I barrel upward with Sander’s dagger clenched tightly at my side. Every single breath hurts. I wince and wrap my arm around my ribs, and my hand comes away slick with blood. Vaguely, I realize Jaspar must have sliced me, and perhaps I am just propelled by magic and will. If so, I’ll collapse when I’m done. But not until then. I am strong enough for this.
My love for Thyra and my faith in her vision beats relentlessly inside me, as strong as any fire or ice. I don’t know exactly what she wants for our tribe, but I know what she believes in. I know she loves her warriors. And I know she loves me, enough to let me figure out my path.
I am nearly to the level that holds Nisse’s chamber when a pair of hands shoots out from the floor below and yanks me off the stairs. I stagger and start to bring my dagger up, but wide brown eyes and a wild spray of black hair stops me cold. “You’re alive,” I say stupidly.
“Thanks to Sander,” Halina says sadly. Then her brows draw together. “You’re bleeding bad, little red.” She comes forward, pulling her apron up to press it to my side.
I gasp at the pressure and agony of it. “Where’s Thyra?”
“Old Nisse has her up at the very top,” she says. “Don’t know what he’s going to do.”
“Is she hurt?” I saw her go down, hard.
“Don’t really know,” she says. “After Sander shoved me inside, I hid behind a tapestry until Nisse and the guard were gone. But they’re waiting at the top of the stairs. You can’t go that way.”
“I have to try. Sander told me the foreign fighters and the resistance will spare the warriors if Thyra is established as chieftain.”
She gives a quick, curt nod. “Efren was waiting for the riders on the other side of the stake-wall. He escaped through a tunnel as Nisse’s guard tried to arrest him. But our people can’t be easily appeased, little red. So many hungry for blood.”
“Does Thyra know all of this?”
“She negotiated the agreement. Got a promise of cooperation from her warriors, that they wouldn’t get in our fighters’ way.”
“The whole story about them emerging through a tunnel—that was a lie, wasn’t it? You made sure I overheard it, hoping I would take the information to Nisse.”
Her mouth twists in apology and she takes a few steps away from me, as if she’s afraid I’ll strike at her. “Had to make him believe it, little red. And if it came from you as well as—”
“I know. It’s all right. You knew I would try to protect my tribe.”
“That I did.” She smiles. “Always clawing your way to the light. All any of us can do.” She rubs at her round cheeks, and I see the tearstains there. “But it went all wrong on the parapet. Sander and Thyra thought they could best Nisse and Jaspar, but those two . . .”
I swallow back the cost of their victory. “Now Nisse holds captive the one person we need to survive the day.”
Tentatively, she squeezes my arm. “I’ll help you get to Thyra. You’re the only one who might be able to do it.” She touches the cuff around my wrist. “That crazy boy said he would get this for you.”
“He’s downstairs.”
“Dead?”
I shake my head. “Hurt, though.”
She frowns. “So many will die today.”
My cheeks burn—she is not saying as much as she could. All these weeks, she’s held back, maybe out of kindness, perhaps out of hope that I would come to it on my own.
This is the price of their freedom, won back from those who took it from them—my people.
“I’ll do whatever I can, Halina.”
“Then so will I.”
My brain shifts through my memories of the top levels of the tower. “How high can we get?”
“There are windows maybe two lengths of a man below the top. And the guards are just beneath that trapdoor.”
“How many?”
“Six. And they have nothing to lose.”
But maybe I could save them, too. Not by confronting them, though. “Can you distract them?”
She bites her lip. “I can try.”
“That’s all any of us can do. Come on.” I re-enter the staircase with her behind me, my dagger drawn. Below us, I imagine I can hear the shouts of warriors, but it may just be the roaring in my ears or the rush of magic in my veins. I need it now. I can’t go without it anymore. But that means I have to trust the foreign thing inside me. I have to accept it as mine. I have to accept it as me. And suddenly, Sig’s instruction makes sense. My heart races as I consider what I’m about to do, and I barely breathe as we creep our way to the level just beneath the guard. Halina is utterly silent behind me, a ghost tracing my steps. She grips my wrist as we huddle in the corridor outside the staircase.
“What are you going to do?”
