Aino brushed at her tears. “It’s going to be fine,” I said. She didn’t answer.
“Only Her Grace will be allowed in the hall.” The secretary tugged at the ends of her gloves. Unease prodded me. Did I know her voice?
Aino frowned. “Kamen’s trial was public.”
“Minister Eirhan has ordered it,” the secretary said in a trembling voice.
Inkar’s eyes narrowed. “I am the grand consort. I shall go where I like.”
“Inkar,” I said. She looked at me reproachfully. “It’s okay.” I had to complete the coronation trials on my own, and she’d already interfered for me once. And in this last trial, I had an advantage that I didn’t think Sigis could match.
“We will escort you, at least,” Aino said.
As we left my rooms, Viljo shot me a worried glance, then turned to follow us. The secretary scowled and quickened her pace. “Through here,” she said, heading toward the family library. “We’ll take the servants’ corridor.”
She opened the door to the library, and I tottered inside.
One little fire had been stoked next to an armchair in the most open corner. A figure sat in the armchair, so bundled I couldn’t recognize them. “Hello, Ekata,” said a small voice. “I had a nightmare. And they say that Father died?”
Svaro. We will find another Avenko.
The relief dropped out of me like a stone. Aino gasped as the secretary parted our hands with force, her fingers tearing at my bandaged palms. The secretary gave Aino a hard shove, back through the open door, then slammed it and pulled a chair under the handle.
Something twanged. Viljo shouted. Then he crashed into me, and we fell to the ice floor with his shoulder in my clavicle. My spine sang with pain. I pushed on Viljo, gritting my teeth as I tried to ignore my back and my muscles and my palms, and sat up. Blood soaked the front of my robe.
Urso stood at the other end of the room, fumbling with the little crossbow. “I told you to keep everyone else out,” he said in a high voice. Eirhan stood next to him. His eyebrows were drawn into a thoughtful frown.
“I’m sorry,” Urso’s secretary said. “I didn’t know how—I couldn’t make—”
Her voice. I did recognize it—from the law library. I almost laughed. I’d been so intent on discovering whether it was Annika or Itilya with Sigis that night that I hadn’t considered that someone who wasn’t a minister could be conspiring against me. My family’s arrogance toward the common people would kill me after all.
“Hardly matters.” Urso’s hands shook as he put the crossbow down on a little table. “Bind her. We’ll do it another way.” A dark messenger bowl sat on the table; something fell from his hands into the water.
My mind landed on one fact after another. I pressed on Viljo’s wound. “Please, will you call for a doctor?”
“Are—are you serious?” Urso sputtered.
These would be my last moments on the earth, so I might as well do something good with them. I fumbled for the small knife at my belt and cut strips of cloth from the hem of my nightgown. “It’s not his fault he was assigned to guard me. Don’t kill him for it.”
“We can’t get out.” Even as he spoke, winter roses burst and grew around the room. They crushed over one another, flowing down the wall and blooming in delicate crystal petals before melting into the walls. “That’s our security, Your Grace. No one is coming in to save you.”
I busied myself tending to Viljo’s wound. My hands trembled. I didn’t trust myself to pull out the crossbow bolt lodged in his shoulder, so I wrapped cloth around it. Little good it did him. Viljo paled with every passing moment. My paltry bandages grew soaked almost as soon as they touched his body.
“You might have warned Viljo,” I told Eirhan. “You might have told him to stay away from me.”
“And what makes you think I knew about this?” Eirhan’s voice was calm.
“You know everything?” I guessed. “You planned it?”
“My dear, what a thing to say.” Eirhan shook out his arms as though the idea clung to him unpleasantly. “After all the time I spent cultivating Lyosha for rule, after the delicate balance I walked between father and son—you think I’d throw all that away to start over? With you?”
“Why did you kill Yannush, then?” My eyes prickled. Focus. Keep applying pressure.
“The man wanted to be prime minister. It was simply untenable.” Eirhan spoke casually, but I was starting to understand him.
He was afraid. He’d spent his life trying to keep his job and his head. He’d never anticipated me, or the trouble I’d bring. He’d been struggling to maintain his place and his power, just as I had.
But just as my situation didn’t justify my actions, neither did his. Beneath my hand, Viljo gasped and wheezed. Something burbled in his lungs, and a fresh lance of pain went through my chest. I’d killed him the moment I’d made him my guard.
Urso glared at Eirhan, though the effect was ruined by the shaking in his hands. “Well? Does that mean you’ve chosen your side, at last?” Urso prompted.
Eirhan watched me silently.
Urso jerked his chin, and his secretary pulled my arms behind me. I struggled uselessly. “Maybe if you cooperate, we’ll have all this over with in time to save your guard,” she said in my ear, and bound my wrists with a thick cloth.
“I’m sorry.” Urso swallowed. His eyes flickered to Svaro. “It was His Grace Below’s idea. The Avenko line… it has to be contained. It’s nothing personal, you see. But we never had the means to do it until His Grace contacted us to offer more… magical assistance.”
So Below had acted first. Though the plan would have come to nothing if Yannush and Urso hadn’t been willing. “And where does Sigis fit?”
“We needed someone to help stabilize the country. Someone with experience and power. We didn’t think… It doesn’t matter.” Urso’s voice turned pitying. “We thought you would be the best alternative. I am sorry you turned out to be as troublesome as your father.”
The funny thing was, he did sound sorry. He was good at regret and sympathy. He was always trying to be liked, and even now he wanted me to understand him. All the same, I couldn’t conflate regret with having a moral compass. “Forgive me if I don’t see.”
“You should have married Sigis. You should have done as you were told.”
I should have been less like my father. That was the bad choice I’d made. And I’d changed my mind too late.
I was done making bad choices.
The walls rattled as someone pounded against the doors. Winter roses twined over them, freezing the handles and the lock and isolating me from the world outside.
“They won’t break through,” Urso said, and I didn’t know if he was talking to me or to himself.
“Why Sigis?” I asked. “Why annexation?”
“I’m sure Yannush explained everything.” A fresh tremor shook Urso’s hand. “Not that it matters.”
“It was money, wasn’t it?” I said. “You’ll be remembered as a traitor who sold his country for a nice title and a bit of land.”