There was something about the way the ship carved a path through the foamy waves that empowered Mira. She felt safe—as if harm were impossible while they soared through the water. No matter which direction she looked, the world was open to her—clouds and sky and briny, crashing waves as far as the eye could see. I would be happy to live like this, she thought. Floating forever on the open water.

Mira remembered the dream she’d had long ago in Arcliff when the sea came and washed over everything. It was foolish of me to run, Mira thought. I should have gone with it willingly. The salty sea wind splashed her face and twisted her skirt around her knees. I hear you, she thought. Hyrold was especially talkative out at sea—except when Flojer was around. Then Hyrold was silent. Mira decided this meant Hyrold wanted her to listen to the captain.

This wasn’t hard to do. Flojer was an interesting man and an exceptional story teller, but also an excellent listener. When Mira told the man that Hyrold grew quiet whenever he was around, he raised his eyebrows in interest. “You hear him?”

“Sometimes… I think I do.”

“So you know then?”

Mira didn’t understand what Flojer was meaning. She didn’t feel like she knew anything extra because of Hyrold. Flojer asked about her conversion, and she told him a little of Halvar’s birth and how she felt the Northern god had come to be with her in her pain.

“And the sea has always called to you,” he said.

Mira’s mind cleared when he said this. It was so true it almost confused her. Why hadn’t she noticed before? It was so obvious she felt silly. Hyrold had been trying to reach her always, even when she was a little girl.

“And he guides you with your dreams?”

Mira looked into the captain’s glowing yellow eyes, shining with mirth and curiosity, a little frightened that he’d known something she’d never told him.

“When I was a child, sometimes I had dreams that came true, but….” Mira didn’t know how to finish her thought without sharing things she didn’t want to get into.

“You stopped listening?”

I guess I did.

“They will come back if you let them,” Flojer promised. “I ignored Hyrold for many years, most of my life, really. Only when, because of a series of… let’s call them disastrous coincidences? I found myself captain of a great Norsern ship. I found myself with a woman I had known only once, full with my child, even though she’d been taking veerslhung. I didn’t have the coin or skills to do right by her or pay off my debts or keep a crew in line… I had no choice but to listen. I was maybe twenty-eight? I said, ‘Hyrold, I have been alive for a few years now, and I have made a terrible mess of things. I admit I have no idea what I am doing. You can be in charge now.’” He laughed. “If it was not for Yarlav, I probably would have ignored Hyrold forever.”

“Children change everything,” Mira said.

“More I think they undo all the poor changes we’ve made in our lives. If we just sat still for a moment, the gods would have an easier time putting the right things into our hands. Children force us to be still. They want to admire the rocks on the shore for hours. It gives the gods time to catch up with us.”

Mira laughed at how profound and how simple the statement was. Much like when she’d first met Dania and wanted to be friends, she desperately wanted to spend more time with Flojer, to hear his thoughts, to feel the force of his being. She felt herself very akin to the captain, even though he was an older Northern man with a son nearly grown. She wanted to be like him when she was older, and she felt like if she spent enough time with him, this was likely to happen. He seemed connected to everything, flowing with all there was and all there would be, coated in the majesty of life, in tune with the song beneath it all.

“We are like ropes to the gods. We need to be tied around the right things. We need to be pulled with the right force and have the right type of knots in us… otherwise, the ship won’t move. But you know this.” Flojer’s smile left, and his golden eyes penetrated Mira’s, speeding her heart. “You’ve felt it. The gods have made me as I am, so that I make Yarlav as he is and put him in the right place for the next step of their plan… whatever that is. My crew as well. My ship. You and your son. They have given me all these ropes to tie together but have refused to tell me where they want the ship to go.” He laughed. “Probably because I would mess it up somehow if I knew.”

Flojer continued to teach Mira things about caring for a ship and a crew, but Mira was not the only person he gave his attention to. He wanted Fyrrah to learn about healing aboard a ship. He had Rowan learn about the tactics a crew used when attacking on land. He also made it clear that if the ship was sent to raid on the Isle, Rowan would not be expected to join in.

“No one will think you a coward,” Flojer said. “One’s home is a complicated thing whether they liked it or not.”

Rowan’s face was made of stone when this was said.

When off-duty, the men would lounge about on the deck and drink. They would sing and make light and be merry, but as they approached Byernen, theorizing of what was to come became their favoured activity. Of course, they only did this when Flojer and Freyt were in the cabin and could not hear what they were saying.

