Chapter 9: The Other Story

Her name rang out  in the little chamber. “The Mother of Orphans, Danafreya.” The Ultor pronounced it like a talisman of power, and for a moment he seemed to swell with new life, his chest punched out, his eyes bright, his cracked lips opened wide. Reen shivered so hard her spine snapped straight. She waited, listening to the silence that lay over them like a blanket. But nothing happened. The Ultor exhaled, and collapsed against the stone wall again, just as he had been before—just a man.

Well, maybe a man, but not like the men she knew. The little lamp, which she’d turned down as low as it would go without sputtering out, barely threw light enough to reach him. With his dark skin and dark cloak, he looked like a collection of small parts of a man, as if the darkness itself had grown a face and strong arms and legs, but forgotten to connect them with a body, so that the parts only floated near each other, jumbled and unreal.

“Do you understand what I’m saying, child?” he asked.

“Yes. I think so.”

“Your Ugasic is very good.”

“My mother taught me. That’s all she spoke at home with me, Ugasic. She wanted me to get a place waiting on a lady someday, or maybe even marry a merchant.”

“Your mother was a drudge?”

“What’s a drudge?”

“She worked in someone else’s home, cleaning and caring for the family.”

“Oh. She worked in our home, mostly. And she dyed cloth, when I was little. Before we came here.”

“Your father was a warrior, though?”

“Yeah. He fought for Sagash, in the Hagannahs. You now about that?”

“I’ve heard,” was all he answered.

She sighed, and eyed the blade in his hand. “That was his,” she said softly. “His sword. Barsow took it after he died.”

“Barsow?”

“The man you—the dead man. The man who had the sword.”

The Ultor looked the sword over. “I thought they said the dead man was your father.”

She sighed again. “My mom married him when I was a little kid. He brought my dad’s sword home, and she married him. And brought us here.”

For a few moments, he said nothing. Then: “I’m glad he wasn’t your father.”

She nodded.

“I’ll return it to you, when I can.”

“Really?” she asked.

“It’s your father’s sword.” He shifted, easing his joints into a new arrangement. “Your mother is dead?”

“Yes.”

“Why did she want you to be a drudge? If your father was a warrior?”

She frowned. “Because a lady’s maid always knows where her next meal is coming from.”

“And a warrior doesn’t?”

“Not the ones I know.”

He made no reply to that. After a moment she asked, “What happened to Danafreya?”

He didn’t answer right away, and for a moment she was afraid he wouldn’t go on.

“What’s the last thing I told you?”

“Danafreya got to be queen instead of a warrior.”

“Yes. Danafreya, Empress of Lasting Peace. That was her regnal seal—”

“Her what?”

“The name she took as queen. Her will for the kingdom. After mighty Komfo, Danafreya, Empress of Lasting Peace. And that was what she brought—until the Calamity.”

NEXT: THE CALAMITY