After the Fall (Raud Grima Book 2)

by Sophia Martin

“Out with it, Ginna!” she exclaimed.

  It was a misery, by the Eye. I made myself take a breath. It’ll get no easier, Ginna-my-girl. “I’d rather not embarrass you.”

  “Embarrass me?” she said, frowning. She was even lovely when she frowned.

  “If you were to have guests, or some such,” I said, wishing I’d kept my stupid trap shut.

  She rolled her eyes. “Oh, Ginna, let me worry about such things. Besides, I’ve no intention of sharing you with anyone, at least for the time being.”

  I suppose I should have seen it then. But of course I never did. I thought she wanted to hide me away as her special secret, and Sigrid’s voice whispered that she wanted to hide me away on account of she was embarrassed after all. But it weren’t neither of those things, not really.

  I never seen it then, though. I just kissed her from her forehead, down her nose and mouth, to her neck and along one collarbone. I kissed her between her breasts, marveling at my good luck, a beautiful jarldis—like a goddess, she was—letting the likes of me touch her. I kissed her belly, running fingers over the slight curve of it and the dip in the hollow of her hip. I kissed her lower, and she sighed and stretched, all lazy feline pleasure. I didn’t mind that she wanted to keep me hidden. It was a relief. I wanted nothing more’n to be her plaything, tucked away and safe from the world. Of course, that didn’t last.

  Part 4: Ginna’s Enemy

  One evening, after Finnarún had been gone all day and I had reread The Book of Tyr for the tenth time—and that alone’d make any sane person babbling mad, I’ll tell you—she come through the door with a look on her face I never seen before.

  It had been near a month since I come to live with her in her apartments in the palace. She’d no books, and forbid me from ever setting foot outside so I’d no way to go back into the city to find my books, or any hope of acquiring others. When I finally broke down and asked her to bring me one, she’d blinked and said, “You can read?” in such a tone of stark surprise I hardly recognized her voice. It made my insides feel watery, it did, and I made a vow never to ask her for a book again, but the next day she gave me the Book of Tyr saying she’d try to find others but that was the only one she could get on short notice. I loved her for giving me that book, even though the book itself I hated, and I thought it proof she loved me too that she’d gone and found it for me. Each day passed and I hoped she’d bring another, but of course she never did. Some days I reread the Book of Tyr, and others I’d no heart for it, but I always reminded myself that she’d given it to me out of love, and so I treasured it even as I despised it.

  It was about a week after she’d given it to me when she come home looking right spooked. I took her coat and led her to the long chaise she preferred, and told the robot to bring her a brandy. “Tell me, luv,” I said to her. “What’s happened?”

  She blinked at me and laughed a bit, and then she leaned her head against my shoulder, which was such a gift I thought I might fall to pieces with the joy of it. Only worry kept me from wrapping my arms around her and such—I had to know what’d happened.

  “It’s the konungdis,” she said.

  “What about her?”

  She sighed and nuzzled her head against my neck, and I thought maybe she was trying to distract me. It was working, too, except I made myself ask again, “What’d the konungdis do?”

  Finnarún picked up the hem of the dress I wore—it was one she’d given me, a loose dark green of silk and lace, and she traced the lace patterns with one finger as she held the hem with the other hand. Part of me wanted more’n anything to forget she’d come home upset and encourage her to pull the dress off me, but I still had no answers. I decided to wait and see if she would tell me what’d happened.

  The robot come over then, bearing a tray with a small decanter and two glasses. It—she, I suppose, for her name was Odný and she was golden and covered in flowery designs—poured some brandy from the decanter into each glass. I took the first she served and put it into Finnarún’s hands. My jarldis sipped with a little smile for me. After another moment, she sighed again and met my eyes.

  “You needn’t worry so, Ginna,” she said with a laugh in her voice. “I just had an unpleasant shock, but I’m already feeling much better.” She ran the hand what’d held the hem of my dress under its fabric, her fingers brushing my thigh. My body answered her in an instant, growing hot and excited from the slightest touch.

  “Please, Finnarún,” I said in a soft voice, part of me still marveling that she wanted me to call her that, part of me unsure whether I was pleading with her to speak or to carry on with her intention.

