He held two fingers to his throat. The sign she herself had used to hold back the blind at Bromfjell, without knowing what she’d been doing.
“Not just yours,” she said. “I’m half-human, so who was she? I must have had a mother.”
“You had two. One who provided the egg, and one who carried you.”
“Blindcraft?”
“Science. Had it not been for the humans’ need to outdo nature, you’d never have existed.”
Hirka swallowed. She was afraid to ask, but she had to. “What happened to them?”
He didn’t reply. He just stood there, with one hand on the piano. His silence spoke volumes. What had killed them? Illness? Had they been Vardar? Forgotten? Rotted away, all alone? Or was it him? Would he have been capable of … She thought about everything he’d said. Everything he’d made her believe. Lies. From him. From Allegra, who’d said Lindri was dead. That Rime had killed Svarteld, and that he and Sylja …
“Allegra said that Lindri … and that Rime … you made me believe …” Her voice faltered.
“I had to. Every day you’ve been here, Naiell has corrupted you with lies. I tried to find you before the raven relinquished control over him, but I failed. So what should I have said, Hirka, when I finally heard your voice? Should I have said that you had to come to me? Should I have said that your life was in danger, and that it was my brother you should fear, not me? What would you have done? Would you have believed me?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Exactly,” he said, as if she had answered. “I had to make you come to me, a man you were convinced wanted to destroy both you and Ym. So I had to find something worth more to you than either of them.”
Rime …
“Think of it as a scale,” he continued. “On the one side you had your own life, and the world you grew up in. Those are heavy things. On the other side you had Rime An-Elderin. I helped you choose. I made Ym lighter.”
“You don’t understand feelings, do you?” she whispered.
He moved toward her.
“Do you thirst for the Might, Hirka?”
The question made her feel inexplicably guilty. Yes, she thirsted for the Might. So much so that she wasn’t always sure whether she missed it or Rime more. Graal didn’t need to wait for her answer. “And you’ve barely been here six months. Imagine living with that thirst for ten years. A hundred years. A thousand.”
He started to unbutton his shirt. Stripped it off and dropped it on the floor. His chest was strong and defined, like that of every blindling she’d seen. He loosened his belt. She was starting to feel uneasy, but there was no desire in Graal’s black eyes. Her unease was a reflex. A memory of the man in the pits who had tried to take her by force.
Graal pulled off his trousers and stood before her, completely naked. Hirka realized that he wouldn’t have been able to take her even if he’d wanted to. He had nothing to take her with. Where his sex should have been, there was a teardrop-shaped scar. A pale hollow that reminded her of her own scar. The one Father had made when he’d found her tailless.
Graal was maimed. Naiell had maimed his own brother to win the battle for the Might. To become the Seer.
The maimed king …
Graal turned away from her. He had an inking that covered nearly his entire back. She stepped closer. Small, black lines, close together, that started in the middle of his spine and swirled out in a chaotic circle. It looked like a bird’s nest. She couldn’t think of anything else to compare it to. The effect was almost hypnotic. A spiral pulling her in.
She lifted her hand and rested it on his shoulder blade. Both of them jumped at the touch, but he stayed where he was. She’d never seen anything like it. There was a system in all that wildness. All the lines were the same length and perfectly straight. Still …
“What is it?” she asked. Her fingers followed the outer edge of the inking, where the lines were darkest, and in toward the spine, where they were older and paler. Maybe she shouldn’t have been touching him, but she couldn’t help herself. It felt terrifyingly right. He was family. The only family she had. He paused before answering.
“They’re days,” he said. “Days since I came here. Since I’ve been imprisoned here with the humans.”
Hirka tried to count. It was impossible. “How many are there?”
“As many as there are days in a year. For nine hundred and ninety-nine years.”
It was incredible. No wonder they covered almost his entire back. “What happens when you run out of room?”
“That will likely be the day I die,” he answered hoarsely.
She felt a sudden sorrow. An intense need to embrace him. She didn’t want to feel that way. He was supposed to be her enemy. But it wasn’t like that anymore. She believed him. Trusted him.
Seer preserve me …
But the Seer had no plan to preserve her. Quite the contrary.
He turned around again. “I’ll tell you why you were created, Hirka. Because it became possible. They did everything in their power to prevent me from fathering new blood. But here you are. My daughter. The child they feared I would have. You’re a miracle. A human with blood of the first. You awakened the gateways.”
“You tried to send me to them …” Hirka remembered Urd’s words. “You tried to sacrifice me!”
“Sacrifice? Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? Had I kept you, you would have been hunted by those who are hunting me. Would that have been better? I know who you’re consorting with, and he’d have butchered you like an animal. Wrenched out your teeth and sold them to the highest bidder. And there are plenty more like him. You don’t belong here. You’re better than them.”
“I’m fine being their equal,” she muttered.
He lifted her chin.
“They thought my blood was dead, yet here you are. Through you I was going to do all that I was meant to. You were to be sent to Dreyri. Not as a sacrifice, but as a leader. You would have had more power that you can fathom. Power over the Might. Power over flesh and blood. Power to heal or to kill. You would have been raised as one of us. You were to take my place. You were to lead our people to Ym. To the Might.”
