I’ll take care of him. The Fiskares are in the business of hospitality, but this house has always been a haven. Kind ladies live here. And decent, honorable men. When Fiskares extend an invitation, we mean it. Our word is good as gold.

I give you my word, Xandro will know his name is Virtanen-Reyes.

Reyes means kings. And…

Kennet sat up a little. He twisted, looking back to Astrid, still asleep beneath his diary.

And Virtanen means river, he thought slowly.

“Holy Schmitt,” he whispered.

The hair stood up on his forearms as he got up. He tiptoed to Astrid’s side of the bed. On her nightstand, the little gold Hildur was resting inside the mussel shell. Astrid didn’t wear it pinned inside her dress anymore. Perhaps it hurt too much there. Perhaps it made her tired, so she put it in the shell, where it could sit still and just look.

Kennet picked it up, held it in a carefully cupped hand as he went out the door and over to Xandro’s crib. As usual, the boy slept with both arms thrown over his head. His little mouth pursed, as if he were chewing on deep thoughts.

Or counting gold.

Slowly, gently, not wanting to wake him, Kennet pinned the Hildur on the river king’s sweater.

My word is good as gold

He went to his work table in the boathouse to putter around. The temperature had dropped a little more, so he switched on his little electric fire, pointing it toward his poor feet which had never recovered from the winter of 1941 and the subsequent tramping across Europe.

“Shit on a stick,” he muttered, patting his pockets. He’d forgotten his cigarettes. Oh well, he smoked too goddamn much anyway. Gum would have to hold the habit today. He reached up high for an old cigar box on a shelf. Good old Minor—almost thirty years old but still stashing candy.

An hour slipped away as he tinkered with a dodgy engine. An hour measured in songs on the radio and a trail of gum wads pressed under the edge of the workbench. The Wrigley Company was slacking off, in Kennet’s opinion. The flavor in a goddamn stick of Juicy Fruit didn’t last for shit anymore.

He folded another piece in his mouth, crumpled the wrapper, picked up a wrench.

He stopped. Froze mid-turn of a nut, backtracking his last thought.

The flavor in a what?

He chewed slowly, pressing the rubbery wad against the roof of his mouth.

It had taste.

Faint, but there. A fruity whisper back behind his molars. A tiny bubble of sweetness in the well beneath his tongue.