The Rot

by Siri Pettersen

  Stefan’s eyes grew moist. He pounded the empty seat beside him with his fist. Stared at the table. His hands were shaking and he could barely sit up straight. And Naiell … well, he was a deadborn.

  So am I. I’m deadborn. Half-blindling.

  The certainty of it no longer had such sharp edges. It was almost soft now compared to the fear that she might be running out of time. Hirka lifted up her tunic to look at the wound. She quickly tugged it back down. Felt the blood drain from her face. Reminded herself that it was normal to be scared. It was okay. She was in shock, that was all. She just had to take a moment and breathe.

  She thought of Rime, the time he’d pulled her up from the Alldjup. When he’d seen her bleeding hand and said she’d better get Father to look at it. What had she said?

  I’ve been patching people up since I was seven!

  It was true. It was what she was good at, who she was. She patched people up. Fixed things. Mended people when they were broken. As best she could. And in any case, she’d seen far worse than this. It was her this time, but it was the same. Exactly the same. The more she repeated the words, the less she believed them.

  Nils disappeared above deck. Hirka hoped the boat wasn’t stolen. She didn’t think Nils was the type to do that sort of thing. He probably just liked having things that went fast.

  There was a rumbling and the boat started to move. They picked up speed and soon they were practically flying across the waves. Hirka pressed down on the wet napkin. She’d have to wait until they were in calmer waters, until the vibrations stopped. It was just a little cut. Nothing serious. Not to someone who had been weaned on such things.

  But weaned by who?

  She laughed and the pain tore at her again. This time in her stomach and in her heart. She was half-blindling. Graal’s child. Offspring of a blindling who was thousands of years old, and who was hunting them. Urd had told her as much. That he’d gotten the rot from her father. A father who had power over Urd and power over the blind. Who wanted to sacrifice her to them. Who else could it be?

  But she was also a child of Odin. A human. So who was her mother? Had she ever needed to be weaned? Blood was the first thing she could remember tasting. Would it also be the last?

  Naiell was convinced that her parents were dead. But sooner or later he would realize that she wasn’t like other people. That she was family. What would he do then? Snap her neck, killing one of his own kin?

  There could be another explanation.

  She clung to that hope, pretending she believed it. But deep down she knew. If there was one thing she’d learned, it was what made her different.

  After a while the boat slowed down. The water wasn’t as choppy. She breathed a sigh of relief, but then came the guilt. She’d survived. Had she been less fortunate, she’d have been the one at the bottom of a canal in Venice. Two teeth worse off. Forgotten. Stabbed to death.

  Think of something else!

  She gave Naiell an imploring look. He got up and came over. “Can you pass me my bag?” she asked. He picked it up and dropped it on the floor in front of her. He sat on the edge of the bed. She liked to think that she could read his eyes now. But maybe that was just wishful thinking. Although, if it had been wishful thinking, surely she’d have seen some hint of sympathy in them.

  He cocked his head. The way he used to do when he was a raven. When he was Kuro. “I can’t help you without the Might,” he said.

  “As if the Might could make any difference to a gaping hole in my body,” she answered.

  That seemed to amuse him. “The things you don’t know could fill Maknamorr, Sulni.”

  Hirka had no room in her head for insults or new words. She had to cling to reality as best she could. Reality was here. Far out to sea. In a roaring boat. With a deadborn. And a wound that stretched halfway across her stomach.

  She pulled up her tunic and squeezed the napkin. Liquid dripped onto the wound. She flinched. Clenched her teeth. It stung like Slokna.

  That means it’s working!

  How many times had she said that to people? It wasn’t true, but she’d told them all the same. She’d just never thought she’d have to tell herself.

  “I can ease your pain,” Naiell said.

  “You can leave me alone,” she answered. “I don’t need an audience.”

  He leaned closer. She stared into his eyes as they flooded with black. “A thousand years,” he said hoarsely. “A thousand years, and you still have no clue what you’re doing. You stand face-to-face with salvation and choose damnation. I withdrew into the raven and I remained there. So I wouldn’t have to wonder why I decided to give up everything I had to save your people.”

