Chapter 36: Your Side…

King Magnus's attempts to free himself from Einar Thambarskelfir's control were, at first, tentative and uncertain. Einar controlled the structures and systems of government, and had made himself into a bottleneck through which all correspondence and control had to be directed. Magnus also did not have access to the full text of many treaties and laws. Einar additionally had waged a specific campaign of corruption throughout Magnus's teen years in attempting to weaken Magnus's work ethic in order to make him easier to control, a campaign that is believed to have resulted in the birth of Magnus's bastard daughter, Ragnhild, when Magnus was in his mid-teens.

However, in the aftermath of Magnus's marriage to Ruffnut, Einar began to realize the depth of his miscalculations and reacted poorly. On the one hand, he now had dragons to help enforce his policies. On the other hand, he had to deal with Queen Ruffnut, which he was reported to have described later on as a challenge that would make the hardiest man quiver in his boots in trepidation, especially when combined with her brother. Furthermore, it was becoming obvious to him just how poorly he had understood Hiccup Haddock's basic personality…

—Corpus Historiae Berkiae, 1396

Nidaros, Norway

Ruffnut looked up at the light snow falling on the fortress as she and Magnus walked outside after dinner. "Magnus, are you feeling all right? You weren't even listening to Sigvatr's saga just now, and I think you hurt his feelings."

Magnus grimaced and groaned, and then rubbed at his face with both hands. "Great."

"Magnus…?" she asked. "You feeling all right?"

He shook his head. "I'm feeling… feeling overwhelmed, Ruff."

"With…?"

"With everything. What do I do about the jarls? I gave in for now, gave them Wulfhild as a puppet, but I did that to buy time, and now I feel like I'm wasting it!" He pointed back towards the hall. "I had all of these ideas on how to change things, but now that I'm trying to start them, I have no idea where to begin!"

She scowled. "Gotcha."

They walked in silence for several more steps, and then she said, "So, what are those ideas?"

"Reach out to the jarls' heirs; I'll have to work with them eventually in the future, so it wouldn't be suspicious, but they'll be a hard nut to crack, all wary of me doing… well, exactly what I plan on doing."

She nodded and made an encouraging noise.

"Or try to get myself more in control of the systems of government, but Einar's got me pretty well shut out of that."

She blinked. "What do you mean?"

He glanced at her and sighed. "I'm a figurehead, Ruff. Technically, I could remove Einar from office any time I wish. But that only works if I'll be listened to… and, well…" he shrugged helplessly. "I spent the last three and a half months away, and the kingdom kept running without me. That should give you a pretty solid idea of just how much control I have over the day-to-day business."

She winced.

"Yeah. I really am Einar's puppet." He slumped. "I'm left out of half of the negotiations, and when I am there, I'm powerless to affect them. Things are just handed to me to sign. And all of the major positions are filled by men handpicked by Einar."

"Wait, he picked Yngvarr? But he's loyal to you!"

"He's also a figurehead in some ways," Magnus growled out. "When his wife died childless several years back, he didn't remarry, but made his brother the acting jarl, and his nephew his heir. He has a great deal of respect, but not a lot of influence… and Einar made sure that he would have a hard time building up any alliances in the kingdom—by sending him away on a regular basis as a glorified mailman."

"But… doesn't that also give him influence with foreign courts?" Ruffnut asked.

"It does, but at the same time, it's not like he stays there and makes friends for long periods. He goes, delivers messages, and comes back. He spends most of his time traveling," Magnus said, kicking at a stone in the path.

Ruffnut watched as it spun away, carving out a darkened trail in the whiteness of the snow.

"I even thought about making Tuffnut the Royal Mailman so that he can fly around Norway and get to know the people, but then I realized that if things start getting heated, I'll be handing the jarls the perfect hostage to take if things turned to war."

Ruffnut scowled at that thought.

"Yeah. Exactly. I don't want to put him into harm's way. Or you, for that matter." He threw up his hands. "But I have no idea of where to even begin!"

Ruffnut yanked him into a tight hug, making him squeak in surprise and lack of air. "Then we figure out where we want to end, and work from there." It figured. They hadn't even been back for a week, and he was acting like he'd failed. Yeah, he was just as bad as Hiccup was.

"Okay," he said, a little strangled. "Air?"

