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

A small figure was making its way out along the longest of those quays as Snorri watched.

“Emy!” Snorri’s shout had heads thrusting from doorways, window hides lifting. The little girl almost fell from the long-quay in shock, which had been precisely the threat that had scared the shout out of him in the first place. But she caught herself after jolting forwards and hung to an upright, little fingers clutching the icy timber, white hair falling across her face and reaching for the dark waters a couple of feet below. One slip and the fjord would swallow her, the cold stealing both breath and strength.

Snorri dropped his gear and ran out along the long-quay, sure-footed, stepping where it would bear his weight and losing no time over the choices. He’d run the long-quay all his life.

“Fool girl! You know you’re not to—” Fear made his voice harsh as he fell to his knees and scooped Emy into his arms. He bit back the anger. “You could have fallen, Einmyria!” A child raised to the Undoreth should have more sense, even at five. He held her tight to his chest, still careful not to crush her, his heart hammering. Emy had been a babe at her mother’s breast when Jarl Torsteff led the Undoreth against Hoddof of Iron Tors. At no point in that battle—not charging the shield wall, not wet with Edric ver Magson’s blood, not pinned by stockade timber with two men of Iron Tors approaching—had Snorri known fear such as that which seized him seeing his own child hanging over dark waters.

Snorri held Emy away from him. “What were you doing?” Soft now, almost beseeching.

Emy bit her lip, struggling to hold back the tears filling her eyes—the same cornflower blue as her mother’s. “Peggy’s in the water.”

“Peggy?” Snorri tried to recall a child of that name. He knew all the children by sight, of course, but . . . it came to him, a wash of relief erasing any exasperation. “Your doll? You’re out here looking for a peg doll you lost before the snows?”

Emy nodded, still close to tears. “You find her! You find her, Papi.”

“I don’t—She’s lost, Einmyria.”

“You can find her. You can.”

“Some lost things can be found again and some can’t.” He broke off his explanation, seeing in his daughter’s eyes the exact moment that a child first understands there are limits on what her parents can do, rather than just limits on what they choose to do. He knelt before her in a moment’s silence, somewhat less than he had been just seconds before, and Emy a half step closer to the woman she would one day become.

“Come on.” He stood, lifting her. “Back to your mama.” And he walked back, careful now, watching the planks, placing each foot with precision. Carrying Emy up the slope, Snorri echoed with an old pain, the hurt of every parent separated from their child, whether by a sudden slip into deep and hungry water or by slow steps along divergent paths bound for the future.

• • •

They came that night.

Snorri had often said that Freja saved his life. She took from him the rage that had forged his skill with axe and spear, setting in its place new passions. He said she had given him purpose where all he had before was confusion that he hid, as most young men do, behind an illusion of action. Perhaps she saved his life again that night, some dream-murmured warning thinning his sleep.

What woke him, Snorri couldn’t say. He lay in the dark and the warmth of his covers, Freja close enough to touch but not touching. For long moments he heard only the sound of her breathing and the creak of ice re-forming. He had no concern over attack—the jarls had settled the worst of their squabbles, for the now. In any case, only a fool would risk a raid with the season barely starting to turn.

Snorri set a hand to the smoothness of Freja’s hip. She muttered some sleepy rejection. He pinched.

“Bear?” she asked. Sometimes a white bear would nose around, take a goat. The best thing to do was to let it. His father advised, “Never eat a white bear’s liver.” As a boy, Snorri had asked why, were they poisonous? “Yes,” his father had said, “but the main reason is that if you try to, the bear will be busy eating yours, and he has bigger teeth.”

“Maybe.” Not a bear. Where his surety came from, Snorri didn’t know.

He slid from the furs and the cold gripped him. Clad only in skin, he took down his axe, Hel. His father had given him the weapon, a single broad blade, half-moon cutting edge. “This blade is the start of a journey,” his father had said. “It has sent many men to Hel, and it will send her more souls before its time is done.” With the axe in his hand Snorri felt clothed, the cold laying no finger upon him for fear he might hack it off.