After the feast, the hall took a long time to empty. Servants jostled at the doors with pitchers, drunken kinsmen searched for their gloves, and boys argued over who would be first to touch Ragned's sword without him noticing. Warriors discussed the spring waters, praised the keel of the new ship and pretended Steinar had already left.
And he had.
But not for his place on the sleeping shelf.
He went behind the kitchen gates, where slops had darkened the clay by the wall and the snow had melted down to mud. There sat the people who were fed after everyone else in the hall: old women, fatherless boys, people with maimed hands, outsiders taken for debt, and the rest of the yard whom no one cared to notice.
Steinar sat on an upturned bucket and set the cup on his knees.
No one came over at once.
Disgrace had its uses: people approached Steinar only after making certain none of the high-born were listening.
Modra came first.
She was not as old as she pretended. Her back was bent more from habit than age, and the eyes beneath her grey kerchief saw too much. In her youth, it was said, Modra had known herbs, bones and words that made cows calve more easily. Later they called for her only when it was already too late to help a child, or when they did not want to hire a good healer for a wounded man.
"They gave you a cup," Modra said.
"I noticed."
"Not everyone notices a gift when it strikes him in the face."
Steinar ran a finger around the inside of the rim. The notches beneath his nail were dry and rough.
"It isn't a gift."
"No," Modra agreed. "It's a reckoning."
She settled beside him without asking. Her clothes smelled of smoke, sour milk and dried herbs. Modra took the cup only when Steinar released it of his own accord.
"Who kept this reckoning?"
"Those who could not carve it into their own skin," Modra said. "Skin burns. Bone is found. The master of the yard takes the stone away. But a cup passes from hand to hand. People take it for a disgrace, so no one asks what has been carved into it."
Steinar looked towards the hall doors. Ragned was laughing there with their father's men. His elder brother had never needed to listen for whispers by the back door.
"What do the notches mean?"
Modra turned the cup until the firelight from the kitchen touched the rim.
"This one: a woman from the fishing hut fed Hroald's men when the snow trapped them. Later they took her son as an oarsman without a share. He fell overboard during a fight, and no one went back for him. This one: a smith gave the iron for Ragned's first sword, and when he died, his daughter was sold for a debt that did not exist. This one: a kinless oarsman pulled your grandfather from the water. In the song, he became a wave."
Steinar said nothing.
Every notch was smaller than a fingernail. Behind each stood a person who had been given no line.
"Why are you telling me?"
Modra smiled without mirth.
"Because they handed it to you empty. Men only boast over a full cup. An empty one they begin to examine."
A girl watched them from the shadows by the kitchen doors. She was thin, with someone else's sleeve hanging down to her fingers and a white stripe from an old scar across her chin. When Steinar turned his head, she hid her hand behind her back too late. A piece of dried cheese gleamed between her fingers.
"Eska," Modra said. "Put it back."
The girl scowled.
"He hasn't eaten."
"He's a jarl's son."
"A jarl's son eats in the hall."
Steinar held out his palm. Eska placed the cheese in his hand, but watched him as though expecting a blow. He broke the piece in two, handed one half back to her and ate the other himself.
Eska blinked.
Modra said nothing, but Steinar saw her fingers tighten slightly around the cup.
"The deepest notch," he said.
Modra stopped smiling.
"Leave it alone."
"Then that is where we'll begin."
She studied him for a long time, trying to decide whether he truly was a fool or merely good at pretending.
Then she jabbed a dry finger at a dark mark on the inside of the base.
"Borri Wedge. Shipwright. Once he made keels that held well in the western waters. Then one hand stopped obeying him, his tongue turned bitter, and Brand decided there was no reason to sing of a craftsman who could no longer hold an axe straight."
"Where is he?"
"By the old shore. Where they mend what the rich do not want to see."
Steinar rose.
"Are you going?"
Modra handed the cup back to him.
"No. If I go with you, people will decide I believe in you."
"Do you?"
"I believe in the notches," Modra said. "People lie more often."
Saiva stood in shadow at the kitchen gates, beyond the reach of the hearthlight. She had heard the last words. Steinar knew because she made no pretence of having come by chance.
"Borri will spit at your feet," Saiva said.
"That is still more than they poured me in the hall."
She wanted to smile, but restrained herself.
"Take care, Empty Cup. Sometimes an empty cup is more dangerous than a full one."
He gave her a deliberately lazy bow and a foolish smile, so that anyone watching would decide he had understood nothing.
Saiva narrowed her eyes.
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