Chapter 25 #3
“I can’t speak to every band of outcasts—but Harroby’s are a generous people. And I’m looking forward to meeting the others too.” Raf swung his head from one of them to the other. “What time do we leave in the morning?”
“You’re coming with us?” Nik hadn’t dared to hope it.
“Are you kidding? You’re not shaking me off again. I’d have followed you into the Ice Prison, if my princess hadn’t told me I needed to warn Brother Gylfi and then go into hiding.”
Nik wished, for just a moment, that they had time to detour to the dome. He wanted to introduce the old dominie to Kyrja and she to him. He wanted to show her the place that had been more home than Pab’s house in Andre Village. He wanted her to see his world.
But that would have to wait until her father was no longer running free and a warrior king wasn’t encircling their kingdom with triremes capable of destroying their entire subsistence.
Raf led them toward the outskirts of the village, silent in deference to all the sleeping families.
Nik still marveled at that. Families, all the way out here on the edge of the world. Life—a free life, freer in some ways than they were under the domes, if what he’d seen so far was any indication.
Was this, too, just part of the narrative they’d been taught?
That only outcasts left the domes, that real life couldn’t be sustained out here?
Was it all just to keep them docile within the world the Fjorders, the Blessed, had built for them?
Just as they’d been taught that thanes were built for the soil, the mines, and only Fjorders for art and culture and education?
“Here we are, Majesty. We’ll bid you goodnight,” Raf said in a murmur, dropping his arms and stopping them before a squat little snow-dome with an opening barely big enough for a person to duck through.
If Kyrja had the same misgivings about it that Nik did, they didn’t show on her face. “Thank you, Raf.”
Nik stepped around his friend, whispering, “Give us a minute?”
Raf grinned and motioned toward a tent a few paces off. “I’ll just go on in. We’re right there.”
Nik waited until Raf ducked under the tent flap and then drew Kyrja close. Her face tilted up to his, and when he settled his lips on hers, he found them welcoming, greedy even.
Fire and ash—that’s what she turned him into. It was all he could do to rein in the heat so he didn’t melt her house.
Though, if he did, she could probably build one for herself in about ten seconds.
When finally he convinced himself to end the kiss, he rested his forehead on hers. “I love you.”
Her fingers, so blessedly cool, brushed the hair off his forehead. “And I love you. But Nik—about what Phoenix said.”
Guess she had heard. He braced himself, fingers curling against her back.
“I’m no threat to your throne, Kyrja. You have to know that.
I would never—I have no expectations. I want to be with you, and if, maybe, someday you wanted…
wanted to be…” How did one tell a queen that he wanted her to be his wife?
That he yearned to have with her what she deserved from a union—a covenant, a forever, a marriage that would last centuries, as long as they both lived?
Were she a thane, he’d know what to do. He’d drop to his knees and ask her to marry him, to till the soil by his side and plant their family in his family’s plot.
Those weren’t the words for the Queen of Fjordlandi. But he didn’t know whatever ones the Fjorders used.
Her smile didn’t falter. If anything, it went warmer. She rested a finger against his lips. “Your presence is no threat. It’s a promise. I don’t want to rule Fjordlandi alone. I know this is all new to you, though, and I won’t rush you. Rush this.”
His heart swelled, and he kissed the finger pressed to his lips. Then lifted a brow, grinned. “Is that how the Fjorders propose? I don’t even get one knee?”
She stretched up and pressed a kiss to his lips. “The Fjorders sit down at a table with both families and negotiate contracts. Romance isn’t logical enough for them.”
Them. She, a Fjordic princess, referred to the aristocracy as them. He shook his head. How strange she was in so many ways. Her mother’s daughter, he supposed, not her father’s.
Absolutely perfect, to his way of thinking. Exactly what Fjordlandi needed, to move them into a future bright for all Fjordic people. “One of these days, Valkyrja, when we have a moment to breathe, I’m going to show you the romance you deserve.”
She caressed his cheek and then backed away, moonlight and aurora painting her smile. “I look forward to that day, Nikanor.” Stooping, she disappeared into the igloo.
