“Of course,” was what she wanted to say, but she kept her silence, and tidied a loose strand of hair behind his ear, and let him get there by himself.
“Shit.” He closed his eyes, utterly dismayed. “I’ve made myself look a fool.”
She turned his face back towards her again. “You have made yourself look passionate, and principled, and brave.” And an utter fool, it hardly needed saying. “All the qualities people admire in you. All the qualities I admire in you.”
“I’ve offended the king. What should I—”
“That is why you have me.” She led him on while appearing to follow, talking softly as though they were trading sweet nothings. “I will speak to my father and arrange for you to apologise to His Majesty. You will smile and be the charming but hotheaded young hero you are. You will show how difficult it is for you to swallow your pride, but you will swallow it, every last bitter drop. You will explain that you are a soldier not a courtier, and say your manly passions got the better of you, but that it will never happen again. And it will never happen again.”
She smiled as they walked. The Union’s most admired couple, so very well matched and so much in love. She had smiled through far worse, after all. She kept her eyes ahead, but she was conscious that he was looking at her all the way.
“I think…” he murmured, leaning towards her, “that I might be the luckiest man in the Union.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” She patted his elbow. “You’re the luckiest man in the world.”
The Choice
Clip, clip. Copper-brown hair scattered about her bare feet, across her bare feet. Hard fingers on her scalp, tipping her head this way and that. Clip, clip.
“’Tis only hair, d’you see?” said Isern, pausing with the shears a moment. “Hair grows back.”
Rikke frowned up at her. “Hair does.”
Clip, clip, and more hair fell, like moments passed, moments lost.
Shivers set a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Better to do it than live with the fear of it.”
“That’s what my father says,” said Rikke.
“Your father’s a wise man.”
“Out of all the men you hate, he’s the one you hate least.”
Her father gave a sad nod. “They’ll need your bones and your brains, when I’m gone.” Old, he was, and crooked and grey. “And your heart.”
“And my heart.” Rikke wasn’t sure whether she’d meant to let go the string or not, but her arrow stuck into the lad’s back, just under his shoulder blade.
“Oh,” she said, shocked how easy killing someone turned out to be. He looked around, a bit offended, a bit scared, but not half as scared as she was now.
She squeezed her eyes shut. By the dead, her head was hurting, jabbing in her face, jab, jab, jab.
“Keep it, and I see for you a great destiny. A great destiny. Or give it away. And be Rikke. Have a life. Push out children and teach them songs.” Caurib shrugged as she sucked fish off the bones, and the wind blew up and made sparks shower from the fire, down the shingle and out over the black water. “Cook porridge and spin and sit in your father’s garden and watch the sun go down. Do whatever it is ordinary folk do these days.”
“They do what they always do,” said Shivers. “They die.”
Isern gripped her shoulder. “You must choose. You must choose now.”
Pain stabbed through her head and Rikke screamed, screamed so hard her voice cracked and became a breathy wheeze. A long-drawn rattle. A laugh. Stour Nightfall’s laugh, wet eyes on her as he grinned at the audience, dancing, mocking, and a golden snake was coiled around him.
“Break what they love!” And his sword left a bright smear. A thousand bright smears. She knew where it would be, always. She knew the sword and the arrow, too. She knew too much. The crack yawned wide in the sky and she squeezed her eyes shut. All she could hear was the clashing of steel. A thunder of voices and hooves and metal and fury.
She opened her eyes and, by the dead, a battle. A battle at night, but lit by fires so bright it looked like day. Or was it smoke? Broken pillars like broken teeth. A lion torn by the wind, ragged and stained. And a sun on a broken tower.
There was a flash like lightning, a noise like thunder, and men were ripped apart, horses flung like toys. She sank down in terror, sank among the corpses and the stomping boots and spraying mud and squeezed her eyes tight shut.
“It’s already over,” said a strange, high voice. “It couldn’t be more over.”
Strong arms forced her down into the dirt and she kicked and struggled and fought with everything she had but it wasn’t enough.
“Hold her! By the dead, hold her still!”
Something pressed across her chest. Pressed so hard she could scarcely breathe, iron fingers tight across her forehead, pinprick lights burning at her. Bright lights like blazing stars in a midnight sky.
“How much did I drink?” she croaked out.
“All of it, I think,” said Orso, putting down the tray. Or was it Leo? “I brought you an egg.”
She lifted her chin a little to give him the eye. But the left eye or the right, she wasn’t sure. “Lay it yourself, did you?”
Leo smiled. Or Orso did.
“I miss you,” said Rikke. Said it to both of them. But she wasn’t sure whether she missed them, or she missed who she’d been when she was with them. The Rikke who’d laughed and kissed and fucked and not had to choose.
Her face was burning. The left side of her head throbbing. Stink of herbs on the brazier, sickly sweet, so strong she could hardly breathe for it. A long, low crooning. A song in a tongue she didn’t know.
“She’s no better, witch!”
“I made no promises.”
“She’s worse!”
“Her Long Eye is stronger than I have ever seen. It fights to be free. Hear me, girl.” Caurib’s voice boomed and echoed as if from a long way off. Something slapped at her and she grunted and grumbled. “Have you ever seen a thing entire? Through time? Have you known a thing completely?”
“An arrow,” croaked Rikke, stirring her thick tongue in her thick lips. “From its making to its end. When it flew, I pushed it away with my finger. And a sword. And a crack in the sky.”
“What was inside?”
“Everything.”
She heard Caurib give a long, rustling sigh. “It’s worse than I feared. Or better than I hoped. The wards will not be enough. We must go further.”
“Speak another riddle,” snarled Shivers, “and I will split your head in so many pieces no stitching will hold the shreds together.”
Hard fingers gripped Rikke’s face, pulled her eyelids open, golden wire blurry in the tricking candlelight.
“You must choose,” said Caurib. “You must choose now.”
She could smell fire, just beyond the mouth of the cave. But she was not in a cave but her father’s hall. Burning thatch dropped from the burning rafters. Screams outside the doorway.
She saw people at the top of a high tower beneath a bloody sunset. A line of them. A queue of them. One by one they fell. One by one they hit the ground beneath, tap, tap, tap.