  Her eyes sparkled, for she knew the effect she had on me.

  “Tell me what the konungdis done,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes and shrugged, her hand leaving off from the stroking, more’s the pity. She crossed her arm under the one what held the glass of brandy. My thigh ached where she’d touched it and I took the other glass of brandy to try to distract myself from the feeling. The liquor tasted like fire and peaches, burning my throat as it went down.

  “She’s just—” Finnarún broke off with a frustrated noise. “She’s a troubled woman,” she said. I’d learned not long after arriving the rumors of Leika’s pregnancy weren’t true. The konungdis held her throne with the tips of her nails, and that meant she was likely to lash out without good reason most of the time. Finnarún’d been a favorite of the konunger—of Eiflar the Heretic, only nowadays I watched myself and called him the Holy—and she’d had a time of it convincing Leika she was on her side after Eiflar tried to give Leika up and all. It was a mess of court politics and if I’d had my way I’d never have had to learn the workings of it, but I loved Finnarún and she was right in the middle of it. I weren’t a complete fool. I could see well enough that she loved being in the middle of it. But that changed nowt for me. Whatever Finnarún wanted, I wanted for her, and what she wanted was to be one of Leika’s favorites, with all the advantages what come with such a position, wouldn’t you know.

  “Her being troubled’s nothing new,” I said.

  “No,” Finnarún agreed. “But today she challenged me about you. My secret’s out,” she said with a little sigh.

  I felt every hair on my body stand on end. What this might mean for me, I’d no guess, but I didn’t imagine it was anything good.

  “The Book of Tyr forbids a woman from taking another woman as a lover,” she went on.

  Which of course I knew. I seen the cells in Grumflein, hadn’t I, with their sad poems on the walls.

  “She’s not threatened you?” I asked.

  “No. I told her you act as my assistant,” Finnarún said with a little shake of her head. “I fear she suspects I’m lying. But that’s why… well, my dearest, you’ll have to be brave.”

  “Be brave?” I said. My heart, what’d been hammering away before for more reasons’n one, picked up its pace all the more and made me feel ill.

  “Yes,” Finnarún said, sipping some more brandy and stroking my leg—over the dress this time. “You see, I had to do it. She needs someone to read her letters to her. And really, dearling, this could be very good for both of us, for she trusts me enough to try you and now you can tell me what her letters say. It will simply be a matter of arranging secret meetings between us.”

  My mind churned, trying and failing to make sense of what she said. “I don’t understand.”

  “You’re to go to her, tomorrow. I managed to convince her I’d need your assistance in ordering my affairs before you left, so we’ve tonight together.”

  I searched her face, her pretty, dark blue eyes, attempting to see what she was planning. How could she mean any of it? How could she send me away, and to the konungdis of all people? To read letters? As if the moment I opened my mouth—

  “She’ll know me for a whore the first instant I read something to her,” I said, frowning and trying, still, to work my head around Finnarún’s plan.

  “Don’t be
silly,” Finnarún said, giving me her cat smile. “Leika’s very… innocent. She never did partake of the delights available before Eiflar took the throne. She was very sheltered. They sent her older sister to the capital, you know, but Leika stayed behind for years in her family’s estate. She’s never even been to the Lavsektor. Can you imagine? Eiflar chose her for that reason. He wanted someone unspoiled.”

  “What about when he did take the throne? You’re not saying she stayed quiet in the royal apartments the whole time?” I asked, making my voice sound like I’d never believe it, though the truth is I’d no idea what to believe.

  Finnarún shrugged one graceful shoulder. “Well, perhaps not. She went to soirées, of course. Dinners the jarls hosted. She went to the opera. But never to the Lavsektor. She won’t ever have heard your particular… accent, Ginna. She won’t know what it means.”

  Gods help me, I wanted to believe her. But for once a little voice—maybe Amma’s, though I’d shut hers out for months, it seemed—had somewhat to say about it. She’s lying to you, Ginna-girl. Everyone in Helésey knows a sewer rat when they see one, and no mistake.

  I gazed at Finnarún, who pulled out a ciggie and tucked it in her onyx holder. The robot come over and lit the end for her. She never looked at me the whole time.

  “You mustn’t fret, Ginna,” she said after she blew out a stream of smoke. “This will be good for both of us.”

