Crown of Stars (Crown of Stars #7)

“We should heat it up for you? Well, if you’d split the wood and paid for it before-times, maybe we’d consider it!”

“Don’t curse your fortune, young man. You’re one of the lucky ones!”

They were both old and spry, well enough fed by the evidence of their plump cheeks and ample hips, cheerful enough to be amused by him but nevertheless watchful, glancing at frequent intervals toward the door as if expecting someone to come charging in. They went on chattering, and the flood of words calmed his trembling.

“Getting a bath at all! Used to be under the rule of Biscop Constance that the common folk in town might pay a sceatta for use of the baths on Hefensdays, Secundays, and Jeddays, but not now. Reserved for the lady’s noble entourage and her captains.”

“Will you stop it?” said the other one in that same undertone. “If they throw us out of town for speaking sedition against the lady, my family will starve! You might speak, and I keep silence, and I’ll be guilty same as you.” She handed Alain a greasy lump of scouring soap. “Begging your pardon, my lord. We mean no harm by our whispering.”

“I’m no lord,” he said, taking the soap gratefully, “and I thank you for your trouble.” He scrubbed. He was not as dirty as he might have been, not nearly as filthy as he had once been, but it felt good to feel the dirt loosen and come free.

They chortled, as if he had made a joke. The taller one left. The shorter swept water into the drain as he washed his hair.

“All done?”

He braced himself for the deluge. The water hit.

Ice. Gasping. The air leaves his lungs and bubbles to the surface. A shape looms out of the water, so close that those teeth seem about to close over his face. He finds his knife and draws it, but it catches in folds of his trousers.

“Too late,” whispers the merman, and it is strange he can speak underwater in words Stronghand can understand. “It is too late for you, Stronghand. Now I am the victor, although you won at Kjalmarsfjord.”

It is strange that he speaks with the voice of Nokvi, Stronghand’s last rival among the Eika.

Gasping, he flailed.

“Hey, now! Hey!” said the attendant. She poked him in the ribs with the end of her broom, and the jab got him coughing. “If you’re going to be violent, I’m calling the guards!”

“No, I beg your pardon. I just—” There was nothing he could say.

Nokvi, Stronghand’s last rival for the overlordship of the Eika, was dead. Stronghand had himself struck the killing blow and pushed Nokvi overboard into the grasp of the merfolk. That battle at Kjalmarsfjord Alain had fought in between breaths as he had himself fought on the hill with the doomed Lions by Queen’s Grave, when he had at the last been cut down and killed by the Lady of Battles. How was it that Nokvi spoke out of the depths?

“Yes,” said the crone, amused now that she saw Alain would not act rashly, “it strikes all the healthy young men so, bawling like babes when the cold water hits them. On you go, to the hot baths.”

She prodded him with the broom, the straw bristles harsh on the tender skin of his buttocks, and he yelped—and she chuckled—as he hurried into the next chamber. This vaulted stone chamber was taken up with a tiled bath smelling of mineral salts. Steam rose from vents in the floor. He stepped in, sitting straight down onto a shelf resting a torso’s height below the surface, but the intense heat took him by surprise. A wave of faintness swelled up into his head as might a surge in the sea, and he sank

water pouring over his face. This time will it be the end?

No.

Never.

Not this way.

He means to die peacefully in his bed, not taken by surprise in this ignominious manner by a vanquished enemy who is dead. Whom he killed.

It is only a merman, smarter than a dog and not as intelligent as a man. Nevertheless, a furious merman bent on revenge while his enemy drowns in the water remains a formidable opponent.

As the creature dives in for the kill, Stronghand rolls in the water and kicks, connecting with the torso of the merman. The move is sluggish, the reaction oddly muted, because the water causes all movement to become slow and ungainly—for humankind. The merfolk have no such restriction. The sea is their element, just as rock and fire and air are his.

There are a dozen mermen, or a hundred. He cannot see into the depths. Hulls block the light. Another Eika flails in the water nearby, trying not to sink, but that brother remains untouched as the merfolk swarm around Stronghand. In another moment Stronghand will black out and inhale sea-water, and he will sink and drown. They will devour him, as they devoured all the others thrown into the sea. That was the bargain, made long ago.