An Apprentice to Elves (30 page)

“That will be too long,” Alfgyfa said, the sullen resignation with which she endured lectures replaced by sudden, desperate, choking panic. “The Rheans are here! They're here now!”

“All the more reason to return to your apprenticeship,” Galfenol said briskly. “You'll be safe under the Iskryne.”

“But all my people—”

“It can't be helped.” Galfenol dusted her palms. “We'll return to Franangfordheall to collect the others and our things. Then start back home tomorrow.”

“You'll leave them defenseless.”

“Child,” said Galfenol tiredly, “they are, in point of fact, quite well defended. And you are not Feldspar One-Army, to hold off a horde of surfacers with your halberd and a handful of crushed quartz crystals. My mind is made up. We're going home, and we'll try this again when tempers have settled.”

Alfgyfa just stared. She couldn't have gotten words out if she'd tried. She hadn't realized how much she'd depended, in the back of her mind, on the svartalfar caravan wintering here to protect the heall, and she couldn't believe that Galfenol would take away that protection just like that, without any warning or consideration. It was unfair and unreasonable, and she was almost painfully shocked by it, as if it were a physical blow. Galfenol was halfway back into the council chamber when she noticed Alfgyfa was not following.

She turned back. “'Prentice?”

“I'm not going,” Alfgyfa whispered.

“What?”

“I'm not going,” she said again. Not shouted, but very definite. “I'm staying in Franangford. I'm not going back to the Iskryne with you.”

She turned on her heel and stalked away, boot nails clicking on stone. She couldn't hear Galfenol doing anything behind her, and she wasn't going to turn around to check. She'd lost enough dignity today already. As she was vanishing down the corridor toward—she hoped—the surface, she did hear the unmistakable scrape of Tin's tread on stone. It was followed by a sharp intake of breath, and then Tin's voice—pitched low, but audible because of the reverberation in the cavern.

“Oh, Masterscribe,” Tin said tiredly. “What have you wrought?”

*   *   *

Osmium caught up with Alfgyfa about a quarter hour after she broke out onto the surface. Alfgyfa thought she'd probably promised the others to come after and keep Alfgyfa safe—as if Alfgyfa had not spent her entire childhood running wild in these woods, as if Alfgyfa could not reach out with the lightest touch of her mind and feel Greensmoke on one side and Viradechtis on the other.

Despite that edge of resentment, despite the fact that she was perfectly capable, angry or not, of getting herself home safe, and despite the fact that Alfgyfa wasn't about to admit it, she was terrifically glad to have Osmium's company. She didn't miss Galfenol one bit, and she had made up her mind not to miss Nidavellir either, no matter how tempting it became. But she was starting to realize that she'd also just walked away from Tin, and Pearl, and Girasol. And Idocrase.

Another thing she refused to admit, even to herself: that last was the hardest of all.

Osmium, having caught up—Alfgyfa might have slowed her stride so the alf didn't have to scuttle, but they were definitely pushing each other a little—stumped along beside her for a good three miles without talking. They had a long walk ahead of them. The trelltunnels would have been shorter and quicker, but Alfgyfa wasn't about to go barging back through the ruined council chamber and a gaggle of this-alfar and that-alfar to save a few miles. Or even a few dozen.

And she wasn't keen on the idea of climbing back up into the trellwarren anyway.

So they tromped along, and eventually they had tromped far enough without speaking that Alfgyfa found herself enjoying the filtered evening light and the song of birds.

She was still anxious. She still felt a great, racking loss for Tin, for Nidavellir, for Idocrase. For the family—yes, family—that she had lived with for more than half her life. And that she was now giving up, because—

—because she couldn't give up her other family to the Rheans without standing and putting up a fight.

“You're your father's daughter,” Osmium said wryly, and Alfgyfa realized she'd snorted out loud in frustration over her own chain of thought.

“I'm something, all right,” she said. “I don't believe that. I don't believe that actually happened! We weren't even close to that cavern!”

“Trellwarrens,” Osmium said. She bent her head down, kicking the toe of her boot through leaf litter. She seemed completely fascinated—but then, alfar didn't usually get to spend a lot of time kicking leaves around. “They don't use space the same way alfhames do.”