  She moved the napkin over the wound and winced. “‘Your people’?” It hurt to talk, but it had to be said. “You forget I’m not one of them. I’m not an ymling.”

  They looked at each other. He had no pupils, no irises, nothing, but still she stared. Eyes fixed on the center of the glassy blackness. She could hear her pulse thrumming in her ears. She was the child of this creature’s enemy. This blindling sitting next to her, too close for comfort. Naiell. Kuro. Her raven. Her protector. As long as he didn’t know …

  “Not an ymling,” he whispered from somewhere deep inside. “But humans also feel pain. More so than the cows.” It took her a moment to figure out what he meant. Cows. Ymlings. People with tails. She couldn’t blame him. After all, it was no worse than deadborn.

  He held two fingers to his throat. She’d seen the blind do that. She’d done it herself, at Bromfjell, without knowing why. And now she was afraid to ask.

  “I am Dreyri,” he said. “I have blood of the first. My brother is the only one of our kind in this world, yet still he has managed to become a legend. People seek him out, follow him, kill and die for him. All for this blood. For a chance to slowly rot and see the sun rise a few more times. And you think fixing a hole in your fragile shell is a challenge for me?”

  A sudden and involuntary hope filled her. A longing for him to be right. For him to be the Seer everyone had believed in. Omniscient. Eternal. Someone who could save her. Fix what she couldn’t fix herself. What would it take? A drop of his blood? Would that be enough to keep her from Slokna?

  Her willingness scared her. It was easy to let yourself be taken in when you were bleeding to death.

  “I thought you were helpless without the Might,” she said, immediately regretting her choice of words.

  The black in his eyes receded. Ink turned to milk. He ran his hand over her stomach, his touch cold and abrupt. She tried to protect the wound with her arm, but he moved it aside. Brought his index finger toward the opening. A prick. His claw sank into her skin. She let out a gasp.

  Her skin started to tingle. The pain flowed out of her body. Her fear that he would realize who she was went along with it, until only a wonderful numbness remained.

  “Might or no Might, I can always halt your blood.”

  She smiled lazily. “You’re walking around with drugs in your fingertips? That’s …” No words in her own language could express how she felt. Then she remembered what Jay used to say. “That’s cool.”

  She looked down at the wound. A red gash in her right side, the length of her hand. But it had stopped bleeding. She couldn’t feel anything now. That would make it easier. She could pretend it was someone else.

  Hirka pulled her bag closer and opened it with her left hand so she wouldn’t have to turn her upper body. She fumbled around until she found what she was looking for. Her sewing things. Naiell got up to give her room to stretch out.

  She cocked her head the way he used to, staring at him until he got the message. He shrugged and slunk through to where Stefan was. She unrolled the sewing kit and pulled out a needle and thread. She wiped them on the wet napkin, hoping it would kill the germs. She didn’t know what Nils had put on it. Humans knew nothing about plants, but they had to know something, seeing as they weren’t dropping like flies.

  Stef
an kept glancing over at her, but she pretended not to notice. He’d have to deal with his demons on his own. But clearly he wasn’t ready for that. He got up and came over to her.

  He looked at the wound in her side and blanched. He slid down onto the floor beneath a round window. A black hole out toward the sea. He wrapped his arms around his knees and sat rocking back and forth against the wall. His fear was catching. Her mouth went dry. Her lips felt swollen. She almost wished she hadn’t sent Naiell away. About the only thing he felt was superiority. And he feared nothing—apart from his own brother.

  Stefan was undeniably strong, but he felt too much. He feared everything that could happen, and probably a lot of what had happened. How could a man like that make a living from selling the teeth of dead men? How had it come to that?

  She was overcome by a sense of hopelessness. Standing on the precipice. About to fall.

  So what’s it gonna be? Live or die?

