A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,54

already are. They don’t want us to threaten their position again.”

Kam scoffed and narrowed his eyes. “We were children when that happened.”

“So were they. But they remember.”

My cousin folded his arms. “You’re making it sound like we have more to fear from them than we do from the giants.”

“We do, Kam. The Hathrim might want to kill us, but these other clans—they want to disgrace us.”

“I think your priorities could stand some examination, Nel.”

“Our reputation outlasts our bodies. You know this to be true. My parents are gone, yet I am paying for their actions. We all are.”

“That’s not the way I see it, cuz. I mean, sure, they got treated like weeds in a vineyard, but apart from missing them every day, the arguments of the past don’t affect my life in the slightest. I have a profession and may have a family soon, and there isn’t anyone trying to take that away from me. Clan politics aren’t my concern, nor are they the concern of most people. It’s only you who have to deal with that. The curse of being blessed, I guess.”

It was my turn to scoff at him, remembering how much I enjoyed running on the Leaf Road. “I don’t feel cursed.”

“Time to start acting blessed, then?” my cousin said, his eyebrows raised so high that they nearly melted into the hair on top of his head.

“Yeah,” I admitted. He’d scolded me well, and it was what I needed. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” he said, and clapped me a couple of times on the back. “We’ll find the giants, and all will be well. I mean, with the other clans.” He winced. “Not sure about the giants.”

And that wry, halfhearted joke of Kam’s almost put me on the same side as Pak Sey ben Kor and Tip Fet ben Lot: I hoped we wouldn’t find the giants at all, and my reputation and the clan’s could grow mold. Because if we did find them, it wouldn’t just be the Nentian pines in danger. It would be Kam and Yar and Pen and whoever else would be joining us tomorrow.

I didn’t like the way this tree was branching, but I had no way to prune it.

—

“Speaking of Hearthfire Gorin Mogen, let’s catch up with him and the fate of his migration northward.”

Fintan’s transformation into Hearthfire Gorin Mogen evoked a much louder response than it had the first time; more people could see him now. But unlike previously, the giant wasn’t cloaked in an ice howler fur but rather in his customary slate gray lava dragon leathers shot through with streaks of black and maroon, tied with a dark blue belt and a steel buckle engraved with the Mogen crest. His beard, too, was different in that it appeared to be groomed and gathered at the bottom with two heavy gold ties.

We came to fresh shores on the first day of the new year—the first official day of spring in 3042. An auspicious beginning for the Hathrim in the Nentian plains. Or perhaps I should think of them as something else. “The Mogen plains” has a pleasant sound to it. Perhaps in a month I will wake up feeling arrogant and declare it.

The vast stands of timber on the northern slopes of the Godsteeth beckoned to us in the wind. Never have I seen such riches! They will fuel a new age of prosperity for our people, and our hearths will smell of woodsmoke again instead of stinking blocks of compressed weeds and vegetables.

Thinking of hearths, I called my son Jerin to me before we set foot on the beach and charged him with forming a crew to harvest the first wood for our new home. We would need not only fires but docks for our fleet, for we would be dependent on the sea for a while and rocky beaches are not gentle to glass-bottomed boats. He predictably recruited his betrothed, Olet Kanek, and her small train of followers who had come with her from Tharsif to await the wedding. Her relationship to the powerful Hearthfires of Tharsif and Narvik would provide us a political and economic boost: They would be our first trading partners, no doubt, and perhaps provide us with new settlers. And once Winthir Kanek decided we had the right to be here, all the other Hearthfires would hasten to agree.

Volund hauled his thick blond braids and some of my gems aboard a ship and continued north to Hashan Khek, where he