hearth and home

Stef can’t sleep.

Part of it is the roof over her head: the spars of wood over her bed, penning her in, when the last few weeks have been spent sleeping outside in the open air. Part of it is the bed: a hammock, soft enough in its own way, but weirdly formless, prone to swing at Stef’s slightest movement. She’s never slept in a hammock before. It seems like everyone uses them here, in the Blüdhaven woods. It has a bit of a learning curve.

Part of it is the boy breathing softly in the hammock above her. That’s certainly new.

Mostly, though, it’s the low murmur of voices from the other room keeping Stef awake.

One of them is Rikard, who she knows well enough, for having traveled with him three weeks through the mountains. The other two are strangers. Almost strangers, anyway—Rikard introduced them when they all arrived at the house, and he seems to know them well enough.

Roy and Yosef.

They were friendly and polite, both of them, all evening—even to Stef, a stranger, and Damian, an orphan, who never has anything kind to say to anyone. Roy cooked for them—it’s his house they’re staying in, so that much makes sense—and all three of them, Roy and Yosef and Rikard, cleaned up after the meal so Stef and Damian didn’t have to do anything.

Not that Stef is complaining—she hates washing dishes, and the last thing she wants to do is clean a stranger’s kitchen while the men sit and watch. But she had already sort of resigned herself to it, when she saw they were going to eat here. She wasn’t expecting Rikard to stand up instead.

Rikard does a lot of things she doesn’t expect.

Sending her and Damian to bed, though, that was familiar. Sitting up around the fire with his friends and talking, long into the night, that’s familiar too. It makes Stef think of her father and his friends. It makes something twist in Stef’s stomach.

She can’t hear what they’re talking about.

The loudest is Rikard, and his voice hardly rises over the crackling of the fire. Roy laughs, a low, grinding laugh. Rikard says something else—then his voice stops. The silence stretches out. Stef strains to hear anything.

She rolls toward the door. The hammock swings underneath her, and Stef smothers a yelp. She rolls again. When the hammock rebounds she rolls out, over the edge, and lands on her feet.

It feels like a warrior’s move. Stef can’t help grinning.

She goes to the doorway. Stops. Listens. Rikard is talking again.

“—tell me the whole story.”

Roy says, “That’s not why you came. Is it?”

Stef leans through the doorway. A narrow staircase twists down to the lower level, where the men are. She can just see the edge of the fire in the center hearth.

“We were passing through,” Rikard says. A short pause. “I found them in the mountains. I couldn’t…”

Stef leans out a little further. He’s talking about them. Her and Damian. A self-taught fighter from the low villages and an orphan from the secret clans in the mountains.

Another pause. Then Rikard says, “Stefanya wants to fight. I said I would teach her.”

“And the kid?”

“Already knows. You should see him—he’s better than I was at that age.”

Roy whistles, long and low. “No easy feat.”

“Nanda Parbat raised him. I doubt any part of his life has been easy.”

Another pause, this one longer. Stef creeps through the doorway, to the top of the stairs, on bare feet. They’re talking about her and Damian. If she can hear something—something about what Rikard is planning—

“He looks like Bryus,” Rikard says.

Apparently this is important. Another moment of silence passes. Stef climbs halfway down the stairs and sits, out of sight of the lower floor, but close enough to hear everything.

“Moves like him, too,” Rikard says. “Sometimes—”

“That could be his training,” Roy says. “Bryus trained in Nanda Parbat, didn’t he?”

“He did,” Rikard says. “Before—” Something passes unsaid. “And after. He went back. He saw Talia. Almost eleven years ago.”

Another silence. Stef leans forward. Whoever this Bryus person is, he seems important. If Rikard is saying what he seems to be—

“Stefanya,” Rikard says.

Stef almost falls down the stairs.

She jumps to her feet, but there’s nowhere to run. Rikard appears at the bottom of the stairs. He looks up at her, arms crossed over his chest.

Stef opens her mouth to defend herself. I wasn’t listening. I didn’t hear anything. I couldn’t sleep, I just wanted some water, that’s all.

What she says is, “I know how to fight.”

Rikard’s mouth turns up. Stef’s father would have slapped her for that; Rikard only smiles.

“You know some of the basics,” he says. “You know how to keep yourself alive, which is the most important thing. But you haven’t had a teacher.” He tilts his head to the side. “You don’t know how to eavesdrop without getting caught.”

Stef ducks her head. In the other room, Roy laughs that coarse laugh of his.

“Don’t worry, kid,” he says. “Not many people can get past Dika.”

Rikard nods toward the room behind him, the hearth and the fire. “Come. Sit with us.”

Stef didn’t really think he would hit her. If he hasn’t hit her in the last three weeks, in much worse circumstances, then he won’t start now. She thought he might berate her, or send her outside for the night, or just send her back to bed. But smiling, laughing, teasing—inviting her to join them—she never thought of that.

He keeps surprising her.

Stef descends the stairs and follows Rikard to the hearth. Roy and Yosef are still seated, on woven mats close to the fire. Rikard sits down next to Roy, close enough to lean on his shoulder. Stef sits next to him, next to Yosef, with plenty of space between them.

Yosef smiles at her. It’s a nice smile, gentle and sweet, not the kind of smile that makes her want to hit something. He has curly blond hair, just like Stef. She wonders if he comes from the low villages too.

