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“Are you sure this is going to work?”
Jin is pulling on his tight leather boots, one strand of freshly washed hair falling into his eyes. “I mean, I barely speak the language,” he continues, rising from the intricately carved chair to pick his bracers off the dressing stand. “It's not like I'm a big shot Kapten. They don't care that my family goes back to before time. I'm a handicap, not an asset.”
Vilde finds herself tangled, yet again, in the laces of her gown. “You undersell yourself, my alskling. It is not me they come to bargain with.”
Jin turns. The patterns on the metal bracers strapped to his forearms glow in the late afternoon sun. He is ethereal, a king from old come alive. Vilde once again has to blink hard to remind herself he’s real.
“So, what, I keep playing peacemaker and they keep dropping their little hints that the pitchforks and torches will come out as soon as you show a hint of weakness?” Jin frowns. “I’m not doing anything meaningful, Vilde.”
She shook her head at him. “They come to look at you. That’s enough.”
He goes still. Handsome face cold, he snaps, “That’s enough?”
“Alsking, not your face.” She doesn’t giggle, she doesn’t. “Although maybe some do. They come to look at the DrakkenMung.”
Jin’s shoulders shift back down underneath his embroidered shirt. “Ah. Well.” He clears his throat.
Vilde has finally gotten the straps to her gown where they belong. She tugs the sleeves up and turns. “Please?”
Jin’s warm hands reach the back of her neck a minute later. He ties the gown, but his hands linger on her shoulders. “Darling, does it matter if I’m DrakkenMung? I don’t work with the drakken and they know it. I’m no warrior.” He quickly corrects himself. “I mean, I can do some interesting things with a sword, but I’m not the kind of person they will see as a threat.”
Vilde turns in his arms. “Then they are fools.” She plants a kiss on his full lips.
“Vilde!” he mutters in exasperation. “You’re not taking this seriously.” He kisses her back.
“You’re the most dangerous man I know,” Vilde tells her husband. “They do not know it yet. When they find it out—” she kisses his cheek “—it will be too late.”
“Glad you’re confident,” Jin says.
“I know you,” Vilde says simply, and turns to find her hair pins.
—
It’s not the first time Jin’s been caught in the crossfire. These trade discussions always seem to end with burly men shouting across the table at each other. Jin’s head is pounding.
It doesn’t help that their dialects keep slipping through his ears like eels desperate for water. The southerners sound like they’re angry even when they’re not, the northerners have a peculiar twang that his brain refuses to convert to meaningful syllables, and the coastal clans have so many colorful turns of phrase that Jin’s dictionary has gone grubby with use.
Jin puts his hands flat on the table. It’s time to make this worse.
Jin keeps his tone level. “And that’s why I’m inviting everyone who wishes to try for the prize.” He smiles evenly at the blustering northern clan ledare across from him. Verlick, was it? He can’t remember. “This is an equal opportunity.”
Thank the Mor it shuts the guy up. Jin can feel his heartbeat in his palms. He turns to the coastal clan ledare banging on the table. “I of course include housing and feed for the drakken in the offer.” The weaselly looking man folds his arms with a humph but makes no further complaints.
“What about the DrakkenKapten? Is this her invite too?” A tall, be-furred man with an elaborately braided beard asks. The table explodes again.
Jin waves his hands. It’s no use. Like toddlers, Jin thinks. Like itty-bitty children. They can’t even take turns talking. Jin fingers his rings and smiles pleasantly, gritting his teeth.
And then Jin stands up. He smiles genuinely. He bows and turns to leave.
“Where are you going?” Verlick or whatever his name is shouts. The table quiets imperceptibly.
Jin turns. He makes eye contact with Verlick. “Like toddlers.” Looks weasel-guy dead in the eye. “Like itty-bitty children.” Jin stares down Mr. Beard. “You can’t even take turns talking.”
Jin spreads his hands. “I’ve given the invitation. Come, or don’t. This meeting is adjourned.”
Jin leaves, sharp smile still curling fiercely on his lips.
