Queens of the Sea

by Kim Wilkins

  ‘And what is wrong with this man?’ she asked. The man wouldn’t look up at her. She couldn’t bear defiance. It was often a marker of secret heathen beliefs. She kicked his foot. ‘Hoy.’

  ‘He’s deaf, my queen,’ Thorkel said.

  ‘He’s not blind and I’m standing right in front of him. Ha, there. So you’ve decided to meet my eye, have you? He doesn’t have much of a sword arm, Thorkel.’

  ‘We believe he may be a steward, perhaps to a warrior who has died. He has cracked four of his ribs, but he helps me all he can. He is a good man.’

  ‘A deaf steward? Whoever heard of such a thing? He’s little use; perhaps he ought to have died so the warrior could live.’ She turned to the man again. ‘Do you accept Maava as your saviour?’ She found herself hoping he would say no. Defiant heathens deserved to be bled on the altar of Maava.

  Thorkel intervened, made a triangle symbol with his fingers. The man nodded softly, calmly. Made the symbol too and mouthed the word Maava.

  ‘Well, then,’ she said, bending to pat the dog’s head. ‘I suppose you will find a way to be helpful to His cause. And you can communicate with him well enough, Thorkel? Does he have a name?’

  ‘I call him Helgi. He reminds me of my son.’

  ‘Oh, the one that died?’

  Thorkel nodded.

  Willow placed a hand on the old man’s arm. ‘Do not be sad. I know Helgi died before you took the trimartyr faith, but if you pray hard enough I’m sure Maava will fetch him out of the Blacklands and send him to the Sunlands. Keep faith. I will pray for you.’

  ‘Thank you, my queen,’ Thorkel said.

  Willow had grown bored with all this talking. She wanted to get back to her chapel. She turned towards the door and as she did so, a voice – clear and ringing – in her mind said, They speak of Avaarni.

  She snapped her head around and eyed Thorkel. ‘Did you say something?’

  He looked at her puzzled. ‘I thanked you.’

  ‘Yes, yes, but after that.’ She didn’t stay to hear his answer, because she knew it had not been Thorkel who spoke. It had been Maava; that voice that had slid behind a veil had now become strong and clear. She began to run towards the chapel, but then her senses prickled and she pulled up. Voices, low laughing.

  Behind the infirmary. In the gap between it and the wall that separated the houses of the wealthiest of Bluebell’s thanes, empty now, as families had fled on the night of the invasion or been put to the sword. This was where a number of Hakon’s highest ranked had chosen to make their homes, much to Willow’s distaste. This was where she could hear the voices. Quite clearly: Modolf and Ragnar, two of Hakon’s most trusted advisors.

  ‘… but she thinks she is seeking a boy, so it is no lie.’ This was Modolf. She could smell the strange citrus scent of the tobacco he smoked in his pipe.

  They speak of Avaarni.

  Willow crept silently towards the wall and listened.

  ‘She will kill you if she finds out,’ Ragnar said, laughing. It sounded as though he was enjoying a pipe too. She imagined them passing it between them, casually, as though they were not committing treason. ‘So you haven’t searched for the child at all?’

  ‘Why would I? Nobody in our nation is going to take a Thyrslander child as their leader; and no matter what our crazy queen thinks, girls don’t turn into boys.’

  ‘Does Hakon know?’

  Willow’s skin prickled. Please say no, please say no. Without a king, she could not be a queen. Maava did not allow women to rule.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t put him in such danger. The bitch is so demented she’d probably cut him into bits, and she’s almost as dangerous as her sister. The Storm King’s seed must have shot out of him fully armed.’

  Ragnar laughed. They continued in their smutty imaginings, calling Willow crazy and deluded and insinuating Hakon was weak for letting her become so powerful.

  Deluded? When it was Maava’s voice who had led her to their treason? It was she who should be laughing.

  She returned to her bowerhouse, to find Hakon half-dressed, running through sword drills.

  ‘Husband,’ she said, ‘could you have Modolf and Ragnar meet me in the chapel at noon?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I need to explain something to them.’

  Hakon dropped his sword’s tip and shrugged. ‘As you wish.’

