The Last Light of the Sun (62 page)

The queen placidly informed her royal spouse that—upon reflection and religious counsel—his soul was not
so
very gravely in danger as to require her to withdraw to a sanctuary immediately after Judit was married, after all. She was content to wait until Kendra, in turn, was wed to this prince in the west. Perhaps in late spring? Aeldred and Osbert, in her view, would be incapable of properly dealing with this second celebration without guidance. Further, it now struck the queen as reasonable to spend
some
of her time at court even after she retired to the sanctuary. These matters could be addressed in a … balanced fashion, as the teachings of faith suggested for all things. On the subject of balance, the king’s earthly state was, certainly, part of her charge.

His diet, for example, with the winter feasting season approaching (Judit’s wedding in Rheden ahead of them), was excessive. He was gaining weight, at risk of gout, and worse. He would need her with him, at intervals, to observe and assess his needs.

The king, who had not suffered another of his fevers since a certain conversation with Ceinion on the ride back from chasing the Erlings to the coast (and would not endure one again, ever), happily proposed she begin such assessing right where they were. The queen declared the suggestion indecent at their age but allowed herself to be overmastered, in this.

YOU’RE TAKING
a long time.

You know why. I had to go to my father first, couldn’t rush away. I’m almost with you. Three more days. There are emissaries with us. We’ll present the marriage proposal to your father. I’ll ask Ceinion to help. I think he will.

Doesn’t matter. My father’s going to consent.

How do you know? This is a very—

I spoke with him.

And he just said yes?

Right now I think he’ll say yes to anything I ask of him.

A small silence in the shared channel of two minds.

So will I, you know.

Oh, good.

She’d done her first harvest-time sacrifice, two lambs and a kid. Anrid had added the goat to the ceremony, naming it as Fulla’s offering, mostly to be seen to be doing things the old
volur
had not done. Changes, setting her own imprint upon rituals, as a seal marked a letter. She’d worn the accursed snake about her neck. It was growing heavier. It had crossed her mind that if the ship from the south came back in spring, it would be prudent to arrange for another serpent. Or perhaps they’d have one on board, perhaps arrangements had already been made.

Frigga, when consulted, thought this might be so.

The harvest turned out to be a good one, and the winter was mild on Rabady. The new governor and
volur
were both toasted in the taverns, and the women’s compound saw its share of after-harvest gifts. Anrid claimed only a dark blue cloak for herself, let the others divide the rest—they needed to be kept happy. And a little bit afraid.

The serpent helped with that. The wound on her leg had become a small pair of scars. She let the others see them now and again, as if by chance. Serpents were a power of earth, and Anrid had been given some of that power.

It was mild enough through winter that some of the younger men took their boats across to Vinmark for the adventure of it. In a hard winter the straits might freeze, though not safely so, and Rabady could be entirely cut off. This year they did learn things, although in winter there wasn’t much to know. A blood feud in Halek, six men dead after a woman had been stolen. It appeared the woman had consented, so she was killed as well when reclaimed by her family. People were too close to each other when the snow came. In spring the roads and sea opened again and pent-up violence could be sent away. It had always been like that. They were shaped by the cold season; preparing for winter, needing it to end, preparing again.

One day, with spring not yet arrived, a small boat was rowed across to the isle. Three mariners aboard, heavily armed, spears and round shields. They came ashore with a chest and a key, spoke courteously enough to the men sent down to meet them. They were looking for a woman. From the town they were sent through the walls and across the ditch to trudge snow-clad fields to the women’s compound. A half-dozen boys, glad of the diversion, escorted them.

The chest was for Frigga. It revealed, when opened in Anrid’s chamber (only the two of them there for the
turning of the key), silver enough to buy any property on the isle, with a good deal left over. There was a note.

Anrid was the one who could read.

