Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War 1)

“Well, yes . . .” Certainly bits of it.

“So you’ll know where I’m headed, then,” Snorri said.

“South?” I ventured.

He looked puzzled at that. “I’d be more at ease going by sea, but that may be hard to arrange. It might be I need to trek north through Rhone and Renar and Ancrath and Conaught.”

“Well, of course . . .” I had no idea what he was talking about. If there had been a word of truth in his story he wouldn’t want to go back. And his itinerary sounded like the trek from hell. Rhone, our uncouth neighbour to the north, was always a place best avoided. I’d yet to meet a Rhonish man I’d piss on if he were on fire. Renar I’d never heard of. Ancrath was a murky kingdom on the edge of a swamp and full of murderous inbreds, and Conaught lay so far away there was bound to be something wrong with it. “I wish you luck of the journey, Snagason, wherever you’re bound.” I held my hand out for a manly clasping, a prelude to a parting of our ways.

“I’m going north. Home to rescue my wife, my family . . .” He paused for a moment, pressing his lips tight, then shook off the emotion. “And it went poorly the first time I left you behind,” Snorri said. He eyed my outstretched hand with a measure of suspicion and extended his own cautiously. “You didn’t feel that just now?” He touched his own nose with his other hand.

“’Course I bloody felt it!” It was quite possibly the most painful thing I’d ever experienced, and that from someone who learned the hard way not to jump into the saddle from a bedroom window.

He brought his hand closer to mine and a pressure built against my skin, all pins and needles and fire. Closer still, and more slow, and my hand started to pale, almost to glow from within, while his darkened. With an inch between our extended palms it seemed that a cold fire ran through my veins, my hand brighter than the day, his looking as if it had been dipped in dark waters, stained with blackest ink that collected in every crease and filled each pore. His veins ran black while mine burned, darkness bled from his skin like mist, a wisp of pale flame ghosted across my knuckles. Snorri met my gaze, his teeth gritted against a pain that mirrored mine. Eyes that had been blue were now holes into some inner night.

I gave one of those yelps that I always hope will go unnoticed and whipped my hand away. “Damnation!” I shook it, trying to shake the pain out, and watched as it shaded back to normality. “That bloody witch! Point taken. We won’t shake on it.” I gestured to a gravel beach on the outer edge of the meander. “You can drop me off there. I’ll find my own way back.”

Snorri shook his head, eyes returning to blue. “It was worse when we got too far apart. Didn’t you notice?”

“I was rather distracted,” I said. “But, yes, I do recall some problems.”

“What witch?”

“What?”

“You said ‘bloody witch.’ What witch?”

“Oh nothing, I—” I remembered the fight pits. Lying to the man on this point would probably be a mistake. I was lying out of habit, in any case. Better to tell him. It might be that his heathen ways could lead to some kind of solution. “You met her. Well, you saw her in the Red Queen’s throne room.”

“The old völva?” Snorri asked.

“The old what?”

“That crone at the Red Queen’s side. She’s the witch you’re talking about?”

“Yes. The Silent Sister, everyone calls her. Most don’t see her, though.”

Snorri spat into the water. The current took it away in a series of lazy swirls. “I know this name, the Silent Sister. The völvas of the North speak it, but not loudly.”

“Well, now you’ve seen her.” I still wondered at that. Perhaps the fact that we could both see her had something to do with her magic failing to destroy us. “She set a spell that was to kill everyone at the opera I went to last night.”

“Opera?” he asked.

“Better not to know. In any event, I escaped the spell, but when I forced my way through, something broke, a crack ran after me. Two cracks, interwoven, one dark, one light. When you grabbed hold of me, the crack caught up and ran through both of us. And somehow stopped.”

“And when we separate?”

“The dark fissure ran through you, the light through me. When we pull them apart it seems the cracks try to tear free, to rejoin.”

“And when they join?” Snorri asked.

I shrugged. “It’s bad. Worse than opera.” However nonchalant my words might be, though, and despite the heat of the day, my blood ran colder than the river.