When Rains Fall

by Cassidy Taylor

  “A dead man can't tell you anything.”

  Sibba begged to differ. She had heard the dead speak, but it wasn't an experience she wished to repeat. Still, his life was her greatest bargaining chip, and she wasn't going to give him anything else for free.

  So Tola had settled on giving him a potion to dull the pain, something that would trick his mind into bringing him back and loosen his tongue at the same time, lowering his inhibitions. After all, the quicker he gave up the information, the quicker Tola would be able to heal him and they would be able to move on from this place.

  “You,” he said. She was relieved to see the anger in his eyes. It was better than the unresponsive stupor he had been in after leaving the draugnvithr. “Are you going to kill me?” he asked, echoing her own question to him just days before.

  “It would be my right,” she answered, just as he had. “For the wrong you have done to me and my family.”

  “But I’m still alive.” He looked ruefully down at his stomach and grimaced. “Barely. Clearly, there’s something you want or you would have let me perish in the forest.”

  “No one deserves to become one of those shadows,” Sibba said, “but you’re right. There is something I want, and I want to know if you’ll give it to me, in exchange for your life.”

  Evenon coughed and winced, gripping his side. “I don’t know that you can uphold your end of the bargain. The boar made fine work of my innards.”

  “Tola can heal you,” Sibba explained. “And she will, once we’re done here.” Tola and Estrid were outside with the boar, butchering it and packing it as best as they could to prepare for the trip to Ydurgat. But she knew that Tola would have one eye on the door, ready to jump into action when she was called.

  His eyes slid to her. He was wary of Tola’s magic, which was strange considering she was certain the tattoos that painted his torso and arms had some sort of magical origins. “What do you want in exchange?”

  Sibba shrugged. “Information. I want to know what’s going on. I want to know why you and your brother were on Ey Island and why you killed my mother, and why you stole her circlet.”

  “That’s a lot in exchange for my pitiful life.” He leaned his head back. The muscles in his jaw twitched, revealing the tension and pain he felt in spite of his nonchalant attitude. “I also want the crown, and I want the freedom to leave.”

  The familiar anger welled up inside of her but she took a deep breath and stared him down. “You get to live. The rest will all depend.”

  Evenon coughed, and blood stained the corner of his lip. Neither of them moved to wipe it away. She thought maybe he wouldn’t say anything. That maybe he was too close to the edge of death. But then he spoke. “My brother and I were assassins sent by King Innis Crowheart to kill your mother.”

  “Why my mother? She was…nobody.” Even as she said it, it felt wrong. Memories like dreams bounced around in her head, ethereal and blurry.

  He scoffed. “She was the lost Malstrom queen,” he said. “If ever there was anybody who wasn’t nobody, it was her.”

  “What does that mean?” Sibba asked. Queens and Kings and assassins—her mind swam with words that were familiar but still meaningless in her world. There was no political intrigue in the Fields. There was battle and honor. Chiefs and their heirs and the endless feuds over borders.

  “After the War of the Five Families,” he explained, “Casuin split into five kingdoms. The Malstrom family was arguably the most powerful of them all, ruling the largest country of Hail on the eastern coastline.” How many times had Sibba looked west, trying to see the distant continent from which her mother had come? How many times had someone else been looking back at her? “Your grandsire named Darcey as his heir after he fell sick with the Blood Flu. Darcey was betrothed to Wynn Crowheart, King Innis’s younger brother. That marriage would have brought four of the five countries under Crowheart rule.” He looked at Sibba, then explained further. “He’s restoring the Crowheart Empire that existed when his ancestor first discovered Casuin.”

  “But the Malstroms weren’t having it.”

  “Right. There are reasons they went to war in the first place. So when your mother became sick, the Crowhearts took Hail by force.”

