After the Fall (Raud Grima Book 2) Read online

  Ótti knows all about it ’cause I tell her when I get home from meetings, though she never goes out much herself and doesn’t care to attend them. “There’s a bunch who’ve time to waste,” is all she said about it this time.

  She stepped over close and helped me on with my clothes again, rubbing my shoulders a bit after her hands pulled the shirt down over my head. “Ginna,” she murmured in her softest voice. “I’m running low again.”

  If my shoulders were tense before, it was nothing to how they crunched up at that.

  “And how’s that?” I asked. I turned, giving her a glare. “I got you a bottle not a week past.”

  She pouted, her large blue eyes narrowing. “You know I can’t sleep if you’re not here.”

  Which was just what to say to shut me up, and she knew it. Ótti takes laudanum to sleep when I’m out, and lately I’ve been out quite a bit. It’s your’n fault, I told myself. If you made more of an effort to come home at night she’d not need so much. But since my brother Vig and my sister Kisla both moved out, I’m the only one bringing in owt, unless you count what Hardane steals from the docks whenever he can. Hardane and Rokja both used to pinch quite a lot of food from the markets in the Kaupsektor, and so did Vig and Kisla, come to think of it. But when the city fell, that was the end of the markets, more’s the pity.

  “I don’t suppose I’ll hear you complain when you’re eating venison stew,” I said to Ótti, not meeting her eyes. The punch was gone from my voice, though, and she could tell she’d won. I’d be off to fetch her another bottle of laudanum ’fore tomorrow, no doubt about it.

  I’m the one what fetches owt someone in the family needs. It’s no mystery why—I’m the one’s got something to trade. Used to be six of us kids. Now with Kisla, Vig, and Eriny each living in their own place—Kisla in a shanty a few doors down with her man, Vig in an abandoned building in Gronicks with a bunch of his mates, and Eriny gone years now, in service on an estate on the mainland—it leaves just us three: me, Hardane and Rokja, living with Amma and Mum and Ótti. So anytime Amma says we’re low on food, I’m off to see Gram or sometimes someone else, depending on what needs to be stocked up. Mum ain’t no use to anyone even though she talks all day and night about how much work she does, but I’ll still go see Gaddi if Mum says she wants thread for mending or some such. Hardane’s been running with a crowd of young slashers which makes my hair stand on end, sure enough, but it means he gets his own things when he needs them, I suppose. We hardly see him anymore, and it’s just a matter of time ’fore he moves out official-like, if you ask me. Rokja never asks for nowt, but that don’t mean I don’t spend a fair amount of time finding stuff for her, either ’cause Amma says she needs it or ’cause I get it into my head she does. And then there’s Ótti, who only ever asks for laudanum—but that’s plenty, considering.

  “Oh, go on, then,” Ótti said, giving me a kiss on the mouth. She’s not the affectionate kind, you know, so of course there went the last of my will. I kissed her back, deeper’n she did, and she grinned at me and led me into the bedroom. It was late morning and no one was using it, though most nights there’s all of us in there. Ótti pulled me down on one of the two wide beds we share and I ran my free hand over her body, lingering on a breast and tugging the light fabric of her dress to the side. I couldn’t take my time, you know, really enjoy it, because who knows when Amma might decide to come in and change the sheets or some such. We fumbled with Ótti’s clothes—me, still mostly naked from the bath—and I slid my hand down her belly to the hot, wet folds of her cunny. She made a whimpering noise that sent a tremor through me like a peal of thunder. “Please, Ginna,” she whispered, and it was like the parts of my body were all coming loose all at once, and I pushed in deeper with my fingers, rubbing with the side of my hand, and she cracked, hard, and I could feel her muscles working. I gasped and pushed my own cunny against her leg, and then I cracked too, thinking, in a kind of daze, Third time today. And that made me feel a bit sick as the pleasure sloughed off, like eating too many sweets.

  Ótti nestled against me and I wrapped my arms around her, but the sick feeling wouldn’t go. I lay there long enough so I thought maybe she’d not notice owt was wrong, and then I kissed the top of her head and said, “Gotta go back out.” I worried maybe it’d give me away, but she looked up and smiled at me.

