Frostfire (8 page)

estate

I’d moved out when I turned sixteen three years ago, and it still felt kinda strange
going back to the house I’d grown up in. It always looked the same and smelled the
same, but there were subtle differences that reminded me it wasn’t my home anymore.

My mom and dad lived in a cottage near the town square, and as far as cottages in
Doldastam went, theirs was fairly spacious. It wasn’t as nice as the house my dad
had grown up in, but that had been passed to the Eckwells after my grandparents had
died, since Dad had given up his Markis title.

Mom had probably grown up in a nicer house too, though she didn’t talk about it that
much. In fact, she rarely ever mentioned Storvatten except to talk about the lake.

As soon as I opened the door, the scent of seawater hit me. We lived over a half hour
away from Hudson Bay, so I have no idea how Mom did it, but the house always smelled
like the ocean. Now it was mixed with salmon and citrus, the supper she was cooking
in the oven.

“Hello?” I called, since no one was there to greet me at the door, and I began unwinding
my scarf.

“Bryn?” Dad came out from the study at the back of the house, with his reading glasses
pushed up on his head. “You’re here early.”

“Only fifteen minutes,” I said, glancing over at the grandfather clock in the living
room to be sure I was right. “Linus was sitting down for supper with his parents,
so I thought it would be a good time to duck out. If I’m interrupting something, I
can entertain myself while you finish up.”

“No, I was just doing some paperwork, but it can wait.” He waved in the direction
of his study. “Take off your coat. Stay awhile.”

“Where’s Mom?” I asked as I took off my jacket and hung it on the coatrack by the
door.

“She’s in the bath,” Dad said.

I should’ve known. Mom was always in the bath. It was because she was Skojare. She
needed the water.

Some of my fondest memories from being a small child were sitting in the bathroom
with her. She’d be soaking in the claw-footed tub, and I’d sit on the floor. Sometimes
she’d sing to me, other times I’d read her stories, or just play with my toys. A lot
of time was spent in there.

Fortunately, Mom didn’t have gills, the way some of the Skojare did. If she had, then
I don’t know how she would’ve survived here, with the rivers and bay frozen over so
often. The Skojare didn’t actually live in the water, but they needed to spend a lot
of time in it, or they’d get sick.

When Mom stayed away from water too long, she’d get headaches. Her skin would become
ashen, and her golden hair would lose its usual luster. She’d say, “I’m drying out,”
and then she’d go take a long soak in the tub.

I don’t think that was the ideal course of action for her symptoms, but Mom made do.

“Supper smells good,” I said as I walked into the kitchen.

“Yeah. Your mom put it in before she got in the tub,” Dad said. “It should be ready
soon, I think.”

Upstairs, I heard the bathroom door open, followed by my mom shouting, “Bryn? Is that
you?”

“Yeah, Mom. I got here a little early,” I called up to her.

“Oh, gosh. I’ll be right down.”

“You don’t need to rush on my account,” I said, but I knew she would anyway.

A few seconds later, Mom came running down the stairs wearing a white robe. A clip
held up her long wet hair.

“Bryn!” Mom beamed at me, and she ran over and embraced me tightly. “I’m so happy
to see you!”

“Glad to see you too, Mom.”

“How are you?” She let go of me and brushed my hair back from my face, so she could
look at me fully. “Are you okay? They didn’t hurt you, right?”

“Nope. I’m totally fine.”

“Good.” Her lips pressed into a thin line, and her aqua eyes were pained. “I worry
so much when you’re away.”

“I know, but I’m okay. Honest.”

“I love you.” She leaned down and kissed my forehead. “Now I’ll go get dressed. I
just wanted to see you first.”

Mom dashed back upstairs to her bedroom, and I sat down at the kitchen table. Even
without makeup, and rapidly approaching forty, my mom still had to be the most stunning
woman in Doldastam. She had the kind of beauty that launched a thousand wars.

Fortunately, that hadn’t happened. Although there had definitely been repercussions
from her union with my dad, and they’d both sacrificed their titles and riches to
be together.

