After the Fall (Raud Grima Book 2)

by Sophia Martin

  “That jarldis is Finnarún Vaenn, my dear Ginna, and you’d best make her happy as she’s Leika-Konungdis’s closest friend, word has it. Off with you. Now. You’ll take her to the east room.”

  So out I went, feathered cap on my head and over-tight dress, winding best as I could through the crowd of hands what reached to pinch and touch me on account of I was the only girl what’d come out as of yet and the rest were all up on stage in the next number. I found her like metal finds a magnet. She stood, easy in her loose golden dress, with a bare back and so long it pooled at her feet, and she slipped her arm through mine with a wicked grin for the jarls we left at the table.

  I walked to the east room like a robot, my head blank as a wall, and she cast her eyes around the room, grinning that smile the whole way. When we closed the door behind us, cutting the din of voices and music and dancers, she turned that grin on me and my legs went to water. She looked just like a cat what’s cornered a bird, I thought, Frigga have mercy.

  “Take off that ridiculous hat,” she ordered, and my hands went into my hair, digging out pins. “And the dress. I’ll have that off, too.”

  Not such a strange order, for by now the patrons of Gaddi’s establishment were fair familiar with the difficulties the dresses caused, and most wanted it off at the first opportunity. But hearing the command from her mouth made my stomach flip and my cunny flame with a heat I’d all but forgotten.

  “I’ll need your help for that,” I said. I turned my back so’s she could see the zipper, and kept at the hair pins as I felt her fingers grasp the end and start pulling down. She did it slow, so’s ’fore long my skin ached for her to have the damn thing off and her hands on me. My head whirled, awash in confusion over the feelings I’d never thought to have again. Her hands run under the fabric of the bodice and across to my breasts, which she squeezed. My arms were still up, my hands in my hair, and I never felt so exposed though the dress was still on. One hand stayed gripping my left breast, but her right hand slipped down, so in no time she’d beat the problem of the dress and had her fingers in the folds of my cunny. A moan broke from my mouth I’d never even known was coming, and I wanted to cry and gasp and collapse in her arms all at once.

  The next thing I knew she rocked me round to face the wall, and pressed me up against it. She pushed with her fingers and massaged my breast as she pressed herself against my arse. I felt her breath on my ear, hot, and heard it speed up as her movements became regular. She was excited, like me, and knowing that made me melt even as the ache in my cunny bloomed and spread. Her fingers pushed lower and one slipped inside me, and I gasped and cracked harder’n any time I could remember, turned inside out like she’d blown me apart from the inside.

  Far away, I could hear her gasping, and knowing she was cracking too made my’n pleasure wash over again, and when it finally ended I was as loose as a boned chicken.

  “Well,” she said, her voice low. “That was nice.”

  I was leaning against the wall, my forehead pressed to the cold panels, my eyes shut. My breathing’d not slowed much yet. She ran a hand from the base of my hair down my neck, back, and over my arse. My body throbbed for her.

  “Ginna, isn’t it?”

  I swallowed and couldn’t make my eyes open. “Yes.”

  “Gaddi says you were a sewer rat,” she said, real quiet, in my ear.

  “Sure enough,” I answered, my eyes still squeezed shut.

  “Hm. That accent would have told me so, I suppose,” she said. She took ahold of my wrist and turned me round so’s my back pressed against the wall. The cold of it was a shock but it made me open my eyes. She was bright as the sun, and just as blinding.

  “You like me,” she said. It weren’t a question.

  “You’re lovely,” I said, and felt stupid as a cow.

  She smiled, though, like’d been the right thing to say, and she leaned in and kissed my mouth, deep as a drink on a hot day. Her hands ran up my sides and over my breasts, went down my stomach. She pulled back and laughed soft, low in her throat.

