Chapter 46
Forty-Six
When we reached the sea’s edge, the king was having an energetic conversation with a tall man with frizzy, white hair, freckles, and decidedly worn clothing. An amused crowd was gathered around them, their expressions making it clear there was some kind of disagreement ongoing.
“I am not taking them,” the man was saying as we arrived, his arms crossed, his face cheerful.
“Do not be foolish,” Arik said. “Of course you are.”
The man raised his brows.
Arik straightened his back. “Ragan…”
“No.”
“I need them.”
“I am not saying do not take them. I am saying they are not coming on my ship.”
“And why not?”
“Because I have a crew to cast for and if they have been kept awake all night by a crying baby, they will be worse at… well… everything.”
It was at this point that I realized they might be talking about me and those I travelled with.
Arik sighed. “You are not serious.”
Ragan smirked. “You know me better than that.”
Fell was the only person I’d seen truly refuse the king without fear until Ragan. But unlike when Fell had done it, Arik didn’t seem ready to burst into rage-filled flame. He was still and quiet, accepting, but at the same time, his mind was visibly humming. He opened his mouth.
“There is nothing you can offer me,” Ragan said. “To put my crew at such a risk.”
“Not even—”
“On land you are my king, but at sea, I am your captain. I will have no questioning this.”
“It is a short journey,” Arik protested.
“It will drive the crew mad, and they will be dull when they should be sharp, and I will have to explain to their mothers that I did not bring them all home again because a baby had kept them awake the evening before they were to raid.”
Arik was almost pouting like a child. “I have not said we are raiding, and he is relatively quiet for a baby—”
This was a complete lie. I knew it and, if everyone else didn’t, they soon figured it out because Halvar began crying at that very moment.
Arik’s captain pressed his lips together firmly with his brows raised as Halvar made his point for him.
The king glared at me as if I had any say in how loudly Halvar wailed. I was bouncing him as he liked, but that day he didn’t like it enough it seemed. And honestly, I was rather hoping Arik would simply sigh and say, “Fine!” and leave without us. Instead, he said, “Hemring—you will take them.”
A man with skin as dark as night and hair white as the moon, laughed one short burst and then said. “Absolutely not. Not just one recently sotern,” he pointed at me and then Rowan, “But two? You are trying to sink my ship.”
“How can he tell?” Rowan said, frowning.
“Oh, do not think on it,” Fara said, laughing aefl, the way Norsern did when they were protecting someone they love from a truth that person wouldn’t like.
“Truly, I would like to know—”
Several Norsern laughed.
“Valya?” Arik’s eyes darted through the crowd for the woman I only vaguely remembered from my fever all those moons ago.
“Sorry, Arik. We are full up.”
“You are not.”
“We are. We have taken three first-timers. I cannot have anyone else who needs close watching.”
Halvar screeched as the summer sun beat down on the docks. This was the longest I had left him out in direct sun, and I was worried he was too hot. He felt sticky.
Many in the crowd were laughing at the obvious outcome of the debate. But from among the rumble came a voice. “You are some of the strongest raiders from across the Land of the Northernmost Star, yet you fear the cry of a babe!”
Heads turned.
I remembered the voice but couldn’t place it for a moment, not until the crowd parted for the red-haired man with gleaming yellow-green eyes. “I will take them, Arik. I have room for a few more.”
“Flojer!” Arik tossed his hands up into the air. “You beautiful, thirsty bastard!” He rushed forward and took Flojer’s face in both his hands and kissed him. “You never fail to amaze me.”
“I will remind you of that next time you are annoyed with me.”
“You will have your pick of raiding spots when the next raid occurs. I swear it before all my raiders, the crew I row with, my own captain, and the many other captains here. Flojer Cairnminded is a true Norser, a true captain, a true friend to the king!”
Flojer scrunched his nose. “I am servant to Hyrold. Nothing more or less.”
“And Hyrold wants my will done?” Arik grinned playfully.
Flojer nodded. “He appreciates grand thinking.”
Though I had only experienced a few moments with Hyrold, I felt certain Flojer’s words were perfectly true.
They described a quality to the voice I had felt but hadn’t been able to name.
Hyrold did love grand thinking, grand acting…
even grand wishing. And the statement left me certain that Flojer had encountered Hyrold before in the way that I had.
Not just paying close attention to the wind as other Norsern did—but he’d heard Hyrold’s voice or felt it or something of the sort. That made us somewhat the same.
Captain Flojer glanced over at me then. His eyes widened playfully, and his smile grew more mischievous. “On board then with the lot of you. I will not be the last ship to leave port.”
Everyone was quick to obey—Rowan, Fara, and Fell. This was the way of seafaring in the north—a captain’s breath was law—but I didn’t know that then. Before I could also obey, Arik reached his hands out to me.
“I will hold Halvar a moment more. Before we part for the journey—”
“You are not coming with us?’
“No,” said Arik, looking a little offended that I’d even asked. “No, it is not a good omen to switch ships. Most Norsern will row on only one their whole lives. Someone will take it as a sign that my reign is coming to an end. Someone will interpret it as an invitation to try for my crown.”
