The only rule in Tryggr was that the players had to tell the truth. The winner of the toss got to ask the question, and the loser had to answer after taking a drink. If he passed or was caught in a lie, she would get to cut off a finger. They hadn’t exactly defined the regulations, so she didn't know if they were playing with that particular decree. Her girlfriends certainly never had.
A high-pitched laugh rang out from the head table and Sibba glanced up to see Estrid, her hand on Torsten’s arm, her face split by a wide, toothy grin. Her cheeks were flushed with drink and happiness, and Torsten was eating it up. His bride, wearing a fine white and gold gown, was in rapt conversation with Tola on her other side. The vala’s green eyes landed on Sibba, and she looked away, back across the table to her drinking companion.
Sibba and Evenon had ended up together by default, and she was finding that she didn’t mind. He was easy to talk to, and she felt safe here, even in enemy territory, with him by her side. It was a new sensation and she did her best to relax.
“Well?” Evenon’s own cheeks displayed two round, pink spots.
Her mind raced with questions, and she tried to decide where to start. She wanted to know why he had looked at her that way when she had named the boat The Malstrom. She wanted to know who had cut his cheek, what he had been searching for in her pockets on the night they met.
Instead, she started at the beginning. “Where are you from?”
He went completely still, and she thought for a minute that one of his fingers would be hers. Then, he said, “A city called Lerora that lies across the Impassable Strait.”
Lerora. The exotic word bounced pleasantly around in her mind. “Across the—”
He held up a finger. “One question.”
This time Sibba flipped the coin, caught it, and slammed it to the table.
“Heads,” Evenon called.
She peered down. “Heads it is.” Picking up her own mug, she took maybe a less generous swig of the mead than he had. They had been drinking all evening. Her head was foggy, and if she moved her eyes too quickly, the room seemed to move with her.
“Where did you hear the name Malstrom?” he asked without hesitation. It made her wonder how long he’d been thinking that question. If perhaps his suggestion to play Tryggr hadn’t been a casual one, but something he’d thought out in advance.
She knotted her fingers together to keep them away from her pocket. The crown lay against her leg like a weight. “From the man who killed my mother,” she answered.
“What happened—”
It was her turn to hold up a finger. She waggled it at him. “One question.”
Evenon tossed back the rest of his mead and then stood to refill their mugs. He wasn't as unsteady on his feet as she thought he should be. She wasn't even sure that she would be able to stand.
Her gaze wandered back to Tola, drawn there as iron to a magnet. The wand-woman, dressed in a traditional black vala veil, sat erect in a high-backed wooden chair in a place of honor beside the jarl’s family. Her staff was at her side, her fingers white around the wooden pole. Tola was not drinking or even talking unless someone spoke to her directly. She looked like someone who had glimpsed her own future and seen nothing but a long, dark hallway.
Sibba’s head swam and she dropped it into her hands. None of this felt right. This wasn't where she was supposed to be. But she couldn't move; she couldn't extract herself from this situation. She was in too deep, facing her biggest fear. Estrid, Evenon, Tola. She cared about them. She cared about what happened to her brother, and even what happened to her clan. She wished she could just walk away from it all, but something kept her glued to the bench.
When Evenon returned, she was quick to flip the coin again.
“Tails,” he called before he had even sat down.
It was heads. He took a drink, and she studied him before asking, “Why are you here?” Because she was looking so hard, she saw the panic flash across his face, though it cleared as quickly as it had come.
“I told you. I thought you could use—”
“That's not an answer,” she interrupted, throwing back her own drink. “Why are you here, with me, in the Fields, at all? Don't tell me about proving yourself and looking for adventure. Tell me about Casuin, and what Malstrom means, and—”
Evenon's hand darted across the table and grabbed hers, pulling her to her feet. It was enough to startle her into silence. No one turned to watch as he dragged her outside.
It was snowing again—fat, wet flakes that melted when they landed on her shoulders. Her feet were sluggish and heavy, and the cold bit her cheeks and nose.
