Chapter 20
Twenty
Days passed. Drunken days. Stumbling over words days. Days of hiding from the bitter cold that clawed into my bones if I stepped out of arm’s reach of a brazier. Days of watching Jorn’s sad expression as King Arik translated the soothsayer’s oversimplified explanations of runes.
“This one is like the feeling of dropping a coin.”
“This one is like a soft breeze coming from the window.”
“This one is like seeing a squirrel steal a nut from another’s tree.”
I suspected King Arik of wanting me to learn Norsern specifically for the purposes of teaching me to read stones.
Looking back, I’m sure this was his motive from the start.
The names for the stones, their meanings—would make no sense to someone without a grasp of the language.
This one was bear, yes, but bearish and bear-like were words that had a myriad of meanings in Norsern.
Right side up was wet-bear.
Upside down was dry-bear.
The ratio of wet to dry mattered in the reading.
Brother. Bread. Baby. Breath. Boat.
These were the names of the runes that marked each stone.
Birch. Broken. Bold. Blood. Bone.
And then I was left alone with them.
Beloved. Banter. Butterfly. Balance. Bane.
“They to you speak different than to me, than to another, understand? Listen to only you. Only stones. Listen to no one else.” Jorn was brilliant at simplifying his Norsern sentences so I could understand him.
And maybe that was because he had come to the North as I had; he’d been thrown into a world with throaty, gurgling sounds and nightly brawls.
Birth. Bridge. Bird. Beneath. Bait.
It was King Arik’s lesson on the subject that truly taught me, though. “Gentlewoman, pretend this is a song. These are the only words you can hear in the song: Baby. Bird. Broken. Tell me what the song is about.”
King Arik was many things, and one of them was a brilliant teacher. The day he explained it like this to me, I scooped up the stones on the table and mixed them in the pouch before shaking a few out again.
They giggled.
I said, “This song is about an elk—it’s white, the colour of bone. It has blood on it. Handprints. It has won.”
King Arik stood so still that I felt for a moment he hadn’t heard me. His eyes were as sharp as arrows as he walked to the door and shouted into the hall. “Fetch Jorn!”
Jorn came quickly.
“Tell him what you told me. Try in Norsern words.”
“Elk-wet,” I said. “White elk-wet. Umm. Blood… with hand-blood-wet. Winning feeling… dry?” I didn’t know if winning was a wet word or a dry one.
Jorn frowned, and his gaze shifted to King Arik’s. The king’s wolfish eyes gleamed as he grinned an I told you so, sort of grin. The way the two of them looked at each other sped my heart.
“Is winning wet?” I said. I hated being wrong, especially in front of other people.
“Either,” said King Arik, not bothering to look over at me. “Depends on the type of win.”
Jorn was still frowning. He crossed his arms. “You prompted her?”
King Arik shook his head.
“What did you say to her before?”
“I said to think of it as a song. Each stone as one word in the song. She cast and read.”
“No understand,” I said. I actually had understood each of their sentences, but not the tone of them.
They both ignored me. Jorn spoke too fast for me to follow.
He might also have been throwing in words from his first language; this was something he did when he and King Arik didn’t want their conversation to be understood by those within hearing range.
It seemed like they were thrilled, and then it seemed like they were arguing, and then the king told me I was dismissed.
The Norsern had worn off on me a little by then.
I stood before the two of them, glaring, utterly exhausted by not understanding people’s words.
You must understand, I’ve left out all the pointless non-interactions I had with people who said something to me, and I stood there dumbfounded, and then they said it again louder as if maybe I just hadn’t heard them.
And then, when I stood there looking stupid, they laughed and moved on or took the bread they were asking me to pass them.
Something of this nature had happened a hundred times since I’d ended up in the Land of the Northernmost Star.
I was nauseous with it. Especially when, clearly, I was the one being discussed.
King Arik noticed me still standing there and laughed. “Why, Gentlewoman, you look pithy.”
“If you both spoke slower—”
“If you learned faster—”
I felt my face erupt into a scowl. “I am learning as fast as I can.”
“I doubt that very much.”
My breathing changed—my shoulders desperate to move in tandem with my angry lungs. “If I could learn faster, I would,” I said.
King Arik grinned. “Is that so?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s driving me mad to have such little sense of what is happening around me.”
“If I could teach you faster, you would want this?” His brows rose.
“Yes,” I said. “More than anything.”
His grin widened. “Well then. I will make it easy for you. No more Islish. It is done.”
And that’s how the most tedious three moons of my life came about. King Arik forbid any who knew Islish from speaking it with me and had them refuse to respond if I spoke Islish to them.
It was painstaking.
I hated him for it.
I cried. I cursed him in my thoughts. I was so lonely I thought I might die.
It didn’t help that winter attacked with a brutal, sparkling ferocity, leaving everything dark and colder than I could comprehend.
Cold enough to burn. In my desperation, I got lazy with the structure of the language.
I skipped the wet and dry and before-this-day and after-this-day endings and said everything in the present, adding tomorrow or yesterday onto the end of my phrase.
I cheated and said one and one and one when I wanted to say three, or I said this many, holding up my fingers.
I gave up entirely on the high-voiced, low-voiced, life-thrower, womb-carrier distinctions and called everyone everyone.
But it worked.
I learned to say—albeit crudely—what I meant to say. I learned to cut through people’s chatter and repeat their words simplified back to them: you mean this? Often, they would laugh and say yes. Or they laughed harder and said no.
I remember, very clearly, the day I first felt I actually knew the Norsern language.
We were once again in the great hall—me, Reedman, Dania and a few others we often dined with.
