‘I’ll bolt your bloody feet to the ground when you get back down here!’
‘How will I carve the roof beams then?’ he called, sliding his fingers over the pale wood. ‘What do you fancy, my queen? Dragons?’
‘Black dogs!’ she called up, setting a hand on Blue Jenner’s shoulder. ‘Like the worn prow-beast on the ship that carried me away to safety, saw me through a storm and brought me home again!’
Blue Jenner set his hand on top of hers and gave it a pat, while a group of prayer-weavers gathered around the foot of the truss and droned out entreaties to She Who Shapes the Wood and He Who Shelters andShe Who Raises High the Stones that this hall should never fall.
Koll caught one of the dangling ropes and slithered down. ‘Black dogs it is!’
‘Why didn’t I marry a bloody farmer?’ muttered Rin, scrubbing at her scalp with her fingernails.
Koll dropped the last few strides and ambled back towards them. ‘You couldn’t find one who’d take you?’
‘How many of these will we need?’ asked Mother Owd, peering up at the towering truss.
‘Fifteen will make the skeleton,’ said Koll, looking up and sketching the timbers in the air with jerky movements of his pointing fingers. The gods knew how he managed it, but he gave some sense of the building completed, the huge beams above, the vast space they would enclose, and Skara found herself smiling as she pictured the warm dimness within, the echoing of the skalds’ voices, the women’s oiled hair and the men’s polished cloak-buckles gleaming in the light of the great firepit, just as it used to be in her grandfather’s day.
Mother Owd gave a soft whistle as she considered the emptiness overhead. ‘We could be here a while.’
‘The Forest took twenty-eight years to build,’ said Skara.
‘I hope to be finished a splinter more quickly, my queen.’ Koll gave a smoky sigh as he looked up proudly at the work done so far. ‘But nothing worth building is ever built quickly.’
‘Mother War strikes like lightning,’ said Mother Owd. ‘Father Peace grows like the sapling tree, and needs the same care.’
‘Yaletoft grows more like mushrooms.’ Blue Jenner peered down from the steps and into the town. ‘You wake up one morning after the rains and there they are.’
It was true, the new city sprang from the ashes of the old, the frames of fine new houses sprouting along the wide straight streets Mother Owd had laid out between the site of the hall and the sea, the saws and hammers and masons’ shouts a constant chorus from dawn until dark.
More people flooded in every day. Some of them folk who had lived in Yaletoft and fled the burning, but Gettlanders and Yutmarkers, Inglings and Lowlanders, too. Folk from all across the Shattered Sea who had lost their old lives in the war. Folk looking for fresh starts and hearing that Queen Skara had honest silver for honest work.
‘Some of what Bright Yilling burned can never be replaced,’ murmured Mother Owd.
‘Then we must remember it fondly and look forward to fresh glories. It is hard to lose something.’ Skara turned back towards the towering truss. ‘But it gives you the chance to make something better.’
Koll was laying out his plans with vast flourishes of his hands while Rin watched, arms folded and one sceptical brow arched high.
‘I’ll hope to have five of them up and braced together before winter comes. The rest will have to wait until spring. I’ll need to go into the hills and pick out the right trees first, though.’ He scratched innocently at the back of his head, sidling up towards her. ‘Maybe my wife will come with me, keep me warm when the snows come?’
‘The snows come three men high up there! We’ll be trapped till spring.’
‘Exactly,’ he said, hooking the golden elf-bangle she wore on her wrist and gently easing her arms unfolded.
‘You’re mad.’
‘I’m just trying to be the best man I can be.’ He took her chain and ducked nimbly inside so it was around both their necks. ‘Just trying to stand in the light.’
She laughed as he gathered her in his arms and held her tight, swaying from one foot to the other. Soon they were kissing shamelessly, eyes closed, his hand tangled in her hair, her hand up under his chin, their jaws working. Never mind seeing it, it was kissing one could hear from a few strides distant, and several of the waiting workmen tossed their tools down and wandered off, shaking their heads.
Mother Owd rolled her eyes. ‘The one drawback of this particular smith and carpenter.’