  She had to keep her spirits up or she wouldn’t be able to do what she needed to. She threaded the needle. “For a hunter, you’re a real wuss,” she said.

  He stopped rocking. “Can I help?”

  She laughed. Braced herself for the pain, but none came. She was numb. Freed by Naiell’s poison. Blindcraft. “Have you seen the state of your trousers, Stefan?”

  Stefan looked down at the holes in his knees. Gave a tired smile. The spark came back into his eyes. He’d be handsome if it weren’t for the stubble.

  “Hirka …”

  He was finally ready, bursting with things to tell her, but she didn’t have time for that. Not now. She propped herself up until she was half-sitting so she could see what she was doing. Pulled the edges of the wound together and held the needle to her skin. Her hand was shaking. There was only one way to do this. Fast and firm. She pushed the needle in and through to the other side. The thread tugged at her skin, but she felt no pain.

  Don’t think. Just sew.

  If only she still had some salve. All she could do now was cross her fingers and hope it was clean. She was at the mercy of fate, something so much bigger than her.

  She made sixteen stitches. One for every year of her life. She was about to cut the thread, but then added one more. Seventeen. In case some higher power decided to take her at her word.

  Crones’ talk.

  She tied a knot and cut the thread. Then she rolled up her sewing kit and let her body go limp. The boat skipped over a wave and the wall slammed into her back. Stefan crawled over and positioned an extra pillow behind her. Then he rifled through Nils’s green box, pulled out a strip of something and placed it over the wound.

  “Don’t. It needs to breathe,” she said.

  “It’s a bandage. Bandages breathe, right? Nearly as impressive as elevators and guns, aren’t they?”

  She let him stick the bandage over the wound. She could always take it off later. His fingers trembled against her skin. Then he grabbed her hand. It was unexpected but nice. “I’ve never met anyone like you, girl.” He stroked her hair. “Never. Do they all have hearts of wolves where you come from? Are they all like you?”

  Hirka would have been touched had Stefan not been in such a daze. He was just trying to get close to someone so he didn’t have to be alone with his fear.

  “I wish,” she whispered. “If everyone were like me, I wouldn’t have had to come here.”

  “Then I’m happy they’re not.”

  She looked into his eyes. Everything about him was so warm. His skin. His eyes. His brown hair with light tips. He was the exact opposite of Rime.

  “You’re too old for me,” she said.

  He made a despondent sound that might have been a laugh. “Not too old to save you, am I?”

  She smiled. Stefan Barone. Her knight in shining armor. The man clinging to her as if he were drowning. And this was supposed to be his world. She closed her eyes. She wanted to go to sleep and not wake up until she was old.

  “I do it because I have to,” he said.

  She forced her eyes open to watch him defend himself.

  “Because I have to. Not because I—She gives me shitloads of money for them, you know? I don’t know why, but it pays the bills. Sure, sometimes I have to travel halfway around the world in the middle of the night, but needs must. She was a chemist when she was younger. There’s something in them. Something she uses.”

  The teeth. He was talking about the teeth.

  The image of him yanking them out of the forgotten’s mouth flashed before her eyes. His body still warm. Her knife in his chest. She’d pushed it all the way to the hilt, but it hadn’t killed him. Not straight away. He’d still been able to do damage.

  “What are you thinking?” Stefan asked. His eyes begged for forgiveness. He could have been one of Father Brody’s lost souls. Kneeling before the altar.

  “I’m thinking …” Hirka stopped fighting and closed her eyes. “I’m thinking I need a longer knife.”

  GUARDIANS

  Rime walked past the first rows of shelves. The ceiling was low by the entrance to the library. The room didn’t open up until you made it to the middle, where all the levels came into view.

  Once he reached the middle, he could hear the wind outside. A whisper between stone blocks and wooden beams, mixed with the sound of ladders sailing along shelves. A woman approached on one of the ladders, stopping just above him.

