The neighbor’s house, a baker, was thankfully dark as well. They, too, were early risers. Vidar skirted the side of the wall to the small garden his mother kept behind their house. No plants survived the winter, which meant it was just a bunch of different-sized mounds of snow covering the pots and small wood-enclosed patches of dirt.

  Vidar brushed the snow off a pot on the far left corner, still keeping his eyes on the windows.

  Moving the pot took some doing with the bottom being frozen to the ground, and he finally had to give it a kick to get at what was underneath. The key. His father didn’t know about this one. It was his mother’s doing, giving the children a way to sneak in the back when coming home after dark.

  The lock wasn’t frozen over, thankfully, but the click of the key was loud enough he thought it might wake up the entire neighborhood. He hid the key and replaced the pot, kicking snow around a little to hide his tracks. When the missing rune was discovered, he didn’t want them to know it was him. Vidar slid the door open on well-oiled hinges and slipped inside.

  The back room was dark, empty, and with a lingering chill that was still far more comfortable than the biting cold outside. He stood there in complete silence for a long while, imagining his siblings and parents in their beds, sleeping peacefully. They would rise before dawn and eat a small meal together before preparing for the day’s work.

  Wiping away some dust irritating his eyes, Vidar walked through the room on light feet, setting course for the closest sowilo rune. Four of them were interspersed throughout the house, with one in the kitchen, one in the master bedroom, one in the sitting room, and one in the annex, from where their father ran his scribe’s business. He’d briefly considered going into the kitchen to grab as much food as he could carry, but he didn’t dare risk it. The pots and pans, utensils, and general disarray made for a very high risk of alarming the sleeping family.

  Sweat trickled down his lower back as he made his way to the sitting room. The kenaz runes in the room were covered with thin cloth bags that allowed some muted light to pass through. It was enough to see by. Barely.

  The sitting room was near the front of the house and was used to entertain current customers or people his father hoped to turn into customers. Vidar had never been allowed to sit by the table. Just looking at the glinting, polished surface and the plush chairs spaced evenly around it made him clench his fist. No. This was not the time for indulging his anger. There was a reason he was here. That reason sat mounted on the exterior wall. With stone all that separated those inside from the elements outside, a sowilo rune in the middle of it made sense, to mitigate some of that cold in the winters.

  Vidar rounded the table and came to stand right in front of it. There it was, the jagged-edged symbol inscribed on a thin metal plate. Simple, really. Copying those would make him rich in no time.

  When it didn’t budge, he frowned. The thing was stuck to the wall, no matter how much strength he put behind the pull. Sliding it in different directions didn’t work either, nor did trying to spin the plate. No matter how much Vidar struggled, he couldn’t get the thing off.

  With his jaw clenched so tight he thought his teeth might pop out, he stepped back and regarded the plate.

  Someone coughed. Vidar froze. It’d been far away and up the stairs, but it sounded like his father. He stood there listening in the dark while holding his breath for a good, long time. No more sounds cut the silence. He sighed in relief but was still on edge. The cough was a reminder he wasn’t alone in that house, no matter how silent it was. This was not his home anymore, making him an intruder. Vidar couldn’t linger. He couldn’t stay, but he refused to return into the cold empty-handed. If he couldn’t bring a rune back with him, then he’d do the next best thing. He’d copy it.

  Cursing his lack of forethought about not bringing anything to write on or with, Vidar made his way to the workshop. Vidar’s heart beat faster and his chest felt tight as he approached his target, a small chamber. A reading chair was the only thing standing on the faded gray rug with frayed edges.

  No, that wasn’t right. Vidar hunched down and put a hand to the ground, touching the lush threads. Red threads. His mother replaced the carpet. That, above everything else, made him truly feel left behind. He stood and scuffed his shoes on the surface, making sure to get as much of the grime as possible to stick.

  The door to the workshop was the same as always. Vidar clenched and unclenched his fists, trying to relax his forearms and get the wooden feeling out of them, a ritual he’d performed many a time in this very spot. Like always, it was useless. He breathed in deeply and held the breath to expand his lungs, trying to push away the constricting feeling in his chest. Wiping at his eyes again and ignoring the quickening of his heart, Vidar stepped into the space he’d come to both fear and loathe over the years.

  The smell was like a blow to his gut. With the lingering mustiness of ledgers permeating the air, and the ever-present faint aroma wafting from the many jars of wax, Vidar’s head swam. The sharp smell of ink made his nose twitch, and he did his best to ignore the drying sheets as he stepped around the tables used for scribe’s work to reach the rune. Controlling the temperature in the workshop was important, and Vidar had hoped he could remove this rune, but it was just as stuck as the one in the sitting room.

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  Frustrated, he grabbed a sheet of paper and a charcoal pencil. He put the paper over the rune and tilted the pencil to create a rubbing. Copying it in ink was his first thought, but if he made a mistake, there’d be no way of knowing what the correct form was. Satisfied at the result, he did another one just in case.