Frigga’s son Bern sent his respects to his mother and hoped she remained in health. He was alive himself, and well. He was sorry to have to tell her that her husband (her first husband) had died, in Cyngael lands, at summer’s end. His passing was honourable, he had saved other men with his death. He had been given rites and burning there, done properly. The silver was to make a new beginning for her. In a hard way to explain, the note said, it was really from Thorkell. Bern would send word again when he could, but would probably not risk coming back to Rabady.

Anrid had expected the other woman to weep. She did not—or not when Anrid was near. The chest and silver were hidden (there were places to hide things here). Frigga had already made her new beginning. Her son could not have known that. She wasn’t at all certain she wished to leave the compound and the women, go back to a house in or near the town, and she wouldn’t go to her daughters in Vinmark, even with wealth of her own. That wasn’t a life, growing old in a strange place.

It was a great deal of money, you couldn’t just leave it in the ground. She’d think on it, she told Anrid. Anrid had memorized the note (a quick mind) before they put it back in the chest.

Probably not,
was what he had said.

She took thought, and invited the governor to visit her.

Another new thing, Sturla’s coming here, but the two of them were at ease with each other now. She’d gone into town to speak with him as well, formally garbed, surrounded by (always) several of the women.

Iord, the old
volur,
had believed in the mystery that came with being unseen, removed. Anrid (and Frigga,
when they talked) thought power also came from people knowing you were there, bearing you in mind. She always had the serpent when she went to the town, or met with Ulfarson at the compound, as now. He’d deny it, of course, but he was afraid of her, which was useful.

They discussed adding buildings to the compound when the last snow melted and the men could work again. This had been mentioned before. Anrid wanted room for more women, and a brewhouse. She had thoughts of a place for childbirth. People gave generously at such times (if the child was a boy, and lived). It would be good to become known as the place to come when a birth drew near. The governor would want a share, but that, too, she’d anticipated.

He wasn’t difficult to deal with, Sturla. As he was leaving, after ale and easy talk (about the feud, over on the mainland), she mentioned, casually, something she’d learned from the three men with the chest, about events a year ago, when Halldr Thinshank’s horse had gone missing.

It made a great deal of sense, what she told the governor: everyone had known there was no love lost between the old
volur
and Thinshank. Ulfarson had nodded owlishly (he had a tendency to look that way after ale) and asked, shrewdly, why the boy hadn’t come home by now, if this was so.

The boy, she told him, had gone to Jormsvik. Choosing the world of fighting men to put behind him the dark woman-magic that had brought him shame. How did she know? The chest was from him. He’d written to his mother here. He was greatly honoured, it seemed, on the mainland now. His prowess reflected well on Rabady. His father, Thorkell Einarson, the exile, was dead (it was good to let a man have tidings he could share in a tavern), and even more of a hero. The boy was
wealthy from raiding, had sent his mother silver, to buy any home on the isle she wished.

Ulfarson leaned forward. Not a stupid man, though narrow in the paths of his thought. Which house? he asked, as she had expected he would.

Anrid, smiling, said they could probably guess which house Thorkell Einarson’s widow would want, though buying it might be difficult, given that it was owned by Halldr’s widow who hated her.

It might be possible, she said, as if struck by a thought, for someone else to buy the house and land first, turn a profit for himself selling to Frigga when she came looking. Sturla Ulfarson stroked his pale moustache. She could
see
him thinking this through. It was an entirely proper thing, she added gravely, if the two leaders of the isle helped each other in these various ways.

Construction of her three new buildings, Sturla Ulfarson said, when he rose to leave, would commence as soon as the snows were gone and the ground soft enough. She invoked Fulla’s blessing upon him when he left.

When the weather began to change, the days to grow longer, first green-gold leaves returning, Anrid set the younger women to watch at night, farther from the compound than was customary, and in a different direction. There was no spirit-guidance, no half-world sight involved. She was simply … skilled at thinking. She’d had to become that way. It could be seen as magic or power, she knew, mistaken for a gift of prescience.

She had another long conversation with Frigga, doing most of the talking, and this time the other woman had wept, and then agreed.

