[Lalaith]

Embla stood at the back of the hall, in the shadows. Much as she had been doing for the past few hours, she was skulking and smirking. She had enjoyed watching Briga rushing busily about, and whispering anxiously with Khandr - who was all the while distractedly running his fingers through his beard. So much so, in fact that she quite forgot to adhere to her usual policy such occasions – to get in the way, pick quarrels and issue counter-orders.

She observed Hunta stumping back, discombobulated, with the cheese. Fastarr, meanwhile, had arrived looking unusually spruce – well-groomed, almost. She guessed by his flushed glow where he had been – the sweatlodge. She felt a twinge of jealousy. Embla had, in her misery, almost given up on personal adornment, but she was fastidious by nature and had been a frequent sauna guest back in the happy Bairka days. But the restrictions imposed on Borrim womenfolk meant that a visit to a public sweat-lodge was out of the question for her now.

She looked at Fastarr again, as he joined in the toast proposed by Khandr. Oh, she knew him well, by reputation at least. This was the killer of Starkadr. It had been before her mother died, when she still lived among the Bairka. She remembered the woman Aud, returning shamed to her people. Mourning her dead babes and her dead lover, grey-faced and wasted by tragedy and scandal. The child Embla – always observant - had viewed this sad figure with a mixture of pity and intrigue.

Now it was she, Embla, who was shamed at the hands of the Borrim. But hers was a dull, hopeless shame, with no memory of a child or a lover to add spice to her despondency. Abruptly she was pulled out of her brooding thoughts about the ill-fated Aud and her Borrim husband – for the latter had just stepped, inadvertently, on the hem of her long cloak, not seeing her in the darkness.

“Dolt,” she hissed. The man recoiled and stammered something in apology. She looked him up and down with all the haughtiness she could muster, taking in Fastarr’s attempts to smarten up his apparel and appearance. “Better wise language than well-combed hair,” she added. The proverb seemed to hit home and she enjoyed watching the blush spread across his wide, honest face.