The Winter King (27 page)

“Another ten, not counting the towers, but three of those are servants’ quarters.”

Kham gasped. “So many?” She’d realized Gildenheim was massive. She just hadn’t realized
how
massive.

“There was talk of building an upper palace before the war.” Vinca smiled with pride before she caught herself and marshaled her expression back into a cool mask. “Things are much quieter here these last three years.”

Kham shook her head. “If Gildenheim got any larger, you would need a horse to ride from one end of the palace to the other.”

“Winterfolk are a hardy breed, and walking does the body good,” Vinca replied crisply. Then she sighed, and admitted, “But an expansion is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Wars are costly, and not just to the treasury.”

A brief, tense silence fell between them at the reminder of the terrible price of war.

Vinca cleared her throat. “If there won’t be anything else, Your Grace? Dinner will be served in less than two hours, and I have a number of duties yet to attend to.”

“Of course. Thank you very much for the tour, Vinca.”

“My pleasure, Your Grace. Shall I escort you back to your chambers?”

Kham wasn’t ready to go back to her rooms. She wanted to explore a little more. “No, you go on. I’ll find my way there.”

Vinca made no move to leave. She gnawed on her bottom lip, then said, “The king would not be pleased if I were to abandon you here alone.”

“If I tell you to go, you aren’t abandoning me.” Kham’s mouth twisted in a sardonic smile. “Believe me, if the king doesn’t like it, he’ll know where the blame lies.” When Vinca still remained where she was, Kham arched a brow. A flicker of irritation stirred in her breast. “I’ll be fine, Vinca. I need to learn my way around. Now is as good a time as any.”

Left with no alternative but to leave or directly disobey the woman who was—however temporarily—her queen, Vinca dipped a curtsy and made her way back downstairs.

Once she was gone, Kham turned and started down the wide corridor that led to another set of stairs. Ten more levels? Plus all those towers and turrets? Her pulse quickened. She was an explorer at heart. Quiet, abandoned places with their musty old secrets had been her home for years, and she’d spent a lifetime ferreting through forgotten treasures, imagining where they’d come from, who had left them there.

True to Vinca’s word, however, the fifth floor was nothing more than living quarters for palace guests—many of those rooms unoccupied, and utterly disappointing on the hidden-treasure front. Still, she opened every door that wasn’t locked and peered inside.

The rooms were graciously appointed, luxurious without the sometimes garish opulence of the palace at Vera Sola. Kham didn’t want to admit it, but the restrained elegance of these rooms appealed to her. And every one of the rooms, occupied or not, was maintained in a perfect state of readiness.

She was inspecting a small study, admiring the cream brocade couches and the beaded embroidery of ice blue velvet drapes, when a young maid approached and bobbed a quick curtsy.

“Begging your pardon, Your Grace. It’s half past six, and the king sent me to escort you to your chambers to change for the evening meal.”

Had Vinca reported that she’d left Kham unattended in the upper levels of the palace? Or had one of the servants on this floor taken exception to her poking her nose in all the rooms?

Kham considered sending the maid back without her, then discarded the notion. If she defied him, Wynter’s next emissary would likely be one of his White Guard, and she had no desire to be marched back downstairs like a wayward prisoner. Her exploring for the day had come to an end.

“What’s your name?” she asked the maid, as they made their way to the main staircase.

The girl looked surprised. “Greta, Your Grace.”

“Have you worked here long—at the palace, I mean?”

“Since I was eight, Your Grace.”

Kham frowned. “Eight seems awfully young to go into service. Is it customary for Wintercraig children to work at so young an age?”

Greta lifted her chin. “My father died in a Great Hunt not long after Prince Wynter became king. My mum had four children and a fifth on the way. The king saw to it that we had a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, and work, because Winterfolk don’t take charity. Mum works in the kitchens. I started doing top-floor work until I was old enough to move downstairs.”

“Top-floor work?”

“Keeping the upstairs tidy. Seventh floor and higher.” She bit her lip. “No one really uses those rooms anymore,” she admitted, “but the king wouldn’t let Mistress Vinca close them up even during the war. Said it was important to keep the palace ready for whatever the future holds. It’s mostly the little ones who tend the unused rooms.”

“The little ones?”

