I swallowed hard. “Thank you. But I can’t go back right now. ”
His shoulders slacked but he nodded. “I understand. ”
“Tell Mom I’ll talk to her another day, okay?”
“I will,” he said, and as I turned to walk away, he added, “Put your coat on. ”
EIGHT
history
Books were stacked from the floor all the way up to the ceiling thirty feet above us. Tall, precarious ladders enabled people to reach the books on the top shelves, but fortunately, I didn’t need any books from up that high. Most of the ones people read were kept on the lower, more reachable shelves.
The height of the ceiling made it harder to heat the room, and since Linus and I were the first people here this morning, it had a definite chill to it. Disturbing dreams of Konstantin Black had filled my slumber last night, and I’d finally given up on sleep very early this morning, so I’d decided to get a jump start on acclimating Linus. He had quite a bit to learn before the anniversary party tomorrow night, where he’d be introduced to all sorts of royalty—both from the Kanin and from the other tribes.
I doubted anybody else would come to the library today, which would make it the perfect place for studying. The halls in the palace had been chaotic with the bustling of servants and guards as dignitaries from other tribes arrived.
Linus had very nearly gotten trampled by a maid carrying stacks of silken sheets, and I’d pulled him out of the way in the nick of time. The upcoming party had turned the normally sedate palace into bedlam.
The library was still a bastion of solitude, though. Even when everyone wasn’t distracted by a hundred guests, it wasn’t exactly a popular place to hang out. Several chairs and sofas filled the room, along with a couple tables, but I’d almost never seen anyone use them.
“It’s okay that we’re here, right?” Linus asked as I crouched in front of the fireplace and threw in another log.
“The library is open to the public,” I told him and straightened up. “But as a Berling, you’re allowed to move freely in the palace. The King is your dad’s cousin and best friend. The door is always open for you. ”
“Cool. ” Linus shivered, and rubbed his arms through his thick sweater. “So is it winter here year-round?”
“No, it’ll get warm soon. There’s a real summer with flowers and birds. ”
“Good. I don’t know if I could handle it being cold all the time. ”
I walked over to where he’d sat down at a table. “Does it really bother you that much?”
“What do you mean?”
“Most Kanin prefer the cold. Actually, most trolls in general do. ”
“So do all the tribes live up around here?”
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“Not really. ” I went over to a shelf to start gathering books for him. “Almost all of us live in North America or Europe, but we like to keep distance between tribes. It’s better that way. ”
“You guys don’t get along?” Linus asked as I grabbed a couple of old texts from a shelf.
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly, but we can get territorial. And most trolls are known for being grumpy, especially the Vittra and the Omte. ”
“What about the Kanin?”
“We’re actually more peaceful than most of the other tribes. ”
After grabbing about a dozen books that seemed to weigh about half a ton, I carried them back to the table and plunked them down in front of Linus.
Apprehension flickered in his brown eyes when he looked up at me. “Do I really need to read all this?”
“The more you know about your heritage, the better,” I said, and sat down in the chair across from him.
“Great. ” He picked up the first book off the stack and flipped through it absently. “I do like the cold. ”
“What?”
“The winters back in Chicago, they were always so much harder on my sisters. Er, host sisters,” he corrected himself. “But the cold never really got to me. ”
“We withstand it much better. ”
Linus pushed the books to the side so it’d be easier for him to see me. “How come?”
“I don’t know exactly. ” I shrugged. “We all came from Scandinavia, so that probably has something to do with it. We’re genetically built for colder climates. ”
“You came from Scandinavia?” Linus leaned forward and rested his arms on the table.
“Well, not me personally. I was born here. But our people. ” I sifted through the books I’d brought over until I found a thin book bound in worn brown paper, then I handed it to him. “This kinda helps break it down. ”
“This?” He flipped through the first few pages, which showed illustrations of several different animals living in a forest, and he wrinkled his nose. “It’s a story about rabbits and lions. It’s like a fairy tale. ”
“It’s a simplistic version of how we came to be,” I said.
