The Liar's key

ELEVEN

“I’m so hungry.”

“Finally he wakes!” Snorri’s voice close by.

I opened my eyes. “I’ve gone blind!” Panic seized me and I struggled up, banging my head on something hard.

“Relax!” He sounded amused. A big hand pushed me down. The old magic sizzled unpleasantly at the contact points.

“My eyes! My fuc-”

“It’s night time.”

“Where are the damn stars then?” I touched my forehead where I’d bashed it. My fingers came away sticky.

“It’s cloudy.”

“Where’s the lantern?” I had him this time. We always kept the lantern burning on dark nights, wick trimmed low. Better to waste a little oil than trip overboard in the dark when nature called.

“You broke it when you fell over.”

I remembered it all. That woman! My hand!

“My hand!” I shouted, stupidly grabbing the place she stabbed me and yelping in pain.

Tuttugu uttered a sleepy complaint and stopped snoring. These days I only really noticed his snoring when he stopped.

“Why am I so hungry?”

“You’re a pig.” I heard Snorri turn over and gather his covers.

“You’ve been asleep the best part of two nights and a day.” Kara’s voice from the other end of the boat.

“Well. .” I paused to consider that. “Well, it didn’t work. You mutilated me for nothing.”

“You saw nothing?” She sounded unconvinced.

“I saw my grandmother. When she was younger than I am now. She was a scary bitch back then too! Worse, if anything.”

“You delayed too long before tasting the blood,” Kara said.

“Well excuse me for being busy staring at the six inches of steel sticking out of the back of my hand!” I still couldn’t believe she didn’t warn me.

“You may see more when you next dream. Perhaps what you seek.” She didn’t sound bothered-sleepy more than anything.

I glowered at her in the darkness, but judging by the soft sounds all around me the three of them had already fallen back into their slumbers. I couldn’t follow them. I’d slept enough. Instead I sat staring into the darkness, rocked by the waves, until the skies shaded into pale to herald the dawn.

• • •

I spent those cold dark hours staring at memories of memories. At my grandmother a lifetime ago, at the sacrifices she made to deny her enemy, at the fire in her that drove her to attack long after hope had fled the battlefield. Like Snorri. Or rather, like Snorri had been.

In the grey predawn I watched the northman slumped across the tiller, the slits of his eyes dark as he watched me back. Baraqel would talk to him soon. The angel would walk across the waves and speak of light and purpose, and still Snorri would steer this boat south, aimed toward death.

“You’re a coward, Snorri ver Snagason.” Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, or the Red Queen’s blood still running hot in my veins, or even an honest desire to help the man, but something set the words spilling from my mouth, my normal desire to avoid any chance of being hit overridden for the moment.

“How so?” He didn’t move or raise his voice. In truth I’d never seen the violence he displayed in battle spill over into conversation-even those that ran against him. Perhaps I just judged him by what I’d do if I were a big scary Viking.

“This key. It’s built of lies, you know that. Taking it to death’s door-” I waved an arm in the air. “It’s just looking for a way out, an escape. You may as well have cut a hole in the sea ice back in Trond harbour and jumped through. Same result, less effort, and fewer people inconvenienced.” I would have told him he wasn’t going to get his wife back, or his children, or the unborn baby. I would have told him it was all nonsense and that the world doesn’t work that way. I would have said that but perhaps I’m not that cruel, or perhaps I didn’t trust his temper that far. . but most likely it didn’t need to be said. He knew it already.

Snorri didn’t speak. Nothing but the moan of the wind and the slap of waves against the hull. Then, “Yes. I am a coward, Jal.”

“So, throw the key over the side and come with me to Vermillion.”

“The door is my quest now.” Snorri sat up. “The door. The key. It’s all I have.” He touched the place where the key hung beneath his jerkin. “And what is the key if not a chance to face the gods and to demand an explanation for the world. . for your life?”

I knew this wasn’t about gods. Whatever he said. His family drew him on. Freja, Emy, Egil, Karl. I still kept their names and the stories he’d told about them, and they weren’t even mine. It’s not in me to care about such things, but even so, I saw that little girl, her peg doll, Snorri running to save her. I’d expected him to speak of them again over the long winter. Expected it and dreaded it. Known that one night, deep in his cups, he must break and drunkenly he would rage against the loss. But he never did. No matter how dark the night nor how long, or how much of my ale he consumed, Snorri ver Snagason made no complaint, spoke no word of his loss. I hadn’t expected to speak of it at last in a small boat, bound on every side by cold miles of restless sea.

“That’s not-”

“Sixty beats of a heart would be enough. If I could hold them. Let them know I came for them no matter what stood in my way. It would be enough. Sixty beats of a heart past that door would outweigh sixty years in this world without them. You’ve not loved, Jal, not held your child, newborn and bloody, soft against a hard world, and promised that child you’d keep it safe. And Freja. I don’t have the words for it. She woke me. I’d spent my time in red dreaming, biting at any hand that tried to feed me. She woke me-I saw her-and she was all I wanted to see-all I could see.”

Kara and Tuttugu hadn’t moved from their benches but I saw in the stillness of them that both lay awake, listening.

“There’s no place in this world for me any more, except as a weapon, except as the anger behind a sharp edge, bringing sorrow. I’m done, Jal. Broken. Past my time.”

I hadn’t anything to say to that, so I said nothing, and let the sea speak. In time the sun found us, and Baraqel must have flowed into the northman’s mind, though whether he had any words to offer up after Snorri’s own I couldn’t say.