Iron Seas 03 - Riveted

before the Horde. Some of the great families still have manuscripts in Norse.” And he’d read copies of them while searching for his mother’s people, hoping to find similarities. “Many of the stories are the same as those she told me, but there are differences.”
    “How so?”
    “Brunhild’s story, for one. How she took her revenge on Sigurd, though she died carrying it out.”
    “Yes. That’s one of my favorites.”
    He grinned. Her favorite was incredibly bloodthirsty. “But that’s not the end. There’s another story with Brunhild in the Underworld, where she and Sigurd are lovers—and Brunhild claims that all of the pain and betrayal no longer mattered, that it was what she’d had to bear before they could be together.”
    “And Sigurd was some kind of reward ? That’s horrible,” she said, and glanced back when he laughed. “Isn’t it?”
    “I believe it’s supposed to be the happy ending she deserves.”
    “But he deceived her—and doesn’t deserve her.”
    “Is deceit so unforgiveable?”
    “That sort of deceit is. It is one thing to lie and deceive for good reason, but it is quite another to hurt someone with those lies and to expect no consequences.” A frown had creased her brow when she looked back at him again. “He pretended to be someone else in bed. Imagine if Dooley came to my bed and said that he was you. Should I ever forgive him?”
    David would kill him. “No.”
    “I agree. So I will pretend that I never heard such nonsense. Hanna’s version is much better.”
    Hanna…and Hannasvik. “Your village is named after her? Is she the same Hanna from my mother’s runes?”
    “Yes. She was from a noble family in Norway, in fact.” She rolled her shoulders, as if to loosen them. “And she married a relation of your friend Goltzius. Hanna’s line is all blood, and you’re directly descended. So I suppose you might be a prince of some sort.”
    David laughed, until he realized that she was serious. “Truly?”
    “Oh, yes. Källa, too…Prince David.”
    He laughed again at the absurdity of it. “The royal line doesn’t follow the women.”
    “Why is that? It’s seems foolish. A baby could be any man’s. You can only know for certain who the mother is.”
    “So they marry virgins—or hope that she is.”
    She was quiet for a long moment. “I suspect that explains quite a lot about the New World. Why do the women allow it?”
    Allow it? David had never thought of it in such a way. Marriage had always been a matter of protecting a woman, loving her, carrying on the family name…because without that protection, without a man’s name behind hers, a woman had very little. Even many of the female scientists he knew had to secure the approval of their husbands or fathers before pursuing their chosen field, and were sometimes forced to abandon that pursuit when other demands were made of them. There were exceptions, of course—there were always exceptions—but it was a sobering realization.
    “They don’t allow it,” he said quietly. “They don’t have the choice.”
    “Oh.” Her chest rose on a soft, drooping sigh. “That’s terribly sad. In Hannasvik, we always have choice. To go or to stay. To return or to continue on outside the village. The choice is never easy, but at least we have one.”
    “Is that why there are no men in Hannasvik? The women are afraid the choices will be taken away?”
    “No. Men are thought well of, for the most part. That was just how it began—the will of the gods, or so Hanna said—and became set in stone.”
    “And no one has broken that rule?”
    “Not in my lifetime. And if others have broken it—bringing their sons back, perhaps—I have never heard of it. But I imagine it must have happened at least a few times over the past century.”
    “What would they have done to her?”
    “She would be exiled, most likely. But they would have helped her. There are always others who have left. They’d have made sure she found them, that she wouldn’t be alone. They’d have done the same for Källa, but she left before they could.”
    Did Annika risk the same? “Yet you plan to take me there?”
    “To Hannasvik? Oh, no. I know of a safe place a few hours away from the village. I’ll leave you there.” She paused, bit her lip. “I hope you know…it’s not a lack of trust. I just won’t break that rule when I have another choice. It wouldn’t be fair to them to bring you in, unless everyone in the village