After the Fall (Raud Grima Book 2)

by Sophia Martin

  Still wiping tears from my eyes, my nose running so’s I had to find a bit of rag for it—the Gods’ way of telling you no sorrow ain’t worth their laughter, as Amma would say—I took the quiet ways to Gronicks. Gronicks is in the middle of the northern-most part of the Lavsektor and just south of the Hársektor, where I was, and it took me no time at all to find my old neighborhood. Sure enough, the building was standing—in fact, so was the rest of the street and a fair number of buildings on the next street besides. I knew without checking that our garret weren’t taken up by no one, and I’d make it my own. So when I seen the blue smoke just a ways further south, I’d no need to even take it for a good omen. It only confirmed what I already knew. This was my place, and it always had been, though my family never owned it. I promised myself I’d get the waxed box from the hiding spot at the top of the stairs and move it here soon as I could, but seeing the blue smoke made me want to see Ivarr more’n anything else in the world right then, so off I went.

  I found the fire in an alley in the south of Gronicks, but no Ivarr. I almost started crying all over again, for part of me was sure he weren’t there—the smoke was a trick of some slasher, or maybe Halla Hundrbeinn, come to think of it, or maybe Ivarr’d come and built it, and then had to run off, or something worse’d happened. Have some sense, Ginna-my-girl, Amma’s voice scolded in my head. He’s gone for food or some such. Can’t expect the man to stay by the fire like he’s keeping a vigil, can we? So I started to sit down beside it, when I heard a hiss behind me.

  There were stairs leading down to a basement, and when I leaned over the side to see, I about jumped a foot when I seen Ivarr’s face staring up. He grinned. He’d had his revenge on me for scaring him the time before.

  The tears threatened again, though I felt my heart lighten at seeing him, and I about gave myself up for mad at last with all the feelings what were thumping around inside me. Ivarr must’ve seen something was amiss, for he climbed out of his hiding spot and took my hands in his.

  “Ginna?” he said, soft-like.

  Then of course I’d no chance of keeping the tears back and I blarted like a babe, soaking the front of his thick-knit cardie at the shoulder. I felt a right fool, but I couldn’t stop.

  Ivarr made low noises like I was a babe indeed, and a squawling one at that, and I thought he’d make a fair Da someday, but it only made me cry more. I cursed myself for a useless idiot, but it did no good. Finally Ivarr managed to dig a bottle out of a pack without letting go of me, and he put it to my mouth. It was some kind of brandy and it burned like fire in my mouth and throat, but sure enough, it steadied me.

  Snuffling and blowing my nose, my shoulders still twitching and my breath still catching, I sat back from him and tried not to start up again.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  I didn’t know where to start. Ótti left, I thought, but that weren’t the worst of it, not by a mile. Gram’s dying. Amma told me to leave. But none of that was the worst, and I knew it.

  It was the rage. The thing with my eyes. That was the worst of it. And if I told him about that, wouldn’t he tell me to leave too? Or maybe he’d say nothing, but never burn the smoke again. And I couldn’t face it.

  I’d never have to tell him. He’d never hear of it, being gone so much. I could wait for the smoke like I ever did, come to see him when he burned it, and have a friend still for a while. He’d never have to know what a monster I’d become.

  “You can tell me,” he said, them sad eyes looking at me like I’d never done no wrong.

  “I can’t,” I said, and it was a fool thing to say, for now he knew there was something awful and I couldn’t pretend it was just Ótti leaving or Gram dying. I’d have told him either of those without a thought.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I can’t lose you, too.” The tears threatened hard then and I had to breathe in deep through my nose.

  Something changed in his face, I’d no words for it, for I weren’t sure what it was. His eyebrows relaxed and he leaned a bit back, but he weren’t angry, I could tell. “Ginna, there’s nothing you could do that would put an end to our friendship, save tell me you didn’t want to be friends anymore.”

  A bitter laugh come out my mouth at that, and I shook my head, shoulders hunching with the weight of it all.

  “Just tell me, Ginna. Whatever it is, I can take it.”

