Sif looked to her friends. They watched Leifsson, wide-eyed. "Not over your candle," she said, facing Leifsson again. "Here." She held out her hand. Leifsson hesitated, then passed her the scroll.
She slipped it into her sleeve and stood. Across the hall was a cask of the Akademi's small beer. She headed in that direction. As she passed the hearth, she twitched her hand toward the embers and scratched her wrist. The fire flared for a moment as paper lit and burned.
She paid it no mind, pulled four mugs' worth of beer from the tap at the cask's base, and returned to the table. She passed the mugs around, and raised her eyebrows at Leifsson.
"And death," Sif put in.
RPJ Core and RPJ Police Cops are now in beta. I'll have a news post about that later in the week. For now, you can visit the RPJ page in the top menu to find the download links.
Libra Cervisiae proceeds apace. The project blog has more.
She descended the staircase to the great hall. As usual, it was nearly empty at this hour, and the fire on the hearth had burned down to a man-sized pile of glowing embers.
Einar and Lilja sat near the fire, engaged in conversation which struck Sif as a bit too innocent. Nobody talked so eagerly about studying.
Leifsson had a table to himself on the far side of the hearth, away from the tafl boards and the late-night readers. He had a candle and a book of his own, which he flipped through at a pace Sif thought was incompatible with paying the words any attention.
Sif paused. "No," she said. Leifsson's raised eyebrow demanded an explanation. "I wasn't alone last night," she said.
"Goransson and Orrisdottir?" Leifsson guessed.
Leifsson's eyebrow rose again. Sif wondered if he practiced, or if anyone else got the same number of searching looks.
Sif wasn't sure if she appreciated that or not. She turned in her chair, caught Einar's eye, and waved. Nonchalantly, Einar and Lilja joined them. Einar took a brace of chairs from the next table over and set them down to Sif's right.
"Right." Einar withdrew the rolled paper from his sleeve and passed it to Leifsson.
Leifsson unrolled it. It was blank. He weighed down the top edge with his book and the bottom edge with his candle, then placed his hand on the center of the page.
She hoped that was clear: an old threat, thought vanquished, now returning.
"The jötnar? But nobody's seen a jötun in—" Einar began.
As the wheels turned in Einar's head, Sif gave Lilja an approving nod.
They had a few hours before the Rikesarkiv's tenth bell. Sif returned to her room, gave Geirsson's history a longing look, and instead took a textbook from her trunk, along with her ælfish dictionary. She sat cross-legged on her bed, and immersed herself in a dry treatment of the few dozen cumulations and forms Herre Leifsson would expect her to know in the classroom tomorrow.
The ninth bell sounded, and some time later, mercifully, came the three-quarters bell. Sif closed the book, set it aside with a good deal less reverence than Geirsson's history deserved, and headed for the door.
Sif isn't used to relying on other people. Her first impulse is always to go it alone.
Lilja stood. Sif stacked their dishes—she saw no reason to make the servants' lives harder—and followed suit.
Einar was playing the besieging side, the one which started at the outside of the board and had to keep the king from escaping. Sif considered it the harder task, although she was the wrong person to ask. She aspired to be merely bad someday.
Sif glanced at the board. Rolfsson and his new opponent were busily returning the pieces to their starting spaces. "Someday, you'll have to show me how to play," she said.
"Someday, you'll have to show me how to win," Sif clarified, looking back up and grinning.