After the Fall (Raud Grima Book 2)

by Sophia Martin

“You’ll get up, Sigrid,” he said, every word bitten off sharp. “You’ll go out there and you’ll offer that jarl a room for free. And you’ll see to it he leaves that room happy. Or you’ll regret you didn’t. Is that clear?”

  Sigrid turned her face up and met his gaze, her eyes narrow with pain and rage. Then, after a moment, she nodded.

  An arrangement, I thought. An arrangement just like your’n, Ginna-my-girl.

  So after that, I was a bed-wife in every way. I’d left behind the time when I could say no to a john. If one of’em wanted to give me welts, I’d no cause to stop them. And now and then I found myself doing the things I never wanted to do. It made me sick, but the sight of Gaddi standing over Sigrid stayed like a brand in my mind.

  The best thing to do, I reckoned, was take stock as best I could. So for the first time since the massacre I started to pay attention to what was happening and what people were saying around me. It weren’t long ’fore I learned a certain number of things.

  For one, Leika-Konungdis had invaded the city on the morrow of the massacre, sweeping aside the pathetic resistance force what met her. Most of our recruits’d scattered, disorganized and leaderless as they were. News of the massacre’d taken longer’n you might expect to get out, on account of only Gaddi and I’d survived it unless you counted Atli’s folk, and they were too busy welcoming the konungdis to bother with spreading the gossip, at least for the first few days.

  “She’s claiming Eiflar the Heretic went mad at the end,” Gudva told me when I asked why no one minded the konunger’d set Leika aside at the Tyrablót. “I expect her supporters just need any excuse.”

  “I was at the Tyrablót,” said a girl I didn’t know the name of. She was new, with rosy cheeks and a curvy body what strained the cut of the tight dresses. “Went with my Mum and Da,” she continued. “Eiflar weren’t any madder’n you or me, and that’s a fact.”

  “Hurry up, girls,” Holma said, rushing through the dressing room while we all put on our costumes. “One more show and then it’s mingle time.”

  “I don’t see how they can justify following a woman,” I said with a frown as I pinned the cap crowned with feathers to my hair. Gudva took my pins from my hand and fussed with the cap herself.

  “Why shouldn’t they?”

  “They’re still calling her konungdis, ain’t they?” Joreida, the red-haired new girl, said. “Why isn’t she a dróttning? She’s ruling on her own, ain’t she? She ain’t got no konunger to be konungdis to.”

  “What’s that? A dróttning, then?” asked Auda, a pretty blonde.

  “It’s like a konungdis without a konunger,” said the rosy-cheeked girl.

  “It’s more’n that,” I said, thinking of Greuta the Builder. “A dróttning’s a proper queen, ain’t she. She can have a husband but she’s still the one what rules, and no mistake.”

  “Sure enough, and Leika don’t even have a husband,” said Joreida. “They ought to call her Leika-Dróttning, don’t you think?”

  I didn’t think the nobles’d like the idea of a dróttning on account of the Book of Tyr outlawing women ruling above men and making all wives the property of their husbands, but I’d no chance to say so, for others chimed in.

  “I heard she’s afraid to come outta her room,” the rosy-cheeked girl said.

  “I heard she’s with child,” another girl on the other side of her said. She was another blonde, named either Maeva or Melkorka, I weren’t sure which.

  “Well, that might explain it,” Gudva said, giving me a knowing look. “If Eiflar got her with child, they’d forget he set her aside then, wouldn’t they now?”

  I nodded. I had to agree. If she had Eiflar’s child and it was a boy, they’d just make him konunger and assign a regent and be done with her. It gave me a chill to think of it. How much power did Leika-Konungdis really have, I wondered. How safe was she, despite all her soldiers and submarines and aeroplanes? She was worthless in the eyes of them what supported her in name, the moment a male candidate became an option.

  Maeva or Melkorka said, “That Eiflar was a looker, weren’t he? Pity he’s dead.”

  “Don’t be daft,” Gudva snorted. “He had all the temples destroyed, didn’t he? And sent half the city to Grumflein.”