Some believed Arik had discovered a new continent full of vast riches, that he meant to surprise the Norsern fleet with the greatest raid of all time. Others balked at this and called it wishful thinking. One man believed Arik wanted half of the Norsern raiders to leave their ships mooring in Byernen and go raiding by land over the mountains to the east. “This has not been done before,” he said. “Arik likes to do new things.”

“He is to send us somewhere he knows we would not like to go,” said another man. “Why else would he not tell us where we are going?”

Halvar was lying on his stomach on the deck between everyone. He squirmed gracelessly towards a berry that Flosi—the man responsible for preparing meals aboard the ship—had pulled out of the stores for him. Whenever Halvar got close enough to reach the crimson dollop, one of the men would move it to the far side of the circle they formed. Halvar would clumsily maneuver himself around and move again towards the fruit. It was a brilliant way to keep him occupied, and Mira was grateful—she’d been worried that her son would get bored on the ship and spend most of his time wailing.

“Arik is up to something foolish,” one of the men in the circle said.

“Many are displeased with him. Go to any tavern in Aalt, and you will hear about it.”

“There is no need to repair things that are not broken.”

“Last year’s raids were a jest.”

Fell was not off-duty when this conversation began, but still, Mira looked to see if he could hear what was being said. She knew Fell loved Arik, that it would hurt him to hear people speak of the king in this way.

When it was obvious Fell could not hear what they were saying, Mira let her questions out. “What has Arik changed? I have been in the North for a little more than a year. I do not know how it was before.”

“Last year, we left early for the raids. There was still ice on the sea.”

“And this year, we leave late. If we’re going far, there will be ice when we return. It will be bloody miserable.”

“Last year, we went to nonsensical places.”

Mira’s confusion must have been visible on her face because young Yarlav shifted closer to her and explained. “Usually, raiding parties go to smaller towns with great sanctuaries,” he said. “If raiding is done this way, the lives lost are less and the riches greater.”

Mira understood.

“But last year, Arik ordered us to take the great fortresses.”

“And we were not really even raiding. He told us to kill or steal those who could forge metal. Those who tanned leather.”

“He set us up in waves so that each fortress was hit many times.”

“There was almost no treasure left for the last wave of ships.”

“My cousin Tegal’s ship was sent to a quarry! Not a single man on board had any wealth to show for his summer.”

A terrible worm wiggled into Mira’s mind. Everything she could see grew sharper in a familiar and terrible way. The edges of the ship jutted out from the sea and sky. Each line in the world was competing for Mira’s attention, screaming at her. Her breath became quick and uneven. Dayne and everyone else… they are in danger.

Mira stood up and looked around. There was nowhere private for her to go. Rowan and Fyrrah were reclining at the head of the ship. Ever terrifying, Aslak was radiating wickedness as he drank alone at the tail of the ship. Flojer and Freyt were in the cabin, but even then, Mira could only go there if she was invited by the captain.

Not having anywhere to go and knowing that everyone on board was going to see her fit made the panic sharper. Her fingers shook, and her breathing became so fractured that men took notice.

“You are well?” one said.

Another called for Fell. “Something is wrong, I think.”

Unable to speak, Mira backed away from the eyes of the crew and set her forehead against the railing of the ship. She sputtered and gasped as her thoughts spiralled towards the awful things that she was certain would befall her family back on the Isle. Fell rubbed her back and made soothing noises, telling the men to leave Mira be. “She is well,” he said. Somehow he knew she didn’t want people watching.

Someone did watch. Mira’s head was still down on the ship’s railing, but she could feel the cold shadow of the man as he came closer.

“What can you taste?” he said.

It was such an odd question that Mira’s mind took a step back from the terror. Salt, she thought. She could taste the salty wind.

“What can you hear?”

Mira listened. Waves.

“What can you see?”

The strange questions slowed her fit. Mira’s heart still raced, but she could breathe. She could speak. She lifted her head and saw that it was Aslak, the old, frightening man, who had asked the questions.

He was hard to look at as his features were so severe, but Mira brought her eyes to his.

“What did you do to me?”

“Nothing. I asked you questions.” Aslak shrugged and headed back to the tail of the ship so he could continue drinking alone.

Mira followed him, unwilling to let the miracle of it go so easily. “But you stopped it?”

“No. I showed you how to stop it.”

“Teach me,” Mira ordered.

The man’s grisly eyebrows raised. It was clear he did not want to be told what to do.

“Please,” Mira said. “This is something that has always happened to me. How did you know what to do?”

“This used to happen to me.”

A childish hope bubbled inside Mira. “But it doesn’t anymore?”

“It is very rare now. Once in a year, twice maybe.”

“Please,” Mira begged. “Explain it to me.”

