Chapter Seven
“How big was he?”
The carriage wheel drops into a rut.
I grab the strap beside the window. Asta keeps her cup level through the entire jolt, because the road respects her and has been trying to kill me since sunrise.
She takes another drink.
“Asta.”
“You said you’d tell me everything.”
“I’ve told you everything.”
“You told me about the buttons.”
“There were twenty-three.”
“The number of buttons wasn’t my question.”
I pull the purple cloak tighter around my legs. The fleece lining is warm. The bench beneath me isn’t. Asta put the thickest cushion on my side before we left Sólvik and hasn’t mentioned it once.
That is friendship.
It is also evidence.
I lower my voice. “He’s riding right there.”
Baldr’s horse moves beside the carriage, close enough that his boot appears each time the curtain lifts. The boot is large too, though this information won’t satisfy Asta.
“The wheels are loud,” she says.
“They become quiet whenever I say anything embarrassing.”
“You say embarrassing things continuously. They’d never get anywhere.”
I look at the strap in my hand. “Excessive.”
Asta waits.
“That is my answer.”
“Excessive is not a size.”
“It is a complete assessment.”
“How much did it hurt?”
Her voice changes on that one. The teasing stays in her face, but her fingers stop around the cup.
“Not much.” I shift on the cushion. “A little now.”
Her eyes drop.
“Do not look at how I’m sitting.”
“I’m looking at the cushion.”
“You’re pleased with the cushion.”
“I packed it.”
“You packed six cushions.”
“Because I know you.”
The curtain lifts. Baldr bends toward the open window, one hand loose on the reins. His hair is tied at the nape of his neck for the road, and the morning sun reaches the amber eye first.
“Do either of you need anything?”
“No,” I say.
“A number,” Asta says.
I kick her boot.
She doesn’t spill the cup.
Baldr looks between us. “What number?”
“The number of hours until we stop for midday,” Asta says.
“Three.” His gaze moves to me. “Are you comfortable?”
My bottom isn’t his concern after last night.
It may be partly his concern.
“Very.”
Asta takes another drink.
Baldr’s gaze drops to the cushion, then returns to my face.
Oh, no.
He knows why the cushion is there.
His mouth pulls into a grin.
I close the curtain.
Asta’s shoulders begin moving.
“Don’t.”
She sets the cup down before she loses it. “He heard you.”
“He didn’t.”
“His face heard you.”
“That sentence doesn’t make sense.”
“Neither did excessive.”
I lean across the carriage and take her cup.
She lets me drink from it before taking it back. “Did he feed from you?”
“No.”
The answer comes easily. Baldr made sure it would.
“He said he wouldn’t unless I asked, and he wouldn’t ask me last night because he wanted me to know which part was him.”
Asta’s amusement fades.
She looks at the curtain hiding him from us.
“That was good of him,” she says.
“Yes.”
“And the rest?”
I point at her. “You had your serious question.”
“I have many.”
“You get one.”
“You’ve been speaking since we passed the gate.”
“That was one very long answer.”
“With twenty-three buttons.”
“They mattered at the time.”
The curtain shifts again. Baldr doesn’t look inside.
Asta leans closer. “Was he—“
“The horses can hear you.”
“The horses do not care.”
“I care. I have to look at those horses.”
“Sól.”
“They know things now.”
That ruins her.
She folds over with both hands against her stomach, laughing without making enough sound for the riders to hear. I try to stay offended. Then the carriage bounces again, Asta tips into me, and we’re both laughing by the time Baldr’s voice comes from the saddle, asking whether the wheel’s broken.
It hasn’t.
The road spends the next three days trying.
Sólvik’s salt wind leaves us before the first night. The open cliffs become low hills, then stone slopes with old snow hiding in the cracks. By the second afternoon, dark pines crowd both sides of the road. Their branches lock above us and steal half the daylight.
Baldr rides beside the carriage whenever the track widens. He brings me warm bread at the first stop, gives me his gloves at the second, and asks about the cushion only once.
I tell him Asta packed it for the road.
He tells me he’s grateful to Asta.
I throw one of his gloves at him.
He catches it and gives it back.
The third day is colder.
Frost covers the window frame when I wake beneath two carriage blankets. Snow lies deep under the trees, untouched except for the marks of small paws and one wide trail where a branch fell.
Asta scrapes a clear circle in the frost with her thumbnail. “Baldr said we’ll reach Myrkvier before dark.”
“Good.”
My toes haven’t been warm since yesterday morning. My nose feels separate from the rest of my face. The purple cloak is pulled over my dress, my coat, and half of one blanket.
Gullither snow arrives to be admired.
This snow has plans.
The carriage slows.
Outside, one of the guards calls to Baldr. Hooves strike hard ground. The wagon behind us creaks to a stop.
