“Idiot! If Kolkagga had her I’d know by now. No one’s brought her in, Slabba. No one.”
“I’m telling the truth! If I wasn’t, I’d have told you there were five of them, but he was alone. One man, Urd! One! All in black, out of nowhere. He was suddenly just there. On the roof of the cart!”
“And what did you and your men do, Slabba? Piss yourselves?”
“He was Kolkagga!”
Urd didn’t reply. For once in his life, Slabba had a point. If it really had been one of the black shadows, even ten of Slabba’s men wouldn’t have made a difference.
“Could I please have a drink? I need a drink.”
Urd shut out Slabba’s irritating, girlish voice. He needed to think. What had happened? If Kolkagga had found the girl, why hadn’t they brought her in yet? Why didn’t the Council know anything? Kolkagga would have made it back to the city in a fraction of the time it had taken Slabba. So why?
Slabba must have blabbed. He’d cracked and confessed. Now he was standing here lying to mislead Urd. That was the only explanation.
“How could they have known the girl was in the cart, Slabba?”
“Because she jumped out! She scampered up a slope and into the forest like a rabbit.”
Urd locked eyes with him. Searched for a tell in his gaze. For the slightest indication of a lie. It had to be there. The girl had been tied up in the crate with enough dreamwort in her system to knock out a horse. She couldn’t have run anywhere.
Slabba sobbed and turned away from Urd, as if that would conceal the fact that he was falling apart. Muck dripped from the mustard-colored tunic that was pulled taut across his buttocks. Urd wrinkled his nose. What in Slokna’s name was wrong with him? Had he soiled himself? Urd followed the trail of muck from Slabba to the chair he’d been sitting on. The chair Hirka had been sitting on. It wasn’t muck. It was stew. It oozed out across the chair. Squeezed out of the blanket she’d had wrapped around her.
The truth hit him like a spear. She had tricked him. She had tricked him! That cursed rot had tricked him! Urd got up and swept the goblets off the table. They clattered to the floor and rolled over to the fireplace. Slabba took an uncertain step back toward the wall.
“Come!” Urd said, heading for the door.
“Where? Where are we going?”
“To find something to drink.”
Slabba followed him. They walked through the house and out into the back garden. It hadn’t been tended since Urd’s father had died. But the view of the river and Blindból never failed to impress. “Don’t worry, Slabba. It’s a minor setback. We’ll sort it out.”
“Sort it out?! How? You’ve lost her! I didn’t even know what she was when you asked me to take her. I thought she was a relative. I thought you were joking!”
Urd started to bare his teeth but then managed to smile. Slabba had already started covering his back. He was lost. He would no longer be of any use. “Let’s take things one step at a time, Slabba. First of all, who saw you come here?”
“No one. I swear! I wouldn’t have come if there was any chance of being seen.”
“Good. Do you have any meetings set up for tomorrow?”
“No. I’m going to pay that damned tea merchant in the Catgut a visit. I swear he hides the best teas under the counter and just gives me brackish water! What’s the plan?”
“I’ll show you. Can you see what I’ve hidden there?” Urd leaned over the edge and stared down into the river far below. Slabba followed his lead, like a sock puppet. Urd pushed him with both hands. It took astonishingly little effort. Slabba’s heavy torso did the job itself. He had no way of regaining his footing to avert disaster. He didn’t say anything either. Just flailed helplessly. And fell.
A moment later, Urd heard Slabba scream just before his body hit the rocks below. Silence descended. Then there was a splash. Urd wrinkled his nose. Slabba had always been tardy. Even when it came to his own death scream. At least now he had one less thing to worry about. As did Slabba’s wife. She was young enough to be his daughter and probably would have thrown herself at Urd’s feet in gratitude if she had been here. Now there was a thought. Perhaps he would pay her a visit when Slabba’s body washed up in the slums. To offer his condolences, of course.
The fat merchant had made his last mistake. As had the girl with the red hair. He was Urd Vanfarinn. His family had an army of three hundred guardsmen. Loyal men who had served the family for generations. Now they would all make themselves useful.
