I looked back up to Fell, but his eyes were on Halvar as well.“What are you thinking?”I said.
“I am not thinking at all,” Fell said.“He grows so fast.I am trying to remember everything.”
Deep into the night, while Fell and Halvar slept, my mind ran over everything again and again.Without Fell’s voice, without his hands… my calm had faded.There was the angering of the king, which did not sit well with me.But there was also what I’d seen behind the gilded door.
In my agitation, I did something most unlike me.I crept from bed, and took my small pouch of casting stones, and slipped into the hall.I knelt beside a nearly-burnt-out brazier, using the coals for light.
The bag pulsed in my hands, hotter than it had any right to be in places, but cold in other places.
“I wish to understand this day, the forbidden room,” I told the pouch as I shook a few stones loose.
Dry Bone.Dry Beneath.It is exactly what you thought it was.
My heart raced.
They are the bones of readers, of soothsayers and seers who had once been embraced by King Arik but fell out of his favour.
My fingers twitched as I pulled another stone out, adding to my question.“Why would Jorn want me to see them?Why would Hyrold?”
I turned the stone over and set it on the carpet.Wet Brother.
Protector.Jorn has been guarding you as long as you’ve known him.He sees himself as the last of King Arik’s readers?—
“Is that true?”I said, shaking the bag a little.Before I reached in to pull a stone, I felt the bag’s sentiment through the tips of my fingers.
It might be.
I huffed.
As for Hyrold?The next three stones seemed to say.He is waking.You are feeling the echoes of that.There is a great elk hunt in the beyond.It has happened before and will happen again.
“I want more clarity than that.”I reached into the bag, but again their answer came faster than I could pull a stone.
You have not worked with us enough.We reveal ourselves to you.We make understanding us easier for you, but you only use us when it pleases you.You pretend things are not as they are.You call yourself Goldkeeper one moment, but free Norsen the next.You must decide.Oh yes.You must decide quickly.
Forty-Three
Rowan had seemed the perfect Norser until the moment I told him I was leaving.We were standing in the yard behind Faller’s tenement, the summery air fresh from the sea.The thousands of wind chimes in Aalt chimed their private tunes.
Rowan’s back straightened, and the Norsern accent that had slipped into his Islish disappeared.“For how long?”
I shrugged.“Fell says it will take several days to get to Byernen, and then after that, we don’t know.It could be the whole raiding season.”
Rowan’s thick brows furrowed.
It wasn’t the notion of danger that seemed to bother him, but rather our separation.Without another word to me, he ran to Faller and stuttered in Norsern, “She is… I cannot… I must, gah!Words!I need to go with her.”
“I have already listed your price for Norsernhood,” Faller said.“You have cost me… I am?—”
“I know, but… you… not understand any… or…”
I understood.Rowan needed to tell himself he was aiding me.It was the one piece of our home he couldn’t brush away from his mind.He could have women and mead and speak of dreams, and wash his hair with enough lye that it became the colour of snow, but he couldn’t rid himself entirely of the Islish man he used to be.His blood was from the Land of Mud and Mist.His blood was sworn to my blood.
Fara was near, because she was always near him, but rather than soothe him in his panic or verbally attack Faller as she was fond of doing, she wove her cold, tattooed fingers through my arm, pulling me to the side.
“Faller has said he will name Rowan Norser once he has been given payment.For the things Rowan has broken, from all the work Faller has missed out on watching over him.Twelveaurar.I have what equals five.”
My sense of measurements in the Land of the Northernmost Star was murky.Silver and gold were used interchangeably, butaurarusually meant silver.A certain weight of silver.At least one person in every gathering was able to convert between metals using their mind, but often there was confusion, because jewelry was the standard rather than pure silver or gold, which left room for debate of an item’s weight value.Watching and saying nothing, I usually had a better sense of what something was worth than the arguing courtiers because I was a much better judge of metal weight than average, given my work in the order.
