“Tell you when, Ran?” he answered, crossing his arms over his chest. “When you’d just learned of Einar’s death and were distraught over it? Or should I have come to your father’s house to tell you and risk seeing him or Erik?”
“Erik will never return here. He is betrothed to the daughter of one of my father’s . . .” Ran stopped then. Erik was another uncomfortable topic between them. Her brother, his best friend. All in the past.
“Just so,” he said.
Ran crossed her arms, mirroring his stance, and lifted her chin. She was about to ask an impossible question. He recognized it in the way she stood and held her head. And the way she worried her lower lip. He tried to prepare himself for anything.
“Did she fall or did she . . . jump?”
Nothing could have prepared him for that. Ran was smart. She was one for details. She’d listened the way Ingeborg must have said it and heard what had not been said. And only a very few people knew or had guessed at the truth.
“She was buried in hallowed ground, Ran,” he replied with the only words he would allow himself to utter.
He would not lie to her again. He may not be able to tell her the truth, but he would not lie. Aslaug’s death was another mark against his soul but he would not damn hers for eternity by exposing her own sin.
“I am sorry for her death. I would never have wanted that, Soren,” Ran said, her arms dropping to her sides. “I did not want that.”
He nodded and stepped out of her way, changing their discussion to something less damaging. “I will see this is returned to you.”
She mounted without help, as she always did, and gathered the reins in her hands. Urging the horse to turn, she paused.
“Once you read those, I have questions for you. Will you meet me at the broch the day after next?”
Ran knew there was more to this than a man and his death. Did she see the same things Soren did? Did she bear the same mark? Was something pulsing through her blood as it did in his even now? He nodded.
“At midday?”
“At midday,” she agreed, and then she turned the horse and rode away.
Soren should not have agreed for it broke the bargain he had with her father. But he suspected that in the coming days, he would break most parts of the damned thing.
“She needed to be told, Soren.” Ingeborg walked up next to him as Ran rode off toward the south.
“Aye.” Soren turned to his aunt. “When I learned that my grandfather had been writing her, I thought that he would have revealed it to her.”
“Well, now you will see what he told her and when,” she said. “Will you tell me, Soren? Tell me the truth about what bothered him so?”
He wrapped his arms around his aunt and hugged her. “I thought you were at peace with his death?”
“I am. I am just not at peace with his last months. He worried over something and would never share whatever that burden was with me.”
“You are a mere woman,” he joked, trying to lighten his aunt’s grief.
“Do not jest over this, Soren. He searched for something or someone. He mumbled in his sleep. He left in the morning and would not return. And he sang those songs, the ones he taught you and your father from the time you could speak.”
“When do you leave here?” Soren asked. He felt the urge to get her away from this area. He’d seen this cottage burned to ash in his dreams and feared it was an omen of things to come.
“In a day or two. My niece is expecting soon and I want to be there for the birth. Now that winter is easing its grasp on the seas, I will go.” She frowned now, searching his face. “Unless you wish me to stay.”
“Nay, do not delay in getting to her. She lives on one of the northern isles?”
“Aye. You sound concerned. What are you keeping from this mere woman now?” she asked, touching his cheek.
“I know you are truly formidable, Aunt,” he reassured her. Or attempted to. “I think you will enjoy being with your niece.”
Ingeborg went back inside the cottage, asking no more questions, which suited Soren. He had no answers for her and only fears about what was coming to Orkney. The winds whispered to him then, trying to ease his concerns but he was not soothed.
Death was coming. Fire was coming. War was coming.