  She came to stand in front of him and grasped him around his right wrist. He looked startled. They rarely touched.

  ‘Hakon,’ she said. ‘Do you believe Avaarni will come back to me, as a boy? To rule?’

  He smiled crookedly. ‘Is that your greatest desire, my wife?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then I believe it will be so, for you believed we could take Blicstowe and look.’ He lifted his free hand. ‘My greatest desire has been met. I have all faith in yours.’

  She let him go and nodded once. ‘Then you must let me do what I must do.’

  ‘I always do.’

  Willow headed to the chapel to pray, and to prepare to spill more blood.

  Skalmir felt boneless after Willow left. He slumped over his knees, making Thrymm lick his face worriedly.

  Thorkel patted his shoulder and said something in Is-hjartan, then let him be.

  She was so like Bluebell. Her hair was mousier, she was not as tall and her face a different shape; but that gaze – hard, uncompromising – Skalmir had seen it a thousand times on the face of his wife. He liked to think that Bluebell’s hardness was tempered with kindness, loyalty. But this must be how she appeared to her enemies. A terrifying machine of death.

  He raised his head, looked around the infirmary. What was there for him but to wait for Blicstowe to be liberated? Was he a coward? Should he creep into Willow’s bower and cut her throat? Should he smuggle himself out on a cart of the dead and find Bluebell? The walls seemed closer than they had before. Snowy had passed his days in the infirmary quietly, as though there wasn’t war and death outside.

  Now, after meeting Willow, it felt closer than ever.

  Modolf and Ragnar came unarmed and Willow made quick work of them. She had almost been disappointed that Ragnar hadn’t a weapon on him. She would have enjoyed a fight; a wound. Instead, the moment she had run Modolf through, Ragnar had scrambled for the door. A thrown knife in his back stopped him in his tracks. He fell to the ground and Willow grasped him by his ankles, dragged his struggling body back to the altar, and driven her sword directly through his heart. The blood that flowed out of him was dark, dark red. Almost black in the dim room. He and Modolf bled and bled, and the life left them as she told them how they had betrayed Maava, but she didn’t know if they heard. They made no sound nor motion.

  Willow knelt in their blood and prayed.

  I heard your voice. I know you are there.

  An hour passed. Another. The blood grew sticky on her clasped hands. Over and over she called Him, and at length felt something gathering, as though the air was crystallising around her ears.

  She lay on her stomach on the altar, face down in all the blood, her hands hanging on to the triangle Hakon had made for her. And she begged.

  ‘Maava, come to me. Come to me. Come to me.’ Her voice grew hoarse.

  The air grew denser.

  Her body began to prickle. Perspiration burst out of her pores and ran like rivers over her.

  The atmosphere thickened, collecting around her eyes and her ears, pressing on them.

  Then a huge crack, and the pressure released. Willow opened her eyes and looked up. She saw silver light, and her breath caught in her throat.

  The light coalesced into vaguely human form. Her eyes bugged. ‘Maava?’

  As she said His name, the human form resolved. At first she couldn’t make out His face; it was both familiar and handsome, and an unrecognisable blur of sharded light. But the more she focussed on the familiar face, the more clearly He took form. Until all the silver light dropped away and she found herself lying on the floor, soaked
in blood, at the feet of a sweet-faced young man with dark hair and eyes. He reminded her a little of Wylm, Avaarni’s father, and a little of Æthlric, her own father. Even a little of Uncle Robert. As she thought about these resemblances, His hair and eye colour shivered and changed and resolved again, as though He was making His appearance up as He manifested.

  ‘My lord,’ she said.

  Maava leaned down to grasp her hand, and His skin was oily like butter. She gripped hard and He pulled her to her feet, blood dripping off her hands. He smiled, and His face changed and shifted again. It grew more familiar now, more sure of itself.

  ‘Willow,’ He said. ‘Here I am.’

  Twenty-eight

  Bluebell was not good at waiting.

  For the first two days after she’d crushed the skeleton army, her body had been recovering and so she had submitted to quiet days at the beach camp. But as soon as her muscles stopped aching, she began to pace and complain. The sky had turned leaden, so she couldn’t see the moon at night to know how quickly it waned.

