Chapter 30
Thirty
As punishment for sharing my secret, I ignored Dania for ten days.
She grew bored of that quickly and placed herself right in front of my face with raised brows and a high-horse expression and refused to move from my gaze.
Wherever I went, there she was, staring at me, making it impossible for me to avoid seeing her.
“I know you’re Norsen now. I could hit you.”
The hall around us was full of lounging Norsern, six of whom were casting for me at King Arik’s request. Dania’s boys were near—Layf screeching with glee as Hald blew on blades of grass to make the most irritating, shrill whistle.
My child will be quieter, I kept thinking. So much quieter.
But in the end, I didn’t choose to forgive Dania. She didn’t force me to either. The tide of her life shifted, and I got to see a side of her she took great care to keep hidden.
The door to the hall crashed open, and the tattooed Norsen who’d arrived said, “Dania? Fell?”
I frowned, confused as to why their names would be said together.
Fell—who was scraping the back of Speartooth’s neck with a skin comb (an incredibly difficult thing to explain if you don’t understand the Norsern sense of magic)—leaned forward to show he was listening to the newcomer.
“The Tornado is on the horizon.”
Dania’s back straightened so fast she didn’t look at all like herself.
In a single heartbeat, she was standing. “Layf, come. Hald!”
“I have him,” Fell said, scooping the four-year-old up.
Hald said, “The Tornado?” and the pair of them—Dania and Fell, each carrying a child—ran out of the hall. No goodbyes. Not even a look.
Reedman knocked on the table next to me.
He’d been a little cold since news of my state travelled through the palace, but he did me a great service that day despite his bruised heart.
He said, “Go with her. She might need a friend.” And by the seriousness of his tone—so rare for the Norsern—I knew Dania was at risk of harm.
I chased after her, and thankfully, I could make out their forms at the end of the next corridor, so I knew which way they turned.
They raced through the hall with the skeletons of prized fish hanging from the ceiling like a still-swimming fleet.
Through the room where extra carpets were stored all rolled up because people were fond of gifting carpets to King Arik, and he had more of them than he had floor.
Through a cluster of Norsern crouched on the ground playing some sort of wager game with shiny stones and tarnished copper coins.
And then out the side of the palace I had gone on the the eclipse.
The side that faced the trading docks and the bustle of Aalt.
Smoke spirals wove from every third or fourth greying-wood building. Goats made their noises. The chatter of hundreds of people rolled into a single sound. The smell of all those people and fires mixed with the smell of the sea: seaweed and seagull skat and salt.
I ran my hardest, which was something I wasn’t accustomed to.
Indeed, it made me feel like I had to burp acid (another wonderful part of being vaneurigk).
But I feared losing sight of them because I doubted I’d be able to find them again.
Friendship was a new thing to me and, as angry as I’d been at Dania only moments ago, I wanted to do it right.
I made social errors all the time in the North.
Let this not be one of the times I get it wrong, I thought as I ran, the docks creaking beneath me, shifting a little to one side or the other.
As it turned out, Dania didn’t need a friend that day.
Forty or so rowers were clamouring down the sides of The Tornado. Some were too impatient to wait for access to the crowded docks and they marched to shore via the sea, taking the exaggerated steps that come from the weight of water, their trousers black from the dampness.
Dania found the one she was looking for, or perhaps he found her.
A broad man with an unbelievably thick neck and hands the size of pumpkins dropped everything he was carrying onto the dock the moment he saw her.
She set Layf down because the boy was miserable and kicking in fury.
The man placed his hands on each side of Dania’s face as they looked at each other, and the wind whipped their hair and clothing.
I didn’t need to be told. This was Eggun, the man she’d been missing since before I’d met her. He was older than I expected, but just as handsome as she’d said. It was the most delicate I’d seen Dania look—she seemed to be seafoam, ready to break into countless scattered bubbles.
They pressed their foreheads together as Hald ran up to his father and tried to squish himself between them. They didn’t make room for the child, but Eggun dropped a hand to his side, running his thick fingers across Hald’s shaved scalp.
Fell had stayed back apart from them, and I stopped next to him, my heart still thundering from the run and aching a little from the sweetness of the sight. I didn’t want to interrupt the reunion either.