“Too old to stay in the nursery but too young to do heavy work. Mostly they just dust and sweep and change the linens. Like I did when I first came here. My sister Fenna still does top-floor work. But she’s ten next year, and she’ll be training with the seamstress.”

“What about your brothers and sisters?”

“My brother Skander—he’s sixteen—works in the stables, but he’ll be training for the White Guard soon. My brother Tarn is an armorer’s apprentice. Linnet—she’s thirteen—works with the gardener. Some of the little ones work with the gardener, too, during the summer, but this time of year, it gets too cold, so they can’t stay out for long. Top-floor work is better. And there’s schooling in the mornings.”

“What sort of schooling?”

Greta frowned as if the question made no sense. “The usual. Reading, writing, doing figures.” She made a face. “History.”

Kham’s brows raised in genuine surprise. “Where I come from, Greta, there’s nothing usual in that. Only the merchants and the nobility educate their children.” It was a long-held belief of many a Summerlander noble that their farmhands and manual laborers had no need for books and mathematics. Education tended to give the menial classes “ideas” that caused all manner of societal problems. “And, history is fascinating.”

“I could never like it.” Greta shook her head. “All those battles and kings and dates. Deadly boring.”

“Oh, no,” Kham objected. “All those lives, those heroes, those tales of great adventures and sacrifice. It’s the very furthest from boring anything could ever be.”

“If you say so, Your Grace.” The young maid looked unconvinced.

“I shall prove it to you. When is the next history lesson?”

“History is every Thorgyllsday at ten o’clock.”

“Excellent. Next Thorgyllsday, you will escort me to wherever these lessons are held, and I’ll share a bit of history from my country that I promise you is anything but boring. It’s the story of Summerlea’s greatest king, Roland Soldeus.”

Greta didn’t look too enthusiastic about the prospect, but Kham attributed that to Greta’s self-professed dislike of history. She’d wager not one of these Winterchildren had ever heard the epic tale of Roland Triumphant. She had no doubt they’d love it as much as she did once.

The prospect of sharing Roland’s valiant tale kept her smiling all the way to the dining hall, where the sight of Gildenheim’s assembled nobles greeted her like a splash of cold water in the face. As the footman rang a bell and announced her arrival, Kham doused her smile and took a deep breath, girding herself for yet another mealtime ordeal.

The next week fell into a stultifying pattern. Although Wynter ate his evening meals with the court and visited her bedchamber nightly, she saw very little of him during the day. Her attempts to get involved in the actual running of the palace were politely but firmly rebuffed, leaving her to fill her time as best she could. She spent her mornings exploring the upper levels of the palace and talking to the children or sitting in on their lessons. Then came the interminably long luncheon and tedious social hour with the ladies of the court, followed by an hour spent walking through the gardens and feeding the birds—which might have been blessedly private and peaceful had not several of the ladies and several White Guard taken to accompanying her. In the afternoons, she wandered about the palace and tried to get to know the servants and Winterfolk who lived and worked in Gildenheim.

Then Thorgyllsday rolled around, bringing with it the much-anticipated history lesson. Khamsin sprang out of bed, eagerly donned a royal blue gown that had belonged to Summer, and raced upstairs, her copy of
Roland Triumphant
clutched to her chest. When she entered the little classroom, however, instead of a roomful of children waiting for their lesson, she found empty chairs and a history teacher who informed her that all the children had been called away to tend other matters.

“How disappointing,” Kham said. “Perhaps I could come back next week.”

“I’m sorry, Your Grace,” the history teacher informed her, “but if you intend to teach them about Roland Soldeus, I expect their mothers will have work for them next week as well.”

She swallowed hard. “I see.” All week long, she’d noticed that some of the children had been disappearing from the classes, not to return, but she’d assumed that they’d just been reassigned to work in other parts of the palace. It hadn’t occurred to her that
she
was the reason they’d been withdrawn from the classes. “What if I were to teach them about one of Wintercraig’s heroes instead?” She didn’t know any stories about Wintercraig heroes, but there was a big library in the palace. Surely there must be
something
she could use in there to excite these children about history.

“I don’t know, Your Grace,” the teacher said. “Perhaps it’s best if you leave the education of Wintercraig children to Winterfolk.”

Kham stumbled back. There was no misunderstanding this message: She was a Summerlander, and she was unwelcome here. “Of course. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize.”

