I gave one of those yelps that I always hope will go unnoticed and whipped my hand away. “Damnation!” I shook it, trying to shake the pain out, and watched as it shaded back to normality. “That bloody witch! Point taken. We won’t shake on it.” I gestured to a gravel beach on the outer edge of the meander. “You can drop me off there. I’ll find my own way back.”
Snorri shook his head, eyes returning to blue. “It was worse when we got too far apart. Didn’t you notice?”
“I was rather distracted,” I said. “But, yes, I do recall some problems.”
“What witch?”
“What?”
“You said ‘bloody witch.’ What witch?”
“Oh nothing, I—” I remembered the fight pits. Lying to the man on this point would probably be a mistake. I was lying out of habit, in any case. Better to tell him. It might be that his heathen ways could lead to some kind of solution. “You met her. Well, you saw her in the Red Queen’s throne room.”
“The old v?lva?” Snorri asked.
“The old what?”
“That crone at the Red Queen’s side. She’s the witch you’re talking about?”
“Yes. The Silent Sister, everyone calls her. Most don’t see her, though.”
Snorri spat into the water. The current took it away in a series of lazy swirls. “I know this name, the Silent Sister. The v?lvas of the North speak it, but not loudly.”
“Well, now you’ve seen her.” I still wondered at that. Perhaps the fact that we could both see her had something to do with her magic failing to destroy us. “She set a spell that was to kill everyone at the opera I went to last night.”
“Opera?” he asked.
“Better not to know. In any event, I escaped the spell, but when I forced my way through, something broke, a crack ran after me. Two cracks, interwoven, one dark, one light. When you grabbed hold of me, the crack caught up and ran through both of us. And somehow stopped.”
“And when we separate?”
“The dark fissure ran through you, the light through me. When we pull them apart it seems the cracks try to tear free, to rejoin.”
“And when they join?” Snorri asked.
I shrugged. “It’s bad. Worse than opera.” However nonchalant my words might be, though, and despite the heat of the day, my blood ran colder than the river.
Snorri set his jaw in that way I’d come to recognize as consideration. His hands quietly strangled the oars. “So your grandmother sentences me to the fight pit and then you bring down her witch’s curse on me?”
“I didn’t seek you out!” The nonchalance I’d been striving for wouldn’t come from a dry mouth. “You stopped me dead in the street, remember?” I regretted using the word dead immediately.
“You’re a man of honour,” he said to no one in particular. I looked for the smirk and found nothing but sincerity. If he was acting, then I needed lessons from the same place he’d gotten his. I concluded that he was reminding himself of his duties, which seemed odd in a Viking whose duties traditionally extended to remembering to pillage before raping, or the other way around. “You’re a man of honour.” Louder this time, looking right at me. Where the hell he got that idea, I had no notion.
“Yes,” I lied.
“We should settle this like men.” Absolutely the last words I wanted to hear.
“Here’s the thing, Snorri.” I eyed the various escape options open to me. I could jump overboard. Unfortunately I’d always viewed boats as a thin plank between me and drowning, and swimming as the same again but without the plank. The tree offered the next best option, but willow fronds aren’t climbing material unless you happen to be a squirrel. I selected the last option. “What’s that over there?” I pointed to a spot on the riverbank behind the Norseman. He didn’t so much as turn his head. Shit. “Ah, my mistake.” And that was me out of options. “As I was saying. The thing is. The thing. Well, honestly.” The thing had to be something. “Um. I’m afraid that when I kill you, the crack will run out of you just the same as it would if we got too far apart. And then—boom—a split second later I’d be too far apart. So tempting as it is to pit my princely fighting skills against those of a . . . what is your rank? I never found out.”
“Hauldr. I own my land, ten acres from Uulisk shore to the ridge top.”