"I told the Thing. Not one fish from the common store — "
"It's not from the common store. It's my share. My bread I give to Steinunn's youngest, and my fish I give to this." He nodded at the stone. "I'm the high seat. Nobody measures what I eat."
She looked at him properly then, in the moonlight, and saw it. She had been so busy counting what was gone from inside her that she had not seen what was going from him: the hollows under his cheekbones, the brooch pinning a cloak that now hung loose.
"Since when?"
"The second night."
"You had no right."
"Maybe not." He wiped his hand on his cloak. "It took your father's voice. I never heard your father's voice. I never rode your horse. I wasn't here when your brother was born or when your mother braided your hair. I couldn't stop it taking any of that, and it was yours to give, and you gave it, and I said at the Thing that was your right." He was quiet a moment. "But it's not your right to stop me going without supper."
"You think this pays for it?" The words came out hard. "For that night? You think if you starve yourself, I'll forget you held me back?"
"No," he said. "I think you'll forget other things."
That stopped her.
The wyrm shifted on the stone; the chains clinked. Somewhere in the hall a sleeper coughed.
"Tell me why," Eydis said. "Tell me what you meant. *Dishonor.* What was there to dishonor? We were going to kill it."
He took a long time to answer.
"I came to Varmdal with nothing," he said. "A hostage in a wedding cloak. Your people looked at me like a debt they'd been forced to accept. Everything I have here, I have because when I say a thing, it happens. That's all. That's the only thing I own in this valley that didn't come from your father." He looked at the wyrm. "Seven generations kept Hervor's oath. We were the first to end it. I wanted it ended by law, with the founder's axe, with the dead asked. Not with a fist. I wanted it clean — for you, Eydis. So you'd never have to remember it as a thing you did in hate."
She stared at him.