With the aim of hiding his silver under the loose plank beneath the bed in his room, he made his way back. The smell of food from Edna’s kitchen beckoned, and Vidar ordered in a meal, not having had a single bite to eat in forever.

  “A lass is sleeping in your room,” she muttered when she put a bowl in front of him.

  “There’s someone in my room?”

  “That’s what I said, wasn’t it? A girl, scrawny thing.” She slapped his fingers with the wooden spoon she kept tied to her belt. “Shame on you for taking advantage!”

  He pulled his hand away. “Ow!”

  She glared at him.

  “I didn’t do anything! Did she give you a name?”

  Edna narrowed her eyes, obviously not believing him. “Barely more than a child.”

  “Name?”

  “No name that I recall. No words at all, poor lass.”

  “Siv?”

  The wooden spoon came down again, but he was quick enough to pull his hand away. Instead, it hit the rim of his bowl, sending the stew flying.

  “Hey! Look what you did to my food!”

  “You do know the poor girl!”

  “She’s a friend!” Vidar protested.

  Edna shook her head slowly. “Terrible state, the lass. Distraught. Does a fine pantomime of you, though. No question about who she was looking for once she hunched over with a sour face and ears standing all the way out.”

  Vidar gave her a glare of his own, but she just chuckled. “Aye, just like that.”

  “She’s just a friend, and I’m going to check on her now.” He stared at the mess on the table as he walked away. “You’re giving me another bowl of that later!”

  “Men!” Edna exclaimed.

  The mad woman thought he was some sort of deviant. Old hags like her are never able to see the good in people, he thought miserably as he made his way up the stairs.

  “Siv?” he asked, opening the door after unlocking it. Siv being in there meant Edna possessed a key of her own. Vidar did not approve of her having access to his things. He’d need to find a way of securing his silver as it grew more plentiful, or he was liable to lose it all.

  A small form huddled on the bed in the dark. It didn’t move. Vidar triggered a kenaz rune, and that made her startle awake.

  She turned with eyes wide from fright, letting out a sound somewhere between a grunt and a hoarse, wailing moan. Her hair was wet and slicked tight to her head. Those wide eyes turned to slits as tears welled up, running down her cheeks. Siv threw herself off the bed to stand before him. The usually silent girl now made a long string of noises, as if she was attempting to speak.

  He put what he hoped was a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Where is Ida?”

  The question only made her cry harder. She raised her arms so the sleeves of her ragged coat were pulled down, revealing pale skin full of old, healed welts and new bruises.

  “Who did this to you? Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head and held out her arms together in front of her, palms facing up, but her hands closed in tight little fists.

  Vidar frowned, then closed his hands around her wrists. “Manacles? Ida was taken?”

  Siv pointed and nodded, excited.

  “Who took her?”

  A frustrated groan escaped her throat, then she began stepping back and forth in the room.

  “Someone who walks?”

  She shook her head and stomped her foot, then hugged herself, panic setting in. Vidar was growing increasingly frustrated but couldn’t fault the girl for not being able to speak.

  “Did you break into someone’s house?”

  Nod.

  “Can you show me where?”

  Shake of the head.

  “Because she’s not there anymore?”

  Excited, she nodded. They’d burglarized another house, and it hadn’t gone over well with the owner, Vidar figured. If Ida wasn’t there anymore, the next logical location for her would be…

  “Jail?”

  Excitement and fear both drained from her, and she sat down on the floor, limp. She nodded.

  “You want me to help her escape from the most guarded place in the entire city, other than the damn keep?”

  Siv looked up at him. Nod.

  “How did you get away?”

  She made a running motion with her fingers, then pointed at Vidar.

  “You ran and came here,” Vidar said. He didn’t have to watch her nod to know that he was right. He wanted to ask why she’d come to him, but it was no use. Obviously, the girls only had each other. Once they left Embla following his own departure, there was no one looking after them. Emboldened, Ida must’ve wanted to find a place to rob straight away so they’d have money to live on. He couldn’t fault her for it, but he saw no way of getting Ida out of this peril.

  “What’ll happen to her in there?”

  Siv held out her right arm, then made a chopping motion with the left. Vidar winced. Having already seen his students that morning, he already knew what the answer would be. Deep down, he’d known.

  “We’ll think of something,” he said. “Have you eaten?”

  Siv shook her head.

  Vidar sighed. “We’re going to have to teach you how to write at some point.” After a brief pause, he added, “And me to read without going cross-eyed and wanting to hurl. Come, let’s go downstairs and have Edna give us some more of that stew while we think of a way to help your sister.”

