Hild (The Hild Sequence, #1)

by Nicola Griffith

She liked time at the edges of things—the edge of the crowd, the edge of the pool, the edge of the wood—where all must pass but none quite belonged.

No one was laughing now but Ceredig, and it was his laugh-because-I-am-king laugh, the one for important visitors, to show ease in his own hall. Everything a king does is a lie, Onnen said.

Even at three, she understood the danger of overhearing a hint that a king in his own hall was an oath-breaker: Never say the dangerous thing aloud.

“But why can’t we stay? Why can’t Uncle Edwin have a home like everyone else?” “The whole land is his home.” “Yes, but why?” “He must be seen.” “Yes, but—” “And he can’t simply have a steward on each estate sending him tribute. Because a steward, unless reminded by the presence of the king, begins to think himself a thegn. He begins to see the land as his, to wonder why he shouldn’t send only a portion of his food, his ale, his honey, to the king. The revolt always begins when the steward wants to be king. A lesson the Franks never seem to learn.”

“If the king notices me, I do this.” She straightened her spine and smiled a proud, glad smile that shocked Hild. “Try it.” Hild shook her head. “Try it.” “No. I’m not happy.” Hereswith laughed. “That doesn’t matter! Well, never mind, I expect you’re too young to understand.”

“Good. And this, too: If you think you’re going to smile at a gesith’s boast, you must let your hair fall to hide your face. Like this.” “I know that one!” Hild remembered her mother’s words exactly—the light of the world must remember everything. She repeated them proudly: “Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.”

But she could climb now, and sometimes when Cian wanted to play hero and she did not, she ran to a tree—she had favourites in every place—and climbed up among the leaves and stayed silent as he called. And if Onnen wanted to wash her hair and the weather was foul, there was a rooftree and its sloping rafters to clamber to. No one ever looked up, not even her mother. This was her secret. But she liked trees best. Hidden in the leafy canopy, sometimes she stayed so still and quiet even the birds forgot she was there.

“Am I to be Branwen again?” And she couldn’t help the sigh in her voice. “Be who you like,” he said, ever the generous lord. “You choose.” “Owein,” she said. “His sword was blue and gleaming, his spurs all of gold—” “No, I am Owein. I am always Owein.” “Then I will be Gwvrling the Giant: He drank transparent wine, with a battle-taunting purpose; the reapers sang of war, of war with shining wing, the minstrels sang of war—”

She spat out her tooth. It lay white and red on the turf at her feet. They stared at it. Hild bent and picked it up. Her tooth, from her mouth. “Soon you will grow another, and stronger.” She nodded. “You must put it in your belt, or a sorcerer could steal it for a spell.”

“You like the water.” “I do.” She laid the stick aside and watched a waterbug dimple the surface and skate across it. “And you’re not afraid of the sidsa?” Her mother’s word for sorcery or witchcraft, not the immanence, the wild magic of these hidden places—there was no Anglisc word for that. Sprites live in rivers and springs, and are not to be meddled with, Onnen said. “I’m not afraid.” She was the light of the world. Besides, her mother said it was still water that was bad. She frowned slightly, as Breguswith did, and said, in Anglisc, “Still water is not to be trusted. It shines and it gleams, but is not what it seems.” They both giggled. It shines and it gleams, but is not what it seems.

Every time she swallowed, she gleamed. Every time she lifted a hand, she glittered. Every time she breathed, she glinted. She was breathing fast; her legs trembled; the glitter and gleam and glint became an endless shimmer.

“You are a strange little lass,” he said in Anglisc, for all to hear. “I am the light of the world,” she said, clear and high, and the scop, always sensitive to dramatic possibility, drew an uncanny chord from his lyre, and at that moment a great gust of wind made the torches on the upper level gutter then flare. The hall fell silent. “I drink to you, little light!” He drained the cup, upended it, and the men beat their palms on the boards and the scop nodded to his whistle man and his drummer and they plucked a few measures of a lively air and, while the other women now moved to fill drinking horns along the benches, she could recross the hall without too many people paying attention.

Auguries and sacrifice: crude tools of toothless petitioners. Or so her mother said, even as she’d rehearsed Hild in every variation. But she said, over and over, there was no power like a sharp and subtle mind weaving others’ hopes and fears and hungers into a dream they wanted to hear. Always know what they want to hear—not just what everyone knew they wanted to hear but what they didn’t even dare name to themselves. Show them the pattern. Give them permission to do what they wanted all along. What did Edwin want to hear?

Edwin was secure on his throne. Then she remembered the way he sometimes turned in his saddle and touched his sword, remembered the relief when the son of Morcant did not fight, and understood that a king never felt safe.

Last time her mother had been there to explain. Last time the king had been in a good mood. “King.” The words, as they almost always did in Anglisc, caught in her throat like a bird bone or a mouthful of feathers. “The stoat steals fledglings from the nest when the birds are away catching worms.” No change in Edwin’s expression. Why couldn’t he see? Why could none of them see? “King. We’re the birds.”