The Liar's Key

“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.

TWELVE

That first day after I woke from the blood dream I spent cradling my hand in my lap and glowering at Kara. She kept her peace though. At least until I started fumbling at the laces of my trews to answer nature’s call. It’s a difficult business at the best of times, standing up in a small boat to relieve oneself over the side. Trying to stand in choppy seas whilst unlacing with an injured hand is doubly difficult.

“This would be a hell of a lot easier if some lunatic hadn’t stabbed me!” The laces confounded my awkward fingers yet again. “Christ’s whore!” I may have uttered a few more oaths, and called a certain völva’s good name into disrepute . . .

“In the north we call that a little prick,” Kara replied, not looking over from her place at the tiller.

I’m sure she meant the injury, but Tuttugu and Snorri, being ignorant barbarians, laughed themselves hoarse at my expense, and thereafter I manfully ignored my wound, having found the edge of Kara’s tongue to be sharper than her needle.