by Cate Tiernan
“Lilja, what are you doing?” My mother stood there with the housekeeper, her arms full of linens.
“I wanted to see Faðir,” I said. “But listen: Why are he and Uncle Geir arguing?”
In our language, we had different words for an uncle from the father’s side and an uncle from the mother’s side. It translated to, literally, “Father-brother” and “Mother-brother.”
“Shah,” my mother said, taking my hand and pulling me away. “They’re not arguing. They’re both big bears of men and talk loudly. Now go have breakfast. There’s cold rabbit from last night.”
So I ran off. The next morning, my father and my uncle and my uncle’s men and some of my father’s men set off to go hunting for the wild boars that ran through the woods.
It was sunset before my father and his men came home. My father looked weary and heartsick: A tragedy had occurred. Uncle Geir, though unfamiliar with our land, had laughingly challenged my father to a race. My father shouted a warning at him, but Geir refused to listen. “He was ever headstrong,” my father said.
Uncle Geir and his men had rushed on ahead through the woods, despite my father’s shouted cautions. As we all knew, in one place the woods stopped suddenly, dropping away to a steep cliff. The sea had reclaimed the land there, and the huge, sharp boulders below were lapped by white-capped waves. My uncle and his men had been unable to stop on their fast horses, and they had all gone over the cliff. By the time my father and his men had climbed down with ropes, they had already been washed away.
I was crying by the time my father finished the story, and so were Eydís and Háakon. My oldest sister, Tinna, and my older brother, Sigmundur, bore the news stoically, as befitted the children of Úlfur the Wolf. But I sobbed into my mother’s skirt. My one and only uncle, and now he was gone forever. What a tragedy.
I blinked slowly, leaving behind the severe, beautiful stone cliffs of Iceland and awakening to my cozy room at River’s. I hadn’t thought about my uncle in centuries. Now, with a grown-up’s hindsight, I saw the truth. My uncle and his men had not died in a tragic hunting accident. My father and his men had killed them, so he would be the only brother left and have all his family’s power.
I put my fist up to my mouth, overcome with sad horror. Until Geir came, I hadn’t even known he existed. And apparently there had been others—also killed by my father, or by Geir? My mind darted from one ancient conversation or snippet of knowledge to the next: Growing up, I’d had no cousins, had thought both my parents were only children and that their parents had died when they were young. Now I had no idea if that was true. Maybe they had each systematically ensured their positions as sole heirs.
My mother had known the truth about my uncle’s death—I was sure of it. She had looked grim and determined all that day. I’d always thought of my father as the harsh, ambitious one. Now I realized that my mother had been an equal partner to him.
Oh goddess. Until I was in my twenties, I’d had no idea I was even immortal. Just that had been a huge shock. Until I’d come to River’s Edge, I hadn’t put all the clues together to realize that my father had been the head of one of the eight major houses of immortals. And it was only now, today, that my brain was admitting what he and my mother had probably done to ensure their position.
I was the child of murderers.
I had another thought: Knowing what they did about ruthless, deadly sibling rivalry, why on earth had my parents had five children?
I sat up in my bed and hugged my knees to my chest, now wide awake. My breathing became shallow as a possibility occurred to me, and though I would never know for sure, as soon as I thought it, it sank like truth to the bottom of my stomach. My parents had five children, knowing that, most likely, only one of us could be the head of our clan.
My brothers and sisters and I had loved one another. We had shared and played together and cooperated.
It was one thing to kill a stranger or an enemy. It was another thing altogether to have enough ambition to kill someone you loved. A person strong enough to kill siblings he or she actually loved—that would be a very strong person indeed. That person would be ruthless enough, determined enough to actually be the head of the House of Úlfur.
I was shaking with cold all over again and untangled myself from my blankets to turn up my radiator. I got a glimpse of my messed-up face and grimaced. I put on a clean flannel shirt since it buttoned and wouldn’t have to go over my head. With an immortal’s typical recuperative powers, I’d be fine in a day or two, all trace of injury gone. But right now I felt like… um, like I’d been in a car wreck.
I’d just looped and knotted a scarf around my neck, trying to remember what Lorenz had done, when a gentle tap on the door alerted me to River’s presence.
“Come in,” I called.
“Hi,” she said. “Feeling a little better?”
“Not really.”
“Do you want some lunch? There was chicken soup.”
I nodded. “That sounds good.” Then the juxtaposition of this normal conversation and the horrible thoughts I’d just been having sort of clashed in my mind, and I burst into tears.
Here’s a tip: Try not to cry when you have a broken nose. It’s a big, painful mess.
I was so tired of crying. Tired of having huge, soul-crushing realizations about a life that, while stupid, selfish, and pointless, had never before forced me to face any truths about myself.
“Nastasya,” River said at last. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.” I sat up and got the box of tissues by my bed. People here tried to use cloth handkerchiefs instead of these, but I hadn’t drunk that Kool-Aid yet. I mean, it’s a tissue. Please.
I started lobbing used tissues into my wastepaper basket.
“What do you think happened?”
I couldn’t look at her as I said out loud the words that had been eating into me for days. “Maybe… it’s just my darkness? I feel like it’s coming out, like it’s affecting everything around me. My job. My magick. Everything.”
