“What are you talking about, Kiri?”
Rorik moved to sit next to Kiri. He pulled her onto his lap. The fire was warm, the smell of the pheasant sweeter than a virgin’s mouth, Hafter had said, smacking his lips.
“I don’t understand this,” Cleve said. “Kiri looks as well fed as a little stoat. Why did she begin to eat again when she started starving herself the eighth day?”
“The truth of the matter, Cleve,” Rorik said, “is that Kiri now has two papas.”
“What?”
“We couldn’t get her to eat. She was becoming skinny as a pole, wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t do anything. You know her way. We tried everything.”
“Aye,” Gunleik said. “I even whittled a knife for her, but she wouldn’t touch it.”
“Finally Chessa said she’d had enough. She told Kiri that she would be her second papa when you weren’t about. I don’t know everything she told her, but the next morning, Kiri ate an entire bowl of Utta’s porridge. Then the two of them went off together. Chessa carried a huge cloth filled with food. When they returned to the longhouse that afternoon, Kiri was smiling. All the food was gone.”
Rorik sighed then. “By the gods, I let Chessa convince me that Kiri would fade away into a ghost, thus I let the two of them come with us. Aye, she said over and over that Kiri would stop eating again if she didn’t see her first papa very soon, that if they didn’t come, Kiri would believe Chessa had lied to her, and starve herself again. I had no choice, Cleve. By Thor’s axe, I’m sorry.”
Cleve looked into the fire, looked at the hissing and spitting pheasant, two of them still on thin long sticks. One of the sticks was beginning to burn. He didn’t want that pheasant to fall into the flames. He said nothing, merely leaned forward and pulled it off.
“Papa, what are you going to do?”
“Maybe Chessa will decide she wants to marry Ragnor.”
His daughter gave him a disgusted look.
“I agree,” he said, and pulled off a wing only to burn his fingers. He yowled.
Merrik took the pheasant and laid it reverently on a rock to cool. “I would have broken your jaw if you’d dropped it in the dirt,” he said matter-of-factly.
Cleve said finally, “If I get her back, Kiri, will you promise me you’ll eat right now? Some of that pheasant that your uncle is watching like a vulture?”
The little girl studied his face. She touched his golden beard. Finally, she stretched out two fingers and pulled off some meat. “Papa’s meat tastes good too,” she said when she’d swallowed.
“But I don’t cook—”
“She’s talking about her second papa.”
Cleve looked over his daughter’s head. Nothing was right. Nothing had been right the minute he’d met Chessa when she’d forced him to come into that garden at her father’s palace. He turned back and said to Rorik, “Now she plans to starve herself if both Chessa and I aren’t with her.”
Kiri chewed on another piece of meat given to her by her uncle Rorik. “Two papas are good,” she said, and licked her fingers.
“Aye, it means you’ll get more attention and become as irritating as Ragnor,” Cleve said, thinking that he probably should cuff her, but he kissed her instead. He said to Rorik, “Kerek will expect us to do something. We must have a plan that even he won’t guess.”
“Aye,” Hafter said, sitting cross-legged beside Cleve. “He’s clever. That’s frightening in an enemy.”
Cleve suddenly smiled, and it made him look dangerous and terrifying, that scar with the smile made him look like the Christian devil himself. “Kerek won’t expect this,” he said, and rubbed his hands together.
13
CHESSA SAT ATa long banquet table across from Ragnor. The chamber was long and narrow, benches around all the walls. Many people could dine in here. There were no windows. Dishes of oil with burning wicks floating in them sat at intervals on the oak planked table. Rush lights were fastened to the walls. Guards stood at the two entrances. The ceiling was low, the wooden beams black from years of smoke. There must have been a cooking fire in here at one time. The king’s magnificent chair was still empty. Kerek sat next to her, Ragnor opposite her, smiling lazily like a lizard sunning himself.
“I didn’t think Kerek could get you for me.” Ragnor bit off a large chunk of bread and began chewing, his mouth still open. “Truth is, Chessa, I would rather have Utta.”
“Utta is married, you fool,” she said, and picked up her own piece of bread. She opened her mouth wide, stuffed it in, and began chewing just as Ragnor was.
“You will stop that,” Ragnor said, throwing his bread down. “You revolt me. It makes you look ugly.”
“What, don’t you believe that when you do it, it makes you look just as ugly and revolting?”
