Blood and Loyalty

by Abigail Riherd

  “Watching you do nothing but work the last few days has tired them out,” the man said, seeing Finn’s furtive look. “Haven’t seen them about much today.”

  Finn wiped his hands on his dirty tunic. “I’m no farmer.”

  “And you were no builder until today.”

  “True,” he said, looking again at the day’s accomplishment. “I’m sorry, but I can’t remember your name.”

  “Gansi,” the man replied.

  “I’m Finn.”

  The man smiled and nodded. “Get home to your wife, Fengi.”

  Finn sighed. That’s right. Fengi. His name was Fengi here. He was married here. Finn shut his eyes briefly as he began the too short walk home. His supposedly simple, fake life was unexpectedly complicated at every turn.

  Finn clenched his aching hands, the sharp pain bringing him some sense. It’s not complicated. He wasn’t Fengi. He wasn’t married. He was going to a home (not his) and would sit across from someone’s future wife (not his), and that was it. That was it.

  That has to be it.

  Finn pushed the front door open, the bottom grinding against the dirt. He should fix that before they left. And they had to leave soon. It had been four days already. Or was it five? If Bassi and his men were inattentive again tomorrow, maybe they could sneak away without putting the town in danger or being followed.

  “Hi.”

  Finn glanced up and had to grip his hands again. Disa was sitting at Helga’s work bench in nothing but her underdress, the hem pulled up to her knee as she bent low over her ankle, her arms crushing her chest and giving him the perfect view of—

  “Hi,” Finn said gruffly as he forced himself to stride into the room.

  “You’ve been busy.”

  “What?” The reply came out harsher than he’d meant. He sighed and turned to face Disa. He could tell she felt the sharpness. She kept her eyes averted as she stood up and grabbed an apron that he hadn’t seen before. It was far too short and the straps wrapped around her waist a few too many times. “Helga’s?” he asked, friendlier this time as he sat to pull off his boots and shrug out of his stinking shirt.

  “What?”

  He couldn’t help but smile at her mimicked reply. “The apron,” he pressed on, ignoring her annoyance. “Helga’s?”

  “Yes,” she answered, looking at him again. “Is it too obvious? She thought I should change, that it would look strange to see me in the same dress day after day.”

  He shrugged. “It’s probably wise.” Now that he was looking at her again, he couldn’t stop. She looked different. “Your hair.”

  She touched the kerchief knotted on her head, the yellow-white cloth concealing her mass of hair. “Does it look strange?”

  Finn shrugged again. He’d never seen her looking so much like a girl. Even when he first met her, when he was tasked to just watch her from afar, she was always in boy’s clothes, her hair wild or else tightly coiled atop her head. “Just different.”

  “Well, it’s better than what’s beneath.” She grabbed a large kitchen cloth and hauled the large steaming pot from the kitchen fire and plopped it on the table, the water splashing over the rim. “Ouch,” she breathed. “Hot.”

  Finn leaned against the wall and let himself enjoy watching her. He was far from his seabird saw and getting further still. “What’s beneath it?”

  She pulled the covering from her head and shook out her tangled mass of hair. “This.”

  Finn laughed as she flipped it back and forth, the matted mass landing in front of her eyes. “What happened?”

  “Our life happened.”

  Finn had a flash of the back of her head from the night of the feast as she danced drunkenly through the trees, the feel of Nan’s knots in his hands when she’d almost kissed him. Finn made a fist, but his hands weren’t hurting so much anymore. “Next time we’re running for our lives, maybe we should take a moment to untie you first.”

  Disa laughed. “Maybe. Will you help me with this?” She gestured toward an empty basin set on the floor. Finn grabbed the pot, ignoring her protests and insistence that he take a cloth, and poured the steaming water into the metal tub. “You’ve burned your hands surely,” she grumbled.

