Sky in the Deep(32)

And though I couldn’t imagine it, maybe I did know what he was saying because I could see it. He’d found a place here and he fit.

“You still have Aska blood in your veins. You still belong to my family.”

“I will always be your brother. I was born Aska. But I’m something else now.”

“You’re either Riki or Aska, Iri. You can’t be both. You told Runa who I am.”

He didn’t meet my eyes. “Yes.”

“How long until she tells someone and they come to kill us both?”

“She would never do that.”

“Well, I’m not going to stay long enough to find out. I’m going home. With or without you. I’m not going to wait for the thaw.”

He raked a hand through his hair. “Then you’ll die.”

“Vegr yfir fjor, Iri. Honor above life.” My voice turned weak. “Didn’t you think about me?”

“I’ve thought of you every day.” He watched as I wiped the tears from my face. “Fiske’s father gave me a choice to be traded back to the Aska, Eelyn.”

“What?” I could feel the words prying my mind open.

“I couldn’t go. I couldn’t leave this place.” He reached to take my hand. “The path of my soul has taken a turn, just as yours has.”

“This is not the same.” I glowered at him. “I want to go home.”

“I know. But you will never be the same. You will never be the same person you were.” He paused. “You are seeing the truth. I see you thinking it, every day.”

“What truth?”

“That they’re like us.”

I put my face into my hands, trying to escape what he was saying. Because it made me feel like the world was turned sideways. Like everything I’d ever been taught didn’t fit into the shape of this world.

“What are you thinking now?”

The weight of it fell from my head, down into the rest of my body. The words were small but they were true. “I’m thinking that I wish you’d died that day.”





TWENTY


Fiske didn’t return until dark. He came through the door with Iri, carrying a basket full of cleaned fish and keeping his eyes off of me. He hadn’t looked in my direction since we went to the river and for some reason, he hadn’t told the others what happened.

Iri, too, had turned cold. I could see the anger wound tight around him. But I meant what I’d said. More than I wished I did.

Inge took the basket from Fiske and nodded toward me. “I need you to take the stitches out of Eelyn’s arm.” She filled another basket with the jars of garlic we’d made. “We have to get these to the cellar and then we’re going to Runa’s.”

Fiske’s tight gaze was fixed on Inge.

“You’ve done it a hundred times. We start on the barn at dawn.” She brushed past him and Iri and Halvard followed her outside.

I stood against the wall, looking at Fiske as the door swung shut. He pulled his scabbard up over his head and laid it down beside the fire. I didn’t like being alone with him. I wished Halvard had stayed.

“Kerling’s barn?” I asked.

He nodded. “He set the posts for the frame before we left for the fighting season. They’ll need it finished so they can buy goats before the baby comes.” He sounded tired, the words riding on a deep breath. “If you sit, I’ll take them out.”

He walked to a wooden box on the shelf and lifted the lid, fishing out a small metal tool, and I sat down close enough to the fire to keep warm. Every day was colder than the last and my clothes weren’t made like the Rikis’.

He sat down in front of me, straddling the bench and scooting closer. I pulled my arm from the sleeve and into my tunic, but when I tried to lift it up out of the neck, I couldn’t. The muscles around the bone were still too weak and it was too painful to lift that high. He caught my fingers and I flinched, leaning away from him. He let me pull against his hand until the arm was free and I let go, the sting of him still hot against my skin.

I turned to the side so he could reach the stitches. I wanted to remind him it was his sword that had cut into me in the first place, but I stared into the fire instead. I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t want to feel him touch me. He picked up the tool and pressed his fingers against my skin before he slid it under the first stitch and carefully pulled against it until it broke.

“It was you. That day,” I said. “It was you in the trench with Iri. Inge told me.”

He broke the next stitch and I winced. “Yes.”

“Where is your father now?”

His hand dropped down to his leg and he looked at me. “He’s in Frier.”

I knew the word and what it meant. Peace. It was where the Riki went when they died.

“He died last year of fever.” And though his voice didn’t change, something in the set of his mouth did. Something behind the eyes.

“Why did you do it?” I asked. “Why did you save Iri’s life?”

He sat up straighter, letting the silence between us stretch out and pull like the thoughts in my mind, trying to find a place to land. “Because we were dying. Because it was the end. And at the end, life becomes precious.”