“Baraqel? Did he say Baraqel?”

Tuttugu nodded.

“At the end?” My stomach became a cold knot. I recalled how much any healing had taken from me. “Is he—”

“Dead?” Tuttugu limped to the heaped furs. “No. But he should be.” He pulled a wolfskin aside and there lay Snorri, pale but breathing. He looked to be asleep rather than unconscious. The broken bones in his face had been repositioned and the skin sewn over them. “I’ve done what I can. We can only wait now.”

“How long have I been sleeping?” It seemed important, even with our enemies fled.

“All day, Jal. It’s nearly sunset.”

“But if Snorri . . . Baraqel, you said? And healing . . . So he’s light-sworn now.” I looked again where my wounds should be. “Then the one who’s dark-sworn is . . .”

Tuttugu nodded.

“Ah.”

I lay back. It would be a long journey back to Vermillion, and if we didn’t beat the arrival of winter, then the Black Fort would be our home until spring. I’d make it, though, and I’d take whatever still remained of my newfound courage and stand before the Red Queen’s throne and demand she get her damned sister to take this spell out of us.

All that, of course, depended on no one being able to talk me out of it between now and then.

Somewhere the sun was setting. I closed my eyes and waited to see just how persuasive Aslaug would be.

• • •

Six weeks later and the first deep snows of winter came, falling from leaden skies, driven by a cruel wind.

“Bring me another ale, will you, Tuttugu, there’s a good chap!”

Tuttugu gave a complacent shrug, pushed his roast chicken to one side, and went to fill a tankard at the barrel.

Outside, the streets of Trond lay clogged with snow. I didn’t care. I snuggled back deeper into the fur of what must have been a white bear every bit as big as the one Snorri vaulted in the Blood Holes. Very cosy. Nobody came or went without good cause, and the Three Axes tavern saw little trade—which was probably the reason the owner had sold me the whole place, lock, stock, and no small number of barrels, for just two of the diamonds pried from Mother’s locket.

It was good to have so many fears lifted from me, so many cares shed, to be safe and warm in the grip of winter. The only worries to trouble me now in the long nights were little ones, or at least far away. The problem of Maeres Allus seemed small compared to the problem of how to get home. In fact, the only thing to steal my sleep, at least the only noninvited thing, was the thought that though the Unborn Captain had frightened me to the point at which my heart forgot to beat, and though his gaze was a terrible thing, those weren’t the eyes that had watched me through the slit of that porcelain mask back in the opera so very many miles and months ago. That stare had been worse still and haunted me even now.

• • •

Life is good.

Today Astrid has to be about her work in town, but I have the lovely Edda to warm me up instead. Snorri says it will end in tears and has taken to giving me disgusted looks as if I should have learned something by now. My own opinion is that if I keep juggling, then all the balls will stay in the air (even Hedwig, a beauty I’ve my eye on and daughter to Jarl Sorren) and my comeuppance will never come down, however richly deserved. Aslaug agrees. She is, it must be said, far more agreeable than Baraqel ever was. I’m amazed Snorri took against her so.

Yes, I should grow up, and yes, I will, but there’s time for that tomorrow. Today is for living.

So here we are, snug in the Three Axes with nothing to do but do nothing. Winter has us locked in, safe from the outside world, trapped in our own little inside world. Ironic when our prize was a key that can open anything, and here we are locked in, kept in Trond until the spring unlocks the ice and sets us free.

For a time back there in that awful fort, with Baraqel nagging at me and my rotten little existence coming rapidly to a sharp point, I did start to wonder if I could have made a better job of the business of living. I started to see my old life of wine, song, and as many women as would have me as something shallow. Tawdry even. On the trek across the ice and in that long dark night within the Black Fort, I will confess to wishing for my time over, to promising I would treat everyone better, set aside ugly prejudice. I resolved to seek out Lisa DeVeer, vow fidelity, throw myself on her mercy, to be the man my age demanded, not the child it allowed. And the horror of it all was that I really meant it!

It didn’t take Aslaug long to talk me down. All I truly needed was someone to let me know I’d been fine as I was, slap me on the back and tell me that the world was waiting for me out there, and to go and get it!