After the Fall (Raud Grima Book 2)

by Sophia Martin

  It weren’t long ’fore I seen that trying to talk sense to her only upset her more, so I took to murmuring soothing words and such instead, letting her go on. It’s a cutter how you hear something said enough times, it gets hard to know the false from the true. I knew Myadar Sölbói was Raud Gríma. I knew she’d escaped the city. You couldn’t be an underling and not know those facts. But I listened so many times to Leika’s version, with Raud Gríma a man and Myadar Sölbói dead under rubble that it started to feel like maybe she was right. And she was so sure, Leika was. Sometimes she talked herself out and seemed to find some peace in the fatigue what followed, but more’n once she begun pacing the apartments, yanking down hangings, looking for the way Raud Gríma would come for her. One night her screams woke me up—I slept in the small room she’d given me above and across from her’n—and when I run down the narrow stairs to the central salon, she come bursting out of her room white as a sheet and moaning. She tripped over a settee ’fore I could reach her side and screamed again as she fell. It was only after three glasses of brandy and an hour of soothing murmurs she quieted enough to go back to bed. Then I sat by her side ’til she slept, sure enough.

  So I come to understand I lived not just with the remaining ruler of Ódalnord, the destroyer of the Gods and Goddesses, not just with a blind woman lonely for any sort of friend, but with a madwoman, besides. It was a secret. Sure, it weren’t hidden she was “troubled,” like Finnarún’d said, but all I’d known ’fore moving in with her was that she’d little patience and a tendency to punish for small infractions. Her madness was another secret altogether. Her blindness was something of one, as well, though some knew of it. Almost no one knew of her madness, except just a small few. Finnarún was one, or so I gathered when I finally met with her for the first time and confronted her with it.

  “I couldn’t just tell you, dearling,” Finnarún said.

  We were in one of the side rooms of Gaddi’s club, and I’d never thought to find myself there again, I can tell you. When I come in, Sigrid’s face was a sight to see, and no mistake. I wore a dress Leika gave me, all gray silk and satin, with a trim wool coat I’d never seen the likes of ’fore I become the konungdis’s reader. Luka’s Chains, but Sigrid’s glare was enough to roast me in it, right there. I ignored her and waited for Finnarún, and it was a mercy Finnarún didn’t make me wait too long on account of I could feel Sigrid’s eyes on me the whole time she danced. I thought of leaving, but it’d been too hard getting away from Leika for this meeting in the first place. I had to make up a story about going to the Torc to buy shoes. No matter that none of the old stores in the Torc were back and running again; Leika thought they were and it was my good luck she’d never leave her apartments and come along to find out for sure. She tried to convince me she’d have a merchant come to us there but I went on about how I’d almost bought the same shoes ’fore then and wanted exactly those. I’d have to tell her they were gone when I got back, for I’d no way to get shoes to confirm the story.

  “She’s a nutter,” I said to Finnarún.

  My lovely jarldis was leaning against the wall of the side room, smoking a ciggie on the end of her black cigarette holder. She wore a dress of gold lamé and blue silk panels, so thin you’d see through in some lights to the shape of her body, and the fabric clung to her curves so’s even without the light you’d no need to guess at the shape of her. She had gilded earrings with tiny pearls, and a dozen golden chains hanging from her neck, all tinkling with baubles shaped like fans—triangular fans, no doubt pleasing to Tyr’s followers. Her hair piled up over a blue and gold headband studded with pearls and amber beads, its wavy strands in a halo like the rays of the sun. For a moment, she put me in mind of Sinmara, the giant-demoness herself, the Goddess of Gold. She was so beautiful, but cruel, as well. I ached for her so, and I could tell she’d no intention of taking me back to live with her. No, she looked right pleased with herself, she did, and with Leika I’d stay.

  “That’s neither here nor there,” Finnarún said. “She serves a purpose, and right now she’s the only ruler everyone can agree on.”

  “I never agreed on her.”

  “Now Ginna, I’m surprised at you,” Finnarún scolded. “Leika seems quite taken with you, you know. She wrote me not three days past telling me what a boon you’ve been to her. She needs you.”

