by IGMS
Rob frowned. "Your contract doesn't include a non-completion clause?"
I sighed. I hadn't thought to include one. "No."
"Oh." Rob fidgeted with his mittens. "That would have been smart."
I slid off the roof, down the snow drift, then jammed my hands into my pockets.
"Where are you going?" Rob asked.
"Away from you."
Arbiter Elof wasn't a priest or a king or an elected governor. We didn't have any of those. He was simply the richest person in Ogynan's Land, with a hoard of boot-licking sycophants. That pretty much made him in charge. Anyone who said otherwise had to reckon with him and his underlings.
I pounded my fist against his front door. One of those boot-lickers let me inside. I stepped from the crisp, cold world of newly-fallen snow into the smoky stench of fish-oil lamps and unwashed fur jackets. The long hall boasted an almost equally long table. Fifty men gnawed on bones around it, ripping flesh like wolves. From the size of the bones, Elof had splurged on three or four sheep from the Confederates to celebrate the end of contract season. He always did treat his followers well.
I picked my way around the chairs and tracked-in mud to the head of the table, near the blazing hearth. My head ached with the sudden heat of it and my palms sweated.
Arbiter Elof leaned back in his chair and lazily glanced up at me, his fingers gleaming with the fat from the rib in his hand. "I can't imagine why you're here, Trygve."
He had to know about the crash. My mouth burned in the dry heat -- the kind of heat my home could never afford. I swallowed. My throat felt as rough as sand. "I want to take out a loan."
"A loan?" He blinked innocently at me. He almost looked like Rob, but Rob never had an edge of malice beneath his blank stares.
The conversations around the table died down as Elof's hanger-ons leaned in to listen.
I couldn't afford to be proud. Right now, I couldn't afford a wooden button. "A loan on the bride-price I agreed to in our contract."
"What? Give you money so you can pay me?" He laughed like I'd claimed I could make grass grow in winter.
I bit the inside of my lip. I had to remain polite. No one else could loan me so much. "Let's negotiate an interest rate. You're a man of business."
"And you're ill-fated, crashing a sled. Soon you're going to be a contract breaker! I want nothing to do with you, Trygve. You should leave."
I stood there, numb despite the heat. "Surely we can --"
Two of his burliest men laid their hands firmly on my shoulders.
I shut up and walked out myself, my pulse thudding against my skull. I'd taken a dozen step out into the biting cold when someone called, "Trygve!"
I turned. Ingrid ran toward me from Elof's kitchen door. A few golden curls peeped out of her tattered hood. Her mouth was downturned, like a bit of lopsided dough. "I heard you. In the hall."
"I'm going to make this work." Not that I had any idea how. I took her hands in mine -- they were chapped and cracked from scrubbing pots with melted snow.
"No one else will loan to you. Elof wants you exiled to Chaos."
They could call it exile, but stepping into the Chaos was death. "I don't understand."
"The evening before cellar contracts started, hours after we'd signed our betrothal agreement, Elof was entertaining some Confederate merchants. One of them tried my stuffed, poached apples and took a liking to me." She wrinkled her face in disgust. "He offered Elof a generous bride-price. If our contract fails, their new contract goes into effect."
I tightened my grip on her hands. "That can't be legal. The terms of his guardianship guarantee you the right to choose your husband."
"Technically, it says the right to sign a betrothal contract, at the fixed bride-price of five gold coins. A. Singular. Elof always follows the letter of what he signs, but he never plays fair."
Ingrid knew that better than anyone. When her parents were dying of pneumonia some six years ago, they tried to sign guardianship of Ingrid to anyone except Elof, but he blocked them with his customary trio of well-placed bribes, threats, and empty promises. Elof got all of her parent's lands in "payment" for "raising" Ingrid.
In a way, Elof was like Ogynan himself. They both spent just enough effort to keep the community from dissolving into chaos. I'd heard from the merchants how other gods actually tried to make their civilizations flourish.
My jaw tightened. I hated both of them -- Elof and Ogynan. My face felt as hot as when I'd stood by Elof's roaring fire. "I wish we could leave."
