The people gathered for the morning dispute before dawn.
Morning on the Grey Land was pale and wet. Low mist lay over the water, and dew had darkened the stones. The people stood in a semicircle, but a clear line divided them: on one side stood Ragned's tents and two sound ships, on the other the turf walls and the repaired, wretched hull of Steinar's ship.
Brand deliberately began without a tune.
A song might anger those who feared finding themselves in someone else's debt. A bare recitation without ornament sounded like an incontestable reckoning.
"The first notch. In the year of famine, Hroald's kin fed people without a hearth. The second notch. In the year of the southern raid, the kin bought three children out of the slave market. The third notch. In a storm, the kin's old ship took aboard oarsmen without shares. The fourth notch…"
He did not name all the notches.
Steinar did not notice at once.
Eska noticed first.
She sat beside Modra with her sleeve clenched in her fist. Her crooked copies were on the sleeve. When Brand passed over the deep line at the very edge of the cup, the girl raised her eyes to Steinar.
She said nothing, only looked.
Steinar understood: there was a notch on the cup that Brand did not want to explain.
Then all was not lost.
Ragned stepped forward when Brand had finished.
"You heard him. Debt does not vanish across the sea. Anyone the kin fed or bought free who then left beneath the kin's cup must remain under the kin's rule. I am not taking these people as plunder. I am restoring them to the old order."
Farin squared his shoulders and deliberately took his place in the front row. All his life he had tried to go unnoticed, but now there was nowhere left to retreat.
Ragned looked at him.
"You, oarsman. Who gave you a share?"
Farin answered:
"I earned it with my own hands."
Men among Ragned's people sniggered.
Ragned raised an eyebrow.
"A hand without a master grants no share. Did Steinar give it to you? Then he can take it away. Did the kin give him the cup? Then the kin's rule stands above his gift."
Steinar understood that Ragned was using yesterday's word 'mine' against him.
He could declare Farin his man, but that would only confirm Ragned's argument.
Steinar said nothing.
Then Borri stepped forward.
He walked badly: the damp had made his injured arm swell again, and his face had gone grey. Under one arm the old craftsman carried a work board from the hull, blackened by pitch, salt and palms.
"Are you going to speak, ship's splinter?" Ragned asked.
Borri spat on the ground, not at Ragned, showing that he still observed the courtesies.
"A splinter keeps you above water when iron sinks."
He laid the board before the circle.
There were notches on its inner side.
Now the notches were clear and exposed. An old layer of salt and pitch covered them, so no one could have cut them the night before. Beside each was the mark of one of the witnesses: a thumbnail trace, a cut, a scorched edge, a scratch from a fish bone or one of Eska's charcoal dots.
Borri said:
"The shares in the bad ship. Cut before we sailed. Confirmed by those who took the risk at sea. The salt of the first crossing is ground into them. If these are not shares, then your ship is only wood, Ragned: the sea cannot read the marks of a kin."
Brand narrowed his eyes.
"Who told you to cut them?"
Borri looked at Steinar.
Then at Farin.
Then at Saiva.
"The ship. It creaked while we argued. I listened."
Steinar's people breathed out in relief.
Borri continued:
"Here is Farin's share. Deeper than the others because the old order will try to erase it first. Here is Nera's share. Without her, you would not have lived to see this dispute. Here is Saiva's share. Her song made the oarsmen take up their oars again when Brand frightened them with oblivion. Here is Eska's share. A small one, but try to dispute it, and first name everything the girl did over the winter."
Eska tried to look indifferent, but her pleased smile gave her away.
Ragned said:
"A child's scratch does not make someone a part-owner."
For the first time Farin stepped forward of his own accord.
"And does a kin's song?"
The silence that fell was not victorious but dangerous.
Brand understood that he had failed to turn the shares into an inherited debt.
Ragned did not reach for his sword.
He smiled.
"Good. Let the bad ship prove its bad shares. But no one leaves for the western waters before evening. The dispute is not over."
At that very moment they discovered that the scouting boat sent out in the night with three people aboard to examine the drifting wood had not returned.
Only a rope remained on the wet sand, chafed through against a stone.
While the people argued over old rights, the current carried away three living people.
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