Iduna (8 page)

Move and wait. Move and wait. Freya had found that she couldn't loiter in the alley leading to the door for too long without raising suspicion. There was just enough regular traffic to have someone notice she was always here. She'd cursed needing to leave and wandered between the market and the door Iduna had disappeared into.

Freya leaned against the wall with the hood of her azure Lawanian cape shading her face in the bright afternoon sun. She tried to stay here as much as she could each day without being noticed. She eyed the small red door Iduna had disappeared into days ago. Waiting for that door to open was like waiting for a glacier to melt. A man was sweeping his porch. Freya wished he would go away. Just as she was thinking that the man was about to greet her, Freya saw Iduna slip out the door. Finally.

Iduna had a saddlebag with her. Freya thanked the gods and said out loud, “Unger, we have a chance.” She'd started speaking to her husband. Whether to feel closer or as a reminder why she was here in this foreign land, she didn't know and didn't care. She knew where Iduna was heading, since Freya had been forced to put her own horse in the capital stables when she'd entered the city. She kept Iduna in sight. As she headed to the stables, Freya backed off. Then she heard swiftly moving feet, and the sky opened up in an afternoon downpour. She pulled her hood more fully over her head and plowed through the pouring rain.

She thought Iduna had looked focused and wondered spitefully who Iduna was plotting to betray next.

She had to wait until Iduna got her horse before Freya dared enter the stable to retrieve her own. Once Iduna left, she asked for her horse and one of the stable-hands went to prepare her horse. She didn’t have time. But she also didn’t have much money to offer a tip to hurry them along. Freya had been living on the streets, looking for Iduna, and hadn’t showered in days. She walked over to the unoccupied stable-hand and stood uncomfortably close. He promptly left her side to help the other get her mount ready. They were so predictable.

As Freya rode out of the stable, she paused at the mixed set of muddled hoof prints. There was no clear sign which way Iduna had gone. With no choice but to play the odds, she followed the main road out of Cha. At the first fork, it looked like most people headed farther inland. A shallow set of tracks went toward the sea. Thinking of Iduna's slight figure compared to a man in armor, she chose the seaward direction.

She galloped hard, hoping to confirm that she'd headed in the right direction, and then she'd back off. The rain stopped, and the sun came out. Steam rose from her robe as she rode on.

She didn't catch up with Iduna until they neared the first town. There she saw Iduna trotting slowly down the fishing town’s main road. Pulling up on the reins, Freya hung back. She would catch Iduna under dark of night.

Freya would make Iduna pay.

Myik, Republic of Lawan

Iduna was stuck. She’d gone to the little fishing town of Myik that stood on the Lawanian coast just a day’s sail from where the Okeenos islands supposedly were. She thought there would be daily or at least weekly transport from this town. Strangely enough, no one seemed to know any way to get to the islands. She'd asked at the wharf and in a number of shops and restaurants. People were unusually abrupt in their responses. She couldn't even get them talking about the people of Okeenos so that Iduna could feel better about her decision to chase down this lead instead of staying to fight.

With no idea what to do next and still full of guilt and frenetic energy, Iduna sat down at the open-air bar near the wharf. The deeper side of the harbor was to the north with the shore ringed by docks. A narrow beach ran along the south side. She eyed the ships bobbing in the mooring field of the small harbor like apples in a barrel. The sounds of boats creaking with the wind and swell would have been soothing on another day.

There was a portly man, with thin hair spread over his head and flushed cheeks, sitting at a table with a large empty glass and a well-eaten crustacean shell in front of him. He looked replete with his afternoon meal and a bit on the lethargic side. A hat sitting on the corner of the table looked official. Iduna had finally found the harbor master.

She ordered two glasses of rice wine and walked over to his table. “Mind if I join you? I have an extra drink that I need some help with.”

The harbor master looked at her and the tall glass. “Oh, yes, of course. Always room for more … more company.” She placed one drink within reach of his left hand and the other in front of her. Sitting down, she waited a while before talking, letting him enjoy a long swig in appreciative silence.

“It's a nice village you have here,” she said.

“Yes, Myik does well. Long summers, light winters, good fishing, good wine.”

“I hear that the fishing life is hard.”

“Oh, it is. We lost a ship just two weeks ago to a spring squall. It's risky work,” he said.

“Do you do much trading as well?” she asked.

When a man as relaxed as this one started to get tense, it was as obvious as a typhoon. Suddenly his lethargy had a cold edge of awareness to it.

“We trade with only the right people,” he said.