"A contract-breaker isn't welcome anywhere." She smiled sadly at me. "Even if you can keep our contract, where would we go?"
We couldn't live in the Chaos, and we could only work in the Confederate Ithena for so long before their laws demanded we return home or purchase a citizen's contract. If I had the money for that, I wouldn't be begging Elof for a loan.
"Sometimes I think Ogynan isn't ignoring us, but trying to ruin our lives. Why did it have to snow right then? Why did our sled crash?"
Ingrid ran her thumb over the back of my hand. "Oh, Trygve. The crash is just the most convenient way for Elof to sabotage our wedding. Otherwise, he'd be fining Rob for the berries he stole."
"Stole?" I stared at her.
She nodded ruefully. "I heard Elof bragging about it afterwards. On the first morning of contracts, Rob came asking the merchants to hire him. Once they finished turning him out, he asked one if he could have a handful of berries. Elof overheard and said he had lots of berries. Rob took that to mean he could have some, though Elof never explicitly gave them to him. He's got a dozen witnesses to the 'theft.'"
Even if Rob hadn't crashed the sled, he'd already ruined me. The back of my throat tasted like bile.
Ingrid pulled a warm round of rye bread from inside her coat and pressed it into my hands. "I've been sneaking out to cook other folk's dinner for a penny. But even if it keeps going well, I'll earn less than a third of what you need by next week. I hope you can come up with the rest. It won't be easy, with Elof against you."
Then she did the nicest thing -- she kissed me, and her mouth was anything but frozen. She blushed hard enough I could see it by starlight, then ran inside.
Ingrid was right. I spent the next day knocking on every house in Ogynan's Land. Everyone was too scared of Elof to loan me so much as a penny or hire me for an evening's odd job.
Insides as numb as my fingertips, I returned home. Grandma and Rob were washing bowls for supper. Grandma scrubbed with practiced efficiency. Rob's rag moved in slow, smooth circles, as if the pattern mattered more than the chore.
"Where are Mother and Father?" I asked half-heartedly. I felt too tired to really care.
"Out trying to scrounge some coins for you. I'm surprised you didn't cross paths." Grandma dried her hands on a tattered rag. "I have something, too."
She hobbled over to the little wicker basket where she kept mementos of her earlier, traveling days -- pressed flowers, pretty stones, carved bits of wood. Rob's eyes widened with child-like wonder, but my throat tightened. She'd never seen the merchants laugh away Rob's petitions for work.
Grandma pulled out something I'd never seen before. A book bound in blue leather and a smooth, black stick with a silvery tip.
"I saved these as presents for the day each of you got married, but I suppose they should come out early." She pressed the stick into Rob's hand and the soft notebook into mine.
I opened it. The pages were yellowed around the edges but creamy in the center, like the yellow rind of Confederate sheep's cheese. "They're all blank."
"That's the kind of ledgers Confederate merchants used back when I was a girl," she said. "It was a gift from my father, but I never had a need for it after I settled here. Its value is mostly sentimental, but I thought you might be able to sell it for something."
Her old eyes looked too bright in the hearth light.
"Th-thank you," I spluttered.
Then I glanced at Rob. He'd used the stick to scr
ibble on the table, his shirt, and now he was trying to write on his hand.
"Rob!"
He startled, then looked around. "Oh. I thought something was about to fall on me again."
"No, you're . . ." I took a deep breath. "Can you stop writing on yourself?"
"I wanted to see what it worked on." Rob said that like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Grandma smiled softly. "It's called a pencil and it works best on paper. Once, when we traveled to trade with Feledales, we bought them by the hundreds. They have a Goddess of Graphite there."
"And do pencils work the same way here as they do in Feledales?" Rob asked.
Grandma shrugged. "As far as I can tell."
Rob pursed his lips. "I'll test it when I travel and figure it out for sure." He turned the pencil in his hand. "It's interesting, isn't it? Things that are frozen here don't stay frozen in the Confederacy. But pencils manufactured in Feledales seem to stay pencils. Maybe. And books stay books, even though we have no God or Goddess of any kind of paper here. Maybe it's about process."
"Process?" Grandma prompted. I pinched the bridge of my nose -- we shouldn't encourage him.
