I smile. “Thank heaven for that.” Because if he and Jaspar hadn’t burst in and tried to help me, I might have been a pile of ash before the stubbly priest even reached me.
We march up to Nisse’s council room, and this time, Thyra is present, as is Jaspar. The elder sits at the painted table. Another man, this one young and pale, with black-brown eyes and a short fuzz of hair the color of winter sunlight, haunts the corner. Kauko sees me looking at him and smiles, speaking once again in the trilling Kupari language. “That’s his apprentice,” Halina says. “His name is Sig. Apparently he’s been through a terrible ordeal and you should forgive him.”
“For what?”
Halina rolls her eyes. “Chances are you’re about to find out.” She mutters something under her breath in Vasterutian but clamps her mouth shut when Nisse gives her a cold glare.
Sig is staring at me with a blank, blunt sort of look. His face looks as if it has been carved from stone, sharp cheekbones and jaw, straight nose. He would be frankly handsome, except there is a swirl of burn scars across his brow and along his cheeks. He’s clad in a tunic and breeches that don’t quite fit—on his lean frame they hang loose, clearly not his own. Sweat beads on his brow even though this room is barely warm, with only torches and the fire in the hearth to chase away the dead winter chill.
“Hello,” I say.
He tilts his head and speaks in Kupari, his voice shaky. Halina sighs. “He wants to know if it hurt, when you caught fire.”
My gaze traces the line of scarring down his throat. “Looks like he would know.”
“Please sit down, Ansa,” says Nisse, drawing my attention back to the players at the table. Thyra is on one side, opposite Jaspar, who sits next to Kauko. Nisse sits at the head.
I sit at the opposite end of the table, not wanting to take a place next to Thyra. Jaspar’s words ring too readily in my head for that. He gives me a reassuring nod as I settle myself in the chair, and Thyra clears her throat and looks away. Halina remains standing at Nisse’s side, quietly translating what is said into Kupari for Kauko’s benefit.
“We have had quite an adventure,” Nisse says, scratching his face. I peer at the blackened stubble on the right side of his jaw, and he chuckles. “My beard was almost a casualty.”
“You’re lucky any part of you survived,” Thyra says. “We both were.” She gives me a hollow-eyed look. “Two of the warriors who went with us did not live through the experience.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“We rode into the city to see the coronation of the new queen—the Valtia. Or, at least, that’s what we thought we were seeing.”
Kauko sighs and shifts uncomfortably, as if the bench is too hard for his soft bottom. Thyra turns to me. “They had us on the steps leading up to a platform. First they brought in the little princess. The Sabkella—”
“Saadella,” says Kauko.
“Right. She’s the heir to the Valtia’s magic,” says Thyra. “She was a tiny thing. Only four or five at the most.” She looks like she finds the whole idea disgusting. “She sat on a little throne and wore a little crown—”
Kauko begins to babble. “He says it’s an important symbol,” Halina interprets.
“Our only symbols of power are our broadswords,” says Jaspar.
Kauko smiles when she translates, nodding at Jaspar as if he’s made a joke.
“Anyway,” Thyra continues. “Then they trotted out their queen, lifted high on a throne they carried through the streets. She had on a gown that seemed to be made entirely of copper, a copper cuff—”
“With red marks on it,” I murmur.
“What?” asks Nisse.
“I saw it,” I say, feeling hollow. “When she called down the storm on us.”
Thyra’s expression has softened. “I saw it too. And she had a blood-red mouth, and a face painted white like the snow.”
I wince at the sudden, stabbing memory of the witch queen’s cracked face. “It was paint?” I suppose that makes sense, but it was thick as a mask.
Kauko nods and speaks to Halina, who grunts. “He says the Kupari people expect such things. It comforts them.”
“Then they are comforted by the oddest things,” I blurt out. Was I really one of them, at one time?
“Kauko speaks of them as if they were children,” Thyra says. “And they looked so desperate in that square.”
Nisse chuckles. “And perhaps they are, Niece. Sheep in need of shepherds. And now that we’ve established that, let’s continue to tell Ansa what happened, maybe?”
Thyra’s cheeks flush. “So they brought this queen out and set her on the platform, and a bunch of black-robed priests”—she waves her hand at Kauko’s round belly—“put a big crown on her head.”
Nisse lets out a huff of amusement. “And that’s when the show began. The fire in the torches around the square rose and twisted and entwined until they caged us in.”
I glance at the torch bracketed to the wall. “It can do that?”