All right, so Iduna may have spent most of her time with her nose in a book, but she had spent years when she was younger working to get the best quality food, haggling in the local market. Since she was working on behalf of the Institute which needed to be above reproach, all of her dealings were with reputable sellers. She had to make sure she was honest, or Surat would have her skin. She’d learned to spot shady dealings quickly to avoid any hassle.

There was something behind this man’s defensiveness.

“Of course. A fair village like yours would never trade with people like the scum of Okeenos,” she said.

He chortled self-righteously. “Never, never. There are great Lawanian tradesmen up and down the coast that deserve our business. Some might like the Okeeno bird eggs and pearls”—he coughed a bit—“but we are honest people here and follow the mandates of Lawan.”

And this is what she gets for not caring about politics. She had no idea what mandates he was referring to. He would not be helping her get to Okeenos.

“Those in Okeenos do have legendary sailing skills,” she prodded, hoping to at least get Surat's lead confirmed. But the harbor master took refuge in the wine, taking long gulps, his Adam's apple bobbing. He wiped his mouth, then either did, in fact, fall asleep or managed to give an incredibly convincing act of a man sleeping off his afternoon's gluttony.

Restraining the urge to kick over the man’s chair, Iduna turned her gaze to the calm harbor. This would cost her time, but clearly there was some trade going on.

She just needed to find it.

Tinh stood in front of his squad of crimson-robed Elementalists and eyed the three other groups to his right. Everyone looked ready. They were in the middle of a wide plain of tall golden grass and had been watching the steady progression of Ull down the craggy mountain pass. There was already a massive Ull camp at the base of the mountain.

And still more Ull came.

Tinh waited. They wouldn’t instigate the attack. The Ull would come to them, and then the Elementalists would raise the water from the river. A few Ull would be lost, but the rest would see the impossibility of their attempts and turn back.

The practical side of Tinh made him wish they could show the Ull the futility of their attack now so all those pouring down the mountain trails could just turn back. They were wasting their time. It was so inefficient.

He sighed and remembered the saying
Effort is life
. The Ull were just going to have to learn their lesson the hard way.

It was a wild and windy moonless night. Iduna lay at the edge of a cliff overlooking the flat sprawl of the uninhabited stretch of beach just to the north of the fishing town. Everything pointed to Myik trading with the Okeeno, and she just needed to catch them. This beach had the best place to land, and nighttime would be when the illegal trading would occur. It could happen tonight, tomorrow, or in a month.

The moon was just a sliver this evening, and she felt the odds were on her side.

Waves pounded the pebbled beach, and the steady onshore breeze had her eyes straining. She licked her chapped lips and tasted the salt of the sea. The air was thick with it — the smell of salt and seaweed surrounded her. She spent most of her time watching the horizon, with her gaze flicking sporadically to shore.

The ocean churned in a steady progression to the beach, with multiple lines of wave breaks.

That was how she first saw them.

Her brain noticed a change in the pattern of the waves far out. It drew her attention just long enough. She pushed her sight and mind to figure out what she'd seen. In a series of wave breaks closer to her, she picked out what looked like several dark vertical leaves plowing over the waves. She calculated the trajectory and figured where the odd objects were headed. She didn't know what they were, but she couldn't hesitate if she hoped to catch them on the beach.

She used a quick spell on the rocks, arranging a series of handholds to scramble down the cliff face quickly and tumbled the last few feet to the bottom. Running along the beach, she hugged the steep wall. This should be the spot. She waited.

…

Freya watched Iduna's rapid descent with fury. How did she do that? What else had Iduna hidden from Freya?

She studied Iduna on the beach and considered if this was finally the time to get her prey. No one was around, and darkness would shield Freya. She could catch Iduna by surprise. She’d slide down and leap on Iduna from above.

The image of slitting Iduna's throat came to her unbidden.

Freya could taste blood in her mouth. Her hand flew to her lips, aghast at the sensation.

…

One by one the strange objects sped toward the shore. Iduna could hardly believe what she was seeing.

They looked like vertical leaves, but that made no sense. Each dark leaf, when seen closer, was actually one person holding on to what looked like a single large wing. She was used to seeing wings working in pairs to make a bird fly by being parallel to the Earth and flapping up and down. These people had just one large wing, longer than they were tall, and held it vertically. The wings didn't flap or move, but the pair moved as if they were flying over the water nonetheless.

Tamping down her wonder, she snuck behind a set of bushes closer to where they'd be landing.

Each of them dropped the wing they'd been using on the ground and used their scooped hands to quickly shovel sand on top. One was a lot smaller than the other. A man and a woman, Iduna guessed. Then they moved to the base of the cliff. Another person joined them from the shore. The landlubber must have been awaiting their arrival, and Iduna counted herself lucky that she didn't run into that person as they both waited.

