“If a man has the option of becoming one of his soldiers, he’ll pick that over turning to stijl and becoming a dowsy, living in squalor, and wondering where the next meal will come from…”
“That’s terrible.”
His eyes glint darkly. “That’s not even the whole of it,” he mutters. “But there are a few of us rebels left, thankfully. But only a few.”
“Then I take it you weren’t among the king’s men?” I ask.
I catch a scowl on his lips as the sun glints off the dirty glass and dirtier stones and bricks. Our shadows follow us along the street as it turns into rutted, cobbled stone with patches of mud and puddles running between the low spots.
“Hey, Blackthorne!” someone calls over the rush of waves crashing against the rocky shore and the labored bustle of pedestrians, workers, and shopkeepers. “Blackthorne,” the call comes again. “Hey!”
He stiffens but doesn’t slow. I match his pace until a figure in rags throws herself at him, practically bouncing off his mass like a pebble. “Blackthorne,” a woman gurgles as she brings a thin glass bottle to chapped lips.
The Viking stops. “What business do you have with me?”
“Scriv told me to find you,” Her plea stalls. “I have to get out of here.”
According to the message from the demon and confirmed by my mother, we all do. War is on the way.
“Good idea,” he says dismissively. “And good luck.”
“Can’t you help? Scriv said—” A tattered shirt reveals the thin plate of her chest. Her breath wheezes as she continues to plead.
He scoffs. “Scriv is as honest as a mullocker.”
“It’ll be the ashpit next for me. I’d rather—” she starts.
“You’d probably rather not starve to death in the wilds and that’s the only place I know to get out of here alive, at least temporarily, but unless you have a map or a guide, you’ll only get as far as the Silver Strand.”
“Can’t you lead me?”
He shakes his head. “You’re better off getting on a boat and sailing far from here.”
“The boats are at the bottom of the sea,” the woman says with a rattling cough.
“Then build one.” Soren shakes his head, annoyed.
The stick woman snorts. “Build a boat?” The bottle meets her lips again in what appears to be a thoughtless gesture. “My husband was a shipwright. Then demon. Now dead. Building a boat is as likely as flying away on a raven’s back,” she slurs.
“Sail, fly, do what you must. There is no man or map that I know of that can help you.” He pauses, rubbing his hand on the back of his neck.
The words echo. But what about a woman? I don’t know how I can help but only that I must. The message buried in my pocket floats into my mind.
As though reading my thoughts, the Viking seems to soften. “I’m sorry,” he says to the woman. He reaches into his coat and passes the woman a burnished coin.
She stares at the coin and then at him before whispering, “Thank you. Your kindness won’t be forgotten.”
“Yeah. Right. Just don’t call me Blackthorne.”
We’re both silent until we reach the breakwater at what he called Battersea. His step hitches as we pass a row of slender cottages lined up like sticks. Their cheerful paint is chipped away by the salt and faded by the sun. No lamps burn in the windows.
The Viking strides across the black sand shoal and we clamber over rocks to the end where the broken, crumbling walls of a cylindrical structure remain.
Over the waves slapping the rock jetty he says, “That’s the old lighthouse. A beacon. It used to guide the ships into the harbor of Raven’s Landing. The great raven empire.” The wind speeds over the water, blowing his long hair away from his face.
We round to the other side of the crumbling beacon. He sits down, staring out to sea before turning to me. His voice is softer when he says, “I come here sometimes to imagine what’s beyond.”
“And you go to the hills on the other side to—?”
“To imagine what’s beyond.”
“Having just been there. I can tell you. There’s nothing but ice and water and frigid air.”
He works his lip. “But that’s not the direction of any known portal.”
“The what now?” I ask.
“The portal between realms. If you came across the ice, how did you get here?”
Surely, he can’t be expecting an answer because I only recently came to know where here is. Then again, I’ve never seen the Northlands or Raven’s Landing on a map. If there’s a portal, maybe I can get home.
“What’s that way—?” I say, pointing to the rolling waves.
“You heard. No boats. All of them were destroyed, set aflame, or sunk—and the stories go that the few people who’ve tried to swim or otherwise float past the breakwater drown and not because they’re unskilled mariners.” He casts a wary eye over his shoulder toward the castle.
“Why did that woman call you Blackthorne?” I ask when I really want to say and why did you tell her not to?
“It means you don’t want to be associated with me if you want to live long,” he says in a tone that suggests there was once an amused lilt to his voice.
Chapter 6
Soren
Her otherworldly eyes slide over me. “What’s your name then? What should I call you besides Viking?”
A vision of her naming me sweetly skips across the surface of my mind. I knock it loose like an irksome fly and opt for the obvious. “You can call me Soren.”
“Not Blackthorne?” she asks. “Why?”
I resist the reflexive urge to throw a punch. Not at her. I hate what the word suggests. It’s like faetcher for the fae.
