Beautiful Wreck (69 page)

I ducked under a curtain of dead birds and fish that swung on strings, past a family’s cooking fire, an iron pot hanging above it. My skirts swept the ground and snagged peoples’ feet. They were laughing all around me, talking about griddles, spoons, etchings in leather, discussing belts and bracers. Ale slopped everywhere, in buckets, in peoples’ drinking horns, down their chins and chests. The tang of drink filled my nostrils and sat at the back of my throat. I would never find the person who’d dared to speak of him.

I raised my eyes above the throng, and saw the climb to the law rock, so patient above this seething mass.

Heirik would not go there to pay for Eiðr’s hand. He would leave that be for now. Justice took time.

Betta and I had silver, more than we needed or knew what to do with. We searched for food and drink to bring back to the booth, but the market overflowed with so many things, we wandered and explored. Magnus walked protectively behind us, letting us roam and talk to every merchant.

At first, I’d resisted the idea of spending Heirik’s money, any of it. I hadn’t imagined there would be so many things I wanted here. Sharp spices for cooking, dried herbs for perfume and sweet bedding, and honey enough to last for years. Bins of nuts and dried fruit. Rows of tiny leather boots. One man sold knives with carved handles in the shapes of boats and animals with shining eyes.

I thought of all of Heirik’s knives, gleaming at his waist, balanced in his hand and slipping through his fingers. I wanted one that fit my own palm.

“Deer antler,” the man pointed at one. “And this one is hvalrif.”
Rib of a whale.

I ran my finger over the delicate twining designs carved into the bone. The blade was slim, the whole thing not much longer than my hand.

Even though Heirik hadn’t handed the silver to me personally, I knew he wanted me to have it. I bought myself that knife, and a leather sheath for it, and I made room on my belt.

Minutes later, Betta and I came to a jeweler’s tent. His workbench was surrounded with a dozen women cooing and pecking at beads and needle cases.

I didn’t really intend to spend any money, no significant amount anyway, but the smith liked Betta and me especially. He seemed to have an inkling that we were worth more—perhaps a sense like Betta’s, an ability to read the most subtle gestures or clues. And so he showed us sparkling beauty.

Hundreds of glass beads blown with the care of a skilled fire-breather, spun with color and capped with silver. Men’s bracelets, thick silver curves and coils that slipped and turned around and around on our small wrists.

The smith winked a bloodshot eye at us and slipped something unimaginably beautiful from under his bench. A man’s torc, a twisted bronze neck ring. It was lit with the glory of a farm sunset, all amber inlays and orange sky. Translucent lavender stones were fixed as eyes within the hissing faces of two stylized cats that met at the throat. Freya’s cats, I thought, and then I heard Betta’s voice in my memory. Like he was watching Freya paint amber streaks in the sky.

Betta made a small sound of awe when she heard the price, and then moved on to look at more delicate things, but I saw her tracking the torc out of the corner of her eye. She seemed resigned, melancholy about it at first, and looked back only to moon. But I watched a realization creep over her like light up the wall of the house—that she was someone different now, someone whose betrothed could wear such a thing. She was someone who could buy it for him. I watched her watch the necklace.

When we had looked at everything, I drew the man aside. “I need to buy safely,” I told him. “I will return with my escort for the cats’ eyes.” I nodded toward the bench, where he’d slipped the torc away.

His brows rose eloquently, and I imagined he wondered many things, whether I was serious, and also sane, whether I had the money, how much was on me, how far away my escort might be. His knob nose flushed red, and he actually bowed to me. Then he hissed an instruction to his wife, waved a hand anxiously for his brawny son to step forward and watch over the inventory, and brought me into his tent.

While my eyes struggled to adjust, my skin drank in the coolness and dampness of the tent. The interior air was like water, quick and soothing, and the place smelled of metal and canvas. When I could see, I noticed a dark and intensely bored boy—another son, probably—half slumped in the corner, examining a knife’s edge. He looked up with faint interest.

I thought the jeweler might stutter, he was so nervous as he asked me for assurance. He needed to know I wasn’t teasing. The fact that he’d even gotten his hands on the material to make that necklace was a miracle, and the piece probably represented a year’s gamble to him and these big boys, to their mother.

Physical money felt strange in my hands. I dug through the clunky pieces of silver, and I gave the man a sizable down payment. He nodded and swallowed, looking like he might cry.

“Might I show you one more item, Lady?” He inclined his head and waited for my name.

“Ginn,” I said. It would have to be enough. In this world, I had no more name than my own small one. My money sparkled and clinked more than anyone else’s, and he was satisfied.

Clearly, I was shopping for a man, an important one, and the smith wanted to sound the depths of my love and purse. And so in the privacy of the tent, he brought out a ring.

