Chapter 43
Forty-Three
Rowan had seemed the perfect Norser until the moment I told him I was leaving. We were standing in the yard behind Faller’s tenement, the summery air fresh from the sea. The thousands of wind chimes in Aalt chimed their private tunes.
Rowan’s back straightened, and the Norsern accent that had slipped into his Islish disappeared. “For how long?”
I shrugged. “Fell says it will take several days to get to Byernen, and then after that, we don’t know. It could be the whole raiding season.”
Rowan’s thick brows furrowed.
It wasn’t the notion of danger that seemed to bother him, but rather our separation. Without another word to me, he ran to Faller and stuttered in Norsern, “She is… I cannot… I must, gah! Words! I need to go with her.”
“I have already listed your price for Norsernhood,” Faller said. “You have cost me… I am—”
“I know, but… you… not understand any… or…”
I understood. Rowan needed to tell himself he was aiding me.
It was the one piece of our home he couldn’t brush away from his mind.
He could have women and mead and speak of dreams, and wash his hair with enough lye that it became the colour of snow, but he couldn’t rid himself entirely of the Islish man he used to be.
His blood was from the Land of Mud and Mist. His blood was sworn to my blood.
Fara was near, because she was always near him, but rather than soothe him in his panic or verbally attack Faller as she was fond of doing, she wove her cold, tattooed fingers through my arm, pulling me to the side.
“Faller has said he will name Rowan Norser once he has been given payment. For the things Rowan has broken, from all the work Faller has missed out on watching over him. Twelve aurar. I have what equals five.”
My sense of measurements in the Land of the Northernmost Star was murky.
Silver and gold were used interchangeably, but aurar usually meant silver.
A certain weight of silver. At least one person in every gathering was able to convert between metals using their mind, but often there was confusion, because jewelry was the standard rather than pure silver or gold, which left room for debate of an item’s weight value.
Watching and saying nothing, I usually had a better sense of what something was worth than the arguing courtiers because I was a much better judge of metal weight than average, given my work in the order.
The wind tugged at the end of my skirt.
Rowan pleaded with Faller.
My bones ached for Halvar, who was back at the palace with Fell.
Fara laced her fingers into mine, looking at me. Blinking.
You must decide quickly, the stones had said to me.
I had seen a heavy bracelet traded in a wager in the palace, a drinking game wager. I’d passed it to the winner across the table. Felt its weight. Eight silver aurar meant one gold eyrir, which meant…
I didn’t think. I couldn’t allow myself to think. I took my arm back from Fara and marched to the palace. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
I turned through hall upon hall, not bothering to speak pleasant greetings to any of the people I knew.
When I reached the door I was looking for, I removed the feather I had set between the floor and the closed door, not letting my eyes focus, keeping everything slightly blurry.
Misty like my mind was. I opened the door, stepped inside, and pulled the chest away from the wall.
I pried the false back off the chest, pulling out my neatly folded goldkeeper’s gown.
“One and a half gold eyrir.” I set the narrow bars of gold into Faller’s hand. “You may weigh them if you want.”
Faller looked at what was in his calloused hand.
I don’t think it was the gold itself that shocked him.
The Land of the Northernmost Star is full of more riches than the annals make clear.
Think of Fara’s eight silver aurar. Would an unmarried woman, reading and casting and brewing herbs for commoners possibly have eight pieces of silver saved up in any other land?
The north had an obscene amount of salt, and salt meant trade options.
But even if they hadn’t. Thievery was part of their way of life.
Raiders were always taking the shiniest things from elsewhere and bringing them home, flooding cities and villages with treasure.
I think Faller was surprised by my payment because the gold was so blandly crafted. Each bar was identical, a little longer than my finger, but twice as thick. I think it seemed raw and unformed to him.
He stared at the gold in his hand for a moment longer, before he turned to Rowan. “You are Norsern now.” And then Faller added. “This means it is dishonourable to kill me while I sleep. If you wish to fight, you must do it when I am looking.”
Rowan paid the man no heed. He was looking at me. Eyes shiny. He was the only one who knew what I’d just done. I’d betrayed the order for him.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice wavering.
Thank Loric, I thought. It was his wealth I’d spent, not my own.
“I swear to feed you before myself,” Rowan said.
They were the words of a sworn sword to a grainkeeper. The words of fealty.
“To guard you before myself. To seek your ends before my own.”
He sank to his knees.
“To serve you and the gods with the whole of my heart.”
His eyes had glowed a little when he’d said gods, for I think we both knew the other was a heathen by this point, though we hadn’t spoken of it directly.
I had no sword to present him with, no armour to gift him in return. But he’d known that before uttering the oath.
There were three ballads in which a woman was given fealty by a sworn sword, but I’d never heard of it happening in real life. All the same, I knew the words to speak as I’d heard my father speak them. “Rise and serve, Sir Rowan.”
There was a daring look in his eyes as he stood. How many heresies had we committed in the last half hour? More than was common.
Rowan’s eyes moved to Fara, who lifted her arms as she approached him.
They wrapped around each other, laughing a little, setting their foreheads together as she murmured, “Happy Norsern Day.” And then they were kissing.
Rowan pulled his face away from hers to look at me.
“We will be ready to leave on the morrow. We can meet at the docks—”
“No,” Fara said. “Come first to my home. I will prepare travelling gifts for us.”
They resumed kissing, and I went back to the palace very quickly because no one could mistake the passion with which they kissed for anything other than instruction to leave the couple alone to their coupling.
King Arik will simply have to accept that I have an attendant, I thought. The gods knew he had enough of them.