  Anger was replacing anxiousness now that his body had realized he wasn’t going to sit down at one of the tables to chase letters around all day again. Vidar looked at the rune, seeing his father’s hand in its placement and application. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself stabbing at the rune with the letter opener he’d stolen in that break-in. It would be immensely satisfying knowing the entire stock in the workshop was being ruined, but he knew it would only last long enough for the servants to return with a replacement.

  His hands shook as he turned around and regarded the back of the workshop with the many works in progress organized on shelves. He was breathing hard now. Excited. Perhaps he could put the whole place to flame. He didn’t have anything with him, but there had to be something in the house he could use. The idea sounded better and better to his ears.

  “Vidar?”

  The soft voice startled him, and he spun to face the door.

  “Tilda?” His youngest sister hugged the side of the door, her eyes wide with what could be either fright or excitement.

  “Where did you go, Vidar? I missed you.”

  All thoughts of destruction fled his mind and Vidar made his way over to her, wrapping his arms around her thin frame. At nine years old, she was still very much a child. So small, so frail.

  “I had to go for a little while and I have to go again. Is anyone else awake?”

  She shook her head with her face still buried in his coat. “I heard something and was afraid, but I didn’t want to wake Mother. She looks tired all the time now and her eyes are red a lot.”

  Vidar’s throat felt thick. “You did good, little Tilda. No need to wake them.”

  “Hey, I’m not so little anymore!” she said, speaking loud enough for Vidar to wince as she pulled away from the hug to point a finger in his face.

  He held up his hands in appeasement. “I’m sorry, oh great big Tilda.”

  “I’m not fat either.”

  Vidar smiled and wiped at his eyes with his sleeve again, tousling her long, straight hair. “Go back to bed, Tilda.”

  “Are you staying?” she asked, looking up at him.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

  She frowned and crossed her arms. “Why not?”

  “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you when you’re older.”

  Since his parents hadn’t shared the circumstances with his little sister, Vidar would not either. They were right in not doing so, he thought. Best let her stay a child for as long as possible. He thought of the children working for Embla. Many of them were younger than Tilda, but the tired eyes in their faces made them look far more advanced in age. Best to protect his sister’s eyes for as long as possible.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to go now,” Vidar said, gently moving her out of the way.

  She hugged him from behind. “Come visit again soon! Just wake me up next time?”

  “I promise,” Vidar said, gently untangling her arms. “Don’t tell the others I was here.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just promise me?” he asked, turning to give her an earnest look.

  She rolled her eyes. “I promise.”

  With their goodbyes said, Tilda hurried back through the house ahead of Vidar and then up the stairs to the bedrooms without looking back. As he passed the bottom of the stairs, he heard someone speak up above. It was the voice of his mother.

  “What are you doing up, Tilda?”

  “I thought I heard someone downstairs, but it’s empty.”

  Their mother murmured, “Such a brave girl. Brave and stupid.”

  Vidar couldn’t stand being in that house a moment longer and exited the way he’d come in. After replacing the key without bothering to lock the door for fear of his mother hearing, he skulked back to the street and disappeared toward Andersburg.

  He breathed a little easier once he set foot in Rat Town again. Only then did he allow himself a sense of victory. He’d done it. The sowilo rune was his. With it, anything was within reach.

  The hour was late at this point, very late, but he wanted to put his new treasure to use right away. To do so, he forced his cold and tired legs to walk him to the old shipping crate where he’d squirreled away his meager possessions. If Ida and Siv managed to get the pieces of wood he was looking for, he’d need the paintbrushes and paint set to make something he could sell. Before leaving the workshop, he’d pocketed a bottled of ink and some pens. They would do for practice but not much more, and he desperately needed silver.

  To his delight, the twin sisters did acquire the necessary materials for him to craft runes. They waited outside the shacks when he returned, bouncing with excitement.

  Ida showed a cloth bag into his face as soon as he approached. “That’ll be two silver coins!”

  “Two? Didn’t we say one?” he asked, opening the bag to peer inside. Counting the discs in the dark wasn’t an easy task, but he thought they numbered over twenty. A good start.

  Ida’s face darkened, and he chuckled as he handed over the coins. “See?” he asked. “That’s better than burglary, is it not?”

  She placed the silver between her teeth and bit down, wincing. “A break-in could have given us a lot of riches, plenty more than two coins.”

  “Two silver coins is nothing to scoff at,” he countered. “And why did you bite down on them?”

  “It’s what you’re supposed to do, to make sure they’re not fake.”

  “How do you tell the difference?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  Vidar pointed to the boys’ shack. “Is everyone in there already?”

  “Not yet. Should be empty.”

  “Do you have the key?”

  That made her snicker. “It doesn’t lock from the outside. There is nothing in there to steal.”

  “That’s true enough,” Vidar said. “Well, I’m going in to experiment a little. Do you want to join?”

  Siv stepped toward the shack, but Ida caught her. “We’re not going into the boys’ place, Siv.”

  “Why not?” Vidar asked.

  She gave him a look.

  “Oh. Right. Well, good night, then.”

  “Sleep tight,” Ida said, heading for the girls’ shack.

  Siv trailed behind Ida, then made some gesture to Vidar where she tilted her face and rested her chin in her palm, mimicking someone sleeping.

  “Good night,” he said.