  “I don’t know what it is, to speak the truth,” I said after another moment’s hesitation. “I’ve gone mad a bit, I reckon.”

  Someone else, Dag, say, might’ve expressed some impatience with me for dancing about the answer, but Ivarr just sat steady as ever and gazed at me like he had all day and night if I needed it.

  “After the last time I seen you…” I begun, and then told him all about the woman, without any details about where I’d been to get Ótti’s laudanum, and then told him everything else: going to Grumflein, finding Raud Gríma’s things, killing that first slasher… then coming home only to have Ótti leave me over the damned laudanum, and on and on. I cried a fair bit over Gram and then again when I got to how Amma wanted me to move. Every time I cried Ivarr let me soak his cardie all over again.

  Finally the whole story come out and I was empty. I was still leaning against his shoulder, feeling like I’d just vomited everything inside me, all wrung out, when he said, “So you’ve no idea who that woman was, then?”

  I wiped my eyes with the backs of my hands and sat up. “No,” I said.

  He nodded and his eyebrows drew together, though he weren’t looking at me so much as out into nothing. “Seems like she’s the key to all this.”

  And it was another of them times, when it was like I’d known it all along, for of course, she had to be the key to it all, but then, I’d not thought of it like that before. “You mean, you think that what’s wrong with me, the rage and all, it’s on account of her somehow?”

  Ivarr nodded. “I do. I think she wasn’t just any slasher victim. You said you’d never seen her before, so she wasn’t from the Undergrunnsby.”

  I shook my head slow-like. “I don’t know everyone down there, though.”

  Ivarr gave a little shrug. “Maybe not, but she wasn’t familiar to you at all, am I right? I think even if you haven’t really met everyone in the Undergrunnsby, you’ve probably still seen everyone more than once, you know? You’d have felt like she was familiar.”

  I had to admit he was right about that.

  “And I’m guessing she wasn’t from Sudbattir, either.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  Another shrug. “You said that kid you saved was in Holy Roots, right?”

  I nodded.

  “That’s in Midderha.”

  I cocked my head. “It’s just north of lower Sudbattir.”

  “Yeah, but the kid wasn’t from Sudbattir, was he?”

  “You’re never suggesting there’s something in common to the slashers’ victims, are you? They’re not organized. And I don’t think the slashers I killed to save the boy were the same ones what killed that woman,” I argued.

  “No,” Ivarr said with a wave of his hand. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that there’s a pattern to where they take their victims.”

  “The woman was in the tunnels and the boy was above ground in Sudbattir.”

  “Sure, but my point is I think they’re avoiding certain parts of the city. You know, they nab someone in one place and then take them somewhere else. Somewhere where they won’t have trouble.”

  I frowned at that. He might be right, leastways ’cause the slashers what’d killed the woman and taken the boy had taken them both somewhere else from where they got them. I’d not known the woman, so that meant I’d never seen her underground before, and the boy’d told folk he was in Midderha when they got him. “It’s only two times,” I said. “We can’t know if it’s a pattern.” I thought back over what he’d said. “And it still don’t make sense, what you said about her not being
from Sudbattir. Why wouldn’t she be?”

  “Wasn’t the part of the tunnels you encountered her in under Sudbattir?” he asked.

  I thought about that and two things come to mind. First, he was right, it was under the northernmost corner of Sudbattir. And second, how’d he known where it was? Which was the next thing I asked him.

  Ivarr sighed. “Because I know where you get the laudanum, Ginna.”

  My eyes must’ve gone wide at that, for he sighed again and shook his head.

  “It’s nothing to worry about, I won’t tell anyone.”

  “But how?”

  “Maybe I followed you, once,” he said with a shrug.

  “What?”

  “I was concerned!” he said. “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t going somewhere bad to get Ótti’s stupid laudanum. You would’ve done anything for her, Ginna. I could see that. I could just picture you going off to talk to some of Ekkill’s people or maybe Bolli Gríss.” Bolli Gríss weren’t much better’n Atli only he lacked Atli’s ambition, holding only a narrow western district called Vígbúa. He was so fat he looked like a big ball with a plug at the top, like a gourd bottle or some such.