He let go of her chin. “But that dream died when you disappeared. When the raven rings took you. Now you’ve grown up with them. I can tell you that Umpiri came first. That my brother cut off the flow of the Might, leaving our people to starve. But you’ll never believe me. Never understand. You only know us through them. And they don’t paint a pretty picture. Fate has put us on opposite sides, and we will always be at odds. I will always fight for the right of our people, and you will always want to stop me.”
Hirka’s feet gave way. She collapsed onto the sofa. It was wonderfully real. A piece of furniture. Something to hold on to. Something real in what otherwise felt like a dream.
She was half-blindling. Bred to lead the deadborn to Ym. That was the purpose of her existence. She was intended for a completely different life. In a completely different place.
Graal pulled her back to her feet. “I needn’t remind you that we’re better than them. I needn’t remind you of all the lies they tell about us. You know better than most that people always lie about what’s different. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. You can never become what you were intended to be. But I still love you.”
She stared at him. The warmth in his eyes was unbearable.
The pieces started to fall into place in Hirka’s mind. The bigger picture. Things she’d been hearing since she was a child, things she’d heard only yesterday. They all came together to form a clearer image. Like the drops of water on the book that had made the pattern emerge, revealing that it was a map.
The map!
Cold flooded her veins. Outside, the sky was getting lighter. Stefan would wake up soon. Him and Naiell. They’d find the phone. And the book.
“Graal …” She swallowed. “What does Sulni mean?”
“Sulni? It’s an insect. A sort of mayfly that lives for only on
e night. Why do you ask?”
“I think I’ve done something really stupid,” she whispered.
SEPARATED
Hirka knew she’d done a lot of stupid things in her life. She’d fallen through the roof of a storehouse down by the quay. She’d fallen from a roof in Ravnhov during a gathering of Eirik’s allies. She’d turned up for her Rite day and paid dearly for it. She’d stopped herself from kissing Rime because of the rot, which she now knew couldn’t be spread the way people thought. And she’d left Ym. But of all her hare-brained decisions, few compared to this.
The insect carriage flew low and fast as day broke. The world was waking up. Stefan was probably up by now, cursing furiously as he looked for his phone. Or maybe he’d already found it. Maybe they were on their way to the zoo right now. Or even worse, maybe they’d already dug up it and the map.
For all she knew, Naiell had the book in his hands at that very moment. The Seer who had let her believe she was a blood bag. The blindling who had betrayed his own kind, stolen the Might, destroyed the gateways, and perhaps sentenced an unknown number of worlds to death, all without so much as blinking. And she’d given him a map.
The dry grass below flattened out, leaning away from them as they landed. It was still quiet outside. A man was jogging through the park. He looked at them but kept running. She’d seen his type before. People running around but not actually going anywhere.
Hirka took off the ear cushions and waited until the roar had died down. “What’ll happen if he finds it?” she asked. Graal hopped down.
“Well, he still doesn’t know what it is, does he?”
Hirka hoped not. She supposed Naiell could have been bluffing, but she was pretty sure she was the only one who’d worked it out. But he knew his brother wanted it, and that was perhaps enough.
“Don’t despair, blood of my blood. He knows I’m his way out of here. Without me he’ll be left here to rot forever. Like I was.”
They walked briskly toward the zoo.
“So it’s true? You can open the gateways?” What she really wanted to know was whether he could send her home, but she feared she already knew the answer to that. He wasn’t going to let her go.
“Not without the Might,” he replied. “But I have someone in Mannfalla who can help. If she’s still willing.”
“Why haven’t you brought more Umpiri here? You could have built an army to fight Naiell by now.”
He glanced down at her with pride in his sharp features. “Pleading for help won’t clear my name. If I’m to be the savior of my people, I can’t be seen to beg. I don’t need help with my brother. Besides, it’s not as simple as you might think. It took me generations to find stones that still had traces of life in them, and generations more to find a beak in Ym. And despite all that, I still haven’t found a direct route from here to our people.”
“Couldn’t you have brought them here through Ym?”
He laughed. The crows alighted from the trees around them. “You make it sound like a travel agency. If only you knew. But right now we have a bigger problem.”
They squeezed through a hole in the fence. The one they’d left through before. They picked their way around the outermost edge of the wolf enclosure. It was early. The zoo was still closed. That was something, at least. That meant no one would have let Stefan and Naiell in yet.
“Wait here,” she told Graal. She was the one who’d messed up, so it was only fair that she be the one to make things right.
Graal turned up the collar of his coat and stood by the fence while she headed for the trees she’d lain under. She could smell the wolves, but they were nowhere in sight. It was a cool and clear morning. Good visibility. She suddenly felt conspicuous and tried to make herself as small as possible.
Here’s the spot.
She crouched down and dug with both hands. The bag was still there, with the book and the phone tucked inside. She was saved. Worlds were saved. She got up and smiled, lifting the bag over her head so Graal could see.
