“Are you all right, Your Grace?” Althari asked.
“I’m thinking about scurvy,” I said.
Eirhan sighed, no doubt resisting the urge to drop his head in his hands. Inkar cocked her head. Althari looked between us, nonplussed.
They’d call me the mad duke if I kept doing things like that. Worse, they’d let Sigis win the coronation trials. But Inkar came to my rescue. “I believe we have met once before. You were a guest of my father’s many years ago.”
“Yes.” Althari’s smile took on the special warmth of memory. “Your father sets such a spectacular table, I almost forgot I was a hostage.”
“My father is a gracious host,” Inkar said. “I hope to have learned that lesson from him.”
“Then you will be a formidable consort indeed,” Althari said. “You have my sincerest wishes for the success of the trials.” Her eyes narrowed as she glanced at Sigis. Then she took her leave.
I leaned toward Inkar. “How long ago did you two meet?”
Inkar considered. “Eight years? Nine?”
“And you remember her?”
“It was my duty to remember faces,” Inkar said. “And remembering faces served me well in the Emerald Order.”
“Oh.” Even the wife I’d picked on a whim could do my job better than I could.
The Baron of Luciato was introduced next, and his name flashed through my mind like one of the silver fish Below. He wore purple and black and had the tanned-leather look that came from years of campaigns. Inkar greeted him with surprising familiarity. “Every horse in the Emerald Order is a Lucian horse,” she said. “I would never consider any other.”
The baron’s smile lit like a candle. “And your father is famous among our traders.”
“Their intelligence is incredible. And they are the most loyal creatures I have ever met. Please tell me you have come to teach the people of Kylma how to ride.”
“You must admit, the environment is… not suited for them,” Luciato said, eyeing me conspiratorially.
Inkar laughed. “This environment is suited to no one.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
Luciato sputtered. “We—we didn’t mean, ah—”
“We have reindeer, bears, wolves, snow hares, and polar foxes, and two distinct types of ground birds in addition to flying fauna. And that doesn’t take into account any of the flora—” I stopped myself. This wasn’t the way a grand duke controlled the conversation.
Inkar hastened to fill the silence. “My wife enjoys biology.”
Luciato jumped on the subject. “Perhaps you’d like a specimen to study, then. An arrangement could be made for a pair of Lucian foals for you.”
“I thought you said they’d be miserable here,” I pointed out.
Luciato’s mouth worked. Inkar laughed at me. “He did not say miserable.” She put a hand on the baron’s shoulder. “Tomorrow, you and I shall visit the stable… the kennel master, and we shall discuss this most generous gift.”
The baron bowed to us both, though his bow to Inkar was deeper and more graceful. Then he wished us luck with the trials and retreated into the crowd.
Eirhan glared at me. I didn’t have to look at him to know it. I tried to fight my own irritation—irritation for Luciato, for Inkar, for Althari, for everyone who could play this game of politics with ease.
Inkar, for her part, glowed. “Two Lucian horses is a generous gift. I could teach you to ride.”
“What makes you think I want to learn?” I said sourly.
She laughed. “Do not fear. It is terrifying at first, but I will help you. And you will find it less and less terrifying, until, suddenly, it is the best thing in your life.”
“I doubt that,” I said flatly, and a shuttered look came over her, the sort of look I recognized with a pang. Apparently, I had learned one conversational skill from my father: the ability to alienate my wife.
No weakness. No fear. I was supposed to make Inkar regret our marriage. As the next delegate came up, I straightened my shoulders and greeted him as though I hadn’t said anything to Inkar at all. Inkar followed suit and had him smiling in ten seconds.
“Your Grace.” Eirhan took me by the shoulder and steered me a short distance away from Inkar. “You have to keep her from doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Charming delegates. That’s your job, not hers. They’re already inclined to like you more than Sigis, since no one actually wants to see him win the trials. You need to seize that. You’ll still need their support when you get rid of her.”
He made it sound simple. But as I turned back to her, I was reminded only of how much I didn’t know. I was so unsuited for this. Nausea began to form a hard ball in my stomach.
Inkar greeted everyone with a smile and could say something about each of them—even the cousins of Kylma Above. Worse, she seemed so genuine. Father had been smooth; Mother, regal. Lyosha had been brash and posturing. My siblings had ranged between cold and clipped to overly saccharine. But Inkar looked like she was happy to be there. Happy to be with me. The fixed, polite smiles of everyone who greeted us became expressions—of interest, of amusement, of something real. Even the other brideshow candidates seemed happy for Inkar, despite their dislike of me, and they wished us luck with sincerity. Only Sigis didn’t approach; he prowled the edges of the room, sparing us a few angry glowers whenever he could. He didn’t give delegates more than an acknowledgment, and he spoke to many ministers at length. I’d have to discuss that with Eirhan later. For now, dinner awaited.
We entered the banquet hall together. Inkar’s eyes wandered up the walls to the vaulted ceiling, carved with my family motifs. “Everything,” she said in a soft voice. “Everything is ice.”
“I’d have thought you’d be used to that by now,” I said. Inkar shook her head wordlessly. “Well, the food’s not ice. Not yet, anyway.”
I was seated in the grandest chair, my father’s chair. I felt small and strange slipping into it. If Father saw me in his chair… the first time he’d caught my oldest sister, Eshra, playing on it, he’d struck her with a birch rod hard enough to break skin. She’d carried the scar on her cheek proudly, right up to the day Lyosha had pushed her into the moat and held her down with a weighted fishing net.
I’m grand duke, I thought. The chair was my right and responsibility, if only until we found the cure.
Inkar took the place next to me normally reserved for Mother. Eirhan sat on my other side. And next to Inkar, Sigis sat with a poisonous smile. “Sorry to surprise you with the trials, dear Ekata,” he said, looking past Inkar as though she weren’t even there. He spoke in Kylmian, and Inkar’s puzzled frown confirmed that she didn’t understand. It didn’t surprise me; Kylma was the smallest sovereign nation I knew of, and no one else had reason to speak our tongue. Drysian was the court language; Kylmian was the language we spoke behind closed doors.
I wondered how much of a diplomatic incident would be caused if I told him to take a long dip in a tanner’s vat. Instead, I forced myself to say in Drysian, “You didn’t surprise me at all.” Thanks to Eirhan. “I hope you enjoy your meal.”