‘You put your arm across your chest,’ Stella said, demonstrating to Úrsúla. ‘And then the magic goes all the way to your heart and it makes you brave and strong.’

‘What’s this rune called?’ Úrsúla asked.

‘It’s a stave called the Power Giver,’ Stella said, drawing the final line and blowing on the ink to dry it.

‘Maybe I’ll get it tattooed there,’ Úrsúla said. ‘I’m going to need all the strength I can find.’

She would talk to Nonni. She needed to tell him about Ebola, to explain how the plastic protection suit that had been in 276between her and suffering had become steadily thicker until it had become armour that nothing could penetrate, neither Syrian high explosives nor the love of her husband and children. She needed to tell him that she had had to face losing first him and then her own life to be able to find, deep in her heart, the truth of just how much she loved them all.

She would recover. She was certain of this now. As she thought of a way of working with homeless people – men such as Pétur and her father – she felt a surge of anticipation. The feeling was warm and unexpected, and she had not had such a sense of expectation for a long time.

The ink on her arm was dry and Stella let go of her wrist. Úrsúla laid her arm against her chest as Stella had told her to, and closed her eyes. Whether it was the rune’s power or not, she felt a new energy swell inside her. 277

278

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many thanks to my translator, publisher, editor, designers and all the others who have made it possible for this book to be published in the English language. But first and foremost, thank you to all the women who enter politics with the vision to better our societies. Writing this book made me realise how much courage it takes to do your jobs.

—Lilja Sigurðardóttir

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Icelandic crime-writer Lilja Sigurðardóttir was born in the town of Akranes in 1972 and raised in Mexico, Sweden, Spain and Iceland. An award-winning playwright, Lilja has written seven crime novels, with Snare, the first in the Reykjavík Noir series, hitting bestseller lists worldwide. Trap was published in 2018, and was a Guardian Book of the Year, and Cage, winner of Icelandic Crime Novel of the Year, followed in 2019. The film rights for the series have been bought by Palomar Pictures in California. In 2020 Betrayal was shortlisted for the Glass Key Award for best Nordic crime novel. Lilja lives in Reykjavík with her partner.
Follow Lilja:

Twitter: @lilja1972
Instagram: www.instagram.com/sigurdardottirlilja/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/sigurdardottir.lilja
Website: www.liljawriter.com

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ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Quentin Bates escaped English suburbia as a teenager, jumping at the chance of a gap year working in Iceland. For a variety of reasons, the gap year stretched to a gap decade, during which time he went native in the north of Iceland, acquiring a new language, a new profession as a seaman, and a family, before they decamped en masse to England. He worked as a truck driver, teacher, net-maker and trawlerman at various times before falling into journalism, largely by accident. He is the author of a series of crime novels set in present-day Iceland (Frozen Out, Cold Steal, Chilled to the Bone, Winterlude, Cold Comfort, Thin Ice and Cold Breath) which have been published worldwide. He has translated Ragnar Jónasson’s Dark Iceland series for Orenda Books. Visit him on Twitter @graskeggur or on his website: graskeggur.com