“Um, no . . . not especially.” I looked around for Snorri but saw nothing apart from heaps of furs and some supplies tight-bound into bails. “How did this happen?” I couldn’t heal myself.

“Snorri did it.” Tuttugu sounded grim. “He said a valkyrie—”

“An angel?”

“He said valkyrie. He said the valkyrie helped him. There was more but he couldn’t speak much at the end. He said . . . but there are no male valkyrie . . . I think the valkyrie was a god . . .”

“Baraqel? Did he say Baraqel?”

Tuttugu nodded.

“At the end?” My stomach became a cold knot. I recalled how much any healing had taken from me. “Is he—”

“Dead?” Tuttugu limped to the heaped furs. “No. But he should be.” He pulled a wolfskin aside and there lay Snorri, pale but breathing. He looked to be asleep rather than unconscious. The broken bones in his face had been repositioned and the skin sewn over them. “I’ve done what I can. We can only wait now.”

“How long have I been sleeping?” It seemed important, even with our enemies fled.

“All day, Jal. It’s nearly sunset.”

“But if Snorri . . . Baraqel, you said? And healing . . . So he’s light-sworn now.” I looked again where my wounds should be. “Then the one who’s dark-sworn is . . .”

Tuttugu nodded.

“Ah.”

I lay back. It would be a long journey back to Vermillion, and if we didn’t beat the arrival of winter, then the Black Fort would be our home until spring. I’d make it, though, and I’d take whatever still remained of my newfound courage and stand before the Red Queen’s throne and demand she get her damned sister to take this spell out of us.

All that, of course, depended on no one being able to talk me out of it between now and then.

Somewhere the sun was setting. I closed my eyes and waited to see just how persuasive Aslaug would be.

• • •

Six weeks later and the first deep snows of winter came, falling from leaden skies, driven by a cruel wind.

“Bring me another ale, will you, Tuttugu, there’s a good chap!”

Tuttugu gave a complacent shrug, pushed his roast chicken to one side, and went to fill a tankard at the barrel.

Outside, the streets of Trond lay clogged with snow. I didn’t care. I snuggled back deeper into the fur of what must have been a white bear every bit as big as the one Snorri vaulted in the Blood Holes. Very cosy. Nobody came or went without good cause, and the Three Axes tavern saw little trade—which was probably the reason the owner had sold me the whole place, lock, stock, and no small number of barrels, for just two of the diamonds pried from Mother’s locket.

It was good to have so many fears lifted from me, so many cares shed, to be safe and warm in the grip of winter. The only worries to trouble me now in the long nights were little ones, or at least far away. The problem of Maeres Allus seemed small compared to the problem of how to get home. In fact, the only thing to steal my sleep, at least the only noninvited thing, was the thought that though the Unborn Captain had frightened me to the point at which my heart forgot to beat, and though his gaze was a terrible thing, those weren’t the eyes that had watched me through the slit of that porcelain mask back in the opera so very many miles and months ago. That stare had been worse still and haunted me even now.