Tove looked down at the table and then back up to Erik and huffed. “For knowing so little about Kvernes, you sure know plenty about Lofgrund.”
Erik looked around. “It’s more like where I came from.”
The large woman rolled up to their table, smiling. “Travelers? Welcome. Inga will make sure you are fed. Meat and a vegetable for a half coin.” She put a meaty hand on Erik’s shoulder. “What will you have?”
Tove was confused. “Have?”
Inga pointed to a menu board on the wall behind them. It was a short menu, but they offered beef steak, mashed potatoes, and a half dozen other items.
They ordered and when Inga was gone, Tove leaned across the table. “People live like this?”
Erik couldn’t help but laugh at it. “Apparently so.”
“Did you eat at restaurants?”
“Pretty much exclusively.”
Her eyes widened. “Were you rich?”
He laughed again, leaning back to stretch his tired muscles. “I was not even a little bit rich, no.”
She looked out the window. “It’s amazing. This was how you lived?”
Erik shook his head. “No, it wasn’t like this. There were indoor toilets and… I guess, carts that didn’t need horses.”
“You’re picking fun at me again.”
“I am not!” Erik feigned indignance.
The food came before Erik could further defend himself. It was well-cooked, amazing by the standards of everything he’d had since he’d woken up in Helheim.
Tove was nearly weeping after she took the first few bites, having gotten the beef and mashed potatoes.
With her mouth full, she looked at Erik, barely keeping it together. “Ith gaht tho mush budder.”
A few men at the tables around them laughed at her and slapped Erik on the back.
Inga shouted at them from the far side of the room. “Inga said, did she not? All who eat here leave satisfied!”
Half the room cheered, and then began shouting orders. Inga yelled at them and they calmed down. She started making rounds, taking orders properly.
They were nearly finished when a middle-aged woman poked her head through the open shutters, looking at Tove, frowning, and then to Erik. She sniffed the air around him and then left, coming through the door and leaning over, rubbing her hands through his hair.
“Excuse me, do I…”
“Quiet…”
She flipped his hand over, and ran a small knife across it. Erik yelped, but her grip was inhumanly firm and he couldn’t wriggle his hand free. She licked his palm and breathed in deep, letting his hand go. The woman stood up, rolling her head back. Tove stood up from the table.
“How dare you! Seidr woman!” Tove pulled back to swing at her, but the woman jerked away. Inga came from the back, holding a dozen mugs. She saw the woman and immediately flew into a rage.
“Seidr! Begone from Inga’s! You know not to come to this place!”
The woman ignored her, looking down at Erik. “You…” She whispered the word, her eyes swirling with black and green.
Inga put the mugs down and came thundering across the room. The woman ran outside into the street, stopping by the window.
“I know you, Haki! I know!” Inga followed her out the door and the woman fled down the street, laughing wildly.
Inga was quick to return to their table as Tove inspected Erik’s hand. It was still bleeding, though not much. It looked almost as though it had already begun to heal.
“Inga cannot… free! Drinks, food! Whatever you wish. No seidr woman should ever come near you in Inga’s.”
Erik smiled. “Thanks, but it’s not—”
“Inga will not hear it! Eat! Drink! I will bring them! No one leaves Inga’s unhappy!”
The room cheered again, returning to their revels in short order. Tove sat down, looking with troubled eyes at his hand.
“She called you Haki.”
Erik looked at the now-scabbed cut on his hand. “She did…”
chapter|11
It was barely sunup when the sound of knuckles rapping on the door pulled Erik out of an uncomfortable sleep. It was the old man who’d rented him the pair of ground-floor rooms after they’d eaten.
“I’ll have you out! Paid for the night, not the day. Want another day, ye’ll pay for it!”
It wasn’t a change of attitude from the night before, when the hunched old man had taken a silver off of him for the two rooms for the night, “and nothing more.” Erik could hear him continue down the hall shouting the same command at every single door. The bed had been less comfortable than the ground, somehow, and Erik figured he would likely have been better off sleeping in the fields surrounding the city.
He’d slept without clothes since the night was so much warmer in Lofgrund than it had been in Kvernes. He hadn’t noticed it while they were walking, but now that it was morning he could feel the heat of the sun coming in through the shuttered window. They must have left Spring at some point during their walk, but Erik would have found it impossible to tell where. The sun had fallen as they walked and cooled the day fairly evenly. The excitement of having made it to Lofgrund made him forget to take notice of how the night had been until he was undressing to sleep.
The old man’s voice was farther off down the hall, and Erik didn’t want to have to deal with him opening the door, so he pulled on the loose, unclean underwear he’d had since arriving in Kvernes and pulled on his unclean pants and shirt on top of them. The whole ensemble needed a wash, and Erik wouldn’t have minded one himself. He held the hand the strange woman had cut the night before up, looking for any sign of the wound but there was nothing, not even a line of red. He had meant to ask what seidr was and what it had all been about, but Inga’s fussing over them had been so overwhelming that he’d forgotten until he was in his room at the inn.
He checked his pocket, pushing the thought from his mind, and found the remaining
