After the Fall (Raud Grima Book 2)

by Sophia Martin

  ’fore the rage could go completely and leave me sick, I cleaned the dagger on a scarf what weren’t soaked through with gore yet and put it away. I put the pistol in its holster, too, and stepped over the bodies and out into the street, leaving Ivarr to manage for himself.

  He followed me, which was more’n I expected, to be honest.

  “Ginna,” he said in a voice to use with mad horses. “Ginna, it’s me, Ivarr.”

  I gave him a smirk, then, though my stomach was rolling fit to come out whole through my mouth.

  “Ginna,” he said again, only there was relief in his voice now.

  I found a piece of concrete to sit on. I couldn’t decide whether to pull off my cardie, for I was cold, but it was sodden and I suspected the ears’d found their way into the pockets.

  That my clothes were blood-soaked and hiding cut ears, but it weren’t enough no more to make me yank’em off in disgust made me want to cry.

  As it turned out, I’d no need to make the decision, for Ivarr took hold of one of my sleeves and tugged the wretched thing off me. He’d retrieved a coat from one of the bodies, and I recoiled to see it, for I knew it from one of the slashers I’d shot, but all’s he did was use it to wipe my skin as clean as he could. He took off his own cardie and dressed me like I was his child, and I thought, There now, Ginna-girl, you’re back to being a babe again. And I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry, so I just grimaced and started up at the sky. And noticed it was growing dark.

  Another badly planned outing, Amma’s voice said. You couldn’t’ve set out in the morning, then? No. You knew it was midafternoon, but you agreed to go cross the whole city for a chance at answers in Vitraust District.

  Well, I’d not reckoned on how long it would take, though I should’ve, on account of it was near the same path as I’d taken to Grumflein. But I tended to forget how bad parts of Midborghá were, and how long it took to cross them.

  Just then I’d no idea what to do about night falling and the fact that we were no doubt still an hour from Vitraust, on account of all the ruins ’tween us and it. And of course, just because I’d killed another… I weren’t even sure how many slashers—five? Seven? It didn’t mean that a dozen more weren’t lurking round the next corner in this or that part of the city. My head rolled forward and I let it hang, feeling nausea quake through me and wishing I was dead.

  I couldn’t even begin to worry about what Ivarr must think of me. If I started that I’d just curl up in the street and wait for the slashers to find me. Only I knew that weren’t true. I’d go on killing them. It was stronger’n I was.

  “Ginna,” Ivarr said, his voice breaking through my misery. I don’t know how long he’d been trying to reach me.

  I turned my head to one side to look at him, though I feared what I’d see in his face.

  “We should keep going,” he said. His eyes looked kind as ever, and I marveled at him. “We’ve got to get you to Vitraust. I’m almost sure I was right.”

  Right about what, I wanted to ask, though I’d harried him with questions about his theory at first as we traveled, and he’d not consented to answer a one. I’d no will to harry him again now, don’t you know. A great shudder rushed through me, but I let him pull me up, and followed as he led us through the rest of Midborghá. After the first few minutes I even stopped thinking about any of it, on account of realizing Ivarr was right good at moving through the city. And why wouldn’t he be? He might spend most of his time at sea, but when he come back he always found a new place to hole up.

  We encountered no one else, and after about an hour the light weren’t too far gone. We come to the great open square—only it was more of an uneven circle, in fact, which had the opera house at its centre. The opera house was in ruins, of course, but almost all of the rubble was cleared, on account of the vigjadises of Freyja using a lot of it and moving the rest when they rebuilt Freyja’s temple.

  The temple itself stood on the southeastern corner of the square, and it was two stories high, though it had spires on each side what towered over all the other ruined buildings in the area. It was painted red and green, with some black and gold trim, for those were all colours associated to Her. There weren’t no vigjadises or novices hanging about, like you might expect on account of their whoring. They don’t engage in such loitering, most likely ’cause they’ve no need to. Folk what want to call on their services just walk right into the temple itself, leastways during the open hours.

  It occurred to me then that we’d missed the daylight hours, and no doubt the temple’d be closed, and I was about ready to just find a nice corner somewhere and forget I was ever born, when Ivarr took my hand and dragged me up to the door anyway and used the great golden knocker.