  “You’ll do,” she said.

  ~~~

  After that, I always looked for her. The dread what lived inside me retreated when she come in through the club’s door. Everything was lackluster and colourless ’til she arrived: golden, like the sun. She lit up the house, and suddenly everything had colour, not just her. Suddenly the steel fingers clutching my insides loosened. Suddenly I was more’n a dancing shell with little hope for a future.

  The girls all noticed, and Auda, the rosy-cheeked girl, gave me trouble about it on account of she weren’t too bright and had to say every thought what crossed her mind. And Sigrid gave me trouble on account of she was a waspish type and miserable, no doubt, and anything what made anyone happy in a noticeable way provoked her, more’s the pity.

  “Your girl’s here,” Sigrid said sharp-like, one night she noticed Jarldis Vaenn come in ’fore I did. She was sitting a few seats down from me at the long mirror, pinning her feathered cap.

  “The jarldis ain’t Ginna’s girl,” Auda said, all big eyes and slow wits. She walked behind us, carrying her dress. “Ginna wishes she was. She’d do anything to be the jarldis’s girl, wouldn’t she, then?” Then she giggled like a silly duffer.

  “You getting a cut of the money she pays?” Sigrid asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Pretty useless, being a whore what don’t get paid,” Sigrid said. “But I suppose you don’t mind. You like it, being her whore.”

  “Leave Ginna alone,” said Gudva as she sat down between us. “You’re just jealous ’cause the jarldis never picks anyone but her for assignations.”

  “I’ve no need for ‘assignations,’” Sigrid sneered. Gaddi owned her, same as me, so she never got paid for them, neither. It weren’t no use wanting more, sure enough. Except she was right about me. I did like being Vaenn’s whore. And Auda was right too, stupid or not. I did wish I was Vaenn’s girl, as impossible as that could ever be for more reasons’n I could count.

  “Do you think she’ll want you tonight?” Auda asked, wiggling to get the dress on a few feet behind me.

  I sighed. “I don’t know.”

  Sigrid snorted. “Sure you do. You’ll kneel for her and give her what she likes, just like you always do. You’ll crawl for her if she asks it.”

  “Sigrid, you’ve no call to be so nasty,” Gudva said.

  I just looked down at my hands, which were full of hairpins. She was right. I would crawl for Vaenn if she asked it of me. I’d do owt to please her. I knew myself for a right fool and weak to boot, but there was nowt for it. Since Vaenn come into my life, it was like I’d been stuck in a long night, and now the sun was back. For short moments, leastways, and I lived for those moments. The worst thing what could happen to me’d be if she stopped coming. If I never seen her again.

  That night Sigrid must’ve taken Gudva’s words as a challenge, for she set her mind to distracting Vaenn from me.

  All the girls’d come out to mingle, and I made my way to Vaenn’s table as fast as I could without offending the customers what’d reach for me as I passed. My luck was against me, and the going was slower’n usual. Up ahead I seen Sigrid ease from the crowd. She come over to Vaenn’s shoulder and bent down—I’d no idea what she was about until she straightened, holding the fur stole what must’ve fallen from the back of Vaenn’s chair.

  Some tall jarl, all elbows and knees, stood and put himself in my path, talking though I heard not a word he said. I angled my face to catch sight of Vaenn and Sigrid again. Vaenn hadn’t noticed her yet, I seen with some relief.

  Sigrid touched Vaenn’s bare shoulder then, and offered her the stole.

  The jarl reached out and grabbed my hips, pulling me to him, still talking. I flashed him a smile but tried to form words of apology, only he weren’t listening to me at all.

  Vaenn turned and gazed at Sigrid, and Sigrid gave her a heavy-lidded look, warm and inviting. I seen Vaenn’s smile widen.
<