  I sighed but held my tongue. Of course I knew of that letter—hadn’t I penned it for Leika myself? But I’d no wish to stay with the mad konungdis, though I found no words to tell Finnarún so. My thoughts were all a mess. I’d a time of keeping the horrid dread at bay without Finnarún, and Leika’s own madness only reminded me of it. Sometimes when she cried and carried on I’d nowt of any use to say to fight it, on account of my own fear rising in me, threatening to drown me just as hers drowned her. It got so bad some nights I missed the god-touched rage what used to take hold of me—but only on really bad nights, you mind. The rage was no solution—Finnarún was my only hope.

  Take me back. Take me away from here. I’ve no love of Leika-Konungdis. I don’t care what she needs. But even so Finnarún’s words struck some deeper part of me. I pitied Leika, it’s true, and it meant something to think she needed me.

  “Now, tell me about her letters.”

  I’d little enough to report. Finnarún wanted to know more’n anything which vigja Leika might appoint to lead the temple of Tyr, taking High Vigja Galmr’s place, but nowt was set. I told her what I knew of the three who seemed the most likely from the letters I’d read.

  “It’s nothing I didn’t know already,” Finnarún said, her face pinched with annoyance.

  Sure enough, you see? Take me back, I’m no good to you in the konungdis’s employ. Take me back so I can be near you.

  “Well, no matter. She can take all the time she likes making her decision,” Finnarún continued. “But if it looks like she’s thinking of Áleifer, you must contact me and tell me so at once.”

  And how I’d do that was anyone’s guess. But I nodded and she reached for me then, and for a time I forgot I had to go back to the palace and live with the mad konungdis again.

  A few days after, a robot come in carrying a package with the rest of the mail. I didn’t think much of it, other’n to enjoy the break in our usual schedule. It was growing fair repetitive, don’t you know, each day passing much as the last… I woke ’fore she did, bathed and dressed, come out and set the serving robots to their morning tasks so’s when she rose everything’d be in order. It’d not taken long to realize that having everything set for her prevented some of the dark moods coming on. Then I’d read her mail to her over her morning tea and after that we’d spend an hour or two answering. She never wanted much for a midday meal, so I’d eat on my own, and she’d go and lie down, more often’n not. In the afternoon, in the early days, she sat in the parlor and listened to the music machine she called a radio. That changed, more’s the pity, when Áleifer, one of them what wanted to be the new High Vigja of Tyr, he took to talking on the radio. Sometimes it sent her into a fit, listening to him. It was no use trying to stop her listening—that’d throw her into a fit just as quick. So I’d wait, tense as a cat on a boat, to see which way it’d go, and when it went bad I’d spend the rest of the evening trying to get her to swallow enough brandy to go to bed and sleep. When it went good we’d eat a meal together and she’d tell me stories about courtiers and such. Of all of it, I liked them stories the best. I’ve always had a weak spot for stories, wouldn’t you know.

  So when the robot come with the package it was a welcome change from the usual. Leika had visitors, from time to time—sometimes in the afternoons and I blessed those days for it meant she’d not listen to Vigja Áleifer, though more’n once I’d cause to regret thinking so on account of the visitor’d say or do something what’d set her off all the same. She’d keep herself together long enough for’em to leave, and then soon’s they did, she’d start her pacing and grabbing hangings off the walls. But packages I t
hought ought not to be such a risk, so I was fair happy to see one delivered.

  “It’s arrived?” Leika asked as she come into the parlor just as two other robots were setting down the tea.

  “A package,” I said. “You knew it was coming, then?”

  Leika smiled, tilting her head to the side, her eyes big dark pools in her face. “Oh yes, Ginna. I placed an order for us.”

  It was a thin, rectangular package, and my heart started thumping in my chest on account of it was just the right size to be a book. I hoped it weren’t the Book of Tyr. I tried reading to her from the copy Finnarún gave me, one night when Áleifer’s radio talk’d sent her into a spin, and it never done a bit of good.

