“Yes, yes.” Skilfar waved the question away. “The Sister set you on your path, the Dead King seeks to stop you. A reasonable ambition considering you’ve been sent to stop him gathering an army of dead men from the ice.”
“No one sent us!” Snorri said, louder than is advisable in front of an ice-witch. “I escaped! I’m bound north to save my—”
“Yes, yes, your family. If you say so.” Skilfar met his gaze, and it was Snorri who looked aside. “Men who’ve made choices always feel they own their destiny. Few ever think to ask who shaped and offered up those choices. Who dangles the carrot they think they’ve chosen to follow.”
Now that Snorri had mentioned Taproot’s whitterings and Skilfar lent them a measure of importance with her interpretation, I remembered something else he’d said.
“A blue hand behind the black, a red behind the grey.” The words tripped off my tongue.
Those eyes turned my way and I felt the winter settle cold upon me. “Elias Taproot said that?”
“Uh . . . yes.”
“Well now, that man has been paying closer attention than I gave him credit for.” She steepled white fingers beneath the angularity of her chin. “The Red and the Blue. There you have the battle of our age, Prince Jalan. Lady Blue and the Red Queen. Your grandmother wants an emperor, prince. Did you know that? She wants to make the Broken Empire whole again . . . seal all the cracks, seen and unseen. She wants an emperor because such a man . . . well, he could turn the wheel back. She wants this and the Lady Blue does not.”
“And you, v?lva?” Snorri asked. “What wheel?” I would have asked.
“Ah. Both courses require a terrible price be paid, and both are fraught with risk.”
“And there’s no third way?”
Skilfar shook her head. “I have cast the runes until they broke from falling. I see nothing but the red and the blue.”
Snorri shrugged. “Emperor or no emperor, it makes no difference to me. My wife and son, Freja and Egil, that’s what calls me to the ice. I’ll see Sven Broke-Oar die and have my justice. Can you tell me if he still bides at the Black Fort?”
“Still fixed upon your carrot, Snorri ver Snagason? Look past it. Look ahead. When the Uuliskind sail, do they navigate by staring at the water beneath their prow? You should ask why it might be that he is there at all. Do they dig beneath the ice just for more corpses? And if not, what else do they seek and to what purpose?”
Something like a growl, but worse, rose in Snorri’s throat. “The Broke-Oar—”
“Let’s go!” I yanked harder at Snorri’s belt before his temper buried both of us.
Snorri hunched his massive shoulders and made a stiff bow. “Gods keep you, Skilfar.”
I let him pass and made my own much deeper bow. Social standing is one thing, but I always feel a scary hell-born witch deserves as much bowing and scraping as it takes to avoid being made into a toad. “My thanks, madam. I’ll take my leave and pray your army keeps you safe.” With an instinctive sideways glance at a particularly well-formed young plasteek woman, I turned to go.
“Step carefully on the ice.” Skilfar called after us as if she had an audience. “Two heroes, one led willy-nilly by his cock, the other northward by his heart. Neither bringing their brain into any decision of import. Let us not judge them harshly, my soldiers, for nothing is truly deep, nothing holds consequence. It’s from the shallows that emotions born of simple wanting arise to steer us as they have always steered man, steered the Builders, steered the gods themselves, towards true Ragnarok, an end to all things. A peace.” She couldn’t resist a commentary. I guess it’s hard for even the wisest not to show off that they are wise.
Her words followed us from the chamber. I halted a short way into the tunnel to relight my torch. “Ragnarok. Is that all the North ever thinks about? Is that what you want, Snorri? Some great battle and the world ruined and dead?” I couldn’t blame him if he did. Not with what had befallen him this past year, but I would be disturbed to know he had always lusted after such an end, even on the night before the black ships came to Eight Quays.
The light kindling on my torch caught him in midshrug. “Do you want the paradise your priests paint for you on cathedral ceilings?”
“Good point.”
We left without further theological discussion. When my brand started to gutter and flare, I lit the last of our torches from the old, tired of being slapped in the face by slime ropes, tripped by stray plasteek legs, soaking my feet in cold pools, and stubbing my toe on blocks fallen from the ceiling. Also the possibility of ghosts disturbed me. For all my bravado in the witch’s chamber the long night of the tunnels had shattered my nerves. Her guardians looked more ominous by the minute; in the dancing shadows their limbs seemed to move. At the corner of my eye I kept seeing motion but when I swung round their ranks remained unbroken.