Beautiful Wreck (33 page)

I’d felt Saga’s presence so sharply this morning, like she’d snapped her fingers in my heart, and I knew without a doubt that today I would pry Betta’s secret free, would touch Heirik for the first time. But after an hour of considering the facts of cups and ale and food, I wasn’t sure what I had left.

In my alcove, I sat with legs crossed and pulled a comb out from under the skins. I wanted to stay in my cave for a little while, so I could miss Heirik’s entrance, everyone honoring him with bowed heads and bent knees.

I drew all my hair over one shoulder and combed out the frayed ends. I had no way of knowing what I looked like anymore. Probably a confused mess of determination and desire, like a woman with well-brushed hair and no plan.

I stayed in my alcove with the curtains drawn, listening to people come and pour drinks and go back out, and when the rush of people slowed, I emerged. I went to peek around the back door frame.

Heirik was already at the stable, a few men standing around him talking. It was safe. And so I got a cup of ale for myself and went to hop up atop the curving stable wall and watch the shearing.

Several women sat here, and all around me they cooed and laughed and whispered behind cupped hands. Everyone reveled in this break, a party, the sun, so different from spinning and cooking and squinting at looms in the half dark.

Three dozen people or more milled around the stables and yard—the whole family, Ageírr’s family too, his little brother Eiðr, all the thralls from both houses. Children and random animals ran in and out of peoples’ legs. Little boys and girls fought with wooden swords and shields, a puppy jumping and snapping between them. Older boys stood near the forge, joking while one of them sharpened iron shears on the big whetstone.

Ranka’s Da grabbed Kit’s backside firmly. She swatted him away with a smile, but he stayed close, standing behind her and nuzzling at the crook of her neck. A tender moment that felt cozy and familiar. I was safe with these people. I closed my eyes to feel the sun.

Svana broke into the moment, jumping up onto the wall beside me in a satisfied flounce.

“Do you remember the shearing?”

I told her nei, thinking of an arc on a screen. I’d watched it over and over, but it was no real memory.

“Then you don’t know, já?” She grinned. “Why everyone is like this?”

She thrust her chin toward Arn, who still clung to Kit, encircling her from behind. They were slowly swaying together, an unconscious dance, sex-infused and true. I looked around and found other couples talking close. Thora looked up from under her eyelashes at a boy who was half her width, women watched the men and whispered, a husband touched his wife’s nose.

I looked for Betta and found her talking to Hár. He sat on the ground against the house, one knee bent. Betta stood over him talking, her hand shading her eyes, and when her skirt moved in a small breeze it caught on his knee. He left off carving a small block of wood and looked up at her, charming and potentially immoral. He was flirting as though he talked to young women every day.

And then it hit me, fast and hard, like a blow to the head. Gods, there it was, a spark of sex between them. Her skirt still snared on his leg, neither of them removing it.

It was Hár. Betta’s pulse of her heart. She was in love with the “old man.” I swallowed ale and coughed my throat ragged.

Images of them came unbidden. Betta smiling at Hár, her big teeth beguiling him, an image of—gods!—Hár’s shaggy head bent to kiss her, her tight braids cradled in his giant hand. I saw her looking ravished, her hair messy and free, the night she came in from riding at sunset. Saw a beaming, blond man handing little Betta a toy doll. My brain spun and ale clogged my nose.

Svana smacked me on the back. “Are you okay?”

“Já,” I croaked and looked at her hair and eyes and dress before I thought of something to say. “Just thinking of other things.” Right. Like Hár’s rough hands all over my friend.

“It is proof of a real man,” Svana told me, and I almost choked again.

I focused hard on Svana, struggled to listen while the idea of Betta and Hár roared in my brain. He was more than twice Betta’s age, já, but still young enough to love her. To be her lover. Oh gods! I couldn’t even think of it, and yet couldn’t think of anything else.

“To shear a sheep perfectly,” Svana said in her scandalized, little voice. “Ears to belly to toes in one piece, and nei cuts on the animal. It is a test.”

The men teased each other about it, she said. They would make bets and dramatic gestures. The women would watch lasciviously, and at least one or two would grab a man and take him alone into the little woods near the ravine. If anyone would be so bold, it would be Betta. I could imagine her crashing happily into the birches, dragging Hár along behind her.

While Svana chirped in my ear, I turned this impossibility over and over. Hár was Betta’s one, her breath, the man she wanted more than life.

I had to talk with her. Now. To be sure I was right, that this was true. But I knew it was.

