Mads lunged into the tiny kitchen. But Tryggve with blade still raised twisted away, back slamming against the support beam, hard enough to make the herb rack crash down over their heads. Mads spat out leaves while Tryggve kicked, sending Mads toppling into the chairs.

“You don’t understand” The words tore from the blond man’s throat, desperate. “I have to do this! My time’s running out!”
Mads threw a chair at him.

He went down, sword still raised, back hitting the floor.” Hjordis threw herself into the fray. They grappled, a tangle of red and green skirts and hair. The sword slipped between them, Hjordis tried to pry those stubborn fingers back. 

“Stop tryin’ to off yerself, ye big fool!” She cried out. Tryggve urged the blade closer. Hjordis pulled. The cold metal stung as it pressed through warm flesh, drawing blood, final salvation just inches from his heart. 

“Let go,” Tryggve sobbed, kicking out. His foot connected with Hjordis soft midriff, a grunt of pain, but now Mads was back, lifting Tryggve off the ground, slamming him down face first. The sword rattled out of his reach, the weight of a smaller ox pressing him down. “Help me Hjordis, pin him down.” 

Face pressed to old floorboards, Tryggve saw it, a faint glitter in the darkness. He reached for it, fingers finding the hilt once more. Still didn’t burn him, there was still time, if he just… 

But Mads sat up, strong arms locked around his throat, straddling his ass with muscular thighs. Hjordis clawed at his fingers, nails leaving crescents as she finally pried his fingers from the hilt. Kicked at it, sent it under Catrain’s old settle bed. 

“No!” The words erupted from Tryggve’s very soul. Pushing desperately against Mad’s strangling hold, blood leaving his brain, making him cough. Years of careful planning gone under the shadows of a drunken crone’s bed. 

The three of them kept struggling in a violent dance. Hjordis wrapping around his flailing legs, Mads working his upper body. There was still time, he was still Tryggve. Time stretched elastic— each second a full measure of straining muscle and grunts, and nothing else. Like a landed fish, the fight going out of him kick by kick. 

And then, the darkness lifted. Pure, pink moonlight flooded the kitchen. Strong and merciless. The change rippled through Tryggve like a wave crashing against shore. His bones shifted, flesh swelling everywhere— the slight masculine form hardening back to Trinny’s familiar shape. 

She slumped in Mads’s arms, all fight draining away like wine from a punctured skin. Hjordis used a broom to fish out the blade from beneath the bed. Picked it up with her skirt’s hem as protection.  Cradled it in her lap like a rescued child.

“It’s over,” Trinny’s softer voice said flatly, limp below Mads who still kept her in a deadlock grip. Hjordis and Mads exchanged bewildered looks, chests heaving.

They bound her with ropes Hjordis retrieved from the war chest beside the hearth. The hemp was rough, biting into Trinny’s strong wrists. Arms behind her back, legs drawn up, gag shoved in her mouth that tasted of dust and stove grease.

They dragged her towards a shed like butchers with a difficult carcass. Both said nothing. The whole village was still in commotion after Tomsun’s collapse. Maidens were sobbing, Children crying for their mams, others calling for Mads to help. 

With a final push, Trinny tumbled onto musty straw on her folded knees, rolling gracelessly on to her side, ropes cutting circulation from her wrists and ankles. Hjordis stood beside Mads, eyes dark, Mads’s blue eyes were wide with shook. 

“Right then, Tomsun,” he huffed. The door slammed. The shed was dark but for a sliver of moonlight mocking her through the cracks.

Outside, Mads and Hjordis’s voices carried through. 

“Did ye see?“ Hjordis hissed, agitated, “she wasnae Trinny, wasn’t any man I ken — some strange Zyr, maybe. Demon. Strange-lookin’ nose and pale. Mam always said they’re usually fair-skinned.”

“She kens magic,” Mads grunted, “Came here for the sword.”

“Ye think the ropes will be enough then?”

“They’ll have to do. Village needs me, cannae linger.”

“I’ll guard her,” Hjordis said. Footsteps. More desperate cries outside. The shadows of Hjordis heels beneath the door, pressing close to the board.  Trinny managed to spit out the rag, panting hard. Hjordis flat voice came from other side.

“We’ll keep ye here until the bluecoats arrive. Knew ye were trouble.” 

Trinny felt her whole body tensing up, shaking. With frustration, with hopelessness and that sucking dead and withered void that moved into her guts during moments of utter despair and humiliation. With the moon’s full power having returned, the thing inside stirred, feeding greedily on this emotions, traded them with rage.  Trinny tried to explain to the Helmbane lass outside, to scream into the dusty soil. 

The thing inside fed. Trinny opened her mouth.