She let him go with a grin. "So… where I think we want to end…" She exaggeratedly looked him up and down lasciviously, making him laugh. "Well, aside from bed tonight, how's this?" She cleared her throat, and said in her 'saga' voice, "And Magnus the Good was seen as a kind and strong king, unquestioned in his authority over his kingdoms—"

"Kingdoms!?" he interjected, surprised.

"—Kingdoms," she continued, and said tartly, "don't interrupt, it's rude, 'kingdoms, and seen as wise and insightful, and beloved by all, having established early in his reign that dissent was acceptable… but rebellion was not.'" She cleared her throat. "How's that?"

"Ambitious," he said, and took a deep breath. "Very ambitious. I mean, Ruff… I have almost no real power or influence—and the people I would need to get it from want to keep it that way."

"You have me, you have Tuffnut, you have Yngvarr, and, oh yeah, you have Berk. You've got us, Magnus. It'll be tricky, but we can do it."

"It'll be hard," he said, shaking his head, a small smile on his face. "But your confidence is inspiring."

She smirked. "Well, the ones who write the sagas are the winners, yeah?" She snuggled up next to him. "I wanna write that one."

###

The Smithy, Isle Of Berk, Alban Hebrides

Hiccup fiddled with the gearings for the sheet metal roller, checking it for wear, and frowning. He'd done his best to strengthen them, but it was pretty apparent that hard oak wasn't going to be hard enough to resist the strain. He'd have to cut iron gears in order for the machine to last longer than a day or two of use.

Joy.

But Astrid had still agreed that the design was sound—meaning that he could chalk this one up as a success.

And that made three creations for her challenge. Just two more and he had it! And he had designs for both already hashed out and waiting construction, and they both looked pretty solid.

He was feeling pretty smug about it… deliberately ignoring the fact that it had taken him nine months, and this wasn't the first time it had looked like he was on the cusp of success.

Then the door to the smithy opened, and he glanced up—and did a double take.

Fishlegs, his face furrowed in an unaccustomed expression of anger, had his arm around Heather, who was wearing her flight harness and visibly shaking, and Wulfhild, bringing up the rear, was looking just as furious as Fishlegs, with a smashed, dirtied saddle held under her arm and two leather straps held in her fist.

"Hiccup, do you have a moment?" Wulfhild asked.

"Sure. What happened?"

She glanced around; Murchadh was off getting them something to drink from the mead hall, and Astrid was up in her perch on the roof beam with her book—scratch that, as she had rolled free of the roof beam and landed in a crouch.

Heather startled and jumped free of Fishlegs' loose embrace at Astrid's dramatic appearance. A knife appeared from somewhere in her hand, and she tensed to throw or stab before realizing that Astrid wasn't a threat.

Hiccup felt his eyebrows climb up to his hairline at that, even as Heather came out of her fighting stance.

Astrid blinked at the ferocity of the response. "You all right?"

Fishlegs reached out and put his arm back around Heather's shoulders, and she visibly relaxed; Hiccup noticed a moment later that the knife was gone again.

"What just happened?" Hiccup asked.

Wulfhild walked over to him. "Hiccup, you work with leather, right?" He nodded. "Then could you look at the ends here?" She handed him the pair of straps.

He took them, and started to examine them. They were fairly standard dragon-leather belaying lines, with the metal loops on the end to clip onto the saddle, but they'd been…

…cut.

A horrible image came to mind, and he looked up at the others.

"Hand me that saddle," he said flatly. Wulfhild handed it over, and he grimaced. It was dirty and smashed, but he still recognized it—it was Heather's saddle for Windshear. He'd helped design and make it only last month.

He quickly found the girth for the saddle; it too had broken. But it had been helped—there was a smoothness to the break for half the depth of the leather… and it wasn't from Windshear's scales cutting into the leather, because the cut was on the outside of the girth.

"Someone cut these," Hiccup said tartly. "The leather is new, and shouldn't have broken. And I can see where the knife weakened all three straps." He tossed down the cut girth onto the floor as Fishlegs and Wulfhild hissed, Astrid blinked in surprise and then looked at the broken bits of leather angrily, and Heather shrank in on herself. "This wasn't an accident." He looked up at Heather, who was holding onto Fishlegs tightly. "Who did this? Do you know?"

Heather swallowed hard, and seemed to press deeper into Fishlegs' side.

