Page 52 of Sky in the Deep
Fiske didn’t move, waiting.
She reached up and touched her lips with light fingers,like she did when she was thinking. She didn’t look in my direction, but her thoughts drifted toward me. She was asking questions. Wondering.
I moved past them, climbing the loft and leaving them below. Halvard was still asleep on his cot with a bearskin pulled up over him and I stopped, hands on the top rung of the ladder. Gyda was lying on her side with her body curved around a small wiggling lump and Kerling was folded behind her, peering over her shoulder. She held the tiny thing to her, pressing it against her bare skin and kissing its head.
Kerling’s face had changed. The barrenness in his eyes was gone. He was missing the weight that usually showed there. Gyda looked up at me and I froze, lifting my foot to climb back down. But instead of the bitterness I’d seen in her eyes the days before, her face was smooth. Quiet. When she looked back down to the baby, trailing her fingertips over its soft dark hair, Kerling pressed his face into her back, closing his eyes.
I found my braid with my hand and wound it around my knuckles, watching them. As if it all hadn’t happened. The raid. The battle in Aurvanger that took his leg. The blood feud that burned in their hearts for me and my people. There was no room for it in that moment. There was only a beginning. And its light hid everything else. It was so beautiful that it hurt, touching every wound uncovered inside of me.
I quietly climbed back down the ladder, leaving them in the dim light of the loft, and walked outside to wash the blood off my face and arms. I could hear Inge and the others arguinginside, hushed whispers working their way through the cracks in the walls.
I plunged my hands into the barrel of melted snow, cringing at the sting of it on my skin, and scrubbed until the water turned pink. My reflection wavered on its surface. Circles under my eyes and the glow of a bruise still healing across my cheek.
I could see Inge through the door, setting the saddlebags onto the table and packing. Her face was twisted into a knot, her lip sucked in between her teeth. She’d given in, and although it was what I wanted, some part of me trembled.
“I came to thank you.”
I turned, holding the edges of the barrel, the water still dripping from my hair.
The Tala stood on the path with her hands folded in front of her clean dress. Her hair was pulled up off her shoulders and her green eyes were brighter against her reddened face. The same rope burns that encircled Halvard’s neck wrapped around hers.
“Why did you help me?” She tilted her head to one side, looking me up and down. When I didn’t answer, she stepped closer. “I know you saw me that night. When Thorpe left you in the forest.”
I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t know the answer. I had no reason for helping her. I just did. And I almost wished I hadn’t. No one would have ever known if I’d left her there.
Her lips parted in a grin. “Thora has her eye on you, Aska. I could see it the first time I met you.”
“I don’t serve Thora,” I reminded her. “I don’t care about her will and I don’t want her favor.”
She smiled wider. “Neither did Iri.”
My eyes drifted back to the house. The defenses in me readied.
“Inge told me this morning.”
I felt my mouth drop open and my heart soured inside me. Inge said she wouldn’t tell anyone.
“When we returned from the forest, I could see it. When you came through the door. I feel foolish for not seeing it sooner, really. You look just like him, Eelyn.”
I tried to pick apart the tone in her voice. I tried to line it up with the calm look on her face.
“You don’t have to worry about Iri.” She waved a hand at me. “We’re beyond that now, I think. I’ll speak to Vidr. You’ve earned our trust. Now maybe we can earn yours.”
My eyes narrowed. “Why would you want my trust?”
“You’re a warrior. And something tells me we will need every warrior from here to the fjord on our side if we are going to keep the Herja from coming back here and finishing what they started.”
“The Aska?” I laughed. “Onyourside?”
“Depending on what you find in Hylli, there may not be two sides anymore.”
I looked over my shoulder, to the door. “How did you know I was going to Hylli?”
“They’re your people.” She looked at me, and a bit of that warmth I’d seen her give to the others, she gave to me.
I could see it in her eyes. She thought the Aska were gone. Or close to it.
“In the morning, we send the Riki souls toFriðrand then we leave for the next village. If you want to go to Hylli, we can take you as far as Möor.” She reached out to me, setting her hand on my shoulder, and I tensed, looking at it.