  “My hands are far too rough to be burned.” Disa forced him to show his palms anyway and then gasped at the blisters and tears on display. “It doesn’t hurt,” he assured her. “The calluses wrought from wielding a sword are not those that come from sawing a log. Or so it would seem.” He pulled his hands away tucked his thumbs into his trousers with sudden shame. There was not an inch of smooth skin to be found on his hands. The blisters would grow coarse and soon he could battle man or tree and feel nothing. He thought of his brother’s hands, slender and smooth, and wondered if a politician ever suffered calluses from the stem of a goblet. It may have been an unfair comparison, but he smiled despite himself.

  “You’re not wearing a shirt,” Disa exclaimed, interrupting his savage reverie.

  “No,” he agreed, his eyes sweeping across her face looking for things his honor wouldn’t allow.

  Disa blushed but pushed on. “No, of course not. I only mean you should use this water first. To wash. You’ve been so late the last few nights I fear the water must have been as cold as it was when it was pulled from the ground.”

  Finn felt a stab of pleasure and guilt that she’d tried to see to his comfort even when he’d stayed away. “No, that’s alright. Not unless you want your hair caked in sawdust.”

  “Well, why not? With a nest like this I’d make quite the tree,” she smiled brilliantly over her shoulder as she dug through one of Helga’s many baskets. “At least soak your hands until I’ve eased loosened some of these tangles.”

  “It really doesn’t hurt.”

  “Yes, but it will put my mind at ease,” she insisted as she settled onto the floor with comb in hand.

  Finn obeyed, sitting opposite her, the scalding water between them, and plunged his hands into the basin. The pain was surprising but momentary, and he had to admit it felt good. The warmth began to creep up his arms and make his muscles feel liquid, his body worn but content as he watched Disa pick at her hair and wince. “What did you do today?”

  Disa threw him a wry look. “Ha, Ha.”

  Finn grinned. “What? I’m serious.”

  “I’ve hardly been allowed out of bed until this evening.”

  Finn glanced around theatrically. “And where is your keeper exactly?”

  Disa pursed her lips and shot her eyebrows sky high as she shook her hair back in a very dignified sort of way and raised her fingers to her lips. Finn cocked his head, confused until she issued a piercing whistle that made him flinch. Within moments the front door cracked open, tiny fingers wrapping around the doorframe before the boy’s head stuck through the small space, his blue eyes wide and inquisitive. “Behold my keeper,” Disa beamed triumphantly. Finn laughed as Disa gestured the boy inside. He moved swiftly and quietly, keeping his back pressed to the wall, his eyes darting frequently to Finn. Disa stretched backward, her fingers scrabbling for the oatcakes on the table. She held one out to the boy but snatched it back before he could take it. “As you can see, you wretched little spy, my hardworking husband has returned home. Perhaps it’s time you curled up somewhere, hmm?” The boy smiled, his feet shuffling back and forth, and Disa held out the cake once more only to pull it back again, tapping her cheek with her finger. The boy smiled as he took his arms from behind his back and threw them around Disa’s neck before planting a wet kiss on her cheek. She pressed the cake into his hand then and smacked his butt as turned to hurry out the door. “See you tomorrow, wicked boy.”

  Finn’s stomach clenched at the exchange. “I can see why you fear leaving your bed.”

  Disa smiled as she dragged the unwilling comb through her hair once more. “You may laugh, but that boy is a ghost. He is everywhere and sees everything.”

  “Who does he belong to?” Finn asked, pulling his hands from the
water and wiping them on a nearby blanket.

  “Everyone, as far as I can tell. I don’t even know what to call him. He doesn’t speak.”

  Finn walked on his knees around the basin to sit behind Disa. “The water will be cold before you’re done.” He pulled the comb from her hand, trying not to think too hard about what he was doing and why he was doing it, and sunk his rough fingers into her hair. If it hurt, Disa didn’t let on. She sat still and quiet while he worked, and Finn began describing all the tasks he’d been set the last few days, talking continuously to keep himself from imagining. Once her hair was more or less tamed, he pushed her head forward, guiding her to the water, and she obeyed. He stopped talking then. He didn’t trust his uneven voice. She only moved to wipe the water flowing down her face and Finn only glanced at the wet, clinging front of her dress once or twice. He’d never done this, but it was easy. His hands may be large and rough, but they could do this. They could scratch her scalp and pick at knots. They could hold her face like this. It could be enough. Close, but not together. The wife of his Jarl, the wife of his brother. This stolen moment could be enough. He could love her like this.

