Arvid had thought that Lady Sigurd was a tall woman; but as she came down the steps from the hall, leaning on Merroc’s arm, she seemed much smaller. Older, weaker, fragile. He heard Martine, beside him, take in a breath that was full of pity.
“She told me, before the wedding,” Martine murmured, “that she lost two babies before Osfrid, and could have no more after him. He was her heart and breath.”
Compassion took him, imagining how he would feel if Ember, born so late and so unexpectedly in his life, had been burned in that fire as well as Osfrid. Not for the first time, he wondered why he’d had no other children. He’d put off marrying because he wanted what his parents had had, love and respect, instead of just political goodwill; but he’d had love affairs, with more than a few women, over the years, and none of them had borne him a child. Most warlords had a score of bastards—half the sergeants in the Domains were by-blows of their lord. He had only Ember. His heart contracted, thinking of her in the Great Forest, where anything could happen.
They waited silently while Sigurd made her way slowly across the muster yard to the fire. Arvid bowed to her. She nodded back, but when Martine bowed she ignored it completely. Martine said nothing.
“My lady, I have arranged for musicians, if you please,” Arvid said.
Some people believed that music helped the soul to quicken, and then to release its hold on this world and move on, to the darkness beyond death which was the threshold of rebirth. Sigurd nodded.
The flute and drum began to play; the musicians had come for the wedding, ready with love songs and ballads and dance tunes. But every musician was used to playing for quickenings, and the music was gentle and soothing. Martine signaled to Cat, the steward, to bring the chairs they had ready forward, so that Merroc and Sigurd could sit. Merroc, Arvid could see, would have preferred to stand, but he sat to make sure that his wife would sit, also.
Sigurd looked withered; ashen with bloodshot eyes, a fine tremble in her hands as they lay in her lap clutching a kerchief. She stared at the fire with terrible intensity. They had moved the cooks away for the time being, so the fire burned unrestricted with no pots or pans nearby. It would make the day harder, but it was a mark of respect they could show.
Ghosts didn’t quicken to the minute, so they had gathered a full two hours before the time of Osfrid’s death. The sun was well up, and shining, but the chill was strong. Sigurd was shivering. Martine sent Fox back to the hall for a cloak and Arvid placed it carefully around Sigurd’s shoulders. She didn’t notice. Her eyes never wavered from the flames.
Martine was in her red coat. Normally he liked to see her in it, her hair tucked up under its matching hat, but today the color reminded him of blood, and she seemed like an enchanter out of the old stories, not to be trusted, not to be—not to be loved.
Waiting fruitlessly for Osfrid’s ghost to appear left him with too much time to think. Too much time to remember. He had, with his own eyes, seen her and three others remake the compact spell when an enchanter’s spell had unraveled it.
She had kept everyone safe, Traveler and Acton’s people alike. He had been so proud of her, and later, so sure of her love… Memories poured through him. Martine pregnant, holding little Ember as she tried to walk, doggedly learning etiquette so that they could visit the southern warlords without her disgracing him, Martine in his bed, in his arms… he shuddered and disguised it by rubbing his arms as though even colder than he actually was.
Could all that, could all the twenty-one years of laughing and loving and working together have been a lie?
He couldn’t begin to imagine the mind of someone who could live that lie.
If only she would come to him, say she was sorry, ask for his forgiveness… He realized that his hands were clenched into fists. He loosened them, and glanced at the sun.
“This was the time, my lady,” he said quietly.
Sigurd gave no sign of hearing him, but Merroc nodded shortly, his eagle gaze fixed on the fire.
But Osfrid did not come.
Arvid didn’t expect him to. If twenty-one years of living with Martine had taught him anything, it was that her castings were true. If she said that Osfrid had gone on to rebirth, then he had, and that was that. He felt sorry for Sigurd, all the same.
Two hours after the time, he touched Merroc on the arm and drew him aside.
“I think my lady’s casting was true,” he said. “Your son was a noble soul and has gone on to rebirth already.”
Merroc’s eyes shone with tears. His hand was unsteady as he wiped them away.
“So it may be. But my lady will wish to wait longer.”
“She is welcome to wait as long as she wishes. But in a few hours we will need to cook the evening meal for the children…”
Merroc closed his eyes for a moment and drew in a breath.
“Have you ever noticed,” he asked, almost conversationally, but with a thread of deep pain underneath his words, “that dying in battle is easy compared to living?”
Arvid couldn’t stop himself glancing at Martine, who still stood, calm and polite, behind and to one side of Sigurd’s chair, where the lady did not have to look at her. Calm and beautiful, like a soapstone carving.
“Aye,” he said. “But when you are the lord, you must go on caring for your people, in battle or after.”
Merroc nodded, and seemed to have trouble stopping the movement of his heavy head.
“Give her another hour or so,” he said. Arvid could see the effort it took not to plead.
“Of course,” Arvid said. “I will give as much time as I can.”
