“No one I’ve sent after him has come back, but I don't think the bitch will have killed him yet,” Thorvald said, sitting on the edge of his mattress to pull on dark, calf-skin britches. His bedmate stirred again and a small, delicate hand reached up to stroke his back. He ignored it, standing to finish dressing. “She'll find a way use him against me first. To destroy me before delivering the killing blow.”
Chief Grimsson was horrible—the only female chief in the Fields, she had killed hundreds of men to keep her position, including multiple husbands. Grimsson kept an army of women and played with men like they were animals, there simply for her own amusement. Her territory lay between Clan Hallowtide and Clan Holmfast, and she was constantly provoking battles on both borders, her territory slowly expanding with each hard-won victory. Peace talks always failed. The Clan Wars had been going on for hundreds of years, and under her rule, there was no end in sight.
She was beautiful and deadly, a spider with a web that grew larger every day. But a part of Sibba admired her, too. The woman knew what she wanted and went for it. She wanted to rule the Fields, and she was doing everything she could to make it happen. Sibba wanted to leave the Fields, and couldn't even get her father to give her a boat.
“I don't want to be chief,” she finally said, and even to her own ears, it sounded weak.
“Ah, yes, well, my daughter,” Thorvald said, crossing and dropping a heavy hand onto her shoulder. “Such is your lot in life. We do not always get to pick, do we?”
Truer words had never been spoken. Such small, simple accidents ended up directing the course of their entire lives. What if Darcey's ship had brought her ashore just a little further south and she had ended up in Grimsson territory? Would she have become a warrior instead of a scorned wife? Would she still be alive today? What if Sibba had chosen to stay in Ottar instead of going to Ey Island with her mother? Maybe her father would have forced her to marry the trader instead of Estrid. Maybe even now, she would be carrying Vyion's child instead of an ax. But there was no sense in wondering. If the Fieldings were to be believed, Interis, Enos’s wife and weaver of the loom of fate, had long ago chosen their threads.
“We make our own fates,” Darcey had insisted. But Sibba remembered watching her small hands pluck masterfully at the loom and thinking that maybe in this, her mother was wrong.
“The only way for you to get out of it is if Jary were to return. And let's be honest—”
“I can bring him back.” The words were out before she had given them any true thought. They drew Thorvald up short as he strapped on his sword belt.
“What do you mean?”
“If I can bring him back, will you give me what I ask for and leave to go?”
Thorvald's eyes searched her face as if truly seeing her for the first time since she had walked into his room. As if only now realizing that she wasn't just some girl with silly dreams and ridiculous words. She was his daughter, a woman, a Hallowtide, and she, like Isgerd Grimsson, would stop at nothing to get what she wanted. She had already delayed too long.
“I would not like to lose you both,” he said. His face contorted into something resembling a smile. “For what it's worth, you are a warrior, Sibba, and would make a magnificent chief.”
The thought had never entered her mind. Not once in her seventeen years. It was always going to be Jary. No matter how many women had warmed Thorvald's bed, no matter how many bastards had come after her, her brother was always going to be the next Chief Hallowtide. It was his right by birth. Suddenly, the idea of retrieving him didn't seem so absurd anymore.
“Why have you given up on him so easily?” she asked. She drew the crow sword from its scabbard and brandished it at him, not in a threatening way but more in an effort to get him to see it. “I took this from the man who killed my mother. If you promise to give me a boat and a crew to sail it, I will bring you back your son, and Chief Grimsson's sword. You have my word.”
Thorvald stood only a few paces from her with his arms crossed over his broad chest, and she discovered that she was very nearly his height. Her plan was flawed but she didn't let it show on her face. Jary could already be dead, or Sibba could die in the process. But she hoped he wouldn't examine it too hard. She hoped that he would, just this once, give her a chance.
The woman in the bed rolled onto her side and propped her head up on her elbow. Compared to Darcey, she was unremarkable, with mousy brown hair and a forgettable face.
“Just say yes, Thorvald,” she said, practically purring as she stretched across the bed, her eyes heavy with sleep. As much as Sibba wanted to hate her, she felt a tiny twinge of thankfulness when Thorvald's face relaxed.
Servants stirred in the hall behind her, lighting the hearth fire and preparing for the day. Thorvald glanced between Sibba and the screen dividing him from the hall. He didn't look like an old man anymore. In the course of their conversation, he had transformed, and he looked like a chief again, with his hair pulled back and his weapons strapped to his body. He was large and formidable, every bit the Fielding.
“Okay,” he said, spreading his arms out as if in welcome. “Get the sadj’s blessing, and you can go. Bring Jary back, and the world will be yours for the taking.”
As if it were his to give.
? ? ?
Though she gave little thought to where she was going, Sibba's feet carried her forward through town and to its very edge. It was snowing again, and she ducked her head, hiding beneath the hood of her cloak. Aeris rode on her shoulder, her head tucked in low against the breeze.
The sadj's house was unremarkable, just another small hut in a row of the same. She ducked inside without knocking—he would be expecting her anyway. Even with his blind eyes, he always seemed to know who was at the door.
Inside was cold and dark; the man, if he could be called a man, had never cared much for the comforts of a Fielding life. Sibba shrugged the hood of her cloak off and walked further into the dark room. Aeris squeezed her shoulder nervously.
“Ah,” came the voice like a whetstone against an iron. “You have come at last.” He turned his face to her, but instead of eyes, there were empty black holes. His teeth had rotted out of his mouth and his skin seemed too loose, as if it were slowly emptying.
Darcey did not believe in the sadj. In Casuin, there were no seers, just as there was no predetermined fate. However, Thorvald relied heavily on the man, coming to him before making any important decision. How many times had she watched him cross this threshold in his battle armor? Sibba did not know how she felt, and she wondered if he could tell.
Now, Sibba settled down on a small pile of furs. He sat across from her, his mangled feet tucked beneath him. No hearth burned and the cold seeped beneath her already wet clothes and into her bones. Aeris had taken to the rafters and lurked just overhead.
“You were expecting me?” she asked.
He smiled a toothy grin, and though his eyes had been gouged out, supposedly by the gods as punishment for his blindness in his human life, she felt him look at her. His face was in shadow beneath the hood and she was glad not to have to look too deeply into the puckered sockets.