Betta came toward me, a smile flowering into a toothy grin. I saw the very moment when she realized that I knew. Her step faltered, she staggered a little, all skirts and ankles, her grin left unfinished for just a second. She drew up her dignity and stood still for a moment until the fabric around her feet unwound, then walked calmly toward me and lifted herself easily onto the wall by my side.

I felt flanked by birds. Svana chattering about sex. Betta folding wings protectively around her desire. She looked as if I might take Hár from her, take her dream.

With a bustling all around us, I could talk freely in a low voice. But with Svana so close, I chose neutral words and hidden gestures. My fingers spread out on the wall between me and Betta. I flicked my eyes toward Hár, where he now stood amidst a knot of sheep inside the stable walls.

“I’m right?” I asked.

Betta blushed with that modesty that she seemed to turn on and off at the drop of a needle. She nodded. And then asked my opinion. “What do you think?”

I took her wrist in my hand. What did I think? I couldn’t think at all.

Her pulse jumped under my fingers while she waited for my approval. It warmed me, how she cared what I might think. I was that important to her. I’d never been that important to anyone before.

“What do I think?” I repeated, and I blinked my watery eyes. I was stunned. Disoriented, I sought Hár out to try to see what she saw.

And I did.

He stood next to Heirik, like father and son. And in a flash, I saw Hár as a totally different creature—someone to want, to play with, to watch privately in the firelight.

He’d raised Heirik, and so I thought of him as old, a kind and rough uncle. He characterized himself that way, and I’d bought it, like any five-year-old listening to stories at his feet. Leave it to Betta to find a lover in there. Somehow, she’d seen past that shield, and now I could too.

He was an adventure to look at, his size alone dazzling. He was loud all the time, whether laughing or joking or stamping his boots in the mudroom. He was brave and responsible and honorable and wild. Off-putting, and casually high-handed, but prone to bust into laughter and smiles full of mirth and sin. It was the sin I noticed now, as he glanced back at us, and I heard Betta swallow hard beside me.

His hair, which I’d thought of as messy and gray, was more like ash blond shot through with pewter. It caught the sun now and turned to silver, to match the pair of metal cuffs on his forearms. They looked heavy, hefty, and I thought I might fit both my wrists inside one.

I couldn’t name why, but I thought he was just right for Betta. Já, good.

“I think it is wondrous,” I said, turning to her, and I was struck by how much she wanted him. It was plain on her face today, almost recklessly so. It made me wonder how much of him she’d had already.

I remembered my intentions for the day. Find out Betta’s secret. Make Heirik know how I feel.

One down, I thought in wonder. Now I just had to get the chief alone.

The shepherd had all the sheep gathered in the circular yard, and Heirik walked among them. He always took my breath away, even on a regular day, even for a tenth of a second. But today he was something new.

He walked barefoot through the clean grass outside the pen. I’d seen him once or twice without tightly laced boots, but never outside like this, in front of people. There were a thousand common things I didn’t understand every day. His pants hung loose without being tucked and bound; his sleeves were the same, no gauntlets holding them fast. His hair was pulled back on top but otherwise hung long and free. The loop of a pair of shears hung from two fingers, balanced casually as he looked into the animals’ eyes.

The shears didn’t seem fine enough. I couldn’t imagine such a feat of delicate trimming—a fleece in one piece with no cuts on the sheep—being achieved by anyone, regardless of his masculinity. The blades were well-formed, but looked too rough to slip through wool like that. The animals looked too lively. They would never stand still.

“The chief does this first?” I asked Betta, already worried for him. The cloth we made from these animals would let us thrive and prosper through trade, the meat from a few of them would keep us alive this winter, and it was Heirik’s place to go first, to bless us, to promise.

“Don’t fret,” she told me. “There is no man here like the chief with a blade.”

I stared at her for a second. With her sitting so close, her body warm and angular and real, the whole thing hit home again.

“Not one?” I raised an eyebrow.

She actually turned away from me, just a little, with a shy dip of her head. When she turned back to me, she was blushing dark crimson.

“We’ll talk alone,” I ordered her. “Right after this.”

“Já,” she said, “okay,” and she smiled, not with her typical wry or knowing smirk, but with genuine pleasure and embarrassment. It was beautiful.

“You’re right, in any case,” I said. “There is no man like him.”

Not in any way, I thought. But with a blade especially. I’d never seen anyone so attuned to scythe, ax, knife, as if they were extensions of his will itself. Heirik was gifted, I thought, my head already pleasantly vague with ale and reeling with truths. He was powerful, intelligent, exquisite in movement and form. Rakknason Longhair. The waves fell down his back now, free from braids. Unmarked, he would’ve been like a god, women on their knees around him wishing for a single blessing of lips and tongue. Marked, he was revolting. They couldn’t see what I saw.