Their relationship had been quite the scandal. My mom had been born in Storvatten—the
Skojare capital—and she was a high-ranking Marksinna. My dad had been Markis from
a prominent family in Doldastam. When Mom was only sixteen, she’d been invited to
a ball here in Doldastam, and though my dad was a few years older than her, they’d
instantly fallen in love.

Dad had become involved in politics, and he didn’t want to leave Doldastam because
he had a career. So Mom defected from Storvatten, since they both agreed that they
had a better chance to make a life here.

The fact that Dad was Chancellor, and had been for the past ten years, was a very
big deal. Especially since his family had basically disowned him. But I’d always thought
that the fact that my mom was so beautiful helped his case. Everyone understood why
he’d give up his title and his riches to be with her.

I’d like to say that life had been easy for my mom and me, that the Kanin people had
been as forgiving of us as they had been for Dad. But they hadn’t.

Other tribes like the Trylle were more understanding about intertribal marriages,
especially if the marriage wasn’t among high-ranking royals. They thought it helped
unite the tribes. But the Kanin definitely did not feel that way. Any romance outside
your own tribe could dilute the precious bloodlines, and that was an act against the
kingdom itself and nearly on par with treason.

Perhaps that’s why they were slightly easier on my mom than they were on me. Her bloodline
was still pure. It may have been Skojare, but it was untainted. Mine was a mixture,
a travesty against both the Kanin and the Skojare.

“So how are things going with Linus?” Dad walked over to the counter and poured himself
a glass of red wine, then held out an empty glass toward me. “You want something to
drink?”

“Sure.” I sat down at the kitchen table, and Dad poured me a glass of wine before
joining me. “Linus is adjusting well, and he’s curious and easygoing, which makes
the transition easier. He’s trying really hard to learn all of our words and phrases.
He’s even tried mimicking our dialect.”

When trackers went out into the world, we were taught to use whatever dialect was
common in that area, which was actually incredibly difficult to master. But in Doldastam,
we returned to the usual Kanin accent—slightly Canadian but with a bit of a Swedish
flare to it, especially on Kanin words. Linus’s Chicago accent wasn’t too far off,
but he still tried to imitate ours perfectly.

Dad took a drink, then looked toward the stairs, as if searching for my mother, and
when he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. “I didn’t tell her about Konstantin.
She knows you were attacked, but not by
whom
.”

Dad swirled the wine in his glass, staring down at it so he wouldn’t have to look
at me, then he took another drink. This time I joined him, taking a long drink myself.

“Thank you,” I said finally, and he shook his head.

My parents had a very open relationship, and I’d rarely known them to keep secrets
from each other. So my dad not telling my mom about Konstantin was actually a very
big deal, but I understood exactly why he withheld that information, and I appreciated
it.

Mom would lose her mind if she found out. After Konstantin had stabbed Dad, she’d
begged and pleaded for us all to leave, to go live among the humans, but both Dad
and I had wanted to stay, so finally she had relented. It was my dad’s argument that
we were safer here, with other guards and trackers to protect us from one crazed vigilante.

But if Mom knew that Konstantin was involved again, that he’d attacked another member
of her family, that would be the final straw for her.

After changing into an oversized sweater and yoga pants, Mom came down the stairs,
tousling her damp hair with her hand.

“What are we talking about?” Mom touched my shoulder as she walked by on her way to
the oven.

“Just that Linus Berling is getting along well with his parents,” I told her.

She opened the oven and peeked in at whatever was simmering in a casserole dish, then
she glanced back at me. “They don’t always?”

“Changelings and their parents?” I laughed darkly. “No, no, they usually don’t.”

At times they even seemed to hate each other, not that that was totally outlandish.
These were wealthy people, living in a childless home, when suddenly an eighteen-
to twenty-year-old stranger going through a major bout of culture shock was thrust
into their lives.

Maternal and paternal instincts did kick in more often than not, and an unseen bond
would pull them together. Eventually, most changelings and their parents came to love
and understand each other.

But that was over time. Initially, there was often friction, and lots of it. Changelings
were hurt and confused, and wanted to rebel against a society they didn’t understand.
The parents, meanwhile, struggled to raise someone who was more adult than child and
mold them into an acceptable member of the Kanin hierarchy.

