A small figure was making its way out along the longest of those quays as Snorri watched.

“Emy!” Snorri’s shout had heads thrusting from doorways, window hides lifting. The little girl almost fell from the long-quay in shock, which had been precisely the threat that had scared the shout out of him in the first place. But she caught herself after jolting forwards and hung to an upright, little fingers clutching the icy timber, white hair falling across her face and reaching for the dark waters a couple of feet below. One slip and the fjord would swallow her, the cold stealing both breath and strength.

Snorri dropped his gear and ran out along the long-quay, sure-footed, stepping where it would bear his weight and losing no time over the choices. He’d run the long-quay all his life.

“Fool girl! You know you’re not to—” Fear made his voice harsh as he fell to his knees and scooped Emy into his arms. He bit back the anger. “You could have fallen, Einmyria!” A child raised to the Undoreth should have more sense, even at five. He held her tight to his chest, still careful not to crush her, his heart hammering. Emy had been a babe at her mother’s breast when Jarl Torsteff led the Undoreth against Hoddof of Iron Tors. At no point in that battle—not charging the shield wall, not wet with Edric ver Magson’s blood, not pinned by stockade timber with two men of Iron Tors approaching—had Snorri known fear such as that which seized him seeing his own child hanging over dark waters.

Snorri held Emy away from him. “What were you doing?” Soft now, almost beseeching.

Emy bit her lip, struggling to hold back the tears filling her eyes—the same cornflower blue as her mother’s. “Peggy’s in the water.”

“Peggy?” Snorri tried to recall a child of that name. He knew all the children by sight, of course, but . . . it came to him, a wash of relief erasing any exasperation. “Your doll? You’re out here looking for a peg doll you lost before the snows?”

Emy nodded, still close to tears. “You find her! You find her, Papi.”

“I don’t—She’s lost, Einmyria.”

“You can find her. You can.”

“Some lost things can be found again and some can’t.” He broke off his explanation, seeing in his daughter’s eyes the exact moment that a child first understands there are limits on what her parents can do, rather than just limits on what they choose to do. He knelt before her in a moment’s silence, somewhat less than he had been just seconds before, and Emy a half step closer to the woman she would one day become.

“Come on.” He stood, lifting her. “Back to your mama.” And he walked back, careful now, watching the planks, placing each foot with precision. Carrying Emy up the slope, Snorri echoed with an old pain, the hurt of every parent separated from their child, whether by a sudden slip into deep and hungry water or by slow steps along divergent paths bound for the future.