فصل 24

Oh, You Wanted to Breathe? That’ll Be an Extra Three Gold

HEARTHSTONE’S ROOM? More like Hearthstone’s isolation chamber.

After cleaning up the spill (we insisted on helping), Inge led us up a wide staircase to the second floor, down a hall bedecked with lush tapestries and more artifact niches, to a simple metal door. She opened it with a big old-fashioned key, though doing so made her wince as if the door was hot.

“Apologies,” she told us. “The house’s locks are all made of iron. They’re uncomfortable for sprites like me.”

Judging from the clammy look on her face, I think she meant torturous. I guessed Mr. Alderman didn’t want Inge unlocking too many doors—or maybe he just didn’t care if she suffered.

Inside, the room was almost as large as my suite in Valhalla, but whereas my suite was designed to be everything I could want, this place was designed to be nothing Hearthstone would want. Unlike every other part of the house I’d seen, there were no windows. Rows of fluorescent lights glowed harshly overhead, providing all the ambiance of a discount-furniture store. On the floor in one corner lay a twin mattress covered in white sheets. No blanket, no comforter, no pillows. To the left, a doorway led to what I assumed was the bathroom. To the right, a closet stood open, revealing exactly one set of clothes: a white suit roughly Hearth’s size but otherwise an exact match for the suit in the portrait of Andiron downstairs.

Mounted on the walls, classroom-size whiteboards displayed to-do lists written in neat block letters.

Some lists were in black:

YOUR OWN LAUNDRY, TWICE WEEKLY = +2 GOLD

SWEEP THE FLOORS, BOTH LEVELS = +2 GOLD

WORTHY TASKS = +5 GOLD

Others were in red:

EACH MEAL = –3 GOLD

ONE HOUR OF FREE TIME = –3 GOLD

EMBARRASSING FAILURES = –10 GOLD

I counted maybe a dozen lists like this, along with hundreds of motivational statements like: NEVER FORGET YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. STRIVE TO BE WORTHY. NORMALCY IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS.

I felt as if I were surrounded by towering adults all wagging their fingers at me, heaping shame, making me smaller and smaller. And I’d only been here for a minute. I couldn’t imagine living here.

Even the Ten Commandments whiteboards weren’t the strangest thing. Stretched across the floor was the furry blue hide of a large animal. Its head had been removed, but its four paws still had the claws attached—curved ivory barbs that would’ve made perfect fishing hooks for catching great white sharks. Strewn across the rug were gold coins—maybe two or three hundred of them, glittering like islands in a sea of thick blue fur.

Hearthstone set Blitzen down gently at the foot of the mattress. He scanned the whiteboards, his face a mask of anxiety, as if looking for his name on a list of exam scores.

“Hearth?” I was so shocked by the room I couldn’t form a coherent question like, Why? or, May I please kick your father’s teeth in?

He made one of the first signs he’d ever taught me—back on the streets, when he was teaching me how to stay out of trouble with the police. He crossed two fingers and ran them down his opposite palm like he was writing a ticket: Rules.

It took a moment for my hands to remember how to sign. Your parents made these for you?

Rules, he repeated. His face gave away little. I started to wonder if, earlier in his life, Hearthstone had smiled more, cried more, shown any emotion more. Maybe he’d learned to be so careful with his expressions as a defense.

“But why the prices?” I asked. “It’s like a menu….”

I stared at the gold coins glittering on the fur rug. “Wait, the coins were your allowance? Or…your payment? Why throw them on the rug?”

Inge stood quietly in the doorway, her face lowered. “It’s the hide of the beast,” she said, also signing the words. “The one that killed his brother.”

My mouth tasted like rust. “Andiron?”

Inge nodded. She glanced behind her, probably worried that the master would appear out of nowhere. “It happened when Andiron was seven and Hearthstone was eight.” As she spoke, she signed almost as fluently as Hearth, like she’d been practicing for years. “They were playing in the woods behind the house. There’s an old well…” She hesitated, looking at Hearthstone for permission to say more.

Hearthstone shuddered.

Andiron loved the well, he signed. He thought it granted wishes. But there was a bad spirit….

He made a strange combination of signs: three fingers at the mouth—a W for water; then pointing down—the symbol for a well; then a V over one eye—the sign for taking a pee. (We used that one a lot on the streets, too.) Together, it looked like he was naming this bad spirit Pees-in-the-Well.

