The Girl the Sea Gave Back(26)

He looked down at me, one eyebrow arching. “What?”

“There has to be some reason he’s tasked you with watching me. And there had to be some reason you came to the beach that day seven years ago.”

I watched him remember. For almost an entire year, Gunther had come to meet me in the meadow. He’d taught me how to make arrows and shoot them. He’d even made my bow. But he had never talked to me other than giving me instruction. He’d never told me why he’d agreed to help me.

“I didn’t do it because I owed a debt to Jorrund,” he answered, gruffly.

“Then why?”

He kicked the horse, riding past me and leaving me to walk alone. I doubted Vigdis or anyone else knew about those days in the meadow. If they did, Gunther wouldn’t hold such a high ranking among the warriors. But Jorrund was good at getting people to do what he wanted. He was good at making people feel like they owed him something.

I moved slowly, watching the pattern of the thicket ahead. We were farther inland than I’d usually be when hunting for henbane, but there was no time to go back to Liera and the sun was already disappearing, cooling the forest around us. If I was going to find the Nādhir, I had to act quickly.

Vigdis’ words came back to me. He’d meant what he said, but even if I did find the man who’d killed his brother, he had plenty of reasons to want me dead. I only had the time between now and then to find a way to keep myself valuable to him. After that, I didn’t know what my future held. My own fate was growing dimmer by the moment.

The truth was that I understood Vigdis, even if I thought he was wrong. His zeal for his clan was pure. It ran through his veins as hot as his blood and Vera’s death had struck him hard. With no children of his own, he’d lost the only soft, warm thing he’d let into his heart and it was easier to blame me than to blame Eydis. I was flesh and blood. I had a face. And most importantly, I could die.

I stopped when I saw the change in the trees ahead, where a narrow offshoot of the river wound waywardly in the dark, widening in the distance. Gunther stopped at the outcropping of stone as I pushed through the reeds. My boots sank into the softening ground and I searched the dried, dead plants of winter that were clustered along the water. If the henbane was anywhere nearby, it would be here. It was too early to find fresh blooms but last year’s fallen stalks would still litter the earth.

I crouched down, digging through damp brush with my fingers and moving down the shore, my hands caked with mud. The light was almost completely gone by the time I found it. A golden bed of spent henbane peeked through a new patch of grass that reached up like fingers toward the warmth of the sun.

I raked the blades back carefully, unearthing an old straw-colored stalk lined with tight rows of seed pods. One was all I needed. I stood, pushing back into the reeds toward Gunther, and we walked back to where Jorrund waited, now almost invisible in the dark.

“I don’t like this,” he said, eyeing the henbane.

“I know,” I whispered, walking past him.

Summoning the Spinners was dangerous, but my entire life with the Svell had been dangerous. I had never really been safe, even if Jorrund had wanted me to believe I was. So I had learned to take risks to make my existence necessary. This was no different.

The fires of the Svell camp were lit in the trees in the distance. They’d been arriving all day and by tomorrow, we’d be headed east with an entire army. Time was running out.

The meeting tent was packed full of bodies as we passed, voices booming over each other in the dark. Jorrund held open the flap of our tent and I ducked inside as he struck the fire-steel and I got to work, laying out the henbane and using my knife to cut the dead blooms from the dry stalk.

“What are you doing?” Gunther watched me warily, the light of the torch reflecting in his eyes.

“I don’t know where the Nādhir is.” I peeled the dried petals back and fit the tip of my blade into the pod, slicing downward in a precise line. The black round seeds glimmered beneath the husk as Jorrund came to stand over me. “So, I’m going to ask someone who does.”

“There are other ways to find him,” Jorrund said.

“Not this quickly.” I dumped the seeds into my palm. If the Spinners had sent the All Seer, I had to believe they were trying to tell me something. That they were trying to guide me, somehow. And it wasn’t only the Nādhir from the glade I wanted to find. I wanted to know more about the Kyrr I’d seen in the forest.

I stood and Jorrund held a bowl out before me, meeting my eyes. “Be careful.”

I took it, not answering. I knew enough about fate to know that being careful had very little to do with living or dying. And I was still too angry with him for going against Bekan to drive away his worry.

We went back out into the crisp night air and I knelt before the nearest fire, scooping hot coals into the bowl with the blade of my knife. Jorrund’s and Gunther’s footsteps hit the ground behind me as I walked into the dark forest. I found a place where the moonlight spilled through the tree tops and sat down, my skirt spread out around me. The coals glowed orange and red inside the bowl and I set it before me, closing my eyes and pulling in a long, steady breath.

The thoughts bled from my mind slowly, until I was left in the forest alone, only the darkness of my mind remaining. The cold of the night air wrapped around me and the rustling of leaves trailed through my thoughts until the silence settled. I opened my eyes and stared into the coals, pushing away each thought and replacing them with the sounds of the forest and the pull of the wind through the branches overhead.