  Gods, he was falling in love with her.

  Disa woke with a start when the door scraped across the floor. “Up, up!” Helga called cheerfully as she bustled inside.

  Disa groaned and fell back into the nest of blankets. She’d been having a good dream about--her eyes popped open and she looked around once more. “Where’s Finn?”

  “Fengi. And he’s helping break a horse with the rest of the men I suppose. He’s not my husband. I don’t have to keep track of him.”

  “Fengi, right. I didn’t hear him leave.”

  Helga grunted in acknowledgement but didn’t respond. Disa’s hands migrated to her head on their own accord but her hair was no longer damp. Even thinking of it now sent a shiver down her arms. The entire night was confusing and fun and confusing and intimate and more confusing. She’d never wanted to talk to her brother or Nan or even Grim more than she did at this moment. Disa felt the now familiar sting at the back of eyelids and squeezed them shut to keep from crying. What if he really was dead? She hated to admit it but there was some wisdom in Finn taking her home. They needed to know what had happened, that Roe may not be coming back, and that their world had unraveled at the edge of a knife overnight. Her impending marriage seemed more important and more frightening than ever.

  And Finn...he was so different now from the man she’d first met. Her Shadow, grave and distant and alert, always just behind her or just ahead of her but never with her. He was still alert but the space between them was rapidly collapsing and he had such an easy smile when it was just the two of them together.

  She’d not seen him for two whole days. She was ready to be angry at him. She’d heard the door drag open and she thought that was it. She was going to yell. How dare he leave her in this strange place alone? How dare he sneak out before the sun rose and sneak back long after it set? But then she’d turned to see him standing there, caked in dirt and weary but his eyes on her like fire. And then he’d taken off his shoes and shirt and slipped his thumbs into the hem of his pants and for a wild moment she’d thought…but he didn’t. He’d told her about his day and sat so close behind her, she could feel the heat from the sun radiating off of him and into her. His hands in her hair made her tongue feel swollen and fat, not to be trusted with speech, while he was perfectly at ease, washing her like this was their life, like this was something they did every day. And as abruptly as it had started, it ended. Her hair was clean if her thoughts were not, and he’d lain down on the floor next to her bed without saying much else, his eyes shut tight and his breathing even within minutes. She’d stayed awake long after the hearth was nothing but smoking embers.

  She needed to get out of here. She needed to find her brother. She needed to—

  “Get up, lazy girl!” Helga bellowed as she began dragging the largest bench closer to the fire.

  “What are you doing?”

  “The men are getting drunk and chasing sheep down from the outfields, so we of course will be getting drunk and doing the mending.”

  “Oh, of course,” Disa grumbled as she threw her blankets to the side, her body aching with too much sleep and too little activity these last few days.

  “Of course drink and running down hills never turns out very well. We’ll be herding stray animals for days. But it’s a nice little tradition this late in the season. Here, put this on,” she commanded, tossing a fresh set of clothes atop the neatly folded blankets Disa was about to tuck away.

  “Where did you get these?”

  “They’re yours, of course! Now hurry up. The rest of the women will be here soon.”

  “Well, at least today will be interesting,” Disa muttered to herself as she pulled off her tattered underdress and replaced it with the fresh light blue one from some mystery woman, another layer of deceit added to her fake life.

  “It fits?”

  Disa gave Helga a tight smile. “It does.” Everything does. Better than it should.