  By force. The words had an ominous ring to them. Sibba tried to imagine her mother as a queen on her sickbed and failed miserably. Her mother had been the healthiest of them all, and the quietest. She certainly hadn’t been a leader. Her father's voice was in her head suddenly, a memory of a scattered Hnefatafl board and raised voices, of a smoldering hearth fire on a cold night and her father standing before it. You came here for sanctuary and I gave it to you. And her mother: You made me pay for my safety with my future. Safety. Sanctuary. She had been hiding from this king. Darcey had known all along. And she and Thorvald had kept it from Sibba.

  Evenon’s voice dropped. “The queen’s older sister sent her away on a boat with their mother, who was from the Fields. The next morning…” He closed his eyes. “Well, all that’s left of the Malstrom family is one little girl who doesn’t even know who she is.”

  “I know who I am,” Sibba said. But it had never felt right, had it? Like she had always had one foot out the door. She was half Fielding, but there was another half, too, that had been a mystery to her. She knew the language and the lore of that other place but didn't know where she fit into it.

  “Do you?” He tried to push himself up straighter but his arms gave beneath him and he grimaced as the injury pulled taut. The skin around it was swollen and purple, the wound oozing a thick, white pus. “Then tell me: who does the crown belong to?”

  “The circlet?” Sibba asked. “It was my mother’s.”

  “And she is dead.”

  “Then it is mine.” She snapped her mouth closed as soon as she heard the words. Evenon looked at her smugly, his eyebrows raised, a smirk on his dry, cracked lips. “Why would I let you live, then?” she asked, effectively wiping the smugness off of his face. “If I am a threat to your king, wouldn’t you just try to kill me again?”

  Evenon shrugged one shoulder, the best he could do in this state. “I have never known any ruler other than King Crowheart, but I did what I did for his daughter. And I want to get back to her. I felt what it was to lose her in the spirit forest. I cannot squander any more time. I’ve done what I was sent to do; it’s time for me to go home. I don’t need to take any more ghosts with me. Just the crown to prove that she is dead.”

  Home. Sibba thought of Ottar, then Ey Island, but neither of those felt right. They were her own ghost forests, full of bad memories and regrets. What Sibba wanted was to find her home. But how could she ever be at peace anywhere, knowing what had happened to her mother, and what was likely to happen to her someday?

  “He will hunt me always, won’t he?” Sibba asked. “I’ll never find peace if he learns of my existence.”

  His eyes met hers and she knew he heard the threat. He was the only one left who knew. “I won't say anything,” he promised. “Not to Chief Isgerd, not to King Innis.”

  “What about your Crowheart girl?”

  “No,” he said. He held a hand to his stomach and winced.

  “Even though I'm a threat to her?” She wondered if she really was. The girl would certainly see her that way, whether she wanted the crown or she wanted revenge.

  “If you promise she won't be hurt, I won't say a word to her.” Maybe his life wasn't a good enough bargaining chip, but hers was. “I'll help you get to Ydurgat, and then I'll book passage on a ship to Casuin and we will go our separate ways.”

  Deep inside of her, there was a seed of darkness that she had been watering ever since Gabel’s attack. She knew it was there, and sometimes she wanted to pull it out like a weed. Other times, she nourished it and cherished it as one might a child. It was the part of her that had gotten her this far, that had helped her survive. But it was also the part of her that ruined lives, that whispered in her ear about betrayal and mistrust. It was the pa
rt of her that wanted to kill him. Her fingers twitched toward the ax at her hip but then stopped.

  From outside, there came the sound of laughter and a voice pitched high with amusement. Tola. Tola, who was the light to Sibba’s darkness. Who had saved her and trusted Sibba with her life. Tola had asked her to give Evenon a chance. Had told her, in her infinite vala wisdom, that there was more to this than revenge, that there was value to human life. Could she do it? Now, with everything in the open, could she trust him?

  “You’ll go with us,” she said, her voice a controlled whisper, “so you can’t ride ahead and warn Chief Isgerd. And you cannot have the crown. If you have to bring a trinket to prove yourself to this girl, then she doesn’t deserve to have you back.” Even with this caveat, his face fell in relief as she turned away.

  She opened the door to find Tola standing on the other side, her medicinal pouch clutched in her long-fingered hands. Sibba yelped in surprise and then froze. Tola’s green eyes stared back at her from the black kohl band.