Mortified, Kham spun on her heel and walked rapidly down the hall towards the stairs. All the way, she fought a losing battle with tears and had to duck into one of the abandoned bedrooms to hide when the dam burst and the flood of hot, salty wetness spilled down her cheeks. She’d faced rejection before, and plenty of it, but she couldn’t remember the last time anything had wounded her like this. This rejection was personal, and it bloodied her in places she’d thought long ago inured against hurt.

She cried until her tears were spent, then wiped her eyes and sat locked in the room until her face was no longer blotchy or swollen, and her eyes lost their puffy red rims. When she finally emerged from the room, half a dozen servants loitering about in the hallway scattered like mice. Kham watched them go with a hardened heart. She’d offered these people friendship, and they’d thrown it back in her face. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

Lifting her chin and squaring her shoulders, she marched downstairs to her scheduled luncheon with the ladies of the court. There, at least, she had never felt at home enough to let down her guard. And because she hadn’t let down her guard, the Winterladies of the court couldn’t hurt her the way the upstairs children just had.

Or so she thought until she reached the dining hall, and Lady Melle came forward, smiling sweetly, her hands outstretched.

“Come in, my dear, come in. We were beginning to worry you’d gotten lost.” As they took their seats at the banquet table, Lady Melle beamed. “Cook has outdone herself today. She’s prepared a special treat just for you. I understand it’s one of your favorites.” She waved over the first of a line of servants carrying covered trays of food. The server whipped off the deep tray with a flourish. A cloud of steam billowed forth as the servant holding the tray held it out for Khamsin’s inspection. “Lutefisk and eels,” Lady Melle announced with a happy smile.

Kham’s eyes widened, and her nostrils flared at the sight—and dreadful aroma—of the pile of gelatinous white fish surrounded by a sea of broth swimming with onions, garlic, and long black eels. Her stomach gave a terrible lurch.

The Winterladies gasped in surprise as Kham leapt to her feet so fast she sent her chair flying.

“My dear!” Lady Melle cried.

“Your Grace!” someone else exclaimed.

Kham clapped a hand over her mouth, grabbed her skirts in one hand, and bolted for the door.
Please, let me make it out of the room. Don’t let me shame myself before them. Please, let me make it out of the room.

She didn’t make it.

“She puked over lutefisk and eels?” Valik asked when Lady Melle finished her report of this afternoon’s disastrous luncheon. “Who doesn’t like lutefisk and eels? They’re delicious!”

“Valik.” Wynter gave his second-in-command a pointed look and jerked his head in the direction of the door. Valik grimaced but tromped out. When he was gone, Wyn leaned back in his chair and regarded Lady Melle over steepled fingers.

“It appears to have been a prank,” Lady Melle explained. “Cook received a note saying the queen was pining for lutefisk and eels, declaring it one of her favorites. Needless to say, that doesn’t appear to be true.”

They were seated in his private office in the western tower. To Wyn’s left, a wide window of leaded-glass panes looked out over the Minsk River valley far below. Not that you could see that valley now. Dark clouds cloaked Gildenheim in a heavy mist, harbinger of the afternoon storm that had rolled in like clockwork every day around noon for the past week. The storm should have already broken up, since Khamsin’s daily luncheon with her ladies had come to its unfortunate end over an hour ago, but his weatherwitch queen was working a different misery out in the sky today, and snow was falling with no sign of letting up anytime soon.

It was early for snow, even in Craig, but whether Khamsin’s daily storms or the Ice Heart was to blame, Wynter didn’t know.

“Apart from today’s unfortunate incident, how is my queen settling in?”

“Truthfully?”

Wyn gave a curt nod.

“She’s not.” Lady Melle threw up her hands in distress. “I’m sorry, my dearest, but the poor thing’s miserable. Our food doesn’t agree with her. She can’t ply a needle to save her life. The ladies tried reading some of their favorite novels to her, but she grew so restless and impatient, I thought we were going to have a tempest right there in the gathering hall. She likes the outdoors, but she hates having us following her, watching her every move. I thought she might like to take a trip with me down to Konundal, but she doesn’t ride, and when I suggested having a carriage brought round, well, I swear I nearly saw some of that lightning Lord Valik says she can call.”