Chapter Nineteen
The dead king has lost his head, his ship, and most of his left foot.
I know the next verse. This is more exciting than it should be.
I catch the next line in Old Norse and sing it with thirty Skorvaer around the long fire.
The man playing the bowed lyre points at me with his bow. I point back with my drinking horn, and we both miss the next line.
Nobody cares.
The great hall has stopped being a hall and become the inside of the storm.
Every table except the two nearest the kitchens has been pushed against a wall.
Benches make a crooked ring around the central hearth.
Wet coats hang from pegs, chair backs, window latches, and one wooden carving that may be important.
The fire runs nearly the length of the room. So does the singing.
Outside, wind drives snow against the shutters. Inside, someone has opened three casks, roasted enough meat to feed Sólvik for a week, and decided the dead king deserves another verse. He does. His foot has just been found in a trout.
I sing that part louder.
The woman beside me winces. She has two dark-grey eyes and the patience of a person who has heard me miss the same note four times.
“You know the words,” she says.
“Most of them.”
“You don’t know the tune.”
“I know where it’s going.”
“Do you?”
The lyre player reaches the high part.
Nope. Not at all.
Three people near the hearth cover their ears. One laughs into his cup. The grey-eyed woman takes my horn, drinks from it, and gives it back.
“Better,” she says.
“I didn’t change anything.”
“You didn’t.”
I sing louder.
Food doesn’t sustain the Skorvaer, but that has never stopped them from enjoying it with great commitment.
Plates move around the fire in a steady circle.
Smoked pork, black bread, little onions cooked in honey, hard cheese, seed cakes, and all kinds of preserved fruit have all passed through my hands.
One of the fruits is not food. I’m almost sure of it.
The mead helps.
Myrkvier usually keeps itself quiet. Tonight the storm has closed every road, shut half the settlement beneath one roof, and given everyone permission to stop pretending they’d rather be home.
People keep finding reasons to sit beside me.
One asks where I learned the old language.
Another brings me the honey onions after I praise them once.
A mine guard wants the Gullither ending to the song, and more lean close enough to hear when I tell him our king keeps both feet and loses a hand instead.
Whenever one person leaves, two fill the space.
I’ve never been this popular while singing this badly.
This is home.
That thought arrives with my horn halfway to my mouth. I take a long drink instead.
Across the fire, Baldr sits with two men from the roof crew. His clean shirt has been rolled to the elbows. One man is telling a story with both hands and a piece of bread. Baldr laughs in the right places.
He hasn’t looked at me for several minutes. He’s looked at me many times tonight. But he simply looks away before I can smile at him.
Our argument has survived a full day, two attempted conversations, and Snowpetal carrying one of his stockings into the dining room during breakfast. The stocking didn’t improve anything.
I lift my horn and Baldr looks over. I smile. His face warms, but the smile he gives me stays small, and then the man with the bread catches his attention again.
I drink.
His breath returns beside my ear.
Sól.
One hand near my waist. One near my elbow. Neither touching. Then his voice changes.
A child.
Pathetic.
I swallow enough mead to make the memory slide back down.
The song ends and everyone cheers. Snowpetal shoots from beneath a bench with half a sausage in her mouth, and the man on the bench lifts both feet.
“Snowpetal.”
She runs under the next table. Three Skorvaer move away from it.
“She’s friendly,” I tell them.
Snowpetal’s tail club strikes a table leg. Every cup on the table jumps, and the three Skorvaer move farther.
“Usually.”
I put down my horn and crawl beneath the bench. The woman catches the back of my skirt before I hit my head.
“Thank you.”
“You were going under there.”
“She has somebody’s sausage.”
“It was hers the instant she took it.”
Fair.
Snowpetal crouches beneath the table with the sausage pinned between both front paws. Her white horns shine in the firelight. She watches six pairs of Skorvaer boots gather at a very respectful distance.
An entire hall full of emotion feeders, mine guards, smiths, and storm workers has faced multiple nights of weather without complaint. One small white animal has ended their courage.
I reach under the table and Snowpetal shows me the sausage.
“I see it.”
She puts one paw over my hand.
“You may keep it. I only want you.”
Snowpetal considers the difference. Then she leaves the sausage, crawls into my arms, and puts both wet front paws on my chest.
I back out and the bench catches my shoulders.
“Ow.”
Two people lift it before I try again. Neither comes closer than necessary.
“Thank you.”
I stand and kiss Snowpetal between the horns. She purrs. The men who lifted the bench step back together.