I sheathe Sander’s dagger and look down at my hands. “Claw my way toward the light, I suppose.” And hope she’s still alive when I reach her. I walk toward a window set into the curved outer wall of this narrower level near the top. We are two levels above the parapet, and I can see much of the city from here—the streets are filled with people, too far away to discern if they’re fleeing or fighting or rioting or cheering. I look to the east, but the view is obscured by a cluster of tall shelters. I can only hope Preben and Bertel have kept our warriors in safety as the world collapses around them.
Cautiously, I lean out and look up. Three of my body lengths above me, I see the round, flat wall that rings the roof of the tower, the place where Jaspar and I sparred, the place where he tried to poison me, not with powder or toxic berries, but with carefully crafted words. And now Nisse is up there with my chieftain while doom closes in.
“Give me a few minutes,” I whisper. “If my body doesn’t plummet past this window, do your best to keep the attention of those guards.”
“And you?” She points at the cuff. “Are you Kupari or Krigere right now?”
I lift the cuff to the light, examining the blood-red runes along its surface. “I’m both,” I say, knowing only as I hear myself speaking that this is the only way I can be, and that it will never be simple again. “From now on I will always be both.”
Refusing to let terror close its fingers around my heart and mind, I jump onto the stone sill and dig my fingers into the rough spaces between jagged rocks. I will have eyes only for the sky. Please, I whisper to the magic, do not let me fall. We are together in this.
A hard breeze gusts at my back, pushing me against the outer wall of the tower. I think that’s all the reassurance I’m going to get. With my whole body clenched tight, I begin to climb, slowly inching toward the top. It’s not terribly far, but from my position clinging to the side of the tower, it feels like miles. Sweat beads and trickles from my brow, but is dried by the steady wind at my back. I don’t know if it’s a gift from the Torden or the push of my magic, and I don’t care. All my focus is on not falling to my death. I kick and wiggle my toes into crags and crevices, pushing my bleeding fingers into any place that will give me a good hold. I ignore the throbbing pain in my side, the slick smear of blood as my belly slides upward.
Finally, when I am just beneath the edge of the roof, I hear the low rumble of Nisse’s voice. “By now Jaspar will be on his way to our warriors,” he is saying. “You’ve made a nice effort, but like before, you will fail to defeat us.”
“I hope your arrogance comforts you as you die at the hands of black-robed invaders,” Thyra says, then seems to stifle a whimper of pain.
I press my forehead to the stones and hold in a sob made of fear and relief. She’s alive, and she’s at his mercy. And if I go up there now, Nisse’s personal guard will flood through the trapdoor and—
A huge crash echoes up from somewhere below me, followed by a scream. “Witch,” Halina shrieks. “Witch!” She lets out another bloodcurdling wail that cuts off suddenly.
She is possibly the cleverest person I’ve ever known.
“Ansa is coming,” Thyra says weakly. “It seems your pet magic wielder couldn’t keep her caged.”
Nisse curses. “Hold her back,” he shouts, presumably to his guards. “She can’t control that magic—if you can keep her at bay, it will turn on her! Go!”
I’m about to find out if he’s right. With one last burst of effort, I heave myself up and over the side, rolling onto the floor of the roof and rising unsteadily to a crouch. Nisse is standing over the door, and Thyra is sitting at his feet. His thick fingers are curled into her hair, and she’s bleeding from a gash somewhere in her hair. She’s ghastly pale, but her gaze is clear as she focuses on me, just a moment before Nisse notices my presence.
He curses and drags her up, holding her back pressed to his chest, a shield. “So you were in on the scheme too?” he asks. “Jaspar said you couldn’t lie to save your life. Another mistake.” His face is drawn tight with fear as he slides a dagger from its sheath and holds it pressed to Thyra’s throat.
Thyra’s eyes meet mine. “Ansa wasn’t part of the plot. She found her way here on her own.” Her mouth is curved into a pained smile.
“She used you, Ansa,” Nisse says. “She’s always used you. She had your Vasterutian attendant plant the story and—”
“I know all that already.” I take a step forward, my fingers tingling. “I know everything, and I still made my choice.”
“You’ll die up here with us, then.”
“Maybe. Or you could let her go and allow her to save us all. Your son is the true schemer, Nisse. He tried to poison Thyra—she merely discovered the trap and struck back. Jaspar’s greed and deception was the birth of all your suffering—and your thirst for power allowed you to nurture it.”