Rob nodded. "Maybe they're really the God of Paper-making and Pencil-making. Or at least that's how their divine powers work. It can only be made in their domain, but then it can go anywhere. Then Ogynan's not really over the process of freezing, or things would stay frozen over the border. He's over frozen-ness itself. Kind of like the Goddess of Hemlock. Medicine becomes poison if you leave the Confederate Ithena."
I looked to Grandma, wondering what story she'd told to spark this idea, but she shrugged and gave me a helpless look.
Sometimes I couldn't tell if Rob was wise beyond reason, completely mad, or both. In any case, I squeezed Rob's shoulder, then hugged Grandmother.
My parents returned that evening with nothing to show for their efforts. The next day I managed to sell Grandma's precious notebook to Nea for a pittance. Then I talked with Ingrid again, but she'd had no further luck.
I shouldn't have sold the notebook. Grandma could have kept it and remembered her early years -- it couldn't save me.
"Have you tried getting a loan?" Rob asked, two days before the wedding. We were pulling the new sled, now laden with firewood Father had chopped in the forest.
My head throbbed. My words came out terser than I meant. "Yes. Yesterday. I've tried everything."
Rob didn't seem to notice my tone. "It would take a long time to try everything. I bet you haven't walked around town on your hands."
"That wouldn't help!" My breath swirled into mist in front of me.
"Grandma told me about a Confederate performer who did that. And eat fire. People gave him pennies."
"You can't eat fire."
"You can if it earns you pennies," Rob said. "Or maybe there's a Goddess of Fire-eating? I'll have to ask Grandma. I wonder if fire is as filling as bread, or if it just keeps you warm."
"Fine. I've tried everything useful."
Rob pursed his lips and adjusted his grip on the rope. "Have you looked over the cellar contract we do have?"
"I don't see how that helps."
"Maybe we could sell the contract. I mean, we do have a cellar with some berries. Wouldn't someone pay us money now for the right to collect the rest of our payment come spring?"
I bit my lip. It wasn't that different from a loan, but maybe getting tangible assets instead of the promise of an almost-contract-breaker would make someone brave enough to defy Elof. Nea had bought the notebook after all -- it was too good a deal for her to pass up.
Once we unloaded the stack of wood, I rushed inside and pulled out the thin, wooden box hidden not-so-cleverly under my parent's straw mattress. I flipped through the various contracts.
Mother was bent over a grindstone full of wild rye berries. "What are you doing?"
"Checking something." I scanned furiously, hands already clammy.
My gut sank. Payable only to Trygve or his immediate kin. No, we couldn't sell the contracts. Why had I thought that anyone would buy it? Either they believed I was chaotic because of the crash, or they believed in Elof's power to hurt them.
Rob walked up behind me and looked the contract over. "Don't worry, Trygve. I have another idea. I'll fix this for you."
After we finished hauling wood for the day, Rob snuck off somewhere. All during supper, he had a huge grin on his face, but he didn't say anything until after we climbed into the loft and wrapped ourselves in our blankets.
"Here," he whispered conspiratorially. "This is for you."
Rob pressed a single coin into my hand. From its size and weight, it was a bronze Confederate penny. Against what I owed for the bride-price, it was practically nothing. But I couldn't bring myself to crush his joy. "Thanks, Rob. How'd you get this?"
I had a hard time imagining anyone hiring Rob, even in ordinary circumstances.
"I sold my pencil to Nea. I figured you needed it more than me."
My words lumped in my throat. He hadn't saved me from exile; he'd tossed away Grandma's keepsake.
"What?" I asked, as if expecting a different answer.
"I sold it. For you."
"For nothing! Do you really think a rare good from the other side of the Confederacy is only worth a penny?" She'd cheated him worse than she'd cheated me. Not that a fair price would have saved me, either. "You should have kept it."
Rob's voice quivered, tiny in the darkness. "I wanted to help."
Then you should have been paying attention to the sled. I grated to say the words out loud, but I bit them back. He hadn't meant to hurt me, though he had. He'd tried to help, though he hadn't. When I was gone, I wanted him to remember a brother who'd been kind to him when most of the world was not.