  “And tried to murder all the sewer rats,” said the rosy-cheeked girl, then with a start, glanced over at me. I was probably the only sewer rat present, on account of Gaddi recruited most of his girls above ground, don’t you know.

  “It’s time, girls!” Holma shouted, and that was the end of the conversation. Gudva’s managed to pin the cap to my head, though the weight of the feathers and the fan they made felt awkward and clumsy nevertheless.

  ~~~

  I learned soon enough that most of the girls weren’t slaves like me, except the redhead, Joreida, who’d traded her daughter’s safety for her freedom, and Sigrid. I didn’t know what she’d traded for, on account of she’d never talk about it, and she’s a tongue like an adder if you tried to ask.

  Most of the girls’d no family to speak of, or hadn’t much call to worry after them, like Gudva who told me once her father’d sold her to Gaddi in exchange for a barrel of mead. It may seem strange, but Gudva was freer’n Joreida or Sigrid or me, on account of Gaddi had nowt to threaten her with. She could’ve quit his business any time she liked, as long as she had a plan for an escape. Sure, Gaddi’d not like it if a girl tried to leave, and I supposed he might harm her if he caught her, as an example to the rest what hadn’t traded their freedom for someone’s safety. But assuming someone like Gudva put her mind to leaving, it was just a matter of stowing away on one of the boats what come and went now regular-like from the harbor, bringing supplies to rebuild the city. For that was one of Leika-Konungdis’s aims, you see, rebuilding the city, starting with a temple to Tyr. But if Sigrid or Joreida or I got it into our heads to leave, even if we snuck out successful-like and found our way free of the city, there was them we’d traded for to think of. I’d no doubt Gaddi’d make good on his threats against my family, come to that. So I puzzled over how to escape him, and never come up with single good idea, more’s the pity.

  If the rage still lived in my heart I might have tried it on the chance Gaddi’d not risk angering me by hurting one of my’n, but when it come down to it, the dread still crowded it out. If the rage was still there, I never felt it, and it weren’t no good to hope it might help me now when it never did before—not when it really mattered, anyhow.

  A week after Gaddi opened his club, give or take a day or two, he handed me three letters tied together with a piece of twine. I’d not written to anyone on account of being worse’n useless after the massacre, but they had written to me: Mum, Rokja, and Amma.

  I found a quiet spot out in an alley a ways from the club. It was full of puddles as most areas of the Torc still were, but I sat at the top of some steps on a metal frame standing against the side of a building, so I was dry enough. I opened Mum’s letter first. In a queer way, I thought she’d tell me better’n anyone else what was really happening to them, wherever Gaddi’s folk’d taken them. If Gaddi’s man threatened them to lie, Amma and Rokja’d do it to keep Mum and each other safe. Mum, being Mum, might try to do it too, but I’d see right through any lies she told, sure enough.

  And there was something awful about opening Amma’s letter, I had to admit, and in a different way, Roekja’s too. I’d not forgiven Amma for her secrets and lies, and Rokja would tear my heart to pieces, I knew, for I’d a sense she’d be miserable far from her home.

  So I opened Mum’s, and read a mess of nonsense about markets in the southern lands and how it was hot all the time and the sun was too bright and how Amma’d found work as a weaver and Kisla’s man’d found some on the docks. I knew Gaddi’s made good on his promise, and they were safe.

  I opened Rokja’s next.

  Ginna, Amma says you sent us away becus you new something bad was going to happen but I don’t no why you never come with us and you shud se
e the animals here they have little harry ones like people they call them mokkees and things like horses but much bigger they call camels and people ride them but I hate them becus they spit and I always wish you were here on account of they scare me and I don’t know why you never come love Rokja

  I was surprised on account of how she never mentioned missing home, only the stuff about me not coming along. It made my heart feel big and I cried, sitting alone on the scaffold. I wished I’d had some other choice in front of me, that day what seemed so long ago when I begged Gaddi to save my family. I’d no heart at all for thinking of Ivarr, and his face, and the way he pleaded that we’d find another way, so instead I opened Amma’s letter.

  It was just a small piece of paper, with just my name and two lines.

  Ginna,

  You did the right thing, sending us away.

  Don’t come after us.

  Reading that, something I’d not known was in my heart, some small hope, crumbled into dust. I suppose in all my half-formed plans of escaping Gaddi, I always seen myself going to the southern lands, seeking them out. Wrapping my arms around Rokja, kissing Mum’s cheek, and telling them I’d take care of them for then on, that they’d never have to worry again, for we were all free of Helésey and everything what kept us in the Undergrunnsby. We’d live in the sun together forever.

  But of course, I knew why Amma said what she did. It was on account of my curse.

  With a shuddering breath, I crushed the page of her writing in my hands. Maybe… maybe if the curse was really gone… maybe if I could find some way to prove it… maybe then, I could come after them someday, if I ever found a way to do it and keep them safe from Gaddi.

