The Raven Girl

Chapter 7

I've changed this chapter. We'll see how the grammar fares – this was another late night edit. Pathetic fallacy, maybe? And, writing aside, this is my lucky chapter. It has a seven in it.

"I hope you've thought to bring her with you and not just the man that found her." The King remarked, leaning forward in his throne ever so slightly. "Else you would be wasting my time."

"Your grace," piped up the man awaiting his compensation, "my-"

"Lord Landvik," interrupted Eirik, "however enthralling your claim may be, this far surpasses it in terms of importance. So, if you please, you will leave now and come back tomorrow."

The lord agreed with a little, simpering smile but, with his back turned, nonchalantly trudged out the room muttering and glaring as he went. He didn't believe Sigurd just as he didn't believe all the others that had brought their offerings through the door, and, to have postponed his own viewing... well, it was just ridiculous.

"Come back in a month." The King rolled his eyes when the door was pulled shut and turned to the guard. "Let me see the girl then."

Sigurd stumbled forward and bowed as graciously as he could manage, dragging Asta along with him. She stood where she was placed but did not curtsey, did not think to curtsey because this was not her king. On the words of everyone she'd known in the wildlands, the king of this country was no king. He came from a long line of usurpers and tyrants and he was no different. Sigurd nudged her despite all this, attempted to prompt her into respecting the ruler she'd been taught to despise, but obliging this wasn't going to erase the crimes her name had collected, it wasn't going to keep her alive. It hadn't kept her mother alive.

Kristin Acker had been a girl of good status, promised in marriage to Magnus Ravner before her birth and before the birth of the revolt. At three she had been brought to their castle so she might grow up with the boy and at eight she was taken into exile, much to her parent's horror, because their engagement had been set and could not be broken. Lord Acker had fought beside his king but his daughter had dined with the enemy, laughed and danced with the enemy, and he could not get her back.

When her mother sent for her, all those years later – during which she had borne two children and learnt to hate the King just as Magnus did – she was hesitant to go. She did not know the woman and more willingly accepted Amund's wife as her mother than she, yet she'd promised Kristin travel was safe and that she wanted only to see her before she died. It was too late to see her father, though, for he was already dead.

With her husband's permission, she followed the instructions in her letter to follow the road south and west until she reached the silent coastline and the hill on which the castle sat, taking her most trusted serving girl along the nervous journey.

The girl had said, when she arrived back tearful and frightened witless, that it was not a moment after they reached their destination when Kristin's mother put a knife to her throat. Everybody there stood by and did nothing, looking with blank faces upon the reunion before returning to whatever menial chore they were carrying out.

"I followed them," the girl said, trembling voice verging into panic, "into an empty room. There was only an unlit fire on one wall and a portrait on the other – the portrait, I should say, of King Gunnar. She kept repeating the word traitor until she had Kristin facing that portrait. I was pleading, but she pointed the knife at me and told me to step back. Then she told Kristin to curtsey to the King and she did because she thought that her mother might let her live if she followed instructions but she... she didn't. She slit her throat and said that she had been saved."

When somebody was marked for death, there was very little they could do besides escape. There was nothing clever to be said, nothing crafty to be done and one could only hope that if fleeing failed, then death would be quick. Asta stood still and ignored Sigurd's elbow because there was, from what she could see, no king sat before her.