Snorri tapped it out of my hand and it went sailing in a bright and glittering arc that set it splashing down in the soup man’s dish, splattering him with a generous helping of brown muck. “If it’s not worth anything and you’re not brave, then you won’t be going over there to get it back.”
To my astonishment I found myself most of the way across the intervening space before Snorri had got past his third word. Soup man rose, bawling out some threat in his gibberish: “murdtet” featured again. His knife looked even more unpleasant up close, and in a desperate attempt to stop him sticking it into me I caught hold of his wrist whilst punching him in the throat as hard as I could. Sadly his chin got in the way, but I knocked him back and as a bonus the wall smacked him round the back of the head.
We stood there, me frozen in fear, him spitting out blood and soup through the gaps left by missing teeth. I clung onto his wrist for dear life before realizing that he wasn’t making any effort to stab me. At that point I noticed that my dinner knife was still clenched in the fist I had wedged under his chin. A fact that he had already registered. I stared expectantly at his knife hand and he obliged by opening it to let his blade fall. I released his wrist and snagged the chain of my locket from the edge of his bowl, bringing the trinket dripping from the soup.
“If you have a problem, peasant, bring it up with the man who threw it.” My voice and hand shook with what I hoped would be considered suppressed manly rage but was in fact cold terror. I nodded towards Snorri.
Having kicked the man’s knife under the table, I withdrew my own from beneath his chin and returned to sit by the Norseman, making sure my back was to the wall.
“You bastard,” I said.
Snorri tilted his head. “Seems that a man who would come back with my sword against an unborn wasn’t going to be scared of a mill worker with an eating knife. Even so, if it were worthless you might have paused for thought before going to reclaim it.”
I wiped at the casing with what had left the city of Vermillion as a handkerchief and was now little more than a grey rag. “It’s my mother’s picture, you ignorant—” The soup smeared away to reveal the jewel-set platinum beneath. “Oh.” I’ll admit that seen through a coating of muck and the misting in my eyes it was hard to judge the thing’s value, but Snorri had not been far off. I remembered now the day that Great-Uncle Garyus set the locket in my hand. It had glittered then, catching the light within cut diamonds and returning it in sparkles. The platinum had glowed with that silver fire that makes men treasure it above gold. I remembered it now as I hadn’t for many years. I’m a good liar. A great one. And to be a great liar you have to live your lies, to believe them, to the point that when you tell them to yourself enough times, even what’s right before your eyes will bend itself to the falsehood. Every day, year on year, I took that locket and turned it in my hand and saw only cheap silver and paste. Each time my debts grew, I told myself the locket was worth a little less. I told myself it wasn’t worth selling, and I offered myself that lie because I had promised old Garyus, up there on his bed in that lonely tower, crippled and twisted as he was, that I would keep it safe. And because it held my mother’s picture and I didn’t want a reason to sell it. Day by day, by imperceptible degrees, the lie became real, the truth so forgotten, so walled away, that I sat there and denied Maeres Allus—the lie became so real that not even when the bastard had his man break my finger did any whisper of the truth reach me and allow me to betray that trust to save my hide.
“Ignorant what?” asked Snorri without rancour.
“Huh?” I looked up from cleaning the locket. One of the diamonds had come loose, perhaps from hitting the bowl. It came free in my fingers and I held it up. “Let’s get some real food.” Mother wouldn’t begrudge me. And so it began.
Already the gleam of the thing was attracting attention. A man watched intently from the bar, a man with short iron-grey hair save for a peculiar broad strip, darker than a raven’s wing, across the top, as though the years had missed that part. I hid the locket away sharpish and he smiled, but kept on looking as if I’d been the object of his interest all along. For a moment I felt a shudder of recognition, though I’d swear I never met the man. The déjà vu passed as my fingers left the locket, and I busied myself with my ale.
? ? ?
Snorri spent the last of his money on a bigger bowl of slop, more ale, and a few square yards of space on the floor of the tavern’s communal sleeping hall. The hall seemed to serve as a method to prevent loss of drunks who might otherwise wander off in search of a spot to sleep and wake closer to some competing tavern. By the time we were ready to retire, the remaining locals were busy roaring out songs in Old Rhonish.