“Does she know about this?” Roy says.

Rikard shakes his head. “Not yet.”

“Know what?” Stef says.

Rikard watches her, leaning his head on Roy’s shoulder. “You tell me.”

Stef frowns. Yosef’s hands move—making signs that Stef doesn’t understand. She looks to the other two.

“Don’t be mean,” Rikard translates. “I’m not.”

“What are you talking about?” Stef says. She looks from Rikard to Roy to Yosef. She wants to go back to their conversation before, about Damian and Nanda Parbat— “You mean about Damian?”

“There it is,” Rikard says.

Yosef rolls his eyes.

“Dika says you picked the kid up in Nanda Parbat,” Roy says.

“We did,” Stef says. She skips over the part where they got captured, where Rikard spoke to his captors in their own language and talked his way out of his chains, where Stef thought he was going to leave her there—or worse, sell her. That was weeks ago. She knows him better now. “They sent him to kill us. Well, mostly Rikard, but I fought him too.”

She skips over the part where he almost stabbed her in the gut, before Rikard got back up and got between them. She doesn’t want to talk about that.

“And now he travels with you?” Roy says.

Yosef signs something. Roy laughs.

“Old habits die hard,” he translates, for Stef’s benefit. In his own cadence he adds, “Dika can make friends with anyone. Always has, always will.”

“Anyone is an exaggeration,” Rikard says, but he smiles.

“Rikard beat him,” Stef says. She notes Rikard’s slight grimace when she says his name. “And spared his life. So Damian owes him a debt.”

A life debt, Rikard said on the mountain, with a voice like stone. You sought to take my life. Now I take yours. He sheathed his swords and reached out a hand to Damian. Your life in my service.

“That’s why he travels with us.”

Roy raises his eyebrows. “Quite a story.”

Yosef signs something. The look on his face makes Stef think it’s a question.

Rikard's smile slips away. “He deserves to know,” he says. It must be an answer.

Yosef makes two short signs. Another question.

“I don’t understand,” Stef says. It’s not quite a question, and they can ignore it if they want—but she’s still here, still listening, and she still doesn’t know sign language.

Rikard shakes his head. “Old arguments,” he says. He sits up, away from Roy. “I’m going back anyway. How long could I hide it from him?”

Yosef signs something, in sharp movements.

“Pretty long, I’d say,” Roy says. He glances at Stef. “Yosha says he doesn’t have to go back at all.”

“Go back where?” Stef says.

Yosef makes a single sign: his hand like a blade, touched to chin and temple.

“Home,” Roy says.

Rikard stands up. “I’m going to sleep,” he says.

“Good luck,” Roy says.

Yosef signs something that makes Roy laugh. Rikard rolls his eyes.

“You too, Stefanya,” he says. “We have an early morning tomorrow.”

Stef picks herself up and follows him to the stairs.

At the top of the stairs they part: while Stef and Damian sleep in the spare room, Rikard and Yosef sleep on the roof. That seemed strange at first, but now Stef thinks that Rikard might actually prefer sleeping outside. She certainly isn’t complaining.

At the top of the stairs, Rikard pauses.

“I understand if… you don’t want to take liberties,” he says. “If you aren’t comfortable here. I can’t blame you for that. But I told you: my friends call me Dika. I meant that.”

He did tell her. It was one of the first things he said after she followed him out of her village. She didn’t believe him then. He was a stranger; he told her she could be a fighter, and then he turned around and paid a bride price to take her away from her father. She didn’t know what he wanted from her. She didn’t know what he meant when he called her friend.

She knows now.

“Well,” she says. “My friends call me Stef.”

His mouth twitches. “Alright,” he says. “Stef. What did you learn?”

He asked her this on the mountain, through day after day of walking. He asked after Damian attacked them, although he gave them both some time to settle first. Stef is getting better at coming up with answers.

“Don’t press your luck,” she says. “Stay at the top of the stairs.”

Rik—Dika snorts. “Good,” he says. “We’ll work on it.” He nods to the bedroom. “For now, sleep well.”

“And you,” Stef says. “Dika.”

That gets her a smile. He looks delighted, and Stef wonders why he would avoid his own name. What does it mean to him, that he asks his friends to call him something else?

He climbs up to the roof and leaves her behind. Stef goes back to the hammock, thinking vaguely that he didn’t wait to see her obey him. He trusts her, at least that far. Her father never would have trusted her like that.

Stef can’t think of anyone who would have trusted her, before.

She tips herself back into the hammock, taking pains not to make too much noise. Damian breathes deep and slow in the hammock above her. He doesn’t seem to have moved. Stef noticed that a while back. Damian doesn’t sleep much, but when he does, he sleeps like the dead.

The room is warm and dry. The wooden roof lies close. The hammock sways back and forth, no matter how little Stef moves. After a few minutes, or maybe an hour, she gives up and leans into it. Only then does the hammock lie still.

Home, Roy said. Yosef signed and Roy said it out loud.

Where is home? Where are we going?

Stef thinks it. Then she realizes that she actually trusts Dika to answer if she asks. She trusts that the answer would be a good one. She trusts that he would tell the truth.

She trusts him.

Now the house is quiet.

⁂