The Girl the Sea Gave Back(57)

“I left a stele for him in Aurvanger. It’s by the river.” I pressed my thumb to the sore wound in my palm, reopened by the Tala’s knife.

“Thank you.” Iri’s deep voice broke the silence.

“And I killed him,” I said, “the Svell chieftain who killed Aghi. I killed him.”

Fiske looked up at me then, leaning onto the table with both his elbows. There was nothing to say. It didn’t lessen the blow of losing Aghi or even begin to make it right. But it was a blood feud that felt like my own. Even if our people had left those ways behind, they still lived in me. And I’d taken my first life, which had its own cost. I’d killed without even the slightest bit of hesitation or guilt. Even now, I wished I could do it again. And I wasn’t sure what that meant.

I stood, setting down my empty cup before any of them could say anything. I didn’t want to talk about it, I just wanted them to know I’d done what they would have done. And I didn’t want them seeking revenge for Aghi in battle when the sun rose. I wanted them to fight with the peace of knowing it was made right.

“Where are you going?” Eelyn wrapped her hand around my wrist, holding me in place.

“To walk.”

She almost objected until Fiske gave her a look and she let me go. “Alright.”

I unbuckled my father’s armor vest, pulling it over my head and setting it on the trunk with my sheaths. The door closed behind me and I listened to the sound of my brothers’ voices drift away on the warm wind as I walked up the path that led to the beach.

The stave burning on the hill in the distance had gone out, the Svell sleeping before their march down to the fjord. It was so dark that the place where the water met the black rocks was invisible, only the gleam of moonlight shining in a blade-straight line on the water.

It was the same path I’d walked for more than half of my life. The same steps I’d taken as a boy, as a young man, and now, as the chieftain of a people that didn’t even exist when I was born. There was no accounting for the will of the gods or the futures that the Spinners gave to mortals. It was the reason Aghi, Latham, and Espen spoke the words lag mund. Fate’s hand.

The battle that awaited us was only a knot in the thread on the tapestry of our people. And though I’d known for the last two years that I’d eventually stand before them, I’d never been so aware of how incapable I would feel in the face of leading.

The Nādhir would follow me into the mist of the forest when the sun rose. And only the gods knew if we’d ever come out.





CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE


TOVA


I dreamed of the water.

The slice of cold against my skin and the twinkling light, dancing on the surface far above me. Slowly, it pulled farther away, growing smaller and the darkness spreading wider as I sank into the depths of the sea. And there, the woman’s song found me, the lilt of a quiet, gentle hum in the emptiness.

Wake up, Tova.

I followed the drift of the voice to the fire from the fragments of a memory that always found me in sleep. The glow of it cast across my bare skin as I sat naked on a stool, a pair of hands at work on the stag’s horns on my arm with a glistening needle. The shadow shifted, moving every time it came into focus, and I tried to hold it still long enough to find the pieces that fit together.

Wake up, Tova.

My eyes opened and I gasped, my lungs stiff and frozen, as if they’d been filled with the silver seawater that surrounded me in my dream. But I was no longer sinking in the black emptiness or sitting before the fire. I was curled up beneath a bearskin in my tent with the roll of a storm growling in the distance. I was in the valley.

The repeating call of the nighthawk made me jolt and I sat up, the fur dropping from my shoulders. The camp was silent except for the slide of wind over the corners of canvas tents. Crisp night air blew in from outside and I pulled back the flap carefully until I could see the moon behind a stretch of thin clouds.

Before it, the All Seer circled overhead.

I breathed, listening to the beat of my own heart in lock step with the flap of the nighthawk’s wings. The Spinners had sent him, like they always had.

But this time, he’d come for me.

I pulled my boots on quickly, keeping my eyes on the light casting into the tent. There was no mistaking the runes, but the future wasn’t fixed. It was a thread that changed color with the shifting of the present and the past. A wave that rippled out to the vast, open sea. And if I wanted to be sure it came to pass, I needed to be there. I needed to stand before Hylli and watch the future come.

Halvard’s axe hung heavily at my hip as I pulled the canvas back carefully, peering out to see Gunther at his post. He sat on an overturned crate with his knife in one hand and a whetstone in the other, sliding it down the blade in an arc to sharpen the gleaming iron. His sword was sheathed at his belt, his axe at his back. But the only chance I could take was with Gunther. I had no choice.

I stepped out into the moonlight and he went rigid at the sound, the knife turning in the light. His fingers closed tightly over the stone in his big fist and his eyes studied my bloodstained hands before they lifted to meet mine. “What are you doing?”

“I’m leaving,” I answered, my gaze flitting back to the sky, where the All Seer was still circling.

“What?” He stood, hiding me in his shadow, and suddenly, he looked like one of the giants from the old stories of the gods. My heart thumped in my chest, watching the knife at his side and waiting to see if he would raise it against me. But the moments passed, the silence returning, and he didn’t.