Chapter 23 #3
“Cast again. Fresh. Ask about my life as a whole.”
I started to shake my head, but caught myself. “I have never tried a big song like that…”
“On the new moon, I have been casting for you, Gentlewoman. I cast that I can lend some of my daring to you. You have my protection here in the court, yet you do not fully use it. Try things, ask questions, seek what you desire… I know when you return home, you will not have as many choices as you do here. Your movements alone will be restricted…”
There was a twinge in my heart when he said that. A twinge that agreed with him, but also a twinge that felt… supported by him. Encouraged. Loved even. How low my standards were for love.
I gathered up the stones on the table, dropped them back into the bag, shook it, and then scooped out a small handful, letting them fall on the dais wherever they willed, thinking King Arik’s life. His entire life.
I let out a long breath as I studied the outcome, and then I laughed. “It makes no sense.”
“Maybe not to you, but maybe to me it will. Read.”
The stones were gathered in bundles—five separate clusters.
“Your life is really five lives. There was the first life… that one was over when you became king. A new life began shortly after that… something happened… something you didn’t expect.
This is the life you are in now, your second life as king.
It will be your second favourite of your lives…
” I looked up, feeling entirely confused, but when I saw his face… he was stilled by emotion.
“I know the meaning of this,” he said.
“This life will end soon. You will lose something, but part of it is a… how do you say… A trick! You will be looking for the wrong thing.” My eyes darted back up to him. Had I just implied to a king he was to make a mistake? I had.
His brow furrowed. “Continue.”
“Your fourth life—the searching one—lasts… I don’t know how long it lasts, but it ends when you find what you seek.
Not what was actually lost, but what you were searching for.
This will be your least favourite life. The fifth life is one of the shortest; here you will know what was truly gone, and there will be regret, but also…
I do not know if Norsern has a word for this…
how do you say when you repair something?
Not a building or a piece of furniture, but when you have done wrong to a person and find a way to repair it? ”
“I know your meaning,” King Arik said. “Some say medicine, but some say repair in the same way they speak of repairing ships.”
“There will be a way for you to have this.”
“And my death?”
The song I imagined contained that, too, only it seemed frightful to speak to anyone—let alone a king—about their own death.
“Tell me.”
“It will be small in the ways you wanted it to be big. But it will be grand in a way you had not thought to want. You will be pleased with it.” I’d saved the sweetest part for the end. “The last life will be your favourite.”
He was quiet for a long time, so long I worried I had offended him or insulted him by making up a story he knew to be false.
“Do you see any children?” he said.
I shook my head. “But I had not been asking—”
“Do you see children for Fell?”
“Uhh… he is not… Fell is not in the reading.”
Again, he was still, staring at the stones on the dais. But after many moments, a chuckle bubbled up from the back of his throat. A quiet hum that grew louder until he was laughing with his whole body, until he ran out of air and wheezed.
“The best and worst still ahead? I like this. I like you, Gentlewoman.” His laughter went on and on, making him seem almost deranged. “Jorn was right about you. You have a talent for this.”
My chest warmed. No one had ever called me talented, but the king had now done it twice.
“You may go. Enjoy your afternoon. I must now have a three-hour argument about trade route maps, which I expect you will find rather dull.”
I gathered up the stones and wandered through the palace, my mood transforming and then transforming again far too quickly for me to make sense of it.
I wanted to play the lyre, but before I got to it, I wanted to check on the gold, but before I got to it, I wanted to look at the teeth of the sea creatures in King Arik’s sea animal library.
I wanted to oil my hair. I wanted to happen upon Fell.
I wanted to go home now before I grew too used to free movement.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to climb out of my tingling skin.
I wanted to set my hands in cold water. I have come to learn that this scatteredness is common among readers, post-reading.
But in this instance, I think I was also confused about my life, what I wanted for it and why.
I gave up attempting to fill my time as the blueish glow of late afternoon painted the corridors and I found my way to the feasting hall, because it had been long enough since I’d seen Fell, hadn’t it?