Hiccup sighed, remembering how cruel some of his tribesmates could be… but ostracizing 'Hiccup the Useless,' however violently, paled in comparison to this act of attempted murder. Worse, it wasn't in the heat of passion—it had been calculated. "Heather. Someone just tried to kill you." He then remembered that she had looked stressed when she'd shown up after lunch earlier, and that she and Fishlegs had been talking in raised voices. He scowled. "This isn't the first thing to happen, is it?"

She and Fishlegs both shook their heads, and he said, "No, it isn't. There… there was a letter left in there," he nodded his head towards the glass-shed, "that… that, well, if I was stupid, it would have made me break up with her."

Heather gave Fishlegs a terrified look, and he clenched his arm around her more tightly. "But I'm not that stupid. It wasn't her handwriting."

"What did it say?" Astrid asked.

Fishlegs blushed. "Um… nothing I'm willing to repeat."

Hiccup blinked. "That bad?"

Fishlegs nodded. "It's in the shed. The piece of low-quality parchment on the desk."

Astrid wordlessly turned and went into the glass shed. Hiccup kept looking at Heather as Wulfhild paced. Heather looked tired and extremely stressed, but before he could say or ask anything else, Astrid reemerged, and strode over to him, holding a parchment in her hands.

She came over to him, and the pair of them examined the note.

Hiccup felt a blush rising to his face as he read it over, and Astrid whistled, and said, "Dogsbreath? Really? No accounting for taste…"

Hiccup nodded in agreement. Dogsbreath chased just about every unattached girl in the village that he wasn't immediately related to, with little success. However, he boasted about his supposed conquests at the drop of a hat. Hiccup had little doubt that, if Fishlegs had gone to him to ask about the letter, Dogsbreath would have cheerfully lied and said that it was true, even though they were first cousins through Dog's mother Catthumbs.

Once he was done reading it and looked at Heather. "Okay. Whoever wrote that farce owes you a geld for damages."

Heather blinked in surprise, as did Wulfhild. "Huh?" Wulf asked.

Hiccup shrugged, and Astrid said, "Well… while a courting couple gets chaperoned all the time—"

"—or at least they're supposed to be—" Hiccup muttered, taking Astrid's hand. They'd managed to ditch the chaperones several times before the battle, after all. It had been weeks afterwards that Gobber had told him that most of the chaperones had been ready to look the other way where he and Astrid were concerned.

"—they… you get some protections, too. And one of them is against stunts like this. It's a little fine, but it's still there," Astrid finished.

Heather blinked. "I… wow. Karolina didn't mention that. She just said that it was seen in bad taste to try to break up a courting couple."

"That too," Hiccup said, and then glanced around the smithy. "Not that it stops some people, but…" He held out the parchment and shook it in his hand. "If you know who wrote this, they owe you a geld." He then pointed it at the broken saddle on the floor. "And whoever did that needs to be charged, taken before a jury, and either slapped with a massive fine or banished." Hiccup remembered the last murder in the village; it had been two, almost three years ago, and Stoick had made him study up on the laws as part of his training as the future chief. The murderer, an Ingerman, had needed to pay a geld of two hundred shillings—ten pounds silver—to the bereaved. That had bankrupted him without being able to pay the full amount, and then Bladewit had banished him for a period of no less than five years. And that had been over a drunken argument over a long-running disagreement that had turned deadly. For this…

Heather paled, for reasons that Hiccup didn't understand; he looked her in the face, and she looked away. "Do you know who did this?" he asked.

She shook in Fishlegs' grasp, buried her face in his shirt, and actually sniffed. "Banished?"

Hiccup nodded. "I doubt that Dad would go that far, but it's a valid punishment for attempted murder." She didn't say anything else, but a tear started to leak from the one eye that Hiccup could see. Hiccup narrowed his eyes and stared at her. "You know, don't you." It wasn't a question.

She shook her head against Fishlegs' side as he patted her comfortingly on the shoulders. "I don't have any proof."

Hiccup picked up the cut belaying line from the workbench and shook it at her. "Heather. This was attempted murder. I want you to tell me who did this."

She shook her head again. "I can't. I don't have any proof! And I'm not going to ruin somebody's life because I'm going to guess!"

Astrid leaned over. "Heather. Someone just tried to kill you."

