“Not constantly, but even a little of her blood is enough to give them the advantage. You see how they control things,” Raimo says. “How they control her. How, as she comes into her own, as she starts to question what she’s been taught, as she realizes she has it within her to be a true ruler, maybe to change things for the better, they weaken her enough to take her down.”
I lower my hands to my sides, fighting the urge to sob. Sofia. She was meant to live a long, glorious life. All the Valtias were. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
Raimo’s bushy white eyebrows rise. “What makes you think I didn’t? I tried to stir the few priests who had not corrupted themselves. I tried to build a coalition that could challenge the elders. But one by one, my allies were converted or killed. And the elders bribed the city council and the citizens until they were so soft and full and happy that they had no reason to question what was happening in the temple. I even went to the Valtia herself.” He rubs at his nose. “She listened. She was horrified. I thought she would help me.” He raises his head. “But then she sickened and died within the week, and the new Valtia trusted in the elders completely.”
“You could have fought them,” barks Sig. “You could have tried.”
“Do you have any idea how strong they are?” Raimo scoffs. “It wasn’t my power that had kept me alive to that point. I had to rely on my wits. So instead of committing noble, idiotic suicide by challenging them, I stole the knowledge they needed to take control forever, and I tucked it—and myself—away until the cosmos sent me the allies who could help me save Kupari.” He lifts the parchment from the box. “After all, it was my fault this knowledge existed, seeing as I’m the one who made the prophecy in the first place.”
“What did it say, exactly?” Oskar asks.
Raimo smiles, his entire face crinkling. “Ah, this is the interesting part. It depends on how you interpret it.” He runs his narrow fingertips over the runes on the parchment. “The Kupari used to read the stars. We used to believe. They used to guide us—not the elders, and not a naive belief that the Valtia was in charge. Our faith in the stars is in our very language—what do you pray to? What do you say when you’re surprised or frustrated? But which of you knows the first thing about them?”
Ismael combs his fingers through his beard. “My grandfather told me a few stories. About the celestial bear that moves the sun through the sky. About a great pack of wolves, commanded by the queen of the night and the king of the stars, that comes from on high to protect us from our enemies.”
Just like the carvings in the temple. Except I was told they symbolized the magic of the Valtia.
Aira looks over at Ismael. “You never told me those stories.”
Raimo nods. “And that’s how we forgot who we were, generation by generation. That’s how we came to worship our queen and our own power instead of the cosmos. But I knew how to read the stars. I put all my faith in them.” He flips over the parchment, revealing a portion of a star chart, concentric circles dotted with the inhabitants of the sky and all sorts of scribbled calculations. His fingertips tremble as he slides them over the dots. “Karhu, the bear, the creature who lives a thousand lives, the one who brings wisdom and balance,” he says, tapping one star before moving to another. “And Susi, the wolf, the implacable warrior. Together, they symbolize a mighty Valtia. They were aligned with the ringed planet, Mahtava—the portent of war. And right here”—he traces an invisible line to a cluster of dots—“is Vaaden, the steed. The myths say he aids the divine in their quests for magical artifacts. See how his spine creates this sharp angle with the alignment?”
He looks up at us, reads the blank looks on our faces, and rolls his eyes. “It told of a great power that would rise in a time of war,” he says. “The vessel would come into existence when Karhu and Susi aligned. This alignment was so rare. My calculations weren’t precise, but I knew it wouldn’t happen again for nearly three centuries.”
“And I happened to be born during that alignment,” I say quietly.
“And so was she. The Valtia,” says Raimo, looking down at the parchment again. “But that’s what the elders didn’t know. I had confided in a friend, my last supposed ally, but he told the elders of the prophecy, and they demanded to know what it foretold. I allowed them to read the part that I’d completed. When I saw the greed on their faces, I knew the time had come to take action. They wanted this power for themselves, not our people. That night, after staring through a lens of ice at the stars above, after completing the prophecy and realizing what it meant, I knew I couldn’t stay.” He runs his fingers down his beard. “My only goal became to survive long enough to see the prophecy come true, and to do my part to serve the will of the cosmos.”