When he lifted his eyes to look at me, they were filled with bewilderment. “I don’t get it. ”
“All the trolls were one tribe. ” I tapped the picture showing the rabbit sitting with the cougar, and the fox cuddling with a bird. “We all lived together in relative peace in Scandinavia. We bickered and backstabbed, but we didn’t declare war on one another. Then the Crusades happened. ”
He turned the page, as if expecting to see a picture of a priest with a sword, but it was only more pictures of animals, so he looked back up at me. “Like the stuff with the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages?”
“Exactly. You’ve noticed that trolls have different abilities, like how you can change your skin. ”
“Yeah?”
“That’s not the only thing we can do,” I explained. “The Trylle have psychokinesis, so they can move objects with their minds and see the future. The Skojare are very aquatic and are born with gills. The Vittra are supernaturally strong and give birth to hobgoblins. The Omte … well, the Omte don’t have much of anything, except persuasion. And all trolls have that. ”
“Persuasion?”
“It’s the ability to compel someone with your thoughts. Like, I’d think, Dance, and then you would dance,” I tried to elaborate. “It’s like mind control. ”
Linus’s eyes widened and he leaned back in his chair, moving away from me. “Can you do that?”
“No. I actually can’t do any of those things,” I said with a heavy sigh, and he seemed to relax again. “But we’re getting off track. ”
“Right. Trolls have magic powers,” he said.
“And during the Crusades, those powers looked like witchcraft,” I told him. “So humans started rounding us up, slaughtering us by the dozens, because they believed we’d made pacts with the devil. ”
It was actually the changelings that got hit the worst, but I didn’t tell Linus that. I didn’t want him to know the kind of risk our previous changelings had gone through, not yet anyway.
Babies that exhibited even the slightest hint of being nonhuman were murdered. They had all kinds of tests, like if a baby had an unruly lock of hair, or the mother experienced painful breast-feeding. Some were much worse, though, like throwing a baby in boiling water. If it wasn’t cooked, it was a troll, they thought, but no matter—the baby was cooked and killed anyway.
Many innocent human babies were murdered during that time too. Babies with Down’s syndrome or colic would be killed. If a child demonstrated any kind of abnormal behavior, it could be suspected of being a troll or evil, and it was killed.
It was a very dark time for humankind and trollkind alike.
“Had we made a deal with the devil?” Linus asked cautiously.
I shook my head. “No, of course not. We’re no more satanic than rabbits or chameleons. Just because we’re different than humans doesn’t make us evil. ”
“So we were all one big happy family of trolls, until the Crusades happened. They drove us out of our homes, and I’m assuming that’s what
led us to migrate to North America,” Linus filled in.
“Correct. Most of the troll population migrated here with early human settlers, mostly Vikings, and that’s why so much of our culture is still based in our Scandinavian ancestry. ”
His brow scrunched up as he seemed to consider this for a moment, then he asked, “Okay, I get that, but if we’re Scandinavian, how come so many of us have darker skin and brown hair? Not to sound racist here, but aren’t people from Sweden blond and blue-eyed? You’re the only one I’ve seen that looks like that. ”
“Our coloration has to do with how we lived,” I explained. “Originally, we lived very close to nature. The Omte lived in trees, building their homes in trunks or high in the branches. The Trylle, the Vittra, and the Kanin lived in the ground. The Kanin especially lived much the way rabbits do now, with burrows in the dirt and tunnels connecting them. ”
“What does that have to do with having brown hair?” he asked.
“It was about blending into our surroundings. ” I pointed to the picture again, pointing to where a rabbit was sitting in the long grass. “The Kanin lived in the dirt and grass, and those that matched the dirt and grass had a higher survival rate. ”
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“What about you, then?”
“I’m half Skojare,” I told him, and just like every other time I’d said it, the very words left a bitter taste in my mouth.
“Skojare? That’s the aquatic one?”
I nodded. “They lived in the water or near it, and they are pale with blond hair and blue eyes. ”
“Make sense, I guess. ” He didn’t sound completely convinced, but he continued anyway. “So what happened after we came to North America?”
