The Cursed Queen (The Impostor Queen #2)(62)
“How do you know our language?” I ask as I begin to follow her again, needing something to get my mind off the press of stone and dank air as we enter a tunnel so low that even though I’m not that tall, I must hunch to keep from conking my head.
“I am good with language,” says Halina. “I know Kupari as well. And Korkean. Ylpesian, too. My father was a trader and he took me on his travels when I was little. As for Krigere . . . I learned fast out of a sincere desire to survive.” She tosses me a smile pulled taut by the ghosts in her eyes.
I clear my throat. “Ylpesian? Korkean?”
“The city-states of Korkea and Ylpeys lie west of here, through the Loputon Forest.” She looks back, and her gaze is cautious. “Allies.”
“Does Nisse know of these city-states?”
Her eyes linger on mine. “Well, now. I don’t know, little red. What did his big map say?”
If she means his map on the table in the tower, the answer is no. The area to the south and west of Kupari was blank. Unpainted. “He’ll find out.”
“Because you tell him?”
I run my tongue along my teeth, uncertainty filling me again as all the revealed secrets of the afternoon stack on one another, high as the tower itself. “I don’t know.”
Her eyes narrow. “Maybe I’ll help you figure it out. Best believe old Nisse is cautious, though. He doesn’t allow riders to leave the city, not since we sent an envoy to the Kupari to beg for help after the initial attack. No one in or out, save Krigere. That’s the way of it now. Vasterutians are prisoners in our own city.”
But considering how easily we just departed my little prison chamber, perhaps things are not as locked down as Nisse hoped. “Where are we going?”
“Not far now.” She skitters along the passage, raw earth held up with wooden posts, some still green. As if it has been newly dug and braced, though such an endeavor would take months. Months . . . perhaps since the early spring.
I stare at her back with new suspicion. “Where do your loyalties lie?”
“What a question.”
“What an answer.”
She lets out a grunt of laughter. “Loyalty is precious, little red. Hard won, hard lost. Easily given, easily betrayed.” She pushes through a door, and suddenly we are outside the tower, outside the stake-wall that surrounds it . . . and below the hill on which it sits. I’m in a narrow lane between two tall shelter buildings, ankle deep in snow that melts away from my boots as if afraid of me.
Halina stares down at the retreating ice and whispers something in her own language. Or, who knows, perhaps Korkean or Ylpesian. She is full of surprises. “Ooh. Be careful there. Your tracks will be easy to spot.”
I am outside the tower without permission, without Nisse’s knowledge. I smile down at the snow, a friendly, welcoming look, I hope. The frost stops fleeing from my ankles and nestles close, reforming as ice. Halina frowns. “And now they’re frozen. Great,” she says in a rueful voice. “I’m not going to regret this at all.” She jabs her finger at me. “Best remember that you have as much to fear from the Krigere as any Vasterutian.”
“Just tell me where we’re going!”
Her mouth twists. “My brother’s house. Because I often make risky decisions. Hopefully I won’t regret this one.” She grabs my hand and pulls me along the snowy lane. The air is crisp and bitter, but the walls are close and radiate warmth. Somewhere inside one of these shelters, a baby is crying. Someone is singing. Others arguing. All in a language I do not understand, though I recognize the round honey sound as Vasterutian.
Halina treks through a maze of these shelters until finally she stops in front of a rickety set of wooden steps leading up to the second level of a building. Light pours from within. “Up there,” she whispers before starting her climb.
The stairs creak and rattle as we ascend, and a head pokes out of the doorway at the top, a wild spray of black curls framing a heart-shaped face. “Mama,” says the little boy, who is perhaps three or four and begins babbling in Vasterutian. Halina answers, her voice firm, and he disappears within once more. She purses her lips when she sees my surprised expression.
“My husband was one of the king’s guards. Old Nisse’s raiders cut his throat from ear to ear. The day the Krigere came to Vasterut was the day I became a widow. I do whatever I have to do to stay alive—for that little boy in there.” She doesn’t look away from my gaze as she lets her words sink in, and then she enters the shelter with me on her heels.
The chilly room is tiny and cluttered with wooden toys and cooking implements. A low table and a stool are the only furniture. Three figures hunch by the fire, covered in patched cloaks with hoods drawn up. The boy has withdrawn to a corner, his feet wrapped in thick cloth, wearing an ill-fitting, filthy wool tunic. He’s crouching next to a basket containing a baby, rosy cheeked and sleeping. Both children have round faces and earth-brown skin.
Halina gestures toward the fire and says something in Vasterutian, and two of the cloaked figures, a woman and a man, toss back their hoods. One of them is the man with the shaved head and black beard who was serving with Halina in the great hall. The other woman doesn’t look familiar, but she, too, has a round face and curly black hair, though hers is tamed and pinned against her head.
“This is my brother, Efren,” Halina says. The bearded man nods. “And his partner, Ligaya.” The woman gives me a wary jerk of her head.