  ~~~

  It weren’t long after things changed again, and not in any way I might have predicted.

  First I wrote back to Rokja and Mum. I tried to write to Amma but couldn’t find a word to say to her. So instead I told Mum to help Amma and look after Rokja, and I told Rokja to look after Mum, mind Amma, and to be brave with the camels. I said I’d not come along on account of having to help defend the city, and I said nowt about the massacre or Leika’s invasion and takeover. I asked them to write me again and tell me if they were well.

  I took to walking from the Torc through the spoke to the city, taking in the changes there. The first snow come not long after I started up with Gaddi, and it gave me one reason to be grateful things’d changed, sure enough. The Rising happened in the spring, and we’d lived in the ruined city for months through the summer and into autumn, but I never reckoned on how hard it would be to manage the rubble when it was buried under ice and snow. You’d think you were climbing something solid and the next thing you knew it was falling to bits under you. And ice—nothing good’d come of trying to cross the city with patches of ice lying invisible under snow on the ground, waiting to send you careening into some broken car or sharp metal bars sticking out of cement, and that’s a fact.

  But snow and ice weren’t the only things new in the city. Leika’s robots spent their time cleaning up the rubble, which weren’t a task for living people from what I could tell. One day I was watching a dozen of them at work when half a building come crashing down and smashed three of the robots under it. Every so often I did see living men at work, and I wondered how many took injuries, or lost their lives moving the ruins of the buildings what couldn’t be salvaged to the harbor and onto ships what took them Gods knew where.

  What could be salvaged some of the men and robots set about using to rebuild, and ships come into harbor bearing plenty more supplies for the purpose. The city was like a puzzle being put together from many sides at once, and it was a shock to see it from one day to the next. Leika still favored the angular, overwhelming style of Eiflar’s day. Often buildings had their edges curved, some concave, some convex, and always precise-like, made up of geometrical shapes what mirrored each other. Doorways stood higher’n anyone ever needed, as did windows and alcoves, with decorative frames over all of them, sometimes shining with chrome or covered in patterns of simplified flowers and leaves, sometimes triangles or chevrons, just like the buildings what gone up under Eiflar and even for a decade before him. His taste ruled Helésey even ’fore he did, don’t you know.

  The palace and Tyr’s temple rose up fastest of all. The palace took on a similar form as its previous one, except instead of having four sides like most pyramids, it had three, a shape I’d never thought of and had no word for (though much later I learned it was a tetrahedron). This renovation made the peak reach much higher’n it had as a four-sided pyramid, and they’d decided not to rebuild the corner towers at all. The rolling stairs were repaired but they only reached the midpoint of the tetrahedron, and what means beyond them the courtiers took to travel to the higher floors within weren’t visible to no one on the outside.

  On the site where the Temple of Tyr’d been ’fore the Rising they raised up a new Temple, this one a combination of three narrow, towering spires connected by what looked like bars at three levels going up. The bars were really three passageways, only they looked a good deal narrower’n they were from a distance on account of how tall the spires were. The spires were prisms, and each was a different height and width, though they were each three-sided and more or less the same shape aside from their differences in size. Tyr’s sacred number is three, you mind, which explains all the architecture built to show off that number. All through the prisms they embedded windows and rods of steel to make upward-pointing arrows, much like the old Temple’d had. It was enough to make your stomach turn.

