Chapter 1 #2
The city is even more remarkable up close than it was from the harbor.
The streets are wide and paved with flat stones worn smooth by generations of feet.
The buildings lean companionably against one another, their dark timber frames interlocked, their turf roofs thick with autumn wildflowers in deep gold and rust-red and a stubborn violet that grows in every crack and crevice.
There are shop fronts with painted signs and a blacksmith's forge belching sparks and children chasing a spotted dog through an alley.
A woman hangs laundry from a second-story window and sings while she does it.
Indrie tries to absorb all of it and cannot. There is too much color, too much life, too much noise. Not the clanging, hostile noise of Armond's court. The buzzing, humming noise of a place where people are simply living.
Ingrid points out the mill where she buys their flour, and the well with the best water, and the corner where Dagny once tripped over a goat and broke her wrist.
"The goat was banished from the district," Ingrid tells him, entirely serious. "For its crimes."
"As it should have been," Indrie says solemnly, and Dagny laughs so hard she has to stop walking.
The chatter carries him through the unfamiliar streets until they reach a small house on a sloping lane near the western edge of the city.
Dagny and Ingrid's home is modest and warm, built of dark timber with a turf roof and a front garden already beginning to turn gold with autumn.
A trellis of some climbing vine Indrie does not recognize frames the doorway, its leaves curling inward with the season.
Someone has swept the stone path from the lane to the door and lined it with small white rocks.
Inside, the house opens into one large room divided by furniture and purpose rather than walls.
A loom sits in the corner with half-finished cloth still threaded through it in a repeating wave of blue and grey.
Dried herbs hang from the kitchen rafters in neat bundles, filling the house with something green and faintly sweet.
On top of a bookshelf near the window, a grey cat regards Indrie with supreme disinterest.
"That's Misty," Dagny says. "She hates everyone."
"She does not hate everyone." Ingrid reaches up to scratch the cat's chin. Misty allows this for precisely two seconds before swatting her hand away with a velvet paw. "She is simply discerning."
They settle Indrie in a small guest room at the back of the house.
It is barely wider than his outstretched arms, but there is a bed with a real mattress stuffed with straw and wool, a pillow that gives when he presses his hand into it, and a quilt stitched in blue and grey that matches the cloth on the loom.
A window, small but actual glass, looks out onto the back garden where the last of the summer herbs are going to seed.
After the bunk on the ship, it is the finest sleeping arrangement he has ever had.
In Kalkoa his mat lay directly on stone, thin enough that every ridge and crack in the floor pressed into his spine, and his blanket was a single coarse sheet that did not cover his feet.
He had no pillow. He had no window. His room was a closet with no door, adjacent to the king's quarters, close enough that Armond could summon him at any hour by rapping his cane against the wall.
This room is small, but it was built for comfort. It has softness in it. Someone chose the colors of the quilt.
He has to stand there for a moment and breathe through the tightness in his throat before he can go in.
Ingrid brings him clean towels and a basin of warm water and tells him supper will be ready soon.
Her smile is gentle and she does not linger, does not hover to see whether he is crying, which he is grateful for, because he is closer to it than he would like to admit.
Dagny appears behind her, peering over her shoulder, and points at the foot of the bed.
"Extra blankets there, if you get cold. Outhouse is behind the garden. Watch your footing on the path when it rains, it's treacherous."
"It is not treacherous," Ingrid says.
"I broke my wrist on a goat, Ingrid. I know treacherous." Dagny nods at the door. "We'll be in the kitchen. Come out whenever you're ready."
They leave him. The door closes softly.
Indrie washes the salt and travel grime from his skin slowly, the warm water turning grey in the basin as weeks of ocean spray and sweat and sleepless nights sluice away.
He washes his hair, works his fingers through the tangles, wrings it out over the basin and drapes it over one shoulder.
He changes into the one clean set of clothes he has beyond what he set sail in, which are Eskil's clothes, because they are the only clothes he has.
A linen shirt so large it slips off one shoulder.
Trousers cinched at the waist with a length of rope, the hems rolled twice at his ankles.
He catches his reflection in the basin water. A dark-eyed young man in a king's clothes, looking lost.
He smooths the shirt down, tucks it in as best he can, and goes to supper.
Supper is a hearty root vegetable stew with chunks of carrot and parsnip and something earthy and golden that Ingrid calls turnip, and it is leagues better than anything Gunnar ever produced.
Indrie watches Dagny and Ingrid together.
The way Dagny's hand rests on Ingrid's lower back when she passes behind her to reach for the bread.
The way Ingrid leans into Dagny's shoulder while she eats, a subtle tilt that speaks of a gravity between them.
The way Dagny cuts the bread and butters the first slice and puts it on Ingrid's plate without being asked, and the way Ingrid smiles at her for it, quiet and luminous, as though she has been handed something precious instead of a piece of bread.
Ingrid says something in rapid Rengaran and Dagny throws her head back and laughs, and Ingrid's smile widens and she touches Dagny's cheek with the backs of her flour-dusted fingers.
Indrie realizes, slowly, that Ingrid is not Dagny's friend or her sister.
She is her wife.
He watches them and aches with something that is not quite envy and not quite grief but lives in the space between the two. He thinks about strong hands on his face in a lamplit cabin, about a rough voice saying you are not mine, and the ache deepens until he has to put his spoon down.
He wants this. He wants it so badly the wanting has a taste, sharp and bright and terrible, like biting down on something too hot and refusing to spit it out.
After supper, Dagny pours three cups of something warm and golden.
"Mead," she says. "Honey. Drink it slowly or you'll be face down in the garden."
"Is that a warning or a memory?"
"Both," Ingrid says, before Dagny can answer.
They sit by the fire. Misty descends from her bookshelf to investigate Indrie's lap, sniffs his hand with elaborate disdain, then curls up on his thigh and falls asleep.
"She likes you," Ingrid says, sounding genuinely surprised.
"Everyone likes Indrie," Dagny tells her. "Don't take it personally."
Indrie strokes the soft grey fur and feels the rumble of her purring travel up through his leg, and thinks that he could live here. That he could learn to live somewhere a cat falls asleep on you and nobody takes it away.
He is tired. The kind that lives in the bones and does not lift with sleep, the accumulated weight of weeks at sea and years before that and a lifetime of never being safe enough to rest. Dagny notices before he does, because she has spent years watching soldiers push past their limits.
"Bed," she says. "You're swaying."
"I am just a little tired–"
"You are listing. Like a bad ship."
He stands, dislodging Misty, who gives him a look of profound betrayal and stalks off. He thanks them both, for the room and the food and the welcome, and his voice comes out thick but the words get said.
Ingrid squeezes his hand. Dagny points at him.
"If you thank me one more time I'm throwing something."
"Goodnight, Dagny."
"Goodnight."
He goes to his room. He takes off his boots and pulls back the quilt and lies down on a real mattress he doesn't have to share.
The softness is obscene. He sinks into it and the straw shifts and molds beneath him and the wool gives against his spine, and his body does something it has not done in years.
It relaxes. Not the grudging surrender of exhaustion, where he would lie on his mat and wait for sleep to bludgeon him into unconsciousness.
This is his shoulders dropping. His hands uncurling.
His jaw letting go. His breath coming deep and slow and easy.
The pillow is under his head. The quilt is around his shoulders. Outside the small glass window the last of the light fades behind the mountains and the sky goes the color of a bruise healing, purple and gold and soft at the edges.
He thinks of Eskil on the dock, holding the golden young man in his arms, his eyes closed and his jaw soft. He thinks of what a man of such bearing sees when he looks at someone like Indrie, and then remembers that Eskil did not look at all.