I push the curtain aside.
Baldr is already off his horse.
He stands in the middle of the road with one hand raised toward our driver. The warmth I know is gone from his face.
“Stay inside.”
Four guards move past him. One draws a sword. Another takes a short spear from beside his saddle.
Asta catches the curtain before I can open it farther. “He said inside.”
“I heard him.”
“Your hand is on the door.”
I look down.
It is.
“I’m only looking.”
“You can look from here.”
The carriage stands at a bend between the pines. Something has torn through the brush ahead and left a black wagon on its side across the ditch. One wheel has split down the middle. The other keeps turning, slow enough that each spoke can be counted.
A Skorvaer lies beside it, eyes open and grey against a face streaked with frozen mud.
His throat has two deep holes beneath the jaw. There’s another body near the trees and a third folded against the broken wheel. None wears a house color or a Dróttin’s mark.
One guard turns the body beside the road with his boot.
“Rogues,” he says.
Baldr crouches beside a dark shape near the wagon.
At first I think it’s a piece of fur thrown from the driver’s bench. Then I see the tail.
It’s long and thick, with a knob of pale bone at the end. Spikes circle the bone. Four curved horns lie against the road, two broken near their tips. The animal’s fur is deep blue along its back and brightens to blue-green at its belly. Blood has dried through most of it.
The body is no bigger than the hall cat.
The broken wagon says size didn’t matter.
Asta moves closer to the window. “What is that?”
Baldr hears her.
He turns so quickly that both guards nearest him raise their weapons.
“Close the curtain.”
“Baldr—”
“Now, Sól.”
His voice is tight enough that Asta’s hand stops on the curtain.
One guard says it anyway.
“Sanguir.”
Every story I heard as a child had them larger. Monsters generally grow in the telling. Their horns split mountains. Their claws opened armor. They lived in the black center of Nástrond and dropped from trees onto Skorvaer throats.
Nobody mentioned round ears.
Baldr stands over the dead animal. He doesn’t touch it.
The driver shifts on his bench. “Road is clear on the left.”
“Take it slowly,” Baldr says. “Keep the horses away from the bodies.”
Asta pulls the curtain toward its hook.
Something white moves beneath the dead Sanguir’s tail.
“Stop!”
The carriage isn’t moving.
I yell it again anyway.
Baldr looks at me.
“There.”
I point through the window. A scrap of white fur disappears behind the blue body.
“There’s something under it.”
Baldr’s head turns.
I open the door.
Asta’s hand closes around my arm. “Absolutely not.”
“There’s a baby.”
“There’s a Sanguir.”
“A baby Sanguir.”
“That didn’t improve it.”
I pull once. She holds on.
Outside, a guard prods the dead animal with the end of his spear. White fur moves again.
A tiny paw reaches out.
“Asta.”
She looks at the paw.
Her fingers tighten once around my sleeve.
Then she lets go and reaches for the folded blanket behind us. “I’m coming with you.”
I’m out of the carriage before she finishes.
My boots hit the frozen road. The left one slides. I catch the door frame, keep both feet, and run toward the wreck.
“Sól.”
Baldr reaches me before I reach the body. His hands close around my waist and lift me off the ground.
“Put me down.”
“No.”
“There’s a baby under her.”
“I saw it.”
“Then put me down closer.”
He holds me against his side. “You are not touching it.”
The little paw appears again. Its claws catch the dead animal’s fur and pull.
It can’t get out.
I stop fighting Baldr.
“Please.”
The little paw catches the blue fur again and slips.
Baldr swears under his breath.
His arms loosen.
“Behind me,” he says.
“I need to reach it.”
“You will. Behind me.”
He sets me down.
The dead Sanguir lies partly beneath the wagon’s broken shaft. A strip of vein-silver glints between the splintered wood and its rear leg. The metal has been woven into loops finer than the lace on my best shift. One torn end curls across the road. The rest disappears beneath the wheel.
Baldr catches the wagon shaft and lifts it.
Wood groans.
The body rolls when the weight comes off it. I drop to my knees and push at the blue fur with both hands. It’s cold and stiff. Asta kneels on my other side, still holding the blanket.
Together we move it far enough.
The baby is curled beneath its belly.
White fur. White eyes. Two little straight horns. Its tail is wrapped around its body, ending in a bone club with six small spikes.
It looks at me.
I look at it.
“Hello.”
Every guard starts talking at once.
“Don’t—”
“Lady Solveih—”
“Get back—”
The baby makes a thin sound through closed teeth.
“I know.” I put one hand on the road between us. “This has been a terrible day.”
Its round ears flatten.
“You can be frightened. You can’t bite me.”
“Sól,” Baldr says.