The responses come in by drakkenpost. They’re all coming. Vilde nods quietly when Jin pours the letters into her lap. Jin didn’t think it would work. He smiles a fox smile, though, when he remembers leaving the meeting, and feels a tiny stab of victory as he goes to ask the maids to prepare for the invasion.
—
Vilde watches the first of the drakken in the sky, distant specks of color that eventually grow wings and fall to the earth, heavy laden with the baggage from their journey. Her husband is in the drakkengrot personally overseeing the preparations for their stabling. He’d insisted. “The invitation is from both of us, but it’s me they want to test. So I’ll do it,” he’d told her, and had gone to talk to Per about what the guests would need.
Vilde watches. She sees three tall young drakken pulling at their leashes and frowns at their handlers. Those bairn will be out of hand in another year unless they are spoken to more softly.
A big black and white female drakken spouts a touch of fire and is scolded for it in a spatter of bullet-like consonants by her handler. A stout woman with greying gold braids down to her knees, the handler wears the wide skirts of the southern clans, and, if the distinctive gold hair is anything to judge by, it seems like her whole family has come along with her. Her drakken throws up her head before wuffling at the courtyard stones in apology.
Over to the side a silver-headed man wearing the slashed halsduk of a coastal clan has a huge limping russet drakken piled with goods. The drakken’s scarred leg bears witness to some long-ago battle, and the man is quickly unloading gear as his beast nudges at him for treats. Vilde blinks. So there is some truth to the rumor that a few of the FirstRiders lived. When the man’s sharp eyes pick her out in the shadows and he freezes, Vilde bows slightly. He bows back after an awkward moment and the pair hurry away.
Vilde scans the courtyard. She needs to go in before she is noticed again. A few drakken look sullen-eyed, and Vilde marks the men with them for further attention later, but no one here is a danger to her. Even her least agile ryttare can outdistance these.
Among the hordes of people in the main hallway she meets her husband, covered in that peculiar sulphuric reek of the drakkengrot and with a carefully masked expression of discomfort on his handsome face. Vilde takes her chance and tugs him behind the closest door.
“The drakken begin to come.”
“That’s good. Everything’s ready and I spoke to the DrakkenMor. She is setting up her welcome.” Jin eyes the surrounding shelves. “Vilde, a linen closet, really? I’m covered in drakken… well.”
Vilde notices the stacks of clean white sheets for the first time. She nods at Jin absently. “Yes, of course, my alsking. But Jin, take care. I have not seen the clan ledare come in. Only little dribs and drabs of volken, the sightseers who can afford a vacation to the great mountain and the wanderers who come to risk themselves for the prize.”
“We knew they’d be planning something.” Jin takes her hand. “That’s the point, isn’t it? To drive it into the open?”
“Yes. But I think now that I see the small drakken that have come, we are not ready. They will cause a trouble we did not think to prepare against.” Vilde wants to pace but the closet is barely big enough for both of them standing still.
Jin rubs his thumb over her hand. “You’re thinking too much again.”
“How can I not?” Vilde tells him. “How can I not, when we are inviting an army into the mountain and calling it a week of sport?”
Jin smiles a tired smile at her. “Vilde, darling. I know. But what did the DrakkenMor tell you?”
“Nothing useful,” Vilde grumbles, but she leans forward and rests her forehead against her husband’s chest. “I will take to the skies if they so much as twitch a finger for their weapons,” she mutters.
Jin laughs and strokes her hair with his cleanest hand. “There’s my Kapten. Come. Let’s get the bathwater warming.”
—
Jin’s heart is in his throat. The drakken hits the cobbles and the ground shakes. The second drakken touches down with an even bigger judder, and the third, and the fourth. There are sixteen drakken in the courtyard and it is too small to hold them all. This huge space, made for the unloading of a few hundred beasts, is too small. Sixteen full drakken. They’d guessed that the clans might be hiding one or two grown beasts among them all. Jin straightens his shoulders and dons an icy mask of indifference.
In the time it takes the ledare to dismount and stride smugly toward him, Jin has time to think, If these are the ones they’re willing to show, how many more do they have?
