“Assassins?” I lifted my head, the room continuing to move after I stopped. “Nonsense. You never mentioned any attack.”
Snorri lifted his jerkin. A single ugly wound ran down his side, far back, just past the ribs, salt crusted as he’d described. I may have seen it when Borris’s daughters were washing him back in Olaafheim after the Fenris wolf got hold of him, or perhaps he had been turned the wrong way . . . in any event I didn’t recall it in my inebriation.
“So how much does it cost to hire assassins then?” I asked. “Just for future reference. And . . . where’s the money? You should be rich!”
“I gave most of it to the sea, so that Aegir would grant us safe passage,” said Snorri.
“Well that didn’t bloody work!” I banged the table, perhaps a little harder than I meant to. I can be an excitable drunk.
“Most of it?” Tuttugu asked.
“I paid a v?lva in Trond to treat the wound.”
“Did a piss-poor job from what I could see,” I interjected, holding on to the table to keep from sliding past it.
“It was beyond her skill, and while we stay here it only grows worse. Come, we’ll sail at dawn.”
Snorri stood and I guess we followed, though I’ve no memory of it.
SEVEN
I woke the next morning under sail and with a head sore enough to keep me curled in the prow groaning for the mercy of death until well past noon. The previous evening returned to me in fragments over the course of the next few days but it took an age to assemble the pieces into anything that made sense. And even then it didn’t make much sense. I consoled myself with our steady progress toward home and the civilized comforts thereof. As my head eased I planned out who I would see first and where I’d spend my first night. I would probably ask for Lisa DeVeer’s hand, assuming she hadn’t been dragged to the opera that night and burned with the rest. She was the finest of the old man’s daughters and I’d grown very fond of her. Especially in her absence. Thoughts of home kept me warm, and I huddled in the prow, waiting to get there.
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The sea is always changing—but mostly for the worse. A cold and relentless rain arrived with the next morning and plagued us all day, driven by winds that pushed the ocean up before them into rolling hills of brine. Snorri’s dreadful little boat wallowed around like a pig trying to drown, and by the time evening threatened even the Norsemen had had enough.
“We’ll put in at Harrowheim,” Snorri told us, wiping the rain from his beard. “It’s a little place I know.” Something about the name gave me a bad feeling but I was too eager to be on solid ground to object, and I guessed that even driven as he was the Norseman would rather spend the night ashore.
So, with the sun setting behind us we turned for the dark coastline, letting the wind hurl us toward the rocks until at the last the mouth of a fjord revealed itself and we sailed on in. The fjord proved itself a narrow one, little more than two hundred yards wide, its shores rising steeper than a flight of stairs, reaching for the serrated ridges of sullen rock that cradled the waters.
Aslaug spoke to me while the two Norsemen busied themselves with rope and sail. She sat beside me in the stern, clad in shadow and suggestion, impervious to the rain and the tug of the wind.
“How they torment you with this boat, Prince Jalan.” She laid a hand on my knee, ebony fingers staining the cloth, a delicious feeling soaking into me. “Baraqel guides Snorri now. The Norseman doesn’t have your strength of will. Where you were able to withstand the demon’s preaching Snorri is swayed. His instincts have always been—”
“Demon?” I muttered. “Baraqel’s an angel.”
“You think so?” She purred it close by my ear and suddenly I didn’t know what I thought, or care overmuch that I didn’t. “The creatures of the light wear whatever shapes you let them steal from legend. Beneath it all they are singular in will and no more your friend or guardians than the fire.”
I shivered in my cloak wishing I had a good blaze to warm myself by right now. “But fire is—”
“Fire is your enemy, Prince Jalan. Enslave it and it will serve, but give it an inch, give it any opportunity, and you’ll be lucky to escape the burning wreckage of your home. You keep the fire at arm’s length. You don’t take a hot coal to your breast. No more should you embrace Baraqel or his kind. Snorri has done so and it has left his will in ashes—a puppet for the light to work its own purposes through. See how he looks at you. How he watches you. It’s only a matter of time before he acts openly against you. Mark these words, my prince. Mark—”
The sun sank and Aslaug fell into a darkness that leaked away through the hull.
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