“I feel as if I've been saying this all day, but I don't understand.”

“They take”—she made an expressive gesture with her hands—“shortcuts. They go shorter ways than the real world allows.”

“The same sideways where they push the stone.”

“Maybe,” Osmium agreed. “It seems to happen a lot where they were in a hurry.”

“Huh,” Alfgyfa said. She stomped the ground experimentally. “I wonder how fast you could get to Othinnsaesc from Franangford using those tunnels.”

“Don't even think about it,” Osmium said. Alfgyfa shot her friend a glance, but Osmium's perfectly deadpan expression convinced her that the alf was, in fact, kidding.

“Argh,” Alfgyfa said. “If the damned svartalfar weren't so damned bullheaded—”

“Oh, certainly,” Osmium allowed. “And my people can't hold a grudge, either. My people, for example, aren't still naming ourselves for poisons half a millennium later.”

It made Alfgyfa laugh. Which was, she supposed, its purpose. “All right,” she said. “All right, then. And I'm not the least bit stubborn either, I suppose.”

“Oh, no more stubborn than the enamel baked on a good cast-iron pot,” Osmium said.

Alfgyfa threw an acorn at her and missed. Somewhere in the undergrowth, a squirrel dove after it. “What am I going to do?”

“You? Us, you mean. It's as much my fault as yours that we fell through the ceiling.” Osmium rubbed her elbow. “How are your bruises, by the way?”

Now that the anger and fear were wearing off, Alfgyfa could feel every one of them.

“Coming up nicely, I thank you for the inquiry.” She stretched against a convenient, low-hanging branch, bit back a moan at the answering aches, then trotted two steps to catch up with Osmium, who had just kept trundling along.

“What are we going to do, then?”

“Fight,” Osmium said. “Die.” She glanced up sideways and winked. “Sneak and plot like Loki would, and come up with something better.”

“You get Thor into a dress,” Alfgyfa said. “I'll come up with some means of distracting the giants.”

“We shall make it a bargain,” Osmium said.

Despite herself, Alfgyfa's heart was beginning to lighten. She ducked down and picked a leaf or two of wintergreen. One she handed to Osmium. The other she crushed and tucked into her cheek. The sweet, cool minty flavor brought a flood of saliva to her mouth. Somewhere off in the distance, Greensmoke's pack had started an evening howl, even though it would be light for hours yet. In summertime, even the wolves had to improvise.

The sound made Alfgyfa homesick again, but this time in a completely orthogonal direction. Was it possible, she wondered, to die of missing two places at once? Even if you happened to be staying in one of them, you'd grown too big for it to be exactly what you remembered.

If only she had some good way to stay in touch with Tin. With—this time she admitted it, though only barely—with Idocrase.

“I'd love to meet them someday,” Osmium said wistfully. “The wolves, I mean.”

“You've met Viradechtis,” Alfgyfa reminded her. “And Amma.”

“And Kothran and Hrafn,” Osmium agreed. “But they're not wild wolves.”

“Oh,” said Alfgyfa. “They can be pretty wild. Whether it seems like it or not.”

But she was already casting her mind out to Greensmoke, seeking the wolf's opinion of alfar. It was, Alfgyfa was not surprised to note, much more positive than her opinion of men. “Well,” Alfgyfa said, “maybe.”

Osmium skipped a step and grinned.

 

TWELVE

The eve of the army's departure was upon them so quickly that Otter barely felt the time before it had passed—or rather, it seemed to have evaporated. With that night would come the feast, and all the food set aside for it must be prepared before it could be consumed. Otter found herself in the warm kitchen, surrounded by rising loaves, slashing the top of each with a razor while Mar snored against the hearth. And while she cut and cut and cut again, she could do nothing to stop the tears that rolled down her cheeks and dropped on her apron and—occasionally—on the loaves.

Well, perhaps there would be some magic there. Something in the salt of her body to protect the ones she had so foolishly let herself come to love.

She almost slashed Sokkolfr with that same razor when he cleared his throat behind her. She whirled, the blade in one hand, and he jumped back laughing. Then she was humiliated by her red face and swollen eyes, but he didn't seem to mind. He did stop laughing, though, as soon as he noticed.