Jin bows. Jin clears his throat. Jin welcomes his guests to the week of races and games, even and pleasant despite his racing thoughts. The men smirk at him and Jin smiles blankly back. At least he knows how to do that well.
“DrakkenMor?” Jin calls out. The drakkengrot echoes his desperation back to him but no wings stir. The Mor is somewhere else. Jin cannot fall to his knees. He’s in his second-best trousers and the floor is covered in dung. Jin walks stiffly back to the entrance of the grot and wills the wooden circlet around his head to feel less like a shackle.
Jin’s face is hot and heavy with the effort of holding a neutral expression longer than normal. The volken that fill the great hall feast chatter in a bewildering variety of accents. The ledare are silent. Jin tastes their glee in the air, thick and cloying on the back of his tongue. Jin has the nastiest feeling that it isn’t just the drakken. They are plotting something else.
Jin sips his wine carefully and watches from behind his aching mask of pleasantry. Not often, but often enough, the eyes of the ledare flit to a thin man in a simple set of furs. Jin has not met him before. Jin scours his dress for an indication of what clan he belongs to and can find no signifiers. It’s only when he opens his mouth to ask a servant for more brisket that Jin hears it. The rolling vowels of the emellan clan that is not quite southern, not quite coastal.
It's the only thing he says all evening. Jin doesn’t even catch his name. Jin doesn’t watch him. But Jin sees the rest of the ledare stand when he stands, all the same.
—
Vilde slices her salmon fillet delicately. “And the winter has not been too harsh?” she politely inquires of her left-hand neighbor. Jin, on her right hand, is swirling the wine in his cup as he looks over the hall.
The last feast is equally endless. Always the ledare are silent after they enter the hall and take their places. The rest of the guests have much to discuss, between the last-minute victory of a black-and-white drakken in the race today and the fight that nearly broke out between three young drakken after the jousting yesterday. Wine flows and fish swim in butter. Vilde tastes only the expectant anger that emanates from her companions at the head table.
From the corner of her eye Vilde sees Jin stand. She carries on her conversation. It is best to seem as if she does not know what her husband plans, this time.
—
“So that’s a no?” Jin inquires, polite as he always is.
“I do not play serlen,” Verlick says, only barely civil. “It is a child’s game.”
Jin’s smile is brilliant, teasing. “Even if you haven’t played since you were a child, you don’t need to be afraid. I’m a newcomer to the game.”
Verlick sputters. “I do not fear you!”
“Then of course you’d like to test me in a round or two?” Verlick swallows. Jin smiles, gentle and compassionate now that Verlick sees the trap he is in. “I only started learning two years ago. You have nothing to lose.”
There it is. Jin is watching while smiling and sees the exact second Verlick’s eyes flick to the man in plain furs. The plain man doesn’t acknowledge Verlick. The ledare begin to mutter in undercurrents of whispers as Verlick faces Jin, face steadily reddening.
“I’ll play.”
The table goes silent. Jin keeps his smile from growing into a grin. Those words were said with the rounded vowels of the emellan clan. Jin turns evenly to face a thin man in plain furs.
“I’d be honored, Ake,” Jin says, and snaps his fingers for the serlen board.
—
Vilde watches over her husband’s shoulder as he takes the last homing flick. Ping. The tiny white piece ricochets off Ake’s neat row and send the black pieces scattering into the lower scoring area of the board. Ake stares. The crowd gathered around mutters under their breaths. Vilde risks a glance at her husband’s face and winces inwardly. She can see beneath his mask to his exultation over a game well won.
Steady, she thinks at him. Calm and restrained. No missteps, not now.
Jin stands, holds out his hands to the audience. “Anyone else want a go?”
Ake’s guttural voice grinds through the sudden surge in chatter. “I believe you are mistaking the victory as yours, Jin-ssi.” When the crowd hushes, Ake goes on, “Perhaps you have so recently begun the learning of the game you have not yet come across the special circumstance rule for this case, when the flicks are unbalancing and so a final round may be played. Do you know this rule?”
