Rime didn’t pay them much notice. He was too busy staring at Hirka. When Urd had killed, the Might had felt the same to her as when she’d been offered protection at the Rite. An echo from the meeting he’d overheard in the dome came to him.
Maybe we ought to cancel the Rite entirely with the blind on the loose.
Why? Why?!
Because the Rite had never protected anyone.
Rime’s blood ran cold. It was like being hit by an avalanche. An unstoppable certainty plowing through him. Ugly. Arrogant. Ice-cold.
“They’ve never protected anyone. They’re taking the Might from people …” Rime’s words made everyone stop. Those who were sitting stood up. Then everyone started talking at once.
But Rime didn’t pay them any notice. He needed to think. Finish his thoughts. Had to fit the pieces together. This was too much to take in. Far too much. “Nobody skilled in the Might has been born in generations, not outside the twelve families. Of course not! They aren’t protecting anyone. They’ve never protected anything other than their own sovereign rule.”
Rime slumped onto a chair by the window and gripped the table. He stared at it. Dark wood. Born of the Might. Aged through the Might. Power in every growth ring. Every knot. “We’ve taken the Might from people. To be the strongest. So as to never allow other families in.”
He looked up at the others. They looked at him with concern, as though he was sick. Even Torje. It looked like there were more of them now. Or was he seeing double? “We’ve been burning the Might out of all of them.” He looked at Hirka. At Ramoja’s puffy eyes. Vetle had never been strong in the Might, even though he should have been. Now Rime knew why. “For how long?”
Ramoja put a hand on his shoulder. Hirka looked from one person to the next in confusion. It was too much for them too. They looked like they were going to fall. He couldn’t let them fall.
Get up, Rime!
Rime looked around, but the voice came from within. Master Svarteld’s disdain for fatigued muscles. There was no weakness in the master’s world. No body over mind. Only mind over body.
It’s your damned body! Get up!
Rime stood up. “I know that the Council is reeling. If we wish to see them fall, there has never been a better time for it. Not in generations,” he said. “But you’ll have to wait a little longer.”
“Don’t you dare, An-Elderin,” Torje said. “This may be as new to you as it is to us, but it makes our cause infinitely stronger.”
“Torje, do what you have to do, but I need answers first.”
“Nobody can give you answers, Rime.” It was Ramoja, her face drawn. “I’ve hoped for answers my entire life. Vetle’s entire life. Nobody can give you what you want. No one can offer a good reason for why things are the way they are.”
Hirka took a step forward. “He can,” she said.
“Who?” Ramoja asked.
Hirka didn’t need to say it. Rime answered for her. “The Seer.”
Hirka moved toward him, her gaze shifting between wonder and certainty. He smiled cautiously. She understood. He could see that she understood. Torje snorted and Rime could hear the others laughing awkwardly. Rime didn’t take his eyes off Hirka. Nor she him. He had to make the others understand.
“The Seer has the answers. He knows. He knows why.”
Lea flung out her arms. “Nobody outside the Council has ever spoken with Him. Not even you, apparently. And you’re the child He saved at birth. The An-Elderin child.”
Torje chimed in. “And if you’re going to get Him to talk, what makes you believe He’ll give you answers? The Council is a viper’s nest of lies and greed. That has to be at His behest?”
Several of them made the sign of the Raven on their chest. That surprised Rime. Their contempt for the Council ought to have extended to Him as well, to the Seer. But then, he didn’t feel that way, so why should they?
“You’re right, both of you. But I know they’re acting without Him.”
“What are you trying to say?” Knute put a tankard of ale down on the window ledge. The wind outside caused small ripples on the brown surface.
“I’m saying that the Council has been making decisions without Him. For how long, I don’t know, but at least since Vanfarinn’s death. The Seer would not have admitted Urd to the inner circle.”
“But I saw Him,” Hirka said. “I looked Him in the eyes during the Rite.”
“So we know that He lives. And I’ll get my answers.”
Ramoja sighed. “Rime, what answer could He give that would satisfy you? No answer can justify an eternity of suppression and corruption. No answer can explain why they’ve stamped out the Might, if that’s what they’ve done. None, Rime.”