  She thought it was for the laudanum.

  Well, she weren’t so very wrong, as I’d go for the laudanum eventually. But what was really calling me from her, aside from feeling sick and choked, was the blue smoke I seen winding into the sky.

  ~~~

  I don’t know how Ivarr makes the smoke blue. I asked once, but when he tried to tell me he said about a dozen words I didn’t know, and I hate showing I don’t know words. I read and read, but some words I never see, like the ones he used.

  Not that Ivarr’d ever turn my not knowing something against me. Ivarr’s a quiet type and as apt as anyone to draw the malice of the hard types, so he’s too close to the feeling that treatment gives you to want to spread it around himself.

  I met Ivarr a few years ’fore the city fell when we both went after the same book in a shop in the Torc. I seen it lying on the ground at the end corner of a shelf, and he must’ve as well from another angle, then we both tried to pick it up at once and near enough clobbered our heads together in the effort. On account of how nice dressed he was, I expected he’d treat me like some filthy rat—I knew I looked it. But he never did. Instead, he got all lighted up over how someone else liked the same book and over how it was so rare he didn’t think no one had ever heard of it or the person what wrote it. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I never heard of it or the writer, just liked the look of the cover. I remember it had a rose embossed on it in gold. Ivarr said he had the other two books by that same writer and asked if I’d read them, and of course I said no, and sure enough, he weren’t going to be satisfied ’til he’d put them two books in my hands. And that’s how it all started, Ivarr giving me books. Even today, even after he became a pirate and Helésey fell and everything, he still brings me new books.

  Ivarr never turns up in the same place twice, so he uses the blue smoke to let me know where to find him. He’s gone most of the time, out to sea (and you can imagine how I feel about that, considering Da), but whenever he’s back and he’s got a book for me, he burns the smoke. Then it’s up to me to make my way through the ruins to find him.

  It’s hard to explain how bad the city is. It used to be so grand, with tall buildings, many in the new style Eiflar the Heretic favored, on account of how much influence he had on the court far back as a decade ’fore he ever become konunger. There used to be lights all over, bright ones in all colours, flashing on and off, sometimes spelling out words.

  But then Eiflar become konunger. He profaned all the Gods but Tyr, sending vigjas and vigjadises to prison and work camps. And many more people run down into the Undergrunnsby to escape the persecution, as well as just us what’d moved there on account of being too poor even for the Lavsektor. And he banned wine, as it was supposed to be Alfódr’s sacred drink, which didn’t sit well. Wine’s too rare for anyone I know to drink it, mind, but there’s plenty that made a living stealing bottles of it and selling them. Course for a while under Eiflar, pirates like Ivarr took to smuggling it, and that was good for them.

  Then Eiflar and his high vigja of Tyr, Galmr the Profaner, got together and decided that though it was just fine to deny Alfódr, Frigga, and the rest, still what’d be a bad idea would be denying the dis, wouldn’t you know. The dis are Goddesses of harvest and the like and they have a holiday called the Dísablót. Every year at the Dísablót, everyone goes to ripping huge markets and has a festival, each in their own province or whatnot. I don’t know if Eiflar-konunger and Vigja Galmr thought the dis would punish them if they canceled the Dísablót, or if they just thought the people would, but either way they got the bright idea to rename it the Tyrablót and have the festival.


  I reckon they must have known they couldn’t just change the name, and nowt else—then everyone’d know it for a pale gesture. No, they had to make it stick. They decided they’d have a great sacrifice, too, like they used to in the old days at the Dísablót. Maybe this idea was really meant to honour Tyr or maybe it was just convenient—either way, they set about catching as many of us sewer rats as they could, on account of the way we were starting to make real trouble above ground. That’s a whole other story, of course, and I’m getting lost in the details again. Anyhow, at the Tyrablót they set about executing some highborn traitors first—one of them used to wear Raud Gríma’s costume and a good lot of the other story I mentioned has to do with her—but something didn’t go as planned and before you knew it, there was a revolution. Underlings stole aeroplanes and dropped so many bombs on the city that for days you’d not go three hours without some ripping huge explosions deafening your ears, and the ground shaking, and if you were unlucky, the ceiling coming down all around you.