Jin does. Vilde had watched the cook’s son use the rule in the fifth game of serlen Jin ever played. Now she watches Jin pretend he has never heard of it before.
Eyes wide, Jin sits back down at the table. “Oh, I see. Is it just another normal round?”
“Not quite.” Ake doesn’t smile, exactly, but the wrinkles around his mouth rearrange unsettlingly. “I go first. And there are no flicks this time.”
Jin stares down at the board as if he is lost. When he looks up at Ake, Vilde can see from the ledare’s satisfaction that Jin’s face is wide and timid. Jin gestures for Ake to pick up his pieces and begin the round.
Vilde brushes her husband’s shoulder of imaginary dust, just enough to remind him that he is playing more than a board game. Jin leans into her touch so imperceptibly that she is gone before she recognizes it. Good.
Ake takes the five pieces he is allowed to rearrange and scatters them back into the high scoring end. He then takes his two highest pieces and sacrifices them to remove the same number of pieces from Jin’s end. “Gaft,” he calls. Dexterously, he throws, and he is lucky. All but three of his pieces make it to the board. After arranging them in the pattern most advantageous, Ake leans back into his chair and jerks his chin at Jin. “Jin-ssi.”
It is the second time Ake has refused to call Jin by his rightful title. Vilde’s hand instinctively finds its way to the cutlery behind her on the dining table. She palms her table knife into a firm grip as tension and excitement fill the hall thicker than butter.
Jin needs to be very clever, or very lucky, to win. Vilde sees the exact moment he forgets to pretend. His eyes narrow and scan the board, flicking around the patterns and absorbing the current number of points against him. Jin’s narrow eyes light on a corner of the board. They widen. Vilde pushes forward, but her hand lands on his shoulder right after he snaps up to face Ake, maskless and alight.
“Fronak,” he calls, not bothering to reorder his high scoring pieces. He takes all seventeen of his lost pieces and throws with his left hand.
The chips rain down on the board amidst the sudden clamor in the hall. All seventeen pieces hit the board. The audience buzzes. Ake’s eyes flare.
Vilde pats Jin’s shoulder again, but he is too far gone. “It looks like you owe me seventeen points, Ake,” her husband says lazily.
Ake’s knuckles are white in his fisted hands. He looks over the board and slowly begins to remove his pieces, as required. When he’s done, Jin carelessly shoves white pieces into a pattern in the cleared space. The hall rocks with cheers.
Ake stares down at the white crown-and-stars that Jin has made. His own black rose-and-hammer pattern is in shambles. Even with his high-scoring pieces, the game is lost. Ake looks at Jin and gives him that rearranging of wrinkles. “A clever ploy.” Ake sweeps the pieces off the board. “Best two of three?”
Vilde can only stand helplessly as Jin wins again, and again. The volken have pushed their way up to see, and the whole hall sees her clever, foolish husband beat his opponent into the dust. When it is done the volken cheer loud and long. Jin whirls up from his chair and catches Vilde in his arms. “Next year we should have a day of indoor games as well as the drakken racing.” He faces to the hall and asks, “Would you like that? Drakken and serlen, the tournament of the century?”
The hall rings. Vilde extricates herself from her husband’s embrace and tugs him back to sit at the table. “Finish your meal,” she tells him dully, hoping a return to the feast will postpone the murder she sees in the eyes of the ledare. Jin sits and eats heartily.
Vilde tears a piece of bread and tries not to hear the chatter in the hall. It is hard, though, when a golden-haired woman in wide skirts stands on a chair and shouts hearty approval at Jin. “Is serlen a promise next year? Because my youngest’ll be coming for your championship, DrakkenMung.”
Jin shrugs nonchalantly. “Bring him to me. If he wins, I’ll hand over the championship myself.”
The hall erupts in laughter as the bright-headed child in question pulls at his mother with a flaming face. She shouts out, “If a DrakkenMung means we get serlen and drakken-racing, then I’m in favor of a different rule. Hail to the Kapten and her King!” as she is dragged down.
