by Morgan Rice
Sophia returned his smile. “That sounds good. I really don’t know much about Ishjemme.”
Sophia heard Rika groan. “Don’t encourage him. He’ll tell you every story the skalds ever wrote.”
They walked down into the city, and it took Sophia a minute or two to realize that there were no guards following along behind, no hidden watchers there to protect them, the way she’d had in Ashton when she’d been playing at being a noble. Was it really so much safer? When she mentioned it, the others laughed.
“Why would anyone need a guard to walk around their own city?” Rika asked.
“Besides, if there’s trouble, we all know how to fight,” Jan said, sweeping back his cloak to reveal the sword at his hip. “Father insisted.”
He’s not saying that he complained every time Father made him practice, Rika thought, looking away when Sophia glanced across at her.
The city was beautiful in a way that Sophia suspected Ashton had never been. There were trees everywhere she looked, so that it seemed at least as much forest as town. Wooden and stone houses sat between them, each cluster of them giving the impression of being alone in the world.
“This way,” Jan said, sounding excited. “If you want to understand Ishjemme, you should see the Thing.”
“The Thing?” Sophia asked.
“It’s where we talk,” Rika explained. “The different clans come together to discuss whatever they want, and our father can hear what they’re saying. But Jan’s probably more interested in the statues.”
“What statues?” Sophia asked.
She got the answer to that soon enough, because on the way to it, there were carvings beside the path. Some were of people, obviously carved by a hundred different hands. Some were flat slabs with scenes worked into them that seemed to be from myth or history, or both.
“This is when Olaf Firstem fought giants for the high passes,” Jan said. “They say he built himself stilts so that he could take them on face to face.”
They passed by a couple of people by the side of the road. To Sophia’s surprise, they bowed deeply to them. No, not to them, she realized, as she glanced at their thoughts. To her.
They said the heir to the throne had come. If this is her, then…
Jan appeared not to see it.
“This one is the battle on the drowning water, when the southerners tried to invade three hundred years ago. Nils Borsson had his men retreated across a river where they’d laid stones beneath the surface, giving them a way across that the attackers didn’t know about.”
“Jan likes to tell stories,” Rika said. “He tells stories, Oli learns history like an old man, I sing, Hans fights, Endi knows about people, while Frig and Ulf hunt.”
“Frig and Ulf argue,” Jan corrected his sister. “And I can fight as well as Hans.”
“But I shouldn’t tell him that unless he wants to test it?” Rika shot back.
Sophia guessed that Jan was trying to impress her with that. She shook her head. “I’ve met a lot of people who can fight,” she said. “It’s easy to hurt people. It’s harder to give them reasons to want to work together. Stories help with that.”
Jan nodded, looking happy that Sophia understood it. “This way,” he said. “Anya will have finished baking by now. She makes the best sweet pastries you’ll ever taste.”
“I should have seen this detour coming,” Rika said.
They stepped off the pass at a building that smelled to Sophia of fresh baked bread and pastries. There were tables set outside in the open air, and people gathered at them. They stared at Sophia as she passed. Several fell to their knees.
“I think it’s going to be hard to get used to this,” she said.
“That’s good,” Rika said. “A ruler who expects people on their knees doesn’t deserve them there.”
“No one deserves people kneeling just because of who their parents are,” Sophia said. “This is your father’s land. People shouldn’t be kneeling to me.”
“But in all the stories,” Jan put in, “Ishjemme was a vassal of your family, under their protection. It only broke away because they no longer ruled. I would kneel to you.”
To Sophia’s surprise, he did just that, kneeling in front of her and holding up his sword in front of him.
“I offer you my sword, Sophia,” Jan said. “I will protect you with my life. I will be there when you need me. I will stand beside you in war or peace.”
Sophia looked over to Rika, hoping that Jan’s sister would be able to defuse the situation with some lighthearted comment. Rika shrugged.
“I agree with Jan. I’m not much with a sword, but if you have any use for a harp player, I’ll be there.”
Although Jan would probably swear far more if she asked.
Sophia went to pull Jan to his feet. “If you’re sworn to do anything for me, can we at least go get these pastries that you say are so good?”
“Aha, a queen who gives commands I can go along with!” Jan said.
They went inside and bought pastries from a woman in her forties who looked over her eatery with a benevolent eye. Even she curtseyed as Sophia came close, and Sophia suspected that it was only because Jan was buying that they paid at all.
When they’d eaten, they made their way down to the Thing, which turned out to be a large open space with stone terraces set into its sides. There were men there, wearing colors that probably marked out different factions or families. Some even wore plaid that reminded Sophia of the clans found in the mountain lands.
They currently seemed to be arguing.
“And I say that I’ll not risk my family taking part in someone else’s war!” a big man with a beard said.
“What if that war comes to us?” another man countered. “You think the New Army will stop at Ashton? What about if they reach Monthys? The mountains?”
“It’s not our fault that you and yours chose to stay on that…” the first man said, but he stopped as Sophia, Jan, and Rika walked into the great open space there.