Dania’s youngest boy, Layf, was beneath the table, sitting on Reedman’s feet, giggling as Reedman moved the child around by lifting his legs.
Her oldest boy had been there with us earlier in the night, but had been collected by the roving band of palace children that I only ever caught glimpses of.
My music teacher—who was just as brilliant as King Arik had promised—was there as well, debating what he called “the climb” of music with one of the many bards in King Arik’s employ (the king used bards as spies, if you have not surmised that already).
The king was playing a bone chip game with one of his captains.
Incense thickened the air. It was a standard evening.
A young man, maybe one year younger than I, entered the hall, his axe glinting on his hip.
He caught my eyes because of the swiftness of his walk—he was in a state, nervous and angry and determined.
Because fighting was so common in the floating palace, I had quickly learned to sense it coming so I could get out of the way.
The young man didn’t fight. He walked up to King Arik, nodded his head politely and said, “My captain. I want him back. This has gone on too long.”
King Arik held his hand up to silence the young man, his eyes still on his game.
The young man waited only a moment before continuing. “My father. I know he is here.”
This confused me because I’d thought we were talking about his captain, but after a few more phrases, it became clear that his father was his captain.
Normally, I had trouble understanding when people spoke in an emotional state as they tended to talk more quickly and roundedly.
They would return to words and then skip ahead, leaving others out.
But I understood this young man’s father, his captain, had been held by the king for moons.
That a man named Sigver the Big-Red had come to ask after him, and then a man named Finnjer who was a healer.
The captain’s name was Flojer, and I didn’t get that confused with Finnjer even though a lot of the sounds were the same.
King Arik told the young man that his captain wasn’t in the palace.
That he must be mistaken. Some of those present in the hall exchanged looks.
There was far less laughter than the last time someone had come to collect a captain…
and then I recalled in more detail the last man I’d seen come to ask for a captain.
Sigver the Big-Red. That had to have been the man I’d seen. He’d been so very large…
“I do not want this to become a pile of clams,” the young man said.
“And if it does?” King Arik said, pulling his gaze from his game for the first time and raising his brows.
“Fight,” Vigdis whispered beside me. “He is going to strike.”
“No…” Reedman said, pulling Layf out from under the table and handing him to Dania. “He does not look that stupid.”
“Here, boy,” King Arik said, using the belittling word for young, life-thrower, not the neutral one. “I will let you have first swing.” He tilted his head back, revealing his throat beneath his beard. “If you would like. Here it is.”
Everyone was silent. My heart beat hard against my ribs.
“I would like my father back,” the young man said, his voice so earnest that it hurt a little to hear. “You called him here. He came. You have given him first pick of the raids four times before. He has never done anything but serve the gods and you and his crew. Where is he?”
King Arik looked at the young man for a moment before sighing.
“He is probably obeying the orders of the gods as we speak. You know him, as do I. If he was not told to share something with you, he would not share it. I also have not heard from him. If I do, I will send word to The Fearsome Beast. It is still docked, yes?”
The young man nodded.
“Take some barrels of mead back with you, to keep his crew occupied while you wait for him,” King Arik said.
The young man hesitated before nodding to himself and walking out of the hall.
Quickly, conversation erupted among the court. I didn’t join in immediately. I knew I should be pleased that I understood such a complex conversation without any of the history, but I was weighed down by the young man’s voice.
I wanted to say that he felt forlorn to me, but I didn’t know that word in Norsern. There was one… I was sure of it… It was just out of my reach. I rubbed my temples as I strained.
“You need more mead,” Dania said, pushing a cup toward me.
I shook my head. “He was so… so… there is an Islish word for it… for this kind of sadness… but gah, I cannot—”
“Just say the Islish, you are soten, there is nothing The Bard King can do to you.”
Several memories settled over my mind at once, and I sat up straight.
I was soten. The only person I actually had to listen to was Fell.
The king himself had told me so, had told me to say no to anyone who did anything I didn’t like.
I looked up at the king, at his bright smile, feeling as though he’d tricked me terribly, and it was all the worse because I’d let him do it.
Surely not…
I had three more drinks before my courage bloomed, and I marched up to him.
He smiled. “Gentlewoman.”
“You told me to say ‘no’ to things I do not like,” I said.
His eyes gleamed. “I did. I think it would be good for you.”
This cannot be. I’d seen pranks and jests in his court play out, always going nine times further than I felt was fair or kind. But three moons felt absurd.
“No,” I said. Instantly, my heart was speeding.
The corners of his mouth lifted ever-so-slightly.
“I want to be able to use Islish with people, with you and Dania. No to this… this…” I waved my hand as I tried to recall the word. “Rule you have made.”
King Arik shrugged. “Fine.”
My skull ached with how hot it grew in my rage. “Fine? After three moons of being… just fine?”
“I don’t understand your ire, Gentlewoman. I told you you could refuse anything you did not like. I asked you if you wanted to learn faster. You said you did.” He smirked. He most certainly did understand my ire; I could tell by his expression.
“No,” I said again, my head throbbing with inner turmoil.
“Do not be so bitter over it, Gentlewoman. I told you, the stones said you were here to learn. This is what you have done.”
“It was a painful way to learn words—”
“No, Gentlewoman. It was the softest way I have ever seen anyone learn a great and terrifying thing.”
“Words are not great and terrifying—”
“That is not what I am speaking of, Gentlewoman. You have learned something it takes a lifetime to master. It will be most useful when you read for me.”
I frowned at him. He looked so smug, I felt sick.
“You, my dear, have learned to say ‘no’ to a king.”