"How do you know? It could have just been another stupid prank that she pulled—" Heather said and then shut her jaw with a click.

"Who is 'she'? What other pranks?" Astrid asked. "Not just the letter?"

Fishlegs was looking down at Heather with alarm, and started to pat her on the back. Heather, for her part, was staying mute.

"Heather!" Astrid protested. "Let us help you!"

"Yes, please!" Wulfhild said intently. "Heather, this wasn't a prank—or at least it wasn't the sort of amusing little jokes that Ruffnut or Tuffnut like to pull. This could have turned you into paste on the side of the mountain!"

Heather started to sob in earnest, her tears coming faster. "You don't know what you're all asking me to do…"

"We're trying to save your life!" Hiccup said.

"By turning in someone else!? On suspicion!?" Heather shot back, her voice thick with tears. "I can't… I can't do that anymore…"

Hiccup shared a surprised glance with Astrid. "Heather… what's wrong? I mean, aside from the obvious," he asked, turning back to her.

She sniffed. "I… I… gods. This is what Alvin did, to make sure that none of us in the household could trust each other. He would make sure that we would all betray each other…" Fishlegs hugged her, and she slumped again him, shaking. "I can't… not without proof. I'm not going to say anything unless you promise you won't act until we know for sure who did it."

Hiccup shared another look with Astrid. She shrugged, and then they both looked to Fishlegs. He grimaced, and then nodded. Wulfhild nodded as well when they turned to her.

"Fine," Hiccup said, turning back to Heather. "You have our oaths. We don't do anything official until we know for sure."

"Let's just hope that you survive until then," Astrid muttered, picking up the second cut strap. Then she turned her head up and looked at Heather. "So, start talking. What's going on?"

Heather swallowed audibly and said hesitantly, "I'm being harassed by some of the other kitchen staff…"

###

Vedrarfjord, Eire

Hákon, bracing himself against the impact, barreled into the fight with his shoulder leading the charge. He sent the two men holding the third one sprawling, and still had enough momentum to slam into the fourth, who had been delivering the beating.

Gunvor followed in his wake, brandishing her ax. "What's going on here!?" she demanded as Hákon checked his charge and pulled himself back up to his full height. "Why are you beating this man?!"

Hákon found the victim on the ground and hauled him to his feet; the victim had obvious collar calluses around his neck, and was dressed in rough homespun. Meanwhile, the three men who had been beating him were much more richly dressed, in fine linens and woolens dyed dark green and blue—and were now spattered with the mud of the streets and glaring at him. The man in the center wore a gleaming silver cloak pin set with a green gem, while the man on his right had a small golden cross on a thong around his neck and the man on his left wore a silver ring set with a purple stone.

The man who had been delivering the beating said indignantly as he tried to brush himself clean, "He cheeked me! He might no longer be my thrall, but the law says that freedmen owe their former masters—"

Gunvor cut him off furiously. "He owes you nothing! Not under our laws! He owes you neither deference nor inheritance nor subservience! He is his own man now!" As she spoke, Hákon steadied the beaten man, and gave a small sigh of relief as he saw his brothers and other Hooligans arriving for backup.

The beater scowled at him as a crowd started to gather. "He is still a freedman, and a freedman he shall always be! Freedmen are only one step above thralls, and yeh and yer dragons canna change that! He, and his children, and his children's children will never walk equal to real men!"

Hákon leaned in, very close to the man's face. "Oh, you think so, eh?"

"It's what the law says!"

"Wrong. It's what the old law said," Hákon said harshly. "Hooligan law reads differently. You are charged with assaulting another man, whose stature before the law is the same as yours!"

"What nonsense is this!? You're a lord! Why do yeh care about a jumped up thrall—" Gunvor snorted aloud, and the man turned and glared at her. "And yeh can't keep yer women under control either!"

A few people in the growing crowd tittered at that, while Hákon snorted. "I've been a 'lord' for all of three weeks. But you are wrong in one way. You want to know why I care? Aside from it being the law?"

The man snorted. "Aye, I suppose." Half a dozen people in the crowd also made curious noises.

