“Ghosts, no doubt.” Skadi smiled. “We’ve lost so many people over the last five years that the city is almost overrun with the restless dead these days. There’s a new story almost every morning of some distant relative wandering in on the aether mist to tell of the reavers, mostly. How the reavers tore down their home, murdered their families, and killed them. Horrible stories.”
Wren nodded. She felt hot and nearly shrugged off her blanket, but the cloth was rubbing on her injured hand and she could feel it pushing back and forth on the long hairs on her skin.
I probably only have a few hours left before someone sees my hand, or some other change, and then they’ll know the truth.
Then they’ll kill me.
So what’s the worst they can really do to me now?
“Last night I went looking for the sound I heard and I found a woman down in your cellar, a woman with dark skin and a strange accent,” Wren said a little too loudly and a little too quickly. She felt dizzy. “She’s as thin as a spear, and as mad as old Gudrun. She kept saying the word Morayo, but I don’t think that’s her name. Who is she?”
Skadi’s eyes narrowed a bit, but there was no surprise or anger in her expression. She said, “Wren, you told me that you saw the remains of the skyship in Hengavik. Yes?”
Wren nodded.
“The woman you found in the cellar was the pilot of the skyship. Her name is Riuza Ngozi, and she comes from a land far to the south.”
“The pilot? But I thought you said the pilot helped you to build your drill on Mount Esja. I thought she was your friend.”
“I thought so as well,” said Skadi. “But after the disaster that took the life of the king and released this plague, I learned that this pilot, Riuza, had sabotaged the drill. She never wanted the project to succeed. So she made sure the drill would never work for more than a few days at a time before needing repairs. And whenever she made those repairs, she threw out the broken parts.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong was that she was breaking the drill just so she could steal the old parts. After she repaired the drill, she would take the parts to a cave at the edge of the bay where she was building a metal ship so she could escape Ysland and go back home.”
Wren shrugged. “So she wanted to go home. I can’t say I admire her methods, but I understand her reason. And this pilot sounds like a clever woman. So she must have had a very good reason for going to all that trouble to build her ship in secret. She must have had a reason why she didn’t just ask for your help. Or did she? Did she ask for your help?”
Skadi wet her lips. “These foreigners are untrustworthy people. From the stories she told us, their countries are full of liars and assassins, thieves and murderers. My impression was that half of their people are so stupid or lazy that they cannot support themselves, so they labor for others, and the other half of their people are so corrupt and dishonorable that they have to build entire castles just to lock away the criminals.”
Wren’s gaze drifted to the floor as she frowned and shook her head.
That’s insane. How can any country survive when half the people are slaves and the other half are criminals?
“Shocking, I know,” Skadi said. “But true, nonetheless. They are not trusting or trustworthy people. Hence, Riuza’s crime and her punishment. What else could I do? Allow her to go back to her people, her wicked people, and let them return here with more skyships and killing machines to invade our country? I couldn’t allow that. I am queen here, and the safety of Ysland is my responsibility. I had to protect my people. You understand that, don’t you?”
Wren nodded sullenly.
“Good.” Skadi looked at the others. “And now, I’m afraid, we all have a great deal of work ahead of us. Thora, please see to our plague-stricken sister in the south cell. Wren, you are welcome to stay here in Rekavik as long as you wish. If there is somewhere else you’d like to go, you’ll be well-provisioned, of course. And Leif, please remain here a moment. I want to take a look at that arm again.”
Thora left the room with a glare, and Wren stood up slowly, wondering if she ought to go with her and see that Freya’s sister died comfortably.
It’s the least I can do for her. For all of them.
As she stepped through the curtain into the audience chamber, Wren glanced back, thinking she might ask just one more question about the woman in the cellar. But through the gap in the curtain, she saw the beautiful young Leif approach the queen’s bed and strip off his shirt to reveal his milk white flesh and the scarred stump of his arm. Skadi shifted forward to the edge of her bed and reached up, and undid his belt, and pulled down his trousers.
The queen was smiling.
Wren jerked back from the curtain and turned, nearly running into the tall figure of Thora in the next room.
“All I have is mezerea,” she said.
Wren blinked. “What?”
“The only poison I have is mezerea.” Thora pressed her lips together tightly, her eyes shadowed and bloodshot. “It’s been five years since I could just walk outside to gather herbs. I’ve been using up my stores since then, and we’ve been experimenting with poisoned spears and traps on the reavers. So now, all I have left is some mezerea. Is that all right?”
Wren blinked again. “Oh. All right. As long as it’s enough. Mezerea makes people choke. I don’t know how it will work on a reaver.”
“I have enough.” Thora walked away. “Do you want to watch or not?”
No.
“Yeah. Yes. I do.” Wren followed.
“Well, it’s going to take me an hour or so to bake it into a pellet big enough to kill a reaver. I assume you want this to work the first time. There’s no need for her to suffer any more than necessary.”
“No, you’re right, thank you,” Wren said. “You know, I barely saw her face before she changed. Never spoke a word to her. But she was a vala, just like us. She deserves whatever kindness we can give her.”
“Kindness?” Thora frowned over her shoulder. “Haven’t you heard, Wren? It’s the end of the world. We’ve lost everything already, and we’re all going to die horrible, painful deaths here, very soon. There’s no place for kindness here. There hasn’t been for a very long time.”
Wren heard the waver, the soft choking in the tall girl’s voice. But when she put her hand on the apprentice’s shoulder, Thora pulled away and refused to look at her. And as Wren followed her to the herb room, she saw the girl’s shoulders shaking in silent grief.
Chapter 19. Answers
Freya and Omar paused on the southern slope of Mount Esja. She gazed across the southern hills and plains, looking for the ribbon of water, searching for the water mill, praying that she might actually see her Erik standing on some distant hilltop waving his spear at her. But she didn’t see anything except shuddering waves of dead grass poking up through the fresh white snow.
“There’s no point in going back to the city, is there, fair lady?” he asked. “Your sister is already a reaver, and your husband will be one soon, and we don’t have a cure for them.” Omar held up the rinegold ring. “There’s no reason to take this back to Skadi. It’s as worthless as she is.”
Freya turned to look up the slope of the mountain at the black outline of Ivar’s Drill. “I can think of two very good reasons to take it back. Maybe we can’t do anything for Katja or Erik. We certainly can’t do anything for Ivar, or any of the other plague victims. But we can still help the people living in Rekavik, and everyone else in Ysland.”
“How?”
“By removing the woman who started all of this.” Freya took the ring. “When she gets this ring and finds there is no cure locked away in the old valas’ ghosts, what do you think she’ll do?”
Omar frowned. “She’ll do anything to stay on that throne of hers. She’ll make up some story about how the valas in the Rekavik ring are defying her. And then, maybe after a few weeks or months, she will claim to learn of a possible cure, but one so hard to make that it will take years of work, or maybe some rare artifact or plant that no one will ever find. And sooner or later, everyone will stop expecting her to find any cure at all.”