Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80439 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80439 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
“You’re 5′5,” Freya says. “Have you seen the warriors who get to go off-world? There’s not one of them under 6′2, and that’s on the small side. You’re too small. And you refused to do any further education, so you won’t be qualified for scientific posts.”
“And you’re too small,” Mila adds, redundantly and unnecessarily.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I don’t want to be a soldier. I want to go see wild places. I want to discover new worlds. And take goats there. And I’m going to try out for the mission regardless. They said anyone can try. It’s an open call. I’m anyone.”
Mila just smirks at me. She enjoys winding me up. The middle child is supposed to be the peacemaker, but Mila didn’t get that memo.
“Before you head for the stars, would you run out for me and get some bread?” Freya says. “I would have baked some, but I have to sleep so much more at the moment.”
“Of course,” I say. “I’ll go to the corner shop.”
“No, get the shuttle and go into the city. There’s a bakery that makes a special pregnancy bread. It makes me feel less nauseous.”
Freya can ask me to do literally anything and I will do it. I am the baby of the family and I’m supposed to be spoiled, but I guess a lot of familial memos got lost in our family. This is something a husband should really be doing, but I’m actually very glad both Mila’s and Freya’s husbands are currently elsewhere. It’s so nice to enjoy our family home as sisters again without loud, bearded men saying loud, bearded things.
Before I go out, I put on a shawl and head covering, just to try to stay out of the eye line of any stray men, in case Mila was right about a slew of eligible bachelors spying me and assaulting me with their many marriage offers.
I am dressed plainly compared to most of the women I see on the streets. They are wearing quite gorgeous dresses in myriad colors and wefts. I am wearing a skirt that covers pants, because I have spent the last year clambering through brambles and I’ll never trust a garment that doesn’t completely cover my legs again. You get a thorn in your you-know-where and you don’t forget it.
I stand out, I’m afraid. I feel as though I don’t belong here, in one of the nicest places in the world, and in several other worlds besides.
Weltheim was a spot on the side of the river when my father built the house as a young man. Now it’s a thriving city. When I step out of the fence line, I am almost instantly swept up into a crowd that is flowing toward the center. On either side of our pretty grassy section replete with trees and flowers, and the river flowing at the back, are apartment buildings that tower dozens of stories into the sky.
Our family has maintained a little slice of heaven in the middle of relentless development, and I am so proud of all of us for holding our ground. We get offers on the place all the time, but nobody can stomach the notion of the house that our father built being bulldozed to make room for a big box filled with hundreds of strangers. We still believe in his dream.
But the city has grown even more since I was last here. It feels like progress is swallowing the world up, almost like the city is an entity of its own, and its growth doesn’t really have anything to do with what we people want. It’s just what it was born to do.
We are Vikings, after all, and Vikings do two things. No, not those two things. We travel, and we build. Our society has stood the test of time, through eons of war. Our clan, the Frayer, is considered the most learned and advanced of the clans. Traditionally, our society was arranged around bloodlines, but it is too large to do that now. The Frayer contains millions of souls. But blood still matters, and that is why my father’s house still stands, and why everybody in this city owes something to our family.
Our greatest enemies are the Vikar. None are to be found in this city. They are a brutal clan of raiders who spend their days traveling from world to world, wreaking havoc on unsuspecting colonies.
Weltheim is regarded as one of the capitals of Frayer civilization. Our ferocity has been turned toward a conquest of the mind and of the material world. We think, philosophize, and build—weapons, actually. Quite a lot of them.
That’s the dirty little secret that a filthy goatherd like me would never be permitted to bring up in polite society. All this wealth around us is in large part built on the back of weapon sales. And who do we sell most of our shiny wonderful weapons to? Well. Best not to ask, isn’t it?