemy. Provider of biology books and technical drawings. Overseer of wolf-urine experiments.

Someone hammered on the door. Aino and I jumped. My heart slammed against my ribs. Calm, I begged it silently. It wouldn’t obey.

“My lady?” Farhod shouted. A moment later, the silver bell at the top of my door rang.

Aino shook her head and backed toward the servants’ door at the rear of the antechamber, pulling on my arm.

“Lady Ekata!” The door rattled. I twisted out of Aino’s grip. It was only Farhod, and he’d helped me all my life. He was going to get me into the university. If we were in danger, maybe he was, too. I couldn’t abandon him.

“I’m here,” I called back. Aino glared at me. “It’s Farhod,” I whispered.

“When revolutions happen, you don’t truly know anyone,” Aino warned me.

There were only two people I knew I could trust in Kylma Above, and Farhod was one of them. But for Aino’s sake, I settled for opening the door just a crack, dislodging a stray winter rose leaf that had grown over the door in the night. “What’s going on?” The blue-white walls of the corridor of the royal wing, carved with the eagle-and-rose insignia of our family, crowded with shapes and shadows that renewed my fear. Though I saw plenty of ministers’ robes, no guards accompanied them.

I doubted any minister who wanted to kill me would stoop to doing so personally.

Farhod’s dark eyes filled with a strange relief, almost as though he wanted to cry. He looked at me as though he hadn’t expected to see me alive. “May I come in?”

“No,” Aino groaned from behind me.

“Yes.” I stepped aside. Farhod hurried through the gap in the door. As I moved to close it, a hand caught the edge, and Prime Minister Eirhan slipped in behind Farhod.

His oiled black hair hung loose around his shoulders, rather than in its customary horsetail. Deep bags under his eyes suggested that he hadn’t slept since the brideshow—though beneath his embroidered blue coat I caught a flash of dressing gown, and his feet were bare. Only a minister in a great hurry would wander our ice palace in bare feet. I couldn’t blame him for stepping straight onto the bearskin rug in front of the dying fire. All the same, I would have preferred he’d chosen a different fire in a different wing entirely. Even worse, Urso, a tundra mouse of a man and the minister of trade, ducked through the door without looking at me. I shoved it closed before anyone else could slip through.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded. Farhod I could understand. He was someone I cared about and who cared about me. But the others—Eirhan hadn’t deigned to look at me since I’d shown up to Lyosha’s heir ceremony three months ago in a dress covered in Experiment Gone Wrong. I barely remembered Minister Urso’s name, and he had no reason to remember mine. Now he stood in my antechamber, pulling his gray-brown hair into a knot at the base of his neck with thick, trembling fingers, and I could see sweat stains on the inside collar of his robe.

People were machines, I reminded myself. They were complicated puzzles, but any puzzle could be solved. “Has someone sent for me?” Maybe Lyosha had finally killed Father. The alternative, of course, was that I had to be taken care of.

Farhod’s brown skin was impossibly pale, even accounting for the moonlight that turned the palace and all within it to blue and bone. His hand clenched around the straps of his large leather examination bag. I’d hauled that bag for him countless times, walking the mountains that surrounded Kylma Above as we looked for signs of bears and wolves and reindeer. All the same, I leaned back when he opened it.

When he straightened, he held nothing more sinister than a bone depressor. “Might I beg the favor of confirming my—

Your Grace’s health?”

“What?” Your Grace was the term used to refer to Father and Mother. Maybe Lyosha, if he’d managed that coup.

Farhod came forward and pressed a thumb to my wrist to check my pulse. It spiked as the bell rang again.

“Don’t,” Aino said, but Prime Minister Eirhan had already left the rug. He flung the door wide, and more figures came in. Aino hurried over to the fireplace under the pretext of stoking it. I knew better. She gripped the fire poker like a sword. I prayed she wouldn’t have to use it.

“Go away,” I told them, but it was too late. The crowd swelled, ogling me as Farhod pushed my tongue down and checked the back of my throat. I gripped his shoulder as he examined my ear. “Make them go away.” I hated how my voice trembled. If this was how I died, I didn’t want everyone to see how afraid I was.

“Please put more wood on the fire. Her Grace has a long night ahead of her,” Eirhan said.

“Why are you calling me that?” Eirhan knew the proper titles for every single person in this palace. He probably had some archaic, official names for insignificant ducal daughters. He would never call me Her Grace by accident.

But the alternative was equally impossible.

Farhod tapped the back of my left calf. “Will Your Grace lift your foot?”