Long enough to dispel any suspicion. I found him in the crowd instantly; he was lounging beside King Arik, the two of them sitting on the edge of the dais, rather than at a table, likely to give Fell the space needed to stretch out.
He was almost resting his head on the king’s stomach.
He noticed me immediately too, and it felt like the sting of nettle coursing through my veins.
I’d wanted to see him all day, but now that I had, I was drowning, and I was tempted to walk straight out of the hall.
Instead, I determined to find the first person I knew who wasn’t sitting near Fell.
As I walked, I was thoughtless; there was only the possibility of him watching me or the possibility of him not watching me. Both were agonizing.
I sat beside Jorn against the wall; there were large open windows on either side of where he sat, sending forth a chilly breeze.
He was hiding from the wind, and it made sense for me, as a foreigner as well, to sit with him, tucked away from the absurdly cold air that no one else seemed to be reacting to.
Not that anyone was judging where I was sitting, I was simply unstable in my mind around Fell, so I imagined they might be.
“Good evening,” I said, taking a seat and feeling soothed.
He is so calm, I thought. It’s good I have sat with him. I must remember this.
“Good evening, Mira.”
“How… was reading for Flojer’s crew?” I said as I reached across the table for the grossest-looking sea creature you could imagine.
It was apparently edible, but I’d never wanted to touch it until I was trying to busy my hands because Fell might be watching me and I ought to look like a person. People did things like reach for food.
Jorn moved the dip everyone put the sea creatures in closer to me with the hint of a smirk. “Cold, but fine enough. They suspected me of tossing one net, so none asked their true questions which… in a way, revealed more than their true questions would have.”
“Tossing one net?”
“Catching many fish with one throw… doing Arik’s bidding, trying to appease them.”
With a plate of dead, curling, tentacles before me and no desire to eat them at all, I set my hands in my lap. “Of course you were doing the king’s bidding. He sent you.”
He nodded. “A simple truth.”
It has been long enough, surely. My eyes flicked up to Fell at the head of the hall. He was laughing at something the king was saying, but quickly—almost as if he sensed my gaze—he was looking at me as well. I looked away, feeling as though I’d been caught in the middle of a heinous crime.
“Do you find it comfortable to sit in silence?” I said to Jorn, who wasn’t making any attempt at conversation with me, despite us sitting together, away from everyone else.
“I would not describe the hall as silent.” He took a sip of mead, the cup obscuring his face but leaving his raised brows visible. “But I understand. I understand. I am not speaking because I am wondering how to word—”
Someone threw something clear across the hall, giving my eyes permission to look toward the dais again. King Arik was the one laughing now, so hard his face had gone red. I couldn’t help but catch some of the joy and chuckle a little.
“The Norsern are wearing off on you,” Jorn said. “Soon you will be laughing as loud as they do.”
I hadn’t noticed I was stifling my laughter, and there was something a touch sad in the realization that I was, through habit alone, attempting to hide my enjoyment.
I displayed another Norsern behaviour. It was common to laugh at something and then explain why you were laughing. Indeed, this was the most common way of striking up a conversation with new people. “Their friendship is a pleasant thing to see,” I said.
Jorn had just been about to take another sip of mead, but he halted with the goblet hovering in front of his face. “For now.”
I looked at him, my brows furrowing in interest. “Do not be cryptic with me,” I said. Cryptic—rünnar—had become one of my favourite words recently. Apparently, it was an uncommon word, but I found reason to use it all the time. I liked the way it felt in my mouth.
Jorn smiled wryly. “They love each other, yes, but the truth within each of them is too different. If they spend a long time together, they will find their way to old disagreements. They will argue and part ways again, and Arik’s heart will be broken as he waits for enough time to pass for them to be friends once more. ”
I glanced back at Fell and the king, their heads close together as they talked, one of them laughing at all times. “What could they disagree about?”
“There are many layers to it, but at the pit, Arik does not believe when Fell says he does not want to be king. He thinks all people want this. You. Me. Dania. Both her children, even the one who is so young he cannot truly speak yet.”