  You might be wondering how underlings come to learn how to pilot and such, but before the city fell, if there was one place where it made little difference whether you were an upperling or an underling, it was the airfields in Vígbúa. For a time it hadn’t even made much difference if you were a man or a woman, either, though once Eiflar took the throne he put an end to that. Still, he didn’t pay much mind to the origins of pilots, mechanics, and the like—aeroplanes being fair new and hard to master, they called to them those what were willing to risk themselves, and if you come along from the Undergrunnsby with a talent for flying, like as not the owners of planes’d let you have a go. Many’s the underling fed his family for months on what he made doing flying tricks, piloting the rich here and there, and giving lessons.

  But I’m losing the thread of the tale again. It’s enough to know that here were underlings what loved flying the way Dag loves trees, and when the Rising happened, they stole as many planes as they could. They destroyed the palace, the opera house, Tyr’s temple, most of the Torc, and most of the city’s other buildings. It’s funny, how the bombing worked. You’ll be walking down a street what used to be lined with them grand buildings, and they’ll all be rubble save for one that’s just standing in the middle of everything like it sprouted from the ruins.

  So that’s Helésey now. Mostly ruined walls and chunks of cement so big and broken you wonder how they ever used to look like buildings and streets. Twisted rods of iron what used to be inside the cement sticking out all over, broken glass of varying sizes, door frames standing crooked without the wall they used to be in. Burnt out automobiles what don’t run no more, pieces of robots what look like human arms and legs from a distance. That’s a cutter, ’cause there’s plenty of real human arms and legs, and the rest of the parts, but none of it looks human no more, on account of it’s been six months. More cutting’n that, even, is how it’s all just part of the city now. You can get used to anything if you live with it long enough.

  The blue smoke rose in a thin line from somewhere east of where I come out of the Undergrunnsby, cross plenty of ruined streets and such. One thing I got to say about living in Helésey after the fall, I can climb and balance and such better’n I ever thought possible. You got to, if you want go anywhere. It’s part of why Ótti never does go nowhere; she don’t want to climb and crawl and bend like you got to. Also she don’t like seeing everything smoking and crushed, and all the rest. I don’t blame her. I was scared to leave the shanty for a week after the Tyrablót, and no mistake. But sooner or later somebody had to get food, and I knew it weren’t going to get any easier, though with some luck it weren’t going to get no worse.

  Only in a way, it did. At first the danger come from aeroplanes bombing and fires and the like, but after that run out everyone thought the danger was just in buildings that were waiting ’til you were in them to come apart. Then the slashers started up. Course they ain’t the only ones might grab you when you ain’t being careful, plenty of the factions got toadies with too much time to waste. When it comes down to it, there ain’t one I’d choose over the other, so crossing the city or going through the wrecked tunnels of the Undergrunnsby ain’t my favorite pastime. Today I was going to have to do it, blue smoke or no—the only way to get Ótti’s laudanum was through the worst of the tunnels, anyhow. Seemed a shame to waste a chance to double the risk by going to find Ivarr first.

  I come up in Gronicks and made my way east and soon enough, started cutting south, taking the quiet ways I’ve come to know around the city. There’s ways through ruins what look impassable only they ain’t really, and sneaking through that way’s safer’n walking out in the open like a duffer. It took me more’n an hour, though, just getting outta the Lavsektor. ’fore the city fell I’d have taken the sewer tunnels, of course, but more’n half of them were wrecked in the bombings. I thought for a while Ivarr’d holed up somewhere in Midderha, but I crossed the whole district ’fore I reached the smoke. Turned out he was in Hafsida, instead. I had a time of it finding a way through some of the clumped up buildings in the north of the district, on account of them being a big pile of rubble now, and in the end I had to go round. Going on three hours later, I spotted the window what had blue smoke trailing out of it. My heart started flapping about in my chest like a trapped bird when I seen it. You’d think I cared more about books than my own girl, but then, I was still sore about her sending me out again for laudanum so soon, so maybe that’s why.