The hall takes up the shout. Vilde feels cold dread congeal like butter in her veins. The ledare are deadly silent.
The hall hushes as the volken slowly notice the grim faces at the head table. An icy voice with the open syllables of the emellan clan snakes into the quiet. “It’s a different way to rule, yes, with a DrakkenMung who is afraid of the skies.”
Jin’s face turns to marble again, smooth and cold and beautifully unknowable. Ake turns to face Vilde.
“Almost like being a wife with no child,” he says.
The hall goes silent.
Vilde chokes on her bread, throat pulsing with fire. The eyes in the hall are all on her. She struggles to her feet.
No one knew. They had been so careful, made sure that no one could have known. Vilde’s gown is closing around her neck. She drops her bread on the table and grips her knife.
“After two and a half years… well, anyone would wonder.” Ake’s condescending voice trickles thickly through the hall.
Vilde can’t speak. She looks around the faces, and her people look back in ill-disguised judgement. They have waited for news of an heir for so long. She stumbles from her place at the head of the table.
Jin catches at her. She shakes him off and runs, runs into the night. There is one place she might be safe. She leaves her husband’s anxious call behind and flees to the drakkengrot, clambering through the tunnels into the heart to find the DrakkenMor.
—
Jin makes a quick speech to wrap up the feast, some enthused elocution about next year’s tournament, and leaves to find Vilde. Jin knows the words he said will not quell the speculation, buzzing harmlessly now but soon sharp and stinging as his guests return to their homes. So this is why the ledare have worn smugness around them along with their furs. When Vilde shows herself at the sending-off tomorrow it will be to a people who have already turned their faces away.
Jin races through the tunnels of the drakkengrot. It’s where they’d come, a year and a half ago, with the bloody rags of their almost-child. It’s where Vilde will run now. Jin swallows hard against the memories rising in his throat and searches the shadows for his broken wife.
“When you ran like that you basically confirmed it,” Jin tells Vilde. She snatches her arm away from him with a sob. Jin flinches. It’s clearly not the time to discuss tactics.
They stand in the shadows together. Jin reaches for his wife’s hand, and she lets him draw her in. Jin strokes her hair. The drakkengrot is full of whispering wings, but until the DrakkenMor wakes they wait without speaking.
And if they do? the Mor says to them. Jin steps forward before he knows it, hand outstretched as if he can plead with an entity older and larger than some mountains.
Jin hesitates, drops his hand, and says, “But they will bring war.”
And if they do? the Mor says again. The Mor sighs and a gale of steam hisses upward in the cavern. They will not stop until they have what they want, and they want war.
Jin bites at his lip. “Do you want war?” Vilde’s hand tightens in his. Jin ignores her and asks the Mor, “Is it really the only way? War, and war, and war? Sheets of flame that burn over the mountains until there’s nothing left except ashes that can’t be burned further? Is this why you made me Mung, and made Vilde Kapten? For our children to enslave your children and drive them across the land in avenging fire?”
Vilde is trying to put her hand over his mouth. Jin wraps his arm around her, but faces the DrakkenMor stubbornly. “Is that what you want?”
Vilde shoves Jin back. She stands between him and the Mor, trembling, but the DrakkenMor only chuckles softly to herself. It shakes the cavern and the drakken roosting on the sides shiver and resettle. This is the man that is afraid to fly? The Mor turns her enormous eye on Jin. He stands tall under her gaze because he must, because he is wearing his best trousers and cannot fall to his knees.
Fine. The DrakkenMor closes her eye and begins the arduous process of refolding herself. Tomorrow, at the sending away, you and I will prove them liars. You will fly with me.
Jin’s knees hit the ground. Vilde’s hands come to rest on his shoulders, but Jin is seeing nothing but sky, tumbling and roiling around him as he clutches empty air.
—
Vilde tugs on her husband’s boot laces. Jin’s hands rest on his knees. They are shaking only a little.