  By the fourth day she was standing on the rock above the giants’ lair and shouting down at them, her hand firmly around Hyld’s collar. ‘Come out!’ she called. ‘The dog is here to visit you.’

  After ten minutes of that, she began throwing stones. If they couldn’t be lured out with promises of dog cuddles, perhaps they could be annoyed out. She jumped up and down on the rock. Banged it with the end of her spear.

  Nothing and nothing.

  The secret passage from the cave near the camp was closed too, a huge boulder moved into place thirty yards in. She had already been there. Why would they not open their doors and listen to her? She had their blood in her veins, after all.

  Steadfastly, though, they ignored her.

  Bluebell crouched and felt all around the rock for gaps and cracks. When she found one, she lay down on her belly with her mouth up against it and started to call, ‘Hey! Hey!’ She could make her voice big to be heard over battle, and this is what she did now, calling, ‘Hey!’ over and over again with each breath. Hyld had wandered a little way off and was sniffing around the base of a weed. Bluebell could feel the sun on the backs of her hands, too far away for more than the softest graze of warmth. She must have been here for more than an hour now. If they thought she would give up, they were wrong.

  A shadow fell over her, and she turned her head. Blocking the sun was a giant; one of the Knapsacks. Bluebell raised her hand to shield her eyes, and looked closer. The female one. Nepsed.

  ‘Hello,’ said Bluebell, though her throat was now hoarse. She cleared it and sat up properly. ‘You finally came. Very quietly, too. For somebody so …’ She cleared her throat again.

  Nepsed didn’t smile. ‘We have more than two entrances and exits,’ she said.

  Bluebell climbed to her feet. ‘I wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘Clearly,’ Nepsed said with a curl of her lip. ‘I’d admire your tenacity if it wasn’t so annoying.’

  Bluebell spread her arms. ‘As you see, I’m fully recovered from my last test, so there’s no real need to wait. I could do the second one today.’

  ‘All in good time.’

  ‘Perhaps giant time is a little slower than human time, though,’ Bluebell said. She had thought this through. ‘You understand I’ve left my city and my army to come and find you.’

  ‘I understand you don’t have a city,’ Nepsed replied darkly.

  Bluebell bit back her irritated response. ‘Which is why I can’t delay going back too much longer. My family is related to you. My father, my grandfather … recovering Blicstowe should be as important to you as it is to me.’

  ‘I didn’t say it wasn’t.’

  ‘But the timing is –’

  ‘It is no small thing to design a test for you.’

  Bluebell shrugged a little, puzzled and annoyed. ‘Aren’t you just going to shove a monster into a cave and send me in to fight it?’

  Nepsed was already shaking her head. ‘No. That was your test of strength. Cammoc and I will give you a test of mental acuity.’

  ‘Mental …?’ Bluebell’s stomach roiled. ‘What kind of test? I can’t read and I haven’t the interest in remembering dusty laws or in totting up sums.’

  Now Nepsed smiled. ‘You don’t think you will pass the test?’

  ‘It depends on what you ask of me.’ Then quieter: ‘Ash has all the brains.’

  ‘Are you saying you are stupid?’

  Bluebell bristled. ‘I am saying I will do anything to win the battle at Blicstowe. That is why I am here and it is your moral duty to help me, not to hinder me.’

  Nepsed softened a little. ‘We won’t be asking you to read or to recite laws or to add numbers,’ she said. ‘But we haven’t decided upon all the questions yet.’

  ‘So it will be some kind of quiz?’

  ‘Perhaps questions is the wrong word. Problems for you to solve.’

  ‘So it will be a puzzle?’

  Nepsed exhaled noisily, clearly growing frustrated. ‘It will be what it is, on the day that we call you to take the test.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The day after?’

  Nepsed put up both hands in a stop gesture. ‘No. Not when you say. When we say.’

  Bluebell opened her mouth to speak again, but then stopped herself. She had been annoying enough. She opted for an appeal to the heart.

  ‘Please make it soon,’ she said. ‘I do not know how my husband fares.’

  ‘Well,’ said Nepsed, taking the bait. ‘We will keep that in mind. Certainly.’

