The Impostor Queen (The Impostor Queen, #1)(35)

Raimo’s laugh echoes loudly, making me wish I had the strength to cover my ears. “I have no interest in your sister, and you have no idea how silly you sound. But you have my word. It stays between us until you decide otherwise—or necessity dictates.”

“Oskar,” I whisper. “It’s all right.” I have no idea what he’s offering in exchange for Raimo’s help, but it sounds like it’s killing him.

“Where do you want her?” he asks, ignoring me.

“Over there. What’s wrong with her?”

Oskar lugs me across the cavern. He sets me down on something soft, making sure to place me on my side instead of on my back. “Lost two fingers in a bear trap. But she wasn’t in good shape before then. She’d been whipped, I think.”

“You think?” Raimo’s voice is much closer now, and it makes me shudder.

“I didn’t strip her naked and check,” Oskar says drily. “But she’d bled through, and I know what lash marks look like. I assume she was a servant in the town. Her dress is plain but well-made, and she’s got some meat on her bones.”

“A runaway maid. How romantic,” says Raimo. “Well, take your bag and go. I should have her fixed up by morning.”

By morning? As nice as that would be, I think it’s going to take longer than that.

But Oskar doesn’t seem surprised—he tugs the bag loose and carefully folds my ruined hand over my chest, then straightens my aching legs. His strong fingers close right over my blood-flame mark, and it pulses another wave of numb through my body.

“So you’ll help her,” he says, sounding hesitant. “You’ll do your best for her.”

“No, boy, I’ll butcher her and make myself a nice stew. Get back to your mother. Oh, and tell her thank you for the rye loaf, by the way. It was delicious.”

Oskar leans over me. His face is smeared with grime and sweat. “Raimo’s going to fix you up, Elli,” he says softly. “I’ll check on you later.” He touches the back of my left hand, his fingers cool, his voice kind.

I doubt I’ll see him again. My mouth is filled with the copper-iron taste of blood, and I think that means I’m going to die. I want to tell him thanks for trying, but I’m too tired to speak. He gets up and walks out. His footsteps fade soon after.

Another face leans over mine. Bald except for two tufts of white hair above his ears. Sunken cheeks. A prominent chin, from which hangs a stringy white beard. A long, hooked nose. Clever, calculating ice-blue eyes. “Name?” he asks.

“Elli,” I whisper.

“All right, Elli the runaway maid.” He clucks his tongue. “Let’s see the hand.”

I drift while he unravels the brown wool, then cry out as he peels it from my wound. I try to pull away, but his grip on my wrist is relentless. “Pity,” he says as he looks at my grotesquely swollen hand and the empty space where my pinkie and ring finger used to be. “What made you desperate enough to reach into a bear trap?”

I don’t answer, and I don’t think he expects me to. He disappears for a few moments and returns with a wet cloth. I roil with bubbling pain as he cleans the raw, bloody meat of my hand. His pale eyes meet mine. “I’m going to heal this, and then I’ll do your back.” He says it with confidence, as if I weren’t hovering on the precipice of death.

He takes my hand between both of his and stares intently at it. I feel faint flashes of heat, then cool.

Magic. This medicine man is a wielder. Here, in the outlands. In the thieves’ caverns.

And he is a healer. No one with that much magic could have escaped the elders’ notice—they would have found him as a child and brought him to the temple to serve like all the rest. They’d never have left him in the outlands to molder in a cave! For a moment, all my questions about who Raimo is and how he came to be here sharpen my mind and drag me back from the shore of oblivion. But then the old man moves my hand and another bolt of pain scatters all of them.

A deep wrinkle appears between Raimo’s bushy white eyebrows. He peers with even more intensity at my wound. More flashes of cold, then hot, then cold again, but I feel them only vaguely, like the idea of temperature instead of the reality.

And now Raimo is scowling.

He mutters to himself, then matter-of-factly unbuttons the back of my dress and pulls it down my arms. The action tugs at the bandages over my flayed back, and I writhe helplessly. Once again, I feel wisps of hot and cold, this time across my backbone. I have no idea how long it goes on, but when I’m jerked into solid awareness again, Raimo is leaning over me.

“You’re keeping secrets, my dear.” He uses the pads of his thumbs to lift my eyelids wide. “Ice-blue,” he says. He coils a lock of my hair around his finger. “And burnished copper.”

My heart skips unsteadily.

He moves closer, until his hooked nose is only a few inches from mine. He smells of fish and wet fur. “I am going to ask you a question, and it is very important that you answer me truthfully. Your life depends on this truth. Understand?”

I nod, though my heart is thumping madly.

“Do you have a mark?”

“Wh-what?” I whisper. “Why are you asking me that?” Panic swirls inside me. How could he know?

He smirks as he reads the fear in my eyes. “You’re not strong enough to stop me if I want to search for it, but it will be easier if you’d just tell me where it is. I’m not going to hurt you.”