He reached out gently, as if approaching something wild and startled, and laid his fingertips on her shoulder. “It's just me.”

Otter flicked the razor closed, heedless of the oil on the blade, and laid it on the table between the loaves. She wiped her snuffly nose on the top of her sleeve. “You'll kill a body with fright,” she complained. She wanted to see him, and she didn't want to see him. She wanted to hug him against her. She wanted to twist away and run. And she wanted to bite hard so
he
would run away and never give her this feeling again, like somebody twisting a dull knife in her gut.

“Can I help with the loaves?”

“The oven's hot enough.” She went and fetched the peel, a broad, flat, long-handed paddle of beech. She handed it to him and carefully said nothing further as he chose the most-risen loaves and loaded them into the oven, while she continued lifting damp, clean cloths to slash the tops of the next batch. She slashed them with letters Thorlot had shown her: runes of victory in battle and strength at arms, which for now, for this purpose, took the place of the runes of health and prosperity they habitually used.

Sokkolfr finished loading loaves and sealed the bread oven with the heavy door. Beneath it, the fire in the hearth crackled gustily. It was drawing well: the bread would cook hot and fast.

He leaned on the peel—blade up, so as not to damage its smooth edge—and said, “Skjaldwulf wanted me to tell you that Tryggvi will be going south with him and the army. And Mar and I will be staying here to protect the heall and the pups. And you.”

“But—” she said. And then, “You—”

“I'm housecarl,” he said. “This is the house. Somebody needs to stay behind, and I am the logical choice. Ulfhundr and Athisla and her pups will be staying, of course. And Brokkolfr and Amma will be here too; she's expected to go into season close to midsummer. It will…”

Her breath snagged on the hooks in her throat.
Don't say it.

He looked to one side. “It will give us one more litter from Mar.”

Otter almost staggered with the complexity of emotions that left her light-headed. She had not expected this fierce relief—when Skjaldwulf and the others were still going, and the Rheans would no doubt treat them as little more than a bump in the northward road. And there was guilt over the relief, to be sure. But at the same moment, she still felt the fear for those who
were
going. And, too, a sharp spike of pity for Thorlot, whose man would not be staying behind, wolfsprechend or no, and with that a second measure of guilt at her own relief.

Then she realized that she had just thought of Sokkolfr as
her man,
and her cheeks hurt with the heat in them. Heat she could not blame on the ovens, when Sokkolfr was standing closer to the fire than she.

He said, “Otter? I thought you would be pleased.”

“I—” Her heart choked her. She wanted to turn and bolt, more now than she wanted anything else, but where would she go? She stared at him, and he stared back, the forehead between his brows so wrinkled in concern he looked, himself, like a worried wolf.

Otter stepped forward. It was the hardest step she'd ever taken. She paused there, like a half-wild cat on the threshold of a warm room. She put her foot down, picked it up again. Put it back down, if possibly, even more hesitantly than before.

She pushed the peel out of the way, put her hand on Sokkolfr's cheek, and lightly pressed her lips to his. “I am glad,” she said, when their eyes met, after. “And I'm not glad. All at once.”

He considered her. Then leaned forward and kissed her back, in turn.

Then
she broke and fled, leaving him alone with the ovens and with tables full of rising bread. It was a quarter hour or so before she gained control of herself enough to force herself back to the kitchen.

When she returned, he had pulled out the first round of loaves and racked them to cool, then replaced them with the second round. The smell of perfectly baked bread filled the kitchen. He turned when he heard her step, a question unspoken on his lips.

Without looking up at him, she uncovered the next row of loaves, flicking flour into the air with a careless gesture of the toweling. Wordlessly, she picked up her razor, looked at him, and smiled.

*   *   *

The feast was a wild success, and it had absolutely nothing to do with Alfgyfa. She'd spent the day more or less in hiding, avoiding Galfenol. The Masterscribe and the rest of the svartalfar were still in residence largely because Galfenol's plans to depart immediately had been derailed by Tin's obstructionism. However, Alfgyfa knew, that was coming to an end. They would be leaving at nightfall, which was still late enough in the evening that there would be plenty of feasting beforehand.