The following day, Fell didn’t want to get out of bed.

“Stay.” He laughed, pulling her back. “Let us have this morning with no one else and nothing else.”

Mira thought back to the night before when she told Fell of her dream and her fears that it revealed their separation.

He did not say that I was wrong, she thought. Mira felt that Fell could sense the coming danger too. But he was a Northman, and risk excited him. He had her for longer than he ever did before, stopping and waiting whenever he came close to the end before continuing on.

Fell sang and played with Halvar and gave Mira his constant attention, keeping one hand on her always, just like he had when she was round and swollen with their child still inside her body. Eventually, their lazy day was interrupted by Arik. He wanted Fell to join him.

Mira was uneasy, and because of this, Halvar grew unhappy. She took the boy to the docks in hopes that this would ease him. Maybe because Fell was a fisherman and always smelled of the sea when he came back from his work, or maybe because the sound of the water was calming, Halvar always settled when he was near the shore. Mira was humming to him and swishing her feet around in the cool, briny water when she heard a familiar sound.

It was a curse, but not a Norsern one—it was from back in her homeland. She looked up and could not help but laugh at the man who had spilled half a crate of dried peas onto the dock. He looked up to her and smiled, quite obviously flattered by her gaze. He was not handsome, but he was so bold and flirtatious with his eyes that he was attractive nonetheless.

He said, “You think my suffering is funny?”

“Only a little,” Mira said.

“Your accent….” The man frowned. “You are from the Isle?”

Mira nodded.

“You are soten?”

“Norsen.”

The man looked over his shoulder before crouching quite close to her. “You wish to return home?”

Mira shook her head, but the man’s posture and sudden quiet led her to believe he had a great secret, and she wanted to know it. “Why? You can take me there?”

His eyes grew shiny and wide with daring. “I can.”

Mira decided the man was lying as a way of impressing her. His eyes stayed mostly on hers, though sometimes they moved to her lips and then back up again. It was not hard to see what he was thinking. “You work on a trade ship,” she said. “The Norsern do not trade with the Islish.”

“No, we don’t,” he said. “But in three days, I leave to trade in one place that I am allowed. And then, I will change my clothes and my accent and my ship, and I will go to another place that from there I am allowed.”

Mira studied the man’s face, but she couldn’t tell if he was lying.

“I am Geryn,” he said with an overly-friendly grin.

Mira did not want to go back to the Isle, but there was something that tugged at her when the opportunity presented itself. A chance that might not come again. “You will be here in the afternoon?” she said.

The man nodded.

Mira’s mind sped in many different directions at once. There it was—Vaneurim had told her to think first of Halvar, that the rest would be handled by the gods. She’d taken the boy where he was calmest, and the gods brought her Geryn. She would send a letter. It may not reach Dayne, but there was a chance that it would, and a chance was worth a lot to her. Mira could tell him not to worry; she could explain that she was well and happy. She could tell him not to come North with his ships. All of the fears that ate away at her since Rowan arrived could be soothed with a single action. She wandered into the bustling mess of the city, planning what she was to say.

Securing parchment and ink took some time as no one wanted to sell only a single page, and ink merchants wanted to make sale of a reed and glass bottle, and Mira had only one coin to her name. She thought of asking Arik for parchment but decided against it, as he was a curious man, and she did not want him prying. She also was not entirely sure he would like her sending a letter to Dayne.

Halvar began to fuss as he grew overwhelmed by the rush of the city, by the manner in which all the sounds flooded together, creating a roar. Mira was irritated by the boy’s sudden bawling and by the obnoxious salespeople. She could feel them trying to trick her into buying more than she wanted, and it stressed her.

In the end, it was Valla’s help that got Mira what she needed. She’d come across yet another roughspun cloth spread on the dirt with parchment on display. A saleswoman with a wobbly chin and dark paint around her eyes sat nearby, though she was not watching her wares closely as her stones were being read by a ragged boy.

“You will have good luck this year,” the child said. “You will sell many things.”

Mira was frustrated to have to wait for the shopkeeper’s attention to ask a quick question. Halvar’s incessant misery did not help.

In her irritation, Mira said, “She will not. She’ll be swindled out of her wares.”

The two looked up at her in shock.

“Why do you say this?” the grubby boy asked.

Mira knelt and pointed. “You see here? The luck is not hers; it is this man’s. It is this man who takes her goods, but before this, she sleeps with him.” Mira turned to the woman. “You enjoy it, and in your old age, you will look back and think it was worth losing your wares over. The memory of him keeps you warm and makes you laugh. He is especially handsome and well built, I think.”

The shopkeeper laughed. “This sounds like something that would happen to me.”

The woman seemed pleased, and Mira asked if the reading was worth a page of parchment and the borrowing of a reed. The woman said it was not.

The boy, however, said he could get these things for Mira if she read for him next. She agreed.

Mira scattered the child’s chips onto the filth of the street, struggling to keep squirming Halvar in her lap. He did not want to be held, but she didn’t want her son lying on the dusty roadside where animal shit and muddy boots stamped filth into the earth.

“What is your favourite thing to do?” she asked the boy, pointing to one chip. “This here is your favourite thing.”

“Casting and reading stones,” he said.

Mira told the child that he was to become great at casting stones, that the gods would use him to send word to people who had wandered too far from their skaels, and that also this skill would keep his stomach full. She warned him that it would not be easy, that the gods would only reward him if he practiced. He gobbled up her words with keen, trusting eyes.

