Some houses had private gardens with tall gates and hedges that ran along paved paths up to the front door. One of them had a man guarding the gate. He was wearing red leather with a silver breastplate. Two throwing axes with red straps around the shaft hung from his belt. Hirka tried to meet his gaze, but he just stared straight ahead as they rolled past.
“Do Council folk live here?”
“No,” Ramoja answered. “The Council families stay within the wall. It’s mostly merchants living here.”
“Wow, they must be richer than Glimmeråsen!”
Ramoja laughed. “Most of them could buy Glimmeråsen a thousand times over.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Hirka had never understood Sylja’s dreams of Mannfalla. In Hirka’s world, Sylja already had unimaginable wealth. More than most could dream of, or need. But here there were people who were richer than Glimmeråsen. And here there were people poorer than Hirka.
Mannfalla accommodated everything and everyone. Poor and rich. Overt and covert. Merchants and thieves, side by side. Nobody stuck out, because everyone did. She’d had nightmares about an entire city running after her. After the child of Odin. But in Mannfalla she was insignificant. Hirka smiled. In Mannfalla she could do anything.
Except Kolkagga are after me and I have nowhere to stay.
Ramoja caught her off guard by asking about that very thing: where she was staying. Ramoja herself was going to stay at a ravenry on the eastern bank of the river with some other raveners. They’d all come for the Rite, so there wouldn’t be room for Hirka.
“I have to meet someone. I can’t say who or where,” Hirka had replied, with a clean conscience. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t a lie. It looked like she was going to be meeting a lot of people. And she had no idea where. She had assured Ramoja that she had all she needed, including money and a meeting place.
The cart rolled out into an open square. At the opposite end towered Eisvaldr in all its glory. Ravens flew in and out through open archways in the wall, which was clad with polished white stone. Hirka’s jaw dropped. What manner of fear had prompted such an undertaking? Shutting off an entire mountain pass at the entrance to Blindból. The mountains it was said the blind came from.
But no living soul had seen the wall closed. It was a gateway. A window to another world. Through the archways Hirka could see that the streets on the other side were paved with the same white stone. Spires and domes glittered. And even though guardsmen stood watch at every single archway, carts continued to roll in and out of Eisvaldr.
Vetle held his stone figure up to the sky to make it look like it was walking atop the wall. The new Jomar became a giant who could crush the entire city.
“Do you see that red dome?” Ramoja pointed, and Hirka followed her gaze.
“Barely,” Hirka teased. The dome crowned the largest and most central building on the other side of the wall.
Ramoja winked at her. “It’s the center of the world.”
“You mean …?”
“Mother’s bosom. The Council Chamber. The home of the Seer is right behind it.”
Hirka felt her confidence drain away. It was like getting hit by the bucket of water Maja had poured over the men at The Raven’s Brood to stop them from killing each other. This was Mannfalla. She was here. Now. And she was looking at Eisvaldr, up at the home of the Seer. The most sacred of all halls. The home of the Rite. She had to do something.
“Stop!”
“Here?” Ramoja stopped the horses. Hirka looked around frantically, then remembered an inn they’d passed on the corner. It looked expensive, but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t planning on staying there, and anyway, Ramoja thought she was meeting someone.
“Over there.”
Ramoja looked at the inn. Hirka slung her bag over her shoulder and jumped down from the cart. Vetle wanted to jump off with her, but Ramoja held him back with promises that he would soon see Hirka again. Hirka smiled, but her heart sank. She doubted that she was ever going to see either of them again.
Kuro had kept his distance the entire trip, but now he circled high above them. At least that was something.
“Thanks for the company, Ramoja.”
Ramoja wrinkled her brow. “Are you sure it’s here? Do you have everything you need?”
“Positive.”
“And you know what you’re doing?”
“Always.”
Hirka was surprised at the confidence in her own voice. It was a stark contrast to how she actually felt. But Mannfalla appeared to be full of contrasts, so what harm could a couple more do?
Hirka reached up to Vetle and gave him a hug. His fair curls tickled her and he took his time letting go. Ramoja snapped the reins and the cart continued east across the square.
Hirka stood outside The White Square Inn and felt her heart sink. Alone again. Not like in the forest near Ravnhov, where Kuro had been all she’d had. This time there were more people around her than she’d ever seen. But all the same, she was alone.
Hirka straightened up a little. This wasn’t so bad, she reminded herself. She had feared Mannfalla every single day since long before Father died. Sometimes it had been so bad that she’d woken up in the middle of the night, sweaty and afraid after dreams about Kolkagga. Merciless black-clad warriors who threw themselves at her the moment she ventured inside the walls. She’d been afraid she would be stopped, arrested, executed. But it hadn’t happened yet.
Yes, she was afraid, alone, and in possession of no more than what she carried on her back. And her only company was an aloof raven who had his own business to attend to. But Mannfalla was the best hiding place she could have hoped for. She could lose herself in the city where she had thought she would be like a fish out of water.
She just couldn’t stay here.
