“What an answer.”
She lets out a grunt of laughter. “Loyalty is precious, little red. Hard won, hard lost. Easily given, easily betrayed.” She pushes through a door, and suddenly we are outside the tower, outside the stake-wall that surrounds it . . . and below the hill on which it sits. I’m in a narrow lane between two tall shelter buildings, ankle deep in snow that melts away from my boots as if afraid of me.
Halina stares down at the retreating ice and whispers something in her own language. Or, who knows, perhaps Korkean or Ylpesian. She is full of surprises. “Ooh. Be careful there. Your tracks will be easy to spot.”
I am outside the tower without permission, without Nisse’s knowledge. I smile down at the snow, a friendly, welcoming look, I hope. The frost stops fleeing from my ankles and nestles close, reforming as ice. Halina frowns. “And now they’re frozen. Great,” she says in a rueful voice. “I’m not going to regret this at all.” She jabs her finger at me. “Best remember that you have as much to fear from the Krigere as any Vasterutian.”
“Just tell me where we’re going!”
Her mouth twists. “My brother’s house. Because I often make risky decisions. Hopefully I won’t regret this one.” She grabs my hand and pulls me along the snowy lane. The air is crisp and bitter, but the walls are close and radiate warmth. Somewhere inside one of these shelters, a baby is crying. Someone is singing. Others arguing. All in a language I do not understand, though I recognize the round honey sound as Vasterutian.
Halina treks through a maze of these shelters until finally she stops in front of a rickety set of wooden steps leading up to the second level of a building. Light pours from within. “Up there,” she whispers before starting her climb.
The stairs creak and rattle as we ascend, and a head pokes out of the doorway at the top, a wild spray of black curls framing a heart-shaped face. “Mama,” says the little boy, who is perhaps three or four and begins babbling in Vasterutian. Halina answers, her voice firm, and he disappears within once more. She purses her lips when she sees my surprised expression.
“My husband was one of the king’s guards. Old Nisse’s raiders cut his throat from ear to ear. The day the Krigere came to Vasterut was the day I became a widow. I do whatever I have to do to stay alive—for that little boy in there.” She doesn’t look away from my gaze as she lets her words sink in, and then she enters the shelter with me on her heels.
The chilly room is tiny and cluttered with wooden toys and cooking implements. A low table and a stool are the only furniture. Three figures hunch by the fire, covered in patched cloaks with hoods drawn up. The boy has withdrawn to a corner, his feet wrapped in thick cloth, wearing an ill-fitting, filthy wool tunic. He’s crouching next to a basket containing a baby, rosy cheeked and sleeping. Both children have round faces and earth-brown skin.
Halina gestures toward the fire and says something in Vasterutian, and two of the cloaked figures, a woman and a man, toss back their hoods. One of them is the man with the shaved head and black beard who was serving with Halina in the great hall. The other woman doesn’t look familiar, but she, too, has a round face and curly black hair, though hers is tamed and pinned against her head.
“This is my brother, Efren,” Halina says. The bearded man nods. “And his partner, Ligaya.” The woman gives me a wary jerk of her head.
I glance toward the third hooded figure and arch an eyebrow. “And . . . ?”
The third figure pushes back her hood with pale fingers. My breath catches in my throat and I stagger back as Thyra turns to me, looking worried and thin and anxious. “We won’t hurt you, Ansa,” she says quickly. “You must stay calm. These people mean no harm.”
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
Her blue eyes are deep and sorrowful. “Whatever I have to, like I always do.”
Her words send a pang straight through me. Today Nisse told me of a Thyra different from the one I thought I knew, one who framed him as an assassin after he caught her plotting to poison her own father. A clever, ruthless Thyra.
Exactly the kind of person who could use someone’s love and trust against them. “I’ve heard a bit about what you have had to do.”
Her lip curls. “I know who’s been whispering lies in your ears.” She looks up at Halina and says a few words in halting Vasterutian before adding, “For bringing us here.”
“You’re welcome.” Halina pulls an offered cloak over her own shoulders. “But I didn’t do it for your benefit alone. Now I want to talk about how we help each other.”