Snenneq shook his head. “You are not seeing the beauty of what I have crafted. Here, sit down. Give me your foot.”
Morgan grunted in a put-upon way, but sat on a slippery stone and raised his leg. Little Snenneq scrambled over and began pulling on Morgan’s side-spikes. After a moment, and a clicking and clunking that tickled the bottom of Morgan’s foot even through his boot, the troll lifted his hands. “Do you see? With my idea, the climbing irons can be taken away and turned around—as so—and when they are again rightly affixed—they are blades for ice sliding!”
“Ice skating.” But Morgan could not help being impressed. In a matter of moments the troll had changed the shoe spikes into the blade of a skate. As he watched Snenneq do the same with his other foot, he suddenly realized what this meant.
“Do you mean we are going to skate here? On this lake?”
Snenneq almost chortled. “Do not worry! I am sure the church men in that ancestor-house will not mind.”
Morgan had a feeling that the troll didn’t know many Aedonite priests. “But . . . but I’ve never skated.”
Qina finally appeared. For some reason the female troll had stopped and retreated back up the slope, and now she was dragging a heavy branch much longer than she was.
“Not to fear, Morgan Prince,” said Snenneq. “I will teach you. I am a rare teacher. I have taught Qina many things!”
“Many, yes,” she said, settling herself and her long branch on a stone near the edge of the lake. “So I do not slide on ice tonight. I sit here. If you fall into cold wet, Prince Highness—” she patted the heavy branch—“this for you to pull out.”
If Qina herself did not want to get on the ice, Morgan wanted to even less. His grandfather and grandmother had told him many frightsome stories of how treacherous ice and snow could be in the far north. But Snenneq was already hurrying him out onto the glassy surface of the lake. “Now do as I am doing. Your knees must be bending!”
Morgan did his best, but each time his feet went out from under him and he fell, he could swear he heard the ice fracturing beneath him. It was hard fully to appreciate the wonder of skating on an ice-mantled moonlit lake when all he could think about was the freezing black water that lurked beneath the ice.
“Oh, poor luck!” Snenneq said for perhaps the fourth or fifth time, so cheerful that Morgan wanted to kick him, but he had to concentrate instead on getting back up without falling over again. “Do not fear to fall, Morgan Prince! That way true learning is found! And that is why our creators gave to us hindquarters of flesh and protecting fat! Do wolves have such fundaments? Do sheep? No, only people, who learn by each tumble.”
Morgan wished he had gone to the Kopstade with the others, even if their evening had ended in a brawl. By now, he could have been comfortably drunk, and even being pummeled by angry Rimmersmen would surely be less painful than Snenneq’s ice sliding.
“By the Good God, I think I’ve broken my knee and my arse at the same time! How is that even possible?”
“Do not fear, Morgan Prince. You are doing well for a first try!” At least the troll was enjoying himself. “Yes, wave your arms, so, around and around, to keep from falling! Try to slide here to me, farther out. Of course I am knowing your knee pains you, but do you see? Such a good teacher I am that you are already learning! Soon you will be ice sliding like the most nimble Qanuc!”
“But I keep the long stick here,” Qina assured Morgan in a voice too low for Snenneq to hear. “Just for careful.”
The conversation had ranged widely over both past and present, from dragon fighting to cow breeding. As part of the estate at Engby, Isgrimnur had given Sludig and his wife several hundred head of long-bodied, short-legged northern cattle, and the creatures had become Sludig’s obsession.
“You would never credit it,” he kept saying, “but in their way, they are as interesting as people!”
“I suspect that may have more to do with the people you meet than the cows you raise, Baron,” Tiamak said, which made everyone laugh. But Sludig did not reply for some moments.
“To speak honestly, it is not the people in Engby who worry us,” he said at last.
“Remember, husband, this is a happy gathering,” said Alva.
For Simon, the pleasant haze of beer and company dispersed a bit. Based on the looks Sludig and his wife shared now, he had not been mistaken: something deeper and darker was disturbing them. “What do you mean?” asked Simon. “Not people?”
Sludig shook his head. “Truly, let us talk of something else, Majesty. Let us talk of your grandchildren. I hear Morgan is man-sized now. I would like to see him!”
“I would like to see him too.” Simon frowned. “At least now and then.” He knew he was being led away from something, and he didn’t like it. “Tell me what it is that worries you, Sludig.”
“Nothing for Your Majesties to fret yourself with. The north is always strange. Perhaps a bit stranger this winter, that’s all.”
“Is it about the White Foxes?”
“Husband,” said Miriamele in a tone Simon knew all too well. “Sludig does not want to speak about it now.”
“Begging your pardon, but the queen is right,” Sludig said. “Not when all are drinking good wine and ale and sharing tales of old times. But while you are still here in the northlands we should speak of these other things . . . and we will.”
They returned to other stories, other subjects, but the mood had changed, and Simon for one could not summon back his earlier carelessness. “This is the cruel trick of being a king,” he said at last to Binabik. “You can have anything you want, but you spend all your time worrying.”
“That, I am fearing, is not just true for monarchs, but for most who live long enough to become grown men and women.” He smiled. “What is your worrying now, friend Simon? Is it what Sludig was saying, or is it still the silence from the Sithi that troubles you, as you were telling to me before?”
Miri had come to stand behind him for a moment; Simon could feel her cool hand on the back of his neck. “The silence from the Sithi is something that worries us both,” she said, “but it troubles Simon the most.”
“It should trouble everybody.” Simon thought he sounded loud, so he tried again in a softer voice. “We haven’t heard a word from them in several years.”
“How strange that is being!” Binabik shook his head. “Not even words from Jiriki or Aditu? They have sent no messengers?”
Simon shrugged. “Nothing. And we have sent them many messages, or at least tried. Perhaps it’s their mother Likimeya who wants it this way. She was never very happy with us—was she, Eolair?”
The count, who had fallen out of the other conversation, started. “Certainly Likimeya was not friendly to us in the way Jiriki and his sister were,” he said at last. “But after meeting her, I would not say she hated mortals, either. Cautious is the way I would put it. And after what her people have gone through at mortal hands, who could say she is wrong?”
Simon made a sour face. “Spoken like the diplomat you are, carefully generous to all sides. But what do you truly think?”
Eolair shrugged. He looked uncomfortable. “It is not entirely fair to ask me to shed the habits of a lifetime in a matter of moments, Majesty. But I suspect there may be something at work we do not know, some argument among the Sithi themselves. I cannot see any reason for such a silence otherwise.”
Miriamele nodded. “I think you may be right, Eolair. And from what Simon has said about his months with them, they also seem to keep time differently than we do.”
“Still, it is strange, this so-long silence,” Binabik said, but then noticed his daughter Qina, who had appeared as if from nowhere and stood silently in the chamber doorway. He beckoned her to him and they had a murmured conversation, then she nodded shyly to the others and went out again, quick and quiet as a mouse.
“The young ones are back from their adventuring,” Binabik said. “Morgan the prince is tired and sore, Qina says, so he is going early to bed.”
Miriamele looked worried. “Is he unwell?”
Binabik smiled. “A mere tumble of small nature, Qina says. Bumped and bruised a little, and shamed because of it, but otherwise without harm. He is in good hands with my daughter and her nukapik, who studies the healing arts. I do believe they are all becoming friends.”
The queen looked uncertain, but Simon sidled over to her. “The boy’s fine. They went out for a walk, he had a little fall. Probably had too much to drink. Don’t embarrass him by rushing off to look in on him. The trolls will take good care of him.”
She did not seem entirely convinced, but she sighed and let herself be guided back to a chair by Sisqi. Soon the conversation turned back to the Sithi.