“Stop calling me that.” Panic threatened to wash up from my belly and out of me. I should have done as Aino said. I shouldn’t have opened the door. We should have fled out the back stairs, taken a sled and some dogs, and driven until the duchy was far behind us. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood.

Farhod looked up at me. His eyes were impossible to read in the shadows of their sockets. “I won’t be long,” he said quietly. “But I must finish.”

I swallowed and lifted my foot.

Farhod checked my reflexes, my temperature, and the color of my phlegm. He bent me toward the fire and peered into my eyes. He examined my fingernails. The longer he worked, the quieter my room became. As if the people who’d forced their way in were trying to melt into the shadows and become one with the ice.

At last, Farhod squeezed my hand and turned to Prime Minister Eirhan. “It is my medical opinion that Her Grace is in the peak of health.”

The room let out a sigh. I, for my part, wanted to scream. Instead, I did the one thing I knew would get their attention: I acted like my mother. I drew myself up, tilting my chin, channeling her ice and silk, her venom and wrath. “What. Is. Going. On.”

It worked. Around me, ministers and servants straightened out of habit. They didn’t see that I was clenching my fists to keep my hands from shaking, that my hair was damp with sweat, and that my fur-lined robe covered a nightgown. They saw the daughter of a man who could break ministers with a word, of a woman whose ire could melt the ice beneath their feet. And perhaps it was only that moment of power, but none of them looked so grand to me. Most of them wore nightclothes and slippers, with a coat to stave off the palace’s eternal cold. Others, like Eirhan, looked as though they might fall asleep on their feet. Yet they’d dropped whatever they were doing and hurried to my room. To see me.

Prime Minister Eirhan sank to his knees, bending his head, and placed his right hand on the floor. His motion sent ripples around the room and out the door as everyone followed suit. Even Farhod knelt. Even Aino, though she looked as bewildered as I felt, and she still held the poker like she was ready to kill.

No one in the room, aside from Farhod and Aino, had ever shown more than the barest courtesy to me. But no one contradicted Eirhan, who spoke clearly and confidently into the silence. “Long live Her Grace, the Grand Duke of Kylma Above, Guardian of the City and Its Boundaries, Blessed of Kylma Below, Ruler Supreme, Beloved of the Gods.”

“Long live Her Grace,” the impromptu court chanted.

Impossible, impossible. I was a middle child of thirteen. Even the littlest, Svaro, would be happier as grand duke than I. Not to mention Father, Mother, everyone else who ought to stand in the line of succession ahead of me. “Where are my parents? Has my father died? Lyosha should be grand duke.” Unless he’d bungled his coup so spectacularly that he’d killed himself in the process.

Eirhan fixed Farhod with a shrewd eye, and Farhod cleared his throat before saying, “The rest of your family is . . .” He shook his head, bewildered.

“What? What happened?” I demanded.

The congregation was silent again. Then Farhod admitted, “We don’t know.”

We don’t know. I had seven living sisters and four living brothers. Two parents in the peak of physical health. Brothers who still played with toy soldiers. “Even Svaro?”

Farhod swallowed. “Yes, Your Grace.”

Eirhan spoke from the floor where he knelt. “Your Grace, in this time of uncertainty, we must do what we can to preserve the safety of the duchy and the government. Will you accept your role?”

I couldn’t do that. I had to go study medicine and write treatises on the volatility of magic. I couldn’t do that if I was stuck in Kylma Above.

But . . . we were Kylma Above. If something really had happened to the rest of my family, the right and responsibility of rule fell to me. I had no choice. I had a duty.

I focused on the pain of my nails as they dug into my palms. Father always said we were born to rule. Even though I’d never wanted to, even though I’d planned to leave, I was born to this. I had to bear responsibility, and I had to find out what had happened.

Maybe Aino had the answers. But she looked as lost as I felt.

“I accept,” I said.

“You are the throne, and the throne is yours,” Eirhan said.

“Long live Her Grace,” the court intoned.

*   *   *

Aino hurried me into my best dress, a heavy velvet contraption the color of deep water under a layer of ice. Winter roses had been embroidered in white and silver silk, and pearls clustered between their leaves. Eirhan had the coronation regalia fetched and handed me the scepter that only the heir-elect and the grand duke were supposed to bear. The cold iron burned against my fingers.

