11.

HENRAEK

 

Ødven’s headquarters is surprisingly small, given his position. I should really stop saying that: surprisingly. Everything about this city, this country, these people, has been surprising. How clean it is. How welcoming the people are. His office reflects what I’ve seen in the city. Clean lines. Open space. A lack of ornamentation. Given my interactions here, however few, one could go so far as to say the aesthetic and architecture reflects the temperament of the people. And why shouldn’t it? People learn to make do with what they’re given.

It’s clear to me now that the Tathadann fed us nothing but lies and rumors to stoke a fear of outsiders, keeping us reliant on them for our safety and well-being. It makes me wonder what outsiders – people from farther away than the hills or a few miles past Westhell County – would make of Eitan and its people.

The only thing that hasn’t been unexpected was Ødven performing a ritual human sacrifice, though the brazenness with which he did it – and how fully the people embraced it – did take me back. Then again, after sixty years of near-constant war in Eitan, I’m not so positive we haven’t been performing our own version.

None of that makes me feel any better about leaving the boys on their own. The only thing that gives me comfort here is that the wall separating this space from the waiting room is glass, so I can keep a constant eye on them. Sitting on the couch, both of them look reasonably composed after witnessing the horror show out on Evivårgen Torg, though Cobb seems more rattled than Donael. He has always been the more fragile soul. In some way, I admire Donael’s self-control, the way that he appears wise beyond his years, because Nahoeg knows the easiest way to be cracked is to show weakness. But that hard exterior also disappoints me, because it reflects me. Half of the reason I’ve fought so hard for the last twenty years is so that my children wouldn’t have to grow up in the same conditions as Walleus and I did, where one flicker of emotion could mean the difference between being labeled hunter or prey. And the fact that he easily suppresses emotion means, to some degree, that my life has been a failure. Then again, there are numerous other things pointing to that.

“It wasn’t always like this.”

I startle in my seat on hearing a voice, stuck so far inside my head while considering the boys. I turn and see a lithe woman standing by the window that overlooks Evivårgen Torg, a view probably not dissimilar from the one in our apartment. Something about her posture exudes regality, someone who doesn’t ask for things but merely says them to the air and expects them to manifest before her, someone who has always known the world to be that way. She casts a final glance outside before exhaling hard, her breath condensing on the cold glass. She turns to me and pulls aside a wisp of blonde hair with a thin pinkie finger before tucking it behind her ear.

“What wasn’t?” I say.

“This. Everything.” She gestures absently toward the city. “All of this concession, keeping everyone happy.”

This must be Federijke, Ødven’s wife.

“I’m not sure I follow.”
She lowers herself onto the desk with the grace of a crane, as if she could balance her entire body weight on a single toe and look effortless doing it, and crosses her legs. Her hands find rest in her lap, fingers crossed. It’s just now occurring to me that, in her long shimmering dress, she looks much more the part of party leader than her grey-fatigued husband. I’m sure that dress cost more than I’m worth, but it doesn’t look like it. As opposed to the Morrigans’ ostentatious display of wealth, Federijke Äsyr errs on the side of classy. It’s a dress that would look great on Emeríann, though she’d sooner die than be caught in something so expensive.

“Years ago, when we formed Ragjarøn, Ødven didn’t feel the need to ask for things. When we united the provinces, we did it because we needed to make one sovereign state. We didn’t ask what everyone felt about the prospects. We knew what the people required and acted accordingly.”

“If I might say,” I wager, somewhat hesitant to contradict her, “your husband just murdered a man in front of hundreds of people. Where I’m from, that doesn’t qualify as making concessions.”

She dismisses it with a flick of the wrist. “That’s only theatre. Something the dumskålles need in order to clap.”

“Dumskålles?”

“I don’t know how you translate. Those who cannot breathe through their noses, always through their open mouths.”

“Ah, right.” I glance out into the other room. Cobb is now lying with his head in Donael’s lap and, though he looks slightly annoyed, Donael is reading to him from a magazine. Or at least pretending to read, because I’m pretty sure that’s a local magazine. I doubt Cobb knows the difference and it’s a sweet gesture anyway. “Still, I have to say that it’s effective theatre.”

“Oh, don’t tell him that or I’ll never hear the end of it.” She holds out her hand, considering her nails, which draws my attention to them, and it’s only then that I realize the slit in her dress has crept mightily up her thigh. “I’ve heard of what you did in Eitan. You, Henraek,” she says, conspicuously oblivious to her shifting wardrobe, “you understand what my husband no longer does. That good will is a wonderful idea, but it is merely what we wrap around war to comfort ourselves, convince ourselves that we are doing what is right, not what is just.”

I swallow hard, feeling the heat radiating off her. “I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I follow.”

“What this city needs,” she says, now fixing those eyes on me, so much that I feel the need to lean back in my chair, “is someone with passion. Someone who knows what they want, what they can’t live without, so they seek it out, destroy everything that stands between them. Someone who burns with righteous fury.”

