“I—” I remembered Sageous’s mild eyes, his suggestions that had turned into truths as I’d considered them. “Who—who is the Sister’s twin?”
“Pah.” Skilfar snorted out a breath that wrapped white and serpentine around her thin torso. “I thought she would choose better.” She extended a hand towards me, clawed, talons of ice springing from her nails.
“Wait!” A shout. For some reason I saw my locket. Whole, its gems in place. “I— Who— Garyus! Who is Garyus?”
“Better.” The hand relaxed. Still no smile though. “Garyus is the Sister’s brother.”
I saw him, my great-uncle, twisted and ancient in his tower room, the locket in his hand. “I had a twin,” he had told me once. “They broke us apart. But we didn’t break evenly.”
On the step below Skilfar Snorri lowered his axe, blinking as if shaking off the dregs of sleep.
“And his blood could break this curse?” The question billowed white before me.
“His sister’s spell would be broken.” Skilfar nodded.
“How else can it be broken?” I asked.
“You know the ways.”
“Can’t you do it?” I tried a hopeful smile, but my frozen face wouldn’t cooperate.
“I don’t wish to.” Skilfar returned to her chair. “The unborn have no place amongst us. The Dead King plays a dangerous game. I would see his ambition broken. Many hidden hands are turned against him. Perhaps every hand but that of the Lady Blue, and her game is more dangerous still. So no, Prince Jalan, you carry the Silent Sister’s purpose and the magics with which she sought to destroy the greatest of the Dead King’s servants. I’ve no interest in taking it from you. The Dead King needs his claws trimmed. His strength is like a forest fire.” I wondered at her choice of words. “But like such conflagrations it will burn itself out, and the forest will prevail. Unless of course it burns the very bedrock itself. Destroy the unborn; that will complete the spell’s purpose and it will fade from you. There are no other choices for you, Prince Jalan, and when there are no choices all men are equally brave.”
“How?” I asked, without really wanting to know. “Destroy the unborn? How?”
“How do the living ever defeat the dead?” She smiled a small cold smile. “With every beat of your heart, every hot drop of your blood. The truth of the Sister’s spell is hidden from me, but carry it where it leads you and pray it proves sufficient. These are the ends you serve.”
Snorri came down the steps, dropping from one to the next, and stood at my side. “I have my own ends, Skilfar. Men do not serve the v?lvas.” He covered the blades of his axe with the leather protectors he had stripped off a minute before.
“Everything serves everything else, Snorri ver Snagason.” No heat in the witch’s voice. If anything it felt colder than ever.
To distract the pair of them from further disagreements, I raised my voice in a question. “Pray it proves sufficient? Praying’s all well and good, but I never set much faith by it. The Silent Sister had to take her enemies unaware. She had to paint her runes and slowly draw her net around them. Even then the unborn escaped when I broke just one rune . . . so say we do find some way to release this spell . . . how can it defeat even one unborn, let alone several?”
Skilfar raised her brows a fraction as if wondering herself. “They say some wines improve with age when bottled.”
“Wine?” I glanced up at Snorri to see if he understood.
“These magics couldn’t be carried by just any two men,” Skilfar said. “Magic requires the right receptacles. Something about this spell, about you two, just fits together. You’re her blood, Prince Jalan, and Snorri has something to him, something that suits him to this task. Pray or don’t pray, but the only hope you have is that the spell strengthens within you, because of who and what you are, because of your journey, and that when the time comes it will be stronger rather than weaker than it was.”
“I’m not going north as a witch’s lapdog,” Snorri growled. “I’m bound there on my own purpose and I’ll—”
“Why is she silent?” I elbowed the Norseman to shut him up, offering the question up to distract them both from the quarrel brewing on his lips. “Why does the Sister never speak?”
“It’s the price she pays for knowing the future.” Skilfar looked away from Snorri. “She may not speak of it. She says nothing so that the bargain will remain unbroken by any accident or slip of tongue.”
I pursed my lips, nodding with interest. “Well. That’s . . . that sounds reasonable. In any event, we really must be going.” I reached out and tugged at Snorri’s belt. “She’s not going to help us,” I hissed.
Snorri, though, obstinate as ever, would not be pulled away. “We met a man named Taproot. He also spoke of hidden hands. A grey one behind us, a black one blocking our path.”