It’s only for a day or so. That’s all.
“Erik? Can you bring her down, please?”
A moment later her husband came down into the darkness beside her and laid Katja gently on the floor. There was no room for three bodies, so he went back up the steps while Freya gently closed and locked the manacles around her sister’s wrists and then tried to arrange her sleeping body more comfortably on the cold stone floor.
She brushed the hair back from Katja’s face and saw the plague warring with her sister’s flesh, wrinkling her skin and thrusting out the coarse red fur, deforming her nose into a canine snout, blackening her lips, and sharpening her teeth. Katja’s breathing was quick and shallow. Freya leaned back and looked away to wipe her eyes. And then Katja growled.
The fox-woman lurched up and wrapped her long hairy arms around Freya’s waist, shoving her down to the floor and nearly smashing her skull against the wall. Freya looked down once at the huge golden eyes in the feral head, and then she drove her elbow into the black nose, and another elbow to the eye, and another elbow to the ear, and each time Katja would snarl or whine, her eyes impossibly wide, her long black tongue flopping around her mouth, her long white fangs lunging and snapping at Freya’s bare throat.
The huntress wrapped her arms around Katja’s head, pinning that beastly mouth shut against her own chest, and she rolled violently to her right. The twisting motion pulled the chains taut and Katja yelped and let go. Freya leapt to her feet and jumped for the door over her sister’s sprawled body, but a long crooked claw snatched her leg in midair and yanked her down again.
Freya fell flat on her face with the doorway right in front of her nose. Her chest and legs were ablaze with pain, and her brain was boiling with adrenaline and naked fear. She kicked and kicked as hard as she could, smashing her heels down on anything she could strike, and she felt the hard impacts to her sister’s head jarring both of their bodies to the bone.
Katja let go again with a horrible high-pitched yelp and squeal, and Freya lunged up out of the cell and onto the stairs. She turned to grab the door handle and saw her sister’s monstrous face flying toward her out of the darkness.
Freya froze.
The chains clanged taut and the creature stumbled back into the shadows, and Freya slammed the door. She sat there on the ground a moment, the cold air shooting in and out of her sore lungs, stinging her throat. Her blood pounded in her bruised hands and chest, and tiny white spots fluttered across her vision.
She could feel Erik and the others standing over her. They might have been talking, but she couldn’t focus on them, couldn’t worry about them. She could only stare at the iron door. But after a moment, she stood up and climbed the steps, avoiding Erik’s gaze and Wren’s stare as she turned to the bearded guardsman.
“It’s done,” she said, wiping her hands on her trousers. “Now take me to Skadi.”
Halfdan led them inside past the guards into a small dirty room where dozens of heavy fur coats hung on the walls, and then into a long, smoky dining hall where countless bone stools stood or laid against the walls in small piles and three long fire pits glowed full of embers. A handful of old men sat around the last fire, huddled under their blankets, chewing on roasted seal ribs. They were wrinkled and gray men, hunched and dim-eyed, but the bare swords on their belts were bright enough and sharp enough.
At the end of the hall was a curtained doorway where Halfdan paused to say, “Wait here.” As soon as he spoke, two of the old men stood up from their seats and rested their hands on their swords. They still looked wrinkled and gray, but they stood as straight as their blades and the thick veins on their hands hinted at their strength.
“Wait for what?” Freya kept her eyes on the two older men.
“For me!” Halfdan shook his head as he pushed back the curtain. “I have to tell the queen that you’re here.”
“Can’t we just tell her ourselves?” Wren asked. “It might save time.”
Halfdan stared at her a moment. “No.” And he left.
Freya, Erik, and Wren exchanged confused looks to confirm that they all found the procedure ridiculous, and then settled into gazing dully at the two men-at-arms standing by the fire. The other men went on eating as though nothing at all had happened.
The iron door beyond the cloak room clanged and a sharp pair of boots clacked on the stone floor behind them. “What idiot brought that damn animal into the city?” The voice was high for a male, and a moment later a very young man strode into the dining hall.
Freya guessed he was just a bit older than Wren, maybe twenty winters at most, and he wore his youth proudly. His beardless cheeks were pale, his long black hair shone in the torch light, and his sealskin trousers clung to his slender legs. His short leather jacket had been dyed black and his cotton shirt was bleached bone white. His left hand rested on the silver pommel of the sword on his hip, and his knee-high boots shone with oil as he strode across the hall.
He jabbed a finger at the old guards and his voice rose with every word until he was shouting with flecks of spittle on his lips. “How hard is it to understand? You don’t let reavers into the city, you don’t let them past the walls, and you don’t put them in a cell inside the damn castle!”
Freya stepped in front of him with both hands on her knives. “That reaver is my sister.”
The youth stopped and bared his teeth in the most vicious smile she had ever seen. “Then you don’t have a sister anymore, do you?”
What? Did he kill her?
She drew both knives at once, shoving one at his throat and the other at his belly. But the youth’s long-fingered hands were faster, whipping his sword from its sheathe. He smashed her hands aside with the silver pommel and shoved the edge of blade at her neck. Freya’s eyes went wide as she saw the bright gleam of the steel vanish under her chin.
Steel clanged in her right ear, and then scraped harshly beside her head. She turned and saw Erik holding his new steel knife just above her shoulder, blocking the youth’s sword. Her husband grabbed the collar of her coat and yanked her back as he stepped forward, still holding his small knife against the long sword.
Freya glanced once at the older guards, but the two men on their feet looked bored and the four men sitting at the fire were merely watching over their shoulders as they ate.
“I don’t know your face,” the youth said. “Who the hell are you?”
Erik began to sign with his left hand.
“He’s my husband,” Freya said.
Halfdan burst through the leather curtain behind them. “Leif! Put that blade away before I use it to show you your own bowels!”
The youth called Leif shoved Erik’s knife aside and slipped his sword away. “Does the queen know about this?”
“She does now,” Halfdan said. “She wants to see them. Should I tell her that you kept her waiting?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Leif said so softly it was almost a whisper. “Let’s all go see Her Highness together.”
Chapter 8. Queen
Halfdan held back the curtain and Leif strode through first. Freya exchanged a quick nod with Erik and they followed the youth into the next room with Wren and Halfdan close behind them. They emerged from the curtains into an audience chamber half the size of the dining hall behind them. Heavy iron bars filled the windows like rusting teeth, and the cold night air swirled in with the smells of the sea. Two huge iron braziers glowed full of red coals against the walls, forcing everyone who entered to stand between the fiery blasts when they approached the throne. And as much as she knew that she should be looking at the woman on that throne, Freya couldn’t help staring at the chair itself.
It was made of wood. The legs, the seat, the arms, the back, and each little carved bird and flower and crest and bear was pure, veined, grainy, stained wood. It was brown and red and black, polished and gleaming like bright steel and yet warm and vital like Katja’s eyes.