  By the time their bowls were empty and Siv had calmed down somewhat, Vidar had formulated something approximating a plan.

  “Can you find one of the boys, Erik, Sven, or whatever the third one was called, and make one of them help us?”

  Siv looked up and blinked several times, like she’d been near asleep. She gave him a searching look, but finally nodded.

  “I’ll need a distraction.”

  He could read the question on her face. She wondered about his plan. Vidar did his best to project a confident grin.

  “I’m going to get Ida out by using my sharp wit and my newfound runic powers!”

  A few hours later, Vidar waited behind the corner of an upscale dressmaker’s shop. He peered out toward the back entrance of the barracks. It was far less guarded than the jail itself, and you could cross right through it to get there. A shortcut. The only reason he knew this was from watching a few guards entering the jail on the other side, only to emerge from the barracks a little later.

  Only a single guard stood by the barracks entrance, lazily leaning against the stone wall with his eyes closed. Vidar didn’t recognize the man with his tousled blond hair and impressively fat jowls.

  The plan was simple. Distract the guard and slip inside. Once inside, no one would question his reason for being there. Vidar would find the door to the jail and then free Ida. To open the door, he would either need to secure a key or use a sowilo rune to melt through the metal. Easy.

  The crowd in this part of town was thin, and the people were well-dressed against the cold. Proper gentlemen and ladies. Their noses were turned up at the sight of him huddling by the side of a building.

  The streets were wider and cleaned of snow and sleet. All the houses were built from bricks, rather than stone or wood. Even the air smelled cleaner here, where rich bastards made their homes. With the keep itself looming in the distance, a many-tiered, defensible structure, Vidar couldn’t help but glance up at the many small windows. Forget the people watching him on the street. It felt like someone was glaring down at him from up there.

  He did his best to shrug it off and concentrate on the barracks. They were built into a thick, defensible wall going around this entire part of Halmstadt. It was an extra layer of protection if the town would come under siege. A few drawbridges pulled up meant cutting off the rest of Halmstadt. Another sign of these bastards not giving a damn about their nonwealthy citizens.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  The more immediate problem was the matter of escaping back out from the wall. If things got too heated, the soldiers on guard might raise the bridges, trapping Vidar inside. Unless… He looked around, then walked around the edge of the building, then crossed a street and then another. There! One of the hatches leading underground.

  That made him breathe a little easier. With the key always on hand, Vidar had more avenues of escape than anyone else in the city.

  A shout rose in the direction of the barracks and Vidar hurried back to spot Erik disappearing behind a set of residences. The guardsman slowly jogged after him, huffing and puffing like he was about to keel over. The door inside was unguarded and open.

  He ran and only stopped once he made it inside. Rushing through at top speed would alert anyone in there, so he forced himself to slow down. Vidar straightened his back and settled for a brisk walk, looking straight ahead, like he knew where he was going.

  Most of the rooms were empty and the few guardsmen didn’t pay him any mind. They barely looked up from their card games or where they lounged in their cots. The problem was, the place was a maze of corridors, stairs, and dead ends. When he passed a young guard, reading a book of all things, for the third time, he noticed Vidar.

  “Who’re you?” he asked, suspicion plain on his face, putting the book away. Vidar recognized the picture of a knight on the front, but couldn’t remember its title.

  Vidar drew himself up and spoke with an air of authority. “My name is Harald Frinn, legal counsel. I am here to provide for the poor souls you have so wrongly incarcerated.”

  The young guardsman’s eyes widened a little, but then he frowned. “All we have now is a couple of drunks and a thief. Who’re you meeting with? Never heard of none like you coming here before.”

  “Please show me to the thief at once,” Vidar said.

  That suspicious look remained for a brief moment, then the young man shrugged and waved for him to follow. “Not sure why you wouldn’t just enter from the front.”

  Vidar grunted noncommittally.

  A few twists and turns later, the guardsman unlocked the door to the jail. It was sturdy, built with metal bars going both horizontally and vertically. Small spaces were left in between. Not wide and tall enough to climb in through, but they left enough room to see the room beyond. Cells.

  “Just go out the front on your way back, won’t you?” the soldier said, locking the door again behind Vidar. He walked off without another comment, leaving him alone.

  Before checking the cells, Vidar made sure no one stood nearby in the short corridor on the other end. It was empty.

  “Ida?” he whispered, trying to get a good look at the inhabitants of the different cells. Each held a single person, that much he could see, but beyond that, the light wasn’t strong enough, only lit by lanterns hanging from the ceiling above, where Vidar stood between the cells.

