Page 77 of The Sun He Buried

“The lower barracks have beds,” I say. “Eat, sleep, and leave after breakfast. I won’t have you freeze to death before you disappoint him.”

“Thank you, my Dróttin.”

“Thank the cook. I’ve contributed a door.”

He bows and leaves with Varrik’s seal unbroken.

Thora waits in the passage. She steps around him and shuts the study door behind her.

She’s wearing the green dress tonight, the one with the narrow sleeves. Her hair’s been pinned twice. She takes the chair beneath the west lamp without asking. It’s been hers often enough.

“You’ve started without me,” she says.

I fill the cup again.

“I saw Dróttin Baldr arrive.” Her gaze moves over the desk, the fire, the closed inner door. “The pale woman with him is human.”

“A triumph of observation.” I drink. Half the cup, in no hurry.

“She looked welcome.”

I turn the cup once against the desk.

“She held his arm,” Thora says. “Will she stay?”

“He can spare one.”

“He brought her openly.”

“You’ve mistaken me for my brother’s calendar.”

Thora smiles. She leans one elbow on the desk and pulls off one glove, finger by finger.

“Tomas asked for his mother again today.” The glove stops in her lap. “Nearly a season gone, and he still forgets.”

I rock the cup on its base, tilting it until the ale climbs the rim, then back before it spills. Then again.

“He calls me Mother when he’s half asleep now.” She works the second glove loose. “My sister would’ve laughed.”

Her bare hand rests on the desk, palm up. I set two fingers against it. She closes her hand around them.

“Take it,” she says.

I do.

Grief comes cold through her skin. It climbs my wrist, clean and deep, and packs the room in grey wool.

It sinks in and holds. The ale doesn’t keep me alive. The tray going cold by the fire doesn’t either—those are habits, the way a drink is a drink. This is what does. I run empty like anything that lives, and I fill on what people feel, taken straight off the skin, whatever they’ve got to give.

Tonight it’s grief—cold, salt, a taste like old coin at the back of the throat. It all carries a flavor; some feeders chase the sweet ones, some would rather have grief and the heavy things. I stopped telling them apart a long time ago. I take what the body needs, she’ll walk out lighter, and I carry the grey for it. Nothing I’d cross a room for.

Thora’s breath catches. She keeps hold of me.

Tomas’s unanswered calls run through it. Thora’s mouth opens on the ache, and I draw until its edge stops cutting her.

Her shoulders lower. She takes one full breath, then another. Her thumb moves across my knuckles.

“The money kept our room another month,” she says. “Tomas sleeps better there.”