House of Winter

Chapter 35, Part 1

Sanna

Lumi and Tom had argued about something, and now both of them were sleeping, or at least pretending to sleep, on opposite sides of the camp, with their kinnlings. Lumi was curled up against Jinni, holding tightly to him as if she expected he would disappear again.

Sanna and Katja were sitting by the fire, watching it burn low. They were silent for a long time, so that the only noise was the crackling of the fire and the occasional hoot of a winter owl. Sanna knew that one of them would break this silence eventually. Which of them was the most stubborn?

"Your father told me you'd gone with him to the lake," Katja said, finally, and Sanna had a fleeting sense of victory that she'd won the stand off, as if there was anything to gain from being the one who remained silent for longer.

"I didn't even think it over, Sanna. I didn't even consider that he would lie. I just believed him. Because all I could think about was Raphael. I spent weeks over winter in the palace just sitting in the garden with Helvig. When I cried my teardrops froze on my face."

Sanna wanted to sneer at the romanticism that Katja tried to imbue into her own grief. Of course she couldn't just say that she had been sad. She needed to lament over frozen teardrops on her face. But Sanna didn't sneer. She had never sneered at Katja. She had always been the princess's confidant in all things, and had never betrayed her feelings.

"I thought it was the will of the gods that Raph and I would be married," Katja continued. "I should have known it was just too perfect. We were in love and we were young and we would have had the world between us."

Sanna turned away from the princess and looked back into the fire. She should have known that Katja would turn the conversation back to her boyfriend.

"We talked about that, over summer in Vulfholm when he visited last year. We imagined what a future would look like if he was King of Lombardia and I was Queen of Norrlund. We made plans. We even wrote out everything we could think of. We were dizzy with the power of it. You have no idea how much we imagined it."

Sanna looked up at Katja, and saw the memories shining in her eyes. Or perhaps it was just the light of the fire, reflecting. Sanna noticed for the first time that Katja's hair was tied up in braids. Had she learned to do it herself?

"We drank strawberry wine and sat in the summer sunlight and I would lie in his lap and we would imagine a time when the two of us ruled the whole world," Katja continued. She was looking down at her hands now.

"We would be such benevolent leaders. We would be everything that our parents have failed to be. Raphael told me of his plans to reestablish partnerships with Vastier. He was sick of the corruption in Vastier and he blamed his father's neglect. If Lombardia and Vastier once again created a strong partnership, then Vastier could be returned to its former glory. Lombardia could be strong enough to weed out the corrupt warlords of Vastier. And I told him of my plans to restore the riches of Norrlund, and end the poverty from the Fire War. We could use the new trade routes with Vastier to create a new age, a stronger age than even the Ocean Age, where progress and invention flourished."

Katja paused and looked up at Sanna. "Raph talked to me about technology. He knew that the steam engines weren't the future. He wanted to create flying ships, like they have in Kakaio. He told me to imagine if they could be run by common ords, instead of starrlings. There would be so much more potential, if ships could be run without magic. I realise now that he was speaking about using the oil from the icelands. I guess he never mentioned that. But I loved the idea of the common people having power. Even if they weren't born with magic, we could give them power with technology."