br />   Panic fluttered in my heart at that, for I knew it’d not take much for Vaenn to lose interest in me in favor of another—I might well worship her, but she’d not such attachment to me, I knew for a hard truth. As she raised a graceful hand and cupped Sigrid’s chin, tilting Sigrid’s face to have a better look at her, I pulled myself with force from the jarl’s hands, and Gaddi be damned.

  My eyes darted round as I pushed through to Vaenn’s table, and when one of the serving robots crossed in front of me I grabbed two glasses of dark mead from his tray. I hurried to where Vaenn sat and seen her notice me, her eyebrows arching. Never breaking her gaze, I made like I was stumbling, and spilled one glass of mead over Sigrid, wetting her from breast to hip.

  “Oi! You right duffer!” Sigrid howled.

  Mead’s made from honey, don’t you know, and it’s right sticky when it dries.

  Vaenn’s eyes glittered with amusement and she drew away from Sigrid. “Well, my dear, it looks as though you’ll have to clean yourself up,” she said to her.

  Sigrid shot me a look of ripping hatred and stomped away.

  I’d no regrets. Vaenn was eyeing me again, looking fair pleased with my act. Her dark blue eyes traveled over my body, sending a thrill along fast in their wake. I was warm again, basking in the sunshine of her beauty.

  I couldn’t lose her to Sigrid. I might not’ve any chance to be more to her than her evening’s entertainment, but I’d cling to that, for without her, I was lost.

  Every time I went with her to a private room, it was like stepping into summer. Her hands on me warmed not just my skin but chased away the cold of the horror and guilt I carried all the rest of the time. I could smile again. I even laughed. I gave her anything she wanted, and her pleasure was like medicine. I needed it more’n any medicine I’d ever had since.

  After that I feared that Sigrid might make it her mission to take Vaenn from me, but I needn’t have worried—nor did I catch any reprimand from Gaddi for spurning the graceless jarl. When it comes to Sigrid, I suppose she never got another chance, for only two nights after I spilled the mead, Vaenn told me an idea she’d had.

  It was like she was offering me summer for the rest of my life.

  “I want to buy you from Gaddi,” she said, her voice all bells and light.

  I’d no words, the shock was so great.

  “I understand you’ve some sort of ‘arrangement.’ He told me he owns you. Never mind that it’s not legal,” she said. We were sitting on the floor with our legs entwined, leaning against the wall. She took my hand and laced her fingers ’tween mine. “Did you know there are jarls that have an idea to making slavery legal again?” She let her gaze travel around the room—mostly bare, save for essentials such as a table and bed. “Would you mind it very much, being my slave?”

  I glanced at her eyes and sure enough, they were sparkling with mischief. “No, my lady. I’d not mind so much at all.”

  “Oh, Ginna, you are so very serious. Of course you’d not be my slave!” she exclaimed, and if I’d been shocked before, my heart near stopped altogether at that. “Not really. What I mean to say is, of course I’d pay Gaddi whatever he wants. He mentioned your family is abroad? And he sees to their safety somehow?”

  I managed a nod.

  “Well, we must make sure he keeps them safe, don’t you agree?”

  I blinked and managed another nod, but my head was whirling and I thought it a piece of luck I was already sitting on the ground.

  “Quite,” she said in that clipped way the flashiest types had. “You’ll come to live with me in the palace. I should so like that, wouldn’t you? I do get very lonely.” Her voice dipped just a bit, and my heart reacted by fluttering like a bird in a string snare. She went on in a whisper that did nowt to calm my heart, “And you know, I might feel just a bit safer with you there. It isn’t a very safe place, the palace.”

  For the first time in months I felt the rage flare. Nothing big. It didn’t last. But the slightest spark. For I would lay down my life to defend her from any danger she faced. “I’d like to keep you safe,” I whispered back.

  “Of course you would,” she purred, stroking my cheek. “You dear angel. So is it settled, then? You’ll come with me?”

  How could I refuse?