Hald had no such qualms. He managed to break apart his parents’ embrace on his third try and was promptly scooped up by his father, looking so tiny in those giant arms.
Eggun growled, “Who is this giant boy? Where is my Hald? Have you eaten him? Must I cut open your belly to get him back?”
“It is me! It is me!” Hald shouted. “Papa, I am Hald!”
The man started crying which was still a new thing for me.
Men’s emotions—something I have always been terrible at dealing with. There is a part of me that is surprised each time they come out. As if men are things of wood and stone, rather than blood and pain and love like the rest of us.
Layf began to cry, too, but his tears were not sweet.
He was frightened by the giant his brother kept calling Papa.
He hid first behind Dania, trying to pull her away from the man, but she was entranced.
He then came to me, which surprised me as I was typically not sought by children for any form of comfort.
There was a flicker of deep enjoyment—being sought, being perceived as strong or capable—but then his cries became more distraught and I pitied him.
“This is your father,” I said, crouching.
“Yes, he is big and scary, but Norsern like that, do they not?” This was a terrible thing to say.
I told you before, I knew nothing of children.
But it didn’t much matter. Layf was soothed by my being close to him.
I could hear Dania and Eggun discussing the day. He would go to his mother’s home first, or they would never stop hearing about it. Then he would come home and bathe.
“Please,” Dania said, her voice tinged with tears.
“And then we will see what happens.” Eggun’s voice was deep, almost a growl.
“I will mind the children,” Fell chimed in. “But please remember, healers recommend at least five years between each child to allow for proper recovery of a mother—”
Dania and Eggun spoke at the same time.
Dania rolled her eyes. “They also recommend having your first child after at least thirty-five winters of life—”
“Shut up you thirsty bastard.”
After hearing that, I half expected a fight, but it didn’t come. Both men grinned, and then Fell got his hug from the giant and from several others recently disembarked, their grumbly chatter tangling together.
A short, thin man shouted at the lot of them. “Still unloading to be done! And you—” he pointed at Fell. “You done resting in that soft palace of yours?”
Fell laughed. “I have been done for years now.”
“Right then. Get to work.”
Despite the man’s gruffness, he leaned into Fell, setting his hands on the back of Fell’s neck. “I will speak to the king. We did well this season, better than he asked. I will request to have you back.”
Fell wrapped his arms around the man and started saying something only I couldn’t hear because Eggun began to shout. “No! Say it is not so! Fell has a soten of his own? Bahaha!”
Nine or ten other voices leapt into the din, and Fell turned back to the group. “She is Norsern now, but she still sometimes listens to me, and she can unleash the power of Hyrold, so you must not annoy me, or I will have her cast curses on you.”
“He will not ask her to do anything,” Dania said. “She was the most high-horse soten you have ever heard of.”
I glared at her but half-heartedly. Dania was so beautifully overjoyed, I was worried anything extra would push her into tears. She was strong enough to deal with that, perhaps, but I wasn’t. Dania was a cornerstone to me.
“Look, she glares. Do you think she knows web-casting? Like a spider?”
“She does seem vaguely dangerous.”
“Where did you meet her?”
“She can hear you,” Fell said.
“Does she answer you with nose-whistle words?”
Fell was looking at me, both of us knowing that they weren’t aware I could understand them.
To share a secret with him, even one so inconsequential, was magic to me.
He wasn’t one to smile wryly often, but he did then.
I still remember that moment so very clearly.
His lazy stance, one arm left around the man who’d embraced him, the corners of his mouth turned, the bob in his throat moving as he held in his laughter.
Was I sinking? Floating? Drowning? Colliding? Yes. Yes. Yes. There was a grumpy child tugging on my skirt and a gaggle of rowers jesting at my expense, and my best friend was on the verge of tears, but Fell was standing before me, and I was overcome with knowing. Rightness. Sameness. Realness.
“Should I say something scary to them?” I said in Norsern, unable to let whatever was in the wind between us build.
“Ouuu.”
“She speaks!”
“Fell you thirsty bastard!”
“Did I not say to unload? We are on land, but I am still your captain until she is fully docked!” The man kicked at the crew, and they scattered back to their ship.
“Would you like to come aboard?” Fell said. “A Norsern ship is a great art. The Tornado, especially.”