Freya heard footsteps from above. She turned and looked up, then rose to her feet and walked away to get a better view, but she could still only see one person descending—bounding down the stairs with the kind of urgency that made Freya wonder bitterly if this woman thought there was still a chance that she could help her friend.
“I think that’s Lofn,” Erna said.
“So where are the others?” Gro asked.
Freya almost replied, Taking their time and using the ropes, because they’ve finally learned their lesson. But she had to get her anger under control; it was no more helpful now than Lofn’s haste.
Lofn slowed as she approached the ground, but Freya waited for her to step onto the ice before speaking.
“You must be in shock,” she said. “You understand that Sonja’s dead?”
“Yes.” Lofn couldn’t look her in the eye.
“Is anyone else hurt?” Freya asked, as gently as she could.
“I don’t think so. They’re coming down the other way.” Lofn gestured to the north, toward another of the tripod’s legs.
Freya was surprised. “You weren’t all together up there?”
“Two of us were, at the start,” Lofn replied, staring at the ground. “Then we started crossing over.”
“Crossing over?” Freya’s puzzlement didn’t last long: there was really only one thing the words could mean. “And that’s how Sonja fell? Crossing over?”
“Yes.”
Freya stepped forward and embraced Lofn, as much to control herself as to try to comfort the woman. Screaming questions at her while she was standing in the wind, shivering with grief, would be unspeakably cruel.
Juliet and Gersemi approached. Gro walked over and met them, speaking with them quietly. Juliet started sobbing.
Freya was tired. “Let’s get out of the wind,” she said.
In the evening, the whole crew assembled in the dining tent to remember Sonja. Freya hadn’t known her well, but she clutched at every anecdote and every kind word, trying to prepare herself to meet the woman’s mother. She helped her friend Carla through her illness. She found a way to make the worst of the vegetables the farmers sent us almost palatable. Freya wasn’t going to traipse into the woman’s village, pushing the corpse ahead of her on a cart, only to blather on about Sonja’s noble sacrifice that had brought them all closer to Tvíburi.
She waited until the morning to take Sonja’s three colleagues aside. She sat them down in the planning tent, with a pile of work logs by her side.
“How long has this been happening?” she asked.
“About thirty days,” Gersemi replied.
“So talk me through it. You throw ropes…?”
“Yes,” Gersemi confirmed. “One person goes to the top of each leg of the tripod, and we throw ropes between the platforms to join them all up. Once they’re secured, we can cross over.”
“Along the ropes. Hand over hand?”
“Yes.”
Freya said, “How could you imagine for a moment that that would be safe?”
Lofn said, “You want us to spend our whole lives reaching for Tvíburi—and at the same time, you want us to be so timid that we can’t even cross fifty strides on a rope?”
Freya understood what she was saying, but the answer still didn’t satisfy her. “There are risks that we won’t be able to avoid. But this wasn’t one of them. You should save your courage for the times when it’s needed.”
“And you should do the same with your rules,” Gersemi replied.
Freya was stung. “Are you saying this is my fault? For asking you to protect yourselves on the stairs?”
“No.” Gersemi was abashed, but she added, “No one’s happy wasting their time on the stairs—and the safety ropes made that seem even more foolish. But I’m not making excuses for what happened to Sonja. If we wanted this, we should have done it openly. We rushed things, we cut corners, to keep the supervisors from finding out. That was our fault, and no one else’s.”
Freya sent them away and went to prepare the body. She bandaged the broken limbs as best she could, trying to bind them into some semblance of the natural shape that the woman’s shattered bones were no longer able to impose.
As she wound the fabric around Sonja’s leg, her forearm brushed against the dead woman’s abdomen, and she felt it twitch. She dropped the bandage and stepped away, wondering if she should run and fetch the medic. But that was insane; Hanna would never have stopped treating Sonja if there’d been any chance that she was still alive.
Freya approached the body and spread her hand over the place she’d inadvertently touched. The flesh was cold and yielding; even a person who’d lost consciousness and gone days without breathing would not be like this. But after a moment, she felt the movement again. The muscles of the abdomen itself weren’t contracting; rather, something was pushing against them. Sonja had not survived, but one of her brothers was clinging to life.
“Hanna!” Freya shouted. She wasn’t sure where her friend was, but she was usually close to the tent. “Hanna!”
Hanna came running, then stopped, confused. “What is it?”
Freya explained. “That’s impossible,” Hanna declared. “I palpated and listened, five or six times.” But she walked up to the body, and Freya stepped aside.
Hanna dug her fingers into Sonja’s belly, and Freya saw her start in surprise. “I don’t know how I missed it. Do you know anyone who could…?”
“I’ll do it,” Freya replied. One of her brothers had died a while ago, and the remaining pair had grown docile with age. They were sure to resent the newcomer, but they wouldn’t have the strength to kill him.
“Are you sure?”
The only thing Freya was sure of was that she owed this to the family. She said, “We don’t have time to look for someone else.”
Hanna fetched a scalpel. Freya couldn’t watch; she sat on one of the beds, facing away, trying not to interpret the sounds she was hearing.
After a while, Hanna said, “I’m sorry. He was too badly injured.”
Freya was numb. “I can’t take her back to the village like that.”
“I know. I’ll stitch her up.”
Freya cradled her head in her hands and listened to Hanna moving around the tent, fetching what she’d need.
Hanna said, “Did you know she was using a pessary?”
“No.”
“That’s why I missed the signs: there weren’t any.”
“Well, no one wants to have children out here.” The herbs were meant to render a woman’s brothers quieter, but Freya had never felt the need to take such intrusive measures herself. She was about to ask why the pessary had suddenly stopped working and let the surviving brother wake, but then decided that she really didn’t want to hear a detailed account of post mortem changes in the womb.
“She didn’t get it from me,” Hanna said. “And it looks stronger than anything I would have supplied. A dose that high risks losing your chance to have nieces.”
“Why would anyone do that?” Freya turned to face her; thankfully, Hanna’s task was almost finished.
“When your brothers fall into the deepest sleep,” Hanna explained, “it’s easier to do certain things. Working at heights, for example.”
Freya was confused. “Why? You mean some women lose their balance if there’s a brawl?”
Hanna laughed curtly. “Not that I’ve heard. It’s subtler than that. You know they share our blood supply? Just as an unborn child does.”