“We’d already divided into groups. Those with certain skills and aptitudes tended to band together. But we hadn’t officially broken off,” I said. “Then when we came here, we all kind of spread out and started doing our own thing. ”
“That’s when you became the Kanin and the Skojare, et cetera?”
“Sort of. ” I wagged my head. “We’d split off in different groups, but we hadn’t officially named ourselves yet. Some tribes did better than others. The Trylle and the Kanin, in particular, flourished. I don’t know if it was just that they were lucky in establishing their settlements or they worked smarter. But whatever the reason, they thrived, while others suffered. And that’s really what the story is about. ”
“What?” Linus glanced down at the book, then back up at me. “I feel like you skipped a step there. ”
“Each animal in the story represents a different tribe. ” I tapped the picture of a cougar, his eyes red and fangs sharp. “The cougar is the Vittra, who were starving and suffering. So they began attacking and stealing from the other tribes, and soon the Omte, who are the birds, joined in. And it wasn’t long until everyone was fighting everyone, and we’d completely broken off from each other. ”
“Which one are the Kanin?” Linus asked as he stared down at the page.
“We’re the rabbits. That’s literally what kanin translates into. ”
“Really?” Linus questioned in surprise. “Why rabbits? Shouldn’t we be, like, chameleons or something?”
“Probably, but when the trolls named themselves, they didn’t know what chameleons were. Not a lot of reptiles in northern Canada. So we went with rabbits because they burrowed deep, ran fast, and they did a good job of blending in with their surroundings. ”
Linus stared sadly at the books in front of him. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to remember all this stuff, especially not with all the different tribes. ”
“Here. ” I grabbed a thick book from the bottom of the pile and flipped through its yellowing pages until I found the one I was looking for.
It had a symbol for each of the tribes, the actual emblems that we used on flags when we bothered to use flags—a white rabbit for the Kanin, a green flowering vine for the Trylle, a red cougar for the Vittra, a blue fish for the Skojare, and a brown-bearded vulture for the Omte.
Next to each emblem were a few short facts about each of the tribes. Not enough to make anyone an expert, but enough for now.
He grimaced and stared down at the page. “Great. ”
“It won’t be that bad,” I assured him.
As Linus studied the page in front of him, his brown hair fell across his forehead, and his lips moved as he silently read the pages. The freckles on his cheeks darkened the harder he concentrated—an unconscious reaction brought on by his Kanin abilities.
“Bryn Aven. ” A sharp voice pulled me from watching Linus, and I looked up to see Astrid Eckwell. “What on earth are you doing here?”
Her raven waves of hair cascaded down her back. The coral chiffon of her dress popped beautifully against the olive tone of her skin. In her arms she held a small rabbit. A smirk was already forming on her lips, and I knew that couldn’t be a good sign.
“Working with Markis Linus Berling,” I told her as I got to my feet. Linus glanced at both Astrid and myself, and then he got up. “You don’t have to stand. ”
“What?” He looked uncertainly at me, like it was a trick. “But … you did. ”
“Of course she did,” Astrid said as she walked over to us, absently stroking the white rabbit. “She’s the help, and I’m a Marksinna. She has to stand whenever anyone higher up than her enters the room, and that’s everyone. ”
“As the Markis Berling, you only need to stand for the King and Queen,” I said, but Linus still didn’t seem to understand.
“Bryn, aren’t you going to introduce us?” Astrid asked as she stared up at him with her wide dark eyes, but he kept looking past her, down at the rabbit in her arms.
“My apologies, Marksinna. Linus Berling, this is Astrid Eckwell. ” I motioned between the two of them.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Linus said, and gave her a lopsided smile.
“Likewise. Are you going to the anniversary party tomorrow?” Astrid asked.
“Um, yeah, I think so. ” He turned to me for confirmation, and I nodded once.
“He will be there with his parents. ”
Astrid looked at me with contempt in her eyes. “I suppose that means you’ll be there too. ”
“Most likely I will be assisting Markis Berling and the Högdragen,” I said, and I didn’t sound any more thrilled about it than she did.