Then she heard voices. Several of them. A dog barking. Someone shouting her name.
Stefan!
Hirka clutched her chest. It felt like her heart had stopped. Then instinct took over. She took out the phone and threw the bag with the book back in the hole, quickly kicking earth over it so no one would see. She turned to see Stefan and Naiell standing on the other side of the fence. Two men were charging toward her. Police? Guards?
She looked back at Graal. The others couldn’t see him where he was standing. He couldn’t see them either, but he knew what was happening. He gripped the fence. She saw him whisper her name.
She had to choose, and she had to choose quickly. If she ran to Graal, they’d find him and Naiell would realize that the jig was up. That she knew. There would be a clash between the brothers, here at the zoo. And no matter what Graal thought, it wasn’t inconceivable that Naiell would emerge the victor. He was bigger and stronger. And then what would happen? Stefan’s life would be in danger. Hers, too. Time was running out.
The smaller of the two guards was a few steps away. Hirka clutched the phone to her chest and backed toward them. She looked at Graal. He looked at her.
“Trust me,” she whispered, even though he couldn’t hear her from where he was. “I am Dreyri.” She lifted two fingers to her throat. Understanding crossed his features. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the fence. Then he turned and disappeared between the trees.
They don’t know anything. They don’t know anything.
Hirka repeated the words to herself. The guards reached her. The bigger one, an older man with wispy hair, grabbed her by the nape as if she were a kitten. She only caught snatches of what they were ranting about. Forbidden. Fines. Danger.
They dragged her out through the fence, telling her she’d been lucky.
They don’t know anything.
Then she felt Stefan’s arms around her. Until he pushed her back and shook her by the shoulders. She was so hungry she could have eaten a horse. She could hear Stefan arguing with the guards. About the fence. Money. Wild animals.
Naiell was standing with his sunglasses on and his hands in his pockets. He was eyeing her, head cocked. He was the most dangerous animal here, but only she knew.
A TRAP
Hirka dreamed she was being torn apart by two ravens. It felt so real that it lingered in her body even after she’d woken up, but she didn’t open her eyes. Then the yelling would start up again, and she’d had more than enough of that since they’d collected her from the zoo.
Stefan had laid into her as if she’d gone to Slokna and back. She’d told him she’d gone to meet Graal to trade the book for Rime. Graal had gotten the book, but she hadn’t seen Rime. That was what she’d said. And that she’d run away from him.
Caught between two ravens.
If only it were as simple as there being a good raven and a bad raven. That would have made the choice obvious, but it wasn’t like that. Graal had won her over. She could no longer pretend otherwise. But he was far from innocent. Frighteningly far. He wanted to let the blind into Ym, and that alone ought to have made her hate him. Turn against him. But she was powerless in the face of his honesty. In the face of his insight into his own nature. He wasn’t evil. He just was. What was it he’d said?
I’ve done things you would deem horrific. And I’ll do more. That’s a given.
Was she letting his sensitivity get the better of her? His intensity, which mirrored her own?
No, it was more than that. It was the way he carried himself. The way he filled the room with his presence, without even trying. Without demanding attention, the way Naiell did. The brothers were as different as fire and ice. Naiell considered himself a god. Graal ought to have considered himself a victim, but he didn’t. He had a strength that was unshakeable. Even after a thousand years. As if it were in his blood.
Was she supposed to have that same strength? Was that the strength that drove her now? Was she about to gi
ve in because he could give her a purpose? A history? Roots? The girl who’d always been nobody. Who’d only known Father. And now she had a heritage that made even Rime’s pale in comparison. Had Graal had her the moment he elevated her from being a child of Odin to a leader?
She felt like a different person, and she hated it. She feared he’d managed to change her just by calling her blood of his blood. By saying that he loved her. She didn’t need him. She’d never needed anyone. Was she supposed to crawl like a worm just because some immortal called himself her father? It shouldn’t change anything.
It changes everything.
Yes, he wanted to conquer Ym. But according to him, Umpiri had been there first. According to him, the Might they thirsted for had been stolen from them. Was it worse to want it back or to take it in the first place? Was it worse to conquer a people or to betray your own people in order to save them?
She didn’t know. All she knew was that she was caught between two brothers who hated each other. Only one of them loved her. Only one of them was her father. But she couldn’t trust either of them.
If only she could have stopped time. Frozen it, until she’d gotten everything in place. But time had never passed quicker than in the human world. A day was divided into hours. An hour into minutes. Even the minutes were divided up into tiny moments, like grains of sand in an hourglass. And they were running through her fingers.
How was she to do everything she needed to when time passed so quickly?
Rime was a slave to the beak and she couldn’t help him. They had to get away from this place, both of them, but Graal would never send her back to Ym. And Naiell had to be stopped. Had she been like Svarteld, she could have killed him without batting an eyelid. Solved the problem, once and for all. But that wasn’t her. That wasn’t to be. So what was she to do? Arrange for the brothers to meet and let them hash things out? No. Neither of them would accept anything less than the other’s death. So much death.
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