Robbergirl Page 5

  Now, she was overtaken with the urge to shove Gerda out of the tent and not let her back in until she had cleaned the interior from top to bottom. For all Helvig knew, the witch could be accustomed to luxurious surroundings, and Helvig was embarrassed to show off a home so poor and untidy.

  Helvig usually couldn’t care less what people thought of her or her home, but there was something about Gerda that had her scrambling to impress.

  "The accommodations are a bit sparse," Helvig said.

  "On the contrary, I think I’ll be quite comfortable."

  Helvig had no idea what to do with her hands, so she plopped down on the frayed rug thrown over the dirt and began to fastidiously unlace her boots. There was something about Gerda’s closeness in her private space that made it hard to meet the other girls’ eyes.

  "Sorry about the boys. They wouldn’t know manners if it bit them in the ass."

  Gerda lowered herself gingerly onto the edge of the trunk where Helvig stuffed her clothes. She did not look necessarily at ease, but rather like someone who was making her very best effort to seem at ease.

  "I’ve made civil conversation partners out of worse people. They seem harmless enough, underneath all the bluster."

  "Idiots, all of them. But well-meaning ones."

  "You’re very hard on them," Gerda said. Not an accusation, just an observation.

  "Well, it’s like training a pup. Have to make it respect you before it’ll be sweet on you."

  "And which one of them are you hoping will turn out sweet on you?"

  Helvig was almost strangled with mortification.

  "Oh no, I didn’t mean—Any of them? Oh no! Jakko's an absolute ass who ran somebody’s brother through with a sword and now he can never show his face in polite society again. Never learned to keep that temper in check." She was tripping headlong over her words in attempt to regain control, her battering heart urging her to stop talking. Gerda seemed to be taking a small, private pleasure from the way Helvig flushed, and Gerda's growing smile disoriented the thief even more. "And well, Rasmus is about as fearsome as a soldier made of tin. A deserter, you see; hardly lasted a week on the front lines. He’s so thick in the head that I still have to take him out thieving with me and keep an eye on him even though he’s been with us for years."

  "What about Wilhelm?"

  "Wilhelm is a Catholic and father says there’s nothing wrong with that, but you know how they are. Superstitious, moralizing. He lived on a bordertown between papist Rhineland and the Lutheran North, and when the Lutherans came calling Wilhelm didn’t bend, so down burns his house and off his children and wife get carted for re-education and the next thing he knows he’s on the run."

  Gerda made a hum of knowing, locking these tidbits of information away for later use at her discretion. Helvig couldn’t believe how little it had taken to get her to sing like a finch. Just one sweet smile and the gentle suggestion of romantic entanglements and she had handed over her men’s histories.

  She knew the witch had a strange and powerful effect on her—she wouldn't have stolen her otherwise—but this was alarming. Helvig, who fancied herself a chivalrous and magnanimous host, was supposed to be the one in charge here, not Gerda.

  "Robbery doesn’t seem like a likely profession for a man so pious," Gerda mused.

  "Robbery is a likely profession for any man with an empty belly. His piety doesn’t stop him from swindling and cheating, it just makes him miserable about the whole thing. And no fun to be around on Sundays."

  Gerda shifted her cloak off her shoulders and began to fold it neatly. She wiggled out of her filthy moccasins, revealing tiny feet with soles cracked through the callouses from walking what looked like hundreds of miles. She caught Helvig looking, and quickly swept her feet under her dress and out of sight.

  "Your hand," Helvig said, so she wouldn't have to address the bruises around Gerda’s swollen ankles. Helvig had spent plenty of long days on the road, but she had never seen someone walk themselves raw like that. Whatever Gerda was heading towards, she hadn’t spared herself on the journey. It looked like she had hardly stopped to sleep.

  "Oh. Yes," Gerda said. She flexed her palm and winced.

  Helvig hauled herself to her feet and moved towards the other girl with her usual brusqueness, ready to take her by the wrist and examine her hand like a horse’s injured hoof. But then she caught herself. If she wanted Gerda to grow to like her, she couldn't treat her like chattel. Hadn’t she just given Jakko a sound beating for the same offense hours ago?