I frowned at Inge. “Did he just say—?”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “That is the spirit’s name. In the old language, it is called a brunnmigi. It came out of the well and attacked Andiron in the form of…that. A large bluish creature, a mixture of bear and wolf.”

Always with the blue wolves. I hated them.

“It killed Andiron,” I summed up.

In the fluorescent light, Hearthstone’s face looked as petrified as Blitzen’s. I was playing with some stones, he signed. My back was turned. I didn’t hear. I couldn’t…

He grasped at empty air.

“It wasn’t your fault, Hearth,” Inge said.

She looked so young with her clear blue eyes, her slightly pudgy rosy cheeks, her blond hair curling around the edges of her bonnet, but she spoke as if she’d seen the attack firsthand.

“Were you there?” I asked.

She blushed even more. “Not exactly. I was just a little girl, but my mother worked as Mr. Alderman’s servant. I—I remember Hearthstone running into the house crying, signing for help. He and Mr. Alderman rushed out again. And then, later…Mr. Alderman came back, carrying Master Andiron’s body.”

Her cow tail flicked, brushing the doorjamb. “Mr. Alderman killed the brunnmigi, but he made Hearthstone…skin the creature, all by himself. Hearthstone wasn’t allowed back inside until the job was done. Once the hide was cured and made into a rug, they put it in here.”

“Gods.” I paced the room. I tried to wipe some of the words off a whiteboard, but they were written in permanent marker. Of course they were.

“And the coins?” I asked. “The menu items?”

My voice came out harsher than I’d intended. Inge flinched.

“Hearthstone’s wergild,” she said. “The blood debt for his brother’s death.”

Cover the rug, Hearthstone signed mechanically, as if quoting something he’d heard a million times. Earn gold coins until not a single hair can be seen. Then I have paid.

I looked at the list of prices—the pluses and minuses of Hearthstone’s guilt ledger. I stared at the sprinkling of coins lost in an expanse of blue fur. I imagined eight-year-old Hearthstone trying to earn enough money to cover even the smallest portion of this huge rug.

I shivered, but I couldn’t shake off my anger. “Hearth, I thought your parents beat you or something. This is worse.”

Inge wrung her hands. “Oh, no, sir, beatings are only for the house staff. But you are right. Mr. Hearthstone’s punishment has been much more difficult.”

Beatings. Inge mentioned them as if they were unfortunate facts of life, like burned cookies or stopped-up sinks.

“I’m going to tear this place down,” I decided. “I’m going to throw your father—”

Hearthstone locked eyes with me. My anger backwashed in my throat. This wasn’t my call. This wasn’t my history. Still…

“Hearth, we can’t play his sick little game,” I said. “He wants you to complete this wergild before he helps us? That’s impossible! Sam’s supposed to marry a giant in four days. Can’t we just take the stone? Travel to another world before Alderman realizes?”

Hearth shook his head. Stone must be a gift. Only works if given freely.

“And there are guards,” Inge added. “Security spirits that…you don’t want to meet.”

I’d expected all of the above, but that didn’t stop me from cursing until Inge’s ears blushed.

“What about rune magic?” I asked. “Can you summon enough gold to cover the fur?”

Wergild cannot be cheated, Hearth signed. Gold must be earned or won by some great effort.

“That’ll take years!”

“Perhaps not,” Inge murmured, as if talking to the blue rug. “There is a way.”

Hearth turned to her. How?

Inge clasped her hands in agitation. I wasn’t sure if she was aware that she was making the sign for marriage. “I—I don’t mean to speak out of turn. But there is the Careful One.”

Hearth threw his hands up in the universal gesture for Are you kidding me? He signed: Careful One is a legend.

“No,” Inge said. “I know where he is.”

Hearth stared at her in dismay. Even if. No. Too dangerous. Everyone who tries to rob him ends up dead.

“Not everyone,” Inge said. “It would be dangerous, but you could do it, Hearth. I know you could.”

“Hold up,” I said. “Who’s the Careful One? What are you talking about?”

“There—there is a dwarf,” Inge said. “The only dwarf in Alfheim except for…” She nodded toward our petrified friend. “The Careful One has a hoard of gold large enough to cover this rug. I could tell you how to find him—if you don’t mind a fairly high chance that you’ll die.”