Page 190 of The Sun He Buried

“I know where it’s going.”

“Do you?”

The lyre player reaches the high part.

Nope. Not at all.

Three people near the hearth cover their ears. One laughs into his cup. The grey-eyed woman takes my horn, drinks from it, and gives it back.

“Better,” she says.

“I didn’t change anything.”

“You didn’t.”

I sing louder.

Food doesn’t sustain the Skorvær, but that has never stopped them from enjoying it with great commitment. Plates move around the fire in a steady circle. Smoked pork, black bread, little onions cooked in honey, hard cheese, seed cakes, and all kinds of preserved fruit have all passed through my hands. One of the fruits is not food. I’m almost sure of it.

The mead helps.

Myrkviðr usually keeps itself quiet. Tonight the storm has closed every road, shut half the settlement beneath one roof, and given everyone permission to stop pretending they’d rather be home.

People keep finding reasons to sit beside me. One asks where I learned the old language. Another brings me the honey onions after I praise them once. A mine guard wants the Gullither ending to the song, and more lean close enough to hear when I tell him our king keeps both feet and loses a hand instead. Whenever one person leaves, two fill the space.

I’ve never been this popular while singing this badly.

This is home.

That thought arrives with my horn halfway to my mouth. I take a long drink instead.

Across the fire, Baldr sits with two men from the roof crew. His clean shirt has been rolled to the elbows. One man is telling a story with both hands and a piece of bread. Baldr laughs in the right places.

He hasn’t looked at me for several minutes. He’s looked at me many times tonight. But he simply looks away before I can smile at him.

Our argument has survived a full day, two attempted conversations, and Snowpetal carrying one of his stockings into the dining room during breakfast. The stocking didn’t improve anything.

I lift my horn and Baldr looks over. I smile. His face warms, but the smile he gives me stays small, and then the man with the bread catches his attention again.

I drink.

His breath returns beside my ear.

Sól.

One hand near my waist. One near my elbow. Neither touching. Then his voice changes.

A child.

Pathetic.

I swallow enough mead to make the memory slide back down.

The song ends and everyone cheers. Snowpetal shoots from beneath a bench with half a sausage in her mouth, and the man on the bench lifts both feet.

“Snowpetal.”

She runs under the next table. Three Skorvær move away from it.