  “She’ll know me for a whore,” I said softly. “And then she’ll know why I was with you. I can’t go to her, Finnarún. She’ll have you thrown in Grumflein.”

  Her eyebrows knit and she looked at me, then. “You are such a dear,” she said, “worrying so about me. But you really mustn’t, my love. I know what I’m doing.”

  I’ll wager she does, the little voice said. I’ll wager she knows very well, Ginna-my-girl, and you’re a right fool to let her use you for her ends.

  The voice did sound like Amma’s, and as soon as that come clear I told it to shut up and go to Hel. It spoke no more, and I set about preparing for another move in the morning.

  ~~~

  When I come to the foot of the Purple Stairs, them what lead up to the royal apartments, my heart started its stupid thudding and my ears begun ringing and I thought maybe I’d have to sit down for a spell. Then after a breath or two I made my legs go, and sooner’n you’d think I was nearing the top and two black and silver robots come to meet me. One took my little bag and then both flanked me, walking up alongside of me. Four human Officers stood by the ripping huge golden doors at the top of the stairs, and I near to stopped in my tracks, don’t you know. But two of them opened the great doors, and through them I went, by the Eye. The robots followed me through, soon enough walking next to me again, for all the world like guards with a prisoner. I wondered how long it’d be ’fore I was a prisoner in truth, for I’d no hope of fooling the konungdis.

  All through the night I asked myself what game Finnarún played, and I come to the conclusion she’d fooled herself into thinking what she did about Leika never noticing what I was. The possibility of Finnarún sending me to be imprisoned on account of her growing tired of me did cross my mind, but if I was found out, she’d be found out, too. So with some relief I set such a thought aside. I spent the rest of the night trying to come up with a story or anything what might convince Leika that while I was, in fact, a whore and a lover of women, Finnarún was innocent of breaking any of Tyr’s laws. The best I could cobble together was to say I’d seduced Finnarún, and even threatened her, maybe, and that sounded weak even to me.

  Yet as the robots opened the next set of doors and I walked into the royal apartments, the words I’d practiced in my head were sitting in my mouth, ready to pour out: It was me, your highness. I made her do it. She was afraid of me, and giving me to you was her only hope of escape.

  The room we come into was big, all the chairs and tables and such made of chrome, glass, and the shiny fabric Finnarún called lamé. The walls were covered with hangings woven with pictures in Eiflar’s blocky style, showing stories of Tyr—Tyr fighting Garm, the hound of Hel, Tyr lifting Hymir’s cauldron in a show of strength, Tyr chaining Fenrir, the monstrous wolf, son of Luka. Everywhere you looked were symbols of Tyr: hands, for Fenrir bit off Tyr’s hand when Tyr chained him, upward pointing arrows, what come from the rune for Tyr, Tyr’s sword, and triangles and chevrons, as well, meant to stand for Tyr’s sacred number, three.

  The robots went still beside me, and I’d no heart to move either. I stood with my hands in fists at my sides, taking in the room while all the dread I’d thought Finnarún’d help me forget come rushing back, filling me up from foot to eyes.

  Even inside the apartments the doors stood too high, and one on the opposite wall opened after a short wait. At first, I never noticed owt strange about her, only that Leika-Konungdis had hair a richer brown’n my’n, and she come through wearing a long robe of purple silk tied round her. I don’t know what I expected, but it weren’t her. I suppose I’d thought she would be older, and wearing one of the loose dresses with a long slit in the skirt Finnarún liked, don’t you know. But she was hardly older’n me. In fact, the more I looked at her, the more I wondered if maybe she weren’t younger. The robe she wore brushed the floor, and after a moment I realized it covered her shift. She’d not dressed to meet me. The shock of that delayed my noticing the oddest thing about her for a little longer.

  “Is it her?” she asked in a low voice. “Is she here?”

  “The visitor sent to you from Jarldis Vaenn,” one of the robots next to me intoned in a voice meant to come from some large man, not a tin machine. I about jumped outta my skin at the sound of it, which made me start talking despite knowing that opening my mouth’d be the end of me.

  “Begging your pardon, your highness,” I said, even as that little voice was shouting in my head to shut up, “I’m called Ginna. I’m Ginna Alvör, to be precise. I’m very honoured. That is, it’s a great honour, meeting you—that is, to serve you.”

  It weren’t ’til I found the will to rein in my tongue, and I noticed the way she tilted her face in my direction—and how the darks of her eyes almost took over their colour—it only showed as a thin ring of dark brown like a frame to the emptiness of her pupils.

  She was blind.

  She stepped towards me, careful-like, her face still tilted. “Where are you from?” she asked, still in that low voice. “I’ve never heard anyone speak with such tones.”

  Dear merciful Frigga, Finnarún was right, I thought, my legs going weak under me.

  “I—I’m from the Eastern Marshes,” I said, naming the farthest place I could think of. It was a near thing to a blunder, for the Eastern Marshes lay just south of Asterlund, where Myadar Sölbói come from. I’d not endear myself to Leika claiming to be an Asterlunder.

  “The Eastern Marshes,” she whispered, taking another step closer. “And what is your relationship to Jarldis Vaenn?”

  The dread rolled within me like a storm. “I was her reader. I wrote letters for her, sometimes. She’d speak them and I’d write them down.”

  Leika frowned, tilting her head even more. “You read well, then? And write prettily?”

  And all of a sudden it come clear to me why Leika needed a reader, and a writer for that matter. I know it’s the kind of thing what should have hit me ’tween the eyes the moment I realized she was blind, but you can’t expect my slow wits to catch it all at once.

  I managed not to say owt about it though realizing it made me want to shout it out loud. All I said was, “Sure, I read and write fair clearly. It’d be my pleasure and honour to be your reader, your highness, and no mistake.”

  She narrowed her eyes for a moment, and then her face cleared as she smiled. “You’ve a charming way of speaking, Ginna,” she said. “I think I understand now, why Jarldis Vaenn chose to employ you.”

  It weren’t possible to hold a breath from the moment I reached the royal apartments ’til she said that, but it felt li
ke I was breathing again for the first time in as long. She believed me. She believed Finnarún’s story. Neither of us would go to Grumflein. At least, not right now. And not unless I made some blunder or other, which still seemed likely, though I clung to knowing that at least for now, we were both safe.