  Wandering around the city I seen firsthand the way the Officers took over again, and never a slasher did I come across no matter the time of day. After reading Amma’s letter and realizing I had to test my curse to see if it was truly gone, I even went out at night, daring the slashers to come for me. But none appeared, wouldn’t you know. And it took no time to realize the Undergrunnsby, leastways the parts what were easy to navigate and where people lived, had been cleaned out. It made my skin crawl to walk through the tunnels, seeing where Mosstown’d been, and wondering what had become of Kona Freylaug, Kona Ótryggr, old Nokki Leifr, Ingirún Rekkr, and Kevan Shald’s chickens, for that matter. Styrlakker’s town was gone like it’d never been. I never ventured far into the bad parts of the tunnel, though, for I’d not the time. I could only stay away from Gaddi’s for an hour or two ’fore he’d get testy about my absence. So I didn’t know whether they’d gone as far as the Machine, and what’d become of Spraki.

  If you’d asked me what I thought happened to everyone, I’d tell you the dread in my heart said they’d all been done away with like Eiflar’d intended ’fore Raud Gríma done for him. And if you’d asked me what I thought my life was going to be like for a while at least, I’d have said that I’d be dancing for Gaddi and such ’til I knew for sure about my curse and found some way to escape him what wouldn’t put my family in danger. But I’d have been wrong about both them answers, wouldn’t you know.

  I’d not learn the truth of the first answer for a long time, but the second come clear only two months or so after Gaddi opened his new club.

  ~~~

  By then we got more’n Atli’s folk for customers. Gaddi was running the only club in the city, so’s it got the attention of the courtiers what come back when Leika-Konungdis did. First it was young ones, silly types what must have been desperate for a laugh and a dance. Then some of the older ones started coming, from what I could tell on account of it was a good place to meet outside of the palace and not raise suspicions. I’d be sitting on the lap of some jarl or other, pretending not a thought lived in my head while his hands worked on finding a way under the dress I wore, while he chatted with the jarl next to him about betraying this jarl or that in hopes of getting some other jarl’s attention. I tried to make a note of the names they said, but it begun happening so often I had to give up after a point. The only name what stuck was Sölbói, for sure enough, Myadar Sölbói’s husband, Reister, had returne
d to the capital with the rest. I gathered from what I heard he’d acquired some status despite his wife’s being almost single-handedly responsible for the city’s fall. What little I knew of him from the bits and pieces I’d picked up before along with what I heard now made me sure that if he ever crossed the threshold of the club I’d make myself scarce and no mistake.

  Still, some part of me (a part without a bit of sense, you mind) wondered what he looked like, and hoped he might come in so’s I’d get a chance to see.

  One night, like I mentioned, some two months since the club’s opening, we girls were all on stage doing a number, and the doors opened to admit a group of courtiers. I noticed her right off, I did, for she glittered the way Ótti used to. Luka’s Chains, it hurt my heart to look at her so bad I come near to losing my footing. She had silken hair like Ótti, thought it was a darker gold and had a wave in it what never happened natural-like. Some jarl in black took her fur wrap from her milky shoulders. Under it she wore a dress covered in beads what caught the light and sparkled gold. In one hand, graceful as a swan, she held an ebony cigarette-holder with a lit ciggie on the end sending a plume of smoke into the air, undulating like a serpent. She gazed out over the crowd and when her eyes found me they stopped.

  I about had a heart attack.

  Leastways, my heart stopped dead in my chest long enough for two or three breaths, then started up like a hammer after. I couldn’t pull my eyes from hers, and she lowered her chin and grinned, prowling forward like a lioness through the crowd to a table right under the stage.

  It come as no surprise at all she reserved me for an assignation, never mind that jarldises never done so before, don’t you know. Gaddi come through the dressing room like a gale and found me sitting in front of the mirror, staring at myself like a right nutter what don’t even recognize herself.

  “You’ve been requested,” he informed me, and I never even blinked.

  “That jarldis,” I said, soft-like, and Gaddi snorted in response.