Sky in the Deep(15)

The first sliver of sun peeked over the pines as I hobbled behind him, the pain in my frozen feet now shooting up my legs in spasms. We rounded the bend in the path where the snow was melting into the mud and the Riki working outside their homes turned their heads, watching me. Fiske didn’t look at them, his eyes forward as he led me down the middle of the village back toward the small empty barn they were holding me in. He was cleaned of the grime from battle, half of his hair pulled up into a knot and the rest falling down on top of the orange fox fur on his shoulders.

He stopped and I bit down hard to keep my teeth from chattering together as he opened the door and pulled out his knife. He cut the rope from my collar and stood to the side. “Go ahead.”

I stepped past him into the barn, and stood, shivering with my arms wrapped around myself. The cut on his ear from where I threw my blade at him was still red, scabbed over beneath his hair.

His eyes dropped down to my feet and he cursed under his breath. He took the pile of wood from the table and started the fire before he pulled a stool from the wall and set it beside the pit. I sat down, pulling as close to the heat as I could and setting my feet up on the warmed stone circling the flames. They were pale and numb, aching, but probably not frostbitten.

Fiske dropped a bearskin beside me as I massaged my legs with my hands to summon the warmth back into them. I sat, staring into the fire and feeling its heat against the tears running down my face.

“How did you know I was out there?” I steadied my voice.

He looked like he didn’t want to answer. “I heard you screaming. In the blacksmith’s tent.”

I closed my eyes and swallowed, thinking about the way I’d cried and begged the night they pulled the arrow from my shoulder. I had never begged for anything in my life. The humiliation of it seared hotter than the infection in my shoulder or the burn on my neck. His pity cut into me, bleeding me of my pride.

“I’ve agreed to keep you until the thaw.” His voice filled the empty space when he finally spoke.

“Keep me?” My words were ice.

“If you run, I’m not coming after you. You’ll die out there within a day. Maybe two.”

“Where are we?”

“Fela.”

I’d heard of it. It was only one of several Riki villages on the mountain. “I’ll take you to my home tomorrow.”

I sniffed. “Is that where Iri lives?”

He hesitated. “Yes, and our family doesn’t know anything about you. If you want to stay alive, it needs to stay that way.”

“Why didn’t Iri buy me?”

He leaned into the wall. “The Riki can’t know who you are. Stay away from Iri.”

I studied him, trying to read the look on his face. Fierce, but pleading. He loved Iri—I could hear it folded beneath each word. “Why did you agree to take me?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Iri is my brother.”

“Iri is a prisoner you kept as a pet,” I muttered. I could feel the change in him, the edge of him sharpening. “I won’t run. But if you think I’m going to act like a dyr—”

He didn’t wait for me to finish. He pushed the door open and left, leaving me sitting before the fire. I stared at the closed door as he locked it and watched his outline flit through the light coming through the slats.

When he was gone, I reached into my pocket and pulled my idol of Iri free. The wood was smooth and shining where I’d held it in prayer under every moon that rose in the sky. I carried it against my heart as I fought. I slept with it beside me. We became warriors together. And long before that, we were friends.

It was Iri who’d wrapped his arms around me in the dark when I dreamed of the white-eyed Herja who’d slit our mother’s throat. It was Iri who’d held me together when I was cracked down to the bone with the pain of losing her. I ran into my first battle with my brother at my side. I washed the blood of his first kill from his hands and pretended not to see the gleam of tears in his eyes. He’d been stronger than me in every way, but we had taken care of each other. And honoring him had been where I’d found my own strength after he was gone.

I dropped the idol into the flames, tears catching in my chest.

I let him go. I erased him. Every memory. Every small hope.

Because the Iri I loved was gone. The boy who had once known every shadowed corner of my life was dead the moment he spilled the blood of our people. That boy was gone just as our mother was, but his soul was lost.

I watched the charred black catch the edge of the wood, eating its way across until the idol was just a part of the fire. Turning to smoke and gathering up above me. It stretched and curled around itself, reaching out into the air.

Until it was nothing.





TEN


I didn’t sleep for fear that the door might open again.

The burn under the collar came alive around my neck, stinging deep down into the skin. I pulled on my boots, sitting in the empty barn alone, my eyes on the closed door. I’d spent the hours with a broken piece of firewood clutched in my fist, finding the veins beneath my skin that would bleed the life out of me the quickest. If I killed myself, Sigr might accept me. I’d never have to be a dyr. But Iri’s words haunted me. I imagined my father as an old Aska, alone in our home on the fjord. He’d already lost my mother and Iri. I was all he had. The thought of abandoning him was too much to bear.