Sky in the Deep(55)

My eyes searched the broken rooftops as I ran, my feet sliding over the loose rock down the ridge. The village looked empty, and in the distance, a black halo stained the earth where the ritual house once was.

My hands flew out to steady me before I clapped them over my nose against the stench of rot. I came down the end of the trail with my feet stumbling over each other and took off, jumping over the bodies decaying in the afternoon sun.

“Aghi!” I screamed, but I could hardly hear my own voice over the thunder between my ears.

I pushed harder, flying past the burned-out, crumbling structures. When I came upon our home, I doubled over, my hands on my knees. It was barely standing, the walls jutting up from the ground in sections. My chest pushed and pulled beneath my armor vest, my eyes burning.

In the doorway, a clay bowl lay broken over the threshold.

I stepped inside as Fiske came down the path and looked around with my breath still held hostage inside of me. More broken dishes littered the floor around the fire pit and my cot was lying on its side with the blanket half burned and wet from water dripping from the hole in the roof. Flies buzzed over an iron pot spilled over with spoiled food.

“Eelyn.” Fiske’s voice sounded behind me.

But I ignored him, picking up the table and setting it upright and then gathering the pottery pieces from the ground. I stacked them neatly into my hand, my mind racing.

“Eelyn,” he said again, louder. “The tools and weapons are gone and the bodies outside are Herja. The Aska have left.”

I set the shards carefully into the pot, waving the flies away, and picked up the cot. I pulled the blanket into my arms. My mother wove it when she wasn’t much older than me. Now it was an unraveling mess, the red and orange designs coming undone.

“If it was bad enough that they left, he’s dead,” I choked. The strangled sound pierced my throat again and I pushed my face into the wet blanket, sobbing. “They’re dead,” I cried. “They’re all dead.”

The warmth of him wrapped around me and I collapsed into it, letting his arms hold my weight. I reeled, my fists pressing into my chest, and I felt it being torn from me. The small, fragile hope I’d carried down the mountain. The faith that the Aska were strong enough.

But they were gone.

Fiske’s arms pulled tighter around me and my legs gave, imagining my father’s body. Burning on the altar. His beard catching flame. His flesh blackened. And if he was dead, then we all were. Because he was the strongest of us, and without him, my world lost what held it together.

Fiske’s voice was soft in my ear. “The Aska bodies were burned. The house is cleaned out. There were survivors, Eelyn.”

I couldn’t let myself believe it. I couldn’t hold the possibility in my mind. There was no room for it in the heartbreak that was consuming every part of my body. The grief of losing my home. My people.

“Think. Where would they have gone?” He let go of me, holding me back to look up at him. His hands pushed the hair from my face. “Where is a safe place? Another Aska village?”

I closed my eyes, trying to think. I knew where they would go, but I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone who wasn’t Aska. It was a secret. And I’d never even been there. I looked up into his eyes and they stared back at me, searching. Willing me to seize control of my frantic, desperate mind. They were like torches lit in the dark.

“Virki.” I wiped my face with my sleeves. “They would go to Virki.”





THIRTY-FIVE


Fiske built a fire in the pit as I picked up the pieces of my home and put them back together. If we ever lived here again, it would have to be rebuilt. Most everything was ruined. But I needed to put things back in their places, even if I never saw this place again.

When I was finished, I took the fur up from my father’s cot into my hands, smelling it. Spice and dirt and sea. The sting behind my eyes made me blink and I pressed my lips together, trying to keep the tears at bay.

I sat down on the stone in front of the fire. Fiske came to sit beside me, handing me the last of our bread, and I took it, turning it over in my hands. He leaned closer to the flames, stretching his fingers out against the heat and then curling them into his palms. He always changed in the firelight. The look of his face was harsh. Like the way I remembered him when I first saw him in Aurvanger. But that seemed so long ago. Now, the look that had once made the fight rise up in me broke me down. Peeled me back.

“What do you think would have happened if you’d killed me that night?” I picked at the crust of the bread in my hands.

He chewed, his eyes moving from the fire to me. “I don’t know. I don’t know if Iri would have ever known. Maybe I would never have known who you were.”

“What if he knew? What if he didn’t get there in time?”

“I don’t think he would have ever been able to forgive me.” The depth of his voice made him sound afraid.

“He’s like you.” I shifted on the stone to face him, suddenly desperate to hear the things he wasn’t saying.

His eyes changed again, falling down to the small space of stone between us. “What do you mean?”

“Family is everything to you.”

He took another bite.

“How many people have you killed?” I asked.

He turned to face me and I almost wanted to scoot back again. “I don’t know.” He pulled the axe sheath over his head and set it onto the table behind us. “How many people have you killed?”