“Maybe. But I’m going to get my answers, regardless.”
“We don’t have the people or the time to waste on getting answers. Not even with a thousand men could you succeed in gaining an audience with Him,” Torje said.
“You don’t need a thousand men and you don’t need time. I’ll do it myself.” Rime could feel power in his words, as though he were binding. As soon as the words were spoken, they were true. He was right. That was what he had to do. He had to see Him. The Seer he had lived and killed for. The beginning and the end. He who had all the answers. And if He turned out to be like the rest of the Council, it would be Rime’s final act. But that didn’t matter. Either way, he had already given his life to Him.
Torje slammed his fist into the wall. The ravens started to chatter. “Don’t listen to him, he’s going to ruin everything!”
“You’ve nothing to lose. I’ll do it alone, and I’ll do it tonight. Are you so thirsty for blood that you can’t wait one night?”
None of them responded. A moment passed before Lea asked, “What did you have in mind?”
Rime nodded at her gratefully. He’d been given the time he’d asked for. “I’m going to break into the Seer’s tower.”
He left the room. He needed rest. Quiet. He heard the raveners talking over one another. They thought he had lost his mind. Maybe they were right. The problem was, he was relying on Hirka sharing in his madness. His Might became a storm when it was allowed to flow through her. Without her, he would never be strong enough to reach the Seer.
Hirka had spent the worst days of her life in Eisvaldr. Imprisoned. Bloodied. Condemned. Why would she ever set foot there again? She had rejected the Seer, so what could he offer that would convince her to follow him into almost certain death?
Torje’s voice rose above the din. “Is he crazy?”
“The craziest of them all,” Hirka replied. “If he thinks he’s going alone, that is.”
That’s when Rime knew he was in danger. Because suddenly the rot seemed a small price to pay to be close to her.
RAMOJA’S STORY
It was early evening. Outside, the wind tossed the ravens around like scraps of cloth, but they were always quick to right themselves. To regain control between the towers of Mannfalla.
Hirka hadn’t been able to sleep. It wasn’t just her fear of the dreams that kept her awake. It was the thought of what they were planning to do that night. That would have kept anyone up—apart from Rime. He was asleep, which was a relief, because she’d been starting to wonder whether not needing sleep was some bizarre Kolkagga thing.
Ramoja had let them use a narrow room in the loft. It had two bunks, with one fixed to the wall above the other, like on a ship. Rime had claimed the lower bunk, and Hirka noticed his breathing grew quieter as she left the room. Even in his sleep, he was aware of people coming and going.
She climbed down from the loft and followed the sound of Vetle’s chattering until she found the kitchen in the east wing, where Ramoja offered her some tea. Hirka asked for chamomile, or something else that might calm her nerves, though she doubted anything would help.
They sat at the corner of the long table. Ramoja’s black hair shone in the light from the embers under the pot. Vetle sat at the other end of the table, dra
wing with a stubby piece of charcoal on a scrap of paper. Hirka sat watching him. He was drawing a raven. Hirka had seen his drawings before, but she was always surprised to rediscover that he drew better than she could. It was so easy to forget they were the same age.
“What happened to him?”
Hirka knew Ramoja would tell her. She had never asked because she had assumed Vetle had always been the way he was, since birth. But watching his mother shrink into herself earlier in the day had made her think again.
Ramoja moved a candle with two wicks closer to Vetle so he had better light to draw by. “You’ve seen it yourself. The Might sapped the life out of him. He was two summers old.”
“But who? Who would want to hurt Vetle?”
“His father.”
Hirka had never given much thought to the fact that Vetle was fatherless. It had just always been that way. Some people in Elveroa had whispered about it. Sylja had called Vetle a bastard and Hirka had told her she couldn’t know that for sure. Maybe his father was dead. She wanted to ask, but she didn’t need to.
“Urd is … his father,” Ramoja whispered.
Hirka’s eyes widened.
