Sky in the Deep(17)

“It’s what’s in the pot.” She nodded to the fire.

The boy was standing over the flames, stirring slowly and watching.

“This is Halvard.” She leaned in closer to my arm and I shifted back. Her nearness made me uncomfortable.

When my arm was out of the tunic, her fingers followed the skin up my neck to where I could feel the burn radiating. She walked to the door and stepped one foot outside so she could crouch down and gather a handful of snow into a cloth. I watched her fold it in on itself.

“Here.” She pressed it to the burn and lifted my hand to hold it while she moved down to the gash. “Runa didn’t tell me she tended to you.” She looked at the stitches. “It looks good. We’ll cut those out next week. By then, your face will look better.” She took my hand into hers, turning it over and eyeing my skin where it was blistered from being tied to the cart. “And these. But the shoulder will take longer.”

When I said nothing, she leaned down to meet my eyes. I wanted to reach up and take a handful of her hair into my fist. I wanted to slam her face into the table.

She slid my arm back into my tunic and repositioned it against me before she wrapped it again. “You’ll stay here with us; I’ll make you a cot up in the loft. I’d stay clear of anyone outside the house if I were you.” She stood, making her way to a large iron pot on the other end of the table, and spooned something into a wooden bowl. She looked up at me, biting the inside of her lip before she glanced over her shoulder to Fiske, who was still watching us from outside as he cleaned fish. When she spoke again, her voice lowered. “I don’t know why Fiske took you on, but from the looks of it, you’ll be traded soon enough. Until then, you’ll help me around here. You don’t have to talk. But if I’m feeding you, you do have to work.”

She put the bowl down in front of me, setting her hands on the curved hips below her small waist. She waited for me to look at her. “And if you bring trouble into this house, Aska, you won’t make it off this mountain.”





ELEVEN


They’d been living with an Aska for too long.

I stared at the cot that Inge made up along the opposite wall from the others in the loft. I’d expected to sleep with the animals. Maybe they wanted me to know they weren’t afraid of me. Or maybe they wanted to keep me close enough to watch. Either way, they were foolish. I wasn’t Iri.

I went up as soon as they sat to eat supper. I couldn’t sit across the table from my brother and pretend not to know him. I couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t thinking every moment of how to kill every last one of them. I rolled onto my side and stared at the wall, where the cold was coming in through a crack. I lifted my hand and fit my fingers into it.

“Did you see Kerling today?” Iri spoke, breaking the silence.

“I did.” Inge’s delicate voice was the only feminine thing in the house. “Vidr did the right thing by cutting off the leg. He’ll manage and it’ll heal. His pride, on the other hand…”

“He’s lost his leg.” Fiske’s voice rose in rebuke.

“But not his honor.” Inge’s words turned sharp. “Gyda needs him. The baby will be here soon.”

“What will he do without his leg? He can’t fight anymore. He can’t farm,” Halvard said softly.

“He’ll raise goats,” Fiske answered. “They’ll be fine.”

Another long silence stretched out before Inge spoke again. “Sit down and let me look at you, sváss.”

“I took care of it already.” Fiske sighed.

“Sit,” she urged again, and I heard the scrape of a stool on the stone floor followed by the sound of her unbuckling his armor vest.

From what I could tell, Inge’s husband was dead and I could probably guess how. Most clansmen died in the fighting season, but others died in raids or of illness. Fiske was obviously the man of the house, but Inge wasn’t helpless if she ran her home and worked as a healer while he was gone during the fighting season. The span of years between Fiske and Halvard could mean there had been more children. Or maybe Halvard wasn’t hers the way Iri wasn’t hers.

“Are those teeth marks?”

I burrowed deeper into my blanket, remembering the way it felt to sink my teeth into Fiske’s flesh. I could still taste his blood in my mouth.

“You didn’t come home in such good shape last time.” Her tone lifted on a smile. “You sure you did much fighting?”

Halvard and Iri laughed and I swallowed down the nausea climbing up my throat.

“I did plenty of fighting,” Fiske shot back.

“Is that where the Aska came from?” Halvard spoke and the others fell silent, the house filling with the sound of the wood crackling in the fire as the sap popped in its grooves.

I lifted my head, quietly pulling myself to the edge of the cot to look through the planks of wood to where they sat below. Halvard was filling clay jars with the salve they’d been making over the fire. He looked to Inge for an answer.

She sat at the table beside Fiske. His tunic was pulled off and she was cleaning his arm where I’d bitten him. The rest of his skin was covered in scrapes and cuts and bruises.

“Yes,” Fiske answered.

Halvard looked up at him, securing the lid to a jar. “Why didn’t you kill her?”