  “Open it,” she told me.

  I tore the plain brown paper off and sure enough, it was a book, but it was an abridged copy of the Elga, the same epic in the gold and painted book what Ivarr’s given me, only cut so’s there were only passages from the original. It had a dark blue cover of fabric over cardboard, and it was so plain compared to Ivarr’s treasure, it made my heart twist to hold it.

  “I thought you might read it to me,” Leika said, seating herself at the table. A robot leaned over her left shoulder and poured a cup of tea.

  I flipped through the pages of the book, not trusting my voice. It come clear to me then which passages had been selected for this edition, sure enough—only the parts of the saga what spoke of Tyr, or heroes faithful to Tyr. I recalled in my edition that in one particular battle, Tyr’s followers lost. I felt a tingling in my fingers as I flipped through to see if they’d cut it out whole or left some part of it in. My eyes skimmed the lines and then I found it. Only instead of them losing, someone’d changed the lines to read that they won.

  I stared at the page in shock.

  It’d never have occurred to me that they might change a story like the Elga. The Elga was near to a thousand years old. It come before all of us—before Eiflar the Heretic and Galmr the Profaner, sure enough, but also before Greuta the Builder and Káll the Victorious and even Nereidr the Oathbound. It was so old, and so—so important, no one knew who wrote it, and it didn’t matter.

  A tiny little wisp of anger curled its way from the deepest corner of my heart then. It wound round through me, pushing out to my ribs, dipping down into my cunny and up through my shoulders. It crept along the back of my neck and made the roots of my hair bristle.

