Chapter Twelve
The woman from Eirik’s study runs past our door right as I’ve finished crying.
I hear her first. Quick steps on the west stairs, one caught breath, then a shoe scraping outside the guest wing.
Asta sets down the cold cup she has been trying to make me drink from. “Stay here.”
This is an excellent instruction. I stand with her anyway.
She opens the door.
The woman stops paces away.
Same grey eyes. Same dark dress, fastened properly now. Her braid has come loose along one side, and tears shine across both cheeks. One hand covers her mouth.
She looks at me.
I know she remembers the doorway.
My face gets hot all over again.
“That’s her,” I whisper.
Asta’s head turns. “From last night?”
The woman flinches.
Wonderful. We have made this so much worse.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean—”
She drops into a bow so quickly that one knee strikes the floor. “My lady.”
“No. Please don’t do that.”
She’s already on her feet. She passes us with her eyes lowered and reaches the far turn at a run.
A door shuts below.
Asta watches the empty passage.
“She asked him to feed,” I say. “And to touch her.”
“I believe you.”
“She was happy last night.”
“She isn’t now.”
No.
My own tears have stopped. This feels rude when hers haven’t.
Asta closes our door. “Baldr shouldn’t have gone downstairs.”
“I told him to go.”
“You were crying.”
“The mine clerk looked ready to climb out the window. They need him for the count.”
Asta picks up the cold cup again. “They have many clerks.”
“Only one Baldr.”
She gives me a look.
I sit on the edge of the bed. Snowpetal crawls out from under it, puts both paws on my knee, and sniffs my chin.
“I’m fine.”
She licks the wet place beside my mouth.
“Thank you. That’s disgusting.”
Her purr starts.
Asta picks up my purple cloak. “We’re going outside.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve spent an hour worrying that Eirik can feel you through the walls.”
Asta holds the cloak open. “If he intends to keep listening, he may listen to you walk.”
I put my arms through.
She fastens the clasp and pulls the hood over my hair. “Also, I’d like to see his territory before it tries to bury us.”
“The sky is clear.”
Snowpetal launches onto my shoulder. Her club-tail strikes the wardrobe with a loud crack.
We all look at the new dent.
“Outside,” Asta says.
Good idea.
Myrkvier has daylight, but the forest keeps most of it.
Black pines crowd the hall from every side. Their trunks are wider than our carriage, and the branches begin so high that I have to tip my head all the way back to find the tops. Snow rests on every limb. The ground beneath them is dark with old needles where the canopy has kept it clear.
Sólvik opens straight into sea and sky. Here, every path turns around a root, a boulder, a house, or another tree that was apparently too important to move.
Asta counts the turns.
I know because her lips move at each one.
“Are you planning our escape?”
“Our return.” She counts the next turn under her breath.
“That sounds less exciting.”
“You walked into a mop room last night.”
“It was useful. I know where the mops are.”
She steps over a root. “A vital discovery.”
Snowpetal jumps from my shoulder and lands in snow up to her ears.
The drift explodes.
She comes out white from nose to tail, shakes once, and charges at the next one.
Two Skorvaer carrying a timber beam stop to let her pass. Both have matching green eyes. One climbs onto a stump.
“She’s friendly,” I tell him.
Snowpetal attacks a buried branch.
He stays on the stump.
The settlement is larger than it looked from the carriage.
Houses and workshops sit between the trees, connected by paths that cross and divide without asking permission.
Smoke comes from low stone chimneys. A smithy rings deeper in the forest. Near a little market clearing, three children slide down a packed bank on a hide and nearly remove Asta at the knees.
She catches the smallest child by the back of his coat.
He hangs there with both boots off the ground.
“Sorry,” he says.
“You will be.”
She points him downhill.
He collects the hide and runs.
I smile at her.
“Not one word.”
“You were wonderful.”
“One word.”
Snowpetal returns with half a pine branch in her mouth.
“You can’t bring that inside.”
She drags it after us.
By the time we find Ketill, the branch has knocked over a bucket, caught between two fence posts, and collected a strip of somebody’s washing.
Ketill removes a wool stocking from it.
“Productive morning?”
“She’s learning about the settlement.”
“The settlement has concerns.”
Asta takes the stocking and turns toward the nearest houses. “Whose?”
Ketill points without checking. “Third house. Blue door.”
She goes to return it.
He watches her cross the path. “Does she always fix your damage?”
“Only the parts I can’t hide.”
