Sky in the Deep(60)

THIRTY-EIGHT


A ball of firelight glowed in the darkness ahead. As we neared, it turned into many, stretching out to each side, and the night fog flowed toward us like a hungry breath until my feet disappeared beneath its thick cover.

Myra called out and we stopped, waiting. I kept my eyes on the torches until one of the orbs began to move. A man jumped down from a tree, seeing Myra standing up ahead of us. Then he looked past her, to Fiske and me. “Eelyn?” He squinted in the dark, holding up the torch between us.

“It’s me,” I answered.

“Who’s this?” He stepped forward.

“He’s a Riki, Hagen.” I spoke the words as calmly as I could. “He’s alone and he’s here to speak with Espen.”

But Hagen’s sword was already drawn before I’d finished, his eyes looking into the trees around us. The other men stepped out of the brush, followed by the sound of more blades sliding from their sheaths.

“We’re alone.” I held up a hand to him.

“Check.” He called out over his shoulder, eyeing me angrily as the others followed his order. They spread out into the forest and the glow of their torches fanned out around us.

He held his sword at the ready, checking Fiske for weapons.

“He’s not armed.” I lifted my hands higher as the men returned from the trees.

Fiske was wound tight beside me, eyes alert and catching every movement.

“It’s clear, Hagen,” one of the men shouted.

He looked at me for a long moment with his jaw working, before he finally lifted his hand and grasped my right shoulder. I did the same, meeting his eyes. “Espen won’t like this. Neither will your father, Eelyn.”

I nodded for Fiske to go first and followed behind him, deeper into the trees where the humming sound of moving water took over the quiet. The torches stilled and the sound of feet stopped at a wall of black.

“We’re going down.” Myra came through the men to meet me.

“Down where?” I followed her to where the others stood and it wasn’t until my feet were at the ledge that I realized it was a drop-off.

She handed me a rope. “Tie it around you like this.”

I watched her carefully, doing as she instructed. When the knots were tight, Hagen clipped his rope into the metal hooks of one that was lying on the ground. He gave the other men a look before crouching down and throwing himself back over the cliff without warning. My heart jumped, watching the rope pull taut and then go slack again.

Myra followed, backing up to the cliff’s edge and meeting my eyes before disappearing. I looked down, trying to see her, but there was only the movement of water catching moonlight. The men pulled the ropes back up and the clips at the end were empty. Two others were next, pushing out from the cliff without any hesitation.

Fiske tied his own ropes and I clipped a metal hook into the knots around me. He backed up, bringing his heels in line with the edge, and braced me with his hand as I did the same, trying to secure my arm against me. It would hurt no matter what I did.

“Ready?” I whispered.

He gave me a nod.

I crouched down and threw my weight back as hard as I could, sinking into the air. The length of the rope rippled out before me like a snake against the night sky above. The light of the torches disappeared over the cliff above us and the rope caught us at an angle just as the others came into view, putting their hands up, fingers splayed to catch us.

“Eelyn!”

The sound coiled around my heart as I swung toward the cliff wall and something caught my boot, sending me spinning until more hands slowed me. When I stopped, my father was shouldering his way through the crowd.

My hands shook, reaching for him as I still hung from the rope. The cry broke free from my throat and I clutched at the air until his big hands found me and pulled me to him. I wept into his shoulder and he shook against me, a cry slipping from his lips as the others unclipped the rope from around me. I squeezed him tighter. He lifted me up and a piece of the fractured world inside me settled back into place. When I came over the ridge to see Hylli burned and broken, I’d been so sure I would never see him again. But he was here, back from the dead, like Iri. Like me.

He pulled my face to look at me, his hand running over my hair. The tears in his eyes fell down into his thick, bushy beard and landed on the laugh bubbling up from inside of him. I had only seen my father cry twice. Once when my mother died and once when Iri died.

The truth seared inside me.

“I knew you were alive. I knew I’d see you again,” he choked out. “The Riki took you?”

I nodded, sniffing back the rest of the tears. But it only took him seconds to see the thing I hoped he never would. His fingers dropped from my face to my neck, running along the skin beginning to scar from the burns.

His breaths came harder, his eyes going wild. It crashed over me, violent and angry. Because I’d never seen my father look at me like that.

Shouts rang against the rock and I tore my eyes from my father, trying to find Fiske. But there were only Aska in every direction, pushing in around us. I lifted up onto my toes, letting go of my father and shoving into the bodies around us as panic rose up inside of me. When I broke through the crowd, Fiske was standing with his back against the cliff face, surrounded. His hands were down by his sides, pumping into fists. I hoped the murderous instinct beneath his hardened face was invisible to the others. His eyes shot from left to right, looking for me.