“There’s not a chance I’ll find my way back. What about you?’ she asked the others. One by one they shook their heads.
“I’ll come, with food and more. You’ll learn the way. There is a system. Don’t worry.”
Garún went quickly over the supplies. Rye flatbread and steam-cooked rye bread, a bit of smoked meat, dried fish, whey-pickled sour meats, fresh water in tins. Not too much, but enough for several days. She noticed a couple of chamber pots in the stack.
“How do we empty the chamber pots?’
“Ah.” Kryik’traak seemed a bit awkward. “Don’t empty in the pool. Rather a corner.”
They were hardly better off here than in the Forgotten Downtown. But it was only temporary.
“All right. It will do. Thank you for your help.”
The marbendill nodded sombrely. “I have faith in you. I and all of us.”
“How many know we’re here?’ said Garún harshly.
“No one but me, I swear,” the marbendill replied, flustered. “But many of us are waiting. Waiting and praying. That everything will change.”
“Garún, relax,” said Diljá. “We can trust him. How often are these tunnels used?’
“Rarely. Old and obsolete. You are safe here.”
With that he bade them farewell and dived back in.
Garún felt the weight of the earth above them, the city pushing down, wishing to crush her beneath its weight.
* * *
Katrín regained consciousness a few hours later. She didn’t know where she was or what had happened. Her entire body was trembling uncontrollably, her skin cold and clammy. The cool air of the cave wasn’t helping.
“What happened?’ asked Garún, when Katrín had somewhat gained her senses and gulped down way too much of their limited fresh water supply. “Why did it take you such a long time to get to Rökkurvík? Why didn’t they capture you?’
She tried to hold her hostile tone in check, but she couldn’t help herself.
Katrín’s eyes widened. “My family, they …’
She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.
Garún nodded and ignored the looks Diljá and Hrólfur were sending her. They’d long moved past the point of pleasantries.
“The house was empty,” Garún said. “Ransacked and some signs of struggle. We don’t know what happened to them.”
“I wasn’t at home when they came.”
“Then where were you?’
“Garún, relax,” said Hrólfur. “She’s obviously sick from … whatever that thing was that attacked you.”
Garún got up and sat down on one of the barrels. She was dying for a smoke.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I was also in the mire with the thing.”
“What was that?’ asked Katrín. Garún didn’t like how she diverted the conversation elsewhere. “It looked like a nightmare.”
Garún shrugged. “No idea. But I think it was using or creating the hrævareldar to hunt.” She leaned back on her hands. “I stabbed it in the face, if you could call that a face. I hope it’s alive and kills a few of those fucking pigs.”
They told Katrín what had happened. How the Crown had raided Rökkurvík. They could only guess what had happened to the people caught in there.
“They’d have no rights,” said Hrólfur. “It’s a serious violation of the law, crossing a transdimensional border like that. They’ve most likely been categorised as non-citizens.”
Diljá snorted in annoyance. “More like non-persons. How on earth did they get clearance to mobilise into Rökkurvík, anyway? I thought the place didn’t exist to them.”
“It doesn’t, legally speaking,” said Katrín. “They’ve been trying to find ways to isolate it since the Crown took over. But two new gateways open up when the seiðskrattar close one. They can’t send the army over in an official sense, either, not without a royal decree.”
“Maybe they have that,” said Diljá.
“I doubt it,” Hrólfur said. “It would almost be considered an act of war. I don’t think that was the Crown that moved in. Not in a political sense, anyway.”
“Then who?’
“Those weren’t soldiers, they were heavily armed police officers. It could have been a special operations task force set up by Trampe, or maybe it’s some other government agency, but you can bet Trampe was behind it. There’s no way that this would happen without him knowing and approving of it. But as far as Kalmar knows, it never happened. You’ll never find any official reports about this. They’ll bury the cost through some bureaucratic trappings. No reports, no trouble. The place doesn’t exist, after all.”
“How the hell do you know all that?’ asked Garún.
Hrólfur’s brow furrowed with concern. Garún didn’t care much for his mock offence. Let him be offended.
“I used to work for the city,” he said. “As I’m sure I’ve mentioned to you. Urban planning. You’d be surprised how much we had to confer with Trampe’s office, directly or indirectly. The stiftamtmaður has to personally approve almost anything that has to do with governing Reykjavík and the entire country. You’d think that he mostly dealt with legislation and so forth in Lögrétta, but no – his authority has a much greater reach. He’s the cornerstone of Kalmar’s rule. There’s just no way he didn’t plan this, logically speaking.”
“Logically. Right, so logically speaking …’ Garún leaned forwards and started cracking her knuckles idly. “How did the Crown know that we were hiding in Rökkurvík?’
Diljá stood up, fed up with her.
“Didn’t some officer almost arrest you coming out of Rökkurvík in a fucking bar?’ she shouted at her.
Garún grimaced. She hadn’t told them about her encounter with Sæmundur, how they had been ambushed by that same officer. But they were all dead now. Probably.
“So why now?’ Garún replied, raising her voice as well. “Why do they move in at the exact fucking moment that Katrín comes back?’
Katrín was covering her face in her hands, crying quietly. Garún didn’t care. She was furious. She remembered for a moment that she still had the delýsíð sheet up against her, underneath her clothes – the delýsíð sheet she had infused with seething, relentless rage, without compromise or compassion. It wasn’t doing her any good at this moment, but she didn’t know how much it was affecting her. Probably better to remain on her toes.
“You’re hiding something,” Garún
