Chapter 23
I’d been so young when home burned.
I’d never realised what a miracle it had been.
How could I have, as a child? It had been all I’d ever known, as unremarkable as Mother’s magic or the pale rune mark on my upper arm.
But then there had been our humble Hjarn Bay hut, the haylofts and stables in which I’d survived after Kjell’s death, the barracks and dusty inns of life as Aranc’s little witchling bird …
and now Durlain carried me into the living room of the place he called home, and I nearly fainted.
It was like stepping into a different reality – a world in which Aranc and Kestrel and all the other birds couldn’t possibly exist. It was like stepping into a dream.
Marble walls in pale shades of dawn, their gradients ranging from ruby red to blushing pink to the soft orange of apricots.
Birchwood floors, inlaid with gold filigree.
Plush white rugs, oakwood furniture, and high, carved windows – windows that were much too large for the cold of Seidrinn winters, their glass just a little coloured and filtering that same impossible golden sunlight into the room.
Fuck. Spelled glass.
How many hours had I spent watching it, all those years ago? Squealing in delight as its colour shifted to violet at dusk, dark blue at night, a rosy pink at dawn?
And then there were the runes.
Of course there were the runes.
Carved into doorposts and window frames.
Stitched into rugs and upholstery. A long string of them ran along the wall near the ceiling, a single unbroken spell, and for a single blissful moment my heartache and bewilderment gave way to that familiar buzz of a puzzle to solve.
What did it do? If they gave me a notebook and a few hours to think, no doubt I could—
‘Thraga?’ Durlain’s voice, shockingly close. ‘Are you going to topple over if I put you down?’
Oh, balls.
Perhaps I could think about runes later.
I shook my head, still lost for words, and he planted me on the smooth wooden floor with baffling care. Only then did I notice the two people on the other side of the room – an audience my mind had helpfully ignored as long as there had been magic to focus on instead.
Lady Estegonde sat in an elegantly carved dining chair by the farthest window, knitting in her lap, her dark eyes on me with what might have been curiosity on a face of lesser restraint.
Behind her, standing by the wall, was a tall human man.
Short silver beard. Long silver braid. A weathered, wrinkled face – not the sort of wrinkles that spelled weakness, but rather the sort that said, I was slaying monsters long before you were even born, and I’ve only gotten better since.
Errik, I figured.
My ambition to not get in Estegonde’s way grew by the second.
I opened my mouth to introduce myself, and possibly apologise for the rather hysterical way in which I’d inserted myself into their household, when a bowl of porridge floated past me.
It was not a serene, even floating. It moved through the empty air with the swinging motions that suggested someone was carrying it – except that there was no one, and that even in a house built of rune magic, the kitchenware ought not to be moving of its own accord.
Half a shriek fell from my lips before I could stop it, and the bowl paused.
‘Ah, yes,’ Durlain said, supremely unaffected. ‘Nanna, this is Thraga. Thraga, meet Nanna – she was rather sick of her rheumatics by the time she died, so when we revived her, we managed to just … not put her back in a body.’
I blinked.
The bowl of porridge gave a little wave, as if to greet me, and merrily continued its floating way to the table.
‘You …’ I started and faltered. Hell have mercy. As if this house and its family weren’t enough for my recently feverish mind. ‘Your nursemaid is a ghost?’
The porridge plunked itself down on the table with mildly reproachful force.
‘She prefers disembodied person,’ Durlain translated, so smoothly I’d have sworn there was an edge of amusement to the pleasant flatness of his voice.
A new mask, or perhaps this was closer to his own, true face – still sharp, but the sort of sharpness that easily lent itself to amusing wit, none of the usual venomous bite to it.
‘But otherwise, yes. Shouldn’t you sit down, before you keel over? ’
‘Um,’ I said, and then an invisible hand gave me a motherly pat on the shoulder, and I shrieked all over again. Elsewhere in the house, from the direction of what had to be the kitchen, a dog started barking ferociously.
‘Sweet flames,’ Durlain muttered, snapping around on his heel. ‘Nanna? Do you need help with Garm, or—’
The door between living room and hall closed rather pointedly.
That was a no, presumably – which I’d have registered more clearly if I hadn’t been so busy gaping at Durlain again, original incredulity replaced by yet another outrage. ‘I thought Smudge was a terrible name, but you named your dog after the bloody hellhound?’