  Helga’s table had been cleared of its herbs and tinctures and was instead piled with loose garments. The long hall was packed full of women, all laughing and rosy cheeked, all pulling a needle. A large brown jug was kept in constant circulation and Disa thought it miraculous the thing never seemed to empty though the crowd grew steadily louder. It only took one whiff of the contents for Disa to decide she wouldn’t be drinking. The smell made her stomach turn and her head hazy like it had been that night, the taste of blood and ash and stale alcohol in her mouth. She’d felt the panic rising in her throat like acid and had been close to calling out for Finn though he was nowhere near, but Helga dumped a sewing basket in her lap and suddenly she felt a new kind of fear.

  “Helga, I can’t sew.”

  “Yes you can,” was all she said, a men’s tunic landing atop the basket. Disa spent the next hour laboriously making neat and even stitches up the torn seam, stealing glances at her neighbor’s deft fingers. She found it much easier to split a man’s shirt at the end of her sword than to repair it by her needle. She was at once full of respect for the women of her village who conquered these tasks and thankful that she’d had a blunt man’s upbringing at the hands of her brother. A blow to the shield was nothing compared to the constant prick at her fingers. She sucked the end of her thumb for the hundredth time that day and glowered at her current chore.

  She heard a thump behind her and saw the boy plop through her large window. He picked himself up quickly and trotted to the center of the room. “Hello, little Whistle,” Disa said, happy to have a distraction. “What brings you here today?”

  He stood before her with his large calf eyes but said nothing. Helga looked up and hissed, the sound alerting the rest of the women to his presence. “Good boy,” she whispered, and the boy turned away from Disa to dash under Helga’s bench, hiding himself behind her expansive skirts while the women on either side of her dropped their baskets and scooted closer to lend their own dresses to the barricade.

  There was a sharp rap at the door before two of the mercenaries pushed inside. “What’s going on here?”

  “Plotting war,” Helga snapped without looking up. A few of the women tittered.

  “Such jokes won’t seem so funny when I have you whipped,” he growled.

  “Well, don’t ask such a daft question. We’re sewing, Bassi. As you can well see.”

  “And where have all the men gone.”

  “To bring the sheep down from the hills before winter blows in.”

  Bassi stood glaring at them all in turn. Though she was looking at her work, Disa could tell the moment his eyes fell on her by the way her skin began to crawl. “And you. Where is your husband,” he asked, sneering on the last word.

  “With the men, herding the sheep,” Helga cut across.

  “I wasn’t asking you, you meddling wench,” he spat.

  Disa broke the thread from her needl
e with her teeth. “He’s with the men. Herding the sheep,” she added, leveling a bored glance his way as she folded the trousers in her lap.

  Bassi wrinkled his nose in disgust, but seemed to accept it eventually. “I’ve had enough of this stinking town,” Bassi’s companion whined. “No one is coming. Can’t we leave?”

  “Shut the door on your way out, won’t you?” Helga yawned. Bassi looked about ready to throttle her but he pushed his companion out the door, pulling it closed as he went. “Thank you!” Helga called merrily and the room erupted with laughter. Soon the brown jug was pulled from somewhere and Helga was whispering in Whistle’s ear and the boy was clambering out the window once more.

  The rest of the day was far less eventful. The sewing and drinking turned into eating and drinking and while Disa enjoyed the company, she was separate from them in a way. She couldn’t share in their reminisces but must pretend to, couldn’t tell her own stories but must nod and smile as they wove their own tales about her early life. Eventually she withdrew to the corner and by some strange twist of fate she was the only one still working. Most of the women had broken into smaller groups, blushing and giggling over some story or stretched out and snoring like Helga under the wide window, her head propped up on mended clothes.

  As the shadows grew longer, Disa kept craning her head to see outside, anxious for a glimpse of Finn. She found if she just knew where he was, could pinpoint him by the sound of hammers or could spy the building he was in, she was much less ill at ease. If she spent too much time alone, the walls seemed to move and press in upon her and the wind in the brush sounded more like a flame catching in the straw. She heard a shout or thought she did. Disa squeezed her eyes shut and tried to take a deep breath to fight against her contracting ribs. Another cry sounded in the distance and a few of the women sat up and turned towards it instinctively. Disa’s fear barely had time to turn into a tremor before there were more shouts, and then a deep rumble of laughter.