“What are you doing?” she asked, wrapping her arms around herself and squinting at him in the darkness. A cold, bitter wind whipped angrily against her face.
“Let’s take a look at the horses,” he said, but he wouldn’t look her in the eye. “Make sure they give us their best.” She had a sudden flashback to the night they met, the way his eyes had looked anywhere but at her as he’d buried his hands in her pockets. She knew she should feel wary, but the mead slowed her senses. Before she even thought to protest, he was pulling her along behind him toward the barn. Looking around to make sure they were alone, he cracked the door open and shoved her inside. In the dark, there were only the familiar sounds of sleeping animals and the sharp smell of manure.
“What are you doing?” Sibba asked again. She felt like she'd been here before, in this very same situation with this very same boy. He was too close, his gaze fierce and clear. What had happened to the slightly inebriated boy who had been feeding her drinks all evening? The playful boy who had been smiling at her just moments ago? The sudden change reminded her of Gabel in the woods—the way he had morphed from a ragged trader to a fierce warrior with just a change of the look in his eyes.
“Tell me about the man who killed your mother.” His cheeks were bright from the cold and it made the red gash across his cheek darker in contrast. He looked ghastly in the broken light creeping into the barn.
“What about him?” she asked. “He was a greedy trader who came to our island thinking he could steal our hoard. He shot my mother with an arrow to the neck.”
“And then?”
“And then came after me.” She searched his eyes, trying to understand why he was asking her this, what difference it made to him. “He called me a Malstrom bitch and tried to drown me, so I cut his throat.” Saying the words took her back. There was blood on her hands, on her face, the retreating tide stained red.
Evenon’s hands were around her shoulders, and without her permission, her hands gripped his waist, pulling him closer. Her head was swimming again, with ale or lust she couldn't say. It didn’t matter. What she wanted more than anything was to get rid of the image of Gabel that had forced its way to the front of her mind. Gripping her face, he tilted her chin up and she clumsily smashed her lips to his, squeezing her eyes shut. It felt…
Wrong.
It wasn't Evenon's hands that she wanted on her face and tangled in her hair. It wasn't Evenon's lips that she wanted brushing against the sensitive skin at the base of her ear, sending tingles up her spine. When she opened her eyes, it wasn't Evenon she saw at all. It wasn't even Estrid, with her bright eyes and long, dark lashes that nearly brushed the apples of her cheeks.
It was Tola, with green eyes made dark by kohl. With the smattering of freckles over her pale skin. With her red hair falling in thin, matted braids over her face.
“Tola,” she muttered, the words a nearly silent prayer into the night.
It felt wrong, and she knew it was wrong when she felt his hands around her wrists. When she tried to pull away, his grip tightened and he twisted her around so that he was pressed against her back and her stomach was to the closed door. His hands groped at her belt and he pulled out her own ax, the one that had just killed two men and was hungry for more, and held it next to her ear.
“Where is it?” he asked.
She blinked rapidly.
Her head was still trying to catch up with what was happening. Wooden splinters scratched her cheek. She pushed back against him but he was as solid and unmoving as a wall, and the ax was sharp against her face. “Where's what?” she asked, her words muffled against the door. The anger she had been working to keep at bay since her mother's death was back, rising in her chest as her head cleared, though this time it felt more like fear.
“The crown. I know you have it. It wasn't on the boat unless it was lost to the sea in the storm. I checked the wreckage.”
Not the crown again. Why did everyone want the circlet? Part of her wanted to give it up, but the other part of her—the part that had killed Gabel to survive, killed Vyion to protect her friend—screamed at her to fight back. “I don't know—”
He dug the very tip of the ax blade into the side of her face beside her ear. “Liar.” Then he dragged the ax from her ear along the line of her cheek. Sibba kept the blade sharpened to a fine point and it easily opened the skin there. Warm blood dripped down her face and neck and into the collar of her tunic.