He bowed and returned to waiting, standing a careful pace away from Martine. Merroc, after a moment’s hesitation, put his hand on Sigurd’s shoulder and whispered something in her ear. She shook her head fiercely and he shrugged at Arvid and sat down next to his lady.
Martine ordered food brought, but Sigurd would have nothing but water. She never moved in her chair otherwise.
Arvid waited as long as he could, but the sun was lowering and he could hear babies crying, children demanding food, mothers being exasperated, in the shelters and barns. Women who had left the grieving mother respectfully alone all day now gathered in the doorways and waited, watched, impatience growing with their own little ones’ needs.
Finally, he had to act. He drew in a breath and stepped forward, but before he could say anything Martine had walked past him and knelt by Sigurd’s chair.
“My lady,” she said formally, respectfully, “we must begin to use the fire again, so that the children may be fed.”
Sigurd seemed to pull her gaze back from the fire with a great effort, but she did not look at Martine. She raised her eyes to Arvid.
“My son will come,” she said. Her tone had the flat certainty of madness or prophecy, and who was he to say which it was?
“He will be welcome when he does,” Arvid said. “Welcome and honored.” She nodded, and settled back into the same pose she had taken all day. “But, my lady—”
Her head whipped around and she almost spat at him, “My son will come.”
“When he does, will he be pleased to find starving children?” Martine’s voice was sharp. Merroc got up hastily and stepped toward her, but Sigurd kept watching the fire.
“What do I care about other women’s sons?” she said.
“Sig,” Merroc said, touching her head. He looked up at the residence, at the floor where their rooms were. “You could watch from your chamber.”
She moved her eyes slowly to his face, as though she had to remember how. “From inside?” she asked. “But he will not see me there.”
“If—when he comes, he will wait for you, my dear,” Merroc said, his tone dreadfully kind. “Come. You go up and I will wait here and watch for him. When you are safe at the window, I will join you.”
For a long moment, Sigurd considered this. Then she shook her head, slowly, and at the end of one shake her head simply kept turning until she was staring once more at the fire.
“I will wait here,” she said. Arvid looked away from Merroc’s face.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “we will need to cook, anyway.”
Merroc nodded and sat down again, taking Sigurd’s hand into his own. She let him, but her pale fingers lay lifelessly in his grasp. Arvid’s throat tightened and he turned abruptly to gesture to the waiting servers and cooks.
Immediately, they moved in to set up the tripod and cauldron and load it with food and water. They set a few smaller pots around the edge. Supper would be late tonight, but at least the babies would get their porridge.
Sigurd ignored the cooks and the pots, watching only the flames. They reflected more and more clearly in her pale blue eyes as the night came down.
Arvid stayed with Merroc, taking turns at sitting with Sigurd while the other walked up and down, staying warm. After the night deepened, Martine brought hot bricks for Sigurd’s feet.
“Take them away!” Sigurd screamed. “I will have nothing from that accursed fire! Do you seek to curse me, too, Traveler whore?”
Martine said nothing, merely removed the bricks and handed them to a woman with several children, who accepted them thankfully and chivvied her children off to bed.
Merroc sent Arvid an apologetic glance. Arvid knew he should support his own wife, should object to Sigurd’s insults, but in the face of such naked grief he could not.
It was second watch before Sigurd finally slumped in her chair, asleep. Merroc gathered her up and carried her to their chamber.
The fort was so quiet as Arvid went up to his chamber that he fancied he was the only one left awake, except the cook watching tomorrow’s breakfast soup. Each creak of the wooden stair was like a reminder of his own mortality, a whisper of death in the night.
Martine was waiting at the door to her room and his heart leaped. Perhaps now, when they could be alone, she would come to him and explain, apologize, weep for her betrayal…
“I have cast the stones again,” she said, like a sergeant reporting to an officer, “and I definitely see danger approaching from the north.”
“The Ice King’s men?” he made himself ask, suppressing the sharp pain of disappointment with duty.
“No,” she said, frowning. “Not them. Weather. Deep cold and storm.”
“In summer?”
She shrugged, face wiped clean of emotion again.
“I tell you what the stones tell me, my lord,” she said, and disappeared, closing the door behind her.
Just once, he would like to forget the duty he owed his people to appear sane and responsible, and kick the shagging door in.
The next day Arvid spent an hour going over the Prowman’s report. It was too short. It contained little that Arvid hadn’t already heard. Five known Powers, and the possibility of more unknown, which made his blood run cold. Would the moon itself turn out to be a Power? Or the worms which writhed in the soil?
Women, the report said, encountered Fire at the Spring Equinox when they were young, and the Autumn Equinox when old. Men were introduced to the Water Power at adolescence.
Earth was slow to act and rarely concerned with humans.
Air was distant from humans, but interacted at times. She was hard to predict, hard to contact, impossible to constrain, even by the other Powers.
