Broken Souls and Bones (Broken Souls and Bones #1)

Chapter 4

4

Lyra

We managed to bribe Pukki down the hillside without toppling the baskets of herbs, roots, and berries much at all, and stepped through an opening in the crooked gates at the back of the longhouse.

Smoke billowed through the hole in the sod roof and through it I could make out the bustle of watchmen across the village towers.

I made quick work of untethering Pukki from his cart and took hold of one of the plum baskets, while Kael slung a canvas pack of thistle roots over his shoulder and took a basket of dewberries in his arms.

The jarl’s longhouse was nearest to the outer gates. There, Thorian, an elder of the groundskeepers, greeted us.

Thorian kept a wooden pipe pinched between his teeth. His body was made of more bone than meat, but his aged, knobby fingers worked swiftly as he secured every pen for hogs and hens around the jarl’s farm.

The old man lifted his head at the clatter of wheels approaching. “Been a while since you’ve left us, isdotter . Seems our lost boy found you just in time.”

I grinned when the old man plucked his pipe from his lips and pecked my cheek as always. Thorian called me a daughter of ice since I came to the longhouse in winter.

Kael was the lost boy for what was done to him when he was discarded.

Loyal as the old man was to House Jakobson, Thorian shared my feelings that Kael had been wronged grievously by the jarl and his household.

Thorian drew in a long pull of his pipe, then freed the smoke in a cloud. “Be on watch, sweet ones. Selena is convinced the pond has been invaded by a fossegrim and is ready to sacrifice old Pukki to see the water spirit gone.”

“Pukki would not be an adequate sacrifice.” I schooled a glare on the old goat already gnawing on his grass. “He’s too stupid.”

Thorian waved me into the longhouse and turned his talk to Kael as they unloaded the spades and shears from the cart.

A door to the cooking side of the longhouse clattered open. “Lyra. Where have you been? Girl, hurry . Do you not hear the horn?”

Selena, hands on her rounded hips, leveled me in her most grisly stare. Try as she did, it was never enough to hide the tenderness in her soul.

Selena was a widow who believed in every vein of lore, and spent her days filling the table of the jarl with savory feasts and blessing each corner and rafter to keep the house free of haunts and trickster creatures.

Beyond Kael, Selena and Thorian were my favorite souls. Kindhearted and strong-willed. They looked after the both of us like an odd pair of makeshift parents.

When we needed guidance, Thorian would guide.

When we were ill, Selena would fill our stomachs with her teas and herbs until fevers faded.

“Thorian told us you’re fretting over a fossegrim.”

“I told that old fool I can hear the creature plucking those strings trying to lure us in.”

I laughed, but let it fade when more than one servant hurried into the rooms to salt meat or slice bread.

On instinct, I kept my face turned away and placed my basket on the oak table. “I’ve brought you thistles. Thought you could make one of those herb tonics to sell at the harvest trade.”

Selena patted my cheek and inspected the basket. “Many thanks, my girl. You know, some would say the gods did not see fit to bless me with children, but I see it as they merely saw fit to send me a beautiful girl and mischievous boy in another way. Now, get dressed. We’ve a great deal to prepare. I’ll be needing your touch with the honey cakes.”

Selena slipped through the ropes threaded with bone beads that divided areas of the cooking rooms from the great hall of the longhouse. She recited a few soft chants under her breath as she went to ward away the unheard fossegrim fiddle.

My chest burned with affection. Cruel as life could be, everywhere my fate led me, I found a few souls to love. I lived with a lie, heavy and terrible at times, but I could not hate how my path brought me Kael and a few kind folk in this house.

Selfish of me. I should not be glad Kael was a servant in the house of his birth. The house of which he should be the heir.

For the first twelve summers, Kael lived as Jarl Jakobson’s first son. Born to the first wife who went to Salur after the heir was born.

When the second wife grew envious that her husband’s son was blessed with bone craft but her children were not, she threatened to take the jarl’s new family away from Skalfirth to her father’s house lest Kael be cast out, disowned, and the jarldom left to be inherited by her firstborn son.

It was a spineless act, but Kael was stripped of his inheritance, his house name, and left to serve his own blood as a stable boy—no family, no title.

Jakobson saw it as a mercy to allow his son to remain in the house at all.

All the folk living along the shores of the Green Fjord knew his birth house.

No one mentioned it.

Kael was given the name Darkwin, a title from a Skald saga of a prince who fell from his throne to the dark roots of the gods’ tree and lived out his days in shadows.

“It is the way of things, Ly,” Kael told me once when we were tasked with watching a line of fishing nets. Jakobson and Mikkal, his second son, had ridden past without a glance our way. “He hardly spoke to me anyway. Thorian said I remind him too much of my mother, and it pains him.”

“That is nothing but weakness,” I spat.

Kael nudged my shoulder. “Let it be and don’t harbor such ill will toward the man. It’ll pinch your face.”

I did not speak of it again, but I never was the first to bow the head to Jarl Jakobson.

Inside a narrow alcove in the back rooms shared by the servants, I ripped off my dirty tunic, next my trousers and boots, tossing them on top of the narrow cot where I slept.

