“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Yeah, they were willing to set us up with a safe house.”
They nodded. It was settled. Garún was surprised how incredibly relieved she was. Relieved that she wasn’t the one who had to kick them off the edge, out of the false security of comfort – that the Crown was the one to do it for her. It was a horrible thing to think, to be glad that their relatives and friends were now at the mercy of the Crown. But that was how the pigs operated and had for years. It was a bittersweet feeling to not feel so alone. She wasn’t the only one in exile any more.
* * *
Hrólfur and Diljá went to a storage unit down by the docks. Garún had scoped it out as a possible place to hide, at least for a while. The storage was an old fisherman’s workshop, filled with torn nets and fishing gear. There was no hint of the smell of fish, and as a result there was something uncomfortable about being there. As if it was a stage, not a genuine place.
By hanging by her fingertips from a broken window and letting go, she fell into Reykjavík, in a backyard just by Haraldskirkja. It was dark, which made it hard to tell what time it was. The short days of winter darkness now ruled in Hrímland. The city was covered in grimy slush. She turned up the electronic music. The noisefiend spoke to her like an old friend. A nerve-racking beat played under shady electronic music, winding and building up so she kept expecting the music to break like a wave, but it didn’t happen. This was a new variation of a familiar theme. Danger was around every corner, the smallest mistake could blow her cover. She picked up a steel-grey spray can and sprayed a symbol on the back of her jacket with the clear paint. Putting on the jacket was repulsive, as if she’d put on a bloody human skin, but she suffered through it. The symbol was a type of huliðshjálmur, for disguise or invisibility, and would make her less conspicuous. She put on the red-tinted goggles and headed towards the pond.
Garún scanned the streams of residual seiðmagn, looking for the passage of seiðskrattar. She listened intently to the obtuse messages of the noisefiend and searched for the telltale traces of seiðmagn they left behind, like waves in the wake of a ship. The huliðshjálmur would not work on them, but quite the opposite – it would make her glow like a beacon from the seiðmagn. She saw many traces of their presence, but none of them recent. Soldiers walked down Hverfisgata in pairs. Police officers were common enough downtown, even armed ones, but the army usually kept to their forts on the peninsula and Viðey. Garún was a natural at lying low when she needed to, something she’d had to learn early on as a blendingur in the city. The soldiers didn’t notice her as she walked past them, her head downcast. The huliðshjálmur had just dried and she felt better having it on, but it still felt repulsive. The difference was the same as between fresh and coagulated blood – each was disgusting in its own way.
Step by step the pond drew closer. She stopped outside a stately house and peeked through the kitchen window. The family inside was sitting down at the table, but paid her no mind, despite her being in clear sight. Inside the clock struck seven. Something made her linger. After a few weeks in the Forgotten Downtown this sight was so unfamiliar and unnatural. Like an overly stylised advertisement in the newspaper. She thought of dinners with her mother and grandmother. Now it seemed like a dream.
Katrín’s home was further down the street. The greatest and wealthiest families of Hrímlanders lived here, in exorbitant estates by the pond, and Katrín belonged to one of the more powerful ones. She was a Melsteð, an old and deep-rooted family that claimed many Hrímlandic people of prestige and power as their own. Mostly politicians and priests, but there were some known poets in between. Garún had never been able to trust her completely. Katrín belonged to the establishment, she had nothing to lose. She was the most active of the group in writing articles, where she used a male pseudonym. She was well educated and made some powerful points, Garún couldn’t deny that, but she’d never taken Katrín’s revolutionary spirit seriously. At best she attributed it to being the whim of a rich daddy’s girl – but now she feared that Katrín’s betrayal could be greater than she’d thought possible.
Of all the houses on the street, Katrín’s family home was the only one with its lights off. Garún lithely moved over the fence and sneaked into the yard. There was not a person to be seen. She went behind the house and found a basement door, a servants’ entrance. She tagged a stave of discord on the door’s window. Fine streaks cracked through the glass, which shattered soundlessly into fine dust. She let herself in.
Inside she was met with an overbearing silence. Garún moved into the kitchen. The cupboards were open and empty. Broken china littered the floor, cracking under her feet despite her best efforts. She sneaked upstairs into the lobby. The house was ransacked. Expensive sofas had been overturned, with ugly new gashes in the expensive upholstery. Paintings had been pulled off the walls, some of them cut. A portrait of