“The whole practice has always seemed barbaric to me.” Mom closed the oven, apparently
deciding supper wasn’t quite done yet, and sat down at the table next to my dad. “Taking
a child and leaving it with total strangers. I don’t know how anyone can part with
their child like that. There’s no way I would’ve allowed that to happen to you.”

The Skojare didn’t have changelings—not any of them. They earned their money through
more honest means. The general population worked as fishermen, and they had for centuries,
originally trading their fish for jewels and gold. Now it was mostly a cash business,
and the royalty maintained their wealth through exorbitant taxes on the people.

That’s part of the reason why the Skojare population had dwindled down so low compared
to the other troll tribes. The lifestyle wasn’t as lavish or as kind to those who
weren’t direct royalty.

“The Changeling practice isn’t as bad as it sounds,” Dad said.

Mom shook her head, dismissing him. “You were never a changeling. You don’t know.”

“No, but my brother was,” he said, and as soon as Mom shot him a look, I knew he regretted
it.

My uncle Edmund was five years older than my dad. I’d only met him a handful of times
when I was very young, because Edmund was kind of insane. Nobody was exactly sure
what happened to him, but by the time I was in school, Edmund had left Doldastam and
now traveled the subarctic like a nomad.

“Exactly, Iver,” Mom said. “And where is he now?”

Dad cleared his throat, then took a sip of his wine. “That was a bad example.”

Mom turned back to me. “So with the Berling boy back, are you here for a while?”

I nodded. “It looks that way.”

“Well, good.” She smiled warmly at me. “With all this nonsense going on, you don’t
need to be out there.”

“That is exactly why I do need to be out there,” I said, even though I knew I should
just keep my mouth shut. This was supposed to be a nice visit, and we didn’t need
to get into this again. It was an old argument we’d repeated too many times, but I
couldn’t seem to stop myself. “I should be out there protecting the changelings.”

“We shouldn’t even have changelings. You shouldn’t be out there risking your life
for some archaic practice!” Mom insisted.

“Would you like a glass of wine, Runa?” Dad asked in a futile attempt to keep the
conversation civil, but both my mom and I ignored him.

“But we do have changelings.” I leaned forward, resting my arms on the table. “And
as long as we do, someone needs to bring them home and keep them safe.”

Mom shook her head. “By being a tracker, you’re buying right into this awful system.
You’re enabling it.”

“I’m not…” I trailed off and changed the direction of my argument. “I’m not saying
it’s perfect or it’s right—”

“Good.” She cut me off and leaned back in her seat. “Because it isn’t.”

“Mom, what else do you want our people to do? This is the way things have been done
for thousands of years.”

She laughed, like she couldn’t believe I was saying it. “That doesn’t make it okay,
Bryn! Just because something has been done for a long time doesn’t make it right.
Every time a changeling is left with a human family, they are risking their children’s
lives to steal from strangers. It’s sick.”

“Runa, maybe now isn’t the time to have this discussion.” Dad reached out, putting
his hand on her arm. She let him, but her eyes stayed on me, darkened with anger.

“I’m not condoning the stealing,” I told her.

“But you are,” Mom persisted. “By working for them, by helping them the way you do,
you are tacitly agreeing with all of it.”

“The Kanin have a way of life here. I’m not talking about the Markis or the trackers
or the changelings. I am talking about the average Kanin person, the majority of the
ten thousand people that live in Doldastam,” I said, trying to appeal to her sense
of reason and fair play.

“They don’t have changelings,” I reminded her. “They work for their money. They’re
teachers and bakers and farmers and shop owners. They raise families and live quietly
and more peacefully and closer to nature. They’re allowed to leave, yet time and time
again they choose to stay. And it’s a good thing too. You don’t know what the world
is like outside the city walls anymore. You haven’t been anywhere except Storvatten
and Doldastam.”

Mom rolled her eyes at that, but she didn’t say anything, letting me finish my speech.

“The life for the humans, outside in the real cities, it’s not like this,” I said.
“The drugs, the violence, the excessive commercialism. Everything is a product, even
people themselves. I know that things here are not perfect. We have our problems too,
but the way we live as a whole, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.