It flared like white fire against the rough brown cloth he laid it on. I gasped and reached a finger to touch it, but couldn’t, it was that stunning. I got down close to it and exhaled, my breath misting its silver surface.

I had no other name for it, but ring didn’t suffice. It was more like armor. A marauder’s shield of a ring. A very thick band, it wrapped once around the finger. The ends curved back to almost meet, two dragon’s heads biting at each other with open mouths and searching tongues. It would span from the base of a man’s finger up to his knuckle. And yet it was somehow graceful, without bulk. The band was filigreed with lines like frost flowers. A delicate, simple, deadly weapon of a ring. I pictured it on Heirik.

More than that, I wanted it for him. I wanted to cover him with this solid, gorgeous thing. I had a fugitive vision of giving it to him, pressing it onto his finger, wedding him.

But he was not mine to cover, not with my own body, not even with a fur or blanket on a cold night, and certainly not with such an intimate and possessive gift. A woman would give this ring as a symbol of raw and proud ownership over a man. I wished I had the right.

It would be bought with his own money anyway, I thought, and laughed, a bitter sound inside the hush of the tent. The dark boy rose, sudden and wary. I told him it was only a passing thought, my outburst. His ring was in no danger from me, and it was not comical at all. It was grave and precious.

The chaos of people had thinned into a steady, sluggish stream. Children ran around our legs, chickens too, and an occasional horse pushed past us, disturbing the flow.

Betta and I strolled, with no need to return to our camp for the night. I asked her to come with me to the law rock, just to listen to the voices echoing as people sang and talked inside the rift.

The angle of the sun’s light was becoming sharp. Everyone’s features looked tired and carved, as if from golden stone. A horse’s yellow tail, hit with a ray of falling sun, became like starkly detailed straw, dry and coarse.

Into this sleepy, ambling crowd came the man. He called me.

“Gods, Ginn!” My head shot up. But he must be calling some other woman? He breathlessly pushed through shoulders and arms, leaving irritated and curious faces all turning after him, toward me. A small space opened up around me and Betta. The man stopped just inside the circle and went still, sheer amazement in his eyes.

“It is true.” His voice broke, as if with relief and joy. In a sort of trance, he said, “You live.” Then he shook himself and came running to me. He took me by my waist and lifted me high in the air, spinning me so hard my hair and skirts whirled. When he set me down, he looked at me with the darkest blue eyes in the world, shining with tears of happiness.

“Oh, Ginnlaug.” His straight dark hair fell across his eyes, and he pushed it away. “I thought you were gone forever.” He ghosted his fingers over my cheek, eyes all wide concern when he noticed my scar. “Sváss min. I heard of a lost woman here, with hair like snow, but I could not believe it was you.”

I took his hand, and with great sympathy removed it from my face.

“It is not me.” The words were so stupid, meaningless. Whoever this man had lost, he thought he’d found her. It was heart wrenching, awful, this widower’s delusion. “I don’t know you,” I told him.

A rapt crowd watched us now. The man’s heavy brows drew down hard as though he might cry, and then his wonder and happiness began to fall away. “But Ginn,” he said. His voice was still light, but I heard something subtly wrong underneath it, some dark and slippery form gliding under the surface of a lovely stream.

“It is me, Asmund. Your husband.”

My heart dropped. His eyes were full of a lifetime of love, and he was so sure, that in a disoriented moment I felt maybe I was wrong. Maybe I really did know him. He was my husband, and the 22nd century had been my amnesiac dream. I was Asmund’s sváss, his shipwrecked love. But I shook my head and backed into Betta, who was warm and reassuring. Her long fingers closing around my waist reminded me of who I really was.

Asmund was still sure I belonged to him. His hand closed hard on my elbow. “Or would you rather stay with Rakknason?” The words were bitter and cold as dried fish. “Deny me for a rich house?”

The nervousness that fluttered in my chest became full blown fear. He wasn’t sad, all of a sudden. He’d turned from a hopelessly grieving lover to a threat. Suspended between his grasp and Betta’s, I sent her a silent plea.
Know me
, I thought.
Don’t let me go.

Asmund jerked me free of her. Betta gasped and I could feel her falter behind me, could feel her skirts twitch, physically turning between the only choices, to go or stay. I wanted her to go get help, but the idea of her leaving me here terrified me.

“Ginnlaug!” Another breathless man made it through the growing congregation. “Brother!” He addressed Asmund, astonished. “It’s true, you have found her.”

I pulled harder, but I couldn’t shake Asmund off. The dark navy sky of his eyes turned smug. You are my wife now, his gaze seemed to say. This crowd my witness.

His brother turned and spoke to the crowd, bursting with the story. “We learned of a woman searching for one of her family.” He looked at me, then, as if he were my long lost brother-in-law. “We heard you traveled with Rakknason God-Maker. Is it true, the great chieftain saved you, good sister?”