“Fuck you Shiin!” The words came out wrong, raw, tearing through Trinny’s vocal cords like sharp blades, completely deranged. “You one-eyed snake, you joy-stealing killjoy, I’ll fuck your moon’s rare end and slap it red until the priests deem it holy!”

A pause. Trinny breathed hard.

“Are ye quite done?” Hjordis voice, unimpressed.

Trinny wasn’t. She was just about to spill more profanities when her eyes adjusted and caught a metallic glint in the corner. A scythe partly hidden beneath some grain sacks and hay, its blade dull and rusted but sharp with possibility. A wicked grin spread across Trinny’s merry features. 

She began inching towards it with all the grace of an overturned turtle. 

Outside someone was shouting; “Tomsun is dead!” 

More sobs and wails followed. Trinny chuckled at that. Old pervert had it coming. Hjordis did not leave her post, that shadow kept shifting restlessly. 

“Watch me Shiin,” Trinny whispered darkly, wiggling towards her rusty salvation. “Watch me spoil your day, one more time.”

Dawn came mean and grey over Arable.

The morning after Shiin’s Day should’ve brought gossip about whose prayers had been answered or not and Catrain Helmbane’s latest antics. Instead the village gathered at the secret grove where stones of their dearly departed circled around them all like quiet onlookers. 

Every soul in Arable attended the burial. They said, or Tomsun had said so really— the more eyes that bore witness to the body laid to rest, the brighter the lilies would shine. Those somber flowers were said to be flanking the winding steps up to Chackchar’s kingdom, designed to not let the soul lead astray. The larger funeral the better — Such was tradition. 

Hjordis pulled her cloak closer and stepped outside, imagined the steps to death’s gate were descending instead of ascending. That everything Tomsun preached actually meant down when he said up. Topsy-turvy. Trinny’s stupid sayin’ kept ringing’ in her head. 

The ceremony left the shed and its cursing Zyrellian occupant alone for the better part of half an hour — a risk Mads, the new chief of Arable — had decided they could afford.  

Trinny’s paper flowers still hung between the eaves overhead, evergreen among dying greens overhead.  Nobody mentioned that.

The same flowers decorated the church where Tomsun lay cold on the altar. Nobody mentioned that either.

At two hours before noon, Mads had carried the shrouded form through the village and began to recite a poem, which then turned into a musical chanting. Women joined in the procession. 

Hjordis walked beside Catrain, her mother listing gently with last night’s wine still working through her.

Some, the children mostly wept openly. They had all lost their father after all. Hjordis knew that pain.

Once Tomsun was buried, the village dispersed in murmuring clusters. Mads found Hjordis in the crowd as people turned from the grave — said nothing, just looked. The same longing look from the water basin. 

His knuckles brushed the back of her hand, quick and deliberate. Then he was moving toward the shed in a hurried stride.

Hjordis helped Catrain home. Poured her tea and sat with her until more color returned to her sickly face. 

“He spoke well,” Catrain croaked. Her fingers shook around the cup. Wouldn’t look at Hjordis. Her daughter had been right about Trinny, while she had been consorting with a Zyr demon.

“Aye.”

"Tomsun would've been proud."

Hjordis looked up at the sword above the hearth. The withered berry, the empty stare of the dragon.

“Aye,” she said again, still looking at the sword. It almost moved In the faint fickle of the firelight. Mocking her. Grinning. Daring her to touch it with her bare hands.

Hjordis’s eyes narrowed.

Catrain went to her bed to sleep away the last of the hangover. Hjordis rose and went back outside to find Mads. 

The commotion reached her before she’d left the cottage path.

Mads’s voice, carrying across the square — not his confident swagger, but ragged at the edges. She found him outside the shed, breathing hard, hay across his shirt and in his hair. 

Around him a knot of women had gathered, chattering animatedly. Dora at the front with something metal in her hands  

“She’s gone,” Mads rushed up to her as he spotted Hjordis, blue eyes wide and manic. “Cut the ropes and got out. I searched every pile of hay, every shadow — she’s not in there.”

“Should’ve spared one soul to guard her.” Hjordis muttered, rubbing her chin. 

Mads went on, gesticulating wildly, holding the door to the shed, “Gods. Minute I got back from the grove—” he dragged a hand through his short black hair, shaking chaff loose. “—I found the cut ropes and I was certain she’d buried herself in the hay, but there’s nothin’.“

“Must’ve found this old scythe head,” Dora carefully held up a rusty piece of metal. “Should’ve been wiser.” 

“Aye,” Mads said solemnly, eyes fixed at the blood on the blade, “reckon’ the Magistracy will be damned right unimpressed, not bein’ able to keep the lass tethered for more than twelve hours.” He scoffed then turned to the women and children, half the village gathered around now, looking to their new leader for action.

“Trinny could still be lurkin’ about, or left clues to which way she’d be headin' next."