“You better dig something nice out of your closet. ” She cast a disparaging look over my outfit. “You can’t go to the party wearing your ratty old jeans. That might fly for the trashy Skojare, but you know that won’t do for the Kanin. ”
I kept my hands folded neatly behind my back and didn’t look down. As a tracker, I had to dress appropriately for many different occasions, and I knew there was nothing wrong with my outfit. I might be wearing dark denim, but they were nice.
“Thank you for the tip, Marksinna, but I’m certain that you won’t be speaking derogatorily of the Skojare anymore, as their King, Queen, and Prince have already arrived in the palace for tomorrow’s anniversary party,” I replied icily. “You wouldn’t want them to hear you speaking negatively of them, since they are King Evert and Queen Mina’s guests. ”
“I know they’re here,” Astrid snapped, and her nostrils flared. “That’s why I’m dressed properly today, unlike you. What would the King of the Skojare say if he saw you running around like that?”
“Since he’s a gentleman, I’m sure he would say hello,” I said.
Taking a deep breath through her nose, Astrid pressed her lips into a thin, acrid smile. “You are just as impossible as you were in school. I can’t believe they let you be a tracker. ”
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When she spoke like that, it wasn’t hard to remember back when we’d been kids in grade school together. I couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old the first time Astrid pushed me down in the mud and sneered at me as she called me a ha
lf-breed.
For the past century or so, the Kanin had been trying to reduce their reliance on changelings. If there were multiple children in a family, only one would be left as a changeling. It wasn’t uncommon for particularly wealthy families to go a whole generation without leaving one.
And in Astrid’s case, both her parents had been changelings, so they were freshly infused with cash from their host families and didn’t need their child to bring in more of an income.
So, unfortunately, that left me forced to deal with Astrid all through grade school. There were many times when I wanted nothing more than to punch her, but Tilda had always held me back, reminding me that violence against a Marksinna could damage my chance of being a tracker.
That hadn’t stopped me from hurling a few insults at Astrid in my time, but that had been long ago, before I’d joined the tracker school. Now I was sworn to protect the Marksinna and Markis, which meant I wasn’t even supposed to speak ill of them.
Astrid knew that, and it pleased her no end.
“Linus, if you ever need any real help, you can always ask me,” she said, with her derisive gaze still fixed on me. “You mustn’t be forced to rely on an inferior tutor like Bryn. ”
“Markis,” Linus said.
Startled, she looked up at him. “What?”
“You called me Linus, but I’m your superior, right?” he asked as he stared back down at her. “That’s why I didn’t have to stand when you came in?”
“That’s…” Her smile faltered. “That’s correct. ”
“Then you should call me Markis,” Linus told her evenly, and it was a struggle for me not to smile. “If I’m understanding correctly. ”
“You understand it right, Markis,” I assured him.
“Yes, of course you are, Markis. ” Astrid gave him her best eat-shit grin. “Well, I should let you get back to your lessons. I’m sure you have much to learn before tomorrow night’s ball if you don’t want to make a fool of yourself. ”
She turned on her heel, the length of her dress billowing out behind her. Once she was gone, I let out a deep breath, and Linus sat back down at the table.
“That chick seemed kinda like a jerk,” he commented.
“She is,” I agreed, and sat down across from him. “We went to grade school together, and she was always horrible. ”
“She wasn’t a changeling?”
“No, she’s been here every day for the past nineteen years. ”
“What was the deal with the rabbit?” Linus asked. He sounded so totally baffled by it that I had to laugh.
“Oh, it’s kind of a tradition. They’re Gotland rabbits, and legend has it we brought them over with us when we came from Sweden. Supposedly they helped us find where to build Doldastam and helped us survive the first cold winter. ”
“How did they help the Kanin survive?”
“Well, they ate them,” I explained. “But not all of them, and now people raise them, and we’d never eat them because they’re like a sacred mascot. Some of the Marksinna carry them around now, like rich American girls used to do with Chihuahuas. The Queen has a rabbit named Vita. You’ll probably see it. ”