But first he had to make the most important decision of his life. Should he tell the Voice that he had lost the girl or not? Urd could hear the dogs whimpering at the front of the house.
It had started to rain.
THE SHADOW
Rime was Kolkagga. The Seer’s assassin. He was everything Hirka feared and fled from. He was the reason for all the sleepless nights. The reason she froze at every sound from the woods. He was the reason Father was resting in Slokna. He was Eirik’s fever. Tein’s bloodthirst. He was death.
She had nearly cried with relief when she saw him. Relief because there was someone who wanted to help her in this fight. Not just someone. Rime. And now here he was. Kolkagga. A confirmation of the truth she couldn’t escape. The Council was never going to listen to her. Or spare her life.
There wasn’t even rage or malice behind their desire to kill. They didn’t hate her. Maybe it was born of fear. She was an outsider, after all. But they wanted to rid themselves of her as easily as they breathed, simply because it was the most expedient thing to do. They wanted to maintain stability. Pull out the weed. Purge the kingdoms of the rot.
Hirka straightened up. The wounds inflicted by the Council’s sword still smarted. Had she only had her bag, she could have rubbed something on them. They’d get infected if she wasn’t careful.
“So they’ve really sent Kolkagga after me?”
“Yes.”
“To kill me?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not how the world works. You can’t just kill people willy-nilly.” She sounded like a child, but she wasn’t anymore. After all, she’d been to the Rite. Hirka smiled bitterly in the dark.
“The Seer gives and the Seer takes,” Rime replied.
“Gives what, Rime?!” She got up. The moon was behind him. Outlining him, as if to show her where he was. As if to warn her. Be careful. Here he is. With broad shoulders and powerful thighs, made to catch anything that tried to run away. He turned to face her.
“He gives the answer to all questions,” he said mechanically.
“Cursed crones’ talk! He gives answers so you never ask questions!” Hirka’s words were like an echo from Father in Slokna. Rime hesitated, but she didn’t think it was because he was considering what she had said. More because he was considering what he was going to say. But the Seer’s sovereignty didn’t concern her anymore. It was dead to her. No words would ever change that.
“I can show you what He has given me, Rime.” Hirka lifted her tunic and turned her back on him. She was burning now. Burning to show him what the Raven really was. How unwilling the holiest of the holy was to intervene.
“This is what He has given me! Do you think I’m sorry to be cut off from His mercy? Do you?!” She let go of the tunic and looked at him again. He had tensed his jaw. His eyes had narrowed in anger, as though the wounds on her back were her own fault.
“The Council’s misdeeds are not His. We follow His word, not theirs.”
“So what in Slokna are you doing here, Rime?!” She tried to make him see how illogical he was being. How he couldn’t see what was right in front of him. “If you follow His word, and He wants me dead, why are we here? Why am I still alive?!”
“I DON’T KNOW!”
His shout echoed between the boulders. Frightened crows alighted from the edge of the forest. He looked like a ghost, standing there. One of the blind. Pale against the black sky. He was a shadow. A figment of her imagination. Had she gone mad? Maybe she�
��d wake up soon. Maybe she was still in the cramped pit in the vault in Eisvaldr, dreaming that Rime had saved her.
An even darker truth revealed itself to her. Rime hadn’t come to save her. The Seer had asked him to kill her, and here he stood, at war with himself. Hesitating. But he didn’t know why he was hesitating, why he couldn’t bring himself to kill her or hand her over to the Council. So far he’d followed orders. He’d caught her. The question was: where would he go from here?
Hirka wanted to scream, to scream that Rime was an idiot for being willing to kill, in the Seer’s name or otherwise. But she couldn’t scream. She hadn’t realized it until now, but she was bargaining for her life.
The man before her was not thinking clearly. He was an animal. A wolf. Right now he was as likely to kill her as not. It was down to the flip of a coin. She was at the mercy of his inner turmoil. His conviction. His faith. She promised herself that she would never believe in anything or anyone, as long as she lived.