From a small wooden crate, I scrounged through my meager belongings, snatching up a plain woolen dress.

Simple. Dull. Invisible.

With trembling fingers, I stroked my braid free and knotted my dark hair behind my neck. Another horn blared from the watchtowers.

“ Shit .” By now the jarl would be greeting the Stav Guard, and the rest of us would be expected to do the same.

I hopped on one leg, trying to shove my toes inside thin leather shoes.

On this side of the longhouse, I could see a portion of the main road. Like a pestilence, Stav Guard entered the inner market, spilling their blight across our dirt roads and blotting out any peace that lived here moments ago.

Doors on homes opened and people staggered into the streets. Others wore bemused expressions or carried platters of offerings and ewers of honey mead for their arrival.

Once dressed, I added more stinging dye to my eyes, wrapped the knife I’d thrown at the scavenger in a linen cloth, and used a thin leather belt to secure the blade to the side of my calf. Kael would roll his eyes, but the notion of remaining unarmed near Stav Guard rushed a noxious sort of panic through my veins.

Outside, sunlight spliced through the mists of early morning, dewdrops sweated off bubbled glass windows, and the damp, briny air dug into my lungs with each breath. As if Skalfirth wanted me to always remember its taste, its scent.

As if it knew this day would change everything.

Already, Kael and Selena took up their places near the back gates with the rest of the household.

I scooped up a handful of berries from a basket on the back stoop and rolled them around in my palm until some of the iridescent juice dribbled through my fingers. A ruse, a distraction, I’d learned well over time.

Keep the Stav looking elsewhere and they rarely cared to look such a common woman in the eye.

“A great many have come,” Selena muttered.

Kael nodded. “Captain Baldur’s unit. I’m surprised. They’re the fiercest. Threats against the prince’s betrothal must’ve increased.”

It was no secret, Dravenmoor would not want a true royal match between kingdoms. Jorvan royals wed Myrdan nobles, but this was the first union in nearly a hundred winters where a Myrdan princess was of age and title to wed a Jorvan prince.

I’d seen the prince only once before, during my fourteenth winter when I was tasked with aiding Thorian with the fishing trade in a nearby township. While there, the king’s caravan arrived to recruit a bone crafter into the Stav.

Thorian led me to the docks once our business was done, and as we’d pulled away from the shore, I caught a glimpse of the prince. Only a few seasons older than myself, Prince Thane had been draped in fine white fox furs, surrounded by Stav Guard, tossing pebbles into the tides.

He’d seemed so utterly bored.

Thane had caught my gaze as our ship peeled out to sea, and shouted, “Watch me skip it, my lady.”

Without knowing me, the prince addressed me like noble blood ran in my veins. Then like all boys my age, rife with arrogance, the prince tossed a pebble, bowing with a flourish when the stone skipped four times before sinking into the tides.

I blew out a breath and stepped closer to Kael. The prince had been kind as a boy, but the Stav today looked nothing of the sort.

Each man was dressed as though he might be meeting the front lines of battle in his dark tunic embroidered with the white wolf head of Stonegate. Scattered throughout were servants and attendants who carried satchels and stuffed leather packs for gathering any weapons we traded.

“There’s Baldur.” Kael used his chin to point out the man at the head of the line.

Baldur the Fox was broad and stern. His beard was not yet to his chest, but he kept it knotted in a single plait secured with bone beads.

The captain was known for his fealty and ferocity, both in battle and in life. Young for a Stav officer, but he moved like a man who’d lived for centuries and had no patience for people around him.

Baldur stopped to greet Jarl Jakobson. Kael’s unclaimed father was a handsome man, strong and skilled with the ax. His peppered beard was trimmed, his hair sleek and tame around his shoulders.

But even standing half a head taller than the captain, Jakobson seemed to shrink beneath Baldur’s sneer.

“Come,” I said, urging Kael to help me finish the cakes and saffron buns for the feast. “We don’t need to watch men puff out their chests to compensate for lack in other areas.”

Kael flicked my ear. “No one will want to take you as a wife if you speak so boldly.”

“Perhaps I will not want to take on a husband if he cannot meet the challenge.”

“Fair enough.”

A few gasps and murmurs drew me to a pause.

“By the gods, the Sentry is here. Why?” Kael spoke with a touch of delight. “Ashwood is incredible with the blade, Ly. Incredible .”

Next to Baldur, another man shoved his way through.

All along his hood and shoulders were crimson stains. I recognized the cowl, the very stride of the scavenger from the wood. My stomach lurched. No. By the gods, no. The thief was no thief at all.

To some, Roark Ashwood was named Death Bringer. He and his blades were infamous. Known as the Sentry, Roark rose in power in Jorvandal from boyhood for his unique talent with the sword. Adopted as a child from Dravenmoor, some believed he was less the silent guard for Prince Thane and more the assassin for the throne.

I’d never seen him, not personally, only heard the whispers of how brutally he would kill to protect his royals. But watching him shove to the front of the line, there was almost a familiarity about the man, a sense of his power that peeled back my ribs and settled into my soul.

And the truth was, I’d assaulted the most dangerous man in the kingdom.