After the Fall (Raud Grima Book 2)

by Sophia Martin

  “Sure enough,” I answered, trying to keep my eyes from the twisted skin, and on his face. “They found her body in her grand salon, and then Raud Gríma comes out her bed chamber holding the new regent’s baby, none other’n the heir to the throne of Ódalnord. It don’t look good for me.”

  The dread filled every part of me. I was right fucked, and I seen no way out of it. If only the rage’d come to me again—and maybe it would, on the scaffold. Maybe I’d kill my executioners like Myadar had, and I’d escape like she did. Though I doubted it.

  “But you didn’t kill her,” Spraki said with a bit more of a question in his tone than I cared for.

  “No, of course not,” I said, sharp as a knife. “Finnarún did, most like. She’s got Eiflar’s bastard and everyone’s convinced the baby’s hers, and with Leika out of the way, that makes her regent. She’s won.”

  I’d like to say I grieved for Leika, but if I did it was all mixed up with my grief for Gram, and Ótti, and Dag, and the rest. I feared for Vinring, more’n anything, though I reckoned he was safe enough for now. Finnarún needed him safe and hale, at least ’til he was close to coming of age. Then she’d have some plan for him, no doubt.

  Spraki blew air out in a kind of low whistle. “You are in bad shape, then.”

  “Thanks. I’m aware. All that’s left is finding out when they plan to hang me.”

  “Oh, I’d wager they’ll do it at the ceremony making Grumi High Vigja.”

  I groaned. “I suppose you’re right about that. Nothing like an execution to liven up the proceedings, eh.”

  “Well, at least Áleifer’s murder caused a delay,” Spraki said. “Did you know Reister Sölbói’s on the upper levels?”

  “Here in Grumflein?”

  “Yes. Leika-Konungdis had him arrested at the gala, or so I’m told,” Spraki said.

  And all of a sudden, I did grieve for Leika.

  She’d come through after all. Had she spoken with him, and realized what a liar he was? Had she decided, then, to give it all a try? To grab the crown of dróttning after all? She’d had him arrested, and come back to her apartments—looking for me?

  I covered my face with my hands.

  “Finnarún planned it all, I suspect,” Spraki said, paying no mind to my reaction. “Reister always did underestimate her.”

  I looked up again. “D’you think she knew Leika’d have him arrested?”

  Spraki shrugged. “Maybe not. But it certainly seems she’s in tight with Grumi. I heard they’ve been near to inseparable since she named him High Vigja.”

  “Weren’t Grumi one of Áleifer’s cronies?”

  Spraki shrugged again. “I don’t know. I’ve not been a part of the court for some time.”

  “But you seem to know plenty despite that fact.”

  He grinned. “I’ve some sources of information among the guards, if you must know.”

  “Who’re they saying killed Áleifer?”

