The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War #2)(39)

At sunset Aslaug came, rising through the boards of the hull as if the inky depths had kept her safe while day scoured the world. Tuttugu glanced my way, shuddered and busied himself with a net that needed repairs. Snorri stared hard at the spot from which Aslaug rose, his gaze unreadable. Did he miss her company? He hadn’t the look of a man who saw her clearly though, his eyes sliding past her as she moved toward me. I hope her words slid past his ears just as well.

“Jalan Kendeth. Still huddled among northmen? Yours is the palace of Red March, not some creaking tub.”

“You have a faster means of getting there?” I asked, my mood still soured.

Aslaug made no reply but turned slowly as if hunting a scent, until she faced the stern where Kara stood beside the tiller. The v?lva saw Aslaug in the moment the avatar’s gaze fell upon her. I could tell it in an instant. Kara made no attempt to conceal that recognition, or her anger. Without taking her gaze from the spirit she tied off the tiller and stepped forward. She compensated for the swell, advancing as if the boat were set in rock.

“Out!” Loud enough to startle Snorri and Tuttugu, and to have me jump half out of my seat. “Out, night-spawn. Out, lie-born. Out, daughter of Loki! Out, child of Arrakni!” Kara’s eyes blazed with the sunset. She advanced, one hand held before her, clutching something that looked rather like a human bone.

“Well she’s a pretty thing!” Aslaug said. “Snorri will take her from you. You know that don’t you, Jalan?”

“Out!” Kara roared. “This boat is mine!” She struck the bone to the mast and all about the hull runes lit, burning with a wintery light. In that instant Aslaug seemed to collapse, flowing into some smaller shape, the size of a large dog, so wreathed in darkness it was hard to see any detail . . . other than it had too many legs. In a quick thrashing of long dry limbs Aslaug scurried over the side and was gone without a splash. I shuddered and looked up at Kara who returned my gaze, her lips set in a thin line. I opted to say nothing. The v?lva held like that, still with the bone to the mast, for another minute, then another, and then, with the sun gone behind the world, she relaxed.

“She is not welcome here,” Kara said, and returned to steering the boat.

“She and Baraqel are all Snorri and I have in our corner. They’re ancient spirits, angel and . . . well . . . There are people after us, things, after us that work magic as easily as breathing. We need them. The Red Queen’s sister gave us—”

“The Red Queen moves you on her board like all her other pawns. What she gives you is as much a collar as a weapon.” Kara took up the tiller again. Adjusted course. “Don’t be fooled about these creatures’ nature. Baraqel is no more a valkyrie or angel than you or me. He and Aslaug were human once. Some among the Builders copied themselves into their machines—others, when the Wheel first turned, escaped their flesh into new forms.”

“Aslaug never told me—”

“She’s the daughter of lies, Jalan!” Kara shrugged. “Besides, she probably doesn’t remember. Their spirits have been shaped by expectation for so long. When the Day of a Thousand Suns came their will released them and they were free. Gods in an empty world . . . then we came back. New men, roaming the earth as the poisons faded. New will. And slowly, without us knowing it, or them, our stories bound about the spirits and our will made them into something suited to our expectations.”

“Uh.” I leaned back, trying to make sense of the v?lva’s words. After a while my head started to hurt. So I stopped, and watched the waves instead.

? ? ?

We sailed on. Snorri and Kara seemed to find excitement in each newly revealed stretch of dreary Norse coastline. Even the sea itself could fascinate them. The swell is doing that, the wind is turning, the rocks are this, the current is westerly. Pah. I’d heard more interesting discussions between herdmen cataloguing the ailments of sheep. Or I probably would have if I’d listened.

A consequence of boredom is that a man is forced to look either to the future or the past, or sideways into his imagination. I tend to find my imagination too worrisome to contemplate, and I had already exhausted the possible scenarios for my homecoming. So, sulking in the Errensa’s prow I spent long hours considering the circumstances of my abduction from Red March and forced march across half of Empire to the Black Fort. Time and again my thoughts returned to great uncle Garyus and his silent sister—born a conjoined monstrosity, the rightful king and queen of Red March. Their father, Gholloth, had set the chirurgeons to splitting them, but neither could ever be set upon the throne when age claimed him. He passed them over for Alica, the younger sister. My grandmother. A less obvious monster. But which of them ruled? Which of them had truly set Snorri and myself upon our path north? Which of them had gambled my life and soul against the Dead King? The blood-men with their sharp knives and blunt opinions had cut Garyus from his sister, but the twins had not split even. Garyus a broken teller of stories, his nameless sister a silent voyeur of years yet to come. And Grandmother, the Red Queen, the beating heart of the Marches for a generation, the iron queen with no give in her, her armies feared across the south, her name reviled.

In the empty hours memories plagued me as they are wont to do with nothing to drown out their whispering. Garyus had given me Mother’s locket, and over years I’d so wrapped it in lies that I couldn’t see its value when sat in my palm. Perhaps I’d been equally blind to its purpose. Dr. Taproot, the man who had known obscure facts about the Scraa slopes and Nfflr ridges of the Uuliskind, had told me a thing about my mother and I had laughed at his mistake. Had I wrapped her life in as many lies as her locket? Did I look at her death with the same blindness that had hidden the locket’s nature from me?