It couldn’t be true! The boy sat drawing by the fire, without a care in the world. She couldn’t see any of Urd’s narrow, angular features in him. Vetle was a warm, happy boy. His nose was on the broad side, like Ramoja’s. Not sharp like Urd’s. The only feature he had perhaps inherited from Urd was the councillor’s corn-yellow hair.
Ramoja had told her without using Vetle’s name. As if it pained her to mention him and Urd in the same sentence. Hirka knew something worse was coming. Something she understood all too well. Her hand settled on top of Ramoja’s.
“He raped you …”
Ramoja’s eyes glistened with tears. She lowered her gaze to the table.
“There are a lot of things I’d have done differently today. I wouldn’t have smiled at him like I did before he … He clearly wanted me. I enjoyed the attention, like you do when you’re young.” Ramoja looked at Hirka and smiled when she remembered she was talking to a girl who was yet to see her sixteenth winter.
“You don’t understand people when you’re young, Hirka. You don’t see the dangers. Today I might have noticed something off in his eyes. In the way we looked at each other. Today I might have realized what he was capable of. Today I might have been able to—”
“Stop it? See it coming?”
Ramoja smiled. She looked grateful that Hirka understood where she was coming from. It didn’t make Hirka any less angry. Her ribs were still tender from her brutal encounter with Tyrinn. “You can’t know. You can never know. It’s not something you see in people, Ramoja!”
Vetle looked up for a moment, but finishing his drawing was more important than listening to their boring chitchat.
Ramoja laughed guardedly. “You sound like Rime’s mother. Gesa was the only person I told, and she was furious. It was the day Jarladin was sworn into the Council. I tried to stop her, but she stormed off to tell Ilume what had happened. I remember her pearl earrings dancing as she turned on her heel, her gray silk skirt rustling as she swept along the corridor. She was going to make sure Urd paid. She knew it might cost Vanfarinn his seat on the Council, and cause a scandal they couldn’t recover from, but that didn’t matter to Gesa.”
Hirka’s chest felt tight as she realized what was coming. Ramoja’s voice was hoarse now. “Gesa went to her mother. She told Ilume what Urd had done. Ilume was upset. Shocked, of course, but …”
“But nothing happened.” Hirka knew how things were. All too well.
Ramoja nodded. “Vanfarinn kept his chair. Ilume thought making a fuss would just be punishing the father for the sins of the son. Vanfarinn was a good man. For the Council. For the people. The stability of the kingdoms would have been compromised.”
Hirka understood. Ilume had let Ramoja pay the price so the people would retain their faith in Eisvaldr, in the Seer himself. Hirka would meet Him that night. She and Rime. Maybe He would kill them or send them into exile. Only time would tell. The list of things the Almighty had to answer for was growing, as far as she was concerned.
“Something happened that night, Hirka. It was more than Ilume’s dismissiveness, that much I know for certain. Gesa wanted to get away from here. Away from the family, away from Eisvaldr. Everything. For almost thirteen years, I’ve wondered whether she only left for my sake. Because she and Ilume ended up in an argument about how Urd’s crime should be dealt with. All Gesa told me was that she and Allvard were taking Rime to Ravnhov. A couple days later we found out that Gesa and Allvard An-Elderin had died in an avalanche near Urmunai. The boy was the only survivor. Little Rime, only six years old. The fabled child. Chosen by the Seer. They say a wolf dug him out of the snow.”
Hirka shuddered. Wolf eyes. “And Rime knows all this? Has he always known?”
“Oh, no. He never knew they’d run, or where they were going. It’s never been anything other than a tragic accident to him.”
“What do you think it was?”
Ramoja turned her cup in her hands. She didn’t answer Hirka’s question. She kept talking about Rime. “I thought the secret about Vetle was between me and Ilume. No one else. But Rime has always haunted the corridors of Eisvaldr. And Elveroa. He’s picked up on a lot. He probably knows what Urd did to Vetle as well. He might not have realized before, but today he put two and two together. When you talked about how Urd had used the Might to kill.”
“Urd wanted to kill Vetle?!”
