C. Wilson - The Winter King

Someone bumped Khamsin hard from behind, making her stagger forward.

“Out of the way, girl,” a man growled in an irritated voice. He and another man, both sweating from exertion, hauled a large, upholstered divan past and set it down along with a host of other furniture cluttered against one wall on a stretch of mended, waxed, and polished floor.

“You there!”

Khamsin turned to find Maude Newt’s iron glare pinned on her.

“Quit gawking like a daft looby and get about your business. We’ve barely two hours remaining to get these rooms restored and spotless.”

An angry retort leapt to Kham’s tongue but, remembering her disguise, she bit it back. “Yes, ma’am,” she said instead, with galling subservience. The birthmark on her wrist blazed with heat, and the urge to send a little lightning bolt up Newt’s skirt was almost more than she could bear. She suppressed the urge with effort, bobbed a brittle curtsy, and sped off towards the door leading to her mother’s bedchamber.

I’m here for my mother’s things , she reminded herself silently. I’m not here to teach Maude Newt a lesson even if the wizened old lemon deserves it!

Controlling her temper had never been easy for Khamsin. Since infancy—since the first sentient days of life in her mother’s womb—hot, wild, rebellious emotion had always lain just below the surface, simmering, waiting for the smallest spark to set her off. There were times Tildy despaired of ever teaching her control. There were times Kham despaired of ever being more than the hot, destructive wind for which she was named.

As she crossed the bower to the bedchamber, she felt Newt’s hard glare boring into her back, gaining reprieve only when she ducked out of sight through the sleeping-chamber door. Well, at least her disguise seemed to be working. If Maude Newt had recognized her, she’d have run straight away to tell King Verdan that Summerlea’s disgrace of a fourth princess was dressed like a servant and skulking in an area of the palace she’d been forbidden to enter.

Khamsin entered the sleeping chamber and froze in her tracks once more. This had apparently been the first room tackled by the crew of frantic servants because its transformation was already complete. Kham could only stand in the doorway and gape.

Her mother’s bed was gone. A new, larger bed rested in its place, piled with several thick, fresh ticks that two young maids were industriously covering with scented sheets. The wood floor, scattered with plush woven rugs, gleamed like polished copper. Every last cobweb and mote of dust had been banished from sight. Sumptuous velvet hangings and tapestries robbed the chill from the cold stone outer wall, and a fire blazed in the wide hearth that opened through a shared inner stone wall to the bathing room beyond. A pot of fragrant herbs simmered over the flames to fill both the sleeping and bathing chambers with a fresh, warm scent to chase away the musty odor of neglect.

Others might find the room’s transformation a pleasant surprise. Khamsin did not. Anger knotted in her belly. She didn’t like change. She didn’t like these hundreds of servants invading her mother’s space— her space—and turning the forlorn but comforting familiarity of her childhood sanctuary into a perfect, spotless foreign world where she no longer belonged.

She turned towards the place where her mother’s dresser had stood earlier today, and an invisible fist closed around her heart. The dresser was gone.

She spun around, scanning the room in rapid, frantic sweeps. The irreplaceable treasures she’d come to collect had vanished as well. Where were her mother’s golden, gem-studded hairbrush, comb and mirror? Where was the small painted miniature of her mother’s likeness? Most of all, where were the two slim, bound books—the gardener’s journal and the private diary—written in Queen Rosalind’s own hand?

“You two!” she snapped at the young girls making the bed. “What happened to my—to the queen’s belongings?”

One of the two girls pursed her lips. “And who is it askin’?” she sneered, scanning Khamsin’s modest dress with a dismissive gaze.

Kham’s fingers curled in a fist. I am in disguise. I am a servant, she reminded herself. Servants do not rudely order other servants around—unless you’re Maude Newt.

“I’m a new girl, just come to the palace to serve Princess Summer,” she improvised. “She sent me to collect a few of her mother’s things before the White King takes up residence.”

That wiped the sneer off the girl’s face. The warm, kind-hearted Summer was beloved by the palace servants. Few would begrudge her the slightest request. In a more accommodating voice, the girl said, “Anything fit for the trash heap has already been taken away. Everything else was carted off to the old solar. If there’s anything of the queen’s worth keeping, it’s most likely there.”

“Thank you.” Khamsin drew a breath and plunged back into the frenetic rush of the Queen’s Bower, weaving through the crowd of carpenters, maids, and other workers. The solar was an adjoining antechamber accessible through a connecting door on the southern wall. Kham reached the door and turned the knob.

Locked. She ground her back teeth together in frustration. The door was locked, and Kham knew who was the most likely person to have the solar key in her possession.

She glanced over her shoulder in Maude Newt’s direction. The Mistress of Servants was talking to a tall guardsman wearing the king’s livery. Khamsin couldn’t hear what they were saying, but when Newt jabbed a bony, emphatic finger towards the queen’s bedchamber, it was obvious the woman must have seen through her disguise.

Time to go. She’d come back later after getting a spare key from Tildy. Right now, she’d best make a quick escape before the Newt caught her. The steely-eyed Mistress of Servants would love nothing better than to catch Khamsin in some sort of mischief and report her to the king.

Khamsin ducked through the bower door and shoved past the stream of workers crowding the hall and stairway. Behind her, she heard a man’s voice call out, “Princess!” but she ignored him and plunged down the stairs.

She raced two flights down and kept running until she reached her room. She’d barely changed out of the plain frock into one of her sister Autumn’s cast-off gowns of spruce green worsted wool when a knock sounded on the door. Kham stuffed the servant’s gown and linen kerchief under her bed and ran both hands through her disheveled curls to smooth them before opening the door.

A liveried guardsman—different from the man in the tower—stood outside her door. “Your Highness.” He bowed shortly, his face a blank slate. “The king requests your presence.”

“What in the name of the Sun were you thinking?”

Khamsin stood stiff and silent, eyes focused blindly straight ahead. Her father, King Verdan, still clad in the formal court dress he’d donned to greet Wynter Atrialan, paced the floor of his private office. Heat radiated off him in waves. He was furious. With her. Not because of the tower, but because of the storm before that.

“Did you think I wouldn’t know it was you? Are you that great a fool that you would openly attack the Winter King before the terms of peace are even settled? With half his army waiting in our streets, ready to slaughter us all at the slightest provocation?”

Her gaze snapped up, guilt and worry suddenly swamping her. She hadn’t meant it that way. She’d only meant it as a warning . . . something to let the White King know not all denizens of Summerlea were cowed by his presence. She hadn’t stopped to consider that he might interpret her storm as an act of war.