  ~~~

  I’ve no sense for what I’d have done if Gaddi’d protested or threatened my family. Going to live with Vaenn in the palace became for me the only path to the light out of the darkness. I fear to know the truth of it, for I’ve a notion I might have gone no matter what Gaddi had to say on the matter, and I’ve no heart to face the like. In the end, I’ll never know, for Gaddi gave me up easy as you please in exchange for enough gold to cover what he estimated I’d have earned for him over the next five years. I thought it was far too high a price. I’d never have lived that long in his care, and that’s a fact. But when I told Vaenn so she only shook her head and laughed, and said I’d best learn to value myself higher’n that if I hoped to make something of myself. Which made no sense to me. I’d no notion of what I might make of myself other’n pleasing her day after day ’til I died. I’d no view of the future other’n that. If I needed to learn one thing, it was to think on the possibilities of my future a bit more thorough-like, but I suppose what with everything happening and what with all I’d endured and survived, that was easier said than done.

  I suppose it shouldn’t come as no surprise that Sigrid had a thing of two to say about my leaving for the palace, but I was surprised, nonetheless. I thought she’d be happy not to have me around, but it seemed my good fortune was worse’n owt else, and the morning I was packing to leave, she let me know it.

  “D’ya think Ginna’ll still whimper in her sleep like she does here?” was her first volley.

  I blinked for I’d never realized I whimpered in my sleep.

  “I don’t imagine the jarldis’ll like that much,” she continued. She was sitting on one of the beds in the room we shared, her arms crossed over her chest.

  “Don’t be daft,” Auda said, shaking her head as she helped me fold the few clothes I’d take with me. “She’ll be happy there. She’ll never cry no more.” She gave me a sweet smile then, and I felt shabby for the way I always thought of her as stupid.

  Sigrid made a loud scoffing noise. “Sure, and I’ll be the next konungdis. ‘Ivarr. Ivarr. I’m so sorry. Oh. Oh.’” I raised my eyes to stare at her in horror as she imitated me. “‘No, Dag. No Ótti. Don’t drink it. Don’t drink it.’”

  My throat closed and my stomach flipped and for one wild moment I thought I’d vomit and choke all at once.

  “Sigrid, shut up!” Holma exclaimed, walking right up to her and getting within biting distance of her face. Gudva got up from where she’d been resting, too.

  “It’s nowt but the truth,” Sigrid spat. “Blarting so’s none of us can get a wink.”

  I swallowed and my throat loosened just a bit. I turned my back to Sigrid and made my hands put the folded things into the hard suitcase Holma’d scrounged up from Luka knows where for my trip.

  But Sigrid weren’t done, more’s the pity.

  She waited ’til Holma’d gone out of the room and Gudva was laying down again and said, “How long d’ya suppose the jarldis’ll put up with your low manners and speech, Ginna?”

  “Ah, lay off, Sigrid,” Gudva groaned from her bed.

  “What d’you care what the jarldis thinks of Ginna’s manners?” Maeva said. She was washing her stockings in a jar by the room’s only window.

  “She’s just slumming now,” Sigrid said, and I made myself stay turned away from her, though I’d finished with the folding and packing and could have closed the suitcase any time. “They like that, you know. Them flashy types. Fucking some trashy whore like Ginna. I don’t know why.”

  “Oh you’re a fine one to talk,” said Auda. “You’re from Sudbattir, ain’t ya? Just one step up from the sewers, ain’t it. You’re no better’n Ginna is.”

  Thank you, Auda, I thou
ght with a mental sigh. Having Auda argue for you was like having a one of Kevan Shald’s chickens stow away in your shanty. It might mean an egg or two but you’d have plenty of shit to balance that out.

  “I’m not the one putting on airs,” Sigrid said. “It’s a disaster in the making, it is. The jarldis’ll see her mistake soon’s she lets Ginna open her mouth in front of company, won’t she? She’ll turn her out on her ear.”

  “I’ll turn you out on your ear less you stop wagging your nasty tongue,” Gudva said, sitting up again.

  “I wish I could be there to see it,” Sigrid said, ignoring her. “Ginna in the company of some flashy jarls and jarldises, and their faces when she makes an idiot of herself in front of them. And that jarldis’s face—by the Eye, that’d be something to see.”

  Gudva launched herself off her bed and across the room in two strides, knocking full into Sigrid’s chest, and next thing you knew they was all thrashing legs and arms on the floor by Sigrid’s bed.

  I shut the suitcase and carried it out of the room, leaving them to it. I knew why Sigrid said what she did, other’n the fact it was all true. She said it on account of she was still Gaddi’s. I was getting out, and my family was safe. Not so for Sigrid. Whatever she’d traded herself for, no one’d come along and offered to buy her back. So I’d no hard feelings for Sigrid. Her words stuck with me, though, and no mistake.

  ~~~

  “D’you want me to learn to talk better?” I asked Vaenn that night after we’d had our third tumble since I arrived in her apartments in the palace.

  Vaenn raised one of her golden eyebrows at me and smirked. “You make yourself perfectly well understood.”

  Something about the way she said it made my cheeks go hot. She noticed and the smirk got bigger.

  “What’s wrong, Ginna? Are you trying to tell me something?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “It’s not that,” I said. “I just—I’d rather not—It’s just that I—”

  I might have stammered on like that, you know, like a blathering idiot, except her laughter cut me short.