And the Great Forest…“You know the forms that Power takes,” the Prowman had written, and so he did. In the Forest, anything could happen. He had been trying all day to keep his thoughts away from Ember, but reading that simple sentence brought back all his fears, swamping thought with simple terror of what might happen to her. He should have gone with her.
Sitting in his workroom, he was astonished that he hadn’t gone with her. What had he been thinking? At the time, in the moment, it hadn’t even occurred to him. Was that because his domain meant more to him than his own child? Was his duty so overwhelming that he could ignore the promptings of his fatherly heart? It didn’t feel so, now. He wanted to be with her, and bedamned to the domain.
But… when the boys had said, “We’ll go with her,” it had seemed so simple. Straightforward. As though it was right that the younger ones should take the danger and he and Martine should stay to protect their people.
Was he just getting old?
Or had something manipulated him in that moment? Fire. Twisting his mind? Twisting his heart askew?
His anger rose again at the thought, and at the realization that it could have been any Power, from Fire to the local gods, even to Elva herself. Without Sight he was fumbling in the dark and as lost as a baby in the Forest. His only guide was Martine…
No. He would not go cap in hand to her. If she wanted to help him, she would offer. If the daylight world was all he had, he would use it as best he could to protect the people who depended on him. And to the cold hells with everything else.
He kept reading. The report said absolutely nothing about the Lake. How was that possible?
Page in hand, he found Martine in the kitchen, discussing the flavoring of the salted meat.
“Juniper berries, wild garlic, pepper if we’ve got it, onions, sage,” Martine said, the cook nodding his head as he ticked them off his fingers. “Anything else?”
“Brandy?” the cook said doubtfully.
“If we must. Tell the butchers not to kill the spring lambs. The meat’s too fatty for brining. Let them grow some more first.”
How long would this last? Arvid wondered. Gods help them all, it had better be over by Snowfall.
Martine turned to find him in the doorway and her face became calm again. Part of him wanted to grab her and shake her or kiss her or anything to get that look off her face—to make her see him again. He gestured her to go before him into the empty hall, and offered the Prowman’s page.
“He does not mention the Lake.”
“Not specifically. The Lake is Water.”
As if that should mean something to him.
“So?” he was forced to ask.
She was surprised. The first emotion he’d evoked from her, and it was surprise at his stupidity.
“All water, lakes, streams, rivers, pools—any running water is Her. The Lake is merely a strong seat of Her power, because the Lake People have never ceased their worship of Her. But Her influence reaches wherever water flows.”
Just as Fire was in every hearth. And Air in every breath he took. And Earth, he supposed, beneath his every step. The scope of it was too terrifying to confront. At least one could avoid the Forest. But they had been surrounded by enemies, all unknowing, all their lives. Everywhere.
Arvid stared at Martine blankly.
“The local gods,” he said. “Have they no power at all?”
“They have great power,” she replied gently. “Power over life and death, and the responsibility to keep the door between the two closed. But they do not try to control the Greater Powers, and I doubt they could. It is as though…” she searched for words…“it is as though their strengths are so different that there is no overlap. Like—like dry and wet, or day and night. The local gods care very little about individual humans, you know, but the Powers like to have more… personal relationships with us.”
Her voice shook, at last, and he knew that she was thinking about Ember. Worried about her. A tear slid down her cheek and she dashed it away impatiently.
“In the story of the Bynum girls, and in the moment I witnessed, He waited for the woman to come to him,” she said. “To embrace Him. She won’t do that.”
“He killed Osfrid.”
“A man,” she said. “And one of Acton’s people.” As though that made it all right.
“My daughter is one of Acton’s people.”
Quietly, very quietly, she said, “My daughter has the old blood in her.”
Although the sun was setting, he left immediately and inspected the fire where they were cooking dinner in a huge cauldron slung over the hot ashes in Moss’s shelter, and the new huts for the women and babies, and all the work that had been done that day, before he returned to the now crowded hall for the evening meal and was told that Martine had taken her food to her chamber to leave more room for their guests. Merroc and Sigurd were eating in the parlor.
The hall was almost dark, and he was glad of the long northern twilight. Days were shorter without fire. He ate soup because he needed food and it was his duty to stay strong, and then he went to his own chamber. Martine had always insisted on a bed of her own because he snored. Now he wondered if there had been another reason. A desire to think her own thoughts, away from him, was the most innocuous of the reasons he could imagine, and that was bad enough.
He slept in brief naps, worry about Ember fighting with anger at Martine and the desire, stupid, stupid, to go to her chamber and beg forgiveness. She was the one who should be at his door begging. But he would not forgive treason. Not without better cause than she had given him so far.
In a small part of his mind he knew that he must never say the word “treason” in front of others, or things would happen which he could not control.
But here, he dwelt on it. Treason. Betrayal. Deception. A whole life, lived on a series of lies.
If he had been a woman, he would have wept.