I wanted to take off my gloves and find out.
Aino took my arm and pulled me back. A moment later, I realized why. Two axes, edged with gold, hung from Inkar’s belt. Gold threaded through the steel in a snaking pattern.
Inkar brushed the tops of the axes. “Do not worry. They are ceremonial only. No good for taking off heads.” Her red smile was anything but reassuring.
“How did she get those in here?” Aino muttered in Kylmian.
I shrugged. I doubted Inkar would use her golden axes on me. “What does mistress of the Emerald Order mean, anyway?” I could start the process of killing our relationship with poor etiquette and descend from there.
Inkar looped her arm through mine. “It means I control a thousand men on horseback.”
“Who doesn’t?” I muttered. Apparently, every suitor of mine had their own army. “Are you ready?”
“I am very ready,” she replied, and we began to walk. Viljo and my secondary guard fell behind us, and Aino followed them. I could feel Aino’s eyes on our arms. But when I moved to pull free, Inkar tightened her grip. I coughed and pretended I was trying to shift my coat.
My stomach grew heavier with each step. I was about to walk into a dinner where all eyes would be on me. Everything I did would be dissected the way I dissected tundra mice in the laboratory. I could recite bones and tendons and magical remedies all I liked, but here that would do me no good.
Inkar didn’t seem put off by my silence. She gazed at the walls, taking in the relief carvings and the tapestries that told the history of the duchy Above. “These are amazing.”
“What?” I pulled my thoughts back from their anxious fixation on the dinner to come. “The winter roses?”
She reached up to touch one. I grabbed her wrist and was rewarded with a surprised—and perhaps affronted?—look. “They’ll freeze your fingers, even through gloves,” I warned her. “They’re not like the ice of the rest of the palace.”
“Is that why they do not melt near the fire?” she said. “Are they magic?”
“The legend goes that some duke Below gave them to some duke Above, and now they’re an invasive species.” They grew into all the corners, twisted around pillars, and ran over the windowsills. “There’s a superstition that they bloom when the family is in danger.”
“They are blooming now.” Her glove traced the outline of a three-quarter bloom. “For your father, perhaps?”
“They’re always blooming. Of course people see something in them.” I pulled on her arm to get her to walk again.
I could feel her observing me. “Perhaps you are always in danger.”
She had a point. Being a member of my family had often resulted in untimely death. All the same, I wished I hadn’t said anything. “I don’t follow superstition.” I followed facts and rules, and even magic had those. Even if they were as light as temporary madness, permanent outcome.
Inkar followed their trail along the corridor. “I am part of the family now. Will they bloom when I am in danger?”
“Ah.” Guilt flashed through me, leaving me hot. “Maybe we’ll find out after the trial marriage.” After you hate me and reject me and hopefully never want to see me again.
If I even survived that long. If I could even make it to the end of dinner—or to the start of it. Now that we’d exited the royal wing, we started to pass people who stared at me, at Inkar, at our linked arms. I could practically hear the gears turning in their minds. Nausea rolled through me, and I stopped to swallow my fear.
Aino’s hand landed on my back, soothing through layers of wool. Then it moved up, and she pretended to adjust my hair, whispering, “You must continue. They’re looking for signs that you’re weaker than him.”
Him. Sigis, Eirhan, or my father? What did it matter? “I don’t think I can eat.”
“Come.” Inkar began to walk again, pulling me along behind her. “The creatures around you are nothing but toads. You do not have to fear them.”
“If they are toads, what does that make you?”
It should have been the perfect insult for Eirhan’s anti-Inkar campaign. But Inkar smiled as though I’d been genuinely funny.
“I am a serpent,” she said, touching a hand to her breast, where the golden serpent coiled. “I eat toads for breakfast.”
“I’ll tell the cook,” I said, and she laughed again. My stomach unclenched a tiny bit. Inkar would sit by my side at dinner, and she didn’t seem easily offended. Eirhan would sit on my other side and keep me from committing the worst political and social sins. I would survive this.
The translucent ice doors of the audience chamber showed a blur of color as delegates moved about within. Sigis was in there somewhere, as were each of my ministers. “Everyone in that room hates me, don’t they?” I asked Aino.
The angry lines in her face softened. “You are the grand duke,” she said. “They will respect you as their host. Don’t be too grateful to anyone who is kind. They are not kind out of pity or love.” She reached for my shoulder. Then her eyes flitted to Inkar, and she stepped back. Aino nodded to the guards. “I’ll be right behind you.”
The guards bowed low to me and opened the doors. We entered the flood.
A hush spread like ice crystallizing over an open hole in the lake. Heads swiveled our way, eyes settled on Inkar and me, on the way we stood together. Then, in a flurry of movement, the servants at the side of the room knelt. They bowed their heads and placed one fist against the ice floor, as Eirhan had done the night before. As they moved, so did the crowd. The delegates and brideshow candidates knelt in a wave; kings and emperors bowed at the waist, hands over their hearts.
I let my gaze linger on my kneeling ministers. Eirhan studied the ground like a good subject. Reko glared defiantly. Yannush’s beard quivered as he whispered to Annika, and Annika’s round face was serious. Bailli rumbled at Olloi. Itilya looked calculating.
And Sigis, hand on his heart, kept his eyes on Inkar. The storm cloud on his face told me he was going to be a problem.
The crowd knelt for a heartbeat, then a heartbeat more. I slipped my hand into my pocket and out of its glove and fumbled for the jar. How had Father managed to begin his displays so elegantly? At last, I popped the cork and felt something cold and smooth flow out onto my hand. The lights guttered, and someone at the back of the hall gasped. It was working.
They wouldn’t be impressed for long if I couldn’t make the magic do anything more. I spotted the tapestries that hung from the walls, filled with my favorite subjects. Concentrate, Eirhan’s voice whispered. If there was one thing I could concentrate on—
I went to the wall and touched a magic-soaked hand to the tapestry. Something stirred in my belly, as though the magic drew out a bit of me as it worked. Hyathae. The seathorn bush on the edge of the tapestry began to grow, spreading branches until it nudged a wolf. The wolf tilted its head up to howl. An owl winged in front of the moon, feathers shimmering.
The magic spread to the next tapestry like wildfire, and a bear lunged, scraping cloth claws into the air. Two foxes started a game of chase, leaping from tapestry to tapestry, and a stag lowered his head to charge a hunter’s horse. The horse reared and sent one of my long-dead relatives flying. Snow and shadows shifted as animals rushed over them; trees grew beyond the edges of the tapestry to spread silk branches into the air.