  Spraki snorted. “Why, you, of course. Well, Raud Gríma. I didn’t know Raud Gríma was you until just now. No one seems to want to bother to learn your name, I’m afraid. It’s all one to them.”

  ~~~

  I spent the rest of that day trying to figure a way to escape.

  I walked the whole courtyard, looking at the walls, looking for anything what’d work as a foothold if I found some way to get down to the courtyard from my room a few stories up the tower. There was a large yew not far from my window—I could climb down it, except for the iron bars what stood in the window frame.

  When they made me go back to my cell I used every moment of daylight worrying them bars, hoping one’d come loose. I only stopped long enough to eat the slop they pushed in through a slat at the bottom of the door. Then after dinner I poked around that slat, but it was too narrow and low to be good for anything. I went back to tugging on the bars, trying to twist, trying brute force, to no avail.

  I was stuck.

  I gave up on the bars sometime in the deep of the night and fell into a heavy sleep. When I woke, I’d lost the will to try escaping anymore.

  That day they kept me in my cell rather’n let me out to the courtyard, on account of I had a visitor.

  “Finnarún,” I breathed when I seen her.

  She stepped into my cell—one of the few solitaries in the lower levels of Grumflein. It had a yew tree outside the window. She wore one of her golden frocks, her hair all curls and waves like the sun’s rays, holding a long ivory ciggie holder ’tween two jeweled fingers of her right hand. Smoke from the ciggie twisted in the air by her face, and her eyes looked tired.

  “Well, Ginna,” she said. “I must say, you aren’t looking well at all.”

  I was sitting on the stone slab what was all I had for a bed. In the corner nearest the door stood the only other thing in the cell: an old brass chamber pot. If I’d had some magic, I’d have spilled it onto Finnarún’s feet, but I’d no wish to leave the spot where I sat, so the best I could do was picture her reaction in my mind. It was almost enough to make me smile.

  “What d’you want?” I said.

  She sighed and then sucked a bit on the ivory ciggie holder, letting the smoke drift slow-like out of her mouth.

  “You might think of ending that habit,” I said after a moment of this. “It’s staining your skin yellow, y’know.”

  For just a fraction of a second I seen the horror on her face, and that did make me smile.

  “I’ve come to tell you you’ll be executed tomorrow,” she announced.

  “Not waiting for the High Vigja ceremony, then?” I said.

  She scoffed. “No. We’ll make a special event of your hanging.”

  I shrugged. “Why bother coming all this way to tell me that? D’you hate me, then, Finnarún? Is that it?”

  She frowned. “You very nearly cost me the crown, Ginna. I think it’s natural for me to feel some… animosity towards you.”

  But that weren’t the reason—my taking Vinring, if that’s what she even meant. She was here ’cause she wanted to gloat, and she’d no one to gloat to save me, less she wanted to share her secrets with another. Finnarún was too careful for that.

  “You might as well tell me all of it,” I said. “You killed Leika, didn’t you? D’you do it yourself, then? You’d not have paid another, and take the risk of them exposing you. You can tell me honest. Your secrets die with me tomorrow, don’t they?”

  For a moment Finnarún’s eyes glittered as she looked at me, but she said nowt. Then she smiled. An awful smile, and that’s a fact.

  “I had the robot do it,” she said, her voice full of smothered joy. “It’s Grumi’s trick. He’s done it before—I think you might remember. Gullthewar?”

  “So you and Grumi did work together?”

  “Oh yes, of course. I’d have liked to do it all on my own, but it just wasn’t possible. But Grumi has as much to lose as I do. Oh Ginna, I’m so glad I was finally able to tell you. All those questions you would ask—you really were horrid at times. And you see where it ended?” She gestured to the walls.

  “So I suppose you’re going to tell me if I’d never asked questions, I’d not have ended here?”

  She pursed her lips. Then she smiled again. “No. I can’t say that—why lie to you now? As you pointed out, you’re as good as dead.” She said the word “dead” in a clipped way that told me how pleased she was. She must hate me, to be so glad to see me die. I wondered why. “Framing you was the plan all along. What a headache it’s all been, when really, it should have been simple. I just needed all the pieces in place—and Áleifer almost ruined everything with his clumsy attempts to murder you! I was furious, I can tell you. And Grumi wouldn’t commit until he was certain Leika wouldn’t name Liniblaudr or someone other than Áleifer High Vigja. He wouldn’t have gone through with it then.”

  “Why not?”

  She took another suck of smoke and released it. “Oh, fears that someone would suspect him. He’s cautious. But then, that’s all for
the best.”

  “As Áleifer’s crony, he’s the last one anyone’d think killed him.”

  “Well, that and your appearance in Leika’s apartments as Raud Gríma,” she laughed. “Oh Ginna, everyone is all in a panic—Raud Gríma loose in the palace—in the royal apartments—no one was safe! Of course, they thought they were safe once you were arrested.”

  “And… they don’t think so now?”

  “There’ve been a few more murders. And two disappearances, can you imagine!”

  Ivarr.

  “So now there’s a new idea circulating,” she continued. “There are those who are arguing that there were several Raud Grímas. Did you know Jarl Agvidar-ungr claims the disguise you wore differs from the one Raud Gríma wore when he attacked Agvidar and his friends?”

  “You don’t say.”

  She gazed at me, her eyes narrow as a cat’s. “I don’t suppose you know anything about where that other disguise might be?”

  She wanted to know if I’d run into Myadar. “No,” I said, meeting her eyes with a stony face.

  “Well, no matter. I’ve no reason to fear Raud Gríma. Raud Gríma has been my ally for some time.” She tittered at that, like it was some fine joke.

  “You used Leika’s fears—”

  “Her madness, you mean. She was terribly weak, Ginna. And you with your ridiculous ideas about making her a dróttning. Do you know you almost ruined everything for me?” She stepped to the window and looked out at the yew. “First, filling her head with such nonsense—she hardly would listen to me anymore. Do you know one night she tried to claim that I wasn’t there? Can you imagine? She said I was ‘nothing but a dream.’” Her imitation of Leika’s voice made my skin prickle. “I showed her how real I was.”

  “That baby ain’t your’n,” I said, more to change the subject than for any other reason, for I knew full well whose baby he was.

  She glanced at me over her shoulder, then took in some more smoke and blew it out the window. “No. I suppose you’d have known it couldn’t be, what with our intimacies. But you and Sigrid are the only ones who know Rikar isn’t mine. I’ve had anyone else who could come forward dealt with, as you might imagine. It’s taken me a very long time to achieve what I have, Ginna. I shan’t allow it all to come undone on the word of a sewer rat or some silly housemaid or other.”

  It made my stomach turn, listening to her talking of eliminating people just for knowing her secrets. “And Sigrid? D’you plan to frame her for a murder, too? Maybe Áleifer’s?”

  Finnarún clicked her tongue. “Really, Ginna, you can be so witless. Everyone thinks Raud Gríma—that is, you—killed Áleifer, and that’s just the way we want it. Sigrid is loyal, for now. I’ve no need to silence her.”

  “Yet.”

  She gave me a little half-grin over her shoulder. “I’ve plans for Sigrid. You needn’t worry about her. She does hate you, you know. Do you hate her just as much? Will it sooth you to know she shan’t escape a bad end, just as you haven’t?”

  “I don’t hate Sigrid,” I said, my voice heavy with the weight of her awful glee. “I am Sigrid. Sigrid is me. She hates me ’cause she hates herself. She’ll see her mistakes soon enough, I reckon.”

  “How very philosophical of you, Ginna. You’ve become enlightened as you face your death on the morrow.” She sounded amused. Her eyes were hard as stones, though. “Well, sleep well. Or not. It’s your last night alive, after all. Spend it how you like.”

  With that she turned from the window and walked to the door. With one knock she had them open it, and then she was gone, the door shut hard and firm behind her, leaving me alone in the cell to face my execution in the morning. Less’n a day. Less’n a day left to live.

  You’d think a person wouldn’t sleep with something like that hanging over them, but soon enough it was too much to bear the fear. My eyes closed and my head was too heavy to keep upright, and I lay and slept on the stone bed.