“Focus on the things you can sense around you. The feeling of the cup in your hand. The taste on your lips. It does not always work. And it does not take all of the rush away, but I find mostly it is good enough.”

“How did you discover this?”

Even Aslak’s laugh sounded sinister. “Stabbing into the dark again and again, until, by chance, I struck something.”

Mira sensed that the man wished to be left alone. Each time she asked a question, Aslak’s thin, fishy lips would press together, and he’d huff. Still, she could not leave him be for another half of an hour. He told her that as a boy, for no reason he could understand, he was always aware that all of life was a child of Egil. He said that most of the time, he could ignore this knowledge and live as other people did, keeping busy with ordinary things like work and eating and having fun.

“Sometimes, though, it would strike me that all of it was a lie. We are not animals or men. We are something else, pretending that the illusion is all that there is. I would become afraid that there was some secret purpose to this game we are playing, but that we had all forgotten what it was... that there was something I was supposed to be doing, and because I had forgotten, there would be some kind of suffering or punishment when the game was over.”

Mira thought about each of his words but decided that her fits were not the same as Aslak’s. When it happened to her, she did not feel like the world was false. She felt like it was too real.

***

That night, as the sea rocked her back and forth on the deck, Mira lost herself in her thoughts. Fell was to her right; she’d reached out with her toes beneath the scratchy linen blanket and pressed her ankle into the sole of his foot. His steady deep breaths seemed to keep rhythm with the wush-woosh of the night crew’s oars, dipping and creaking, lifting, then dipping again.

Halvar was to her left, his mouth wide open as he slept, his black hair stuck to his forehead all wrong from how much he’d sweat in his sleep. Mira hadn’t been able to wash more than the child’s face and hands since they boarded the ship, and he was slowly becoming as grimy as the crew.

The sea-breeze brushed her face and neck, and the stars were bright. Mira kept Aslak’s lesson in mind as she mulled over what was to come. She thought about Halvar and Fell and how much she loved them. She thought about Dayne and her family back home and how much she cared for them. She thought about Arik’s four strategies, how she was certain that he meant to take territory on the Isle, and how she was sure he wanted her to play a part.

Each time her cheeks grew hot, and she felt a sick rush of fear, she took Aslak’s advice and drew her attention to something tangible and sensible. She listened to the purr of the crew’s collective snoring. She focused on the feeling of the deck as she ran a finger along it. The raw, ridged wood. The lip between each plank. The cold, rough head of a rusting nail. Mira had too many things that were too important; she could not ignore her fears any longer, and so she devised what she would say to Arik when she saw him next. She would speak before he spoke. She would apologize again for her letter and say that she had an idea. Mira would offer to do whatever Arik needed, with a few firm exclusions. Her family on the Isle must not be harmed. Halvar must be allowed to go back to the land—Fell could take him to the shore in Byernen, and they could go back to Gittenurg or, if Arik thought this was not safe, they could go into the forest together. Mira would stay and do Arik’s bidding if he agreed to those terms.

She would also tell him that if he meant to use her as a hostage—as this was something commonly done in her country, and likely Arik knew it—it would be best if he gave her to Dayne. She would explain that if any of her other countrymen discovered the things she’d done in the North, she was at great risk of a painful death. She would say, If it cannot be arranged that I am given to my family, I will still do as you bid. But if this is what happens, it would be ideal if my life in the North was kept as secret as possible, so I might avoid the stake. She did not think Arik would have difficulty with this.

It would be hard to go back to living as she did on the Isle, the hairstyles that hurt her head, the clothes that kept her from breathing rightly, how she would have to keep silent forever and always—she would likely be married off. That was an especially awful thought… but maybe Dayne would not listen so much to their mother now that he was Lord? Maybe he’d let her stay unmarried.

She imagined Arik saying, My lady, you would not take your child with you?

No, Mira answered in her thoughts. His life would be much better in the North than back home. In the North, people can do whatever they like, no matter if they’re the child of a miller or the child of a king.

Halvar was a bastard and half Northern; he would not be well-treated in her homeland. It hurt to think of these things, but Mira had put them off for far too long.

Arik would say, Then you will not see Halvar or Fell again? Your countrymen will not allow you to come and visit the North, my lady. We both know this.

It was the greatest of all aches Mira could imagine, and thinking of it for even one moment filled her eyes with tears. But she could not have them at risk, not Halvar, or Fell, or her family back home. If never seeing them again was the price of their safety, the price of the love and happiness that she had been given in the past year—if that was the price for making sure that her family on the Isle was not slaughtered by the Northmen—she would pay it. Always in the ballads, people paid a price for breaking the rules, and Mira had broken nearly every rule.