“That explains the lists.”
“You saw the lists?”
“Everyone saw the lists.”
Asta comes back before I can defend emergency stockings.
Ketill has three ledgers tucked beneath one arm and a burn-darkened coat fastened to his throat. “I’m going to the scale yard. You can come, if you agree not to enter the mine.”
“Why would we enter the mine?”
He looks at me.
Asta answers for us. “We agree.”
The path drops deeper into the trees. More people join it as we walk: workers with lamps hooked to their belts, two women carrying wrapped food, a boy rolling an empty cask twice his width. Everyone greets Ketill. Nobody bows.
The mine opens beneath a black stone shelf. Heavy braces frame the entrance, and warm air rolls out carrying iron, smoke, and wet earth. I can’t see far inside. Lamps move below us, little yellow lights going down.
The scale yard sits safely aboveground.
Asta makes sure.
Four wagon beds stand beneath a long roof. Dark cloth covers rows of narrow vein-silver bars. Clerks move between scales, tally boards, and open crates while guards break old seals and carry the pieces to a brazier.
At the far end, Baldr’s replacement allotment waits in three wagons.
Three.
I stop.
“Wasn’t that one shipment?”
Ketill follows my gaze. “It’s one release.”
“But there are three wagons.”
“One release. One seal record. One pass receipt when it leaves together.”
The same problem sits in Sólvik. One full allotment, one long wait, one number at the end.
I walk closer to the nearest wagon.
Asta catches the back of my cloak before I reach the scale. “Ask.”
Right.
“May I?”
Ketill looks at the motionless scale, then at my boots. “Yes.”
I step beside it. Sixteen bars fill the first wagon. More wait under cloth on the other two.
“Why not send this one when it’s counted?”
“Because the release is recorded as a complete allotment.”
“Change the release.”
Ketill’s eyebrows rise.
I touch one finger to each wagon. “Three smaller loads. Different days. Different roads where you have them. Weigh every load here, at the pass, and in Sólvik.”
“The roads meet east of the ridge.”
The voice comes from behind me.
My shoulders jump.
Eirik stands beneath the edge of the roof.
Black coat. Black gloves. Silver mask. The purple eye finds my face and stays there.
Asta moves close enough that her sleeve touches mine.
Eirik turns to her. “If you intend to keep me from the scale, stand on the other side.”
“I intend to keep her from you.”
“That will require more height.”
“Asta,” I whisper.
She doesn’t move.
Eirik turns back to me. “The three roads become one before the eastern pass. You’ve moved the weak place. You haven’t removed it.”
I can hear his voice saying I wanted him. My face goes hot.
He waits.
He asked about the idea.
I make myself look at the wagons. “Then the loads need separate records before the roads meet.”
“Written by whom?”
“The clerk at each scale.”
“One clerk can copy a false figure three times.”
Oh.
I glance at Ketill’s ledgers. “Send two records.”
Eirik’s head tilts.
“One with the wagon,” I continue. “One another way. A rider could carry a copy ahead, or back here, and the people at the pass wouldn’t see both until after they write their own.”
“And Sólvik?”
“Sends its count to you and Baldr separately.”
“Better.”
The word catches me harder than it should.
Eirik walks to the first wagon. Nobody blocks him. The yard doesn’t stop working, though every clerk nearby becomes very interested in the number under their hand.
He looks at Ketill. “Three releases. Three scale crews. A sealed tally travels with each load. A copy returns here by a separate rider. No clerk handles the same third at two stages.”
Ketill works through it. “Six more riders. More guards.”
“Missing silver costs more.”
“The north track adds half a day.”
“Then the second load uses it. The first takes the ridge road when the recount closes.”
Ketill nods once. “I’ll write the orders.”
I stare at Eirik. “You’re using it?”
“I’ve just paid six riders. It would be wasteful not to.”
That is not an answer.
It is very much an answer.
Baldr covers my hand and tells me he has it. He means to make the problem lighter for me.
Eirik found the weakest part, made me fix it, and will send the first load when the count closes.
Breakfast still happened. Listening doesn’t erase it.
It does make him harder to arrange inside my head.
Asta studies the three wagons.
I know she’s not studying the wagons.
Ketill opens the top ledger on a standing desk. “If we’re changing the release record, we should test the columns against the last eastern run.”
A clerk brings two boards and a folded receipt.
Mine count. Upper-gate count. Pass count.
The first two agree.