  Helvig had never had any use for manners, but she got the distinct impression that if she wanted Gerda to trust her, she had better learn some.

  "Let me?"

  It felt strange to phrase something as a question and not a command.

  Gerda extended her hand. Helvig pulled it gently to rest on her knee while she propped her foot up on the trunk beside Gerda. The witch’s skin was still clammy from the biting wind, but her skin warmed under Helvig’s searching touch.

  "Hurt much?"

  "Not terribly."

  Helvig smoothed her thumb over the twined blue veins in Gerda’s wrist, and the crosshatched lines in her palm some people said were the map of a person’s fate. Gerda sat still for her, tame as a housecat with eyes twice as keen. Helvig could feel her watching her face, scrutinizing the tiny expressions she was trying so hard to keep hidden, but the thief didn’t take her eyes away from her work.

  Helvig unknotted the kerchief wrapped around Gerda’s hand, revealing the thin, blood-blackened cut beneath.

  "Scabbed over nicely," Helvig murmured. "And it isn’t hot to the touch. I think you’ll be alright."

  Gerda was holding back a grin, but it came across as a smirk anyway. She found something about this whole exchange amusing, but Helvig couldn’t put her finger on what.

  "You think so, doctor?"

  Helvig smoothed her finger over the fleshy pad of Gerda's thumb.

  "That’s my professional opinion, anyway."

  "Well, for what my opinion is worth, I agree with you."

  "You were very brave, out on the road today. I know you must have been scared, but you didn’t show it."

  Gerda shrugged.

  "Fear services no one in times of trouble. And anger has a way of drowning it out."

  A foreign emotion twisted in Helvig’s gut. Guilt, she realized.

  "Apologies for the bloodletting."

  Gerda blew air through her lips, a gesture that delighted Helvig with its unabashed girlishness.

  "I know why you did it. I’ve paid steeper prices for a roof over my head, and while I may still be cross you took up upon yourself to offer me your hospitality...I’m grateful for it all the same. I can’t be choosy about the kind of mercies that come to me in this weather."

  Helvig dropped her knee. She didn’t realize she still lightly held Gerda's hand until the other girl squeezed her fingers.

  Helvig pulled her hand away and whirled around. She took the rings from her fingers and the baubles from her ears, dropping them into the pockets of her vest for safe keeping, her face burning red all the while.

  "It was good of you to play along when you met my father. He’s a cunning man and I’m not sure he believed us, but it matters how things look to the men. Knowing others' place keeps them in theirs."

  Gerda chuckled, a throaty sound that sent a warm shiver down Helvig’s spine.

  "Does your father travel the world looking for the sorriest miscreants he can find?"

  "The miscreants find him, mostly."

  "Is that how he came into possession of you?"

  Helvig turned around and regarded her guest warily. Gerda’s tone was aloof as ever, but her eyes gleamed with interest in the lantern light.

  "Guess we don’t look much alike, do we?"

  "With your dark coloring and his red hair? No."

  "Would you like a drink?"

  The suggestion fell from her mouth unconsidered, and she was impressed with her
own boldness. Gerda seemed genuinely surprised, and Helvig counted it to her credit that she could get one over on the enigmatic girl.

  "I…think I would like that, yes," Gerda said.

  Helvig pulled the cork out of the old missionary’s wine with her teeth and scrubbed out a shallow wooden bowl with the cuff of her blouse

  Stories from her past swirled around inside her in waves that threatened to overtake her if she wasn’t careful. She needed to dole out her secrets wisely. As ferociously as she wanted Gerda’s trust, she knew better than to give away the moments that had made her too freely.

  "I was six," Helvig began. "Starving on the streets while my parents rotted in the churchyard. Smallpox, I think, or maybe the influenza. Don’t recall. But I remember how I would stand in the marketplace and mope until some charitable soul bought me a bit of bread. Or until a stupid one looked away long enough for me to palm his pocketbook."

