The Impostor Queen (The Impostor Queen, #1)(3)
An echoing shout for Elder Kauko from down the corridor has us both turning toward the door again. “Coming!” he calls.
I follow him into the stone hallway that connects this rear wing to the grand chamber of the Temple on the Rock. The shouting is coming from there. Elder Kauko runs his hand over the dusky shadow on his bald head, his fingers steady and smooth. It’s a habit of his. “Elder Aleksi, is that you?”
Elder Aleksi rushes into the hallway, carrying the limp body of a boy who is bleeding from his head, his hands, his knees. My red skirt swishes around my ankles as I stop dead and stare. Aleksi, his heavy chin jiggling, gives the boy a concerned look. “He was hit by a horse cart,” Aleksi says as Kauko reaches him. Then he sees me hovering a few steps behind. “He was so eager to reach the temple that he wasn’t watching where he was going.”
He mutters something else that I don’t hear as he lays the boy, who can’t be more than ten and is skinny as a pole, on the tiles. “I fear we’re losing him.”
“No, he’ll be fine. I’ll do it right here,” says Kauko, leaning over the boy, his hands hovering over the child’s crimson-streaked sandy hair. He looks over his shoulder and gives me a faint smile. “Our Saadella can watch.”
My heart speeds as I take a step closer. Aleksi’s brows are low with warning, an expression I see every time I ask to watch the apprentices practice their wielding skills in the catacombs. “My Saadella, this is an ugly business, and—”
“But it will be something I can do when I have the magic inside me, correct?” I ask, edging along the marble floor. Only a few wielders can heal. To do it, they must have both ice and fire magic—a great deal, as I understand it—and the two opposing forces must be balanced. The Valtia’s magic is the most powerful, and it is also perfectly balanced, so this means—
“Of course, Saadella, should you ever wish to,” says Kauko briskly. “And it is sometimes an excellent gesture of goodwill toward the citizens, to do healings on ceremony days.”
“Then show me!” I say eagerly, and then gasp. As Kauko’s palms hover a few inches from the boy’s scalp, I can actually see the skin knitting together over a ragged wound. I open my mouth to ask how exactly Kauko manages it, but Aleksi puts his hand up.
“My Saadella,” he says quietly. “Healing takes complete concentration.”
Elder Kauko leans back after a few minutes, smiling and rubbing his hands together. I want to grasp them in my own—would they be burning to the touch? Icy cold? Both at once? “There. He is out of danger.” He meets Aleksi’s eyes. “Take him down to the catacombs and get him settled, and I will attend to the rest of his wounds after I have escorted the Saadella back to her chambers.”
“The catacombs?” I ask, peering at the boy more closely now. “Does that mean he’s a wielder?”
Aleksi nods. “His name is Niklas. He was apprenticed to a cobbler, who was kind enough to let us know he’d seen Niklas leave scorch marks on a piece of leather he was working. I thought it might be a false lead, but this boy clearly has fire. I knew it as soon as I was in the same room with him.”
Kauko shakes his head. “I’ve always admired your ability to sense such things.”
Aleksi grins at the compliment. “I don’t know how much magic is inside him yet, or whether he has any ice magic too, but we’ll test him once he’s well.”
I smile down at the boy, whose fingernails are black with grime, whose cheeks are hollow with deprivation. “Then he already knows how fortunate he is to have been found—it’s a shame that excitement got him hurt.” On impulse, I kneel next to him as his eyelids flutter. My fingers brush over his sharp cheekbone. “We’ll take good care of you, Niklas,” I murmur. “You have a wonderful life ahead of you.”
The boys eyes pop open, and they are dark blue, like the waters of the Motherlake in spring. He blinks up at me, then his eyes trace the white marble walls around him and go round as saucers. Just as his mouth drops open, Aleksi gathers the child in his arms, his plump fingers curling over lanky limbs and holding tight. “I’ll take him now,” Aleksi says as the boy starts to squirm and whimper, probably still dazed from his injury.
He stands up and strides down the corridor toward the entrance to the catacombs, the maze of tunnels and chambers beneath our temple where all the acolytes and apprentices train and live. Kauko turns to me. “Well, that’s enough excitement for the afternoon, eh?”
I look down at his hands, which are firm and strong-looking, unlike Aleksi’s. “But I would love to hear more about how—”
Kauko chuckles. “Perhaps another time, my Saadella. Our lesson is over for today, and I am sure Mim would be disappointed if you did not partake of the lemon scones she has acquired for your tea.”
My cheeks warm. Mim knows all my favorite things, and the sight of her smile as she gives them to me is loveliness itself. “Well then. I would never want to disappoint my handmaiden!”
Kauko grins and walks with me into the circular grand chamber, toward the eastern wing of the temple—the Saadella’s wing. My wing. As we reach it, heavy boot steps sound on the marble and the Valtia’s sedan chair is carried into the grand chamber from the white plaza outside. My heart squeezes with longing—I am only allowed to see my Valtia two days a year, at the planting ceremony and the harvest ceremony. She rarely leaves the temple, though, so I am frozen where I stand, gaping rudely. I narrow my eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of her face behind the gauzy material that covers the windows of the small wooden chamber where she sits. All I can see is the coppery glint of her hair, plaited and twisted and pinned into an exquisite coil atop her head.