Chapter 1 #2
Hardly. Hers was not the ice hard enough to fortify the Ice Prison, like Einar’s did.
Hers was not the magic vast enough to hold a continent’s weather in precise formation, like Krystiana’s.
Hers was certainly not the control so complete she could keep the volcanoes in the Ring of Flame that circled Fjordlandi from destroying them all, as Fodur did.
All she could do was paint pretty pictures with frost. Though at least it brought a smile to people’s faces. That was something, wasn’t it? She mustered a grin of her own for her brother. “I should let you go. Ellas and the Red Hands, all in one day—that’s more important than my training.”
Einar let a frown mar his perfect golden brows.
He, like their sister, took after Fodur and most other Fjordic people in their looks.
Fairest skin, fairest hair, fairest eyes.
She, on the other hand, looked like Mamma—one of the rare brunettes to be found in Fjordlandi.
Yet more proof that she wasn’t like her siblings, wasn’t like her father.
“I wish…” Einar sighed, shook his head, and his voice went even softer.
Too soft to stretch across the distance to Mamma, though he flicked a glance her way.
“I wish we could listen. Freya says unrest in the domes is growing. There is talk of refusing to submit to the Test. Of refusing to farm, to mine.”
A shiver coursed up Kyrja’s spine that had nothing to do with the ice beneath her boots.
That cold she never even felt. But the thought of the thanes—the commoners beneath the agricultural domes—actually rebelling was enough to make her throat close off.
“If they refuse the Test, they’ll be executed.
” She, too, kept her voice a bare murmur, not letting herself look over at her mother.
Mamma was a thane, born in Fjordlandi’s largest dome, Harroby. One of the vast population whose sole purpose was to till the soil, grow the food, or mine metals and minerals from the volatile mountains always threatening to spew molten death out upon them. Well, and one more purpose.
To be given for a term to whatever aristocratic Fjorder had been selected for a Blessed Union, to produce a magical child.
Her stomach churned as she considered it.
Neither warmth-loving thanes from the protective domes nor cold-immune Fjorders who lived in the open cities had magic on their own.
But when matched, they could. Magic was rare, and never did two magically-Blessed create a child who had their magic, not in Fjordlandi.
She knew it worked that way in other kingdoms, that King Seidon, for instance, had needed a wife with magic as strong as his to create new life at all.
But for whatever reason, the Giver of All had doled out His gift differently here.
Here, they could not only control the water, like King Seidon could, but its temperature.
Perhaps in the scales of the Giver, that extra gift required another weakness to balance it.
The right ratio must always be struck in their lineage.
Always one Fjorder parent from the cold-immune elite.
Always one thane from the class of commoners little more than slaves.
Over the centuries, their physicians had created a single Machine capable of running a Test to show which precise matches would grant that magic.
It was Fjordlandi’s greatest asset, coveted by the rest of the world.
And through it, Fodur had found his match in Mamma.
A rare gift, that someone as powerful as the king could even find a consort capable of giving him magical children.
In the rest of the kingdom, they didn’t even bother Testing those already Blessed.
Matches were never found. But Mamma—sweet, kind, loving Mamma, as unlike Fodur as one could possibly be—had turned up in the Test for her king.
Had given up her life beneath the dome. Had moved here, where she was always cold, never appreciated, usually dismissed or looked down upon, even as she stood in a fine gown at a state dinner behind her husband.
And had stayed even beyond the twenty-year term of the Blessed Union.
Stayed for her. The child she’d petitioned for. The child she’d been granted as a boon because she’d done the impossible and given an already-magical king of Fjordlandi two Blessed children strong enough to take up the crown when he finally relinquished it.
The child everyone was a bit surprised was magical at all. And who no one was surprised to find unable to truly harness that magic. Kyrja drew in a breath and started for the stands. “Will you be helping Freya with dinner, Mamma?”
Mamma and Einar’s consort had bonded instantly, both being thanes as they were.
In a way even Kyrja could never do with her mother, not given the amount of Fjorder in her blood that made her immune to the cold—not to mention her magic, however untethered.
