Cold, I Sipped the Snow

I was counting the links around my wrist when Lord Marshal Rusk entered the throne room with my husband's blood still dark on his cuff. The chain ran from my left wrist to an iron ring bolted beneath the dais. I could reach the first step of the throne and no farther. The guards had taken my shoes, my pins, and the narrow silver knife I kept in my sleeve. They had left me my wedding ring, perhaps because no one thought it could hurt them. Rusk stopped below me. "Queen Mara." "Not for much longer, I imagine." "You have a gift for making a plea sound like an insult." "I learned from the king." At the mention of Alaric, a muscle jumped beside Rusk's mouth. He had been the king's marshal for eight years, then his prisoner for three months, then the commander whose soldiers had broken the palace gates before dawn. He had lost his brother in one of Alaric's cells. I had signed the arrest warrant. Rusk glanced at the chain. "The council will decide what you are." "The council has never decided anything without first learning what I wanted." "That was the problem." He turned toward the tall doors. A pair of guards opened them, and the first people admitted were the members of the Privy Council. They came in twos, careful not to look at me. I knew their carefulness. I had taught it to them. Lord Harlan, the council's oldest member, held a folded sheet of paper. His hands trembled. "Your Majesty, the king's physician has certified his death. The cause was a sudden failure of the heart." "His heart was failing for months." "His last hours were attended by his physician and Lady Cora." That gave me the first useful fact of the morning. "Where is she?" "Safe," Rusk said. "Safe from whom?" His eyes stayed on mine. "From you." I pulled against the chain. It scraped the stone and stopped. "Bring her here." "No." "Then you have no right to use her name in this room." "I don't need your permission." The answer landed harder than the chain. For twelve years, permission had been the quiet machinery of the palace. I had approved appointments, delayed hearings, and made men wait outside locked doors until they understood that the door was mine to open. Now Rusk stood between me and the entrance. He placed a leather folder on the council table. "The king left no signed declaration of succession. The council must choose between the Crown Charter and the claim of his daughter." "Cora is the lawful heir." A few councilors looked up. I had spent years keeping the word heir out of Cora's reach. I had sent her to a remote abbey when she was nineteen and called it a precaution. She had called it exile. Rusk watched me. "You agree?" "I'm chained beneath her throne. Agreement seems less useful than it once did." "Your recognition will matter." "Only if you let her hear it from me." He gave a small nod to one of the guards. The guard stepped forward and unfastened the chain from the ring. I rose too quickly. Pain went through my left shoulder, and my knees buckled. I caught the throne's carved arm before I fell. Rusk let me steady myself. Then he took the leather folder from the table and set it on the step beside me. "Read the charter," he said. "You'll find that the council has a choice." I opened the folder. The paper inside carried the king's seal, pressed in black wax. The charter was real. So was the signature beneath it. I knew the signature. I had watched Alaric make it three years earlier, when he could still hold a pen without help. Rusk had not forged the document. That meant he had either found it among the king's papers or had known exactly where to look. The charter gave the council twenty-one days to confirm an heir. If it failed, the marshal would hold emergency authority until the matter was resolved. "Convenient," I said. "Law often is." I looked up. "You plan to crown Cora." "I plan to prevent another ruler from taking the kingdom by force." "And you'll use the king's daughter to make it look lawful." His jaw tightened. "I'll let her speak for herself." "Will you?" Rusk stepped close enough that I smelled the smoke in his coat. "You will not speak to her unless I allow it. You will not command the guard. You will not issue a pardon or summon a councilor. You have no seal, no office, and no authority." I turned the ring on my finger. "You left me one thing." "What's that?" "The right to remember." For the first time, Rusk's face changed. It was brief, but I saw his gaze flick to the folder. Then he turned away. "Bring her in at noon. Let the council see the king's daughter." The doors closed behind him. The chain lay in a heap by my feet. I sat beneath the throne and listened to the palace move around me. Somewhere beyond the walls, bells began to mark the king's death. I knew the pattern: six slow strokes, a pause, then six more. I had ordered the bellmaster to use that pattern when Alaric's body was brought home from war. The bells were still ringing when I found the hidden seam in the folder's lining. A narrow strip of paper waited inside it. There was no signature, only four words in the king's uneven hand. Ask who chose the physician. I folded the message into my palm before the guards returned.