River was silent for several minutes while I played with the fringes on the end of my scarf.
“Hmm,” she said at last. “And our other option is to wonder who would try to hurt you.”
I looked up, wishing I could blame this on someone else. “Incy, I guess. That’s the only one I can think of.” Would I feel him, if he were nearby? Would River pick up on his darkness? She could sense mine.
“Okay. Now, why do you think you caused this?”
“I don’t know,” I said, then I blurted the inevitable. “I’m just dark! I’m the dark child of dark parents, from a long line of dark ancestors. I can’t escape it! It’s useless to try.” I started crying again.
River’s hand stilled on my shoulder. “You believe that?”
“There’s no believe or not-believe,” I choked out. “It just is. That’s how it is. That’s the reality.” Oh my God, I hated reality so, so much. I would take fantasy any day. When River didn’t say anything, I went on, telling her about what I’d realized about my father, my uncle, my parents.
“That’s who I’m descended from,” I said. “That’s the blood in my veins.” I looked at River’s face and saw compassion but also a thoughtful stillness, as if I were a puzzle she was trying to figure out.
“And I wanted to be his heir?” I said. “I wanted to be the daughter worthy of Úlfur the Wolf? What was I thinking? I must have been crazy! And Reyn!” I was getting more and more worked up, thoughts and pain spilling out of me like blood from a wound.
“What about Reyn?” River asked.
I took a shuddering breath. “That… thing we have between us. I don’t know what it is. But we have this… thing. He’s the winter raider, the Butcher of Winter, responsible for the deaths of who knows how many! I’m the sole heir to the House of Úlfur the Murderer! That’s us. If we actually got together, the world would explode! I knew it would be a disaster, but I mean it really would be a disaster!”
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nbsp; “You feel that you’re so dark that there isn’t any choice anymore?” River asked.
“There never was a choice,” I said bleakly. “That was… an illusion. Or wishful thinking. But there’s no escape.” This hurt much more than I would have expected.
“Nastasya, listen to me.” River sounded very serious and put her hands on my shoulders, forcing me to look at her. “There’s always, always, always a choice. You have to believe me. Most of us start in darkness. Many of us stay there. I don’t know if it’s just an immortal thing, but I’ve found that to be true, across the world. But it is also true that there is always a choice. No matter how dark you are, no matter what you think your heritage is or how inevitable your fall is, you can always make a choice in the next second to be different.”
I’d heard it before. She just didn’t understand. Yes, her family had been slave traders, which was bad. My parents had eliminated their siblings. And probably done even worse things. Things I prayed I would never find out.
“You don’t believe me,” she said when I was silent. “You think I don’t understand and that you and your family were so much darker than mine.”
Dammit. “My face is not that expressive.”
“Nas, I know you.” Her voice was gentle but insistent. “I really do know you. I know you all the way down. I see everything you are, light and dark and everything in between. I see things you haven’t even discovered yet. And I love you, as is.”
My throat closed up. She was lying. I wondered if I could leap out the window before River could stop me.
“Forget it, it’s locked,” she said.
“You’re eavesdropping!” I accused her angrily.
“Please. You hate talking about emotion. Right now you’re so uncomfortable you’re practically writhing, you have a ‘shut up’ expression on your face, and your eyes flicked toward the window. A kindergartner could have put it together.”
“I need to get out of here.” I stood up so quickly, I almost knocked her over. Lightning fast, she grabbed my hand and yanked. I sat down hard on my bed, jarring my nose and everything else. I was shocked—hadn’t even seen her move.
“You will sit and listen to me,” she said. My eyes widened at the thread of steel in her voice that I’d never heard. “I need to show you something.”
I opened my mouth—I don’t even know what I was going to say—but in the next moment River put her hand on my face, her fingers outspread. She muttered something and drew some sigils on me with her free hand.
And in a few moments, I began to see… a scene. It wasn’t like before, where I felt I was actually there and could smell things and feel the air on my face. This was shallower—more like watching a movie. The edges were blurry, and if I looked at something too long, it faded.
Once again I saw River in her youth, black-haired and beautiful with a hard smile and eyes the color of a rock in an icy stream. I saw the two men I’d seen at the slave auction, her brothers, and there were two more men there. I say men, but they all looked very young, in their late teens or early twenties. The family resemblance told me these were her other two brothers. The guys had goofy haircuts and wore clothing styles that had been ancient by the time I was born.
I was aware of River next to me, now singing softly under her breath.
The younger River and her brothers were in a small, dark room with walls of blackened wood. They were on a boat. A single candle flickered on the table between them.
“So it’s decided, then?” one brother asked. I could understand his speech, though he must have been speaking Middle Italian.
“Yes,” said Diavola. “When they’re on the road to Savona, in the woods, two hours’ ride from here—there.” Her long, slim finger pointed to a place on a parchment map. “We can ambush them.”
“Who will actually do it?” one of the younger brothers asked.