“Are you going to kill me?” The question came out before she could think about it, her voice muffled against the wall. She thought that maybe knowing would lessen her fear, like a warrior going into battle, knowing he might die but fighting anyway.
“It would be my right,” he said, his voice dangerous and low. “You killed my brother, after all.”
Blood on her mother's knife. A gash on his cheek.
An arrow in her mother's neck. A quiver at his hip.
Of course. It was why she had never found the bow on Ey Island. Why she had never felt quite alone after her mother's death.
Gabel hadn't killed Darcey.
It had been Evenon all along.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sibba
“You lied,” Sibba grumbled.
“I'm not lying,” he said, jerking her back and slamming her again into the door as if to punctuate his point. Her face hit the door and bounced off, fresh blood erupting from her tongue as her teeth clamped down on it.
“Not now. In Tryggr. You said you were here to help me. But you're here to kill me, just like you killed my mother.” She spat out a mouthful of blood. “I get to chop off one of your fingers first, and then I'm going to cut out your heart.”
He grunted, unconcerned. “It's just a stupid game,” he said, his breath hot on her ear. “The next blood this ax tastes will be yours.”
He pressed a knee into the small of her back, sending sharp pains down her legs. Then she felt something rough around her wrists—a length of rope binding them together. He pulled the knot tight until it felt like her shoulders might snap out of their sockets. Then he turned her around and groped again in her cloak. She felt the anger coming off of him in waves. It was both familiar and terrifying because she knew what it meant he was capable of.
“Your brother died fighting,” she said to the top of his head as he stuffed his hands into the pockets at her waist. “It was a noble death.”
He pulled away and looked at her. She made no move for the ax he had dropped at their feet, no move to escape. His eyebrows gathered together. “That is no comfort to me,” he said. “We do not believe in your false gods. There is only one god, Enos, the Bloody God, and he does not reward needless death.”
His hands found the right pocket at last and he pulled out the delicate circlet, holding it in the dull light that seeped through the cracks in the barn door. His eyes never leaving it, he said, “This is it. All I need to be able to return home a hero.”
“To prove yourself to your Crowheart girl,” Sibba said, her voice high and mocking.
A hand wrapped around her throat. She remembered Gabel—his brother—and the way his thumbs had pressed into her airway, but his grip was not so severe. “To prove to my king that the Malstrom queen is finished, once and for all.”
Bound and helpless, visibly marked by her enemy—it was her worst nightmare. The scar on her face would be a permanent reminder of the time she let herself forget how dangerous it was to let other people in. A lesson she would not soon forget. She wanted to rage against him, to exact her revenge. Maybe she was Fielding after all. She kicked out desperately and one of her feet connected with his leg just above the knee. His grip slackened and he staggered back, grimacing. He massaged his thigh and then stood straight again, studying her.
“Your mother also fought. Until her very last breath. Until the arrow took her in the throat. I will likely carry her mark for the rest of my life.” Evenon reached out and traced a line from her eye to her lips. “Just as you will carry Enos’s to your grave.”
Her heart raced, her blood running cold and sending a chill down her spine. It was that same feeling she had felt when she had drawn the ax across Gabel’s neck. When she had challenged Vyion to a duel. She wanted to kill him. Sibba lunged at him, her hands still bound behind her back, the move desperate and foolish since he was the only one with a weapon. He raised his arms instinctively, but Sibba saw too late the gleam of the ax blade still in his hands.
It sliced cleanly into her stomach. The pain didn’t register at first, just an incredible pressure. Evenon, eyes wide, looked down at his hands. He released the ax and it fell to the ground, soaking the dirt floor with blood. Sibba’s mouth flooded with something warm and salty. She dropped to her knees, crimson blood leaking from her mouth and the wound in her stomach.
The pain came on all at once. She was back in the ocean, the waves washing over her, gasping for a breath that wouldn’t come. What had her father said about stomach wounds? That they were the worst. That they festered and rotted, killing the person slowly, from the inside out.
“Even in battle, show your enemy mercy.” Her father’s face appeared in front of her, his mouth set in a grim line, and she choked out a sob.