  Six cages, for lack of a better word, took up most of the narrow room. Each of them could hold at least twenty people, he thought, but the few prisoners in there were kept apart.

  “Ida?” he asked again, a little louder.

  “Yes?” a man answered, slurring his speech, half-asleep. The cells were crafted very much like the door leading into the space, with metal bars leaving the jailers with clear and direct line of sight into the enclosures at all times.

  “Shut up,” Vidar said, his voice a little too loud.

  One of the huddled shapes stirred.

  “Vidar?”

  Vidar hurried over to Ida’s cell. “Ida!”

  She sat with some difficulty, a sharp intake of breath betraying some wound in her side once she attempted to stand. Ida remained upright in her second attempt and shuffled toward him. “What’re you doing here?”

  Her face was a swollen, purple mess of welts and bruises. One eye wept a reddish liquid and it was not tears. Resignation. Her entire posture looked defeated.

  “Siv came to find me. I’m here to get you out.”

  “I wouldn’t mind leaving!” one of the drunks shouted, far too loud for comfort.

  “Shut up,” Vidar hissed before turning back to Ida.

  “Can you run?”

  Her voice was small, and the reply long in the coming. “I can barely stand.”

  “We’ll think of something,” Vidar said, digging through his coat pocket to grab one of the sowilo runes he’d kept from Alvarn. “Stand back.”

  It looked like she was trying to raise an eyebrow, but Ida’s swollen face wouldn’t emote properly. She remained in her place, silent. Expectant.

  The wooden disc was smaller than the usual kenaz runes since it was meant to be kept under your clothes to stave off the cold winter. Ever since thinking of this plan, if you could call it that, Vidar had made sure to transfer essence to it continuously. Now, in his mind’s eye, the circle containing that essence thrummed like it was barely able contain what churned within.

  He didn’t know much about metal, but he did know it melted slowly. Triggering the rune with a wide opening meant expelling a whole lot of heat in a flash, but that probably wouldn’t work. On the other hand, if he made the opening too small, it wouldn’t do much at all. If only he’d have some time to test things, but it was not meant to be.

  Vidar breathed out and made the opening, triggering the sowilo rune as he held it in place against the metal where the door met the frame, right where the locking mechanism would slide into place.

  The metal quickly grew hotter, and in a matter of seconds, it was glowing orange and yellow. A new problem reared its ugly head then. While he didn’t burn his fingers from the wooden disc itself, the hot metal offered no such protection. The searing pain proved unbearable, but he, thankfully, carried the letter opener with him. Using that to push on the heat rune as it merged with the metal, lodging itself inside, pushing forward, Vidar could protect himself.

  The heat rune pushing into the metal as it melted made for the second surprise. A real rune scribe might be able to tell him why external heat affected the wood while the rune’s own heat didn’t, but that’s what happened the moment the wood was pushed deep enough into the metal. It caught fire.

  Since he no longer touched the rune, other than with the letter opener, he couldn’t be sure how much essence remained within, but it was enough for the whole thing to burst once the wood it was carved upon sustained enough damage.

  A loud, crashing sound was all he had time to register before everything turned to black.

  When he woke, Vidar was in a cell of his own. It was located opposite the one Ida occupied, and, groaning and searching his surroundings, he saw the door.

  “It blew open!” he yelled before groaning as his head thrummed with pain.

  An almost silent sigh from his right, followed by the muted word, “hurray,” allowed him to locate Ida again. They’d moved her to the cell right next to him, the one closest to the back door.

  “Did you get hurt?” he asked, trying to piece everything together. “Did the blast knock me out?”

  “It did. I’m fine. Your little trick broke the lock and took a chunk of the door with it, but the noise alerted the guards. Since you were out cold and with my legs having a few too many lumps and bruises, they scooped us up right away and tossed us into new cells. I think you’re in more trouble than me.”

  Vidar’s hand came away with blood from the back of his head, and the back of it was covered in small black specks. Metal shavings, he realized, scraping them off with his nails. Thin trickles of blood followed each buried piece. He winced. “They don’t like attempts at breaking prisoners out? Who would have thought?”

  “They found all the runes on you. First, they cursed about the guild overstepping, but they didn’t find a seal on you. For the guild, I mean.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Without a seal proving you’re part of the guild, they know you’re not a member. Don’t you know what happens to practitioners who aren’t part of the guild?”

  A chill ran through Vidar. “No, I don’t. What?”

  “I don’t know, but they seemed to think it was funny even if they didn’t know what to do with you. So now you’re in here with me. Congratulations.”

  She breathed in deep and closed her good eye. “Sorry. You risked yourself in coming here to rescue me and all I’m doing is whining. Thank you, and I’m sorry it came to this.”

