Then she was in a bedroom, decorated with finery the likes of which she had never seen—gold-tasseled curtains and pink stone floors, a giant bed with a post at each corner so tall that it nearly touched the ceiling. There was a man on the bed, his skin papery-thin, and he held the hands of a familiar girl. Sibba took a tentative step forward. Neither looked at her.
“Soft hands, soft heart,” the man rasped. She saw the bloody rags around him then and knew that he was dying just as her own father was now. The crown on his head gave him away as a king. The girl—Sibba jerked to a stop. The girl was not just any girl, but her mother, her features round and soft with youth.
Then the man and her mother were gone and she was in a smooth stone courtyard. Rain pelted down around her, falling on a chaotic scene. At the top of the steps, a tall, blond girl and a boy with black curly hair clung to each other, blood rushing down between them, mingling with the rainwater and pooling at the base of the stairs.
“Malstrom bitch!” someone shouted and Sibba turned, ready to fight, but the scene changed again. She was on a ship being tossed about by violent waves, looking down into her mother's pallid face. Beside her, a woman wrung her hands.
Now she was swimming, waves crashing over her, and her mother was there, clinging to a small wooden dinghy, rowing toward the distant shore. She was crawling on the sand, spitting up saltwater, and a handsome, young Thorvald was there, pulling her into his arms.
“The children must be protected,” he was saying. “They cannot know. They belong here. Not on some distant western shore.”
“It is their heritage,” her mother said. “It is where they belong.”
“They will die there!” Thorvald argued.
“Or, they will rule there.”
Soon the rains will fall and the tides will rise, and it will be up to you to decide on which shore you stand.
Sibba fell to her knees, the snow soaking through her leather britches the only evidence that she was back in Ottar and not spinning through a past that wasn't hers to see. Or was it? Just because she hadn’t lived those things didn’t mean that they didn’t define her in some way. Her mother had made her choices, and those choices had pushed Sibba forward into her own life, sent her stumbling onto an unfamiliar path.
When she looked up, the sadj was gone and she was alone again.
Who was she, really? She was the daughter of the clan chief and a foreign queen. She was a passable hunter and a great warrior. She had nothing to her name except an ax, a stolen sword, and a few loyal friends. She believed in shadows and valas and that there were things in this world that she couldn't explain or control. She was a Fielding and a Malstrom, even though she was still learning what that meant. She loved her mother, was who she was because of her, but they weren’t the same.
“I am Sibba Hallowtide,” she said aloud, speaking the words into the world, deciding where she stood.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Sibba
“Where will you go?” Jary asked. He and Sibba stood side-by-side on the gently rocking dock, not touching, but close to each other. Not smiling, but happy. She hadn't been sure he would be able to come. His recovery had been slow and he had walked from the Chief's house to the waterfront with a smooth wooden cane that Ari had fashioned for him. He wore a cloth around his injured eye, but Tola, who had been at his side almost constantly, said he would fully recover his vision.
“The girls like scars, anyway,” he had said jovially, glad just to be home.
But it seemed to be true. Girls watched him even now, bandaged and beaten as he was, as they went about their morning chores, their gazes lingering longingly on the chief's son. Sibba hoped they didn't see him as broken, though, as someone who needed to be put back together. He was—they both were—a sum of all of their experiences. Just as she would never forget the feel of Gabel's hands around her throat or the sight of her mother's dead body in the garden, he would never be able to escape what had happened to him in the fighting pit. But without those experiences, they would not be here now, together, their eyes cast on the expanding horizon.
“I don't know,” Sibba finally answered. She didn't know where the currents would take her, where her destiny lay.
“Well, don't forget to come back now and then,” he said, clapping a heavy hand on her shoulder.
She had been so mad at him for so long. Why had she wasted so much time? It was foolish, she saw now. Love was not weakness. What she felt toward Tola and Estrid and Jary—that didn't make her a coward. Love was the bravest thing of all, beyond even hate or revenge. Love was a risk, and so, so worth it.
Determined not to throw away any more of those moments, Sibba wrapped her arms around her brother and held him tight. He stumbled slightly beneath her grip but then recovered himself and wrapped his free hand around her waist, returning the surprise embrace. His shoulders were solid and broad, and the stubble of his beard pricked her cheek.
“I'm sorry I stole your bow,” she whispered into his ear.
There was a pause before he pulled back to look down at her, mock surprise on his face. “I always wondered where it had gotten off to,” he said with a laugh.
Sibba saw Estrid and Ari then, just over Jary's shoulder. They were a pillar of stillness in the chaos of the dock. Both were wrapped in furs and clinging to each other as they had been since Estrid's return to Ottar. Estrid would not be coming with her, of course. Estrid belonged in her own life, with Ari, who had become fiercely protective since learning of her pregnancy.
Stepping around her brother, Sibba clasped Estrid's hands.
“I wish I could go,” Estrid said but Sibba shook her head. Beneath the furs, Estrid's belly was rounding out, growing a life that had to be protected.
“You have better things to do,” Sibba insisted. “And you,” she said, turning to Ari, “make sure she does them. Take care of her.”
Ari had learned his lesson in Estrid's absence and now held the dark-haired beauty tight to his side. “And you take care of her,” he said, gesturing to the longship moored at the dock beside them.
“I will care for her with my life,” Sibba promised. He had built it for her, and it was the most beautiful thing Sibba had ever seen. Long and narrow, it barely moved in the bouncing wake, the newly-polished oak hull gleaming in the spring sun. At Jary's urging, her father had given her sixteen oarsmen who had volunteered for the trip, and they sat now on the benches, waiting for her, just like the whole, vast world waited for her.
“What will you name her?” Ari asked.
Sibba didn't even have to think about it. “The Hallowtide.”
“Not the Malstrom?” Estrid asked, remembering what she had called the small skiff they had wrecked in Endar.