Sophia could feel the eyes on her then. These minds were ones she could touch, and she could feel the wide array of thoughts there, wondering about her arrival and what it would mean. Some seemed to think it meant that war was an inevitable terror. Others thought that was a good thing. Some wanted to continue being ruled by the Skyddars, while others wanted the prospect of change for its own sake.
“You’ve heard the news,” Jan said, moving into the middle of the space. “Lord and Lady Danse’s daughters, Sophia and Kate, have returned to us!”
Some of the men there bowed their heads. Some knelt briefly. Others looked at Sophia as if wondering what she might do.
“You’re really her?” the big, bearded man asked. He stood over Sophia, looking her up and down. “You’re the one who’s meant to be our queen? Half the clans are here already, and there’s more arriving every day by boat.”
I’ve fought all my life, and I’m supposed to just obey some girl?
“I’m not looking for anyone’s obedience,” Sophia said, looking around at them. “And I heard you arguing before. I’m not looking for a war. I certainly don’t want to invade the Dowager’s kingdom in some stupid attempt to gain power.”
The bigger man started to say something, but Sophia held up a hand. She knew that if she let him talk over her now, they would never listen to her.
“I’m not done,” she said. “I also think that if one of you is attacked, then you all need to work together to stop them. If you don’t, then when an enemy comes for you next, what help will you have? And don’t tell me that those across the water chose to stay there. That’s no kind of choice. Which of you would leave your homes willingly? Which of you wouldn’t fight for them? My parents stayed until the Dowager burned it around them, until my sister and I had to run through the flames. Home matters, and we should all be prepared to work together to protect it.”
She looked around, worried that she’d said too much. The men there didn’t seem to be saying much.
To her surprise, though, she found them nodding. Even the big man in front of her was.
“Aye,” he said. “You’ll do.”
He knelt. He wasn’t the only one. Around Sophia, man after man dropped to his knees. Even Jan did it again. Sophia looked around at Rika, who smiled.
“It seems that you have a kingdom, my queen.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Kate laughed at the sheer freedom of riding through the hills near Ishjemme. Every time she’d been out in the countryside before, there had been a purpose to it. Now, she was just exploring, wandering for the sake of it with her cousins.
Perhaps that was part of the reason for her happiness: that she had family to share the moment with. Ulf and Frig argued with one another constantly, but Kate could see how inseparable they were, and how well the two worked together as they rode across hills and through small woods of pine trees.
“We come out here to hunt,” Frig said. “Ulf might be a dullard, but he can stalk prey.”
“Frig might be a loudmouth, but she knows how to track,” Ulf countered.
When Kate saw the herd of elk spread out in one of the valleys below, she knew what they intended even before they asked it.
“Do you hunt, cousin?” Frig asked, passing across a short hunting bow tipped with horn.
“Aye, do they teach folk to use a bow back in Ashton?” Ulf put in, in between bites of an apple.
Kate smiled. “I think I may have picked up a thing or two.”
Fast as only her powers would let her, she snatched the apple from Ulf’s hand and tossed it into the air. She nocked an arrow and fired in one movement, skewering the apple neatly.
Frig laughed at that. “I think you’ll manage. Come on.”
They headed down into the valley, dismounting and moving out across the grass quickly and in silence. They kept to rocks and behind scrub, while Ulf seemed almost to sniff for the wind, keeping them in places where their scent wouldn’t carry to the waiting prey.
“Does your sister have all the same talents you do?” Frig asked as she moved closer.
Kate paused, then shook her head. “Sophia can see thoughts, and… well you’ve seen Sienne beside her, but fighting isn’t really what she’s good at. She’s better with people.”
“People are overrated,” Ulf said.
“Just because you’d sleep under a rock given the chance,” Frig snapped back.
They were getting closer to the elk now, so they moved more quietly, barely making a whisper of sound as they advanced toward a stand of trees. Kate crept amongst them, readying her bow to bring down one of the creatures.
She had to bite back a shriek as Siobhan stepped from one of the trees. Or appeared to, anyway. Her supposed mentor stood before Kate, as ageless and beautiful as ever, vines entangled in her hair, her dress a thing that shimmered like the water of the fountain that was the source of her power.
“Siobhan?” Kate said. “What are you doing here?”
“I can reach anywhere you are, apprentice,” Siobhan said. “You are mine, as surely as the land around my fountain.”
“I am no one’s,” Kate insisted. She turned to call out to her cousins, but they were out of sight.
“Oh, don’t bother calling for them,” Siobhan said. “They wouldn’t see me like this anyway. They might be your cousins, but that talent is beyond these two.”
“I don’t need their help with you,” Kate said, trying for defiance.
“You’re right,” Siobhan said, her tone changing to something softer. “I’m not your enemy, Kate. I’m your teacher, and it’s time to pay the price for your last lesson.”
“My last lesson?” Kate said, even though she knew what it would be.
Siobhan smiled. “You saved your sister. It wasn’t the lesson I intended for you to learn, but you learned it, and now you owe me. I will have a task for you soon.”
Kate swallowed at that. “A task? A murder, you mean.”
She thought about the last task she’d performed for the witch, about the young woman who had died at her hands in the slowest way possible because Kate had assumed that Siobhan would stop her at any moment.
