Sky in the Deep(12)
“If I’m not back after the thaw, he’ll come looking.”
His eyes moved to the idol on the ground. “Did you tell him I’m alive?”
My father running across the field toward me, his eyes glittering with fear, flashed in my mind. “I tried to. He didn’t believe it. He thought Sigr had sent your soul to me.”
Iri seemed suddenly far away, his eyes looking off into the dark corner of the room. “Maybe he did.”
“Sigr didn’t do this, Iri. Thora did.” My voice flattened, my eyes narrowing. “You’ve killed your own people. What will you do when you die? You’ll be separated from us forever!” The words buckled under the weight of their meaning. Even as I’d grieved for Iri, I always believed I’d see him again. That we’d all be together one day. But Sigr would never allow him to enter Sólbj?rg. Not after what he’d done.
“You don’t understand.” His voice lost the last of its anger. He dragged his fingers through the scruff on his jaw before he picked up the idol from the ground, turning it over in his hand. “I saw you and…”
I leaned into the wall, trying to hold myself up as I watched the thoughts move over his face.
“I saw you and I thought I was about to watch you die. I thought my heart was going to stop beating inside of my chest.” He swallowed hard, the place between his eyebrows wrinkling.
It wasn’t what I was expecting him to say. The heat in my face pushed up, leaking out of my eyes. The tears stung in the cold. “We thought you were dead, Iri. We tried to get down into the trench for your body. We tried to…” I swallowed down the words. There was no undoing it. “We have to leave. We have to get back to the fjord.”
His eyes shifted around the room. “I can’t.”
“Why?” I studied him, my voice rising again.
“I have to find a way to convince them to take you as a dyr.”
“No!” My voice filled the room, ringing in my ears.
“Quiet! If anyone knows I’m talking to you like this…” He sighed. “If they trade you, you’re on your own. You won’t make it back to the Aska. We have a couple of days before the traders from Ljós come. I’ll figure something out.”
I thought of my father, his blue eyes looking into me, heavy and wide with shame. I could feel the weight of a dyr collar around my neck.
“You know I can’t become a dyr, Iri. I’ll never be accepted into Sólbj?rg.” I couldn’t believe he would even suggest it. “I’ll take my own life before I let that happen.”
It was what we’d been taught our entire lives—vegr yfir fjor—honor above life.
He leveled his eyes at me, his voice dropping low. “If you take your own life, you’ll leave our father alone in this world. But if you forfeit your pride and wait out the winter, you’ll be back with him after the thaw. You’ll go back to the Aska and earn back your honor.”
I gritted my teeth, clenching my fists at my sides. Because he was right. “I hate you.” The words released the full force of whatever I’d held back from him. The rage. The disgust.
But he took it. He let it roll off of me onto him, and he didn’t fight it. He looked at me for a long moment, his eyes moving over my face like he was seeing me for the first time.
“I know.”
EIGHT
I sat before the fire pit, inching closer to warm the numbness in my fingers and toes. I could wait for dark and break through the wall, but I had no idea where I was. And there was no way I would survive on the mountain with a sickness stewing in the muscle and sinew of my shoulder, writhing like a snake under the skin.
The latch on the door lifted again when the dark finally fell and I stood, backing against the wall. A small face crowned with dark winding braids appeared.
“I’m here to check your wounds and help you clean up.” One hand clutched at the woven shawl draped over her shoulders and the other held a basket to her hip. “If you try to hurt me, I’d be happy to let you die of that infection.” She nodded toward the spot of fresh blood seeping through my filthy tunic.
The girl was about my size, but she was too clean and soft to be a warrior. It wouldn’t take more than two breaths to have my hands around her neck.
She moved toward me warily, her large, dark eyes inspecting my face where I could feel the bulge on my cheek and the crack in my lip. She swung the basket onto the table and set a pot on the ground in front of the fire pit, watching me from the corner of her eye. When she handed me a small loaf of bread, I tore it into pieces with my grimy fingers and ate as fast as I could. The pain in my jaw was nothing compared to the hollow feeling in my stomach.
She set a jar and a stack of neatly folded cloths onto the table and then filled a carved wooden bowl with the steaming water, sending the smell of lavender and comfrey into the air.
I pulled my tunic over my head, trying to be careful with my shoulder, and lifted myself up with my only strong arm to sit on the table. The girl peeled the soiled bandage from the arrow wound and leaned in, examining it. Her fingers spread the skin slowly and I hissed.
“He’s a good shot,” she murmured. “Right in the center of the joint.”
My jaw clenched against the throbbing. She may have looked clean and soft, but she wasn’t weak-minded. And she knew I was dangerous but she wasn’t afraid of me. She wanted me to know it.