The procession to the Great Hall felt like a dream. As we left my rooms, I ran scenarios through my head. My family had been murdered. (All but me? Unlikely.) My family had murdered one another (more likely than I wished). A plague had struck, and the others were ill (possible, but I didn’t have enough information). The rest of my family were the victims of some kind of sorcery (but why had I been spared?). I gripped Aino’s hand. Aino held me like a lifeline, too, and that frightened me even more.

We halted in front of the Great Hall. Its closed double doors were engraved with the family crest: a winter rose in full bloom. A line of ministers blocked our way.

One minister stepped forward. I recognized him as Reko, minister of the people. He was a thin, sallow-skinned man, who wore rough robes of turned-out sheepskin, peasant garb that even Lyosha hadn’t lowered himself to wearing. He looked like a disgruntled fox trying to hide among the herbivores. His frown deepened as he saw the crowd that surrounded me. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Eirhan mirrored his movements, coming to stand in front of me. “We need someone to lead us.”

“We have someone to lead us,” Reko replied. “We have the grand duke.” That counted out a few of my theories. But why was I so necessary if my father or brother was still alive?

“The grand duke and the heir-elect can hardly be expected to lead in their current state.” Eirhan’s proclamation sent a ripple of murmurs through the growing crowd behind us. “We need a representative of strength, and we need it now. If it is Her Grace, so be it.”

I pulled back my shoulders and shifted my grasp on the scepter. I was an Avenko, and ruling was in my blood. My family held the balance between Above and Below, and that made me the most necessary person here.

“You advocate treason,” Reko challenged Eirhan. The delegation behind him bristled. I tried to attach titles to faces. I recognized Bailli, minister of the treasury. I thought of him as the walrus because of his bald head and the twin scars that slashed from the corners of his mouth down to his chin. He held the rest of my coronation regalia—the orb, the ducal ring, my father’s crown.

“Admit it, Reko,” Eirhan said softly. “You don’t care about her. You’ve been trying to dismantle the autocracy for years. If there’s no duke sitting on the throne, he can’t reject another proposal for a parliament, can he?”

Reko’s face turned ruddy. “How dare you—”

Mousy Minister Urso scurried between them. Over the years, he’d tried to be the peacemaker between Father and Mother, appealing to decency, dignity, and whatever else he could dredge up as motivation. I’d always considered him a fool for butting in on family arguments. Now I was glad that someone had dragged him out of bed. “Please, Reko,” he said. “I was of the same mind as you at first.”

“That mind seems to have wandered off,” Reko replied.

Eirhan hissed his disapproval, but Urso continued, hunching his shoulders. “The first night of the brideshow was a disaster. The delegates will continue to arrive throughout the week, and now we have no heir-elect to present to our allies. How many will remain our allies if they see we have no leader?”

I tried to cut in. “I’m not really—”

“They can treat with the ministers. They have no need to see our grand duke,” Reko said.

“I don’t need—” I said.

“The whole point of the brideshow is to be visible,” Eirhan said over me.

All my life, these men had ignored me. It had never bothered me until now. Grand dukes didn’t let their subordinates push and belittle them. Lifting the scepter, I used it to shove bodies out of the way until I stood at the front, facing Reko. “Stand aside,” I said in the best grand duke voice I could muster.

Reko bared his teeth, and ice skittered up my back. But I wasn’t about to show my fear. Fear was the enemy of my family. Fear was a demonstration of weakness. “The proper address is ‘Your Grace.’” I punctuated this with a swift poke of the scepter. Reko grunted as it hit him in the midriff. I shoved past him and pushed on the rose-relief doors.

Eirhan rallied behind this new development. “Ministers, Her Grace will have our attendance.” He swept in behind me. The others followed.

A sudden clang made me turn. A soldier stood in front of Aino, holding his halberd at a not-so-friendly angle. “Ministers only,” he said.

Heat swept through me. Using the scepter as a knife, I sliced through the crowd. Ministers fell away from me like meat peeling from bone. “Aino goes anywhere,” I told the guard, and he leaned away from the rage in my voice. “You will refuse her nothing.”

He stepped back, and she hurried through the door. Our hands clasped.

The Great Hall was still decorated for the brideshow. Our family crest hung on a two-story banner behind my father’s throne, and around the hall, smaller banners were hung for each brideshow delegate. Winter roses wound up the slim ice pillars that held the balconies aloft. This time, I ignored the scenes that lined the walls, and I tried to push recipes and serums and amulets out of my mind. I moved toward the throne, flanked by Eirhan and Aino. But as I walked, the events of the night solidified into weight that dragged at the hem of my dress.