“I’ve been trying to work that out for over a decade as well. But I don’t think so. He had nothing to fear. I hadn’t told anyone what he’d done. Two years had passed and he must have known I was never going to say anything. He probably just wanted to make sure no one would find out. During the Rite, for example.”
Hirka understood. “A boy with as strong an affinity for the Might as the twelve families. Everyone would wonder …”
Ramoja nodded. “I didn’t know it was possible to take the Might from anyone. I’ve never heard of anyone being able to do such a thing. But then again, the Might’s a rare gift in itself. For a while, I thought you had it. That you could do more with it than anyone else. That raven came to you of its own free will. You were always hanging out with Rime, as if you shared the same secret. The ravens said your blood was different. And when I saw you with Kolgrim in the square that day, when that rock shattered, I thought …”
Hirka sighed. Ramoja thought she had seen her break Kolgrim’s rock, but that had been Hlosnian, the stone carver. Not her. The ravener had seen a girl who could use the Might to shatter a rock, and who wanted to run from the Rite … Hirka was too tired to explain.
“Sometimes I wonder whether he wanted to kill him,” Ramoja went on. “Other times, I think he just wanted to show me what he could do. Show me that he could take away the most precious thing I have if he wanted to. If he had killed—”
“Then you’d have shouted the truth from the rooftops. He wanted to make sure you still had something to lose.” Hirka’s skin crawled at the unwelcome thought, and at the fear she might be right. How could someone live that way? Like one of the blind! Completely without conscience.
Ramoja nodded. “I’ve never told anyone else. But I talked to Ilume about it. Rime might have overheard. He’s always been a sharp one. Perceptive.”
“That didn’t stop you from slapping him.”
Ramoja dragged her hands over her face. “He’s always been like family. Him and Ilume. When the Council wanted to get closer to Ravnhov, she asked me to come with her. They needed a ravener, and she could have chosen anyone, but she chose me. I don’t know why. Maybe she felt guilty for what had happened with Vetle. Maybe she could have prevented it if she’d taken it seriously when Gesa first came to her. Maybe she just considered me a link to the daughter she no longer had.”
Or maybe she just wanted to make sure you didn’t say anything while she was away. Hirka thought about a boar
d game Lindri’s customers played. Each player started on their own side of the board with various wooden counters. The idea was to use them strategically to take over the opponent’s side. Hirka almost always lost because she took the most direct route. It was like announcing your intentions. She knew better than that now. Ramoja continued.
“Ilume said the best thing for me and Vetle would be to get away, and it was difficult to disagree. So we moved to Elveroa. We never went a day without seeing each other. Particularly at first, when the ravenry was being built. The first Elveroa had ever seen. Rime was so young. Back then.”
“Before he became Kolkagga,” Hirka said.
Ramoja nodded again. She poured more tea into their cups from a cast-iron pot. It was tepid, but neither of them cared. “Eirik told me about that when I got to Ravnhov. I’m not the only spy in Eisvaldr. Others had sent letters about Rime’s decision.”
“He let you down.” Hirka knew exactly how Ramoja felt. She thought back to Ramoja and Eirik’s conversation at the icon in Ravnhov. They had been talking about Rime.
He’s chosen his path. Now he’s killing for the people you thought he’d change.
“Rime was all I had left of Gesa. I’ve been around him since he was born. Ilume was convinced he was going to be one of the youngest and strongest Insringin had ever seen. It seemed predestined. I started to believe in her. In him. He was strong, and he had always questioned everything. I dared to see change in his eyes. The possibility that the game would end and justice would prevail. And what did he do? He made sure it would never happen. Kolkagga. Already dead in the service of the Seer. A shadow. An assassin. For them!”
Hirka’s skin prickled as she listened to Ramoja’s story, pieces of the puzzle falling inexorably into place. Rime. The Council. The Might. If Rime was right, then no wonder Mannfalla was reacting to Ravnhov holding people back from the Rite. What if the Might flourished among the enemy? Among those who shunned the Seer? The world would be divided. Everything would change.
Would this be her last night? The Seer could kill them both if He wanted to. All she had to cling to was her faith in His unconditional love. That and Rime’s convictions.
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