  “It’d be my pleasure to read it to you,” I said, but I’d another idea in mind.

  ~~~

  The trouble with my idea is I’d have to find another excuse to leave the royal apartments and I’d have to travel through the city, and it’s one thing to do that in old clothes what don’t catch the eye and another thing in silk and lace and such. It ain’t just the trouble of not spoiling the clothes, neither—I figured I’d just been lucky or the slashers and whatever toadies still lived’d just been lying low them first weeks after the invasion, when I went out to test my curse. If I walked down the streets in a flash dress and coat and in shoes with heels on them, I might as well wave my arms and shout “Come for me now!” with all my voice, for it’d all be the same to them what watched from the shadows.

  Thinking on the possibility did nowt to stir the old rage, though. Sometimes I was certain it was gone in truth. Sure, I’d felt a twinge once in a while, but when I searched for it the rest of the time, it weren’t there at all, and it come easy to think I’d just imagined it, pure and simple. Used to be just thinking of slashers got my blood hot. I thought maybe I knew where the change come from. It was on account of Rokja being safe from them all now. And also on account of the dread. The dread smothered the rage, like a blanket on flame, sure enough. I’d no idea if I was better off for it or not.

  Anyhow I knew I’d not count on it to save me if slashers did come for me, more’s the pity. I wished I had the Raud Gríma disguise to wear, but it was hidden away with the books themselves. I’d some thought to try and sneak out at night, but there weren’t no telling who might see me in the palace and I’d no idea how Leika might react if it got back to her. No, I’d be better off going during the day, and find some way to convince her to let me.

  As it turned out, she was the one to ask me to go on an errand for her the morning after the false Elga come, so I’d no need to think of anything so clever after all.

  She rung her hands over her cup of tea as I read her letters to her, and after the fifth—one of several arguing in favor of mobilizing the troops for an invasion of the Southern Lands—she interrupted me. “Ginna.”

  “Your Majesty?”

  “Finnarún—that is, Jarldis Vaenn, has told me of a—a rumor—” she broke off and said nowt else for a time, though her hands kept at the ringing and her eyes moved around like she could see the things in the room.

  I waited, not sure whether she wanted to go on or not, and not sure if I should keep reading. And I was wondering what Finnarún was up to now, as I did.

  “There’s a rumor, of a secret—I don’t know what to call it. There was a jarl, before—oh. He was a traitor—he helped…” her voice dropped to a whisper, “he helped him, you know.”

  Him could only mean Raud Gríma.

  “A jarl, your Majesty?” I said, though I’d an idea where this was headed, and it made me want a word with Finnarún again. How much did she know? She weren’t sharing it all with me, wouldn’t you know, and I was coming to understand that I was just a pawn to her. It made no difference to the way I felt—I only wished I could be a pawn and live with her.

  “Yes, a jarl. His name was Jarl Spraki. Finnarún says—Jarldis Vaenn, I mean. She says he—well, we all thought he died, you understand. He was meant to, at the Tyrablót. Eiflar caught him! He was going to have him executed, but—but he stopped the executions—he killed Eiflar!” She was getting worked up like she did and I tried to think of how I could get a glass of brandy in her even though we’d not yet finished breakfast. Leika never drank any liquor ’fore lunch, never mind that no one cared what she did, far as I could tell. Maybe if I poured some in her tea—she might not even notice, she was that upset.

  Course, while one part of my mind was on that problem the other was chewing on her knowing Spraki was alive and Finnarún being the one to tell her.

  How many spies did Finnarún have?

  Did she fuck all of them?

  And when had Leika met with Finnarún? I was never gone from the royal apartments other’n when I met Finnarún myself. How could Leika have met her without my knowing?

  “Your Majesty, please, you mustn’t take on so,” I said, more to try and sooth her with my voice than out of any hope she’d listen to my words.

  So I was fair shocked when she blinked and took a deep breath, and got control over herself, quick-like.

  “Ginna,” she said, “Jarldis Vaenn thinks Spraki has medicines. She thinks he’s hiding in—in the sewers. I can’t imagine how horrid that would be. She says there are people who live in the sewers.” She shuddered. I gave a glare to no one in particular but pointed at Finnarún all the same. It was just like her to play this kind of game, hinting at the existence of underlings to Leika when she knew that’d pray on the woman’s mind, and knowing all the while an underling was living with her, reading to her, and such. I’d wager Finnarún got a laugh from that.

  “If there are people in the sewers, your Highness, they’re no threat to you, I’m sure. Poor, pathetic sorts, they must be.”

  Leika blinked, unseeing. “Eiflar said—he said the poor were degenerates.”

  “I don’t see why, just on account of being poor,” I said, forgetting to be careful I even forgot to call her “your Majesty” or “your Highness,” being that Eiflar’s ideas caused some anger to flare up in me. Nothing like the god-touched kind, but just the old kind what used to blaze every time I come across some new evidence of Eiflar’s view of the world—him and High Vigja Galmr. The pair of them, bloody profaners and heretics—spreading hatred and lies and making laws—they
were the degenerates…

  “But don’t you see, Ginna? If the poor weren’t degenerates they’d never have been poor!” Leika said, and I about had to leave the room or give her a good shake, one or the other. I was only saved from my own bad temper when she went on. “But honestly, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. Ginna, Fi—Jarldis Vaenn thinks Jarl Spraki might have something in his medicine that might help me. My eyes. I must find out.”

  The thought of crawling through broken tunnels, back to the damned Machine, for medicine yet again, near to made me burst into wild laughter right then and there, and how would I have explained that, I’d like to know? I pressed cold fingers to my mouth, using both hands, pushing hard, and swallowed that laughter like it was a lump of ice. Shut up, I told my mind, but my mind weren’t listening and gave me images of the tumbles I’d shared with Spraki, all to get laudanum for Ótti. Nothing’s changed, my mind said, and I said back, Shut. Up.

  “How would I know where to find him?” I asked when I thought my voice’d come out normal.

  “Find him?” Leika echoed. “Oh, dear Ginna, your loyalty is such a boon! Of course I don’t expect you to find him. I wouldn’t have you in those awful sewers!”

  I had to press my fingers on my mouth again, though I can’t say whether I’d more laughter coming up, or if it was tears that time.

  “No, I merely want you to deliver a message to Local Group Leader Úlfketill.”

  “Oh,” I said, and frowned. “I don’t understand, your Majesty. I mean—of course I’ll deliver it, but you’ve never wanted me to deliver a message ’fore now, so—”