  It weren’t longer’n a minute ’fore a little slat in the door slid opened and a pair of young blue eyes looked out. They looked at Ivarr first and then took me in more slow-like, widening at the sight of the blood. The slat closed without a fair-the-well and my heart sunk again. Then I heard an excited, high voice—a young girl, no doubt the owner of the eyes—and a lower voice respond. After another moment the heavy door swung inward.

  Ivarr never waited to be invited in, he just took my arm and stepped over the threshold, nice as apples. There was a novice girl in a fresh, green shift, standing there gawking, and I recognized her eyes from the door slat. Next to her stood an older woman in a red dress, maybe only a few years younger’n Amma. Her hair was steel-coloured and her face looked to be made of the same stuff.

  “We’re no Temple of Frigga,” she said, sharp-like, but I reckoned since they’d opened the door, they intended to at least offer us shelter.

  “She doesn’t need healing,” Ivarr said. “At least, not the physical kind. She’s uninjured.”

  It was then I seen the mural on the great wall opposite the door, and I about lost my footing though there weren’t nowt to trip on, nor was I walking at that moment. Ivarr looked up too, and he said, his voice full of breath, “Well, there you are.”

  The novice and the vigjadis both turned and looked as well, though it was clear enough they’d no sense for why.

  The painting on the wall was Freyja, no doubt, with her arms wide, wearing her colours of green, red, black and gold, painted with real metal, it looked like. She had gold rays coming out from around her like she was the sun, also painted with real metal. But what made Ivarr and me stop was her eyes. They were painted gold, too.

  “Mine never look like that, do they?” I whispered to him.

  Ivarr glanced at me, then turned back to the wall. “Not exactly. I mean, first of all, they glow red for most of the time. Then they go gold. Those…” He took a step forward and reached for the Goddess’s face, though it was far too high up to touch. “Those aren’t glowing, not like yours do.” He turned back to me, then, and his face weren’t frightened or nothing like that, just Ivarr’s soft-eyed look, like always. I was too frozen by the sight of the painting to move at all.

  The vigjadis cleared her throat. “Do you mean to say she’s had glowing eyes?” She nodded her chin at me.

  Ivarr nodded. “Red, then gold. When they’re red, it’s like she’s not herself at all.”

  The vigjadis said nowt for a time; it felt like a long time, you know how that is, though it weren’t probably all that long. Then she said, “Heidir, take them to the kitchen and see what there is left from supper.”

  The novice, who’d been watching us all with eyes like moons, jumped a bit and then took Ivarr and me each by the hand, just like a child might. She smiled at each of us and led us down the hall to the left. It was a dark hall, for they’d no lights in it, but it brightened at the end for it emptied into a large room with long tables and benches what had oil lamps on the walls. The sounds of a kitchen echoed from the other end. She took us clear through that room and into another dark hall, then we come out into the kitchen where the sounds were coming from. There were four novices there, two men and two women, and they were all cleaning dish
es and pots, drying them and putting them away and the like. When we come through the door they all stopped and stared at us and then turned their questioning eyes on Heidir, who looked pleased as a puffed up bird to be the one in charge of us.

  “We’re to give them what’s left from dinner,” she said, and I noted for the first time that her accent was fair noble. The vigjadis’s was more akin to what you might hear in Sudbattir, but not Heidir. I wondered how she come to be a novice for Freyja.

  The faces on the four others said right plain they’d never been asked the like before and they were wondering what to make of it all. They’d not missed the blood on my clothes, Ivarr’s cardie being the only exception. But they held their tongues well enough and one of them set about giving us bowls of soup and pieces of bread from their pantry. They sat us at a table, much smaller’n the ones next door. The others went back to cleaning.

  Ivarr and I gave each other a look and started eating. No sense wasting good food.

  After maybe ten minutes of this, I heard voices in the hall we’d come in through. Then three vigjadises, led by a fourth, the one we’d already met, come in one by one. And it was the second one what gave me a shock like seeing the mural of Freyja all over again. The vigjadis looked so much like Amma, save for her hair weren’t white, I about spit up my mouthful of soup.