Anrid, who was very young, after all, began having restless nights around that time. A different kind of
disturbance than before, when she hadn’t been able to sleep. This time it was her dreams, and what she did in hem.

HE WAS DOING
what his father had done long ago. Bern kept telling himself that through the winter, waiting for spring. And if this was so, it was important not to be soft about it. The north was no place for that. Being soft could destroy you, even if you left raiding for a different life, as Thorkell had done.

He would leave with honour. Everyone in Jormsvik knew by now all that had happened on what had come to be called Ragnarson’s Raid. They knew what Red Thorkell had done to keep them from going to Arberth, and what Bern had done, and how the two of them (the skalds were singing it) had shaped destiny together, after, leading five ships to Champieres.

Two of the most experienced captains had spoken with Bern on separate occasions, urging him to stay. No coercion—Jormsvik was a company of free and willing men. They’d pointed out that he’d entered among them by killing a powerful man, which boded well for his future, as did his lineage and the way he had begun on his first raid. They hadn’t known his lineage when he’d entered; they did now.

Bern had expressed gratitude, awareness of honour. Kept private the thought that he really didn’t agree with this vision of his prospects. He’d been fortunate, had received aid beyond measure from Thorkell, and even though the idea of the attack in Ferrieres had been his by way of his father, he’d discovered no battle frenzy in himself, no joy in the flames, or when he’d spitted a Jaddite cleric on his blade.

You didn’t have to
tell
people that, but you did need to be honest with yourself, he thought. His father had
left the sea road, eventually. Bern was doing it earlier, that was all, and would ask Ingavin and Thünir not to pull him back, as Thorkell had been pulled back.

He set about balancing accounts through the winter.

When you changed your life you were supposed to leave the old one behind cleanly. Ingavin observed such things, cunning and wise, watching with his one eye.

Bern had wealth now. A fortune beyond his deserts: the Champieres raid was being talked about, word spreading, even on the snowbound paths of winter. It would be in Hlegest by now, Brand had told him in a tavern one night, icicles hanging like spears on the eaves outside. Kjarten Vidurson (rot his scarred face) would know that Jormsvik was still no fortress to set himself against, though he was likely going to try, sooner or later, that one.

Bern had begun making his reckoning that same night. Had left the tavern for the rooms (the three rooms) in which he’d kept Thira since returning. He’d offered her a sum of money that would set her up back home with property and the choosing (or rejecting) of any man in her village. Women could own land, of course, they just needed a husband to deal with it. And keep it.

She’d surprised him, but women were—Bern thought—harder than men to anticipate. He was
good,
he’d discovered, at understanding men, but he’d not have expected, for example, that Thira would burst into tears, and swear at him, and throw a boot, and
then
say, snapping the words like a ship’s captain to an oarsman out of rhythm, that she’d left home of her own choice for her own reasons and no man-boy like Bern Thorkellson was going to make her go back.

She’d accepted the silver and the three rooms, though.

Not long after, she bought herself a tavern. Hrati’s, in fact. (Hrati was old, tired of the life, said he was ready for the table by the fire and an upstairs room. She gave him that. He didn’t, as it happened, last long. Started drinking too much, became quarrelsome. They buried him the next winter. Thira changed the name of the tavern. Bern was long gone by then.)

He’d had to wait until spring, when challengers began coming again. In the meantime, he paid three of the newer, younger ones to carry a chest to Rabady as soon as the weather made that possible. These were Jormsvikings, they weren’t going to cheat him, and mercenaries could take a paying task from a companion as easily as from anyone else.

More balancing in that chest. His mother would surely be locked into a grim life, a second husband dead (and she only a second wife in Thinshank’s house), no rights to speak of, no sure home. Bern had left her to that, taking Gyllir into the sea.

Silver didn’t make redress for everything, but if you didn’t let yourself get soft you could say it went a long-enough way in the world.

He couldn’t safely return to Rabady: he’d almost certainly be known (even changed in his appearance), taken as a horse thief, and more. The horse had been named and marked for a funeral burning, after all.