As she’s saying it, I can see in those blazing eyes what she really wants: someone to rule like the Morrigans ruled, with authority and a complete lack of compassion. But I also see – and, maybe, feel – the other ways she’s trying to convince me. And in that glint in her eye, I see the duplicity behind her. She wants me, wants me to help her, and wants me out of her way, all wrapped in one messy, volatile emotion.

“Honestly, darling.” Ødven’s voice booms and I jump again, though Federijke sits unfazed. “How many times have I said it? Sleep with the help if you must, but not our comrades. Some things are more important than your momentary pleasures.”

“It can last much longer than a minute, dear.” She regards me with one last long, searching look. “Not that he’d know.” Then she twists off the desk, making sure that her dress flaps up right at my eye level before leaving the room.

“I see you’ve met the missus,” Ødven says. He reaches into a low bookshelf behind his desk and pulls out a bottle of liquor a shade somewhere between caramel and urine.

“She’s… charismatic.”

He pauses and regards me for a moment, then proceeds to pour the liquor into two bell-shaped glasses. “You’re kind to say that.” He hands me a glass and sniffs his own. “Smart, too, because I might kill you if you’d said otherwise.”

I hold my glass as I wait for him to say just kidding. When it doesn’t come, I just swirl the liquor around.

Seemingly satisfied, he lifts his glass up to mine, says, “Gutår,” then swallows his whole. I bring mine to my nose then hesitate when I get a full snort of it – it’s like a handful of black licorice caught fire atop a pile of pine – but throw it down my throat anyway lest I appear inconsiderate. I manage not to cough or pound my chest and consider that a small victory.

“Ødven, if I may,” I push out past the fumes, “what am I doing? Why did you bring us here?”

“What do you mean?” He pours himself another glass and I’m glad I’m still holding mine tight in my hand.

“They said you needed my advisement. Given what happened,” I say, gesturing out the window toward the Torg, “I don’t think I can be of much help to you. I’m hardly the leader type. More the…” I bobble for the word, as whatever that liquor was sprints straight toward my head.

“You see yourself as the spark. Not the match, not the kindling, but the spark.”

I cock my head. “I think that’s a fair assessment.”

“Yet I think you can be more.” He rises from his desk, hands crossed behind his back. “You have been inside many a fire. You understand them. How they start, how they burn, how they spread.” He slaps his heels together with military precision. “How they are extinguished.”

I flinch slightly at the last comment, although I’m sure that’s not how he meant it.

“I need you – and your boys, of course – to travel to Rën, a village near the sea.”

“I’m not sure how much you know about Eitan, but we’re not well-versed with the sea. Or water of any sort, for that matter.”

“The man you saw earlier. The Nyväg man. I wasn’t being theatrical, despite what my wife has doubtless told you, when I said that they want to destroy our way of living.”

I spin the glass in my fingers, glance out and see both boys are napping on the couch. Good for them. They need it.

“The dissidents are trying to destroy our power systems, those which provide heat, light, water, electricity. The plants are located in smaller villages around the country. Rën holds the largest one.”

“If they’re so vital, why does Nyväg want to destroy them?” I recognize the irony of the statement as soon as I say it. We knew the water distribution plant was a necessary sacrifice when we went in.

He gestures toward the crowd outside. “Choose your cause. Fourth-generation villagers who resent being brought into the union. Teenage anarchists with nothing else to do. Pigs from another party who don’t agree with my vision for the country.” He considers his glass, picks it up and swallows the contents before replacing it on the desk. “Their reasons are as varied as their names, but their desire is all the same: destroy a peaceful existence for the majority because of hurt feelings of the minority. I don’t think I need to tell you the consequences if they should succeed.”

“I think I understand.” I slide my glass across his desk. He catches it with a wan smile and refills it.

“Then you’ll understand why I need you to help restore order to the village.”

And there it is. The real reason. Draw on my rebel past to track down the members of Nyväg and eliminate them. I dump the liquor down my throat, feel the warm, comforting hand spreading through my chest.

“How many people am I supposed to kill to restore order?” Initially I’m not sure if he can hear the inflection in my voice, but his flatlined mouth says he gets it.

“To that, I would remind you that your precious Emeríann is very comfortable back in Eitan, and she remains safe because of the word of my ally Brighid, and by her word only.”

I swallow hard. “There is no way you would need to remind me of that.”

“Then I would remind you that Brighid also beheaded her father but a few days ago.” He pours one last glass for himself, savoring this one.

I nod.

“Concern yourself not with the details of the job, but with fulfilling it. Are we clear?”

I run my tongue along my teeth, tell myself to shut up while Emeríann and I are still alive.

“I suppose we’ll pack our bags.”

“Yes,” he says. “I suppose so.”