I exhaled my anger and squeezed his hand. "Thank you, Rob, for watching out for me."
Mother, Father, and even Grandma sniffled whenever they saw me, like I was already a corpse. I couldn't stand it anymore. So, the day before what should have been my wedding, I sat on the roof again, staring out at the Chaos. It stared back, as black and pitiless as a midwinter's night. Tomorrow, on my planned wedding day, I'd be exiled into it.
For a brief moment, I entertained thoughts of becoming a fugitive in the Confederate Ithena, a contract-breaker vagabond, always on the run. But I had no skills for such a life -- I doubted I'd last three days. When Elof or the Confederate authorities caught me, they'd hit my family with a fine, then toss me into the Chaos anyway.
One way or another, I'd be forced into the Chaos. I might as well go now. At least Ingrid wouldn't have to watch me disappear.
I stood on the border of the Chaos, the snow ending in a sharp line a pace away. Up close, the Chaos stopped looking like a dark haze and revealed its true nature. Purple shapes writhed through red dirt, trees hung upside down, and rocks kept turning into snakes. I tugged my mittens on tighter, as if those could protect me, and stepped across.
The ground rolled under me like the back of a running elk. I pitched forward, and instead of indigo rocks there to catch me, a chasm opened.
I tumbled. Tumbled, tumbled, bumping off oddly soft sand-ledges. I stopped with a dull thud.
It knocked the wind out of me, but I hadn't broken anything. I would have laughed, giddy with relief, if I could breathe.
Then one of the ledges turned into a triangle and stabbed me through the chest.
Laying on the ground felt odd. Next to me, my blood stayed red, liquid. Further out, the droplets turned into a pair of voles and three-fourths of a butterfly and scampered off. They left clear puddles behind in the sand.
Funny, really. I'd die before I broke my betrothal contract after all.
Noises played around me -- screaming, birdsong, silence that hummed a merry tune. But when I heard Rob's voice, I opened my eyes.
"Hello." He knelt and bandaged my chest.
"R-Rob?"
"It's not as bad as you think it is."
I took a
few breaths. The pain had dulled. Maybe . . . maybe he was right. Or this was another kind of Chaos trick. I didn't ask. "How did you find me?"
"I saw you walk in."
I blinked up at him, not understanding.
"I was sitting at the border, testing blackberries."
I frowned. "You shouldn't be able to find me in the Chaos. The ground shifts, turns, and boils in here."
Rob shrugged. "I just walked straight. It was all pretty normal."
"Normal?"
Before Rob could answer, a triangle shifted up through the sands and launched towards him.
"Watch out!" I shouted.
I couldn't move fast enough to tackle him out of harm's way. Rob looked the wrong direction -- up. The triangle hit his neck, then crumpled like paper and disappeared.
"You know," Rob said, "getting excited probably isn't good for your injury."
I gaped. "H-how are you fine?"
"Grandma always says Chaos plays off your thoughts, and you say my thoughts always seem to be someplace else. I figured I'd be safe." He shrugged; he hadn't even noticed the triangle. Rob knotted the bandage at the front of my chest, then helped me stand. "This is a fascinating place. Do you know that berries stay frozen when I hold them, but not when I let go?"
Was he really thinking about berries at a time like this?
Sure enough, he pulled a single blackberry out of his pocket. "This is nineteen. I wonder if berries would stay frozen if someone from the Confederacy brought them here, or if this only works because I'm one of Ogynan's. Or maybe it's because people have a bit of Order in them, and I believe that berries should stay frozen and Ogynan has nothing to do with it. I wonder how I could test it?"
I laughed -- a dry, exhausted sound. Rob actually liked this deathtrap. I hobbled two steps toward where I thought the border was, and the air flared to ungodly heat.
Rob scowled at me. "You're thinking, aren't you?"
"Of course!"
"You should stop."
I shook my head. "Do you know where we are? I have to keep my eyes open, I have to . . ." I trailed off. Being present-minded might be helpful in god-Ordered lands, but no gods reigned here. "Rob, take my hand. I'm closing my eyes, and I'm going to bore you."