  She seen me staring and looked right back, like she knew exactly what I was seeing.

  Her hair was a dark brown, like mine, only with streaks of gray. She wore it in a knot at the back of her neck. She had Amma’s eyes, though, and Amma’s mouth, except when I looked some more I decided her nose weren’t quite the same. Still, she looked just as thin and strong as Amma.

  When I finally tore my eyes from her and took in the rest of them, I realized another looked familiar to me. It was some time ’fore I placed the resemblance.

  They stopped and stood in a row across the little table from us. The one what looked familiar but I couldn’t place crossed her arms tight over her chest. She had reddish-gold hair, a long nose, and eyes green as leaves. I’d seen eyes like that somewhere.

  “Vigjadis Spaka says you’ve had glowing eyes,” the vigjadis what didn’t look like no one I knew said to me. She wore a black dress with gold trim, while the others all wore red and the novices wore green, so I reckoned she must be in charge.

  “That I have,” I said, putting down my spoon.

  “And she said you’ve not felt yourself when it happens,” the woman in black said.

  “You could say that,” I agreed.

  Ivarr kept silent, but he’d put down his spoon, too.

  The woman in black frowned at me, crossing her arms like the other vigjadis’d done. “But I understand your eyes go red?”

  “I suppose so. Leastways, I see red, and Ivarr says they glow red. I’ve never seen them, myself.”

  The black-clad vigjadis gave the others a look. They returned it, the one from the entryway with a shrug, the others more intense, like they wanted her to ask more questions.

  “When did this start?” the one in black asked me.

  I sighed. “Some time ago. Maybe, near a month? Not quite?”

  The one what was familiar made a little noise, and I looked at her, hard. That’s when it come to me.

  “Luka’s Chains,” I breathed and seen Ivarr flinch out of the corner of my eye, for I’d worn in a temple. “She must’ve been your sister.”

  The vigjadis went all pale, and the one what looked like Amma took her arm, and the one in black glared at me.

  “Explain yourself,” the one in black said.

  “It all started,” I said, then stopped, for a fear took me that I’d muddle it all up. I thought for a moment, and went on, careful-like. I was right sure that the woman in the tunnel was this vigjadis’s kin, and I had to take care how I told the story. So I did it slow and gentle, not giving too many details, but letting them know what’d happened anyhow.

  The one what must have been the woman’s sister sat down in another of the seats during the telling, and the one what looked like Amma rested her hands on that one’s shoulders, comforting-like. When I got done with the whole wretched tale, no one said nothing for a fair bit of time. The young ones had all stopped cleaning to listen and now they were staring with their mouths half-open, mostly at the sitting vigjadis. I was in no hurry to keep talking about any of it, though I still wanted answers. It was a strange spot for me, I confess, for I couldn’t decide whether to feel impatient or wish the floor would swallow me up.

  “So Ginna’s right, I take it?” Ivarr said at last, and everyone turned their eyes on him. “About that woman. She’s your sister, or something like that?” He was addressing the sitting vigjadis.

  She nodded. Great tears rolled from her eyes and down her cheeks.

  “Vigjadis Embla was Vigjadis Erna’s twin,” the black-clad vigjadis said after another pause. I’d not have guessed that; sure, there was a resemblance, but they didn’t look exactly alike. Though you’d probably wonder how I could be sure, considering the state the woman in the tunnels was in when I met her.

  It was something special, finally knowing her name. I considered the fact that she was a vigjadis against what I knew of slashers. These slashers must have been fair bold, to take a vigjadis for a victim.

  “Her eyes used to glow,” Vigjadis Erna said, looking at me through her tears. That gave me a deep shiver, and froze my tongue in my mouth. It was my luck Ivarr weren’t so shocked.

  He said, “Your sister had glowing eyes?”

  “She did, but they never glowed red,” said Erna. She had a low accent like the vigjadis from the entryway.

  “Only gold,” the one who looked like Amma said.