  ‘So. Tomorrow?’

  Nepsed sighed. ‘No.’

  Something hardened like steel in Bluebell’s guts. She whistled to Hyld. ‘We might go then.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I don’t mean back to camp.’

  The giant frowned. Her wispy hair was caught by a breeze and Bluebell could see every deep line in her forehead. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t have time to wait.’ She turned and began to walk back the way she had come.

  ‘Do you mean to return to Thyrsland?’ Nepsed called after her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With your sister?’

  The giant’s tone was even, but that evenness was forced, Bluebell could tell. She remembered, now, Gagel pointing at Ash and saying, ‘Make sure she comes.’ Curiosity prickled. Bluebell turned and faced Nepsed. ‘Yes, of course. All of my retinue. Ash will be needed at the battle to control the fires.’

  Nepsed pressed her lips together and said nothing.

  Bluebell turned away again, heart beating a little harder. ‘Tell Withowind I said thank you, but it is time I was on my way. I have lingered here too long already.’

  She would have liked to walk away faster, but Hyld was slow on the rocks. When she reached the other side of the plain she looked back. Nepsed still stood there, a distant figure now, unmoving.

  When she was nearly back at the camp, on the grassy verge that led down to the beach, Bluebell spied Ash to the south, hurrying away. Bluebell planted her feet and called Ash in her loudest voice, and Ash turned and stopped. Bluebell beckoned, and Ash came. Reluctantly perhaps.

  ‘We are packing up,’ Bluebell said, when Ash was a few feet away.

  She froze. ‘What? Why?’

  Bluebell didn’t answer the question. ‘How confident are you about your powers?’

  ‘I’m … well, very confident.’ Ash glanced around her. ‘The elementals are all around me. I can feel them with my mind, take them and squeeze them with a thought.’

  ‘Then we are done here.’

  ‘But the giants …’

  ‘Taking too long.’

  Ash looked as though she wanted to say something else, then nodded instead. ‘As you wish.’

  ‘I wish. Come.’ Bluebell led Ash down to the camp, to give orders to prepare to leave.

  At first light the next morning, while her soldiers were carrying crates to
the longboat, Withowind came. Bluebell saw her out of the corner of her eye, standing on the ridge with her silvery hair catching the morning sun. Smiling to herself, Bluebell glanced over at Ash, who was holding a tentpole steady while Frida untied the ropes attached to it.

  ‘Bluebell!’ This was Withowind, and Bluebell turned and lifted her hand in greeting.

  She whistled to Hyld and stamped up the beach to the ridge.

  Withowind was smiling. ‘Don’t go,’ she said. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘I have a city to lay siege to.’

  ‘Nepsed and Cammoc are even now preparing the second test.’

  Bluebell shrugged, enjoying the game. ‘I don’t really have time.’

  ‘Do you think you can win back Blicstowe without our help?’ An edge of cold touched the giant’s voice.

  ‘I cannot know that. But what I do know is that it’s impossible to win it back from here.’

  Withowind met her eyes. There was a challenge in her gaze, but it soon flickered out. ‘Come with me now. The second test.’

  ‘And the third tomorrow?’

  ‘It will …’

  ‘I’m not waiting.’

  ‘You need us.’

  Bluebell indicated Ash over her shoulder. ‘You need her.’

  Withowind fell silent, her expression unreadable.

  ‘The second test today. The third tomorrow. If you pass, we will come with you. We have our own ship, we have our own weapons. We do not have horses but we can keep pace with you on our feet.’ Withowind paused, then said, ‘We are stronger than you imagine.’

  ‘But I have to pass the tests?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  Now Withowind grew exasperated. ‘Is this how you have won so many battles? Annoying your enemies to death?’

  ‘My worth is of no consequence to you. It’s Ash you want. Though I presume nobody will tell me why.’

  ‘We cannot leave the island unless you pass the tests,’ Withowind said quickly. ‘We do not make the rules.’

  ‘Then who does?’

  ‘That will be clear soon.’

  Bluebell tilted her head, curious and annoyed at the same time, but sensing she had tested the limits of Withowind’s patience. A pair of seagulls flapped past. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘I’ll come with you now.’