Joe Abercrombie - Half a War

‘Varoslaf has come for his mouthful of the meat.’ Koll frowned towards the wharves as they grew closer. ‘And he’s brought a lot of ships.’

Thorn’s eyes were narrowed to slits as she scanned across those long, lean, vessels. ‘I count thirteen.’

‘More than just a show of strength,’ murmured Queen Laithlin. ‘I think the Prince of Kalyiv means to stay.’

Mother Sun was warm outside, but in the hall there was a chill.

Prince Varoslaf sat at the head of a long table, so polished one could see another, blurry, Prince Varoslaf reflected in its top. One was more than enough to worry Koll.

He was not a large man, wore no weapon, had not a hair on his head, his jaw, even his brows. There was no wrath, no scorn, no brooding threat on his face, only a stony blankness somehow more troubling than any snarl. Behind him was gathered a crescent of fierce warriors, another of kneeling slaves with heavy thrall-chains dangling. Beside him stood a spear-thin servant, coins twinkling from a scarf across her forehead.

The nine headmen of Roystock sat on one side of the table between Varoslaf and Laithlin, boasting their best silks and richest jewels but with their nervousness written plainly on their faces. Like the crew of a rudderless ship, drifting in the northern ice, hoping they wouldn’t be crushed between two mighty bergs. Koll had a feeling hope would get them nowhere in this company.

‘Queen Laithlin, Jewel of the North.’ Varoslaf’s voice was as dry and whispery as the rustling of autumn leaves. ‘I feel favoured by the gods to once again bask in the radiance of your presence.’

‘Great prince,’ answered Laithlin, her own entourage crowding with heads bowed into the hall behind her, ‘the whole Shattered Sea trembles at your coming. I congratulate you on your famous victory over the Horse People.’

‘If one can call it a victory over the flies every time the horse swishes his tail. The flies always return.’

‘I have brought gifts for you.’ Two of Laithlin’s thralls, twins with braids so long they wore them wound around one arm, shuffled forward with boxes of inlaid wood, imported at daunting expense from far-off Catalia.

But the prince held up his hand, and Koll saw the deep groove across his calloused fingers left by constant practice with a bow. ‘As I have gifts for you. There will be time for gifts later. Let us first discuss the matter.’

The Golden Queen raised one golden brow. ‘Which is?’

‘The great Divine, and the money that flows along it, and how we should share it between us.’

Laithlin sent her thralls scuttling back with a waft of her finger. ‘Do we not already have agreements that have profited us both?’

‘Put plainly, I would like them to profit me more,’ said Varoslaf. ‘My minister has devised many ways of doing so.’

There was a pause. ‘You have a minister, great prince?’ asked Koll.

Varoslaf turned his chill gaze upon Koll and he could almost feel his balls retreating into the warmth of his stomach. ‘The rulers of the Shattered Sea seem to find them indispensable. I thought I would buy one of my own.’

He made the slightest jerk of his bald head and one of the slaves stood, and pushed back her hood, and Koll heard Thorn give a low growl.

Apart from a thin braid above one ear the woman’s hair had been clipped to yellow fuzz. She wore a thrall-ring of silver wire around her long, lean neck and another around her wrist, a fine chain between them not quite long enough for comfort. She had been tattooed on one cheek with a prancing horse, the prince’s mark of ownership, but it seemed her hatred was still at liberty. Her pink-rimmed eyes, sunken in bruised sockets, blazed with it as she glared across the hall.

‘Gods,’ Koll murmured under his breath, ‘this is ill luck.’ He knew that face. Isriun, daughter to King Uthil’s treacherous brother Odem, who once had been Father Yarvi’s betrothed, then Minister of Vansterland, but had taken too high a hand with the Breaker of Swords and been sold as a slave.

‘Odem’s brat dogs me once again,’ hissed Queen Laithlin.

The foremost of the headmen, a sharp-eyed old merchant festooned with silver chains, cleared his throat. ‘Most feared great prince.’ His voice wobbled only a little as Varoslaf’s eyes slid towards him. ‘And most admired Queen Laithlin, these matters concern us all. If I may-’

‘It is traditional for the farmer and the butcher to divide the meat without seeking the opinions of the pigs,’ said Varoslaf.

For a moment the silence was absolute, then the Prince of Kalyiv’s slender servant leaned slowly towards the headmen and gave a thunderous pig’s oink. The nearest recoiled. Several flinched. All paled. They must have closed many fine deals at that finely polished table, but it was awfully plain they would be turning no profits today.

‘What is it you want, great prince?’ asked Laithlin.

Isriun leaned down to whisper in Varoslaf’s ear, her braid brushing gently against his shoulder, her bright eyes flickering to Laithlin and back.

Her master’s face remained an unknowable mask. ‘Only what is fair.’

‘There is always a way,’ said the queen, dryly. ‘We could perhaps offer you an extra tenth part of a tenth part of every cargo …’

Isriun leaned down again, whispering, whispering, chewed-short fingernails fussing at the tattoo on her cheek.

‘Four tenths of a tenth part,’ droned Varoslaf.

‘Four parts is as far from fair as Roystock is from Kalyiv.’

This time Isriun didn’t bother to speak through her master, but simply snapped the rejoinder to Laithlin’s face. ‘The battlefield is not fair.’

The queen narrowed her eyes. ‘So you came for a battle?’

‘We are ready for one,’ said Isriun, lip wrinkled with contempt.

As long as she was whispering poison in the prince’s ear they would travel a stony path indeed. Koll remembered the skinned men swinging on the docks of Kalyiv, and swallowed. Varoslaf was not a man to be intimidated, nor tricked into a rage, nor swayed by flattery or bluster or jokes. Here was a man no man dared challenge. A man whose power was built on fear.

Laithlin and Isriun had fallen into a duel as savage and skilful as any in the training square. They slashed mercilessly at each other with portions and prices, stabbed with tithes and parried with fractions while Varoslaf sat back in his chair, his hairless face a mask.

Koll saw only one chance, and he put his fingers to the weights under his shirt. He thought of his mother, screaming at him to come down from the mast. No doubt you will be safer on the deck. But if you wish to change the world, you must take a risk or two.

‘Oh, great prince!’ He was surprised to find his voice as bright and easy as it might have been in Rin’s forge. ‘Perhaps you should retire to bed and leave your minister to make the arrangements.’

Maybe cowards handle great terrors better than heroes, for they face fear every day. Koll forced his feet forward, forced his face into a smile, flapped his hands about with carefree disrespect.

‘I see your decisions are all made by King Uthil’s niece. A snake that turned against her own family. A snake that still drips poison even collared and chained. Why waste all our time pretending otherwise? After all,’ and Koll put one hand on his chest, ‘it is traditional for the farmer,’ and he held that hand out towards Isriun, ‘and the butcher … to divide the meat without seeking the opinions …’ And now he held both hands out towards Queen Laithlin and Prince Varoslaf. ‘Of the pigs.’

There was a disbelieving silence. Then Varoslaf’s guards bristled. One muttered a curse in the tongue of the Horse People. Another stepped forward, reaching for his curved sword. Then there was a sharp smack as Thorn hit Koll backhanded across the face.