  “Vigjadis Gerdir has the right of it,” Erna said. Her own eyes rose towards the ceiling, though I reckoned she was looking for the sky beyond. “She had visions. Great, lovely visions, sent to her by the Goddess Herself. She was god-touched, my sister.”

  The high vigjadis sighed and clasped her hands in front of her as she said to me, “I believe I know what happened.” Her speech was like Ivarr’s, merchant-class and educated. “At least, I’ve a good guess. Though I never thought to meet someone like you in my lifetime. Of course, I never thought to meet someone like Embla, either. These are exceptional times.”

  I hung on every word, willing her to state her idea.

  “It seems that Embla was chosen of Freyja,” the high vigjadis said. Erna bowed her head and her shoulders shuddered. The vigjadis what looked like Amma, she’d called her Gerdir, still stood behind her, but as Erna leaned forward with the shudder, Gerdir had to move her hands to the back of the chair. “When those… those men took her, and did what they did to her, they angered Freyja as no one has for… well, centuries, at least. In modern times, the worship of Freyja has come to rest on her beauty, the fertility she gives, the sexuality and love she patrons.”

  No one was paying the novices any mind, but I noticed they were all listening to her like she’d come down from the sky herself. I wondered if they often heard directly from the high vigjadis. It must be something special, meeting with her. When she’d heard about my eyes, she’d thought it important enough to come in person.

  “But what many have forgotten, especially with the rise of Tyr, is that Freyja’s domains include war and death, as well. Many know that the dead in battle go to Alfódr, but half go to live in Freyja’s halls,” the high vigjadis said. I heard a little sigh from the direction of the novices.

  “So you’re saying that when they killed Vigjadis Embla,” Ivarr said, “Freyja touched Ginna?”

  “Ginna showed mercy to Embla,” the high vigjadis said. “Ginna sent her to Folkvang free from pain. That garnered Freyja’s favor.” She frowned. “Certainly, the Goddess was full of wrath over what they did to her favorite. What I do not know, is why she would choose Ginna as her warrior in reaping her vengeance.”

  I’d said nowt of Raud Gríma or Luka yet, and I knew when she said that I’d h
ave to.

  “What was your life like before all this began?” Gerdir asked.

  And now I was going to have to talk about being a whore, too.

  Not that it mattered. I weren’t ashamed, leastways not with folks I didn’t know. But there’d be questions about why I’d never joined the temple and such, and I’d have liked not to have to answer them, for I’d no wish to offend. Still, there was nothing for it. It would all have to come out, I could tell.

  “I live in the Undergrunnsby with my family,” I said. I was fair certain Gerdir gave a bit of a twitch at that. “My father’s long dead, and we’ve never had much, but when the city fell things got worse, wouldn’t you know. So I took to whoring.”

  Now you might expect vigjadises of Freyja to take that sort of thing as normal enough, but they don’t see what they do as whoring, so I got several pair of raised eyebrows in response.

  I sighed. Might as well get it over with. “Look, after what happened to… to Vigjadis Embla, you understand… I was… well, of course while it went on I was terrified,” I said. “But after, I was fair angry. And I’d just got some books, and one was about Raud Gríma, and I thought of Jarldis Sölbói and how she swore herself to Luka and brought down the city, and I—well, I swore myself to Luka then, as well. I wanted vengeance on the slashers. Every last one of them!”

  I could feel the rage starting to build at that and it made me want to run from the temple ’fore they seen it in my eyes, but I couldn’t do that. So I gripped the edge of the table and tried to breathe through it, which made no difference at all. I heard the novices mutter as my vision was taking on a reddish tinge. The vigjadises didn’t seem so worried.

  The high vigjadis, who I still had no name for, walked round the table to my side in just a few steps, and she touched each of my temples with her fingertips. She began muttering low, and just like that, I felt the rage roll back. It was still there, inside, but it was all curled up like it’d been when I took Styrlakker’s job at first.

  She kept up her praying, for I’d no doubt that’s what she was doing, for some time after the rage had ebbed. Then she stepped back and gazed at me for a while. I met her eyes and held them, more on account of I felt them trap me rather’n out of any boldness. I’d no sense for what went on outside of that look, though I imagine everyone was watching.