Thyra’s eyes flicker with a sudden uncertainty, as do Nisse’s. “You’re better at telling lies than I ever imagined,” he says.
“No, I’m not. Let her go. You didn’t try to poison her. You can undo the damage Jaspar has done—to her and to you, and to everyone else.”
“Uncle?” Thyra asks in a strained voice.
He takes a quick step back, bringing him within a few paces of the low wall. “Or I could wait until Jaspar marshals all the warriors who went to the eastern part of the city. Once they surround this place, the fighters of the south will be forced to bargain.”
I clench my fists. I’m the one who allowed Jaspar to live. “The riders and the Vasterutian resistance have flooded the streets. He’ll be lucky to reach them.”
“Jaspar will find a way.” His eyes shine with the simple faith and pride of a father in his son.
“Jaspar has destroyed you,” Thyra says. “He pitted us against each other, playing us both for fools. But now we can—”
“At what point will you stop scheming?” Nisse pricks Thyra’s throat, making her bleed. “My son is loyal, and he will not fail me. You, on the other hand, have more than earned your execution. I wait only until Jaspar sends the signal that he’s on his way back for me.”
A signal that could come at any minute if Jaspar is half as determined as I know him to be. I only injured his arm, not his legs, and given the time that has passed, if he was able to escape the courtyard, that signal could come at any moment. The foreign fighters will take the tower because there were no Krigere to stop them, but with all of them here, it won’t be hard to place it under siege as long as Jaspar’s warriors can intimidate the Vasterutian people into staying back.
My mind spins with all the possible outcomes, but then Nisse takes another step back from me, and I am caught by a painful flash of memory—Jaspar throwing Sander over the edge of the parapet. “Don’t take another step.”
Nisse smiles. “Why, Ansa? Are you going to stop me?” He presses the blade tighter to Thyra’s throat.
I draw Sander’s dagger, and when I lift it, the cuff of Astia shines in the bright sunlight directly over our head. Nisse squints at it. “What is that?”
“Balance,” I say. “A gift from elder Kauko.”
Nisse’s face twists with rage. “That priest betrayed me?”
“Weren’t you going to betray him?”
“All he wanted was you, and we delivered you to him!”
I smile with the realization—no matter what I chose, Nisse would have betrayed me. He is no innocent victim—he only fathered a snake because he is one himself. I couldn’t be wielded as a weapon because I couldn’t control the magic, and so he gave me up. “Because I was worth something to Kauko. Or, my blood was.”
Nisse looks me over, appearing to notice my wounds for the first time. “And it seems you’re shedding quite a lot of it. I’m surprised you’re still standing.”
I aim the dagger at him, focusing on the beating pulse in his neck. “Let her go, or you’re the one who will be on the ground.”
He laughs. “You seem to forget that I’ve watched you for weeks. If you aim your magic at me, you’ll kill Thyra as well. You’re a storm, Ansa. You’ll take everyone down with you.”
A drop of fear slips icy down my back as my chieftain’s blue eyes meet mine. Suddenly I’m in the fight circle on a new spring day, and I’m bleeding and hurting and defeated as Sander walks away from me, and hers is the one voice I hear shouting for me to get up. Like I could that day, I can read the simple faith written across the planes of her cheekbones, etched into the curve of her mouth.
A distant horn blows once, and then again, pulling Nisse’s lips into a lethal grin. “And now we’re out of time,” he says, pressing a hard kiss against Thyra’s bleeding temple.
He draws back his blade, preparing to cut her throat.
“I love you, Thyra,” I whisper, and then I let the magic loose, fueled by devotion and determination and all the adoration that’s in me, powered by hope in the future and acceptance, finally, of who I have become. The ice winds along the blade of Sander’s dagger, but this time, instead of focusing on its progress, I focus on my target. It’s the size of my fingertip.
As his weapon descends, I thrust my blade forward, even though I know the iron will never touch his flesh.
Nisse makes a strangled grunt and his dagger swings away from Thyra. One hand claws at his frozen throat as he staggers back, the weapon falling from his hand as it grasps desperately for something to stop his collision with the edge.
His fingers find the back of Thyra’s tunic. Her mouth drops open as she reaches for me, and I lunge forward as both of them tumble and fall.