He smiled, leaning back.“Part of the myth of his life.”
“What is he planning?”I said, suddenly aware that I might have all the answers to my and Fell’s questions sitting across from me, if only I knew the right way to ask.
“Obviously, I cannot tell you everything he tells me, but you are strong-sensed.You know he is thinking of movements.He has four potential plans.His enemies, the captains, the weather even—he will choose his course at the last moment, when he has as much knowledge as he can.He thinks this will protect his choice from being foretold by readers—he is not wrong about that.He will ask you to read for him again.He told me of your last attempt.”Jorn’s eyes locked onto mine kindly, but forcefully.“It was flawless.Raw.I told him you were young and desperate to please and agreeable and that you could not read.”
“Why?”
“Would you not like a chance to avoid being chained to him as I am?”
I wanted to tell Jorn he wasn’t chained, but something in his expression kept me from softening his words.
“I can read anything,” Jorn said.“Stones, bones, rivers, smoke… but what speaks to me most is the stars.If you tell me as much as you can about the day you were born, I may be able to tell you something that will cheer you some.”
“It was in the spring when day and night are equal length,” I said.“The equinox.”
“Exactly?”
“Exactly.”
“How many years ago?”
I frowned.My birthdate had passed during the fog of newly born Halvar.Surely there had been some celebration of the equinox.I had missed it entirely… “Ten and ten and… two.”
Jorn set to work, spinning his bronze plates, lining things up very carefully, frowning with the kind of concentration that makes a person especially beautiful, the kind of focus that comes only when someone is doing what they most love.And, as had been happening to me often since Halvar’s birth, I found myself able to see—just a glimpse—of the child’s face still buried in the man: Jorn as a boy playing, building sand fortresses perhaps.I thought of Jorn’s mother.Her wishes for him.Would she be pleased with what he had become?I decided she wouldn’t be.While he was a master of his trade, calm when others were frenzied, living with plenty to eat and drink and smoke and study, he was a captive in a foreign land.
“Is your mother still living?”I said.
He continued to fiddle for a moment before looking up at me.“I cannot say for certain, but I think not.”
The wind twisted through the courtyard, tousling his hair, knocking his trinkets into one another as the weight of his words settled in my heart.
“She was forty-four when I was born, and I am forty-three now so…” His hands were back at his work.“Look here, this is a map of the stars on the day you were born.Look at these two—they are meeting up and conspiring.This is very mischievous.It is quite similar to Arik’s birth, actually.”
Jorn told me many things about the stars that afternoon, speaking about each of them as if they were people with characteristics and relationships, and while I was listening, I was also overwhelmed by the boyishness I saw in him.In the same way Hald ran to Dania to tell her about the insect he’d found, Jorn was thrilled to be telling me about the stars.And Jorn’s mother was so far away he didn’t even know if she was dead, so perhaps no one had sat and listened to him like this in a long time.
When I returned to our rooms, feeling bittersweet and ready to make amends, Fell wasn’t there.It was late-afternoon, but that didn’t mean much to me given how random my sleep was.Despite my exhaustion, I stayed awake, waiting for his return, as long as I could, growing angrier with him for being elsewhere with each hour that passed.Finally, just as I had given up and found sleep, he entered—but not as he usually did.
Fell was light in all his behaviours, as I’ve said, but that day he was heavy.His boots made sound as he kicked them off.His steps.Even how he closed the door.
He slumped down on the bench nearest the door, his weight all wrong in his limbs.
“Are you drunk?”I said.
“No.”
The longer I looked, the more I could see that was the truth.He was starkly sober, his ice-blue eyes crisp and clear in the dimness.He rested his head against the wall behind him, looking as beautiful as always, but also dreadfully exhausted.
“What has happened?”I said.
“Well… you are getting your wish.”
“What?”
“We will not be parting when Arik sets off for Byernen to meet with the captains.”
I felt relief despite Fell’s obvious misery.
“He has forbidden you from rowing again?”
