I’d intended to spend the day playing music in my chamber, but then, without any planning from King Arik or myself, a guard of sorts presented himself at my door early morning.
I opened the door to find Fell, smiling that awful smile of his.“There will be many sights today,” he said.“It is a good time to be a guest in Aalt.”
I stood there looking at him, bewildered by him.
“You would come with me and some friends?Dania will meet us, too.”
Of course I would.I’d already forgotten everything I knew, including King Arik’s warning, simply because Fell looked as he looked, felt as he felt.
I followed that beautiful man right out of the southernmost doors of the floating palace, my cheeks warm because the guards saw us leaving together.Because our shoulders were not so far from one another.
All the ice and snow had melted, leaving the world damp.Birds sang their songs of spring, and the docks were filled despite the early hour.I’d come to realize that at least a third of any group of Norsern were hungover on a given morning, so the full size of a group could never be ascertained until after midday at least.On the day of the eclipse that was true as well, but it didn’tfeeltrue as so many people were out.The breeze was fresh and damp, smelling like sea and cedar smoke, carrying four or five different tunes from different directions.
“They will all end up playing the same song later,” Fell promised.“There are eclipse parties in your country?”
I pressed my lips together.There were, but the Norsern idea of a party and the Islish idea of it were very different.
“We do not eat or drink,” I said.“All is silent.Even babies…” My ears caught on a cart full of wind chimes for sale, each singing its own little song of delicate notes.“But it is all building for when the eclipse passes.There are sweets and drinks and music.There is water-dancing, which I’m realizing now is hard to explain…” Again, my attention was pulled away.The most colourful bird I had ever seen was sitting on a man’s shoulder.The man winked at me.
“Normally, I charge a copper to hold him,” the man said, nodding to the bird.“But for you, I would charge a kiss.”
I froze, entirely unsure how to respond to such brazenness.
Fell smiled at the man, setting his hand near my back—not on my back—but close enough that I could feel the heat of him, close enough that I seemed spoken for.
I recalled floating in Odae with him.His fingers…
“Here the eclipse party is a message,” Fell said as we kept walking.“The gods must know that we love being alive, that we want our sun back once the moon has had her way with him.We try to be loud enough that they will not forget us.”
I looked up at him even though we were still walking along the packed docks and it was probably best for me to pay attention to where I was going.“What?”
His eyes were shiny with mirth.“The sun and moon will have sex today.No one has told you this?”
I wanted to keep looking at him because he was beautiful and his face was full of teasing, but I had to look away.I couldn’t hold eye contact with him after hearing the wordsex.
Speartooth, Loudlaugher, and Catseye (who by then I knew were named Sigyn, Daal, and Inga) were waiting for us at a spring that trickled down the rocks just as the endless docks of Aalt met with the red sand of actual earth.Norsern passing by would stop to drink straight from the rocks before carrying on, not bothered in the least that so many other people had set their lips against the same place.
“Ah!Thirsty Bastard and Lightning Wielder!Nice of you to join us.”
I’d given up asking them not to call me that, realizing the name had only stuck as long as it had because I’d been resisting it, and Norsern love teasing each other.
“We were just placing wagers.”
“Inga is going to invite a new child to life this day.”
“I think she will choose a life-thrower with dark hair.Sigyn thinks blond.”
“Ithink I will choose no one,” Inga said.
The men were drunk already, and Inga was some type of intoxicated that didn’t seem to come from drink, her lids painted a deep charcoal colour that made her eyes glow all the more.“They have been teasing me endlessly,” she said, her eyes on Fell.
I hated her, hated the conversation the pair of them were having with their gazes alone.
“For you, Lightning Wielder,” Daal offered up his own mead, and I took it.I’ll need six of these if Catseye and Fell are going to be looking at each other like this all day, I thought, taking a big, long drink.
“Ah!”Fell raised his brows, revealing his surprise at how much mead I’d taken.
“It is a Norsern party, no?”I said, relishing in his attention.