  I can be right quiet if I want to, so I decided to see if I could give Ivarr a fright. I climbed up the fire escape on the building he’d chose, one of the few in the area what was still mostly intact, except for broken windows. Taking a look through the window with the smoke, I seen the little pile of burning wood and pieces of trash first. It was a bare room with bits of broken furniture around—someone’d been through for firewood, like as not. Across the other side, sitting on a blanket, there was Ivarr, nose in a book. I pulled myself through the window careful-like and he didn’t look up none.

  “You trying to burn the building down?” I asked, loud-like, and Ivarr jumped up and pulled a pistol from nowhere. “Whoa, there, Ivarr!” I gasped, putting out a hand like that’d stop a bullet if he fired.

  “Ginna,” he said, rolling his eyes and sticking the pistol in a holster under his jacket.

  “Since when you toting a gun?” I asked as I made my way around the little fire. My eyes took him in as I did. He weren’t using tonic no more in his wren-brown hair, but then few did these days, as tonic’s hard to come by since the city fell. He still kept his hair trimmed short, though. He wore a heavy felted-wool jacket, almost dark enough to be black, but really a brownish-green like the bottom of a pond. It had a large, folded collar that stood up near to his ears, and I thought it just as well since his face was shaved almost clean but for a shadow of whiskers. I thought of sailors with their bushy beards and wondered if he got cold on the boat.

  “Gaddi insists we arm ourselves,” Ivarr replied.

  “And what, a good knife ain’t enough?” I patted the blade I keep at my belt. Course I’ve a couple more elsewhere, but it does no good to show off where you keep your hidden weapons, now does it?

  “Apparently not to Gaddi,” he said. Skyg Gaddi’s his captain and sometimes one of my johns, which Ivarr don’t like much. Although I don’t know why he cares since he never wants none of my business for himself.

  “You’ll as soon shoot yourself as anyone else,” I said and gave him a grin to take the edge off it.

  His own face broke into a smile as well. When Ivarr smiles it’s like a breath of air after you’ve been holding it. Most times he looks sad, on account of how his eyebrows are low and his eyelids always look heavy. But when he smiles, you see just a touch of mischief in his eyes, and their gray-blue gets a shadow of green.

  “You’re probably right about that,” he said.

  We both stood there grinning like a pair of idiots for a minute, and then I asked, “So what’
d you bring me?”

  “Oh!” he said, jumping like I pinched him. He grabbed an old brown canvas bag what was lying against the wall a couple of feet from where he was sitting. “You’re going to like these, I think.”

  “You got more’n one?”

  He nodded at me. “Here,” he said, holding out a book.

  I took it, running my finger down the spine, then flipping the pages. It was bound in red leather, with gold lettering on the front and the spine that read Raud Gríma: Hero of Luka. The author’s name was Hara Jórkell. I’d never heard of him, or of the book, and I’d read more’n one on Raud Gríma since she first started making her appearances.

  “And then there’s this one,” he said, pulling out a book bound in blue paper over a hard backing. The paper had been dyed, the colour uneven. Its title was Myths of Njord: Konunger of the Sea. The author was Vedi Belgar.

  “He’s one of my favorites,” I said, my fingertips running over the name indented into the stained cover.

  “I know, that’s why I brought it. I thought you’d like it,” Ivarr said, and I could almost see him puff up like a proud bird.

  “And it’s about Njord. I suppose I’d best be paying Njord tribute one of these days, for keeping your boat from sinking.”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” Ivarr agreed.

  I flipped open the blue book although the red one was calling me just as strong.

  “I’m not done,” Ivarr said quick-like, lifting a heavy one with a leather binding the colour of rich dirt from the bag. “This is the last one.”

  On its cover, embossed, was one word: Elga. No author, of course, for who knew the author of this, one of the most famous sagas in all history? I set the other two aside and reached, then let the huge book fall open as I took it from him, cradling it in my hands. The margins bore intricate, colourful illustrations and borders, and some pages were full pictures. “It’s right lovely,” I breathed.