The first thing he registered was the taste of blood. The second was the hair. 

Thick. Abuntant. In his mouth, across his face, smelling of iron and honey. He spat it out and pushed himself to his back. He blinked. The room tilted, steadied. Slanted roof. Candle on the far table. Sheets pulled down around him. 

Tilted a rolling head and looked down. Red. Lots of it. Put a hand there, found the hole and pressed through experimentally with two fingers. Pulled them out. Looked at them.  More red.

Then he touched his nose. His nose. His actual nose. The one that turned up at the end. Pinched it. Patted his jaw — the right jaw, the sharp one, not Mads’s broader arrangement. His hands went to his hair and found it long, loose, damp with blood and sweat and he grabbed a fistful of it and it was gold. 

Oh.

He sat up. Too fast. The room spun. He let it spin. The blood-soaked sheets fell off one shoulder.

A woman in red by the door was staring at him. Red dress — Hjordis red dress with the quaint rural flower stitchings and torn holes, the one he’d watched her button and unbutton and stomp through mud and moss. But it sat wrong on the more substantial and squared shoulders. Tight above the chest, too much arm showing and the skirt ending well above the ankle that was considered decent in some parts of Coranor. 

She stood against the far wall with her arms wrapped around herself and flame-red hair hanging in a heart-shaped face and those wide-set green-brown eyes was staring at her own hands. Opening and closing them. Opening and closing, staring at them like they'd committed a crime without her.

Which they had, technically.

He grinned. He couldn't help it. He spread his arms wide.

“Oh Poopsie, you should see your face!“ 

“Don't.“ Her voice came out ragged, Nellie’s deeper voice but with Hjordis charming accent. “Don't call me that. Don't— what is—“ She grabbed a fistful of the red hair, yanked it. “What is this, what did ye do to me, what—“

“That wasn't me, technically—“

She moved fast. The dagger was off her belt and across the room and at his throat before he'd finished the sentence, her knee on his chest, the wound objecting loudly. He grabbed her wrist.

“How are ye still breathing!“ she hissed down in his face. “I drove the blade through yer heart, I felt it—“

“You did, yes, excellent form, very committed—“ The red hair flooded his face. His thrashed his head, spat some out, kept hold of her wrist. “Didn't quite take though.“

“Why!“ She spat, some of her spit struck his forehead. 

“Marvelous question. Deeply inconvenient answer. Can I get dressed first?“

She pressed the dagger forward. He felt it at his throat and lay very still, chest heaving.

“Why. Are. Ye. Still. Breathin’.“

“Because I can't die.“ He held her wrist steady. “This is the thing I tried to explain during the eclipse, and again in your aunt's sunflower room which — ah — we shall discuss separately, right before I went out the window, which you'll recall didn't kill me either—“

“Make it stop,“ she said. Her voice cracked on the last word. Not anger. Something rawer. “Make it stop, make it go, I can feel it in there, I can feel it movin’—“

“I know.“ He kept hold of her wrists. Not hard. Just present. “I know exactly what you feel. I had it for years, a decade, Hjordis.“

“Let go of me—“

“When you stop pointing that needle at my face.“

She stopped pushing. He released her wrist. 

Hjordis stumbled away from him, got to the door. Tryggve braced both hands on the floor and began the process of standing, which took longer than it should have on account of the hole. 

They stood breathing.

He looked down at himself. The bloody sheet had wrapped around him during the fall and was doing a reasonable impression of a Myrian ceremonial toga, if the Myrian ceremony in question had been a massacre. He plucked at it. Below it — he checked, briefly, because ten years was ten years and a man had a right to verify — everything was as he'd left it.

“Small,“ he announced. “But reliably present. Fye, I've missed you, you useless little Pidyn.“ He patted himself encouragingly. “We'll work on it.“

Hjordis made a sound.

“Right, yes, not the moment.“ He moved past her, found Mads’s discarded clothes flung over the back of a chair “Excellent evening all round. I'm stabbed, you're wearing a dead woman's face, there's a body in the corner doing nothing for the ambiance — truly, Poopsie, this is the most fun I've had in—“

“How,“ she said behind him. Her voice had gone very flat. The dagger was still in her hand but pointing at the floor.

“Long story. Involves a goddess, a noose, and the worst seventeen minutes of my life — well, the Douchess later surpassed it considerably, but—“ He looked over his shoulder, saw her face. Stopped. “Later. I'll tell you later. What matters now is—“

“What matters.“ She laughed, and it came out wrong. Nellie's voice, Hjordis's laugh, the sound landing nowhere. Her free hand went to her face. Her own face. The wrong face. Her fingers pressed into the cheekbone, the jaw, the nose that wasn't her nose. “What matters is I've got a dead woman's face and a thing inside me and ye're standing there patting yer Pidyn—“

“I wasn't patting—“

“I can feel it,“ she said. Quieter. “Inside. Like a weight behind me ribs. Like something listening.“

He said nothing for a moment.

Then: “Yes.“ No performance in it this time. “That'll be there for a while. I'm sorry.“

“I'm stuck like this,“ she said.