All of it was a lie.

When Mira looked at the boy’s stones, they told the story of a child growing sick and then dying. There was also a message for her in the bones: You must stop pretending you do not like us when it suits you and then using us when it suits you. We do not like this.

Mira didn’t see any point in saying this to a skinny boy with bright, eager eyes. Besides, perhaps it was as Jorn said; maybe if the child believed her, it would come true.

The boy kept his word, and Mira got to write her letter.

Halvar had lost all patience and was in hysterics as she scribbled. The boy offered to hold him so Mira could write, but she was afraid the child had fleas, so she refused. Because of Halvar’s thrashing, her penmanship was terrible, but she felt like it was good enough that Dayne could still recognize it as her hand.

Mira took her letter to the docks and waited in the exact spot where she’d met Geryn. After hours in the thick filth of the city center, the fresh sea air was more than welcome. Mira would have waited for days, but she did not need to; she spotted Geryn in half of an hour.

At first, the man refused to carry her letter. “Who would I give it to? It is Wayford I moor in. I will be very far from Arcliff.”

Mira sighed. “Any knight will take the quest of delivering it.”

“I think you have a false understanding of knights.”

“Just try.”

Geryn seemed to like it when Mira spoke firmly. He smirked and took the letter. “This will not get you into trouble, will it?”

“What? No. It is a letter to my brother. How could it?”

“On the Isle, when we moor, they look through our stores. If they ask to read the letter, I will let them.”

“This will be no problem,” Mira said. “The knight who delivers it can also read it, I do not mind.”

Geryn said, “May I have a kiss for good luck?”

“No.”

“Perhaps when I return then?” He smiled devilishly, nodded his head, and went back to his work.

The idea of sending a letter to Dayne soothed some of Mira’s worries, but not all of them. She still did not want Fell to go to Byernen. Maybe if Dayne listens and my countrymen do not come North, no harm will come to Fell. She could not put down these thoughts even when the king summoned her for supper.

She brought Halvar with her as always, leaving his basket in the corner of the room, his first sleep after dark often being the longest. Mira laughed to herself when this pattern set in. Why could he have not chosen to sleep long later? So that I might be able to sleep longer too? But he did not, and it was sometimes nice to have the early evening time.

There was great misery in the king that evening. He laughed and drank and sang with Fell, but Mira could see sorrow below the surface. When Fell excused himself to piss, Mira could not help herself.

“Your Grace, forgive me, but I sense in you a deep sadness this evening.”

He laughed. “Yes, my lady, the world feels heavier than usual this day.”

“Tell me,” Mira spoke softly. She did not want the king to feel as if she was ordering him, but she desperately wanted to know of his plans for Byernen. She hoped his sadness was related somehow.

He laughed again and drank his strong wine. “I feel old this evening. I see Fell; he is young and strong.” Arik shrugged, but inside, Mira could tell he did not feel like shrugging. “I wanted him to be my son, as I have no children of my own, but he is too wild even for me to tame. I want you to be as my daughter, but also I want you for myself. I am tired of being king, but I must continue on because no one else can see what the world is to become. And I have received word that much of Ornen caught fire three days back, many people died, and several ships were lost.”

Arik seemed to forget for a moment he had been talking and stared blankly.

“It is hard on the heart to be king. Every choice you make will help some of your people but hurt others. Many have died following my commands, and many more will die come autumn.” He was staring into his cup as he spoke, almost as if he was so deep in his misery he no longer knew Mira was there. He shrugged again and drank deeply. “But you are also sad this evening.”

He was too clever. Mira felt obliged to speak some of her truths to him as well. “I had a horrible dream last night that the sea came and took Fell away from me. I fear because I sense the dream is true, that something bad will happen soon. I listened for Hyrold, hoping he could help, but I felt that he laughed at me. He told me not to think such southern thoughts.” She grew teary. “But I still have some of the south in me. I want Halvar to grow with his father. I want him to learn to speak and have conversations with Fell. I want him to train with his father and learn to fish with him.” Mira did not share the fears she felt for Dayne or herself if something should happen to Fell or for Rowan and Fyrrah or her homeland. She tried to hide her tears from the king, but knew the shaky texture of her voice might have given her away.

Arik reached out and gently took her hand. “Speaking the truth is good, my lady. You remember the story when Fell was seventeen, and we found ourselves trapped by a clever group of southerners?”

She nodded.

“Taking the sword for Fell was the easiest thing I had ever done. I was not a king nor a Northerner. I had no ambitions for myself—I was only a man protecting a child. It was the simplest moment of my life, the best moment of my life. I fear for him the same as you, my lady.”

He let go of her hand, and she smiled, wanting to believe everything Arik said. For the most part, she did.

“Your Grace?”

Arik gave her his full attention, his sharp, wolfish eyes revealing nothing but patience.

“I know why you have not left me privy to any of your plans, and your reasons are fair, but I sense that you are organizing something of great risk.”

Arik laughed. “Yes and no. I have four strategies; some are riskier than others. But first, I must see what the southerners do, and then I will choose.”

When Fell returned, the king recovered his artificial joy. They laughed and sang together until late in the evening. Mira found that she liked Arik more than she had previously. She could easily see him the way that Fell did. Arik was almost a good man, only he was plagued with too much desire and too much ambition. When Halvar woke, the king dismissed Mira but insisted that Fell stay with him, for they had “much to discuss.”