  “I’ve no use for Ekkill or Bolli Gríss,” I said.

  “Well, I didn’t know that. So I followed you, and it sure wasn’t easy! But I saw you go into the Machine. I saw the guy that opened the door. He looked weird, but not dangerous.”

  “I don’t trust him, though,” I admitted.

  “Good,” Ivarr said. “I hope you don’t trust anyone, except maybe Amma.”

  “And you,” I said under my breath, but if he heard me, he never showed it.

  I’d almost lost the thread of what we’d been saying completely by then, but I closed my eyes tight and tried to bring it back. “So you think the slashers what took that woman never come from Sudbattir, but somewhere else?”

  I opened my eyes and looked at him. He was looking back, rubbing his fingers against the stubble on his chin.

  “Do you know where?” I asked, startled.

  “I’ve a guess.”

  “What?” I said for the second time in ten minutes. Ivarr was full of surprises, it seemed.

  “Look, what time is it? Midafternoon?”

  I’d not been paying any attention to the time, which weren’t like me, but Amma and Rokja weren’t waiting for me no more, so what did it matter? I cast a look at the sky above, and decided he was probably right. “Sure enough.”

  “What’d you say we take a walk up to Vitraust?”

  ~~~

  As we made our way—for walking doesn’t quite capture it, what with all the climbing over rubble and hiding in spots to avoid the attention of toadies and all—I tried to talk to Ivarr about Gaddi’s dealings with Styrlakker without saying what I heard at all. Which was about as confusing as it sounds.

  “So, you’re back again in the city,” I said, and he gave me a nod without saying nothing on account of he was climbing over a broken slab of concrete what’d crushed two cars. “Seems quick since the last time, not that I’m complaining.”

  “Yeah,” Ivarr said with a grunt. “Gaddi had business in town.”

  “Did he, then?” I said, just standing on the other side, watching with my arms crossed as Ivarr struggled. “What kind?”

  “Don’t know,” Ivarr managed, and then he was over the worst of it and he had to take care not to come down the other side too fast.

  “Did you capture something he wanted to sell?” I said as I walked ahead of him on a path someone’d made through metal sheets, pipes, and broken glass.

  “I don’t think so. Things are getting bad even on the sea,” he said.

  “They are?”

  “It’s like Styrlakker told you. Leika-Konungdis is getting control back over everything. There’s submarines to watch out for again—it’s the first time since the city fell that there’s been any of them. And patrol boats. I bet there’s the whole fleet grouped up somewhere, probably north. I hear that’s where she is. Up north somewhere.”

  All of a sudden my cardie weren’t warm enough and I wrapped my arms around myself to stave off a shiver. “She’s coming down, if you believe Styrlakker.”

  I took him up into a long building what was half demolished but ran all the way down the street. It used to be a store full of garments for rich folk—not the courtiers, what got all their clothes made special and all, but for Ivarr’s class, well-off merchants and the like. Now, though, it was missing almost all of the wall on the street side so’s you could see every floor, like a doll house I seen in a shop window once, sure enough. You had to be careful as you went on account of parts of the floor were loose and ready to fall out, but they looked just like the good parts of the floor. So for a bit I didn’t say nowt else and neither did Ivarr, who was stepping careful-like where I’d stepped before him.

  We made it out the other end and Ivarr said, as though there’d been no pause, “Styrlakker’s right, as far as I know. We’ve been talking to anyone we can every time we stop anywhere, and it’s what everyone’s saying. She’s just about got all the soldiers assembled and when she does, she wants to take back the city.”

  “We can’t let her,” I said, though I’d no idea how any of us could stop her.

  “Sounds like Styrlakker’s trying to arm people.”

  I seen another chance to prod Ivarr about Gaddi’s visit to Styrlakker. “He is, at that, but what chance’ve we when the city’s all in factions?”

  I glanced back at Ivarr when I said it, but nothing special showed in his face and all he said was, “That’s true.” He sounded right gloomy about it, as well. I had to conclude he knew nowt about what Gaddi was up to.

  That subject not leading anywhere good, I decided to try another. “So why’d you send up the blue smoke, anyway, Ivarr? You find me another book, then?”