  ~~~

  “Ginna!”

  It was black as the inside of a shoe, and I blinked my eyes open to the darkness and listened as hard as I could. Soon enough I reckoned I’d dreamed Ivarr’s voice, though, and I closed my eyes again.

  “Ginna!”

  My eyes opened. This time there was light at the window, like from a glim. I sat up.

  “Ginna!”

  “Ivarr?” I whispered.

  “Ginna, you’ve got to help me, here,” he hissed back.

  I was at the window in a breath and he handed me the glim. He’d climbed up the tree, I seen, and he was balanced on the end of a long branch, which was creaking under his weight.

  “Ivarr, what’re you doing?”

  “Just hold the glim steady so I can see the base of the bars.”

  I turned the light to shine on the iron bars what ran down the length of the window. They were bent at each end, extending out from the wall at the top and bottom of the window, with cement holding them in the stone. Ivarr brung forward a pack and begun rummaging around in it. He pulled dark gloves over his hands what put me in mind of Spraki’s gloves back in the Machine. Then he brung out a jar of something or other and an angular metal tool—for a moment I searched for the word for it, and then it come to me. A trowel.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked again in a hushed voice.

  “Making a cake. What does it look like?”

  A surge of laughter welled up sudden-like in my chest, and I tried to swallow it, but it snorted out my nose. I clapped my free hand over my face.

