“An unborn, you think?” Snorri frowned. “And now you say it’s following us?” He shrugged. “It’s not doing a very good job of catching up. I’d worry more about what lies ahead than behind.”

“Hmmm.” Stop worrying about the frying pan because the fire’s hotter? I shrugged but couldn’t get those eyes out of my imagination. “But what if it did catch us up?”

“That would be a bad thing.” Snorri studied his empty tankard again.

I looked out at the rain, and at the sky darkening with a gathering storm, and at the night’s approach. Whatever Snorri said, out there something that loved us not was following our trail. Quarry it had called us. I picked my wet cloak off the floor, still dripping. “We should press on to the next town. No point dawdling.” Nice as a night under a good roof would be, it was time to be off.

Keep still and your troubles find you. I might not have known much about the unborn, but I sure as hell knew about running!

ELEVEN

“It’s not raining!” I hadn’t noticed at first. My body still huddled as if against the downpour, but on this evening, beside the muddy trail and close enough to our fire to make my clothes steam, there wasn’t a drop of rain to hide from.

“Stars.” Snorri stabbed a finger at the midnight-blue heavens.

“I remember those.” Not long ago I’d been watching them on a hot night, leaning out from Lisa DeVeer’s balcony and lying. “Those there are the lovers,” I had told her. Pointing at some random piece of sky. “Roma and Julit. It takes an expert to spot them.”

“And is it good luck when they shine on us?” Lisa had asked, half-disguising a smile that made me think she might well know more astrology than I’d given her credit for.

“Let’s find out,” I had said, and reached for her. And they did turn out lucky that night. Even so, I suspected myself a victim of Grandmother’s insistence on education for all. It’s hard on a chap when the women he wishes to impress are better schooled than he is. I suspect my cousin Serah could name every constellation in the sky while penning a sonnet.

“I wasn’t captured on the Uulisk slopes,” Snorri said.

I frowned at the stars, trying to make sense of that. “What?”

“What I told your queen would lead her to believe that I had been.”

“Had been what?” I was still trying to see what this had to do with stars.

“I said Broke-Oar sailed up the Uulisk. That they fell upon us there, that the Undoreth were broken, my children scattered. I said he took me to his ship in chains.”

“Yes,” I said, trying to remember any of it. I recalled that the throne room had been stuffy, that my legs ached with standing, that I’d lost a night’s sleep and found a hangover. The details of Snorri’s tale, not so much—except that I had thought he’d been lying the horns off his Viking hat and now he seemed to be telling me that he really had been.