“No,” Jorn said.“But I caution you from appearing to be so.He is always looking for the next strike coming his way, for the next lie told to his face.He cannot be out-clevered.Again and again, the stars tell me.The stones tell me.When I read cards—which I do not do much anymore—they tell me.Arik is among the wisest of men.He seeks the truths avoided by others.”
I agreed with Jorn then, and I agree with him now.King Arik was one of the wisest people I’d ever met.
Likely not a perspective you were expecting.
You probably know him by his name in the annals:Arik the Foolish.
I’ve told you already, the annals get many things wrong.Arik was anything but foolish.
Twenty-Four
Jorn’s warning on Fell’s second evening back had left me a little unnerved, but what happened next in the hall gutted me entirely.
Catseye—the woman I’d thought was stealing from me when I was in my fever, the woman Fell had brought me to before anyone else while I was in delirium—came to the hall.She was beautiful, as I’ve said, and she loudly reprimanded Fell for letting his fights as my Norser build up, earning laughter from several Norsern.But then, she seemed quite done with her anger.
She sat with Fell nearly in her lap and shaved the sides of his head, which had grown out some since he’d left the palace.She untied the part of his hair that was long, combed it, washed it, and then braided it.
He leaned into her body in a way… I could have cried.
Instead, I went to bed early and listened to the wind outside my chamber window, the lapping of water against the palace, ice chunks scraping rhythmically against each other.There was something soothing in theslurp-rushof it.The constancy.
I must go home soon, I told myself.I will ask the king in the morning if now that I’ve read, I can go home.There were too many kinds of pains in the world.I’d been protected from so many of them back on the Isle.I decided I hated living in the north.I am not made for this kind of ache.
And then, just as I made peace with my thoughts and began to feel sleepy, I heard humming in the hall outside my door.
Surely not.
But I knew it was.
He knocked on my door, just once and softly, and I thought of not answering as a punishment.For whom?Perhaps for him, perhaps for me.I just knew that someone should pay something.I ignored the thought and answered, owl-faced by choice, which I think is a more severe owl-face.I didn’t even speak.I just stood there, waiting for him to explain himself.
He laughed, one short burst of joy.“I had been meaning to catch you before you went to sleep.”
Still, I said nothing.
He squirmed ever-so-slightly, and then the audacious manbit his lip, his eyes wandering while he thought, as if I wasn’t standing right in front of him, ready to be destroyed by such a sight.
My face burned and I became terrified he could sense my overwhelm so I averted my gaze.It was too late—the image was seared into my mind.
Why?I begged myself.
Why what?Why would something so small feel so significant?Why did he look as he looked?Why did I feel as I did in his presence?It was a form of torture I was entirely unfamiliar with.
He looked back at me, and I likely appeared ill, because I felt I was.
He grinned.
And then I realized that he’d said something, only I hadn’t been paying attention because… well, I was unbalanced by the entirety of my situation.
“No understand,” I said quickly.
“You do not understand my words or… why I would say them?”
“Uhh…” I was losing the ability to speak in his presence.“Say words… yours again, slowly.”I winced internally at how backwards my phrase had been.
“I will go to a place in the forest—there is a spring that might be medicine for me—for my shoulder, this makes sense, yes?Would you prefer to come with me or stay here?I thought you might miss land.I am only asking, not telling.I do not believe in orderingsoternone way or another.”
He was inviting me somewhere.