The third is eight bars short.
“There,” I say.
Ketill checks the date. “This was copied before the rear wagon cleared the pass scale. The final receipt is probably in the delayed packet.”
“Clerical lag?” Asta asks.
“Usually.”
Eirik takes the folded receipt.
His purple eye moves across it once.
Then he tucks it inside his coat. “Find the final.”
Ketill closes the ledger. “I had planned to embroider it.”
“After you find it.”
The moment ends.
Clerks return to the scales. A guard carries a new stack of seals from the smithy. Ketill starts giving names to the three crews.
Nobody says theft.
I turn to find Snowpetal.
She’s not beside the scale.
She’s not under the wagon.
She’s not attacking the pine branch she abandoned near the fence.
“Snowpetal?”
Asta turns toward the path.
“She was here.”
“She was,” Ketill says.
“Where did she go?”
Movement shakes a low branch beyond the yard.
Snow drops.
Snowpetal hops out of the trees with a dead rabbit in her mouth.
Both rear legs drag between her paws. Two small holes mark its throat. She crosses the yard, places it on my boot, and sits.
Her white eyes lift to mine.
Oh.
“Did you catch this?”
Snowpetal purrs.
“All by yourself?”
Her club-tail thumps the ground.
“You clever, horrible baby.” I kneel and rub between her horns. “I love it. Thank you.”
Asta considers the rabbit. “That shouldn’t have sounded sweet.”
“She brought me a present.”
Snowpetal puts one paw on the rabbit’s head.
“You may eat your present.”
She bites through the neck.
Ketill looks away.
Eirik doesn’t.
“Your animal has table manners suited to Baldr’s court.”
I look up at him. “She likes you.”
“She left the rabbit with you.”
“She sat on your boot.”
“A threat.”
Snowpetal begins eating one ear.
Eirik looks at the trees. “She needs blood.”
My hand stops on her back. “She has blood.”
“Skorvaer blood.”
Ketill crouches beyond the reach of her tail. “Meat fills her stomach. It can’t sustain her. Sanguir feed through the horns.”
I look at the two white points beneath my hand.
“From a living person?”
“Freshly drawn is enough,” Ketill says.
Snowpetal crunches.
“She’s not biting anyone.”
“Agreed,” Eirik says.
I stand. “And nobody is being told they have to give it to her.”
His pale-green eye hardens. “No one in Myrkvier gives blood by order.”
“They need to know what it’s for.”
“They will.”
“And they can change their mind.”
“Before or during the draw.”
He turns to Ketill. “Ask the infirmary for volunteers. The healer collects it there and brings it sealed. No donor comes near the Sanguir.”
Ketill nods.
Asta folds her arms. “I want to see where it’s collected and stored.”
“Of course you do,” he says.
“Is that a problem?”
“Only for the healer.”
She goes with him.
By the next morning, Snowpetal has a shallow stone bowl, two stoppered jars, and a healer who explains the entire process before opening either one.
The blood came from volunteers. They were told it would feed a Sanguir. They could withdraw at any point. Their names stay with the infirmary.
I ask twice.
The healer answers twice.
Then she pours.
Snowpetal lowers her horns into the bowl. The red gathers against the white surface and thins. Her purr grows loud enough to shake the bowl against the floor.
When it’s empty, she sleeps for six hours.
I send my thanks to the donors without asking who they are.
That day and the next stay clear.
The first small release receives a ridge-road seal. The second waits under a fresh seal for the north track. A third crew counts Baldr’s last wagon while he watches, and the figures agree. The full reserve count still holds every gate.
Asta and I learn the path to the market without losing the hall.
Mostly.
We find a narrow footbridge, a bakery that sells hot seed cakes, and a clearing where Snowpetal can attack drifts without frightening anyone off a stump.
The woman from Eirik’s study doesn’t return.
Eirik appears at the scale yard twice. He asks Ketill for the eastern receipt both times.
It remains late.
At the end of the third clear day, Asta and I carry seed cakes back toward the hall while Snowpetal leaps between our tracks.
The first warning comes from above the trees.
One horn call.
Then two more.
Every person on the path looks north.
The sky beyond the pines has gone dark.
Wind strikes the branches hard enough to dump snow across the road. Smoke from the hall chimney flattens and tears east.
Asta catches my arm. “Inside. Now.”
The first new flakes come sideways.
Snowpetal turns toward them.
Her ears lift.
Then she runs straight into the storm.