Vilde ties his boots and looks up at him, seated in his carved chair but trembling. The early morning sun gives him a halo. Vilde slides between his knees and pulls him down to kiss him. “It is only for a few minutes.”
“I know,” he mutters, leaning his head against her collarbone. He swallows. “I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces,” he tries.
Vilde gives him a light laugh. “They’re going to look like children, fighting our goodwill with poisoned words. And when the volken see the DrakkenMor they will know.” Vilde runs a hand gently down her husband’s hair. “That is not an empty title, that the Mor is always at your back.”
Jin lifts his head. “You think Ake will call me DrakkenMung if the Mor snorts a little steam his direction?” he jokes.
Vilde brushes her thumb across his eyebrows. “I think that is what we are trying to avoid, alsking.”
Jin nods. Vilde helps him lace on shoulder and arm guards over his fine linen shirt, pressing her lips to each spot before she covers it with worked leather. When Jin is ready he stands and closes his eyes. Vilde turns away to give him a moment, and when she turns back, she is facing a DrakkenMung of old, tall and powerful and intimidatingly beautiful. Vilde can’t help the smile that crinkles at her eyes.
Jin winds his fingers through hers, and they walk to the courtyard hand in hand. As Vilde pushes open the door, Jin leans down. “For you,” he tells her, quiet under the hum of so many people. “For us.”
Vilde kisses him. She does not care that the volken watch. “Once you step into the sky you are one of my ryttare and are doubly mine.” And then Vilde lets go, and her husband turns and calls out for the DrakkenMor.
—
When the DrakkenMor comes down from the sky the whole air is rent apart. Jin is glad the people around him are afraid. It makes a clear spot for the Mor’s immense body to land.
The Mor barely puts her feet to the cobbles, wings still flickering percussively through the air. In a heartbeat, in the seconds before his death, Jin darts into the curve of safety right in front of her. He puts his hand up as a gesture of greeting.
To Jin’s surprise, the Mor lowers her head and there are warm scales under his fingertips. She towers over him. The crowd has made more than enough room and he is all alone before the Mor, hand on the very edge of a jaw larger than a cottage. Jin breathes for the first time. “Welcome,” he tells her softly.
Jin’s pride is a tattered rag these days, and he is not ashamed of the squeak he lets out when the Mor flicks her wingtip and scoops him into the air. He tumbles. Somewhere, he knows, Vilde will have gasped in concern, and it is for her eyes and not for the watching ledare that he tucks himself in and falls poised onto the long stretch of the Mor’s back. Jin finds a spine to settle himself against and kneels, knees spread wide across leathery scales. He waits for the ground to fall away.
You give the orders, the Mor tells him.
Jin clenches his hands miserably. “Onward, then,” he says, and with a stomach-dropping lurch the sky swallows them up.
Jin doesn’t know how far he has flown. Even the temptation to taunt Ake is not enough for Jin to open his eyes, here in the sky where he might see anything. Or nothing. Jin’s fingers are locked around the spine he sits against. He’s never going to move again.
Something hits the Mor behind him, hard enough to make the Mor’s skin twitch. The Mor remains silent, and so Jin is forced to open his eyes. Jin squints against the cold wind as a man in a slashed halsduk strides over the DrakkenMor’s back as if it is a cobbled courtyard.
The interloper reaches Jin and bows. “DrakkenMung?”
Jin doesn’t bow in return. This man might be pretending not to know that they are thousands of metres in the air, but Jin is getting sick of pretense. “Last I checked, yeah.”
The man hands him a tiny medallion on a thin leather cord. He speaks, rapid winding words in the coastal dialect. “I came to the races, not to win, but to see you.” He thrusts the medallion at Jin’s cramped fingers again. “Take this. If you have need of us we will come, the old guard. There are not so many of the first of the riders left. But we are training those who have the knowing in their hands, and if war comes again, you have us. I go home to tell my brothers this.”
The DrakkenMor shifts direction. Jin squeaks and clutches her spine desperately. The FirstRider doesn’t even sway. He stands tall on the Mor’s undulating scales and the sunlight shines his grey hair bright as silver.