It wasn't clear what the two parties were doing, and Iduna waited until their business was complete before she made her move. As the landlubber left the way he came and the people from the winged leaves headed back toward their stashed equipment, Iduna made up her mind.

She would do whatever it took.

The empty spot in her chest throbbed.

She took strength from the necklace Angko had given her which she wore around her neck. She’d started wearing it after she had abandoned Cha and left the people she cared about. It reminded her how important her task was.

She ran out to meet the smugglers.

“Take me with you,” she shouted against the wind.

“What? Who are you?” yelled a woman with curly hair flying about her head.

“I'm the person who's keeping you on this exposed beach to be caught or turning you in later unless you take me with you,” Iduna said.

The man left his board to come stand inches from her face. “We could just kill you,” he said.

Iduna wished she'd thought this through more. He was a full head taller than her, and she wasn't short.

“A dead body on the beach would draw too much attention, and hiding me would take too much time. Take me with you.” Of course they could just dump her at sea. She hoped they wouldn't think of that. Smugglers weren't always killers, were they?

Both smugglers turned to the top of the cliff closest to town and noted the small light bobbing with uneven progress. Someone was headed their way. The man looked her up and down. He paused.

“Kai, let's take her,” the woman said. “Fool doesn't know what she's asking.”

“She'll be riding with you, Pua” he replied and moved off to grab his gear.

“All right, sweetheart. Come with me, and do exactly as I say, when I say it.” Pua grabbed Iduna's arm and tugged her over to the buried leaf. “Grab that,” she said, pointing to the wing. Meanwhile the woman carried an oblong board with string and a heavy-looking ball suspended on one side. She dropped the ball then the board in the shallows. Iduna was making slow progress, staggering as the onshore breeze caught the wing and tossed her side to side.

The woman hissed and snagged the wing from Iduna, laying it in the water next to the board, fiddling and muttering. Then she got an evil look in her eye and beckoned Iduna forward.

“Lay facedown,” she said, pointing to the board.

Iduna did as she said and began to realize she'd gotten herself into a situation she really didn't understand. The woman pulled the board forward into the water, then climbed up and lay on top of Iduna, bracing her feet on either side of Iduna's feet.

“Hold on tight.” Pua started paddling with her arms through the first series of waves. Then she pushed against Iduna to a standing position. She stood on Iduna's back, her stance wide and her weight well distributed. Salt water splashed in Iduna's face. The small woman seemed to be enjoying herself, singing loudly to the wind. The song was one of challenge and joy. The woman squatted and pulled the wing up. Shifting her feet to stand between the V of Iduna's splayed legs, Pua cried out, “Now get on all fours, and rise to stand next to me.”

Iduna scrambled up without tipping the board too much. She was standing on water.

“Get in front of me.” Pua opened her left arm, still holding on to the wing with one hand. Iduna shuffled in front of her, then reflexively put her hands, hand over fist, on a strap running along one side of the wing, the same strap the woman was holding. The board swiveled in the wind, like a needle in a compass.

Keening and calling, Pua tilted her head back to sing upward to the skies. The woman closed the circle with her left arm and stretched her right out to grab the far side of the wing. When Pua’s hand made contact and both hands were now clutching the wing, Iduna felt a sharp jolt. They were off, flying on top of water and bursting through the lines of waves.

They zigzagged for hours, heading out farther and farther to sea. Each turn was a hair-raising release, flip, and snap as they let go of the sail, it swung to the other side, and they caught it before it filled with the wind again. The wind was strong and steady with occasional gusts and gaps that, by turns, had Iduna's heart racing with the thrill of speed and flight, or catching herself off balance and fearing a splash into the deep, rolling ocean. It was exhilarating.

When they landed on the beach, Iduna popped off the board and helped pull it through the last bit of surf to the shore. She couldn't stop smiling and beamed at the woman. Pua smiled back and shook her head.

Iduna barely saw the punch coming before everything went dark.

…

Freya lay sobbing on the shore, a ball of self-loathing, fear, and hate. She had scrambled down when she'd seen Iduna stride into the shallows. Then Iduna had joined the others, and they'd left so quickly.

It had all happened too fast.

She'd paused when the taste of blood had hit her, unbidden and with a rush of anticipation. Why had she paused? She cursed herself. What would happen to her husband? She knew. Oh, Yorin, she knew. He would die, and it was her fault.

She must find Iduna again. She must.

She swore she wouldn't hesitate again.

A vile song echoed in her ears.