I reach under the baby and lift.
It weighs less than the hall cat. Its body shakes against my palms. The little club-tail knocks my wrist hard enough to sting.
Baldr steps in front of me. “Put it down.”
I stare at him.
He stares back.
“No.”
His eyes brighten. “It can kill you.”
“It’s freezing.”
“It is a Sanguir.”
“It is a baby.”
“Those facts do not cancel each other.”
“Then everyone should stop pointing weapons at her.”
Nobody lowers one.
Asta stands beside me and opens the blanket. “She’s right about that.”
Baldr looks at her.
“I didn’t say she should’ve picked it up.”
“Thank you,” he says.
“I said the weapons are upsetting it.”
The baby’s lips pull back.
Tiny teeth.
Very many tiny teeth.
One white paw flies toward my face.
I catch it against my shoulder. Three talons slide from the fur and score the leather of my glove.
Baldr reaches for the baby.
“Excuse me.”
The talons stop.
I hold the paw away from my cheek. “We don’t scratch people who are helping us.”
White eyes fix on my face.
“I just pulled you out from under a dead body. My knees are wet, my left foot is freezing, and everybody is shouting. You will be nice.”
The baby goes still.
One talon disappears.
Then the next.
The last slides back into the little white paw.
She lowers her head until her horns touch my glove.
The guards stop talking.
Baldr’s hand remains halfway between us.
I rub one finger between the baby’s ears.
She presses into it.
A purr rattles through her whole body.
“See?” I say. “Nice.”
Asta wraps the blanket around both of us. “This isn’t the word I’d choose.”
The baby pushes her face beneath my chin.
Baldr looks over my shoulder at the dead rogues, the wrecked wagon, and the blue body beside our boots.
Then he looks at me.
“We can’t take a Sanguir into Myrkvier.”
“We can’t leave her here.”
“Sól.”
“No.”
The word comes out flat.
He looks at me instead of the creature beneath my chin.
I have never said no to him this way. Not at dinner. Not when he took my basket or my worries or an idea he thought I shouldn’t have to carry.
The baby purrs against my throat.
“I’m keeping her.”
Baldr rubs one hand over his mouth.
Behind him, a guard begins to speak.
Baldr raises one finger. The guard closes his mouth.
“Inside the carriage,” Baldr says. “No one else touches her. If she turns on you, you give her to me.”
“She won’t.”
“If.”
I look down at the white head beneath my chin.
“All right.”
Baldr steps aside.
That is how I get a Sanguir.
Asta climbs into the carriage after me and shuts the door. The baby sits in my lap inside the blanket, looks around once, and begins kneading my purple cloak with both front paws.
“She has spikes on both ends,” Asta says.
“The front ones went away.”
“The back ones didn’t.”
The little club-tail bumps the bench.
The wood cracks.
We both look down.
“Small crack,” I say.
Asta moves to the other bench.
Baldr appears at the window before the carriage starts. His gaze goes straight to my face, then my gloves, then the white ball in my lap.
“Still alive?”
“Very.”
The baby shows him all her teeth.
Baldr’s horse puts three more feet between itself and the carriage.
“She’s nervous,” I say.
“So is the horse.”
“He should come inside. It’s warmer.”
Baldr looks at the broken line in the bench.
“I’ll ride.”
The carriage rolls around the wreck.
I keep the curtain closed until the dead blue body is behind us.
The little Sanguir doesn’t look back. She curls into the fold of my cloak, puts her nose against my wrist, and falls asleep before the road straightens.
She wakes twice before Myrkvier.
The first time, she climbs my chest and settles across my shoulders. The second, she steals half a strip of dried meat from Asta’s hand and swallows it without chewing.
Asta gives her the other half.
“You like her,” I say.
“I prefer having all my fingers.”
The baby licks salt from her thumb.
“Of course.”
Near dusk, the pines open.
Myrkvier rises through them in dark wood, stone, smoke, and snow. Houses sit between the trunks instead of pushing them back. Paths twist around roots and disappear under white drifts. At the top of the slope, a long hall stands above the settlement with firelight in its narrow windows.
No towers.
No bright banners.
Nothing built to be admired.
The place is beautiful anyway.
The carriage stops before the hall.
Baldr opens my door and offers his hand. His other hand stays close enough to catch me, though his eyes remain on the blanket tucked beneath my cloak.
I step down.
Snow crunches beneath my boots. The air smells of pine smoke and cold iron.
The baby pushes her head through the purple wool.
One snowflake drifts from the branch above us and lands between her little horns.
She blinks at it.
“Snowpetal.”
Asta steps down behind me. “You’ve had three hours.”
“I needed the snow.”
The baby presses her face beneath my chin.
“Snowpetal,” I say again.
She purrs against my throat.