Jin eventually manages to unclench his fingers and take the medallion. He squints against both the wind and the light to ask, “Why?”
The old man kneels to look Jin in the eye. “I came to see if the DrakkenMung was as afraid as they whispered. I have seen it. But you take to the sky, all the same, to spare the people you would rule some years of violence.”
The FirstRider leans in. “War is coming, my King. It is always coming. I go to tell my brothers that you have gotten here first.”
Before Jin can react, before he can ask this strange old man anything, the FirstRider stands. He flicks Jin a piece of stone. “Keep the DrakkenKapten alive, my King. I wish to best you both when the serlen tournament is called.”
The old man bows once more and then turns, breaking into a run. Jin watches openmouthed as the FirstRider sprints the length of the Mor’s back and hurls himself off the end of her tail. A much smaller russet drakken lifts through the gap a second later, bearing a man in a slashed halsduk who settles a knit cap firmly over his silver hair. The pair arc over the Mor’s tail and then disappear into her immense shadow.
Jin shuts his mouth. He looks back, sees for the first time the sky behind him streaming with all the bright drakken going home. Like serlen pieces made of gemstone, Jin thinks, turning the polished piece from the FirstRider over and over in his hand. Precious. Something he can win.
Jin stumbles on the cobblestones. His wife is there before he can fall, and Jin tumbles gratefully into her arms as the Mor returns to the sky and his people cheer. War is coming. Today, Jin has learned he is DrakkenMung, and he must win them time to be ready.
—
Vilde stands in front of the barnmorska in fear. This woman has the knowing of new life, and Vilde has never seen her smile. The barnmorska finishes cleaning her hands and turns. In the windowlight of her craggy cottage, her face is placid, wooden. Vilde’s fingers wind into her skirt and hold fast.
“There is a child,” the barnmorska tells Vilde, jaw moving as if she chews a cud.
Vilde’s knees go weak. “There is a child?”
The barnmorska mutters in annoyance. “It is so. Now, you cannot be going to the drakken each day and shaking the baby about. You cannot fly until the child is born.”
Vilde’s skirt is tight around her hand, a sudden binding. She shakes her head at the old woman. “But I must fly. I am Kapten, I must train the ryttare and—”
The barnmorska tsks. “And you have done so and lost one child so far. How many more must you lose before you heed my words? Keep still, keep to the ground. Long enough to give this baby a chance.”
“But I must fly!”
“So, so. I will help you again to bury the baby when it comes before its time.”
Vilde’s lungs are ice. She presses her hands to her belly, remembering all too clearly the rags tucked into the ground months ago. Vilde gasps. “War is coming, barnmorska. If I am no longer Kapten, the clans will rise. You know this. They will come when they know I no longer guard the mountain skies.”
“And the clans will rise in time, when the Kapten and the King have no children. Already the whispers are thick in the wind. How much longer will you wait to secure your hard-won throne?”
Vilde cradles her belly. “I cannot leave the skies open!” she cries. “They will burn us all!”
“The DrakkenMung will buy us time,” the barnmorska says simply. “Have you not trained your ryttare well? It is your husband you must trust, and the baby that will be.”
The barnmorska moves around Vilde and opens the door. Vilde goes out, like a person dreamwalking, to the rough path. Her feet move her down the mountain. There are flowers in bloom and the sky is a chip of blue glass, so far away now. Vilde stops at the meadow and looks up.
“I cannot fly?” she asks. Never since she claimed the skies had she set feet on the ground intending to stay. Vilde looks at the grass, spring-new and thick around her feet. She kicks at it suddenly. “I cannot fly?” she cries, shuffling desperately away from the growth that snakes up from the earth to trap her every step. “Cannot I fly?” she pleads with the expanse above.
The sky is silent. Vilde crumples to her knees, alone in the lush meadow, and chokes down great gulping sobs. Kapten, rider, drakken-guider and sky-strider. She has come so far from the shivering child she was, a starveling outcast with clever hands and kindness for beasts. She won her wings so slowly it was as if they grew from her own back, tearing through her own skin and stretching miniscule increments at a time until she could reach a world where no one could trap her. Now she must give them up?
