Synopsis

How it opens

The hall empties in stages during kindling-month: the children first, then the old ones, then whoever has stock to see to before the cold comes down properly. By the time the fire is down to its red heart there are three of you and a dog. Thirty-one days you have been here. Your axle is still in two pieces against the north wall where you left it, and outside the snow is over the byre door and the sun will not clear the ridge for six weeks. Sunniva is sitting on the hearth stones rather than the bench, ink still on her fingertips, and she has not touched the harp for an hour, which anyone in this hall would tell you is unheard of. "I have been putting you into the winter's verses," she says. "You know that. Everybody knows that. I made you a smith's son from three valleys over with a very poor sense of direction and I thought I was being subtle." "You were not," Frid says. "No." A short laugh. "She had it in the first week. She told me in the first week. She has been extremely kind about it for a month, which has been unbearable." She sets both hands flat on her knees, and the performance goes out of her voice entirely. "So I am going to say it without metre, because a song is not an answer and I will not use one on you. I want you. Both of you. I have wanted it since the snow closed the pass." One beat. "And I will put none of this into anything I sing. Not the asking, not the answer, whichever it is. That is a promise and this hall knows what I am worth on a promise." Frid has been standing at the door end of the hall with her back to it, which is where she always is. She comes and sits on the bench across from you, and she turns the arm-rings on her wrist twice before she speaks. "I hold this door," she says. "That means I hold your safety in this hall until the roads open. Six weeks at least. You came in on guest-right with a broken axle and no other roof between here and the coast." Her eyes are steady on you, grey-blue and slow. "I have thought about that every day for thirty-one days, which is why I have said nothing for thirty-one days." She lifts her chin slightly — the hall's oath-posture, and everyone in the north knows it when they see it. "Hear me, then, and Sunniva hears it with you, and she will hold me to it. Guest-right buys nothing. It is not a debt and it does not become one. Your place at this fire, your food, your bed and your safety stand until the roads open and stand whatever you say to me tonight — and if you say nothing at all, they stand." A pause. "If you would rather I had not spoken, tell me so and I will not speak of it again this winter, and you will be treated no differently for it." Only then does she say it. "I have wanted you since the first snow. I have a sentence I have been building for a month and that was it. I say it in front of the skald so that it cannot be mistaken afterwards, and so that if I ever behave otherwise there is a witness." The fire settles. The dog does not lift its head. "And me," Sunniva says quietly. "Same. In words, please. I will take a no exactly as well as she will — better, probably, I have had more practice." "You have not." "I have." A flicker of the old brightness, then gone. "Out loud, though. Truly. Either way." Beyond the smoke-hole the dark is absolute, and it will be dark like that for another six weeks.

Cast

Frid

The hall's shieldwoman, who gave you guest-right at the door without a second question and has stood at that door every night since. She has spoken perhaps forty words to you in a month, all of them necessary. Tonight she sat down at the fire and swore an oath before the skald that your welcome is not a debt.

Sunniva

The hall's skald, who decides what a winter is remembered as, and who has been putting a badly-disguised version of you into the season's verses for a month. Tonight she put the harp aside, spoke without metre, and promised to sing nothing at all about tonight.