  “He’s all yours,” Sibba said, and she pushed past, leaving the vala to her work.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  The next morning, Sibba woke to a world covered in white. Light streamed through the cracks in the walls and drove her to her feet before any of the others stirred. It had been a late night. Tola had made quick work of Evenon's wound, but it had sapped her energy and she had fallen asleep in moments, not bothering to eat dinner. Estrid and Sibba had eaten in silence, not having spoken to each other since the revelation of Estrid's pregnancy. Sibba couldn't keep her eyes off the girl's midsection. It was strange to think that there was someone growing inside of her and that Sibba was responsible for bringing both of them back to Ottar safely.

  Evenon had passed out from the pain inflicted by Tola's healing process, pain that Sibba remembered well from her ax wound, and not woken since. She looked at where he slept beneath a mound of furs, and then to her friends across the room. Even Aeris was still asleep, her head tucked under her wing, perched on a rack in the corner. The sounds of deep, heavy breathing reached her ears and she smiled, actually smiled, in spite of everything.

  Her feet slid easily into her boots, and she opened the door carefully so as not to wake the others, squinting against the early morning light that glanced off of the snow. Just as she was about to step over the threshold into the fresh powder, she noticed a footprint. Her eyes followed it to another one, and then another, leading away from the door and to the road beyond the rise.

  Footprints in the snow.

  Her first thought was, intruder. But then the next more logical explanation hit her. Leaving the door open, she crossed to Evenon's blankets and threw them back.

  He was gone.

  He was gone, and when she stuck her hand into her cloak pocket, where she had stored the crown after taking it back from Evenon, she found it empty. He was gone, and he had taken the crown.

  She was so stupid.

  So stupid.

  She let him in—

  She trusted him—

  And all along, it had just been a ploy to get her to let her guard down. She had fallen for it.

  Her anger now was directed at herself. There was nowhere else for it to go so it cycled around in her own head—stupid, stupid, stupid. The dark seedling inside of her grew, stretching its branches into her limbs, making her blood run cold. It had been her mistake, and she would be the one to fix it. Without waking the others, she slipped on her weapons belts and cloak as quickly as she could. She had to go before the snow melted and his tracks disappeared.

  Outside, she ignored the way the wet snow seeped beneath the lining of her boots, and how the cold wind nipped at her exposed nose. She had to get to Ydurgat and she had to stop Evenon. Tola had been wrong. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else but murderous revenge.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Sibba

  Ydurgat was a sprawling coastal town—larger even than Ottar—that reached its fingers into the marshlands and all the way back into the surrounding fields that pressed up against the edge of the draugnvithr. The outlying farmlands had been harmless enough, but as she reached the city proper, the walls loomed ahead of her, casting long shadows over the crowd of merchants and travelers that she had joined quite by accident. As in Endar, the guards patrolling the gate weren’t stopping anyone. They were there for crowd control, to keep people in line. And as a show of force. No one would dare launch an attack on Chief Grimsson here, not beneath the watchful eye of her Maiden Army. Girls trained not to weave or farm, but to fight.

  Passing beneath the gate, she kept her eyes down to avoid being noticed. She doubted that a girl like her would draw much attention in a place like this, but better safe than sorry. Once past the guards, she searched the faces of people she passed, looking for spiraling tattoos or a scarred face, or the tip of a bow over a shoulder, though those seemed to be pretty common here. She had lost Evenon's trail back at a crossroads when the backwoods path they'd been following had met the main road leading into Ydurgat, but she was sure he had come this way.

  Beyond the entry courtyard, the flow of the crowd divided. The docks were straight ahead. In the distance, masts bobbed peacefully above sparkling water. She surged ahead with the others, ignoring the merchants and vendors lining the streets, the servants dumping waste buckets into the gutters, and especially the guards, resplendent in their leather and chain-link armor. The crowd was thick and immovable, and Sibba got stuck for a time behind a guard negotiating with an herb vendor over the price of mint. When she passed at last, she found herself veering left with the masses, though the harbor was still straight ahead. Any attempts she made to change course were met with curses and shoves and once, an elbow in her eye. There was no way for her to cross, so she would have to circle back around.