Freya, though—Freya was more like Mamma than anyone else in Fjordlandi.
Einar had participated in the Test just two years ago, with the expectation that it could take a century or more of regular testing to find someone to match him, if ever it happened at all.
No one had been more surprised than Fodur when a solid match was found so quickly—and from among the thanes.
The ratio shouldn’t have been right, he’d said.
Einar had more thane blood than Fjorder in him.
To correct the balance for a hope of a magical child, all logic said a Fjorder should have been his match.
He’d had them check the Machine, rerun the Test three times.
The results came back the same each time. Freya. If they could produce a child, there was an eighty-nine percent chance that child would have magic.
More importantly, to Kyrja’s mind, was that Freya was an absolute delight. She brought joy and laughter to the palace, a smile to Einar’s eyes, and had provided the sort of solace for Mamma that no one else ever could.
Mamma smiled now at the mere thought of her daughter-in-law and nodded. “After a trip to the hot springs.” She rubbed at her back, wincing.
Kyrja’s brows knit. “I thought it was your knees.”
Her mother laughed and, when Kyrja drew close enough, reached out to pat her cheek with a gloved hand. “It’s all of me, my little snowflake. I’m old. There’s no getting around it.”
Seventy-five. If she still lived under the domes, she’d probably have been dead years ago.
Life was harsh for the thanes, cruel. Disease ran rampant in their hot-and-cold world.
As the king’s consort, she had an easier life than any other commoner, access to medicine usually only the rich Fjorders could afford.
Even so, she had aged while her husband didn’t, thanks to the magic in his blood.
While her children all seemed to stop aging too.
Kyrja knew it was hard on her, even as she wondered at her mother’s stubborn smile.
She covered Mamma’s leather-clad fingers with her own. “I would join you, but it’s inoculation day at Dania’s clinic.”
Mamma’s smile went even warmer than usual. “I know. Give her my love, and tell her to carry some of it to her husband and daughters, and that brother of hers.” She let her hand fall from Kyrja’s face and turned toward Einar, who’d trailed her to the side of the rink.
Kyrja could see the struggle there, where it had always lived in Mamma’s eyes. That desire to reach out to him too. To touch his cheek. To pour out her love for him.
She couldn’t, not with either him or Krystiana. It was forbidden. All she could do was offer him a smile, a nod, and say, “I look forward to dining with you tonight, Your Highness.”
It was normal. The way their world was. Even so, it never failed to make Kyrja’s throat go tight. That she was the only one of Mamma’s children she was allowed to love. To call by name. That she had to greet her own husband as Your Majesty, her older two children as Your Highness.
Where was the fairness in that?
And Einar? Did he chafe against it? If so, he’d never said as much to Kyrja. He certainly never showed it. Just gave a courteous bow and said, “Likewise, Modur.”
Kyrja fully expected him to make his exit, leave her to walk their mother out, as usual.
He surprised her, though, by lingering, moving with them at Mamma’s slow pace toward the door.
Kyrja took the opportunity to look up at his chiseled jaw, the pale gold of his hair, still dusted with snow from their training, and ask, “What is this Accord with Ellas?”
Einar seemed to consider for a second, then shook his head. “Nothing for you to worry about—not yet. After your Blessing Day.”
Frustration gathered in her chest. Her brother was always putting her off, any time she tried to take an interest in state affairs. “All right, then what are the Red Hands asking for this time?”
Einar cleared his throat and darted a look at Mamma. But at least he answered. “The usual. More resources, more seats on the Great Council. Nothing they have any hope of receiving. Fodur won’t budge on those things.”
“And they cannot budge in asking for them,” Mamma said, voice soft and even.
“How could they? Thanes outnumber Fjorders five-to-one. But they have only two seats on the Great Council—two, out of thirty-six! And even if that were equal, we all know that it’s the High Council of the Blessed, not the elected Great Council, that wields true power in Fjordlandi. ”
Einar’s jaw went tight. “It’s how it’s always been.”