Halvar stopped fussing the moment he was in Arik’s arms as Arik’s face lit up with the warmth of every brazier in Aalt.
“But Fell is switching ships, no?”
Arik paid me no heed. His entire mind was with Halvar.
“We are parting for just a short journey,” Arik explained to the child.
“I know you will miss me, but I am a busy man, I have many duties to attend to. You will be with your mother and father and a very skilled captain, and if you look just across the water a little ways, you will see the ship I am on. I will cast for you from there…”
It was as if our previous argument had not happened at all. Was it truly out of the king’s mind or was he simply good at hiding it? Regardless, his frustrations with me did not extend to Halvar. He walked away from me, Halvar nuzzled into the crook of his arm as he rambled to the babe.
Quickly, those who’d stopped to witness the king’s debate with his captain found their way to ship or task.
Jorn set a hand on my shoulder, and I turned to see his steady, sorrowful face.
“I have wished to tell you… Every time we have spoken, I have wished to say that sometimes a cage feels impossible to escape, but often this is a trick of the mind. There is always a path if one is looking. If one is listening.”
I had no idea how to respond to that. Eventually, I said, “You must not say so many cryptic things if you wish me not to use the word cryptic.”
He laughed softly, but his hands were moving too much for me to believe he was truly enjoying himself.
“I know…” I looked to where Arik had wandered off with Halvar, wanting to know the king couldn’t hear us over the din of the busy docks.
“I know you have done me more…” What was I trying to say, and how did it work in Norsern?
“I know you have done more for me than I am aware of.” I couldn’t forget how highly the stones thought of Jorn. Protector.
The man’s black eyes hardened, leaving me wondering if I had offended him or chosen my words poorly.
“Jorn! Up to your usual tricks, I see!” Flojer took one long stride and was beside us.
Immediately, Jorn’s demeanour shifted. He smirked. “You know me well, but not so well as you think, Kaker.”
Flojer grinned, his eyes darting to me. “It is not custom to keep a captain waiting.”
I pointed at Arik, who had taken Halvar to the dock’s edge and was exclaiming something about the sea to him. “I cannot leave until the king gives me back my baby.”
Flojer snorted. “A fair argument if I have ever heard one. How many moons is he?”
“Uhh, four or…” I was truly terrible at expressing numerical values in my second language.
“Nearly five moons,” Jorn completed for me.
Flojer’s eyes settled on me. Clear and cutting. “You are not recovered from the birth then?”
I wasn’t. I honestly felt I never would be. But I had no idea how he knew that.
The captain’s face grew stern. “I have an excellent healer on board. It is almost as if he can see into the body without making a cut. Do you have everything you need for a voyage with a child?”
I huffed. “I think so… I mean, apart from having any sense of how long we will be gone or where we are really going…”
“No one has that, though,” Flojer said. “Not truly.”
“Ah,” said Jorn. “I enjoy your mind. Why do we not spend more of our time together?”
“Because neither of us likes to think we are competitive,” said Flojer. “And if we kept company too long, we would become caught up in out-perceiving the other. We would be unable to avoid the truth of ourselves.”
Jorn laughed and then grew somber once more. “Take care of this one.” He nodded to me.
It embarrassed me to have someone express fondness for me so openly. I told you. Men’s feelings have always been a difficulty of mine.
“I will,” said Flojer. His eyes were on Halvar and King Arik. Fell was approaching them, the smoking, roiling city alive behind them as Fell’s face erupted into the grin that only Halvar earned from him.
I couldn’t make out Fell’s words over the chaos of twenty ships preparing to leave, but I knew by his gestures and expression he was speaking to Halvar, saying something sweet like, “Hello again! Yes, I have seen the ship. It is all ready for you. You will like it, I think. There is a drummer. I know you like drummers…” Before he took Halvar from the king’s arms, Fell leaned on Arik’s shoulder, and Arik, in turn, set his head against Fell’s.
They stood there, embracing until Arik murmured something, and Fell burst into laughter.
Arik cupped a hand to the back of Fell’s head lovingly, before pushing him away.
Fell took Halvar in his arms and started down the dock, Flojer and I following. I glanced back at Jorn—Hehemdi—and found him watching me, looking just as sad as when I’d first laid eyes on him.
Though the day was hot, my skin grew cold as we reached The Fearsome Beast, a large rowing vessel, big enough to carry forty raiders and their spoils and supplies.
She had two square sails, one much larger than the other, with a small box-room between them rising from the deck. Oil-sleek oars glinted at her sides.
“You are uneasy?” Flojer said.
I was, but it took me several moments to understand the sensation. “I have only been on a ship a few times before,” I said. “The first time when I was taken captive—it was in error, but unnerving all the same—and most recently, when I was opening the door for Halvar.”
Flojer’s eyes shone with warmth. “Ha. I wager this journey will be more pleasant.”
I took a deep breath in through my nose as Fara had taught me, but it wasn’t until Flojer looked at me and nodded—one sharp, encouraging motion filled with half a dozen unspoken promises—that I found my courage and stepped onto the ramp leading to the ship’s gleaming deck.