The oldest-looking brother (a small distinction) said, “We must all do it. Diavola will set the flare and startle the horses. Mazzo, you will dispatch the driver and the two outriders. Outriders first, then driver. Michele, you take the two hind-riders. Then we’ll all converge on the carriage and—” He clasped his hands together and swung his arms in a fast arc, right to left, as though holding a sword.
I understood. They were planning to kill someone. A handful of people.
The youngest brother, Michele, nodded slowly. “It’s a good plan. Then the five of us will rule together, like the five fingers on one hand.”
It hit me: Diavola and her brothers were plotting to kill their parents and seize their power. Their own parents.
I was speechless at this realization, and then I saw Diavola and the oldest brother, Benedetto, exchange a glance. In an instant, it was all clear to me: Diavola and Benedetto had another plan, a secret one. The two of them would then kill the three younger brothers. So that the family power would be divided by only two, instead of five.
This was so painful to me, seeing it. The five immortals of the Genoa house reminded me of the five of us from the Icelandic house. I’d wondered how my brothers and sisters and I would have grown up, if we would have turned on one another like vipers. Here it was already being played out.
So inherited darkness did consume a person, in the end. In the end, there was no escape, and the darkness would have consequences that you would never be able to live down. To live with. To forgive.
My breath was coming fast and shallow—I wanted to leave this scene. I didn’t want to see any more of River’s horrible fall.
River sensed my feelings and slowly drew us out of the half spell, the vision.
When our heads had cleared and we were firmly in reality again, I stared at River, trying to see a trace of cruelty in her sad and haunted expression.
I cleared my throat, the sound loud and startling in the quiet of my room. “You… killed your parents?” Please deny it.
My heart fell as River nodded, an ancient anguish on her face. “Yes.” One side of her mouth rose in a bitter smile. “A thousand years of therapy isn’t enough.”
“And you and Benedetto killed your other brothers?” Wait—I remembered her saying that she has four brothers. Still has. Not had.
“No, thank the goddess,” said River. She drew in a deep breath and let it out, as if releasing pain and memory. “Amazingly, we didn’t. It didn’t happen that—same night. Like it was supposed to. And before we had another opportunity, I was… saved.” Her eyes met mine, and a little of the pain had lessened, eased by the remembrance of who she was now, today. Not a thousand years ago.
“Saved? So… you accepted the Lord as your savior?”
“There’s more than one way of being saved.” Her voice sounded more like herself. She straightened her shoulders and seemed familiar again, only the barest, faintest shadow of Diavola in her eyes. “A teacher came. And if you think you were resistant—well. I was much more so. But she broke through. At last. She saved me. Set me on the path toward light. Taught me all about… choices. And slowly, I convinced my brothers.” She looked up. “And now I’m teaching you and others. Sometimes I think that maybe this helps with the karma of… killing our parents. And then, maybe someday you’ll be teaching someone else and sharing your own story.”
I snorted reflexively, then winced with pain.
“And you’re friends with your brothers today?” I asked.
“More than friends. They’re my brothers. We share the same blood, the same history.”
“And they’ve forgiven you, for wanting to kill them?” Or maybe they didn’t know.
River smiled wryly. “They still throw it in my face at holidays.”
I didn’t see how she could be so… normal today. After all she had been.
“Most of us start in darkness,” she said, echoing her earlier words. “Some of us raise darkness to an art. I’m trying to help people who don’t want to be dark. One person at a time. Right now, it’s your turn.”
I didn’t know what to say.
&nbs
p; River stood gracefully, as if she hadn’t just stunned me with her revelation. “Why don’t you rest some more? Then come down to dinner?”
I nodded slowly, and she left my room. I drew my knees to my chest again and carefully rested my bruised cheek on one knee. Too much to take in.
CHAPTER 15
Have you ever been making something in a blender and you have just a little extra and you don’t want to waste it, so you go ahead and put it in, and then when you start the blender it totally spews out from beneath the lid?
That’s how my brain felt. For most of my life, I’d had maybe one or two new ideas or concepts introduced to me a year. Like electricity. That was a big year. In the last two months, there had been several huge, earth-shattering, sanity-testing revelations every day. Now it was all leaking out through my ears. Metaphorically.
The dinner bell rang. I sighed, tucked my scarf around my neck, and headed out my door.
Reyn was just coming out of his room two doors down. I started to force myself to smile, to not act like a paranoid loser, but my smile froze in place as Amy, laughing, came out of Reyn’s room also.
“And you just left him there?” she said to him.
Reyn nodded, looking younger and lighter than he usually did. “For a day and a half.”
Amy laughed again, leaning against him.
Then they saw me.
Here’s an example of how I was rocketing toward maturity: I went ahead and forced the smile. It probably looked like a pained grimace, but it was the best I could do.
Amy immediately came up to me, genuine concern on her face. “I heard what happened,” she said. “I’m so sorry! But Anne fixed you up, didn’t she?”
“Yes.” I had peeled off the nose tape, slowly and painfully. But I still looked distinctly raccoonish.
Amy leaned her head toward mine conspiratorially. “Did she make you drink tea?” Her eyes were full of warmth and humor, and I couldn’t help liking her. It wasn’t her fault that Reyn and I had a horrible, confusing history and that I was a complete moron emotionally.