Hirka turned her back on Eisvaldr’s majesty and walked down the street, past the merchants’ houses, and down toward the river, where the houses were smaller and more ramshackle. Where the streets had a stronger smell and the people shouted louder. Here she could disappear.
THE SLEEPING DRAGON
“A silver piece for two scrawny chickens?! Do I look like I was born yesterday?”
Hirka put her hands on her hips and glowered at the downy-lipped woman manning the stall. The woman raised an eyebrow and reappraised her. Hirka started to turn away.
“Wait.”
Hirka smiled and turned back toward the stall. The mustachioed woman slapped a third chicken down on the counter next to the other two. She looked both ways, as if to reassure herself no one had noticed, as she tied them together. Hirka nodded, pleased, and left the silver piece on the counter. She grabbed the chickens and went over to Lindri, who was waiting by the next stall.
He ruffled her hair with a wrinkled hand. “You learn fast, Red.”
“Always.”
Lindri took the chickens and slung them over his sloped shoulder, even though he was almost as skinny as Hirka. Just a bit taller. “There’s no limit to what they’ll try during the Rite. Prices double overnight! Do they think people get stupider just because there are more of them?”
“People do get stupider when there are more of them,” Hirka replied.
Lindri laughed. His lower teeth stuck out, crooked like the ruins on Vargtind. “You’re all right, Red. You’re all right.”
Hirka grinned. Lindri had liked her straightaway, from the moment she’d come into his teahouse only three days previously, looking for somewhere to stay in the overcrowded city. He’d dismissed her before she’d even opened her mouth. If it was work or lodging she was after, she was out of luck.
Her first night in Mannfalla had been fast approaching. Her feet had ached from walking up and down the streets looking for somewhere to sleep. But it was futile during the Rite. Hungry and exhausted, she had heard the sound of a wind chime coming from an alley by the river. A melodious invitation from among the houses. She had followed the sound and found herself at Lin
dri’s. He ran a teahouse that would have brought tears to Father’s eyes. Wooden drawers lined the walls. Every herb had its place. Even the counter was made of drawers. The tables were low and people sat on stools covered by gray sheepskins and drank from cups without handles, like the ones Ramoja had. The urge to stay had been overwhelming.
Lindri was almost seventy winters, and she had noticed that he often massaged his wrists and elbows. It slowed him down, and it was clearly an effort to climb up to the top drawer to fetch what customers wanted. So Hirka had started serving people while negotiating a bed.
“My dear girl, I haven’t so much as a stool to sleep on!”
“I don’t need a stool. I need a bed. And it looks like you could do with one too.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Hirka had wiped the counter with a cloth that only made it dirtier.
“Sore joints?”
“What of it?”
“I have a salve made from ylir root. For the pain. And I’ve been loosening stiff joints since I learned to walk.”
“You’re a healer?! You’re just a child! Have you even been through the Rite?”
“Yes. Well, in a few days.”
Lindri had given her a skeptical look as he rubbed his wrist. That was when she had dealt the final blow: “Where I come from, it doesn’t matter how old you are, only what you can do. I’d like to help you, but you’ll have to lie down. And since you don’t have anywhere to do that …”
For a moment she’d feared Lindri would throw her out. He’d jutted out his chin as if he couldn’t believe her audacity. But then he’d started to laugh. A wheezy screech of a laugh.
“I like you, Red.”
That evening, Lindri had applied her salve to his joints and slept better than he had in five years, apparently. And Hirka had been allowed to use his granddaughter’s room. The granddaughter was older than Hirka, but according to Lindri, she was as lazy as she was sullen. Lindri said he was glad she didn’t visit often because everything she touched turned into more work. But he made as much use of Hirka as he could. She’d been going to bed exhausted in the evenings and had started dreaming of her own teahouse. She would offer rooms and people would come to stay for days at a time. They would eat well, sleep well, and get well if they needed to.
But then she’d remembered who she was. She was a child of Odin and she was in Mannfalla. A couple days before the Rite. What was the point of dreaming when she didn’t even know whether she would live to see the next moon?
“Are you coming?”
Lindri snapped her out of her torpor. She’d stopped without even noticing. She looked up at the red dome. It was close. Tall windows ran all the way around, just beneath where it started to curve. All of them had stained glass with motifs she couldn’t make out from where she was standing. The Council met behind those windows. And if what she’d heard was true, the Seer resided in a floating tower somewhere behind the red dome. Out toward Blindból. Perhaps He could see her right now. They said He saw everything. The hairs on her arms stood on end.
“I’m not used to this many people,” she said by way of an apology. “It’s almost impossible to get anywhere.”
“You’re telling me, Red. Keep hold of your coin purse. Come on, we’ll try a different way.”
Lindri put a hand on her shoulder and steered her into a side street. He was still a bit bowlegged, but his pain had abated somewhat. They entered a quieter street running parallel to the main street in Eisvaldr, but closer to the eastern ridge. From here, they could see the Council families’ magnificent homes. Structures fit for gods that could have housed a hundred men with room to spare.