Nik gave himself a moment to suck in a long breath, bank his heat, and then moved into the tent.
Coals from a campfire smoldered in the middle, two beds laid out on either side of it, a few low shelves opposite the door on which some of Raf’s things had taken up residence. His friend sat on one of the pallets, a box in his hands.
Nik greeted him with a nod, expecting a grin and prod from Raf about his private goodbye to Kyrja.
Instead, his friend sent him a look so serious, Nik froze halfway to the second bed. “What?”
Raf tapped a finger to the box. “This was at the inn for you. From your father.”
Frost and snow, he’d forgotten all about that. His throat went tight, his mouth dry. “Did you—what’s in it?”
Raf let out a long breath. “Part of me wishes I could say I didn’t look, but fact is, you were in a prison no one ever gets out of, and I didn’t know if it had anything in here I needed to take care of for you. I waited until I got back to Harroby, but then I looked.”
“I don’t care if you did, Raf.” A bit of amusement edged out the sudden anxiety, at least. “When have I ever not shared something with you?”
With a quick flash of a cheeky grin, Raf looked over his shoulder. Toward Kyrja’s igloo.
Nik moved to his side and gave him a laughing shove. “Something. Not someone. Find your own girl.”
“That’s what this is about. Sort of—I mean, not my girl.
” Face twisting, Raf held out the box. Nik settled beside him on the pallet and pulled off the lid, even as Raf said, “Your father’s girl.
Your mother, I mean. He had this crazy idea that she was still alive.
Or what seemed like a crazy idea. Before. ”
Nik’s breath left him in a whoosh. Pab had found out?
How? He pulled out the topmost paper, squinted at it for a moment in the darkness and then brought the campfire up with a wave of his hand.
Raf grunted beside him, but Nik ignored the noise of surprise.
His best friend would just have to get used to such things.
Nik,
You’ll find this difficult to believe—I know I did.
Your mother’s alive. She was taken by the Fjorders after a blood test showed an abnormality.
The proof of it’s in this box. They’ve been doing this to us for decades, Nikanor, maybe centuries.
I don’t know where it started, or how, or how they know who to test like this.
I’ve found all I can—I don’t know books like you do. You’ll have to do the rest.
They stole her from us. And who knows how many others they’ve stolen from other families, or what they’ve done with them. The records I got my hands on didn’t tell me where she is now, only that she was Awakened and put into training.
Awakened. That’s what it said—your mamma.
That means she’s young still, while I’m old.
It means they didn’t just steal my wife from me, they guaranteed we could never reclaim our life together, not really.
Even if I found her now, it would be too late.
I have only months left, that’s what the healers say.
Perhaps, had I found this information years ago, it could be different. But I didn’t. So it falls to you.
That’s why I called you here, where her trail ends.
Pick it up, Nikanor. Find her. The king will question you after my death, probably arrest you—I’ll make sure of it.
Be prepared. I’ve made a device for you, here in this box.
It should melt the ice even in the Ice Prison.
Wear it at all times after you reach Reykstoll.
Use it to escape whatever cell they toss you in, and then find her.
I’ll get you in, and then it’s up to you.
Once you’re in the palace system, I know you’ll find a way.
The thanes who serve there will help you. They know to watch for you.
I hope you find a way to help them too. The Fjorders take so much, and we let them.
We think this is all there is. We think we’re lucky to have our little plot of land and our little bit of food and our little existence within the domes or serving them in the cities.
The funny thing is that I was considering giving all this up, all the work with the Red Hands, before they took her.
I just wanted to live with my family, enjoy what I had.
When others learn what’s being done with their family members, the complacency will end. It’ll have to. Once you show them your mother, everything will change. She’ll light a fire inside them, with your help.
I’ve done my part. I’m tired. I know you won’t approve of what I plan, but decades of talks have achieved nothing.
The only way that tyrant will ever learn that he can’t just take other people’s family is if someone takes his.
Like the king in the Old Words, who resisted all the other plagues.
But when his son was taken…then he let the People go.