Gunvor rolled her eyes as Hákon reached down his shirt and pulled out an iron amulet, emblazoned with runes of blessing and freedom, free to dangle from the leather thong it hung from, and then he picked it up off his shirt and thrust it forward. "See this!? This was once my mother's collar. Like the very one that he," Hákon pointed to the freedman, who was watching in awe, even as his eyes started to grow puffy from his beating, "once wore! But she was rescued and freed, and this was crafted as a symbol of her freedom! And she married my father and carried an ax into battle, and bore him six children before he died fighting dragons!" Cloudfox flew overhead at that moment and landed on the peak of the rooftop behind him, staring down at the crowd. "I am the son and grandson of freed thralls, and don't you dare tell me that my blood is worth less than yours! My chief is the son of a freedwoman! Do you want to tell him or my son-in-law, the man who tames dragons, that they do not walk equal to 'real men'!?"

People in the audience were looking at him, shocked.

And then one of the watching freedmen started to applaud—by himself at first. But then his clanmates joined in, with his brothers cheering and commenting about how their mother would be proud. Even the dragons behind them got in on the act, making cheerful chittering noises and noises of approval, led by Cloudfox from his rooftop perch. He gave a quick burst of flame into the sky, which seemed to startle several of the other watchers. At least one person in the circle seemed to be convinced on the grounds of the dragons alone. But still others were standing there, silent and sullen, or shocked and dismayed. A few were muttering in obvious discontent.

Well, they would work on them. For the moment… "What are your names?" Hákon asked the man and his two compatriots.

The well-dressed man glared at him, and Hákon shrugged. "You can tell me now, or cooling your heels in gaol. Your choice."

The man glanced around at the crowd and the other Hooligans standing around, and scowled. "Éimhín mac Naomh. And these are my brothers, Niall mac Naomh and Somehairle mac Naomh."

Hákon nodded, and turned to the freedman. "And yours?"

The freedman swallowed painfully, but met his eyes with effort and said, "Ultán, milord. Um…" He averted his eyes and mumbled something that sounded like, "mac Vir." Son of man. Which Hákon was willing to bet meant that he didn't know who his father was.

"Well, Éimhín here owes you a geld for assault, based solely on what I witnessed. Are there any other charges you would like pressed?"

Ultán glanced at Éimhín and seemed to consider for a moment. "Aye. He's been extorting me wages from me, sayin' that I still owe him dues as a freedman."

Hákon breathed out, "Oh, does he now?" He turned to Éimhín. "Did you?"

"Aye, in accordance with the law," Éimhín said belligerently. "Freedmen owe their former masters a share of their wages. That's the law."

"Not our law." He turned to Ultán, scowling slightly in thought. And then he winced.

He didn't want to make this blow up… and he was realizing that his initial belligerence was hanging about like a Zippleback's breath cloud. He was in uncharted waters, and had no idea of how to proceed from here without giving that spark, especially as his own temper was flaring as well, and it was a struggle to keep it contained. But he would do it. His own honor demanded that he do so. And, on a more practical level, he wanted to lead a peaceful city—not one riven through with simmering tensions like this.

Finally, he said, "Ultán, Éimhín, Somehairle, Niall, with me. I want to discuss this in the mead hall rather than in the streets." The men glanced at each other uneasily.

Hákon sighed. "Please. Everything has changed recently for all of you. While I won't break my laws, or bend them, I feel that a talk would do much better than summary justice in the streets?"

Éimhín looked triumphant, while Ultán looked crestfallen. Hákon sighed. "Come. Please? Or I'll go with the summary justice option."

They nodded and a short while later, ended up in the mead hall—followed by a crowd of onlookers.

Hákon swallowed; this would be his first public judgment since coming here… and he was nervous. He muttered a quick prayer to Freyr, as lord of kings, and to Odin, holder of knowledge, for their guidance.

He looked at the men as they stood nearby, waiting. Ultán was clearly a laborer; his hands were beaten and rough, he was missing a finger from his left hand, and he was wearing worn homespun. Meanwhile, Éimhín and his brothers were clearly from one of the more wealthy clans, just by the manner of their dress.

"All right. The facts of what just happened aren't really in question, are they? Ultán talked back to you, Éimhín, his former master, and you decided to give him a beating as a lesson in manners, yes?"

They all nodded.

"So. Éimhín, you will pay a geld for assault. That's non-negotiable."

"But—!"

"You beat a freedman, Éimhín! I'm doing my best to be lenient here, but I can not let that slide!" Hákon said sharply. "Work with me here! I recognize that you didn't know any better! How could you? It's been two months, and you're near enough to my age. And I'm hardly ready to make a change of this degree like that."

