“Are you done?” he demanded after she’d gone on for quite some time. His expression had only grown harder in the face of her mirth.
“Why,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes as she tried to catch her breath, “in all the Nine Worlds would you think I would ever want to marry you?” She turned to go. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. The answer is no.”
“I don’t think you’re thinking this through.”
“Have you missed the part where I don’t want anything to do with you?” she said over her shoulder as she walked away.
Eirik called after her, “If you marry me, you’ll be a queen.”
Gunnhild stopped dead.
“Queen of the districts I govern, to start, which include your own Halogaland. But when I become the king instead of a king, it would make you one of the most powerful women in the country,” Eirik went on. “I wonder what your mother would say about that.”
One arm held her staff limply at her side while the other formed a fist.
“She’s an ungrateful little whelp . . . stubborn and insubordinate . . . should be ashamed of herself.”
Those were not even the worst things Solveig had said of her.
“It’s your choice,” Eirik continued. “I’ll only ask you once. If you refuse, you have my word that I won’t bring this matter to you again.”
Gunnhild began to truly consider his offer. If she accepted it, Thorolf would hate her. And Oddny would think she’d lost her mind. But Eirik had succeeded in appealing to her ambition after all—just not in the way he’d expected.
Eirik’s title aside, he and her father were both rich, and once they each handed over her bride-price and dowry—both of which she’d keep, as was custom—it would likely amount to more silver than she could amass in years trying to establish herself as a reputable seeress.
And in the short term, Eirik was more desperate than she’d thought if he was coming to her with such an extreme proposition. Which meant that he might be willing to agree to equally extreme terms.
He had ships and men. They were already traveling.
Maybe she could get them to travel just a little bit farther before winter was upon them.
Whatever Thorbjorg had against Gunnhild was trivial in the face of what Eirik was promising her. The resources she’d have at her disposal would be beyond her wildest dreams. Regardless of whether she could travel as a witch, she would have the means not only to save Signy but to hunt down Thorbjorg and Katla and make them pay for what they’d done to Heid and to Oddny’s family.
She would kill them both in the worst way possible.
And then, just out of spite, she would make that damned fox into a fine fur hat.
All that aside—marrying a king would be a very satisfying thing to throw in her mother’s face if Solveig ever woke up again.
“Fine.” Gunnhild turned. “I accept.”
Eirik recoiled in surprise. “You . . . accept?”
“Yes. And you will negotiate the bride-price and dowry with my father as the law dictates. However, I have my own terms as well.”
“Oh good. Great.” Eirik scrubbed a hand down his face. “Go on, then.”
She couldn’t lead with the most important thing, her most desperate want. She had to seem reasonable. She thought about what he’d told her in the woods in Finnmark, and that shaped her answer.
It occurred to her to ask first, though: “How many wives do you have so far? And children?”
“None and none. That I know of. Why?”
The answer didn’t surprise her, for reasons she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Nonetheless she raised her eyebrows, unable to resist a dig at him: “Really? But you’re a king, and you’re, what, thirty winters old already?”
Eirik fixed her with a long look before saying, “Get on with it already.”
“Fine,” Gunnhild said when it was clear he wouldn’t take the bait. “In that case: If we’re to marry, you shall take no other wives but me and sire no other children but mine. And when you succeed your father, I’ll be queen not just of your districts but queen of Norway—not consort, nor queen consort, but queen. The only queen.”
Some of King Harald’s highborn wives were called queen, but none were considered queen over the entire country alongside him. She was asking to become the very first woman to assume this position.
Asking more of Eirik than was proper.
Asking to be publicly recognized as his equal.
Eirik folded his arms. “You must be jesting. It’s every free man’s right to take as many wives and sire as many children as he can support.”
“Exactly,” said Gunnhild, undeterred. “In Finnmark, you told me how you grew up. Do you wish for your sons to love each other as you and Arinbjorn do, or do you want them to be like you and your half brothers, so you can watch them fight over Norway like scavengers over a corpse before you’re even in the ground? Are you going to repeat your father’s mistakes?”
“My father does not make mistakes,” Eirik said through his teeth.
“Your brothers would disagree,” she said, and savored the look of fury on his face. “Anyway. That’s my first term. My second—”
“Dear gods, what else?”
“As you said before, my friend Oddny’s mother was the only one who tried to help me as a child—I don’t know if you’ve met Oddny herself, but she was just here. You’re holding her lantern.”
“She was familiar, but no, I don’t know that we’ve officially met. Why?”
“The raid I mentioned to you back in Finnmark, the one my father spoke of the night we arrived—it was her farm that was destroyed. Her sister was the one kidnapped, and we mean to rescue her before the start of winter. So my final term is that you’ll take me and Oddny straight to Birka from here.”
Eirik stared at her. “Have you lost your mind? We’ve been traveling all summer. We want to go home.”
“Those are my terms,” Gunnhild said. “Take them or leave them.”
“You’re mad.” Eirik rubbed both hands down his face now. “You’re delusional if you think—”
She stepped closer to him so they were nose to nose. “How badly do you need my help?”
He dropped his hands.
“No,” he said firmly enough that she reared back. “Absolutely not. You don’t know what you’re asking for, Gunnhild. It’s too late in the season to travel so far. Do you know what it’s like to sail in the winter? By day, it’ll be so cold that you may lose fingers or toes. And the nights are even colder, and longer. We’d have to dock at a settlement or stop to make camp every single night or risk us all freezing to death on the water, and at that rate it would take us at least two moons to get there. Two long, miserable moons. I won’t risk my life, or my ship, or my men. I would rather take my chances dealing with Thorbjorg on my own than agree to something so utterly foolish.”
Gunnhild bit her lip and sighed through her nose, but this was one area where she couldn’t exactly argue with him. He was the more experienced sailor by far, and more traveled than possibly anyone else she knew. If even he wouldn’t agree to making this journey, then she might be forced to admit that no one would. And if that were so, she couldn’t fault her father for refusing her request as well.