Shadow Queen - By Deborah Kalin Page 0,1

how you expect me to govern if you insist on keeping secrets.’

‘My daughter is not the province of politics,’ she said – resolutely glossing over the way Helena’s betrayal had plunged our House into chaos, threatening longstanding alliances, dissolving several trade agreements, and weakening our hold on the throne. Sepp wore a thrall’s collar to both exclude and protect him from those very politics.

‘If you’ve been paying attention, you know all you need to,’ Grandmother went on. ‘Including how to keep silent. Now, stand still, or do you have yet more creatures beneath your skirts?’

From his place against the wall, Sepp winked at me, chasing away any sour mood before it could take hold. He had always been able to cheer me, despite his own less-than-favoured treatment at Grandmother’s hands. I didn’t laugh, though, because I knew exactly what Grandmother would say: A Duethin doesn’t giggle, Matilde.

Suddenly, the crowd before the gate pressed aside, a narrow path opening to reveal an enclosed chair advancing. People surged back as soon as the shuttered box passed, closing the path in its wake. Stares and silence followed the chair, and the four olive-skinned men bearing it. The latter wore short linen tunics over trews and sturdy leather boots, cloaks trimmed with fox fur their only concession to the leftover winter chill hanging in the air.

Another two men walked behind, both with short upper lips and beetled brows. The elder bore battle scars and rheumatoid-swollen hands, the younger sported hair untouched by time. Their clothes were finer than the bearers’, a rich dark blue instead of undyed linen. Each wore a foot-long blade belted to his hip.

A coldness that had naught to do with the wind touched my nape. Helena had been among the Ilthean.

I’d heard rumours, of course, but other rumours had placed Helena among the luxurious Morvingen courts, or with my mother’s people – the nomadic Skythes – wandering the plains under the eastern sun. Some even claimed she’d fled north to the chain of islands scattered among the white-capped waves. The idea that she had gone south, into the nest of vipers that was the Ilthean empire, had seemed too fantastical, too great a betrayal, even for the brash Helena of House Svanaten.

Yet now she dared worse – she had brought those white serpents north, brought them into the Turholm itself, the very heart of the Turasi nation.

I chanced a glance at Grandmother. No wonder she’d looked like a storm brewing this past couple of days.

The chair halted at the base of the stairs, the faint squeak of its door opening setting my teeth on edge. It wasn’t hard to stand still anymore.

Helena stepped forth, dark hair twined through with slender braids and coiled atop her head. Pale sunlight flashed off the rubies threaded in her hair and strung around her throat. Black edged her eyes in a face made pale by cosmetics.

Two followed her from the chair, a flaxen-haired woman who kept her eyes downcast and a boy of about ten, sulky-mouthed and wearing a circlet of silver in his short dark curls. The hair and the shape of his eyes marked him immediately as Helena’s son, though he stood as far from the women as he could without disappearing into the crowd packed close behind.

I snuck a glance at Sepp, but his dark, curly head was bent over the ferret kit he still nursed. I didn’t need to see the slope of his cheekbones or the shape of his eyes now, however, to recognise his mother when she stood before me at last.

Flanked by the Ilthean noblemen, trailed by her son and the other woman, Aunt Helena climbed the stairs, her gaze slipping over me without pause.

She didn’t notice Sepp, although he’d finally lifted his head and was staring at her.

One step from the top, she stopped, meeting Grandmother’s eye with a bold tilt of her chin. ‘Mother.’

There was an awkward pause as Grandmother cast her eye over Helena’s retinue, though my aunt made no attempt at introductions. In return, despite their obviously high status, no thrall stepped up to them with the traditional welcome of traveller’s meat and mead.

‘You must be weary after your journey,’ Grandmother said at last, her tone turning the civility into something close to a command. ‘None will begrudge you rest, if you wish to forgo Aestival.’

Helena had poise enough to withstand such an artificial welcome. ‘Not so weary I cannot greet family,’ she replied.

Grandmother didn’t flinch, her expression as hard and set as