“How did you get off the mountain before the thaw?”
I nodded to Fiske.
She dragged her palms over her face and her breaths slowed. “Why?”
But none of that mattered. I leveled my eyes at her, bracing myself as I spit the word out. “Is he dead?”
“No.” She took hold of my wrist, squeezing. “He’s alive. He’s in Virki.”
I looked back at Fiske, the smile breaking onto my face as I leaned over, putting my hands on my knees to steady myself. “How many? How many survived?”
Her face turned grave and the house went quiet with it.
“Most died. Maybe forty from our village survived. And some were captured.”
I sank back on the stone, trying to stop the spinning. The world was moving around me in blurred, colorless lines. I shook my head, trying to cut her words from the truth. “Your family?”
She didn’t answer, her face stone.
I stood again, going for the door, desperate for the air.
She came out behind me. “What are you doing with a Riki, Eelyn?”
“I need to get to Virki.”
“What is he doing here?” She shoved me and I recoiled, hissing. “What is it?” She pulled me to her, pushing the neck of my tunic open to look at the wound that festered in my shoulder. “Arrow?”
I nodded.
She checked the back of my shoulder and her hands suddenly stilled on me. “Is that…?” Her gaze fell to the burns circling my neck. “Did they…?”
I dropped my eyes, the shame of it too overwhelming.
She pushed past me, squaring off in front of Fiske as he came out the door. Her hands pushed into him hard. “What did you do?”
He looked down, expressionless, his frame towering over her.
“Why is he helping you, Eelyn?” She turned back toward me.
“The Herja came into the mountains.” I leaned into the tree that stood beside my home. The one Myra and I climbed as children. “They’re everywhere.”
I watched her think. She brought her hands together, pressing her thumbs into her bottom lip.
“The Riki lost many. Too many.”
“Good,” she muttered, shooting her eyes to Fiske.
He tensed, pressing his mouth into a line.
“They’ll kill us, Myra. All of us. I need to get to my father.”
Her eyes were still on Fiske, who silently stood in the doorway. “What about him?”
“He’s coming with me.”
“No.” She shook her head, taking a step back. “I’m not taking him to Virki. He’ll come back with the rest of the Riki and finish us off!”
“No, he won’t. The Riki are weak. They can’t fight.” I swallowed. “Not on their own.”
Myra gaped at me. “You aren’t serious. The Aska will never fight with them. And Sigr will never allow peace with Thora.”
“Even if it means surviving? The Herja will come back. Look at this!” I flung my arms out around me to the village. “The thaw is coming, Myra. And when it does, they’ll be back!”
“Vegr yfir fjor.” She bit down, her nostrils flaring. “We can’t trust them, Eelyn. You know that.”
I glanced at Fiske. Even if I did trust him, I would never trust his people. Not really. “I know.”
He lifted his chin, looking down at me.
“Fine. Bring him. The Aska will kill him when we get to Virki anyway.” Myra looked at us both before she turned on her heel, slinging her bow over her head and starting down the path alone.
THIRTY-SEVEN
We walked in a single file line down the edge of the coast. The wind blew up the cliff faces in gusts, pushing us back as we moved south. I clutched my throbbing arm to my body as the blood seeped out of it and soaked into my tunic.
Hylli grew small in the distance and the trees grew thicker, turning into the coastal forest that most of the other Aska villages were nestled into. It was a trail Myra and I had taken many times, going with my father to Utan and Lund to trade fish for things Hylli needed like timber and herbs that could only be found in the forest.
She didn’t look back at me as we walked, but her shoulders were set in a hard line. She kept one hand on the handle of her knife and the other hooked into the string of her bow. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill Fiske and I wasn’t sure her loyalty to me outweighed her hatred of the Riki. She’d lost her father to fever when we were young and then she lost her sister the day I lost Iri. Now, she’d lost everyone else to the Herja. And I should have been there.
I didn’t want to imagine her, watching the bodies burn with the ritual words on her lips. I didn’t want to think of her holding the last of her family in her arms. I knew Myra as well as I knew myself. I knew the way she held every broken piece of her heart in place, refusing to fall apart. And she was left to face it alone, because I was selfish. I’d left her in Aurvanger. Just like I’d left Iri.
Whether or not she would forgive me, I’d never forgive myself.
*
We came upon the bay carved into the cliffs like a half moon. The sea was still crusted with ice at its edges in the shallows. Schools of fish swam beneath it like a shifting plume of smoke.
Fiske hadn’t spoken a word since we left Hylli. His attention was on the slick, rocky ground as his boots struggled to find footholds. This wasn’t his terrain just like the snowy mountain wasn’t mine. I pulled the hood of the cloak up when the wind turned bitter and watched the fog roll into the land, spilling over the ground as the sun went down. The water below crashed harder onto the rocks and when we could no longer see it, we stopped, making camp inland near the forest.
Myra watched Fiske moving through the trees as he gathered wood. “How could you tell him about Virki?” she ground out in a furious whisper.
I pulled the fish from my bag, choosing my words carefully. “What were you doing in Hylli?”
“I went back for my family’s things. What was left of them.”
I took a deep breath. “Iri’s alive, Myra.”
Her hands froze on her axe’s handle and her eyes left the trees, coming to land on me hard. “What?”
“He’s alive. He’s been living with the Riki this whole time.” The words sank in and as they did, I listened to the way it sounded, saying it out loud. Saying it to Myra was one thing. Saying it to the rest of the Aska would be another. Iri had been beloved and admired in Hylli, but they would have his life for what he’d done. And I was tainted by it too. So was my father.
“How? Why?” She stood.
“He wasn’t dead when we left him in Aurvanger. The Riki found him. They saved his life. Fiske saved his life.”
“No. I saw him. We saw him.” She paced before me, her eyes frantic.
“It’s true.”
“And what? Now he’s one of them?”
“Yes.” It was the first time I really believed it.
“You can’t change your blood, Eelyn! You can’t just erase all the Aska the Riki have killed!” Her voice was raw and I knew she was thinking about her sister.
“We can’t erase any of it.” And that was the most terrifying part of all.
Fiske came out of the trees with a pile of wood under his arm and started on the fire as Myra watched. The glare in her eyes fell heavy on him but he ignored her.
She returned her axe to its place on her back. “I’ll take watch.”
“Sleep, I’ll do it.” I stood.
“So he can cut my throat?” She huffed, pulling the idols of her sister and her father from inside her vest. “You’re a fool if you think I’m going to sleep this close to a Riki.” She turned and stalked off into the dark, leaving us.
Fiske worked at the fire as if he hadn’t heard her, his face lit up.
“She doesn’t trust you.” I handed him another piece of wood. “None of them will.”
Behind us, in the darkness, I could hear the faint sound of Myra’s prayers.
He sat against the tree, taking the axe from his back so he could lean into it. “Do you trust me?” His face was hard. Unreadable, like always.
“Yes.” His eyes lifted to meet mine and they looked into me. The way they had in Hylli. “But I don’t know if the Aska will listen to us.”
“You think this is the end?” He looked at his hands.
“The end of what?”
“The end of everything. The Riki. The Aska.” The words hung in the air over us, burning in the fire.