  Ivarr gasped and stopped short. I turned to face him.

  “I almost forgot!” he said, and pulled a small brown book from his coat. He reached it out to me and I took it. On the cover, it said, Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar. My eyes went to Ivarr’s face.

  “No,” he said, holding up a hand. “It’s just the known fragments you’ve seen before. Nothing new. But I liked the look of it and I thought you might want it.”

  Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar is an old epic poem what’s mostly been lost but for a few pieces. I should’ve known from the book’s size it weren’t no unheard of find, comprising the whole saga somehow. But I clutched it tight, don’t you know, and gave Ivarr a smile. “Thank you,” I said. “I’m right pleased to have it.”

  He grinned right back, his eyes losing that sad look, and off we went again.

  As we walked I chanced a look in the book from time to time. There were a few pages of pictures, but nothing like the copy of Elga Ivarr’d brought me last time. Still, I admired the images, for whoever’d made them had some skill with a brush, and I took in a line or two of the saga every few steps.

  It’s on account of that, I reckon, that I never noticed we were walking into a street occupied by a fair large group of slashers.

  We’d come most of the way through Midborghá to Vitraust, and if I’d had any sense and weren’t nose-in-a-book I’d have taken us through another detour right about then. I knew that part of Midborghá was popular among slashers on account of it’s far enough from Atli’s territory and another boss named Úlfarr’s in Nordhafsida, which is east of Midborgha and just south of Vitraust. Slashers like to stay clear of toadies on account of there being some competition ’tween them for playthings and such, and toadies tend to get the upper hand. This particular spot was a good one for running into slashers, so much so that in my early days of working for Styrlakker I thought to maybe come wandering through here in hopes of picking a fight.

  Now here we were, walking into a pack of them nice as apples. And I’d no interest in fighting with them or provoking another attack of rage with Ivarr for a witness this time rather’n Ótti.

 
; “Fuck me for a damned halfwit,” I whispered, and pushed Ivarr into a building hoping no one’d spotted us yet.

  The building we found ourselves in was mostly standing upright, which weren’t no kindness to us on account of that made for fewer hiding spots. We’d no time to really look for some anyway, on account of I’d none of Luka’s favor that day, more’s the pity, and the slashers all started carrying on outside. Sure enough, they’d seen us.

  For a moment I looked at Ivarr, feeling real panic ’cause I knew we were either dead or he was going to see what I’d become. My fingers clutched at my sides and my lips pulled back from my mouth, as if panic were enough to stop the slashers from coming. I gave a thought to praying to Luka for mercy, but that was nowt but foolishness.

  Ivarr’s eyes locked with mine as we heard them calling to us, and I thought again of giving up some kind of prayer. But then the thought of what them slashers might do to Ivarr—for slashers’d prefer a woman, sure enough, or a boy like the one I’d saved, but they’ll make do with a man if one’s fallen into one of their traps, and no mistake. I could almost see what they’d do to Ivarr and I couldn’t stand it. I looked at his face, at his sad eyes, and quicker’n lightning my vision went red. I’d some notion of Ivarr giving a gasp, but I no longer cared what he thought of me. I seen a spot behind a broken door and shoved him towards it. Then I turned and waited for the slashers, my hands finding the dagger and the gun without my giving it a thought.

  ~~~

  “You weren’t kidding,” Ivarr said, coming out from behind the broken door.

  Just then my vision was fading off from its gold phase. I looked at him and was almost completely myself. I about vomited.

  Not that there was owt wrong with Ivarr, mind. But I was covered in blood, as before, and I’d the bodies at my feet to show where it’d all come from, and more’n one was missing an ear.

  Ivarr weren’t calm, exactly. No, his wide eyes showed the terror he felt, sure enough. But he stepped towards me careful-like and stretched out his hands, palms down, like you’d do to calm a horse. It struck me that I was sure turning into a right madwoman.