Getting the small skiff across the inlet to the mainland had been easy, though she didn’t dare take the tiny boat down the Rata River to the town. The water was high because of the melting snow and the current too strong for her to navigate it safely. She ran the small boat aground in a marsh and unloaded her possessions on dry ground before returning and dragging the skiff into the reeds. She dropped the rock that she used as an anchor and covered the boat with broken reeds, then stood back and surveyed her work. It would have to do.
She slung her pack onto her back. It was heavy, loaded down with whatever she could carry from her mother’s hoard and her few meager clothing items. The ax was in its usual spot at her hip, easily within reach, and the sword was sheathed on her other side, strapped to her belt with an old knife sheath that she never used anymore. She felt more like a packhorse than a girl. When Aeris tried to hop onto her shoulder, Sibba shook her off.
“Don’t even think about it,” Sibba said. “You can fly, you lazy bird.” Aeris had been uneasy on the boat and seemed glad to have land back beneath her wings. Sibba didn’t share in her relief. She was here only out of necessity. To tell her father of her mother’s death, and to find a boat and a crew. In and out. No need to revisit the past. She had only the future ahead of her, and the great unknown. The open ocean and a world to explore. Surely there would be somewhere out there that she could call home, someone who might accept her for who she was and not who they wanted her to be.
Ottar was a half day’s walk away. She had been walking maybe an hour when the heavy gray clouds that had been threatening her all morning finally cracked, dropping frozen rain on Sibba’s head. This was not the fluffy snow that had fallen days earlier, but the kind of precipitation that would cave in roofs and freeze livestock in the fields. And they were well into the Fields now, surrounded by a sea of brittle grass that would offer them no protection. So she trudged on, bending her face against the pinpricks of ice.
She kept her mind off of her frozen toes by thinking about what she would do in Ottar. The items she had for trade would maybe buy her a boat, but it wasn't so easy to come by a crew. Not a loyal crew anyway, one that wouldn't stab her in the back and leave her for dead in the roiling waters of the Impassable Strait. If she had any hope of making it out there, her father would have to give her men—good men, explorers willing to uproot themselves and travel into the unknown. And with the land battles between the clans that had been going on for decades and showed no sign of stopping, she didn't know if he would be able to spare any for her.
Around mid-day, she began to pass her father's outlying farmsteads. In the distance, farmhands herded sheep and cows into outbuildings to escape the rain. At one home, a tow-headed child wrapped in a cloak that was too big for her stood in the door ringing a bell for the noon meal. Sibba considered stopping and begging for food, but all she wanted was to arrive in Ottar. To confront her father. To move on. She didn't belong here anymore. She didn't belong anywhere.
Thankfully it wasn't long before Ottar's walls came into view. Lining the far bank of the Rata River, her father had constructed twenty-foot tall pike walls to protect his precious city. A bridge spanned the river, the gate at the other end open to the day's traffic. To her left, there was the red sail of a departing ship billowing in the wind, its crew bundled in black furs, heads ducked against the icy rain that was dripping off the tip of her own pointed nose.
She was glad that no one took notice of her, not even the posted guards. She had been gone for so long that she was unrecognizable, just another traveler. Aeris was perched on her shoulder, her head jerking back and forth on high alert. The bird had been born on the island and never known anyone besides Darcey and Sibba. The only other person she had ever seen had attacked them and thrown her across the beach. After so many solitary years there with her, Sibba thought she knew how Aeris felt.
Beyond the wall was a maze of small houses, and in the center of it all, a coil of smoke wound into the sky from her father's longhouse, its moss-covered roof standing taller than the rest, the sutvithr tree's branches reaching still higher. Even from this distance, Sibba could see the crowd around the base of the tree and feel the intense energy of the people that milled around her, all of them moving toward the longhouse.
A girl passed her carrying a pail of water, her skirts muddied and wet, her hair loose around her shoulders. Reaching out, Sibba touched the girl's wrist.
“What's happening?” Sibba asked.
The girl recoiled only a little when she saw Sibba and Aeris, but it didn’t deter her from answering. “The accused chose a sword trial.”
“What is the offense?”
“Adultery,” the girl said in an exaggerated whisper, seeming happy to impart this piece of gossip to her.
Of course. There was no better way to break up the monotony of the snow season than with a good, bloody execution. Sibba remembered attending trials, sitting beside her father and Jary, her mother covering Sibba's eyes for the worst of it while Jary had taunted her. Secretly, she had been glad for it, even though she had struggled against her mother's grip. She remembered, too, the energy, the excitement of the crowd when someone was sentenced to death, blood in her father's beard and smeared down his face. She was at once repelled and drawn to it, especially now that she knew how it felt to take a man’s life, and to bury someone she loved.
Around them, the crowd surged forward and Sibba followed, staying beside the woman even when her pail sloshed water on Sibba's toes. Aeris flapped her wings for balance and the woman balked, scooting a step away.
“Who is the unlucky woman?” Sibba asked before her new friend could scamper away. Only women could be tried for adultery. Women had a lot of rights, but sexual freedom after marriage was not one of them.
“Estrid Fogthorn,” the girl answered. “Such a shame. So young and beautiful. And can you imagine? Sharing a bed with the boat builder when she’s married to a rich merchant…”
But Sibba wasn't listening. The name was like a punch in the gut and Sibba momentarily forgot to breathe. She could turn back now. Find somewhere to stay until the trial was over and pretend she had never heard any of it.
Couldn't she?
What difference did it make to her if Estrid Fogthorn lived or died? They had been friends once but that was a long time ago, before she and Ari had pushed Sibba out of their triangle of friends. Before Sibba had made the mistake of loving someone a little too much. Sibba’s mind immediately told her that she shouldn’t care what befell the girl. Estrid had broken her heart; they hadn’t spoken in over five years. It was none of her business if she was dead or alive, an adulteress or a wife. Happy or miserable. Estrid hadn’t loved her five years ago; she didn’t deserve Sibba’s love now.