I’m an Avenko, I tried to tell myself. I was born to this.

Besides, I only had to be duke until I found out what was going on.

I sat. Aino squeezed my hand, then retreated. The ministers fanned out around me, both those who had marched in my procession and those who stood against me. Minister Reko, glowering, held one hand to where I’d hit his stomach with the scepter.

The doors opened again to reveal my most unwelcome guest yet: King Sigis, foster brother and all-around undesirable. I frowned at Eirhan. What had happened to “ministers only”? But Eirhan bowed low as Sigis came up to us.

“I hear there is cause for condolences.” Sigis had a rich, smooth voice that others no doubt found soothing and attractive. He paired it with his most charming face and a royal red coat. Each silver button on the coat was in the shape of a wolf’s head. He wore two medals pinned to his chest and one around his neck, as if we’d forget how important he was if he didn’t constantly remind us. He drew back as he saw me, surprise flickering over his features. “Ekaterina. Are you truly your father’s successor?”

It occurred to me that I should answer him, but Sigis had already begun speaking to Yannush, the foreign minister. Yannush’s wiry brown beard, clipped to a crisp point, bobbed as he replied. I heard the phrases “grand duke,” “heir-elect,” and “rest of the family.” Yannush sounded as though he had a firmer grasp on the situation than I did.

I beckoned for Farhod. I wanted to bring Aino forward as well, but when I glanced at her, she shook her head. A servant did not stand next to a grand duke. “Give me the full story,” I said.

We ought to have spoken in private. I was too aware of the way my ministry pressed in. And Sigis, as a foreign king, shouldn’t have been involved at all. But Eirhan cleared his throat before I could suggest it, and the hall fell silent. “It began after two, Your Grace,” he said. “Her Grace your mother was found in a state of—” He licked his lips and looked back at Farhod. The entire hall seemed to lean forward.

Farhod swallowed and bowed to me again. I almost laughed, though that might have had something to do with the onset of panic. Farhod had yelled at me, lectured me, patted me on the shoulder when I’d done well, taken away my experiments when he thought I was going to blow up the palace. Now he had to treat me like a duke. “Her Grace was found in a motionless state and could not be roused.”

I parsed the words out in my mind. “Is my mother dead?”

Whispers flurried through the hall. Sigis’s blue eyes grew thoughtful, and Farhod raised his voice. “A maid checked on her after hearing strange sounds. Her Grace was asleep and could not be woken, and Doctor Munna was called for. When guards were sent to notify His Grace, they found him in the same condition.”

“And my sisters and brothers are like that, too?”

Farhod hesitated. “The entire royal family,” he said. “Except you. No one else. I have never seen an illness like it.”

Murmuring rose around the hall. Sigis leaned back, cocking his head; Reko and his delegation surged forward. Eirhan motioned to the guards stationed around the room. A dozen flanked the throne, halberds at the ready. The tips could punch through boiled leather, and my father had decreed that the ax blades be sharp enough to remove a man’s head with a single blow.

“This is as good as a confession,” Reko barked. “It’s obvious that she or one of her allies orchestrated the entire event. How else would a middle daughter have a shot at the grand duchy?”

I almost laughed at the idea of allies, but Farhod was the one who replied. “You’re assuming she aspires to the post. Perhaps because that is what you would do in her place?”

Reko’s face splotched with red. “In the name of the real grand duke, arrest her!”

“That is an act of treason!” Eirhan snarled.

Their axes were less than a foot from my neck. If they turned those axes on me, I could watch my life spill out, melting the floor for a few seconds before my brain stopped forever. “Wait,” I croaked. “You said it may be an illness. Have they had it for some time? How quickly does it set in?”

“I’m not sure, Your Grace,” Farhod said, putting a slight emphasis on my new title. “Munna and I suspect a matter of hours.”

“Is it fatal? Is it contagious?”

“I do not know,” he said.

Reko’s face went from scarlet to ashen. And in that moment, I knew what would make me look better than him. “The palace must be quarantined until Farhod and the physician figure out whether this can spread. The first priority is protecting the duchy.”

Eirhan, for once, looked as though he sympathized with Reko. “What about us—I mean, what about Your Grace?”

“I have some knowledge of chemistry and biology,” I said. Farhod’s lips twitched at my false modesty, while Aino rolled her eyes. I made a mental note—declare it treasonous to roll your eyes at the grand duke. “I’ll assist with the cure. Maybe you’d like to help as well. Otherwise, you can conduct your duties from inside the palace.”