  “That’s not the reaction I was hoping for when I pictured myself doing this,” Ivarr said quiet-like as he unscrewed the cap of the jar and dipped the trowel in the paste inside.

  I never dared say a word, for the laughter was still bubbling—it was a mix of joy and panic, I knew, on account of I’d never thought to see Ivarr again and I’d no stomach for seeing him harmed just hours ’fore facing my’n death.

  “‘Ivarr, my hero, you’ve come to save me in my hour of need,’” he whispered in a high voice.

  I snorted again. “I sound like that, do I?”

  “No, but you could, just this once, you know, since I went to all this trouble.”

  “I think you’re mad,” I said, but now tears were coming up in my eyes, and it was all I could do to ignore them and hold the glim steady.

  Neither of us said owt else for a time as he worked on the bars. The paste, whatever the stuff was, weakened the cement what held the bars in the stone wall, and soon Ivarr gave a good pull and the bar he was worrying come clear out of the stone. He went after the next bar, but then we heard the marching.

  I met his eyes, then cut the glim.

  Their voices were faint. I couldn’t make out what they talked about. In the sudden dark, my eyes couldn’t see a thing, but I’d an idea it was more a function of the contrast from killing the glim, and maybe the guards might see Ivarr if they looked—better’n we could see them, looking down.

  Grumflein used to have spotlights all over, shining this way and that—they were automatic, you mind, inventions not so far off from the robots what served the rich folk. But the bombings during the Rising’d destroyed all but two, and those never quite shown on the yew tree, don’t you know. The guards walked on underneath it, and never bothered to look up, or light glims of their’n to have a better idea of what might be happening on the walls of the prison. Nothing quite like the arrogance of Tyr’s followers. It brought to mind Leika, and how surprised she’d been when I read her a story where Tyr’s followers lost; not an ending she’d ever encountered ’fore then. It made me sad, thinking of her, and it seemed to me that Tyr’s followers weren’t doing themselves much of a service, telling each other only stories where Tyr won. Made them lazy, like them guards. Would Leika be alive if she’d been raised on stories other’n those?

  Soon’s I thought it was safe, I lit the glim again, and Ivarr went back to work. I reckoned he looked fair paler’n he had a few moments since, but just seeing him there g
ave me another rush of joy, washing away the sadness for Leika, and I had one of them moments where I thought maybe I was losing my mind. The terror of the execution on the morrow still had me in its fingers, as well, so I was a right mess of emotions and not a one took first place among them, wouldn’t you know.

  Then I noticed the noise.

  At first I thought it was the sound of him worrying the second iron bar, but then the noise got louder. As it did, I recognized it, and it made me feel like my skin was crawling clear off my bones.

  “Bombers, Ivarr,” I breathed.

  “Yep,” he answered without a moment’s pause.

  “D’you know about them?”

  “They’re Kolorma Svida’s,” he said. “Myadar’s partner. They’ve come to start the attack.”

  “Right now?”

  He nodded and yanked on the bar, pulling it from the wall. The opening left by the two bars he’d taken off was wide enough for me to pass.

  “Move back, I’ll be out in a wink,” I said. “Go on, ’fore the guards come back round.”

  “I’m supposed to go in,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “To free all the prisoners.”

  The way he said it, the bitterness in his voice—I stared at him for a full breath ’fore saying anything more. “They’ve tasked you with that?”

  He gave me a sharp nod.

  “They chose the wrong man,” I said.

  He sighed. “No. Dihauti was going to do it. They almost didn’t let me—they knew I’d have a problem with it. But I had to, Ginna. I had to be the one to come for you. Dihauti’s a good person but he doesn’t really care if you live or die. They just thought freeing all the prisoners would be a good distraction, like last time—”

  “I can’t believe Myadar Sölbói! She’d do it again, knowing what happened to you family?”

  “It’s war,” Ivarr said.

  The hum of the bombers was getting louder, but I still heard the sound of grit under boots as the guards’ steps come closer again.

  Gaddi was right, I thought with a lurch in my heart. But I’d not let him harm my family. I’d escape now—hope bloomed inside me. I’d escape, and my curse was behind me now, so I’d find them—Rokja, Mum, Kisla and even Amma—