“The task will be what I decide it will be,” Siobhan said, in that infuriatingly calm way she had. “You know that whatever I require, the consequences will matter.”
Kate could remember the lines of the future Siobhan had shown her; the images of Gertrude Illiard eventually becoming so evil that she had Sophia murdered. She still wasn’t sure if she believed it.
“What game are you playing, Siobhan?” Kate asked.
She laughed at that. “Whatever game I want.”
She stepped behind a tree, and Kate didn’t even try to follow her. She was already gone.
The others found her a couple of minutes later, looking at her first in disappointment that she’d wandered off from the hunt, then in worry.
“What is it?” Frig asked. “What happened?”
“It’s hard to explain,” Kate said.
Ulf shrugged. “Try. I smell… something here.”
Kate wasn’t sure what to say, but if she couldn’t tell her cousins this, who could she tell it to?
“Part of the reason that I’m different from my sister is because I agreed to become the apprentice to a witch,” Kate said. She waited for the shock and hatred to appear on her cousins’ faces, but all she saw there was sympathy.
Frig laid a hand on her shoulder. “This is not the Dowager’s land,” she said. “We don’t burn folk for what they are. We judge them by their actions.”
“What I might have to do is the problem,” Kate said.
“Your witch has asked for something?” Ulf asked.
Kate nodded. “The last time she set me a task, someone died. I made a deal with her, but I will not just be her killer.”
She saw the twins look across at one another. There was no sense of the silent conversation that might have occurred between her and Sophia, but she still suspected that they were thinking the same things. It was probably the only time Kate had seen them agree.
“For a problem like this,” Frig said, “you need the rune witch.”
***
It took an hour to ride to the place they were heading, Kate following behind the twins as they led the way up into the mountains, where sheer height made snow cling to the peaks and the air seemed thin.
Finally, ahead, Kate saw a place that looked as though someone had built a log cabin into the side of the mountain, so that it seemed like an awning set against it. As they got closer, Kate started to see that every inch of the wood, and most of the stone around it, was carved with symbols and runes, some looking like letters in languages she didn’t know, others looking more like pictures.
“This is as far as we go,” Ulf said. “People who approach Haxa must do it alone.”
Frig laughed. “More like, the last time we were here, Ulf knocked over things he shouldn’t have, and she was angry with him.”
Kate nodded. “It’s all right, I’ll go in alone.”
The door wasn’t locked, so Kate knocked and then entered. The space beyond looked like any comfortable cabin might have, with carved wooden furniture and intricately woven throws. As with the outside, the whole of the space seemed to have been carved, in a complex web of images that seemed so detailed they could have come to life at any moment. A broad tapestry hung across the back of the room.
As Kate watched, a woman pulled that tapestry aside, providing a brief glimpse of a rock wall beyond, and of tunnels carved into that rock, presumably leading deep into the mountain. Kate found herself wondering what lay in those depths, and what would happen if she stepped past that curtain.
“I’ve been waiting for you. The runes said you would come.”
The woman looked young, but in the same way that Siobhan looked young, as if something much older wore a young shape. Her golden hair was wild, tangled in a mess that had rune stones woven into it in spots. She wore furs and elk skins, shot thr
ough here and there with flashes of plaid, and leaving her arms bare. At least, her left arm was bare. Her right featured a rainbow’s worth of colors, symbol after symbol marked there with tattoos, and even with what looked like brands.
“I’m Haxa,” she said. “It’s not my true name, before you ask. It just means ‘witch’ in one of the old tongues. And you’re Kate. You should be more careful with your name. Words have power.”
She extended the arm without tattoos, clasping Kate’s wrist and examining it.
“You have a lot of marks on you, Kate,” she said.
“I have a lot of marks?” Kate said.
Haxa smiled at that. “I like you. Direct as your cousins, but with enough power to be interesting. Come and sit down.”
She gestured to two of the chairs, taking one. Kate sat in the other, and despite all the carving it was comfortable. There was a knife on a small table next to Haxa, and a block of wood. She picked both up and started whittling, the blade moving with surprising speed even though she didn’t seem to be paying it any attention.
“You know that those with power express it in different ways?” Haxa asked.
Kate nodded. Finnael, the man who’d taught her how to heal, had said as much.
“For me, it’s words,” Haxa said. “Symbols, runes. I learn the names of things and their ways. I cast the runes to divine some of what might come. I see the marks that others don’t. You have a lot of marks on you, Kate. You have marks claiming you for another, marks of the future too, marks of power, marks of love. Which of those did you come to me about?”
“I swore to be the apprentice to someone,” Kate said. “Now she wants me to kill for her.”
“Then kill,” Haxa said. She looked at Kate as if waiting to see her reaction.
“I won’t be made to do that,” Kate said.
“Ah, so it’s not that you object to killing, then?” Haxa retorted. “Just to being told when to?”
Again, Kate had the sense that she was being tested. “I have killed, when I’ve been attacked, or when I have been defending my friends, but to be an assassin? You’re right, I don’t want to be told what to do, but a big part of that is that I know Siobhan will make me kill people who haven’t done anything to earn it.”