Page 40 of The Sun He Buried

“It was a very bad week for me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“I’m a little sorry.”

“Thank you.”

He watches the recruits. One of the older girls has found the missing arrow tucked behind the target.

“I couldn’t change our parents,” he continues. “By the time I had enough standing to push back, Eirik didn’t need their teachers. He’d found his own.”

“Did he forgive them?”

“No.”

“Did he forgive you?”

Baldr rolls the cup between his palms. “He knows I tried.”

That isn’t an answer.

It’s the only one he gives me.

Now I’m picturing two boys with the same face in the same house. One got the teachers. The other learned wherever he could.

“So you teach all of them.”

“I make sure they all get the same start.” Baldr nods toward the recruits. “What they become after that belongs to them.”

Runa drops the rock on her own foot.

She yelps.

Baldr is across the yard before it stops rolling.

He crouches, checks her toes, and makes her wiggle all of them. The rock is small. Her boot is thick. She survives.

I stay on the wall with his shirt beneath my hands.

Eirik wanted everything they told him he couldn’t have.

Myrkviðr is three days down the road. I’m going into Eirik’s hall carrying twelve ribbons and a stuffed unicorn in my pocket.

This should go well.

The drill starts again.

Baldr makes them shoot in pairs. He turns it into a game, and the game becomes a competition within seconds. Arrows strike straw, wood, dirt, and once the side of another arrow.

I want a turn more with every round.

When Runa hits the outer ring again, she runs to me first.

“Did you see?”

“Every bit.”