  Helvig poured the last of the wine into the bowl, filling their little tent with the fragrance of overripe plums and acidic Italian soil.

  Their fingers brushed when Helvig passed Gerda the bowl, and the robber’s heart flapped in her chest like a dying moth.

  When Gerda took a sip and glanced through her lashes at her host, a rich red stain coloring the creases of her lips, Helvig felt like she was already drunk.

  "One day," she continued, swallowing hard. "The encampment of ne’er do wells outside the city walls came into town to spend their gold, and I was stupid enough to try and lift a silver dagger right off King Berthold’s hip. Course, it was too big for me to filch properly, and of course he caught me. You’ve seen him; I was terrified he was going to put me in a mince pie and eat me in two bites."

  "What stopped him?"

  "The prospect of another pair of hands working the roads, I s'pose. He said I was the lightest-fingered six-year-old he had ever seen. He swung me up on his shoulders and stuck an apple in my mouth and carried me home like a prize piglet." She recalled her terrified disbelief that anyone could want her at all, and the way she cried for joy when he had bought her a meal fit for a king at the local tavern. She could still taste suckling pig and hot buttered bread and malty brown ale, and warmth swelled in her chest at the memory. "He took me to raise, taught me proper thieving and hunting. Just like that, I was someone’s daughter again. Look."

  Helvig retrieved a dagger slid between the bindings of her furry boots, and she held it up to the lantern light. The flames danced along the fine etching of the blade and illuminated the glossy curve of a mahogany handle.

  "This is that very knife. He gifted it to me, as a reminder."

  "A reminder of what?"

  Helvig gave a sly look.

  "To never let my eyes get bigger than what my hands can carry."

  "It’s beautiful. May I admire it?"

  Helvig leaned forward to hand the weapon over, but she stopped short at the last moment.

  Mind what I said about trouble, her father whispered in her ear.

  "Oh, I see, clever witch," Helvig drawled, withdrawing her knife. "I shall keep my weapon, thank you, out of sight and close at my side in case you try anything during the night."

  "Oh, what would I possibly try?" Gerda asked with a pout. She affected innocence well, but Helvig could see by her eyes she had been thwarted. Maybe not in something so brazen as a murder plot, but definitely in some sort of machination that would weaken Helvig’s tenuous upper hand.

  "You’re a smart girl; you would have figured something out."

  Gerda merely smiled a mutineer’s smile and began to hum a song used to frighten children into sleep. She unwound her braids with nimble fingers and brushed the free strands with a small comb she carried in her purse

  "So," Helvig said, shucking off her heavy oilcloth jacket. She was trying not to stare at all that hair, or think of how badly she wanted to touch it. "I’ve told you a bit of my tale."

  "So you have."

  "What about you? Why are you so keen to die at the top of the world? What’s waiting for you up there?"

  "My business is my own," Gerda said flatly.

  Helvig swallowed her frustration. They had shared food and drink and shelter, and she was doing her best to prove that she meant the girl no harm. What more could Gerda possibly need to feel safe sharing her story?

  "So you’ve said. And this Snow Queen, she’s your business too?"

  "I’ve said as much."

  Helvig made a derisive sound.

  "The same Snow Queen children press hot pennies to frosted windows to see? The white lady who paints the flowers with ice?"

  Gerda’s eyes flashed a warning. This anger was very real, and it burned hotter than Helvig thought such a chilly creature could manage.

  "That’s a fairy story."

  Helvig tossed her coat in a corner and began to unfasten the gaudily buckled belt around her hips. Gerda stood and lazily pulled at the laces on the back of her dress.

  "So are you, witch," Helvig grumbled. "And so am I, for that matter. A little girl in Torino saw me relieving her family of some fowl one night and now there’s a whole village of Finns who think there’s a wild girl raised by wolves living in the woods, eating chickens feathers and all. All fairy stories start with some terrible truth, and that’s the teeth of the thing. That’s the bit that sinks into people and makes it so they never forget. It’s almost always the ugliest part of the tale. So, what’s yours?"

