“Just go home,” Sibba said. “Go find Ari and go home.”
“Not without you.”
“I don't need you.” Sibba knew that the words were hurtful. It had been intentional. But Estrid did not seem to take them to heart.
“Well, I need you.” When there was no response, Estrid continued. “Sibba, I'm sorry. For what happened—”
“Nothing happened.”
“We never got to talk about it. I woke up one day and you were gone, and your father was throwing me at Vyion, and...”
“Nothing happened,” Sibba repeated. You are everything that I want. Sometimes the words she had spoken ran amok through her head. She felt the warm flush crawling up her neck to her cheeks.
“That doesn't change the fact that I'm sorry.”
Estrid placed her hand on Sibba's knee and she couldn't hold herself back anymore. Sibba gripped her friend's hand and squeezed it, then brought it to her lips, pressing the palm to her mouth.
Then she turned to look at Estrid. “I'm sorry, too,” she said. And she was. She was sorry that she had told Estrid how she felt, sorry that she had driven that wedge between them. Sorry that she had let her heart break. Sorry that it was still cracked. But she didn't explain any of that to Estrid. She didn't have to.
They stayed there until the village grew quiet. Then they began the walk toward Estrid's longhouse, Estrid guiding her through the maze of houses, passing silent homes and sleeping sheep.
“I have a question for you,” Estrid said as they walked. Sibba's hackles immediately rose. “The sword. Where did it come from? People saw it during the trial and were asking about it.”
Of course they would be curious. It wasn’t every Fielding that had a sword. They were usually heirlooms, passed down from one generation to the next. But the strange craftsmanship of the hilt did not speak to a Fielding heritage. “I won it,” she finally said, “when I killed the man who murdered my mother.” It was still strange for her to admit to killing anyone. The blood was so fresh on her hands.
“Oh, Sibba,” Estrid said, and it occurred to her that she hadn't told anyone except Evenon that yet. No one else, not even her father, knew that Darcey was dead. “What happened?”
Sibba told her about the man in the woods and their fight on the beach. About how he had been looking for something. How he had shot her mother and left her to bleed to death in the garden.
“My poor Sibba,” Estrid said, gripping Sibba's arm and leaning against her in a semblance of a hug. “It must feel like you're losing everyone.”
Sibba blinked. “Everyone?”
Estrid stood back and looked at her, cocking her head as Aeris might do. “You know. Your brother.”
“Jary?” Of course. She didn't have any other brother. Come to think of it, she hadn't seen him since arriving in Ottar. “What about Jary?”
“You don't know? He's been taken hostage by Clan Grimsson. He's probably...”
She trailed off, unable to say the word. Well, Sibba had no problem with it. Estrid was right. She was becoming used to it. The word, the idea, was becoming a part of her regular life.
Sibba's lips formed the word without any hesitation as they stepped over the threshold into the dark stillness of Estrid's house, where the longsword leaned against the doorframe and Ari lay wrapped in furs and snoring on the bed. “Dead.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sibba
“He's not dead.”
Chief Thorvald Hallowtide was adamant about that much. Sibba stood awkwardly just beyond the screen that divided her father's living quarters from the rest of the longhouse. He sat on the edge of his straw mattress in just his night shift, his thinning hair loose around his shoulders. Without his armor and his weapons and the murderous glint in his eye, she saw how he had aged in the five years she had been gone.
She tried to find some sympathy for him. Five years ago, he had lost his wife and daughter. Then sometime in the last year, his only true-born son had never come back from a border skirmish. He was just as alone as Sibba was. It wouldn't be long before some other young warrior challenged the Hallowtide rule over this territory, and he had to know that. When she had woken him, he had whipped around with a knife in his hand. What was it like to go to sleep not knowing if you would wake up with a sword in your belly?
“And neither is she.”
On that, however, he was wrong. He swiped a hand down his face like he could wipe away Sibba's words. Like they could be unheard, erased.
“And you're not going anywhere.”
The anger came back all in a rush. It had gone away overnight as she and Estrid had stayed awake nearly until the sun rose, talking about everything they had missed. Sibba had told her about the cabin on Ey Island and finding Aeris abandoned on the forest floor. Estrid had recounted the details of her wedding to Vyion and the years of married agony that had followed, broken up only by her clandestine meetings with Ari in the boathouse.
“Do not be angry with me,” Estrid had said, “but I love him.”
Sibba had shaken her head. “I'm not angry. I just want you to be happy. Both of you.” Even if it hurt, it wouldn’t matter for long. Last night, when she’d spoken, she’d assumed she would be leaving soon.
But now she was angry again. Who was he to call her a liar, to tell her what she could and could not do? He was more of a father to his half-dozen bastard children than he had ever been to her.
“I can pay for it,” she said. “I just need a crew. A good crew.”
He scoffed at her, standing and crossing to the wash bin where he splashed water on his face. It dripped down his graying beard and soaked the floor at his feet. On the bed, someone stirred, a figure buried in furs, but Sibba didn't care which harlot he had in his bed with him, who was keeping him warm at night now. Who would bear him more children, little half-brothers and sisters that she would never know.
“You cannot buy a good crew,” he said, wiping his face on a linen cloth. “A good crew must be earned.”
She knew he was right.
“And besides,” he continued, “you're my heir now. You have to be here to take over when I die.” He was studying his face in the warped looking-glass over the basin. “Which may be sooner rather than later,” he added as an afterthought.
“You just said that Jary isn't dead.” Just like her father, Sibba realized she hung onto that hope as well. She didn't belong in this place and certainly didn't want any sort of title or power that would bind her to it. She wanted only to leave and to be left alone. To see the world and find her place within it.