sunlight is fading, and the frigid air bites at my cheeks. It might not have snowed yet, but winter has sunk its teeth deep. I’ve never felt cold like I have in the past few weeks. In the temple, it was always pleasantly warm or cool. But now I understand how lucky we all were—my fingers feel so stiff that I’m sure my blood is turning to ice, and the stumps of my pinkie and ring finger tingle sharply and painfully.
“So, what’s your theory?” Freya asks after we pile our baskets full and begin the trek to the caverns.
“My theory?”
“About the old Valtia. Do you think she’s dead?”
The pang of grief knifes through me. “Yes,” I murmur. “I think she’s dead.”
“I’m not sure. If she is, then wouldn’t the new Valtia have shown herself to the people? Do you think she really went mad?”
There’s that urge to vomit again. “Why do people out here care about that so much?” I blurt out. “Is it just the warmth? That’s all the Valtia does for the outlands, right?”
Freya is silent, and when I look over at her, she’s scowling. “We’re Kupari too,” she says, her voice shaking. “Just because we’re out here doesn’t mean we’re not.”
I blanch at having offended her, remembering Sofia’s disagreement with the elders about entering the outlands to be seen by her subjects beyond the city walls. “Of course you’re Kupari! I didn’t mean to suggest—”
“But everyone in the city thinks we’re criminals, right? That’s what the miners called us that day they came to tell us to leave. Thieves. They painted us all with one brush.” Her lips pull tight. “I’m glad Sig set them on fire!”
I stare at her with wide eyes. “And how did Sig set them on fire?”
She bites her lip, then grins with her secret knowledge. “He wields it.”
“There are lots of wielders in the caverns.” I thought I’d met all of them in the past few weeks—and none of them seem that powerful. “Which one is he?”
She shakes her head. “Sig hasn’t been around since the fight with the miners. A bunch of the other wielders were angry after it happened—they thought it would draw the attention of the Valtia and her elders. So Sig and a bunch of his friends who are wielders left the caverns and haven’t been back since. But believe me, no one wields fire like he does. He is made of fire.”
The rumors Mim heard from Irina the scullery maid were right after all. There was a strong fire wielder among the cave dwellers. “If he has such an affinity for fire magic, why is he in the outlands instead of in the temple?”
“Why would he want to be in the temple?”
“To live a life of privilege and serve the Valtia and the Kupari people? Such a strong wielder would surely have been chosen as an apprentice, guaranteed to become a priest one day. Why would he want to live in a cave in the outlands instead?” This is something I’ve been dying to ask for weeks.
Freya’s little face squinches up. “Because he didn’t want to be gelded and shaved, to begin with?”
“G-gelded?” My stomach turns as I remember one of my lessons with Kauko, about how male horses often have this procedure to make them easier to control.
Freya leans forward, her braids swinging, and speaks in a low conspiratorial voice. “It’s when they cut off a boy’s—”
I wave my hand in the air. “It’s all right. I understand.” I think of the apprentices and younger priests, few of them as tall as a normal man, many of them with high, reedy voices. I think of all the little boys I’ve seen over the years, led into the temple after having been taken away from their families. And of Niklas, the boy who had been hit by a cart before Aleksi brought him in. Aleksi had said he was eager to get to the temple—but what if he’d been trying to get away? All the things I’ve seen over the years come back to me, painted with a much more sinister tint. For reasons I don’t fully understand, I think of Oskar and his freezing eyelashes. How was he not found by the priests?
I look into his sister’s eyes. “The wielders in this camp weren’t banished from the city, were they? They chose to live out here instead of serving in the temple. They’re in hiding.”
Freya’s mouth twists as she chews that over. “Sometimes older kids will