Hirka swallowed. Her words had to be chosen with great care. She took a step closer to him. “I’ve only seen the Seer once,” Hirka said. “And all He did was lock me in a pit. He could have killed me on the spot. But He didn’t. Wouldn’t I already be dead, if that’s what the Seer had wanted?”
Rime closed his eyes and bowed his head. The weight lifted from his shoulders. He nodded.
“I’ve never taken a life,” she said, bolder now that she’d seen him land on the right side. “I’ve eased suffering. Stitched people up. Talked them through their pain. You’ve killed them. Which of us has best served the Seer, Rime?”
“Get some sleep. We have to be up before daybreak.”
THE TAIL
The sun crept out from behind the mountains, giving the world back its colors. But some of them were unrecognizable. Hirka stared at her reflection in the river. Her hair was dripping brown, colored by tree bark. She tightened her grip around Rime’s knife.
“I’m going to look like a boy …”
“You already look like a boy,” Rime replied.
The words hurt her more than they should have. He was crouched on the riverbank, his elbows resting on his knees, tall reeds hiding him from view. His scabbards stuck out behind him on each side. He had changed his clothes. He was no longer Kolkagga, he was Rime An-Elderin. The guardsman who had pulled her up out of the Alldjup, wearing the same light-colored shirt with slits in the sides. His bag was on the ground. That had changed color too. It was brown now, like her hair. A trick, a bag that could be turned inside out to blend in. It was starting to dawn on her where the stories about Kolkagga came from. The warriors no one could see. Invisible at night, invisible during the day.
Kuro had reappeared. Once again she’d thought he was gone for good, but the raven never let her down. He was currently eyeing up a bundle next to Rime’s bag. Hirka hoped it was something to eat.
Rime looked at her. Hirka lifted the knife and started to hack at her hair, cutting away big handfuls at a time. She looked like an animal. The shoulder of her woollen tunic was torn. She wanted to say she couldn’t even remember the last time she’d had a proper night’s sleep, but her reluctance to show weakness stopped her. If only she could sink under the water, into a soundless world. Like in the bathhouse in Ravnhov.
She found herself thinking about Tein. What would he say if he could see her now? With Rime An-Elderin. With Kolkagga.
“Finish up. We need to get moving,” Rime said, getting up.
“Where are we going?”
“Mannfalla.”
She looked at him. Had he lost his mind? He seemed fine, apart from what he had just said. His eyes were clearer than they had been only a few hours ago. Calmer. He was no longer a starving, confused wolf. He knew what he was doing.
“Mannfalla? Sure, that sounds brilliant, Rime. Let’s go there. I’ve got loads of friends there. Urd, the Council … even the Seer! His love for me knows no bounds.” She crossed her fingers in the sign of the Seer, like an augur.
“Don’t forget Kolkagga,” he replied with a straight face. He started picking up her hair from the ground. “Kolkagga have been looking for you for more than a day. They’ll have looked under every tile in the city by now. From now on they’ll spread themselves out from Mannfalla like a hail of arrows. Out here we’re easy prey. However, if we survive in Mannfalla until tomorrow, then we’ll have a chance. It’ll buy us some time.”
“But they have guardsmen on all the gates. Probably more than usual just now. Even if we were stupid enough to try, there’s no way we’d get into Mannfalla.”
“You’re forgetting the most important thing.”
“What? That you’re Rime An-Elderin? The holy idiot? The good luck charm who thinks with his little toe and goes wherever he wants?” She rolled her eyes.
He got up and gripped her shoulders. The sudden show of intimacy felt threatening. It niggled at something close to her heart that was better off left alone. “Use your head. They expect outlaws to leave the city. It might well be impossible to get out, but not in.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” she mumbled, dropping one final fistful of hair on the ground.
“We don’t know anything for sure. But we have one thing that works in our favor.” He let go of her shoulders, but the heat from his hands lingered. “No one will know what I’ve done yet, or that we’re together.”