  ~~~

  Leika-Konungdis only got stranger the more I come to know her.

  She was young, and sometimes despite her eyes—injured in the bombing of the palace, I gathered—she’d be light as Rokja, playful and sweet. It come clear to me soon enough she’d been fair lonely and welcomed me as much for the company as for the service I could provide. The robots could read her letters and keep their contents a secret, after all. But Leika soon begun treating me like a pally. I’d read a letter from this jarl or that jarldis, and she’d say, “Oh, that old stuffed owl, what a nuisance!” and tell me stories of each of them for hours at a time.

  Other times her mind turned dark, and I soon found out she feared one person above all, and there was no reasoning with her about it. Raud Gríma. She thought Raud Gríma still prowled the city, looking for a way to bring her down, or worse still, to sneak into her bedchamber and ravish her.

  Once I become a bit more at ease with her, I ventured to explain a few things when one of the dark moods took her. “Raud Gríma was a woman, your majesty. Her name was Myadar Sölbói, and she’d no taste for ravishing anyone, far as I know—”

  “And what would you know about it, you’re all but a foreigner!” she snapped at me.

  Another time, I tried again. “They caught Raud Gríma, your highness, and near to executed her, so she fled the city. She’s long gone.”

  “That’s what he wants you to think, Ginna,” she said, grabbing my arm tighter’n any woman her size should’ve had the strength to. She looked at me, unfocused eyes wide, her lips parted, her breathing quick and labored. “He wants you to believe these lies about Myadar Sölbói. I knew Myadar Sölbói, and she was killed in the bombings, I tell you. She was a courtier like the rest, and she seduced my husband—I knew of it, you understand! But she was just a woman like you or me. No—no—Raud Gríma is waiting. I’ve taken precautions, Ginna. I’ve taken steps—to—to ensure our safety. But he’s waiting for a moment—for a slip… the tiniest mistake!” She released my arm and buried her fingers in her curling brown hair. “Oh, Tyr, preserve me. Tyr, Tyr, protect me!”