Soren puts a hand on my shoulder and I drop the last rock. Sunlight pounds down on us, warm enough to actually feel. “How am I supposed to find her? Where am I supposed to go next?” I yell, tossing out my arms.
“The funerals are tomorrow night,” Soren says.
“What?”
“It’s seven days since we met, which was a Moonsday, so the funerals are tomorrow night. Back at your Cove.”
I blow a hard breath. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to watch the town burn again, even if it’s in pyres.
But a Valkyrie does not balk at death.
We arrive as the sun is falling. There are media vans and death priests everywhere. I recognize logos from Freyan volunteer organizations from all up the eastern coast of the States. Soren is even more interested than I am in avoiding anybody with a camera. Men and women come from across the country; half of Congress is here, kings and princes, representatives from every priesthood, reporters, and the far-flung families of the dead. Baldur the Beautiful is here, Freyr the Satisfied with his endless entourage, and two Valkyrie: Siri of the Ice, whose region we’re in, and Precia, the Valkyrie of the South, where Rome and Jesca Summerling were born.
I’m glad I packed my last wool dress from the tower. It’s dark green and falls to my knees. A red apron ties over it, cinching my waist and pinned at my shoulders with abalone shells. Chains of fake gold line the collar and wrists. I pull on Jesca’s silver rings and wear both my seax and Unferth’s sword. I braid tiny ropes to either side of my face and let the rest of my hair fall down my back. I use ash to darken my eyes with thick lines, like a mask, and dab it onto my mouth, too.
It’s as if I think all this preparation and costume will help me look my sisters in the eye. They surely know what I’ve done, since even Soren had heard the story, and maybe that commander on the military base did get around to calling one of the Death Halls.
We join the mourners, and one look at either of us parts the next section of the crowd until a path arrows us toward the pavilion. It’s set up in the valley beside the razed festival site, a gilded stage hung with prayer flags and flowers flown in from some tropical greenhouse. It clashes dreadfully with the moor, especially as the sun sets and our island goes hard and harsh with shadows, but the pavilion lights up in a blaze. There are fourteen pyres arranged so that when lit they will become a circle of fire like Freya’s brisinga necklace. My stomach twists at the pomp. This is the part of being a Valkyrie I always hated. The decorations, the ceremony, the gilded prettiness of everything. I would prefer to light the fires and scream. Make a sacrifice, yell gruesome poetry, to remind the mourners death is all we truly have in common.
Rathi speaks at the podium in a red three-piece suit, pink starburst tie pinned with a horse brooch, his hair perfectly slicked back and his false green eyes bright. He welcomes everyone in a shining voice. Behind him stands Siri of the Ice, her thin lips in a line when she sees me; she flicks her fingers lightly against Precia’s elbow. There’s Baldur the Beautiful, nearly impossible to look at in person, a golden beach bum in jeans and a loose white coat, tears caught like stars in his night-purple eyes. And my parents’ own Freyr the Satisfied, taller than his cousin-god, in old-fashioned finery: purple velvet jacket and hose to show off his well-shaped legs, fur boots, a six-hundred-year-old sword crusted with gems, and an actual crown. There are congressmen and the president’s lawspeaker, a death priest in a silver raven mask, five wolf-guards with their faces tattooed black, attendants in gray and green cowls holding incense and torches at every corner of the pavilion.
The crowd waits in a half circle, the first fifty rows in wooden folding chairs, the rest arrayed among the fourteen pyres. I reach the end of one aisle, Soren at my side.
“Signy!” cries Peachtree the clown from across the crescent of empty moor between dais and crowd. She waves an arm as Rathi falls silent and everyone turns to me. I keep my eyes on Peachtree, on the two sequins melted onto her cheek from the fires of the attack.
Murmuring breaks out and Rathi steps around the podium. “Signy,” he says, only loud enough for those of us near to hear. He holds out his hand for me to take, to pull me up with him, but I shake my head.
“I am only here to grieve,” I call loudly. “To dance with the song of crackling flames.”
My wish-brother hesitates and then nods. He goes back to his welcome speech and ends with Rome Summerling’s favorite prayer. When he looks at me I mouth the words with him. It loosens the pain curled tight around his eyes.
Into the silence after his invocation, drums beat a sedate, gloomy rhythm, and a team of flautists raise the hairs on my neck with their ghostly accompaniment.
Precia and Siri step forward to opposite ends of the pavilion. The Valkyrie of the Ice is tall and lean, in a white feather cape and an impractical skirt of chain mail. Beside her the young Valkyrie of the South wears a leather and fur coat, her dark hair coiffed and her eyes dangerous. They are both so elegant, so powerful in every smooth gesture, and together they lift their voices in a song of mourning.
It’s controlled, synchronized. Not a word out of place, not a gesture unpracticed. So unlike the wild splash of death, the frenetic beating of my heart as I struggled and fought to save my family. Not desperate, not thick and bloody.
This is only a performance.
Such a lowly thing for a Valkyrie to do, Ned told me when I painted myself up for the festival.
I feel so empty.
We don’t even have his body to burn.
The Valkyrie fall silent and put their arms around each other like sisters.
Freyr the Satisfied holds out his hands. He draws Rathi forward with him, and from here I can see the shudder as my brother closes his eyes. The god is lovely and tall, as they all must be, and charisma flares in the corner of his smile, in the light way he flirts with the audience even as his words are sad. He offers condolences, and those of his twin sister, Freya the Witch, who promised him our island would never be forgotten in any of the strands of fate.
Freyr then tells us a story of meeting Rome Summerling once, over a decade ago; his words blur in my ears, but everyone around me laughs, gently at first, then uproariously. Even Rathi smiles widely and puts his hands together over his heart to bow to the god of joy.
Rathi leads another prayer, that lilt of his father’s accent carrying the sadness out of his voice, and he gleams with a sincere sort of glory. Cameras flash, and I imagine viewing this all through a television screen, as I’ve seen so many appearances by the gods and Valkyrie before.
But the cold ocean wind tickles my ears and I smell salt and mud under the perfume and gathered bodies. There are evergreen boughs tossed onto the pyres to brighten the inevitable sickening of the air when the remains burn, and I wish there weren’t. That we would all be forced to breathe in the sour death.
Why should it be beautified?
I ignore the congressman with his wide sideburns and rearing-horse lapel pin as he eulogizes my island. I ignore the click of a camera beside my face. Let them see that I stand to the side, that I don’t sing along with Jesca’s favorite hymn or the old dawn theme they used to open the festival.
Only when Baldur the Beautiful steps forward, and tears glint on his cheeks, do I feel any of it matters. He shines like a star in the darkness, tan and healthy and perfect, his jacket casually open, his collar unbuttoned. All the god of light says is “May they rest peacefully in Freya’s embrace, as I do in my turn.”