Joe Abercrombie - Half a War

Mother Scaer gave a disgusted hiss. ‘Not even Grandmother Wexen presumed to set herself so high.’

‘This is for the greater good, not my own.’

‘So say all tyrants!’

‘If you despise my methods so, perhaps you should give up that elf-weapon you carry? Or is it not quite the evil you first feared?’

‘Sometimes one must fight evil with evil.’ Scaer looked towards Yarvi’s guards, and shifted the relic she carried beneath her coat. ‘If you have taught the world one lesson it is that.’

Yarvi’s frown hardened. ‘You should have the proper respect, Mother Scaer. For the office of Grandfather of the Ministry, if not the man who holds it.’

‘Here is all the respect I have for you at once.’ And she spat onto the floor at his feet. ‘You have not heard the last from me.’ And her footsteps clapped in the great space above as she stalked from the Hall of Whispers.

‘A shame.’ Yarvi wiped the spittle calmly away with his shoe. ‘When we were always such good friends. Still.’ And he turned to Koll with a grin at the corner of his mouth. ‘Enemies are the price of success, eh?’

‘So I’m told, Father Yarvi-’ Koll quickly corrected himself. ‘ Grandfather Yarvi, that is.’

‘So it is. Walk with me.’

Though Mother Sun was high and bright there had been rain that morning, and the grey stones of Skekenhouse were dotted with puddles. The fires had all been put out but there was still the faintest tang of burning. The killing had been stopped but there was still an edge of violence on the air. The calls of the traders came muted, the eyes of the people were cast down. Even a dog’s distant bark sounded somehow fearful. Mother War might have folded her wings but Father Peace was far from settled at his loom.

A crowd of supplicants had gathered in the long shadow of the Tower of the Ministry. Folk come to beg for some prisoner released or some indulgence granted. They knelt in the wet, cringing as Grandfather Yarvi swept past, implacable, and called out thanks to him for saving the city from the Shends.

None mentioned that he’d been the one who gave the city up to the Shends in the first place. Not to his face, anyway.

‘Folk used to nod to you,’ murmured Koll. ‘Bow if they really wanted something. Now they kneel.’

‘It is only proper that they kneel to the Grandfather of the Ministry,’ he murmured, acknowledging the most servile efforts with a generous wave of his shrivelled hand.

‘Aye, but do they really kneel to him, or to the elf-weapons his guards carry?’

‘What matters is that they kneel.’

‘Are fear and respect really the same?’

‘Of course not,’ said Yarvi, walking on and leaving more of his many guards to clear away the crowd. ‘Respect soon blows away in a storm. Fear has far deeper roots.’

Teams of thralls crawled among the ruins, struggling under the ready whips of chain-masters, working to restore the city to the way it had been before the sack. Some of them, Koll was sure, were folk who’d stood high in the favour of Grandmother Wexen. Now they found that the higher you climbed, the further there was to fall.

It made Koll wonder whether they’d really changed the world so much for all that blood shed. Different folk wearing the collars, maybe, and different folk holding the chains, but life was still life. Same questions. Same answers.

‘You are unusually quiet,’ said Grandfather Yarvi as they walked on towards the docks.

‘Sometimes you work so hard for something that when it comes you hardly know what to do with it.’

‘Victory rarely feels much of a victory, in the end.’ Yarvi’s eyes slid sideways and it seemed, as ever, that he could see straight into Koll’s thoughts. ‘Is that all, though?’

‘There’s something that’s been … well … bothering me.’ It had in fact been burning a hole through Koll’s mind since the day it happened.

‘You’ve never been one to keep your worries to yourself.’

Koll twisted his neck and felt the reassuring rattle of the storekeeper’s weights under his shirt. ‘My mother always told me honesty was a man’s best shield.’

‘Fine advice, as your mother’s always was. Be honest, then.’

‘Grandmother Wexen …’ He picked at a fingernail. ‘She said she didn’t send the men who burned Skifr’s family.’

Yarvi peered at Koll down his nose. He seemed to peer from a long way up, since he became Grandfather of the Ministry. ‘A lie. Like the lie about there being a traitor within our alliance. Grandmother Wexen knew how to sow discord among her enemies. Now she does it from beyond the Last Door.’

‘Maybe …’ Koll pressed the tips of his forefingers together so they turned blotchy white. Every word was an effort. ‘Ask who benefits, you always told me.’

Grandfather Yarvi came to a sudden halt and Koll heard the guards halt with him. He could see their shadows stretching out towards him on the cobblestones. The shadows of the elf-weapons they carried. ‘And who benefits?’

‘You do,’ croaked Koll, not looking up from his fingers, and added in a rush, ‘or we do. Gettland. All of us. Without that hall-burning Skifr would not have come north. Without Skifr there would have been no journey to Strokom. Without the journey to Strokom, no elf-weapons. Without elf-weapons, no victory at Bail’s Point. Without victory at Bail’s Point-’

The weight of Father Yarvi’s bad hand on his shoulder put a stop to Koll’s blathering. ‘The future is a land wrapped in fog. Do you really think I could have planned all that?’

‘Perhaps …’

‘Then you flatter and insult me both at once. I have always said that power means having one shoulder in the shadows. But not both, Koll. Skifr was our friend. Do you really think I could send men to kill her? To burn her children?’

Looking into his pale eyes then, Koll wondered whether there was anything the First of Ministers would not do. But he had no more evidence than Mother Scaer, and even less chance of getting satisfaction. He forced a quick smile onto his face, and shook his head. ‘Of course not. It just … bothered me, is all.’

Father Yarvi turned away. ‘Well, you cannot be so easily bothered if you are to take my place as Minister of Gettland.’ He tossed it out like a trainer might a bone and, sure enough, Koll chased after it like an eager puppy.

‘Me?’ He hurried to catch up, his voice gone high as a little girl’s. ‘Minister of Gettland?’

‘You are the same age I was when I took up Mother Gundring’s staff. I know you do not quite believe in yourself, but I believe in you. It is high time you took your test, and swore your oath, and became a minister. You will sit beside the Black Chair, and be Father Koll, and your birthright will be the plants and the books and the soft word spoken.’

Everything he’d wanted. Respect, and authority, and his talents put to use. Father Koll. The best man he could be. So why did the thought fill him with dread?

The docks crawled with humanity, people bargaining, arguing and threatening in six languages Koll knew and at least six he didn’t, ships tangling at the wharves, tangling with each other as they came and went, oars clashing and scraping.

Many were leaving Skekenhouse in the murk of mistrust that had followed Gorm’s death. The Shends had already cleared out with their plunder, grumbling at getting only a part of what they were promised. The Throvenmen were heading home to rebuild their broken farms, their broken towns, their broken country. Without the chain of Gorm’s fame binding them the Vanstermen were splintering into factions already, racing back to safeguard what was theirs or set about taking what was someone else’s before winter gripped the north.