“You’ve heard rumours,” I replied, making a snap decision that I didn’t like the members of the small council.
They were staring at me like they could see through me to the devastated, frightened girl who had huddled before them in the Citadel. Marked. In chains. Frightened and broken, vulnerable to the manipulations of the people with the real power in our world.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” the smaller woman spoke up. Trust the Sinn to tire of small talk the fastest. “Are the rumours true? Are you the Fjorn? Is the myth real?”
“I can’t speak for the myth, but I am a Fjorn.” I spoke only to her, deferring to her frankness.
“So there are more?” One of her brows twitched up. It was white, as was her hair—though she couldn’t have been older than forty. “If you are a Fjorn and not the Fjorn, you must know of others.”
“There were three,” I answered, glancing at Calder.
“You’re the fourth?” Laerke cut in. “There should only be three.”
“If you say so.” I lifted a shoulder. They didn’t need to know about what Ein, the first Fjorn had told me. They didn’t need to know about the prophecies. Not yet. “They’re all dead, but the Fjorn are real—and so is the Darkness.”
“Do you mean the end of the world?” the Sinn queried.
I nodded. “It began a long time ago. First, with the magic mutations, and then the sterility.”
“But the day those shadows exploded out of you, it rose in earnest,” the Sinn pressed, her eyes cutting, shrewd.
Was she blaming me?
“The Darkness is a power, a force. It senses me through my own power—and that was the first time in seven years my power had been used. Before that, I was essentially hidden from the Darkness.”
“So it sensed you, if you are to be believed,” the Skjebre man surmised. “The day you killed your mother and the Dealer. Since then, the end of the world has begun in earnest?”
“Is this another trial?” Calder’s voice cut through the room with the sharpness of one of his blades. He loomed over me from behind, his hands cupping my shoulders, showing them that I was not without support. “Because if it’s not, you each need to carefully reconsider the way you’re conducting your conversation—and if it is, then you can go through the due process of gathering your evidence against whatever you think she’s done and calling her to the Citadel for a proper trial. Which will it be?”
They stared at him. At the heat emitting from him. At the temper drumming beneath the surface of his skin. At his hands, gripping me firmly, possession in the curl of his fingers.
“Our apologies.” The Vold woman spoke up for the first time, brushing a very thick, blonde plait from her shoulder and standing. She offered her arm to me, and I grasped it, our hands wrapping around each other’s forearms.
I had seen the customary Vold greeting a hundred times, but it had never been offered to me.
“Helga,” she introduced herself. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Tempest.”
I nodded to her and she fell back to her chair, delivering a swift kick to the Eloi man as she passed. He unfolded himself, revealing a very tall, but thin frame.
“Olav.” He offered his hand in a normal—albeit quick—handshake.
The other Eloi was already waiting behind him, and she took my hand instead of offering hers, her eyes intent on mine.
“Toree,” she said.
The Skjebre man introduced himself as Odvar without standing, his head still twisted to the side in examination of me. The Sinn woman was last, and she also didn’t stand. “My name is Magne,” she said. “I apologise if my tone was accusatory. It wasn’t my intention.”
“It’s fine,” I said, and it was. She was a Sinn. It was just how the Sinn sounded. “What else do you want to know?”
“The bond.” Her reply was immediate, her eyes passing to Calder, fixing again on his grip of me. “Is it real?”
“I am her Blodsjel,” he replied, as unemotional and cold as ever. “I’m driven to protect her at all costs, whether I wish to or not.”
“But you wish to?” Magne pressed, her voice sharpening, catching a hint of something in his that the rest of us missed. “You care for her as the sister of your soul?”
He sucked in a quick breath, his hands squeezing my shoulders. It seemed he was trying to calm himself down.
“The Darkness is here,” he snapped. “It riddled us with plague, drowned us in floods and buried us in frost—and now it contaminates our crops and poisons our livestock, but you want to know if I care for her?” He was vibrating, and I reached up without meaning to, placing my hand over his.
“Which is more important to you?” I questioned, adopting the coldness that Calder had shed. “The myth, or the reality?”
I directed the question to Magne, knowing that it would prick her Sinn pride.
Her eyes shuttered over, and she lost some of her rigidity, sinking the tiniest back into her chair.
“Why did you not tell us sooner, Captain? Did you really think you could stop the end of the world all on your own?” This had come from Laerke. Her blue eyes tried to shield a hint of suspicion as she tipped her head up to him.
“The five great masters have been aware from the start,” I inserted, disliking her question. “The Warmaster organised the Sentinels to help relocate people when the floods happened. The Inquisitor delivered medicine to fight the plague. The King has called everyone to Edelsten for this festival and is plying us all with food that is safe to eat and wine to drink, drawing them away from the poisoned crops and dying livestock.”
“But the people don’t know,” Olav said, shaking his head. “These are all short-term solutions. They’re limited by the reach of five people—admittedly, very powerful people—but there are still only five of them.”
I scoffed, unable to swallow the sound. “You are the small council,” I returned. “You are only six people. The Scholar has command of hundreds of Obelisk servants, the Warmaster command of every Sentinel in Fyrio. The King has an entire fortress of people to do his bidding, plus his own King’s guard. The Weaver—”
“Stopped taking on students a long time ago,” Odvar cut in. “He no longer contributes to the Skjebre sector. Until the day of your trial, I hadn’t actually seen him in years.”
“And the Inquisitor had been missing for almost as long,” Olav added. “It’s well-known among the Eloi, though those outside our sector weren’t privy to the knowledge. The Inquisitor had people to do his bidding—loyal sectorian servants that he trained himself. They answered the call every time he was summoned, claiming that he had sent them to conduct business on his behalf. I was very surprised to see him at your trial.”
I could feel the edges of my lips twisting down in a frown. “I don’t understand your point.”
“We convened after your trial and made enquiries,” Laerke answered. “The King and the Warmaster have been preoccupied with Reken skirmishes for a long time, feeding back stories of their heroism to keep their image alive. The Scholar has been just as absent, with a limited number of trusted people within the Obelisk carrying out duties on his behalf. It’s like they existed purely through legend until the day of your trial.”