“Urd has to know, doesn’t he?” she asked, thinking about the third rider who had made a run for it while Rime watched her from the roof of the cart.
“He only knows it was Kolkagga, not that it was me. And he won’t tell anyone what little he knows. Even a holy idiot can work that much out.”
Hirka could feel her cheeks burning. She should have thought of that. Urd couldn’t tell anyone about her or what he had done. It was a relief to realize.
“The only thing he can do is send his family guardsmen out to find you,” Rime continued. “But that’s nothing to worry about. There’s only a couple hundred of them. Kolkagga would find you first anyway.”
She stared at him, but nothing suggested he was trying to be funny. Hirka adjusted the cloak around her shoulders. It was his, and almost brushed the ground when she wore it. “My hair’s still wet,” she said. “It’ll stain your cloak.”
Rime reached out and ran his fingers through her hair. “It’ll dry as we walk,” he said. She swallowed and nodded.
“The city gates are just beyond the ridge. The road’s a couple hundred paces east. We’ll run into a lot of people.”
Hirka nodded again. She knew that. Rime continued.
“The cloak helps. It hides your tail.” His cheeks colored slightly for a moment.
Hirka smiled. “You mean it hides the fact that I don’t have a tail?”
“It does, but that’s not enough.”
“It’ll have to be.”
“They’re looking for a tailless, red-haired girl. They’ll be paying particularly close attention to people’s tails.”
Hirka bit her lip. He was right. She would have asked to see her tail if she were guarding the city gates. It was the easiest way of ruling people out.
“Then let’s not go together,” she said. “If they catch me, you can’t be with me. There’s no other way.”
“There is.”
“Oh?”
Rime turned away from her before answering. “You need to have a tail.”
Hirka laughed. “What, do you expect me to grow one?” No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she realized what he was getting at. She backed away. Rime picked up the bundle by his bag. He opened it and threw it down on the ground.
Hirka swallowed. A tail lay before her, in a coil that loosened as she watched. Fine hairs were all too visible against the bloodless skin. It tapered into a brown tangle. There should have been a man attached to the other end, but all she could see was a bloody stump. The insides bulged around the tailbone, which protruded from the center like a cracked egg.
An image of
one of the men who had accompanied the cart pushed to the forefront of Hirka’s mind. A man lying on the ground as she ran away. It was his. The tail was his. Part of his body, without … its owner.
She turned away and closed her eyes. She’d thought there was food in the bundle. Emergency rations. Her stomach churned, threatening to expel the mushrooms they’d eaten for breakfast. She was such a child. What had she expected? Rime had tidied up during the night. Of course he had. He couldn’t leave bodies and carts lying on the side of the road. They’d attract half the guardsmen in Mannfalla. They might as well have left a map showing where they were hiding. But what had he done? Apart from carving one of them up?
The nausea wouldn’t abate. Rime spoke again. He sounded indifferent, as if he were talking about a cured ham.
“It was hanging upside down overnight. It won’t bleed anymore. We’ll thread it through the tail hole in your trousers so they’ll see it if you’re asked to lift the cloak.” He hesitated for a moment. “It’s not like he needs it anymore,” he added.
Hirka opened her eyes again and looked at him. He met her gaze, but it was as if he were looking at her from far away. As if he were here and she were in Ravnhov, several days apart. If he felt anything, it was impossible to see from here.
“Well, that’s simple enough,” Hirka said tersely.
Rime nodded and took the knife from her. Hirka turned around. She stared up at the sky. If only the sun would rise quicker. She longed for its warmth. She could feel it already. No. That was Rime’s hands. Warm against her hips. He kneeled down behind her.
“I’m attaching a strip of cloth to the end,” he said. “We’ll need to tie it around your waist to carry the weight.”
Hirka nodded. She swallowed again and again. Rime’s hand loosened her belt and she felt his fingers on her back. A dead man’s tail was pulled across her skin and threaded through the hole in the trousers she had inherited. A hole she’d never had any use for. The tail was cold and heavy. It seemed to get heavier and heavier. It was too heavy to carry. Too heavy.
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