“Yes.“

“This face.“

“Until you kill someone else, and then you get that face. Very bad system, I agree. You don't want to kill anyone. I would strongly recommend not killing anyone. That is the first rule.“ He held up a finger. “Second rule: don’t despair or it will take the reins completely—“

“Aye.“ Short. She knew. She'd felt it already.

He looked at her for a moment. Not performing anything. Just looking.

“I'm sorry,“ he told his naked toes, softly. “For Mads. Charming lad, really. And for—“ he gestured vaguely at her direction. “This. I was rather expecting a more… permanent resolution. Holy Helmbane blood and all that.“

She turned away from him and stood there with one hand on the dagger, her other hand pressed to the door.

He made himself quiet. Inspected Mad’s Shiin’s day tunic, put a finger through a ghastly hole. Had to mend that.

He dressed with his back to her, shirt over the wound — still seeping, would for a while — belt pulled two notches tighter on the waist. He did the buttons. Tucked the shirt. Ran a hand through his hair once and left it slicked back.

Then he crossed to the bed and picked up the Demon Slayer, lying there abandoned, hilt covered in his own dried blood, just next to Nellie’s bare foot. He avoided looking straight at that blank face. That soft warm skin he’d been kneading just minutes ago. Like so many before her, dead because he couldn’t— because he wouldn’t— No. Not that. The blade. Dragon handle. Fine specimen.

The hilt fit his hand the way nothing had fit his hand in twenty years. He turned it once, caught his reflection in the flat of the blade — golden hair, friendly green eyes, a wound healing itself in real time below the collar. 

Rumenor, the old man had called it.

“Back where we belong,“ he said quietly, to the blade or to himself, and tucked it in the belt.

He pulled the satchel over his shoulder. Then went to Nellie. 

“Right,“ he said to Hjordis. “First and most pressing piece of changeling housekeeping. You need to learn this. Watch me closely.“

She turned. Watched him hoist Nellie off the bed carefully, hands gentle and soft. He crossed to the wardrobe, opened it with his elbow, and put her inside with reasonable dignity.

Closed the doors.

“Rule three,“ he said. “Out of sight. Not out of mind — never out of mind, carry her with you, the guilt is yours to own — but out of sight. The Bluecoats will have questions and you don't want to be here for them.“ He patted the wardrobe door once. “They used to call the hosts Mugmoochers, down in Trapperdale. Awful dialect, awful name. Don't call yourself that. Don't let anyone call you that.“ He looked back at her. “You'll hear it. Ignore it.“

Hjordis stood in the middle of the room and said nothing.

He picked up the last of his things. Checked the window. Down to the alley, manageable. He turned.

“Thank you,“ he said. “For setting me free. It wasn't what you intended and it cost you something considerable. I won't forget it.“

He reached for the window latch.

The sound she made wasn't a word. He turned.

She'd gone down. Not fainted — she was conscious, sitting in the blood-soaked boards with her back to the bed frame, both hands in Nellie's red curls, pulling. Not speaking. The breath coming in short broken increments and her whole body kept folding inward, collapsing at the middle.

Tryggve stood at the window with his hand on the latch, looking sheepishly young in Mad’s oversized clothes, neck extended, hair disheveled. 

“Hjordis?“ He asked unsure and scratched his neck.

She didn't look up. Her shoulders shook. 

The feeling arrived without announcement. Something in the chest, tugging hard in the general direction of his heart. 

Sympathy.

That's back too, he thought. Of course it is.

He took his hand off the latch.

Crouched down in front of her. Elbows on knees. Smiled softly and waited until she finally looked up with glossy brown-green eyes. Red eyebrows furrowed with annoyance. Well — something cruder than simple annoyance, surely, but he’d settle with that for now.

“Cora,” he announced brightly. “There's a wizard in Cora. Exceptionally intelligent man. Not much for company—“ he grimaced slightly, “—but he understands this kind of thing better than anyone alive. If there's a clean way out of what you're carrying, he'll find it.“

She stared at him with Nellie's eyes.

“I wasn't going to offer,” he said. “I want to be honest with you. I was going to leave, let fate do the talking.“ He rubbed the back of his neck. “But it appears sympathy has returned along with everything else. Very inconvenient that. I had made quite good peace with its absence.” He let out a scoff, rolled his eyes, “Pretty sure the coming back bit left me without soul… Or that I came back because I lacked a proper soul from the start— doesn’t matter which, got my handsome face back. That’s something.“

He let out a huff he hoped read as a self-depricating laugh, grinned wide, all perfectly lined up teeth on display. Hjordis face was stone, shoulders still trembling. Red dress awkwardly small and clinging. 

He stood, adjusted Mads’s ill-fitted tunic, side stepped and swirled and sang out loudly, giddily happy because he believed he had the right to, everything considering.

“Here I am, don’t be nervous, Mr Beardaughter to your service! I won’t be a bore, that’s for sure, after twenty long years adrift, I finally hit shore! ” 

Not even a blink at that spectacular performance. Tryggve sighed, dropped his hands.

“I’m sure we can sort out this palava together, so chin up Poopsie.“

He adjusted the satchel. Extended his hand — not to her face, to her shoulder, brief and impersonal. “Come on then. Up.“

She looked at his hand. Didn't take it.

“Don’t call me that. I’m not some wee bairn…“

She stood up on her own, wiped her face on her sleeve, and walked past him to the door.