  Giving up on her quest to go right, she turned and stumbled into what could only be described as chaos. She had expected more of the same—merchants and guards and servants—but instead, the road opened up into a massive stone-lined courtyard. On the far end, a sutvithr tree larger than any she had seen before loomed up before a towering longhouse. Between Sibba and the longhouse, though, were Grimsson’s infamous fighting pits.

  In Ottar, trials and holmgangs were held in trial circles. There was something noble about being a part of one—lending strength and willpower to the combatants. But throwing them into an actual pit was something on an entirely different level. There were three that she could see, increasing in size as they neared the longhouse. Deep pits dug out of the courtyard with walls at least twice as tall as Sibba, each surrounded by a row of stone steps that some were using as seats from which to observe the proceedings. Others were leaning against the wooden railings that marked the edge of the pits, cheering and jeering.

  She moved closer, drawn by the sounds of clashing metal and grunts. Sibba was too big to sneak her way to the front, so she hung back, waiting for an opening that didn't come. When the fight ended, the spectators became a mob, pushing their way toward a woman who stood on the outskirts with a leather purse on one hip and a guard beside her. The guard—a tall, towheaded woman—saw Sibba looking and cocked an eyebrow, but was quickly distracted by the onslaught of what could only be gamblers vying for their winnings.

  She approached the barrier carefully, afraid of what she might find. In the pit below, a man knelt on the dirt floor, a bloody sword in his hand, his head bowed over a body. Neither the man nor the body wore any armor or adornments, just threadbare clothing and grim expressions. They looked evenly matched, equal in strength and age and size. And they were both men.

  Sibba looked back at the gamblers, able to pick out a few men, but was surprised to see that they were mostly women. Her gaze flitted back to the two in the ring. The victor had put a hand on the dead man's chest and was crying, his shoulders shaking with sobs she couldn't hear. This was where Tola had grown up. In a place where death wasn’t about honor but about sport. No wonder the vala had been upset by Sibba’s vi
olence toward Evenon.

  “Friends of yours?” A voice startled Sibba back from the edge and she turned to find the guard a foot or so from her, her chain-link armor dull beneath the snow clouds. Her yellow hair was done in a long braid that wrapped over her shoulder and fell nearly to her waist, where the hilt of a massive sword protruded. The other half of her head was shaved bald, the skin beneath scarred and puckered as if burned.

  “No, it's just that—” Sibba stopped. She had to be careful here. “I've never seen the pits before.”

  The woman grunted, and then leaned over the pit, her hands on the barricade. “Oye! You there! Start cleaning up your mess!” The mourning man cast a look of hatred at the guard but stood, leaving the sword and the blood on the dirt floor and instead grabbing the dead man by the wrist. In a few tugs, he had the man over his shoulders, and he came to stand below them. The guard dropped down a rope ladder and the man began to climb, a fantastic feat with the body as an extra burden.

  “Who is he?” Sibba asked.

  The guard laughed. “He's a man.”

  “That's all?” Sibba watched him climb and when he was nearly to the top, reached down to help, but her efforts were stopped by her companion’s hand around her wrist, pulling her back. The grip was too tight and Sibba jerked away.

  “I'll forgive you because you're new here,” the woman said, “but that's not how we do things.”

  “You don't help people?”

  “We don't help them.”

  The body flopped over the edge with a sickening thud, followed by the man who collapsed beside it.

  “On your feet,” she commanded. “Take him to the pyre.”

  After he had gone, two more men squeezed between Sibba and the guard. Both of them were tall and lanky, moving with confidence. The first one leered at Sibba and she sneered back, baring her teeth and making him laugh. The second one looked at her and seemed to see into her soul with his dark eyes. There was something there she recognized, a dangerous storm brewing. They both hopped down over the barricade and the crowd, pockets either lined with gold or empty after the last fight, began to murmur in excitement.