“Surely Your Grace understands that it’s dangerous to confine all the heads of state in a plague house,” said Bailli in a gravelly voice.

I glared at him. “Do you think it’s good to endanger the rest of the city just because you hope you haven’t caught it yet?”

Bailli’s cheeks reddened, and his eyes flashed with something darker than anger. I’d made my second enemy as grand duke. My reign was off to a bad start.

“It’s not only a matter of us, Your Grace,” said Minister Yannush, pointing to the delegates’ banners that hung from the walls behind him.

“It would be . . . unwise in the extreme to hold our foreign visitors against their will,” Eirhan added.

“I disagree.” This came not from any of my ministers, but from Sigis. He smoothed his beard and smiled. Although his native tongue, Drysian, was the business language of the North, he addressed the court in Kylmian. He always liked to show off.

He strode past the guards before they could decide whether he was allowed to do so. His crotch was face height as I sat on the throne, and I tried to lean away without making it obvious that I was leaning away. He smelled of musk, as if he’d been purposefully wrestling a belligerent sheep before coming to see me. “It’s simply a matter of the way you say it. I personally find that with the right leverage, you can get anyone to agree to almost anything.”

“That sounds like a threat,” I muttered.

“It’s not a threat, Ekata.” Sigis propped his arm on the back of Father’s throne. “An experienced politician could get the delegates to agree to the quarantine. That’s all.”

Yannush whispered something in Urso’s ear. “Perhaps an . . . interim regent could provide some stability?” Urso said. He sounded anything but sure.

I gripped the arms of Father’s throne. “No.” If Lyosha thought he could be grand duke, then I could be grand duke, at least for a few hours.

Eirhan stepped in front of me, like a shield. “The Avenko family has been on this throne since the foundation of the duchy. They hold the balance between Above and Below. We cannot select another to sit in their place.”

Reko crossed his arms. “For once, we agree. Let the throne stay empty.”

“Impossible,” Eirhan said.

Reko’s lip curled. “Why? What will she bring that we lack? Experience? Ability?”

“Is that how you speak to your grand duke’s face?” I spat, channeling my mother’s venom. Reko’s mouth twisted in contempt, and my anger rose to match his disdain. Maybe I didn’t have the experience or ability of my father, but I did have the iron will.

I deliberately turned away from my ministers, ignored Sigis, and focused on the guards who surrounded me. The nearest was shaking, and beneath his helmet, he looked hardly older than me. “What’s your name?”

He practically rattled in his ceremonial regalia. “Viljo, my—Your Grace.”

Viljo. I focused on his face. Before tonight, I hadn’t cared to remember many names. But that would have to change. Father remembered everyone, and so would I. “Viljo, take some men and make sure every palace exit is guarded. No one goes in or out, not unless Farhod or the doctor confirms it. And place guards outside the bridal wing. No one can leave until it’s safe.”

I lifted my chin. I didn’t need to look at anyone else. I didn’t need anyone else’s approval. Nevertheless, my traitor eyes moved to Sigis. He looked thoughtful. He looked . . . pleased?

I wasn’t so sure I was doing the right thing.

Viljo led five guards out. As the ministers shuffled, Eirhan spoke up again. “I move to have Her Grace declared provisional grand duke.” His retinue of allies mustered a hearty enough cheer for me.

Sigis clapped but said nothing. I recognized his calculating look, and I did not like it.

“And what does ‘provisional’ mean?” Reko sneered. “Will she take provisional coronation trials? Make provisional decisions?”

“There will be no coronation trials. Decisions will be made as they always have. There’s no need to catastrophize, Reko,” Eirhan said.

Reko’s eyes seemed to cut me. “And who’s to say she’ll consider it provisional?”

“You will,” I said. “I’m sure Father will be grateful to any loyal ministers who ensure his line is safe while he is . . . resting. And to those who help him once he has fully recovered.”

The mutters that circulated the hall seemed more approving than disapproving. Sigis’s mouth twitched.

Eirhan snatched the rest of the coronation regalia from Minister Bailli, leaving him to bluster at his empty hands. Eirhan shoved the ducal ring on my finger and dropped the orb in my lap. With a little more precision, he placed the crown, a thin diadem of electrum dotted with pale blue pearls, upon my head. It had last been fitted for Father and balanced precariously. “I declare you—provisionally—the Grand Duke of Kylma Above.”

Three

ALL WAS silent for a moment. Three or four people clapped, a lonely sound in the Great Hall, and the noise died out quickly. I cleared my throat. “Thank you.”