Éimhín scowled, but nodded in acknowledgment.

"So here's what I propose," Hákon said, trying to assume the mantle of an experienced statesman while his inner miller ran around gibbering. "Éimhín, you will pay a geld for the assault. And for the charge of attempted wage theft—yes, theft, because that's what it is, Éimhín—in acknowledgment that you wouldn't have known of the law, if it is acceptable to Ultán, I will suspend that charge for now. But if you do it again, you will be charged for both crimes."

Ultán considered it for a moment, and then nodded. "Seems fair to me."

Éimhín scowled but nodded. "Aye. It seems that you are serious about this."

Hákon cocked his head and then nodded. "Oh, yes. It's not just the law. To me—to all of Berk—it is a very personal thing."

Éimhín snorted and shook his head. "And here I was wondering if your chief… our chief had jotunn blood. Instead, he's a freedwoman's?"

"Yes, he is. But on the worthiness of his blood… Stoick has been my chief for twenty-two years. He is a great warrior, and a leader like no other. I watched him charge the great dragon that was holding the Nest in bondage, despite the fact that it had teeth larger than him," Hákon reminisced. "I had never seen a thing like it. And his mother was once a thrall, and he learned stories at her breast about the treatment collared men and women experience—as did I. As did my brothers." Who made noises of agreement from where they were standing in the crowd. "So… yes… we are very serious about freeing thralls." He crossed his arms. "In fact, you can consider our adoption of the dragons to be an extension of that, as their queen was holding them as her thralls to steal food for her."

The crowd in the room murmured at that. Éimhín glanced at one of the dragons—Cinaed's Gronckle, a bright yellow and black specimen who had been inevitably named Bumblebee. The dragon was lazing about in the rafters of the mead hall, looking down with curiosity at the ongoings. Then Éimhín turned back to Hákon. "So… without freeing thralls, you wouldn't have dragons?"

"I'd suspect not," Hákon said, "for any number of reasons."

Éimhín seemed to take that in, and gave a curt nod. "Well, then. I think… that I have some thinking to do."

Hákon shrugged. "Do that, and tell me where your thoughts lead, please." He looked out at the crowd. "I call this judgment finished! Go about your days!"

As they dispersed, Éimhín came up to him. "Chief Hofferson…"

"Yes?"

"I… I have questions. On how you do things on Berk."

###

The Smithy, Isle of Berk, Alban Hebrides

Having finished telling over the litany of harassment, Heather looked around the other faces of her friends in the smithy… and they were all sympathetic, although Fishlegs looked like a stiff breeze would send him flying. At the revelation that Twiglet was harassing her because of him, he'd promptly gone into denial, arguing that Twiglet must have known that she was there listening to her talk to Lopsides and was attempting to mislead her. Some cross-examination had brought that to an end, but he still looked dubious as to his desirability, and seemed to be incredibly uncomfortable over the whole situation.

But everyone else seemed to be having much less complicated emotions over the whole thing. Hiccup especially looked as if he were actively restraining himself from marching over to the kitchens and asking some very straightforward questions. But if he did that, it would crush her hopes of ending this in a peaceful fashion. All it would do was entrench the resentment against her.

So she looked down and said, "But I don't want you to do anything…"

Wulfhild spoke up. "Heather. Ignoring that you could have died today, these 'pranks' have cost you money and threatened to injure you. Why shouldn't Hiccup just march in there and arrest Twiglet for assault?"

"Because she has friends!" Heather said, anguished. "Do you really think that they'd treat me any better if I got my friend, the Chief's Heir, to come in and stomp on them for me?"

Hiccup grimaced at that. "Okay. I see your point. But Heather… I can't tell if they're trying to hurt you, or break you and Fishlegs up, or just try to embarrass you. And that worries me. Like the twins would go for embarrassing you. That's one thing. But cutting your belaying lines? That letter?" He shook his head, setting his braids to swaying. "I know that I gave you my oath… but I'd ask you to please reconsider."

Heather shook her head. "No."

"Heather! Please! Let me help you! Your right to live in peace—and in one piece—is more important than their 'feelings' on this." He got to his feet. "Also, you're my friend, Heather. You're our friend." He waved around, indicating everyone in the room. "Why would you want us to let this go?"