  Gerda’s outer dress slipped from her shoulders and pooled at her feet. Helvig’s breath caught in her throat at the sight of Gerda clad only in a shift, and if she didn’t know better than to indulge such a fantasy, she would have thought that Gerda had done this on purpose, to distract her.

  The witch stepped unabashed onto the bower of furs.

  "I didn’t realize the price of sharing your bed was my life’s story."

  Helvig shimmied out of her breeches and stood in her oversized undershirt, still clutching her father’s knife. Gerda, in her supine position, posed no real threat and yet Helvig felt like she was about to slip into bed with a huldra who wanted to draw her into dark and twisting labyrinths she would never escape.

  "It’s a better deal than what Rasmus had in mind."

  "You’re still upset about that, aren’t you?"

  Gerda looked better than a dream, ten times more fetching than any ballerina.

  Insinuations and entendres leapt to mind, too many to easily corral.

  "Fine," Helvig grumbled, side-stepping this new and dangerous topic of conversation. "Take your secrets with you to your grave for all I care. Just don’t drag me down with you."

  She sank down next to Gerda, slipping under layers of knit wool and soft pelts. Her knife, as always, was slid underneath her pillow.

  "Do you take your knife to bed with you?" Gerda asked, blinking her huge blue eyes. "That seems rather unsafe."

  "Unsafe? How am I s'posed to stay safe at night without a knife in my bed? You’re a funny girl."

  "Well, witches need not explain their ways to mortals," Gerda said with a yawn.

  Helvig rolled over onto her side so that she and Gerda lay face to face. Gerda’s pale hair was spread out around her on the pillow like a bridal veil.

  "Shoot straight with me," the thief said quietly. Gerda's brow softened a bit, allowing whatever question may follow, and Helvig's heart beat quick in her chest. "Are you really a witch?"

  Gerda considered this for a moment, fair lashes shielding her eyes.

  "I know the properties of a few herbs, and I can divine weather from the clouds, and I am a woman who travels alone on the wide roads of the world. If that makes me a witch, then I suppose so. But I don’t think I’m the sort of witch your boys hope I am."

  "Then what’s that around your neck?"

  Gerda touched the charm pressed against her breastbone. Some of the ice behind her eyes began to thaw, just like when she had met Bae.

  ‘It’s a prayer, written in runes and baked into clay. Someone gave it to me
a long time ago, to keep me safe on my journey."

  "Is it magic?"

  "In a way, I suppose. I never take it off, so maybe I believe it is."

  Helvig reached out and ran a fingertip across the hard grooves of the clay. An illicit thrill went through her, both from touching such a devilish item and from feeling the warmth of Gerda’s skin through her thin shift.

  Helvig pulled her hand back to her side of the bed quickly, stuffing it under the blankets. She shouldn't touch her, if she could manage it. She shouldn't even look at Gerda too closely, not after what happened last time.

  "It’s beautiful."

  "Thank you," Gerda said and tucked the necklace back into her shift. She pressed her fingertip into the knife under Helvig's pillow, just hard enough to dimple the skin.

  "It really is lovely, this blade. You should be proud to carry it."

  "I am," Helvig said, and her voice came out strangely hoarse. She snatched up the lantern from beside her bed and blew it out without ceremony, welcoming the darkness that obscured her features from Gerda’s unrelenting gaze. "Well, we ought to sleep. Morning will come soon enough."

  "What then? Shall I be your little pet, kept on a golden leash until you get tired of looking at me?"

  Her tone was idle, softening the cutting edge of her question. If anything, she sounded weary, and Helvig wondered if she was used to being kept in fine cages and marveled at by her captors.

  That twist of guilt came back again.

  "Of course not. You’ll have to think of some way to make yourself useful to the camp, otherwise the King will make me drop you right back where I found you. You said you were grateful for our hospitality and I’m happy to extend it, but you heard my father. We all must earn our place here."

  "You need food, don’t you? I’ll find some."

  "Are you a forager?"

  "When I have to be. But I was offering to go out on the hunt for you. I’ll bring your father a fine catch of venison and then he’ll have nothing to complain about."