As soon as I heard the words, I knew them to be true. I’d seen something similar in my reading for the king that morning. He was so ambitious he likely couldn’t conceive of less ambition.
“But when one thing is the truth, its opposite is usually true as well,” Jorn said. “Arik wishes Fell desired to be king, but deep down, he knows Fell does not. He knows that when he grows older and weaker, he will be killed, and his crown and country will go to someone not of his choosing.”
I narrowed my eyes, feeling as though Jorn were being purposefully cryptic to punish me for overusing the word. “These things cannot both be true at the same time.”
Jorn laughed. “And also, that is the truth.”
“Hmm,” I said, playing at suspicion. “Am I sensing a truth worshipper behind those words?” I’d been jesting, but it turned out I’d also been reading.
“It is the only god that makes sense, do you not think?” Jorn tilted his head to the side. “But since we are speaking of truth… You have been told to be careful, yes?”
“Yes,” I laughed. “My entire life.”
“But here, in the palace… I can tell you are clever. You know you must step carefully, yes?”
My jaw tightened slightly because there was no jest in his words. All the lightness had seeped away.
“Arik will ask you to read for him soon.”
He already has, I thought.
“You may want to avoid speaking of yourself when you do it.”
My heart slowed. I hadn’t mentioned myself, but King Arik had…
“I know young, beautiful people don’t like listening to old, ugly ones, but I have been the king’s soothsayer for years. Many have tried to stand in my place. None prevailed. I know a little of what I am speaking.”
I wanted to tell Jorn he wasn’t ugly, nor was he that old, but more so, I was bothered by his hypocrisy. “You have read for him and mentioned me,” I said coolly.
“Only some,” Jorn said. “I told him of the great performances you will give. I told him of the respect you will have, of those who will think poorly of you, of the ways you will be trapped… but like a river, you will weave around the things that try to hold you in one place for too long.”
“That sounds like a lot,” I said.
He laughed. “It is only the surface I tell him.”
My eyes flicked back to Fell, still laughing with the king. “What if I want to stay in one place?”
“You will not want this.”
My eyes threatened to tear, which surprised me—I hadn’t thought our conversation was diving into the depths. “I am afraid I have already begun to want it.”
“Something will happen to make you change your mind.”
“What?”
“I do not know such specifics. You did not finish your reading, remember? But I saw that you will go many places. I think you will see your home again.”
A vital question rose within my mind, coming out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Is it you who will disappoint King Arik?”
“No,” Jorn said, his voice quieting. “But again, I think you are clever. I have foreseen this, too. This is exactly what I have been wondering about myself.”
“He seems a hard man to hurt,” I said. I’d seen him in so much pain in the stones.
“In some ways, yes,” Jorn said. “But if one knows where the wounds are, anyone is easy to hurt.”
It was a dark comment, but brilliant. I was suddenly deeply interested in our conversation. I could feel my mind stretching as King Arik often said.
“For instance,” Jorn continued, perhaps sensing my engagement.
“Hallbjern—a man who cares nothing for arguments, who thinks only of finding an equal to spar with, who devotes his entire life to the strategy of wrestling—having this man come to your aid when he comes to no one’s aid for free…
this is the sort of thing that might itch at Arik’s scabs.
Becoming too close with those closest to him… this might… agitate.”
My heart skipped. “You think it is me who will disappoint him?”
“No,” Jorn said. “But I caution you from appearing to be so. He is always looking for the next strike coming his way, for the next lie told to his face. He cannot be out-clevered. Again and again, the stars tell me. The stones tell me. When I read cards—which I do not do much anymore—they tell me. Arik is among the wisest of men. He seeks the truths avoided by others.”
I agreed with Jorn then, and I agree with him now. King Arik was one of the wisest people I’d ever met.
Likely not a perspective you were expecting.
You probably know him by his name in the annals: Arik the Foolish.
I’ve told you already, the annals get many things wrong. Arik was anything but foolish.