"I'm not saying let it go. I'm… I'm asking you to work with me on it. Okay? Um… okay, so, I know that Twiglet is responsible for some of the stuff going on the in the kitchens. But that's Magnhild's responsibility, right? I don't actually know if they're the ones doing it to the stuff in my room—and I actually know that it can't be them for some of it, because I was in the kitchens with them during the times some of the pranks were being set. So either she has more help or there's other people."

"So?" Hiccup asked.

"So help me catch them—help me figure exactly who is doing it—and you can stomp on them to your heart's content, with specific accusations and all of that. But if you come in there like a rampaging bull and start making accusations without anything to back it up, you're just going to piss them off, and they're going to target me ten times as hard as they are now," she said earnestly.

Hiccup paused and seemed to be considering that. Astrid bent down and the two of them whispered back and forth between them, as Heather dry-washed her hands out of anxiety.

Then Hiccup nodded and sighed. "Fine. That makes sense." His brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed. "But if there's another near-fatal 'accident', I'm gonna have Dad arrest the entire kitchen staff and start asking questions, and I'll apologize to Magnhild later—assuming that she isn't in on it. Got it?"

She swallowed hard. If he did that, she'd be a pariah. But… at least he was willing to work with her on it?

She nodded slightly. "Okay."

Astrid asked, "So, Heather. You're the one with the spy training. Where do we start?"

Heather blinked. And the first thought that occurred to her was that letter. "Well… I have one idea. Wulf… you're the high almoner now, right?"

Wulfhild nodded.

"And, Astrid, you're still the Master of the Dragon, right?"

Astrid nodded.

"Could you look through what records you both have and see if you have anything written by Twiglet? So we can compare it to that letter?"

A sound of dawning understanding crossed through the room, and Astrid nodded. "I think that I might. And," she glanced at Wulfhild, "if I don't, she can get it for you."

###

Bucoleon Palace, Constantinople, Roman Empire

The priest-tutor, Father Metaxas, walked briskly into the Varangian barracks' office, dragging Sigurd behind him by the wrist.

Sigurd had no idea what was going on. He had started doing his Greek lessons with the tutor in the man's office just after lunch, and he'd immediately gotten lost—so he'd snagged a piece of parchment off of the man's desk and a charcoal stick to start scribing himself some notes while the man's back was turned, grabbing some book off of a shelf.

Metaxas had turned back around, and seen him writing, and had reacted in shock. And then Sigurd had been forced to show that he knew how to read and write runes—the priest had gotten a slate and some chalk and ordered him to write what he had dictated, or read what he had written. So he had. And now apparently he was in trouble.

Kristoffer saw them coming and gave a visible sigh. As soon as they were in speaking range, he asked, "What happened?"

"He's literate," said Metaxas bluntly. "Fluently literate Norse barbarians are rare, even among the noblemen's sons that join the Guard. I want him for scribe duty. We don't have enough of you people that know how to read and write as it is."

"Well, you can't have him. You may not have enough scribes, but we've only got the one dragon rider."

"I'll go to the bishop over this," the priest-tutor said testily.

"Feel free. And train him in Greek writing while you're at it!" Kristoffer said with a laugh.

"Oh, I plan to. And Latin."

Sigurd's eyes widened. What the Hel? What was the big deal? So he knew how to read and write!

…didn't everybody?

Didn't they?

Kristoffer was looking at him and the priest with laughter in his eyes. "Well, far be it for me to stop you. Maybe you can have him when we've got a good corps of dragon riders trained up."

Sigurd looked at Kristoffer, betrayed. The man had promised just two days ago to sit back and watch his saga unfold—not divert it into a scribing desk!

The tutor smiled grimly at this and started walking back off with Sigurd, having never released his wrist. "Come with me, boy. We have more work to do."

Not really having a choice, he followed Metaxas. The man, part of the Greek contingent of the Varangians and a consecrated priest, spoke Norse fluently, and had a personality that reminded Sigurd of some of the more acidic members of the tribe back home.

"Boy, Sigurd, how did you learn to read and write? And why didn't you mention it before?" he abruptly demanded as they approached the tiny room where he had his lessons.

Sigurd, a bit taken aback by the vehemence in the question, stammered out, "I don't… I don't understand!" And he didn't. It was like being asked 'how did you learn to tie a knot?' or 'how did you learn to walk?'

