“Sure.” Shuffling onto another branch, I made space on the wide one I’d been sitting on.
Ivren wound his legs around it, and with unfair fluidity pulled himself up.
“I was hoping I’d find you here,” he said when his long legs dangled over the ground.
Wrapping my arms around my knees, I turned to the harbor where the moon’s sliver cut the water like a sharp knife gutting fish. “Why?”
A sound that didn’t belong to the forest made us jerk, and Ivren grimaced. “I wanted to make sure you were all right. That was a lot tonight.”
“I’m fine.” Bark scratched against my back, reminding me that the one thing that might have protected me against the karls who wanted me dead was now gone. “Just tired.”
A low huff left him. “I can see that. When did you eat last?”
I couldn’t remember. “Yesterday?”
“Are you asking me or yourself?”
“You saw what happened last time.” I picked at a leaf. “What am I supposed to do?”
It was better to starve for a while than doom my people to a life under someone like Geord.
Ivren was quiet for several long moments, before a decision settled his features. He reached out a hand. “Come on.”
I narrowed my eyes.
Ivren hooked the air with his hand. “I said, come on.”
“Where?” I asked. Nobody was asleep yet. I’d seen barrels of wine and trays of food being taken down to the lake, and fires sparked everywhere in the camp and the longhouse.
“We’re going to the lake.”
My laugh was as dark as the night around us. “They don’t want me there.”
“So?” Ivren shook some hair out of his face. “There’s food. And drinks. And I’ll be with you the entire time.”
I wanted to say I didn’t need a guard, but that wasn’t true.
It wasn’t likely I would survive long on my own. But that’s how it had to be.
“You should go alone,” I said. “It’ll be more fun.”
He bounced his brows. “Who said it’s not fun to fight off bloodthirsty climbers? That’s what I’ve been training my entire life for.”
“Don’t let them hear you call them that,” I said quietly. “These woods are never entirely quiet.”
Climberwas what some jarls called Vikings in the lower classes who tried to marry, kill, or bond their way into the elite. My father didn’t allow us to speak that word even within the walls of our hearth.
I agreed with him. Our society wasn’t initially built on birthright, and there were still exceptions—like the summer trials, where anyone in the Hird could become an heir if one was forsaken by the gods—but in many of the fylkis, the separation between jarls, karls, and thralls grew generation by generation.
“You’re right.” Ivren winced. “I hear it too much at home. But I was serious. You should come. Rakkel, Adrion, and Ottoh are all there, and most of the karls have drunk too much to be a threat anyway.”
My stomach rumbled loudly at that moment, and when Ivren chuckled, I sighed.
“Fine.” I shrugged. “But my blood is on your hands if they decide to toast me instead of a boar over one of the fires.”
“Deal.” Ivren grinned as he jumped down from the tree. He reached up his arms. “Come on, Sweengard. Get down here. I can see that you’re debating changing your mind.”
A sheepish smile spread across my face. As soon as his feet had touched the ground, I’d decided I could wait another night to fill my stomach.
