soul.”
She tilted her head to look at him. “Really?”
“Oh yes.” He nodded. “My soul is already bound to the sun-steel, the rinegold, around my neck. That relationship is governed by the metal, it keeps me changeless, and thus immortal. So by giving all of you a bit of my soul, a small part of that relationship is passed on to you. It’s a transitive property. I can show you the math, if you like. But in short, your bodies now have a strong resistance to change as well. So I imagine that this generation of Yslanders will live very long, very healthy lives. Not as long as me, but that’s a good thing.”
“But the ears.” Freya passed her hand carefully over her head, petting her tall, soft fox ears.
“As I said, I can’t take the fox-soul out. It was still in those bloodflies. But my soul is holding it in check, and my soul is much stronger than some prehistoric mongrel’s.”
“Hm.” Freya rested her chin on her knee. “Is that why the bloodflies don’t bite you? Because your soul is in them?”
“Of course they bite me!” Omar glared at the sky. “The damn things must have bitten me a hundred times when I was making those nests.”
“But you don’t have fox ears or eyes.”
“Because I am entirely unchangeable.” He held up his rinegold trinket on the chain around his neck. “Oh, I started to grow ears once or twice, but each time the fox-soul would be pushed out and I’d return to plain, old Omar again.”
“So does this mean you’ve lost your soul? Did it hurt you?”
“The soul-breaking was a bit unpleasant, courtesy of the flies,” he said. “And it has left me feeling a bit stranger than usual, mostly giving me an extremely strong sense of where all the Yslanders are at any given moment. But as they die, as they inevitably will, those drips and drabs of my soul will find their way back to me. In a hundred years, everything will just like it was before I ever came here.”
“Oh.” Freya stared over the smoldering bones at the black waters of the bay. She whispered, “I miss him.”
Omar nodded.
“I keep looking out there like he’s just going to come up out of the water without a scratch on him, smiling. Holding a fish. But he’s not, is he?”
“No, it’s been far too long. I’m sorry, but if that drop of my soul inside him was going to save him, if he was going to come back, he would have by now. I’m sorry.”
She sniffed and exhaled loudly. “So it’s really over then. What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I should leave before I cause any more disasters around here. I don’t really belong here,” he said. “Not that I belong anywhere, but I definitely don’t belong here. It’s too cold and gray and quiet for my taste.”
“So your homeland is hot and bright and loud?”
He smiled a little. “Something like that.”
“Oh. I think Erik would have liked a place like that.”
Chapter 33. Kingcraft
Halfdan sat uneasily on the wooden throne of Rekavik. He shifted his weight, first asking for a cushion, and then putting it aside. And every time the wood creaked beneath his weight, he winced. Finally he stood up and said, “My cousin Ivar was a good man, and he’s dead. His son Magnus was a good man, and he’s dead. We’ve all lost good men and women over these last five years. Ysland has bled too much. There will be no more killing today. Turn them loose.”
The guards let go of the prisoners’ wrists, and Leif and Thora stepped away from them, rubbing their sore arms.
Freya stood on Halfdan’s left side with Omar, and Katja and Wren stood on his right in matching vala black. A single night’s sleep in a bed had brought Katja back from the shock of her cell, and now wearing one of the dead queen’s simpler dresses, she looked as confident and wise as ever, if a bit thinner around the waist and wearing a new pair of ears. Nearly everyone gathered in the new king’s audience chamber wore the fox ears now, and more than a few women had covered theirs with scarves, and some of the men wore caps, and some people couldn’t seem to stop tugging and picking at the soft furry things on top of their heads.
Freya touched her own ears. She kept forgetting they were up there. She wasn’t in the habit of fiddling with her hair, or wearing scarves, or looking in mirrors, and it was so easy to forget that they were up there. They felt soft and downy and warm, and they could bend and flop a little bit. Rubbing them gently sent a shiver down her scalp and spine, but mostly from the strangeness of it rather than any sort of pain. And they tickled sometimes when her short hair blew about in the wind. But otherwise, they were invisible to her.
I have a fox-soul inside of me.
And I have Omar’s soul inside of me.
What does that even mean?
The question faded as soon as she asked it. It didn’t matter.
“Leif Blackmane,” Halfdan said loudly. “You murdered many free and innocent men, and you allied yourself with the reavers, who also killed many free and innocent men, but you did so at the command of your queen. So you shall not die here today.”
“I’m telling you, I never spoke to any filthy reaver! It’s a lie!” Leif shouted. He turned toward Omar. “He’s a damned liar!”
“Shut up and be condemned like a man!” Halfdan snapped. “You are hereby banished from Ysland.”
The scowling youth looked up sharply. “ From Ysland? Where am I supposed to go?”
“You have six months,” the new king continued. “When autumn comes, if any man should find you still in Ysland, he shall be within his rights to strike you dead where you stand. And you, Thora Ingasdottir, for keeping Skadi’s secrets and knowingly, willfully aiding her in her schemes to seduce the king, to seize the throne, and to lead Rekavik into ruin, you are also banished from Ysland.”
The tall girl said nothing. She stared down at Halfdan’s feet with haunted, miserable eyes. But then she slowly lifted her gaze and turned to look at Freya, and Freya saw the cold hatred in the apprentice’s face as the tears tumbled from her unblinking eyes.
Halfdan grunted. “It’s only three hundred leagues or so to Alba. If you start swimming now, you may reach it before your six months are up. Guards, throw them out.”
The guards took the exiles out of the room, and the crowd of onlookers at the back all seemed to relax and exhale and stand a bit easier.
“Finally.” Halfdan sat back down on his throne, which creaked, and he winced. “Omar Bakhoum.”
Omar stepped out in front of the throne and turned to face the king.
“You came to this country as a friend, and you were treated poorly. Yslanders pride themselves on their hospitality, and you were most grievously wronged by Skadi and Leif. But despite that, you returned to us, you killed the demon Fenrir…” He trailed off with a frown.
Freya understood. They had told him earlier that morning, after he received his royal torque and sword, that Fenrir had been his cousin Ivar.
“You defeated our enemies and cured the plague,” Halfdan said. “For this, our entire country is in your debt, and anything you ask will be yours.”
Omar smiled brightly. “Well, that is most kind, my lord. I can see you will be every bit the king that your wise cousin was before you. But as for me, I’m merely pleased that I was able to right the wrongs that I helped to create, and all I ask now is for some small help in constructing a ship to carry me home south. A small sailing ship should suffice, an elegant xebec, perhaps. I can sketch something up later.”
“But we have no wood for making ships,” Halfdan said.
“That’s no problem, my lord. We’ll make it of steel. I’ll teach you how. And after I’m gone, well, if the Yslanders wish to take to the seas once more on ships of steel, well, that would be a very fine day, wouldn’t it?”