  Vidar searched his pockets. All his runes were gone, but that was not the worst of it. He groaned.

  “What. Did you think they’d let you keep the runes in a cell?”

  “They took my silver. With Siv crying in my room, I forgot to stash it!”

  That made her chuckle. “Don’t think you’ll have to worry about poverty for much longer. They’ll cut off my hand and leave me to rot for a while, but then they’ll release me. You, though? I’m not so sure.”

  “I’ll be fine. This isn’t over.”

  Then he started digging around in his pants again before breathing a sigh of relief. “The key. They didn’t find it.”

  Losing that would have been a much bigger blow than the runes and the silver. The runes would have been nice in the short term, obviously, but he couldn’t even make himself consider the fact he might be soundly trapped forever, however short that forever turned out to be.

  Vidar grabbed hold of one of the metal bars that made up the wall and pulled himself up. Everything spun for a moment and his headache throbbed, but it eventually settled down. His pockets were empty, but he needed something to make a rune with, anything. If he could just get another sowilo rune, the lock could be conquered. With a kenaz rune as well, he could blind the guards, allowing them to escape.

  The problem was in crafting runes with no supplies.

  “Do you have anything on you to write with?” he asked.

  “No, dummy. Who lugs around a bunch of stuff to write with? I can’t even read.”

  She sounded a little cheerier than before, but Ida wasn’t much help.

  “What about you drunks?” Vidar asked.

  “Shut up, I’m trying to sleep!” someone slurred.

  One of the others stood and reached an arm through the openings in the cell wall. He was holding something, a smell he recognized well from the sewers. “I’ll give you a nice ol’ turd to write with if you let me out of here.”

  Vidar shuddered. “No thanks.”

  Even if that would’ve worked, and he wasn’t sure it would, he hadn’t become quite that desperate. Not yet.

  “Blood,” Ida said. “Or if you want my oozing, crushed eye, I’ll pluck it out for you. Doubt I’ll have any more use for it.”

  “I’m sure your eye will be fine,” he said absentmindedly, not believing his own words for a second. That eye wasn’t going to heal. Vidar pursed his lips. “What about blood? That might work.”

  “I just said?—”

  “Hold on a moment,” Vidar said. “Let me think.”

  The consistency of blood wasn’t as good as paint, obviously, but it would probably dry without messing up his painted lines too much.

  “Yes, it might work,” he said, scratching his chin. “But what to paint the symbol on?”

  The cells were completely bare without as much as a bucket to piss in, hence the less-than-pleasant stench wafting in from the drunks, he realized. Using his clothes as a canvas wouldn’t work without a way to keep the fabric stretched at all times. Too many folds and creases and the whole thing might blow up in their faces again.

  “Your skin,” Ida said. “Or mine.”

  Vidar held up a finger, as he’d just thought of something brilliant. “I’ve got it!”

  “Don’t you dare,” she said dangerously.

  He grinned and turned to her. “Just messing with you.”

  Then he remembered the wood enveloped by melting metal. No, his own skin would not work, not unless he wanted to end up burned to death in an inferno.

  “I’ll burn. It won’t work,” he said.

  Sighing, he sat, leaning against the wall separating himself from Ida, trying to think of something. She joined him on her own side.

  “You really don’t have anything else?” she asked.

  Vidar shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “So what do we do?”

  He thought another moment, then settled on a solution that might work. The only one he could think of even attempting.

  “We’re going to have to wait for one of them to open the door. Then we attack.”

  “You’re going to fight the guardsmen without a weapon?” Ida asked, doing her best to mask what he thought of that idea.

  “No,” he said grimly. “Not without a weapon.”

  The small pieces of metal embedded in his skin didn’t release enough blood, so he set to the disgusting task of biting a finger on his left hand until blood welled up from the wound. Using that as ink, he painted his other palm. One line going down to the left, then another continuing down to the right. Kenaz. Light to blind. Before he finished the circle, the blood stopped coming from his finger, forcing him to dig in again with his teeth. Eyes watering from the pain, he completed the circle.

  It didn’t take long for the thin streaks to dry, and Vidar closed his eyes, bringing forth the circle in his mind’s eye. He placed the kenaz rune within and then, holding his breath, he filled it with essence from his own arm.

  It worked. He couldn’t believe it, but it actually worked.

  “Yes,” he muttered, soft enough not even Ida could hear. “I did it.”

  Finally, in that moment, he thought of a use for the thrust rune, stakra, as Lytir so aptly named it. Looking at his still relatively unscathed hand, he sighed and then set to biting.