  Rime asked after Northree, the shepherd he’d spoken to during his last visit. Although Northree may not have been in charge, he was clearly among those with the most knowledge. The woman directed Rime farther into the library before climbing higher up, out of sight.

  Rime found Northree halfway up a wooden ladder, where he stood browsing a drawer full of small cards. He smiled when he saw Rime, stuck a wooden peg in the drawer to mark his place, and climbed down with an almost feminine grace. Though in here everyone seemed sexless. Equally gray, equally gentle, and equally content in their work.

  “How can I help you, Rime-fadri?”

  Rime grabbed him by the arms and steered him toward the center of the room. “This is an impressive tower, Northree, isn’t it?”

  “It’s the biggest in all of Ym, Ravenbearer. Not the tallest, but certainly the most spacious. It has no equal.”

  “I’m counting on that. How long do you think it would take to pull it apart?”

  The shepherd blinked a couple of times. “I don’t understand …”

  “Let’s say I decided to find the books we both know are here but that you say were burned. How long do you think it would take to pull apart the entire tower if I were to get every guardsman in Mannfalla to help?”

  The shepherd took an unsteady step back. “Pull apart …”

  The shock tactics had worked. Northree was shaken and surprised. But that wasn’t enough. He had to be afraid. He had to fear for his life. Rime stepped up close to him and tightened his grip on a thin arm before whispering, “Shepherd, yesterday we plunged a sword through the heart of a man trying to hide something he’d only just done. What do you think I’d do to a man who’s been hiding something for a lifetime?”

  The shepherd closed his eyes. For a moment Rime thought he’d won. “I swear, Rime-fadri, there’s no knowledge of use to anyone here that you’ve not already seen. What you’re looking for was destroyed over eight hundred years ago.”

  “Of use or not, I intend to find it. You can either give it to me now or you can accept your punishment when we do find it.”

  The shepherd shrugged sadly. “There’s nothing I can do.”

  It clearly wasn’t enough to make the shepherd fear for his life. Rime could threaten him with everything under the sun and it wouldn’t help. Something more was needed. Something bigger. Northree had to believe that Rime would prevail. That he would never give up.

  “I’m the Ravenbearer,” Rime snarled. “Nothing can stop me. There’s no secret that doesn’t belong to me. I’ll be back at sunrise with every able-bodied guardsman, and I promise we’ll find
it. Even if I have to tear down every wall and rip up every floor. Until then, shepherd.”

  He turned and left without looking back. That final megalomaniacal flourish ought to have done it. Now there was only one thing left to do.

  Wait.

  Even in the middle of the night, there were always lights to be seen in Mannfalla. Lamps burned around the clock along the main streets. Hundreds of them, particularly here on the north side, where Eisvaldr was situated. The city at the end of the city. No longer the home of the Seer, but still the home of the Council. Still home to those few who had more than they would ever need. And a library with more books than they would ever read.

  Rime jumped down onto the library balcony and found the nearest window. It was a sturdy thing, tall and reinforced with glazing bars. Had Hirka been here, he could have drawn enough of the Might through his body to melt them. Like they’d done when they’d broken into the Seer’s tower. He hadn’t been able to do it again since, and the greatest minds in Ym couldn’t explain why. Would he ever find out?

  He drew his knife and wedged it between the window and the frame. Slid it up until it met with resistance. Then he whacked the hilt of the knife with the back of his hand. Heard the hasp open inside. He did the same to the one above and opened the window. It creaked. Definitely not a window that was opened every day. Rime sheathed his knife, climbed inside, and closed the window behind him.

  The books slept in the pitch darkness, as they’d done for generations. Endless rows of text. But nothing that would contradict what the Council had established as the truth over the centuries. Doubt had no place here. Other voices had been weeded out, so mercilessly and over such a long period of time that it no longer occurred to anyone to ask about them. All things considered, could it even be called knowledge?

  Rime moved in toward the middle of the room. The open shaft swallowed what little light there was. It was impossible to see anything on the levels below. It was quiet.