Metaxas scowled at him. "Boy. You've been trained as a scribe. Your handwriting is skilled, and you have a large vocabulary. I would judge you as having been taught to the level of a rhētor, but I've rarely encountered a Norse barbarian with that skill level before—and all of those boasted about it with poems and sagas, and claimed status as noblemen or skalds. You did not. You made no mention of it. And I want to know why."

Sigurd blinked. "Huh?"

"Do you think that I'm a fool, Sigurd?"

He shook his head. "No, sir."

"Then who taught you?"

"The village teacher did!"

"Finally, we're getting somewhere." Metaxas stopped and leaned down at him, getting uncomfortably close to Sigurd's personal space. "Are you an exile then? Some lord's son banished—"

"I wasn't banished!" Snotlout said angrily. "I left of my own free will! I even gave Hi—gave my cousin a letter to my father when he asked!"

Metaxas' lips curled into a smile. "So your father is literate too, I presume? You are quite the puzzle, Trondsson. Who else did the village teacher instruct?"

He blinked, not comprehending the question. So he answered it. "Everybody, of course."

"So all of the noblemen's sons in your holding are taught?"

Sigurd cocked his head, confused, and then shook his head. "No… everybody."

"What do you mean, 'everybody'?"

Sigurd shrugged and said, "I was taught along with every other kid my age. That's just how we do it! How we've always done it!"

"Feh. I don't believe you. Your entire tribe is taught to read? And ruin perfectly good peasants?"

"No, it's true!" he protested as they reentered the room where they'd been sitting a short while before. "We're a tiny tribe, like seven hundred people, but everyone knows how to read! I didn't think it was special until… until now!"

"Well, you're here now. Why?"

"Why…?"

"Why did your whole tribe get trained in literacy? Maintain control over the thralls and slaves?"

"We don't practice thralldom on Berk," Snotlout said back angrily.

"Then who does the planting and reaping? Who does the cooking and labor?" the priest-tutor demanded, his tone one of strained patience.

"We all do!"

"I won't have you making up tales to try to distract me, boy! Now tell me the truth! Why were you taught to read and write?!"

"It is the truth!" Snotlout shouted. "And I'm not even the best one! Hiccup and Fishlegs were better than I was!"

Metaxas glared at him. "I said no lies. Why were you taught to read and write!? I want an answer!"

"Because we had to! Because dragons always came and attacked our village and people might die and we needed to know how to do the things that they had known how to do if they died! So we wrote it all down!" Snotlout bellowed, dragging back up memories that he had thought long-forgotten.

The priest, a little taken aback, began to smile. "Now that I believe. So… who are Hiccup and Fishlegs?"

"My cousin and one of my friends from growing up," Sn… Sigurd said irritatedly, annoyed at his slip.

"And how literate are they?"

Sigurd shut his mouth, and then yelped as Metaxas rapped his knuckles with a stick. "Answer me!"

Taking a deep sigh, Sigurd said, "Very. Hi… my cousin writes books and is an artist with a whole shelf of sketchbooks. My friend is a scribe and collects books from the traders. I don't know how many languages he can read, but I recognize some of those," he waved at the letters on the spines of the books on the shelf, "from his collection."

The priest, eyes shining, had Sigurd identify the letters he recognized, and the priest was practically rubbing his hands together a few minutes later at the discovery that Fishlegs could read and maybe write Latin, Greek, Aramaic, and Norse.

"And you swear before Christ that you are not lying to me?" he said sternly to Snotlout.

He nodded, feeling small and angry. He had come all this way, risked so much… and his cousin and former friend were still showing him up and making him look worthless and weak.

"And where is your village, boy? And what is it called?"

"Northern Alba, among the islands. It's called Berk," he said numbly, rubbing at his sore knuckles.

"Excellent. Well, let us continue. You have much to learn." He pulled from the shelf one of the imposing tomes with Greek lettering on the spine. "Time for you to learn to scribe, as well as speak, a civilized tongue."

He opened the book, and laid it out in front of Sigurd. A dense and foreign text presented itself, and he swallowed at the sight of it. Metaxas handed him the slate and chalk. "Scribe these as I point them out to you." He started to pick out individual letters on the page. "This is the letter alpha… this is the letter beta… this is the letter gamma…"