“Obviously.”
Inkar turned onto her back. Finally, she said, her voice tentative, “Perhaps it would be of benefit to show some of that compassion. In public.”
I snorted softly. “My father never showed compassion. Compassion makes greedy people reach for more. It makes hard people think you’re soft.” He would always rather be seen as hard than weak.
Inkar was silent for a moment. Then she said, “You do not like your father.”
“Not at all,” I said.
“Then why do you wish to imitate him?”
Defensiveness flared up in me. Father had ruled the duchy well. “I—he’s my father. He was successfully in charge of an entire country. He must have been doing something right.”
And he’d infuriated someone so much they’d decided to destroy us.
CHAPTER TEN
I woke from dark, heavy dreams full of ice and roses. The night outside had cleared up; the moon had set, and the sky was a deep blue, with stars dotting it like snowflakes.
“What time is it?” I whispered.
I expected Aino to answer, but a stranger loomed over me. I jerked away, adrenaline rising. One of my sisters had sneaked in; one of them was going to kill me—but then she shifted, and I saw the dark waterfall of her hair, and I remembered all that had happened.
“I am sorry,” Inkar said, and for a moment, I thought she was sorry for marrying me. “I agreed to the shooting contest this morning. I did not mean to wake you.”
“Well, you did.” I tugged on the blanket. My eyes felt as if I’d opened them in salt water, and my skin was slick with sweat.
I heard the soft thuds of her slippered feet as she went over to her trunk. “You may come with me, if you like.”
“I’d rather go back to sleep.” My pounding heart might make that difficult.
Aino opened the door a crack. “I thought I heard you,” she said in her steel-cold, for-Inkar voice. “Good. A grand duke’s schedule starts before dawn.”
“No, thank you,” I muttered.
“Eirhan’s already here,” she continued, as if I hadn’t said anything at all. “He has your order for the day.”
Of course he did. Precisely defined by him, determined by him. He had my schedule fixed from the moment I rose to after I should collapse in my bed. And I had no say in it whatsoever.
I turned to Inkar. “I’d love to watch you shoot.” And Inkar’s grin, conspiratorial and triumphant, gave me the flash of warmth I needed to ignore Aino’s pursed lips.
The training yard was a patch of ice on our western side, maybe thirty-by-thirty feet, packed over with snow and circled by a low wall. A guardhouse, more decorative than anything else, held weaponry and targets that the weapons master hauled out and propped against the wall. Kylma Above’s standing army was a joke compared with the monstrosity that lined the lake’s edge, but our soldiers took pride in their work. And Below gave us the advantage we needed in times of siege.
As I sat on a bench with my coffee, Inkar handed her overcoat to Viljo and went over to the weapons master, rubbing her arms. She’d braided her hair into a long, silken rope that highlighted the length of her neck. She shook the weapons master’s hand.
The Baron of Rabar arrived in a magnificent yellow cloak embroidered with red and blue poppies. He approached and knelt before me, smoothly enough that I almost missed the surprise on his face. “Your Grace honors us with her presence.”
“I want to see what my wife can do,” I said. I didn’t mention the pleasure I got from defying Eirhan. It didn’t seem like ducal behavior. “And how is your wife this morning?”
The baron’s face clouded momentarily. “She is well, I assure you,” he said. “She wished to travel, but she’s resting after the birth of our son.” He got to his feet, crunching snowpack.
I’d seen the baron with a pretty woman in velvet. “I…”
“You must take Her Grace’s greetings home with you,” Eirhan said, coming up behind us. “Please, don’t let us interrupt your match.”
The baron went to join Inkar. Inkar clasped his hand and said something that made him chuckle. As they took their bows from the weapons master, Eirhan said quietly, “The young lady the baron brought with him from Rabar is not his wife.”
“I gathered that,” I said.
“You have insulted him by inferring that he ought to have brought his wife.”
“I’ll be extra complimentary at dinner,” I offered.
He sat on the bench next to me. “I told you to remember who brought their mistresses.”
“You tell me a lot of things, Eirhan.”
“Perhaps you understand why, Your Grace.”
I didn’t answer. For a while we watched Inkar and the baron as they nocked arrows and let them fly. The baron’s struck right on the line between the center and the closest ring. Inkar’s was almost dead in the middle.
“Minister Urso is meeting the delegate of Avythera,” Eirhan said as Inkar and the baron shook hands and trooped to the targets to retrieve their arrows. “He’ll join us shortly.”
Avythera wasn’t the largest country in the North, and it wasn’t our neighbor, but it did have important trade routes. And Sigis wanted it. He’d prattled at me for ages about it the night before last. It said something about us both that I couldn’t remember the details.
“Why not bring out the rest of the council?” I said. “We can have our meeting right here.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Eirhan said. “Anything to get Your Grace to sit still.”
Urso trotted up to us, pulling his scarf down and bowing low. “Your Grace. I’m sorry I’m late.” He cast about for a suitable place to sit, but when he saw the only option was on the bench next to Eirhan, he elected to stand, clasping his hands together and bouncing on the balls of his feet. “The delegate from Avythera was… eager to speak on the matter of our agreement. And passionate.”
“And what did he have to say?” Maybe that would clue me in as to what the agreement was actually about.
“He was, ah, interested in striking up an independent relationship with Your Grace.” Urso gulped. “As opposed to with her father.”
Urso looked at me. Eirhan looked at me. I tried to look clever. Eirhan took a deep breath. “The Avythera agreement was a free-trade agreement between Kylma Above, Drysiak, Avythera, and Solarkyet. Your father withdrew from the agreement when Solarkyet revolted, and imposed a restriction on the number of foreign goods Kylmian traders can purchase. He wishes them to spend their money at home.” Eirhan smiled pointedly at Urso. “And I suppose the delegate wishes us to spend it abroad.”
Urso shifted from foot to foot as he tried to find some way to sweeten his words. “Very much so,” he finally said.
I ran over what he said twice more in my head. “Why not trade abroad? Won’t it be better for our standing?” I asked.
Urso’s head bobbed. “Your Grace is correct, naturally. But your father had his reasons. And Sigis has made us a counteroffer to make exclusive trading agreements with Drysiak instead.”
I looked at Eirhan. “Any special requirements to that counteroffer?”