“You’re hurting her feelings.”
One looks at Snowpetal. Snowpetal opens her mouth, and he steps back again.
“She’ll recover,” the woman says.
I put Snowpetal on the floor. She collects the sausage and disappears beneath another table. Everyone on that side of the fire moves.
The lyre player begins a faster song. A drum joins from near the kitchens, then two pairs of hands against a tabletop. The benches shift farther from the fire, and somebody catches both my hands.
The man has blue eyes and a split through one eyebrow. I remember him from the scale yard. He carried seals to Ketill and didn’t laugh when I asked whether the wax had to be red. It didn’t. Ketill simply liked red.
“Do you know this one?” he asks.
“Probably.”
He pulls me into the open space. I know the first six steps.
The seventh tries to kill me.
My heel catches the edge of his boot. He holds both my hands, turns the stumble into a spin, and brings me around without letting me reach the floor. I laugh so hard I miss the eighth step too.
People clap. Not because I fell.
Mostly.
The man with the split eyebrow guides me through the turn again. This time I get both feet in the correct places. The drum speeds up, and I spin past the hearth.
Asta stands beside the far table with a cup in her hand and Ketill stands much too close to her.
He says something I can’t hear. Asta’s eyes narrow. Ketill puts another cup in front of her, and she refuses it.
He drinks from his own, says something else, and pushes the second cup closer. Asta drinks.
Hmm.
Her mouth opens on one short laugh. Ketill sees, and that appears to be a problem. Asta looks furious with him, herself, the cup, and possibly me for witnessing any of this.
I wave. She points at the floor in front of me.
Right.
I look down before the next turn and keep both boots. When I look back, Ketill is leading her toward the kitchen passage. His hand stays near her back without touching. Asta is still holding the cup.
She looks over one shoulder at me. I grin. Her eyes promise consequences.
Tomorrow’s problem.
Tonight I have a song, a fire, and a man who knows how to keep me from breaking my nose during the seventh step, and I throw myself into all three.
The song ends and my partner bows. I bow too.
The floor arrives closer than expected. He catches my elbow.
The next song begins before either of us can reach the benches.
A broad man with green eyes takes my partner’s place.
He knows only four steps, which makes us evenly matched.
We get through half the song by copying everyone else and the other half by turning in a circle until the room becomes unreliable.
“I need to stop.”
“Good.”
He lets go of my hands. I take one step toward the fire.
The hall keeps turning.
The green-eyed man catches both my shoulders and points me toward a bench.
“There.”
“I had it.”
“You were walking toward the wall.”
“The wall moved.”
He sits me down. Someone puts another horn in my hand.
Myrkvier is very generous.
I drink. The horn is gone before I finish.
Baldr holds it.
I look up at him. He looks at the horn, then me. “How many?”
“Songs?”
“Drinks.”
“Some of them were the same one.”
“That’s not a number.”
“Then why did you ask?”
His mouth pulls into a smile before he stops it.
I catch his sleeve. “Dance with me.”
The smile leaves. The answer takes too long.
“My knee is bothering me.”
Baldr carried a roof beam through a storm yesterday and was fine.
I release his sleeve. “All right.”
“Sól.”
The green-eyed man holds out his hand again. I take it before Baldr can finish.
“She needs both feet watched,” Baldr tells him.
“I’ve seen.”
They exchange a look over my head.
I point at Baldr. “No managing.”
His jaw tightens.
Oh. That wasn’t fair.
The drum starts again, and I let the green-eyed man pull me away before I have to fix it.
We dance. One turn. Two.
On the third, his attention jumps past my shoulder. The pale skin around his eyes loses color.
“I have to go.”
He releases me and walks quickly into the crowd. I finish the turn alone.
Fine.
The man with the split eyebrow finds me again. He lasts through half a verse.
Then his gaze catches on the dark beyond the fire. His hands leave mine.
“Excuse me.”
He vanishes between two benches. I check my breath against my palm.
Mead. Not excellent, but everyone here has the same problem.
A younger man takes my hand when the next verse begins. He has silver eyes and a braid that reaches the middle of his back.
“You sing loudly,” he says.
“Thank you.”
“That wasn’t praise.”
He laughs. Good.
We turn. The silver-eyed man smells of smoke and bitter fruit. He knows every step and none of them try to kill me.
This is going very well.
He leans closer. His attention stays on my mouth. Then my throat. The hand around mine tightens.
“You’re very warm,” he says.
“The fire is enormous.”
“It’s not the fire.”