He sent the village to search in pairs — east field, pumpkin patch, the mill road. Hjordis followed Mads to the big barn where Trinny had slept one night ago, worked through it methodically. It smelled like horse and old hay. 

Mads had found it behind a loose plank near the feed trough — Trinny's worn satchel, buckled with the bone button. He searched through the contents. Paper shapes, coal stub, dented tin, playing card, the vial of port wine.

Nothing that explained anything. 

“Paper and nicknacks,” Mads sighed, closed it shut.

“Cut the bottom open,” Hjordis said, turning it over.

He looked back at her, one brow cocked. 

“There’s a compartment sewn into the base.  Book or something’ bound in board. Went over her things, just like ye told me.”

Mads turned the bag over again, slower. Then flung it over his chest, didn’t reach for the knife at his belt. 

“The Magistracy should do it,” he said, “could be a hex sewn in alongside whatever’s in there. Blood magic. Could’ve worked it into the stitching.” He looked down at her, brow still cocked. “Better to leave it sealed and let the bluecoats deal with it proper.”

Mads was rarely this reasonable. Hjordis just looked at him, arms crossed, surprised at how quickly he was warmin’ to Tomsun’s inherited robe of authority. 

“Aye,” she said, “Fine.”

The afternoon light came through the barn’s high window and caught the unusual blue of his eyes. 

She'd known that face for fifteen years. Knew it better than her own.

The hunt found nothing. As the sun dropped, Mads called it off, off to the church annex to compose the message for Greenlake. The Magistracy was said to have an office in the old Trade town.

Hjordis sat in the kitchen pushing food around her plate, cheek resting on her fist, the sword above the hearth throwing its familiar dull gleam. The memories returned, Mads’s full weight across Trinny’s back, the sword skittering out of reach across the floor. 

They’d stopped a person from dying. That’s what had happened. It didn’t feel like what had happened. 

“What comes next?” She asked the dusky room.

Catrain’s voice came from her bed, “We carry on lass. We Helmbane women got no other choice.”

Hjordis was in her own bed, still awake when she heard footsteps outside — leather creaking against gravel. She was at the window in time to see Mads crossing the moonlit square, Trinny’s satchel at his side, moving for the south road.

Her pulse kicked hard. She threw her shawl over her nightdress and went out. 

“And where the feck d’ye think yer sneakin’ off to?”

Mads whirled. Left hand going quickly to the knife at his belt, then lowered. “Jordie. Ye scared the life outta me.”

She stepped closer. “Answer the question.” 

“Greenlake. Got to warn the Magistracy, mad face-shiftin’ blood wizard on the loose and such.”

“In the dead of night.”

“Cannae wait. Go back to bed.”

“I’m comin’ with ye idiot.”

“No.”

“Me name carries more weight with the Magistracy than a village priest’s apprentice.” She held his gaze, “Ye know that.”

Mads let out a huff, looked at the sky for guidance. 

“Fine. But we leave now.”

He gave her five minutes. Red dress, sturdy boots, Catrain’s gray cloak of wool. Bread and meat and water to last the two day hike. Then she turned to the sword. Stared at it for three minutes. Her palms grew sweaty. The dragon’s fake eye kept mocking her. Challenging. Hjordis reached out finally, eyes shut, bracing for the alleged burn of the unworthy. 

Her fingers clasped around the handle. She opened her eyes, felt no burn. Just cold leather strips beneath calloused fingers. Felt no magic to it either. 

"Huh," she huffed.

She pulled it loose from the mount, sword arm dragging down by its immense weight, struggled and somehow managed to strap it to the leather belt of her dress. The blade was too tall and cumbersome against her hip, naked point almost gracing the floor boards.

She looked at her mother, sleeping soundly, long gray hair spread over the pillow. Pretty and at peace for once.

Dared not wake her, and penned down a short message instead, placed it on her nightstand. 

Gone to Greenlake with Mads. Back by the morrow. Brought the blade too. Hjordis. 

She patted her head gently, Catrain turned around murmuring something that sounded like the verses of a song Hjordis never heard before. Something about a hunted bear seeking shelter beneath a sturdy oak tree. Wasn’t the first time Catrain had sung in her sleep. 

Hjordis smiled and watched her one last time and took her things. 

Outside, Mads saw the sword and his eyebrows went up to hide behind his dark bangs.

“Ye brought that thing.”

“I’m a true Helmbane after all,” Hjordis clapped the handle smugly. To her disappointment, Mads didn’t seem that impressed. He turned away. “Let’s go. Whole Day’s march to Greenlake.”

Hjordis kept smiling and followed Mads teal back into the dark, the sword heavy and cumbersome against her hip, and thought that she was finally acting like her father’s daughter.