It was that noise that set Evenon back into action. He was backing away. She watched his feet, unable to raise her head, feeling like she weighed a thousand stone. “By the time they find you,” he said, “it will be too late. You’ll be dead and I’ll be halfway to Ydurgat. I’m sure Chief Isgerd will be glad to know that your father hasn’t given up on your brother yet. Pleased enough to give me passage across the Strait on one of her ships.” He wanted to sound fierce, but she heard the tremble in his voice.
Please. She wanted to ask him for mercy, but the words wouldn’t come. Her body had stopped responding. It collapsed heavily to the floor, her head bouncing off the hard-packed dirt, her eyes on the bloody ax in front of her.
The door shut loudly behind him, and Sibba heard the bolt sliding into place with a final, deafening clang.
✽ ✽ ✽
Hours passed and the cold seeped beneath Sibba's clothes and took residence against her skin. She had thrown up, the sour mead stinging as it made its way back up, and she now lay in a puddle of the pungent vomit and warm blood. The horses were restless, stamping and snorting, trying to get away from the smell. This was how they would find her and how she would be remembered. Once, she tried to struggle to her feet, but the pain had shot through her body like a bolt of lightning and she had collapsed back to the floor. Who would find her body? A servant, more than likely, coming at dawn to tend the animals.
Sibba wondered what would greet her on the other side. Had she died with enough honor to go to her father’s Elanos? Would she see her mother again and feast with the warriors? Or did the festering stomach wound mean she would be sent to Malos and spend eternity in the shadows? That was even if the Fieldings had the right of it. Her mother’s Enos valued the glory of conquest, of converting others to his beliefs. If he were the one to ultimately decide her fate, surely all was lost.
Sunlight was not yet seeping through the gaps in the wall when she heard footsteps outside. The bolt slid back on the door and it creaked open. Sibba wanted to pull herself to her knees, to try to defend herself, or at least look less like a calf bound for slaughter, but she could do nothing but lie there and let her teeth chatter.
The shuffling of boots stopped.
“Who's there?” Sibba managed to choke out.
The answer was a gentle touch on her hands, the bite of a cold blade against her wrists. “Hold still,” came a girl's voice. She sliced deftly through the rope and Sibba's arms fell forward, wrapping around her middle. Rolling to her back, she groaned and coughed up a mouthful of blood, then squinted her eyes closed.
Cold, long-fingered hands pried Sibba’s arms away from her stomach and probed the wound there. Sibba coughed again. “How did you know?” she asked, but the sound was a whispered gargle around the blood in her throat.
“You called to me,” Tola said. “I would have come sooner but I couldn't get away until Jorunn fell asleep.”
Sibba grunted in objection, but then remembered the kiss, remembered her mead-induced hallucination, the name falling from her lips. She would have flushed if her blood hadn’t been soaking the ground. Somewhere in the back of the barn, a horse nickered.
There was silence, pressure on her stomach, then, “Gods, Sibba, I wouldn’t have delayed if I’d known.”
Too late, Sibba tried to say, but her face was cold, so cold, and her lips stiff and immobile.
“Hush,” Tola said. “I’m going to fix this, but then you’re going to have to get us out of here.” She put her hands on Sibba’s cheeks and used her thumbs to open her eyes. Tola was little more than a blob in the darkness, a shape hovering above her. “Do you hear me? I won’t be able to do any more, but you have to take me with you. Estrid is waiting for us in the woods to the south.” She squeezed Sibba’s head between her strong hands. “Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” Sibba said, hearing but not understanding. She couldn’t imagine being able to move, let alone help Tola get anywhere.
What happened next, Sibba couldn’t explain. Tola pulled away for a moment, rummaging in her purses, and when she came back, she smelled like eir leaf and rose petals. She knelt, digging her staff into the ground on one side, and put her other hand on Sibba’s stomach. Sibba watched as if in a dream, almost outside of herself. Her heart fluttered in her chest. She gasped, arching her back.
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