It was late autumn, nearly winter, so the flowers had already faded and gone to seed, producing wispy tufts of white.Nevertheless, I picked some and scraped away their thorns with my thumbnail as we walked back to the palace.I used the king’s keys to access his storerooms, taking a small portion of scrap linen and yarn.I wove the thistle’s stem in on itself and wrapped it in linen, binding my creation with yarn.
Then I sought out Broder.The man wasn’t hard to find—he’d stayed in the same place he’d been since the funeral songs began, staring into the flames of one of the palace’s central hearths, grief bending his shoulders like a yoke.
I had none of the words I needed to explain myself to him, so I didn’t try.I approached the man who’d killed his father slowly, taking enough time to ensure that he saw me coming.I figured it was unsafe to startle someone capable of killing his own kin.All the same, I couldn’t imagine the woe of living in a world where slaying a family member might be required of me.
I ignored all propriety and set my work around his neck, tying the yarn so the thistle would rest atop his heart.He smelled of sweat and mead and smoke.His eyes met mine, and I saw his pain.The endless sea of it.
My offering was an ancient practise on the Isle, nearly lost but for mention in a few songs.To lay thistle on someone’s heart was unspoken of by my order, but certainly if it were mentioned, it would be called a crime.Since it wasn’t mentioned apart from in the songs, I didn’t consider truly what I was doing.The songs said thistle could pull.I gave it to Broder thinking it would pull sorrow from his heart.Not all of it, of course; nothing cures grief entirely.
“Thank you,Soten.”
He rested his hand atop the gift, and I thought that important, that the heat of his skin would speed things up some.
Yes.I have admitted it here in ink with my own hand.My first act of sorcery, drawn from an old ballad and a misunderstanding of how power moves through the world.I did not think twice on it.Death has that influence, I suppose.The ability to stir and awaken what lies dormant.
Nineteen
There were a great many things that could have granted me reckless abandon in that wild palace.Yes, I had tasted things, shared secrets, averted my eyes a little more slowly than was appropriate when a Norsern ran past me partially clothed.But I had not given myself over to anything.I was simply myself as I’d always known me, living abroad due to unfortunate circumstances.But when I had found a place for Loric’s gold in one of many identical storerooms that I was certain would go entirely unnoticed, I found myself without much to do.I took my lessons and curtailed my frustration at the idea that every word should end differently depending on whether it waswetordry.I played my lyre in my chamber for a decadent amount of time.I enjoyed sweet treats.Arik prompted me a little to return to the reader, but with a teasing ease.When I asked why he seemed so happy that I refused Jorn, the king said Fell could handle a tussle or two.Did I feel guilt when he said this?
No.I felt nothing.I couldn’t entertain a single thought of Fell.
It wasn’t that Ichosenot to think of him.I was not able.
We were struck by lightning together—stop.That was how my thoughts of Fell went—hints of an idea ending before it reached its conclusion.
It was the music that got to me first, that changed what went on beneath my skin.The drums in the north were wild yet steady, free and contained.I felt the urge to tap my toes each night in the hall as I ate.I sipped mead—for the warmth, I told myself—and watched the feral dances.Islish dance is a magical thing, each step part of a greater pattern.The more people dancing, the more expansive the pattern.But Norsern dance was mindless, eyeless—bodies moving as they felt.Shoulders.Hips.Arms swinging and flowing.
Listening to the music and watching courtiers dance resulted in a sense taking over me that I can only explain as staring out a window.It became clear that there was a world beyond the limits imposed upon me.A world of feeling and moving.I did not, with the front of my mind, wish for this world, but I watched it carefully.I knew I was left out of it.People pranced.They ran jovially.They struck one another when angry.They rolled around on the ground trying to slam fists into each other’s faces.They threw things and laughed and laughed and laughed.
I watched.
They ripped their clothes off and shrieked as they ran toward the sea.
I watched.
They flirted.
I watched.
If you were to say to a being, “There is something like a meal that you have not had before, but you have been hungry for it your whole life.”And then you were to show that being a host of people having what it is they hunger for and let them know they could never have it, you would expect them to go mad, wouldn’t you?I did not go mad.I went quiet and still and empty.The idea of expression—of taking what was within and pressing it out into the world, marking the world with its colour—it was a foreign thing to me.And, maybe for a time, I grieved as I watched everyone around me do it: taint the world with their hidden insides.Their anger and joy and eagerness leaving an impression of them in the lives of all nearby.
I became aware that the halls back home would not feel so different now that I was gone.Dayne would miss me, but the sound of the halls would be the same.The feeling when a person walked into them would be the same.How cold it was to realize I had touched so little of my life that there would be no residue of me left in it.
“Why are you always so glum?”Dania said, flopping into a chair beside me during one of my melancholies.It was perhaps two moons since I’d arrived in the north.Her skin was flushed from dancing near the brazier, damp from the exertion of it.
Because I’m trapped in my life, I thought.
“Truly, I demand an answer.”
I sighed.“I am the odd one out here.”
“You are not.I’m Islish.Kaevn over there with the dark hair is Islish.Jorn is a foreigner too.Some people are dancing, some are sitting like you?—”
“No, I’m… I would never be able to be… how people here are being.”
“Says who?”
I looked at her with an expression that said,don’t be foolish now.
