Alane watched them go.
Once they were out of sight of the camp, Brokk raised his barrel-deep voice, singing as they rode. “Oh, I had a pretty girl, but she spent up all my gold. I had a pretty girl, but she only brought me strife. I had a pretty girl, but she left me for a blacksmith. So I gave up on pretty girls, and now I have a wife.” On the last word, he gave Reyker a pointed look.
“Something you want to say to me, Brokk?”
“You are a lodestone for god-gifted Green Isle girls.”
“Alane is lonely and heartsick over what was done to her country. If she sees anything in me, it’s because I’m the only man here who speaks her language and understands her homeland.”
“If you wait to escort that magiska home yourself,” Brokk said, “she’ll become another casualty in the war between you and your brother. If you care about her and the other two, send them away now. You can always go back to Glasnith and fetch her later.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because she’s young and fair and she looks at you like she cannot wait to tumble into your bed.”
Reyker flushed. “There is more to love than that.”
“Who said anything about love?” Brokk shrugged, whistling another bar of the cheery, obnoxious tune.
They reached the mead house, a communal feasting hall and inn of the Fjordlands, where a certain class of people from the surrounding mountain and fjord villages gathered whenever they could to drink and gamble, eat and fight, find a mate for a night or two—be they patrons or prostitutes. Reyker was no stranger to such establishments, having visited them with fellow Dragonmen; an attempt to escape his misery by diving into the brief pleasures they offered, though no amount of wine or women ever healed the fractures within him.
Music and laughter poured out as soon as they opened the door, and it reeked of sweat and smoke and liquor. They had to navigate through crowds of carousers, but people dancing and talking parted like a wave for Brokk, tossing him nods of recognition or smiles of appreciation. Reyker garnered a few smiles from the women, but just as many glares. Even on the other side of Iseneld, far from Dragon’s Lair, people he had never met saw his infamous warrior-mark and knew exactly who he was.
Solvei sat at a table in the far corner of the mead house, across from a man with lanky yellow hair. Reyker couldn’t see his face yet, but as they got closer, something else caught his attention. On the table between Solvei and the man was a knife.
There was nothing special about it—a beveled blade of steel and iron, a wooden handle wrapped in leather. Except he knew this knife. He had held it several times, once to his own throat. She had held it to his throat once too. And she had used it to slice her wrist, to bleed for her gods so they would purge his body of venom.
This knife had saved him. And now, for some reason, it was here in Iseneld, lying on a sticky table in a mead house, covered in smudges from a Dragonman’s fingers.
Reyker didn’t feel the black river sweep up. He was himself, and then he was that other man, drowning in rage. Reveling in it.
He blinked, and his hands were on the Dragonman, pinning him against the wall. It was a face Reyker had seen before, but it swam before him now, and he could not place it. “Little lordling,” the Dragonman singsonged. “You survived after all.”
Reyker hardly recognized his own voice. “Where did you get that knife?”
“From a sweet young witch on the Green Isle. I believe you might know her.”
The Dragonman’s grin turned bloody under Reyker’s fist. Far away, people shouted at him, just noise buried by the pound of his pulse in his ears. A meaty hand tried to pull him back, but he threw out an elbow and followed it with a kick, and the hand was gone. He roared at the Dragonman, words rushing out of him without pause, without thought. “You’re-lying-where-was-she-did-you-touch-her-I-will-kill-you! ”
The knife was in his hand, though he didn’t remember reaching for it. He pressed it to the Dragonman’s neck.
More hands grabbed at him. He was about to turn and stab them, but a chair crashed down on his head. Before he could recover, something hit his legs, sweeping them out from under him, and he was on the floor, the breath crushed from his lungs as an anvil dropped on his chest. The knife vanished.
He didn’t know how long he lay there, struggling and growling like an animal, before the fog cleared from his mind. Solvei held one of his wrists to the floor, a stranger restraining the other. Brokk was sitting on top of him, blood dripping from the giant warrior’s nose. The music had stopped, replaced by mutters from the crowd pushing in around them.
“It’s over,” Reyker said. “I’m all right now.”
“I don’t give a damn how you are.” Solvei’s hand squeezed tighter on his wrist. “You almost killed us.”
“I’m sorry. I lost myself.”
“You’ll lose your head to my sword next time.” Brokk’s body was tense, like he was waiting for Reyker to turn rabid again. “So make sure there isn’t a next time.”
They let him up slowly, everyone watching him. All he wanted was to be alone, to calm down and pull himself together without fifty sets of eyes on him. Brokk gripped his shoulder, steering him to the door. Outside, Brokk’s fingers dug in deeper.
There was the Dragonman he had beaten.
“Don’t make me hurt you, Lagorsson,” Brokk said.
“I’m fine.” He took a step toward the Dragonman. “But stay close, just in case.”
The Dragonman held a cloth against his swollen face. “Keep that mad dog away from me.”
Reyker left a few paces between them. He curled his fingers, the ache of his knuckles keeping him grounded. “I just want to ask you some questions, Andrithur.” That was the Dragonman’s name. He’d been a guard in Dragon’s Lair, fought beside Reyker in the Rocky Isles.
“I have a question for you.” Andrithur spit out a tooth. “If you love your witch so much, why did you leave her? Why did you let her think you were dead?”
“I didn’t—” He swallowed the anger with deep breaths. “When did you see her? Where?”
Andrithur told his story, and Reyker remained silent and still despite the squall building inside him.
Alive.
Somehow Lira had survived jumping from the bluffs, falling into the sea. She had made it to her brother in the Green Desert. But where had she gone from there?
If she was not dead, then she could not be a spirit. Which meant when he saw her on the glacier . . .
Reyker was already running to Vengeance, his legs moving before his mind finished sorting through the memory. Lira had been there with him, in the Mountain of Fire, and he had left her in Ildja’s jaws.