His mouth snapped shut.
On the other side of the room, Errik’s deadpan face looked significantly more deadpan than a moment before.
‘Oh.’ Heartbeats too late, the other explanation dawned on me – an explanation so horrible I believed it immediately. ‘Oh, no. You’re not saying …’
Something twitched at Durlain’s jaw. ‘It’s a rather long story.’
‘We are very fortunate,’ Estegonde said in an absent, musing tone, fingers nimbly counting the stitches on her needle, ‘that my darling nephew would never do anything foolish. Otherwise, running off with Death’s beloved pet might have tempted unkind tongues to call his actions exactly that.’
Durlain glared at her.
Errik’s face was straighter than Mount Kelda’s flank now.
‘That aside,’ Estegonde added, looking up to smile at me, ‘your porridge is getting cold.’
Right.
I staggered to the table and dropped into the nearest chair with about as much grace as the average lumberjack.
The porridge was thick and creamy, nothing like the watery substance I’d served Durlain in our Elenon inn; it smelled of honey and hazelnuts, and when I stuck the first spoonful into my mouth, I found there were raisins in it, too.
This was the sort of breakfast that could nourish a corpse back to life.
It made everything better, and it made everything worse, too.
It took me three more bites to identify the fuzzy, unfocused feeling welling up inside me – rage, hot and chafing, squeezing my ribs into my lungs with the strength of giants.
Because this existed. This stunning house with its golden light and its loving little family existed, and it wasn’t mine – it would never be mine, and as soon as our bargain ended, Durlain would shed me like a coat worn thin and I would never see any of it again.
I would be back in the world outside, with kings who were out for my blood and townsfolk who stoned people like me to death, and right now, every bite of porridge tasted of all the times I would hungrily remember it.
I was being ridiculous.
I ought to be glad I was alive.
But I’d been dying for years, and these walls and windows – Mother’s walls, Mother’s windows – were all too stark a reminder that perhaps the first tatters of my life had stayed behind in those hell-cursed brambles, torn from me with my blood and skin.
I swallowed a spoonful of porridge. My voice was thick as I said, ‘I would like to have that conversation you mentioned.’
Judging by the angle of Estegonde’s head, that was not the way courtly ladies would have gone about the matter. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to finish your—’
‘No,’ I said, at the same moment Durlain sank into a chair opposite me and muttered, ‘Good luck with that.’
I glowered at him. He sent a flash of that murder smile back at me, as if to say, Was I wrong?, and for a fraction of a moment he was every inch the vicious little pest again beneath the veneer of the perfect prince at home.
A mask after all, then?
Questions for later.
I turned towards Estegonde, my empty spoon almost knifelike in my fingers. Perhaps I was not the only one who noticed it, because standing by the wall, Errik calmly, very calmly, crossed his muscular arms.
Varraulis’s sister herself only sighed and tucked her knitting aside. ‘Very well. I should ask first what you remember of your mother.’
That sounded less like a conversation and more like an interrogation. Then again, she’d hardly exchanged two dozen waking words with me; perhaps it wasn’t so strange she wanted to get an idea of the battlefield first.
‘Her name was Gunn,’ I said, slowly, uncertainly. ‘She was also … also …’
A witch.
They already knew about my powers. They had to know. Someone had put that nightgown on me; they must have seen the mark. And yet the words stuck in my throat, hiding like a frightened child in the dark – a confession I’d been trained to never, never speak out loud.
‘A runewitch,’ Durlain said, levelly, as if this was a conversation on the weather.
‘Yes,’ I managed, too relieved to be annoyed, and even that one word tasted of stones and razors.
‘Yes, exactly. We … we had our own vegetable garden by the house. She took care of that. She had friends over all the time. Kjell told me her father – my grandfather – had lived in the house before us.’
It was precious little information, I realised with growing mortification as the words stuttered past my lips. But if Estegonde felt any annoyance at my ignorance, her face didn’t show it – quiet, gentle interest, like a softer mirror image of Durlain’s piercing looks.
Only when I fell silent did she nod and add, ‘Did you ever learn why she was killed?’
‘It’s the sort of thing people do to witches, isn’t it?’ It came out more sharply than intended.