Bloodtide

time. It was just sense to make peace while you still had something to hang on to. The question was, was it true peace or just a way of buying time? Yeah, there was a lot of debate about whether it was safe to go or not but no debate at all about whether or not to go. Promises had been made. The new policy had to be carried through. If we didn't go, everyone would know there was no trust and, no trust, no peace. So we went. We made sure, of course, that we were armed to the teeth – the best men, the best weapons, the best cars. But as Had said, if you have to make a treaty visit into a war party, you ain't got no treaty.

As for me, I was planning on doing my best to be out of the way when the visit came, well out of the way. Like Antarctica or something. But in the end I wasn't so sure any more. Signy for one thing. Do you know, she really was in love? And I mean, Signy's idealistic and silly as half a pound of bacon sometimes, but even she couldn't be that wrong. When she first went she was so pissed off with me she wouldn't even reply to my letters, but over the summer she warmed up a bit. She even began to see my point of view about the knife.

She was sounding a bit more realistic about the whole thing, but not half realistic enough. It was like she'd been completely pie-eyed about Conor to start with but since then she'd seen through him somewhat. I thought, yeah… somewhat. She wrote pages about him to me, and I have to say, he sounded like a seriously damaged case to me. But, maybe his heart was in the right place. Signy certainly thought so. Maybe it really was his father who'd been the bastard; maybe Conor really did want things to change. Signy was going on about the old guard, and how she and Conor were fighting them, and how great it'd be for us to get together again. Well, it was difficult. I didn't trust him but… I just wanted to see her so bad!

And the other thing – this is kind of weird – there was that knife. I didn't believe in the gods then, and I'm not sure that I do now. Most likely the dead man and his knife were out of Ragnor or one of the other cities out there. But how come I feel the way I do? That's the difficult thing. I don't really think men, no matter how clever they are, can manufacture the way I feel just by giving me a knife. And I feel good. In fact, I feel marvellous. Don't ask me how or why, but I just know I'm going to be around for a long to come… a long time to come. And that makes me think that I can visit Conor and come away in one piece.

Crazy? OK, crazy. And you know what I think about the gods – never trust someone who's gonna live forever, they don't have enough to lose. Even so, Siggy's on a roll, and Conor ain't gonna stop me now.

25

Signy

We spent weeks preparing for the visit. Me and Conor planned it all – everything. No expense spared, no trouble too much. I told him how much care and money went into funding his visit and he wanted ours to be every bit as good. We even stopped planning the schools and hospitals and all the rest of it. Oh, I know it's easy to say we were spending money on ourselves while people were going hungry and the sick weren't being treated, but that's not the point.

We were building trust. We were making a new world. That's a hard thing to do. I knew what it'd be like for Val and my brothers. They'd be suspicious. They'd be afraid. They'd hope it was all going to work out, but they wouldn't know, not for sure. They'd drive in and the crowds would be cheering and yelling and everything'd be great, and they still wouldn't know that there wasn't going to be an ambush. They'd sit down to eat this gorgeous meal, but they couldn't know for sure that the food wasn't poisoned. It'd be just the same for them as it had been for Conor and his people. Not until they were on their way home and back in their own territory would they know they were safe and that the whole big gamble had paid off.

I know they have so many doubts, but they'll see. It takes an act of faith to make trust where there's been only murder and war before. The people have done it; Conor has done it. I know that my father and my brothers will do it too.

I know Conor better now. I know he's not superman. I know he can be weak, I know he's scared. I know he finds trust hard. But he did it! That's the amazing thing, that's what I say to him when he starts doubting – he did it! He came to my father's lands. And if he can trust, so can all his people. Even the old guard, even the security. When they see Val on their own land, maybe even they'll come over to the new way.

My father and my man. The new way.

Conor is terrified – terrified! It's hard to imagine; I keep suddenly realising, this man is so scared! Every bone in his body is telling him that what he is doing is wrong. Everything he'd ever been taught, everything he knew, it was all telling him that what he was doing was wrong. But still he went ahead with it – for the love of me, I sometimes think. But that's not to do him credit. I make too much of myself sometimes. I know he tried to make this peace work before he even met me.

That's what makes him a great man. His vision is bigger than he is, just like my father. But what Conor is doing is even harder, because he can't do it by being himself; he has to reinvent himself as a better man than he really is.

Half the Estate of course are hating every second of it Conor told me about all the arguments in meetings, how they are trying to stop it at every turn. They know that if Val comes here and goes away safe, nothing will ever be the same again. But it's too late. They'll see. Everything's set and there's nothing anyone can do to stop it.

26

He came to her on that last night. It would be safe to say that Conor was as alone then as anyone ever was. He was so tense he was weeping with anxiety. Signy by contrast was full of excitement. She couldn't understand what made him so fearful, but she'd seen him like this before on big occasions. She did her best to make it all right. She held him close. Later she tried to make love to him, but he couldn't do it.

'Soft as a little mouse tonight,' she teased. Conor lay trembling in her arms. His heart was in a vice of ice.

'Will it go off properly? Will it work?' he asked her, and he smiled in a way that terrified her. But Signy was touched once again by what she saw as this grim man's weakness, his vulnerability. She kissed him and held him tight and reassured him that everything would work out.

For Signy had no idea of the scale of the deception. She believed in her father's vision and she believed in Conor's heart. How could the one be so wrong, and the other so treacherous? She believed she was turning war into friendship with the strength of her love. It was quite beyond her to imagine that she was just a maggot on a hook to catch a fat old fish.

Long after she had fallen asleep, Conor lay and stared up at the ceiling, holding her gently, but unable to shed a single tear. He had set himself on a course and was unable to turn away from it, even for love. All his life he had been able to hold his feelings deep inside himself, like tiny fish frozen in the icy tightness of his heart. He had learned to do this long, long ago, when as a child he had dared show no weakness to his father, and now it served him beautifully and horribly in his deception of Signy. So deeply and tightly had he frozen his feelings, he had no idea what they were.

He didn't know it, but Conor was breaking his own heart first of all. And where would he ever find the wealth and the power to put that back together again?

27

Siggy

The crowds! It felt like the whole world had come to see us off -beggar girls, shop men, street kids, bigwigs, merchants, local councillors, smugglers, thieves. Everyone. Big and little, all waving and cheering, because even though they may have had everything or nothing, they all had King Val; and here he was. The king bit was a sort of