Vilde puts her hand over her stomach. She is not alone anymore. The world she has reclaimed from the sky is not hers alone. And there is her husband, who buckled on his own wings with trembling fingers for her sake. The barnmorska is right. She is Kapten, but Jin is King, and beyond her great love for him she knows he is the cleverest man she has met.
Vilde scrubs at her eyes. A little green cricket leaps from her skirt as she stands, lifts her face, and tells her child brokenly, “If it is for you.”
Vilde goes to the drakkengrot to tell the Mor the news.
—
Jin sets the final serlen piece in its place. The stacks of open letters on his worktable have been pushed aside, and when the cook’s son thumps the table in defeat the paper rustles ominously. Jin smirks. “I remembered,” he says.
The cook’s son, redheaded and fiery, sticks out his tongue in the lamplight. “You’re getting better and better, Mung,” he tells Jin, grinning. “Now that you know my special tricks you’re almost good enough to beat me every time. I guess you’d better make a big belt along with the little belt for the championship. You might get to wear it in a few years.”
Jin smiles at the little brat fondly. “I’ll make sure the big belt is prettier.” The boy makes a rude gesture, something he must have learned from his older brothers, and ducks below the table as Jin swats at him.
Laughing, Jin looks down at the serlen board, one polished piece on his side a different kind of stone than the rest. His wing-and-heart pattern shines back at him. Before Jin can reset the pieces the door swings open and Vilde comes in, smelling like the drakkengrott. “Out,” she tells the cook’s son. Jin winks at him, and he runs off.
“Busy today?” Jin says, rising from his chair. “I missed you.”
“I have news,” Vilde tells him heavily. Jin goes to her. He swipes his fingers across the freckle-spattered skin under her eyes and they come away wet.
Jin pulls his wife into his arms and guides her to their bedroom. “Hey,” he tells her. “I’ve got you. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out together.”
—
Vilde watches her husband’s face go through a thousand emotions and end in shock. “Really?” he says.
“Really,” she tells him.
“But—” he swallows. “The baby is okay, it’s healthy?”
“So far.”
Jin laughs, an edge of hysteria in it. “But that’s—” he whirls her up in his arms. “Vilde, that’s wonderful!” He peppers her face with kisses. “Darling, that’s incredible!”
Vilde is crying again somehow. The wild joy in Jin’s eyes is breaking her apart, his hope finally making the child real to her. She holds him still and kisses him desperately. “Our own little one,” she says, shaking.
Jin holds her. “This time it will be different,” he tells her fiercely.
Vilde nods. “I’m not going to fly.”
“What?” Jin pulls away to look at her. “You’re not—”
“The barnmorska says it is best. That I cannot fly. To keep the baby safe.” Her husband stands still, watching her. Vilde slides her hands up to his shoulders. “I will need you to keep the clans from their pitchforks until I can once again take to the skies.”
Jin swallows. “Yeah. We can think of something. Are you…”
“I want the child,” Vilde says softly.
Jin’s eyes widen in gentle understanding, and he kisses her cheek. “So do I,” he says lightly. He slides down to kneel at her feet.
“I’m sorry,” Jin tells her belly. “You’re going to be responsible for the stability of an entire kingdom. That’s a lot, little one. But I promise you we’ll be here.” He runs a thumb over her belly. “You’re our hope, busunge.”
Vilde clings to Jin’s hand, tears blurring her vision completely. He squeezes her hand reassuringly. Still talking to his child, he says, “And we’re going to love you more than you can ever imagine.” He kisses her belly feather-light. “I can’t wait to meet you.”
Jin stands. He gathers Vilde up in his arms again.
“We can’t wait to meet you,” she whispers. Firelight glows over the paneled walls and the thick furs on Vilde’s bed, and she tucks her head into the crook of her husband’s neck.
This is worth it all, she thinks. She touches her belly. I’ll give up anything, even my kingdom, for you, my child.
Even the sky, for us.