Katrín held a hand up against her temple, her eyes closed. She couldn’t look them in the eyes.
“I haven’t been home for a few days. I think. I sometimes go to a … friend of mine. In Hlíðar.”
“Why? Who is this friend?’
“Garún! Can you shut up for a second?’ Diljá spat. “Let her talk.”
Katrín swallowed and forced herself to open her eyes.
“I was …’
Her voice broke. She looked down, frantic hands playing with the hem of her skirt. She looked like a little girl. She steeled herself again and forced herself through the words.
“I was smoking sorti.”
The confession charged the air between them. Katrín kept talking, slowly.
“I was smoking sorti when they came … when they came to my house. And now they’re all … My family is …’
Something gave inside her. The crying was bitter and raw, pain that had to be released. Diljá sat next to Katrín, but hesitated in comforting her, unsure how to act even though she knew exactly what she was going through.
Garún let her grieve for her father and mother, her sisters, thinking of the feather-covered pool of blood in their house. She felt no compassion. They’d all known what risks their insurrection demanded. Perhaps Katrín had not fully realised it until this point, but there was nothing to be done about that now.
After Katrín had settled down she told them about how she’d woken in some drug den after someone shook her awake, telling her something she couldn’t quite understand but knew was serious and important. Sorti was one of the strongest drugs you could find in Hrímland, a highly addictive substance made from thaumaturgical materials. People differed on what the components were in sorti, which was like a thick, dark ichor, but its users found a complete sense of numbness, apathy laced with ominous visions that faded from their memory as soon as the high did. But something else remained. Sorti ruined people, weathered them down into nothing. It was for the broken and desperate, people who were utterly devoid of hope. Katrín was the last person Garún thought would be using it.
“You’ve been lying to us,” Garún said in a flat voice. “How can I trust anything you have to say?’
“I know!’ Katrín’s outrage gave her the strength she needed to calm down and speak. “And I understand that. But don’t act like you don’t have any secrets. Didn’t we keep on trusting you after we found out you were tagging everywhere in Reykjavík without us knowing?’
“You’ve got some fucking nerve!’ said Garún, standing up, clenching her fists. The others tensed up. “I’m fighting for something that matters! I’m trying to actually change things! Meanwhile you live your comfortable little life, hiding behind words posted by a pseudonym, wasting your time and your abundant money smoking drugs. Like a fucking idiot! Nobody forced you to go and play rebellion against your father! It’s not my fault the Crown took your family – that’s on you.”
“Garún!’ Diljá got up into Garún’s face, matching her aggressiveness with a sudden ferocity that had Garún reeling back. “Can you shut the fuck up! Haven’t we had enough? Just shut the fuck up and let her talk!’
They fell quiet for a while. Hrólfur eyed them cautiously, almost as if he was more curious about this whole affair than worried about it. Diljá went back to Katrín and placed a comforting hand on her back. Garún paced around the cave. It was too small. No way out. What a goddamn mess.
Katrín nodded slowly as Diljá encouraged her to go on.
“Like I said, I was in Hlíðar. Someone told me something about the police and my house. I didn’t quite understand, I was … I was out of it. But I knew I had to go. So I swapped clothes with another girl and went outside.” She played with the hem of her skirt while she spoke. “They were everywhere. The police. Soldiers. Seiðskrattar. The streets were barricaded. I didn’t know where to go. None of my friends would help me, they are—”
Filth, Garún thought to herself, stuck-up filth.
“—not quite ready to stand up against the Commonwealth. There are so many cops and soldiers in the city now. They have checkpoints set up everywhere. So I went and met the only person I knew would be able to help me.”
“Who was that?’ asked Hrólfur.
“Hræeygður. My dealer.”
Tuttugu og þrjú
BEFORE
Katrín Melsteð was not her own person. To every person she met, she was first and foremost Valtýr Melsteð’s daughter. A specimen of a fine pedigree. Everywhere she went she dragged the chains of her great lineage with her. Attached to it were the ancestral ghosts of her famous relatives: goðar, poets, bishops, scholars, merchants, not to mention her own father’s overbearing presence. It was incredible how the long grasp of deceased men of wealth and power managed to claim her at every turn. She belonged to them. To others she was nothing but a reflection. A by-product of the achievements of great men.
When Katrín was a child she fantasised about going to the Royal University in Hafnía. The mainland seemed like a dream made manifest in the waking world, a beacon of everything cultured and refined: literature, architecture, philosophy, art. It was everything this island was not. She devoured travel journals of Hrímlanders visiting Kalmar’s capital and travelling its great empire. She wanted to study archaeology in Hafnía. She was going to become an explorer. There were so many secrets hidden in the earth, waiting to be rediscovered: ancient sorcery; ruins of vast, forgotten empires. She’d find relics that would change the course of history. She would decipher hieroglyphs and runes that had riddled scholars for decades. She’d make a name for herself – her own legacy.
Katrín knew she was destined for something greater. So when she applied for Hafnía in secret, knowing her parents disapproved, she knew she would get in. What she didn’t foresee was that her father did not