Hirka spotted something and stopped. A mountain of a house built of gray stone towered above them. White flowers whose name Hirka didn’t know climbed up the walls and around leaded windows that were taller than a grown man. The hillside was covered in fruit trees. A row of torches blazed along the roadside even though it was still light. White flower petals fell as she watched, settling on the ground like snow. She could hear some kind of music—random notes from small bells caught in the wind.
Every stone in the walls was a different size, making them look like scales on a lizard’s skin. And the roof looked like it had been there for eons. Dark tiles in various sizes reinforced the impression of something living. Hirka couldn’t take her eyes off it. Any minute now the roof would lift up slightly and the stones would pull apart from each other, as if it were an immense dragon drawing breath.
Hirka realized she was holding her own breath.
“They call it the sleeping dragon. It’s where the An-Elderins live,” Lindri said. He needn’t have bothered. Hirka already knew. Lindri leaned closer to Hirka so no one would overhear him. “If it hadn’t been called that since the dawn of time, it would be tempting to think it had something to do with Ilume-madra.”
Hirka twitched on hearing her name.
“She’s one of the twelve. The head of the family. Surely you learned about the families at school, Red?”
Hirka nodded absently. She stood there listening to the silver bells chime. The wind whipped at her hair, blowing it into her face. Red curls against white flower petals.
“Yes. We learned about them at school.”
Hirka had learned most things from Father. She’d never gone to normal school. And now she had to learn everything herself. Get by on her own. Would Rime be there during the Rite, when she’d need help the most? Was he here now? Was he behind one of the windows up there?
Guardsmen patrolled the road up to the impregnable building. No one was allowed too close. What lay within was valuable. Pure. Sacred. It was the An-Elderin family home.
Why would he help? Why would anyone who lived like this so much as spare a thought for someone like her? A lump formed in Hirka’s throat. People in Elveroa were generally on equal footing. Some had more than others, but it was a small place. Children played together, though Ilume had done her utmost to keep Rime away from them all.
This was something else entirely. What she was looking at here wasn’t a house. It was a castle. From a legend. A story. Nobody growing up here would play with children outside the wall. Maybe with merchants’ children, but what about the scrawny kids roughhousing down by the river? The urchins living on rooftops? She doubted they ever crossed paths.
It suddenly dawned on her why people romanticized Mannfalla. Maybe it didn’t have anything to do with greed after all, and it was just a question of being on the inside. Somewhere children could be safe and didn’t have to steal and live on sagging roofs by the river.
Eisvaldr had never held any appeal for Hirka. The Council’s schools were of no interest to her. She didn’t even have the Might, so she didn’t have the slightest hope of being chosen or offered a place in this city. She’d had all she needed where she was. Until Rime had left to come back here.
She remembered that day at the Alldjup. Rime, back after three years. A warrior. A guardsman. Bearing arms, jaw set. A grown man. So utterly beautiful that it was infuriating. She’d been angry that he had come, angry that he had outgrown her, angry at the Rite and everything he represented. The distance between them had been greater than the span of the Alldjup. And now it was even greater still.
Hirka stared at the house, which sat, unapproachable, high above her. She wanted to curl up into a ball. Her chest felt like it might explode.
“Come on,” Lindri said. “The chicken soup won’t make itself.”
THE HEALER GIRL
Slabba was a complete idiot. He didn’t see the usefulness of anything at all, not least information. Urd sat down in the carriage and shut the door so hard the hinges rattled. “Ora Square!” he shouted to the coachman above. For a moment he didn’t recognize his own voice. It sounded hollow and dry.
The carriage started to move straightaway. Urd opened his leather pouch and pulled out a bottle. A plain, nondescript item containing an elixir from the Council’s so-called best doctors. A remedy for
sore throats. Urd sniggered. If only they’d known what they were dealing with. They were helpless in the face of what ailed him.
To be fair, the bravest among the doctors had asked to examine him, but Urd had stopped his hand before it got anywhere near his covered neck.
Urd drained the bottle. Sweet mint mixed with the persistent taste of rotting flesh. It was better than nothing, and it did provide a brief respite from the pain. He leaned back and closed his eyes. The carriage crawled onward. The sound of the city’s people, horses, and merchants filtered in.
Slabba.
The fat merchant hadn’t realized the value of what he had said. It had tumbled out of him as an anecdote. His brother’s wife had suffered from serious headaches for years. They came and went but were often so bad that she was bedridden. She had tried everything. Slabba had rattled off a long list of ridiculous remedies, from standing on your head to eating nothing other than vegetables. As though Urd had any interest whatsoever in this woman’s more or less imagined history of maladies.
But the other day she had been to see a young girl with a flair for healing, and she was convinced that she was cured. The girl had just arrived in Mannfalla, but according to Slabba she was already being spoken of in the best circles.
You wouldn’t recognize a good circle if it hit you in the face, Urd had thought. That was when Slabba, in all his ignorance, had really shocked him. “They call her the tailless girl. Wolfgirl. I’ve heard Ravengirl too.”
“People will believe any—” Urd interrupted himself. “Tailless?”
“Tailless! They say a wolf bit off her tail when she was a child.”
Odin's Child Page 26
