Joe Abercrombie - Half the World

“It reminds us where we came from,” said Yarvi, good hand rubbing at his neck.

“Father Yarvi,” said Sumael, slipping free of the helmsman’s embrace. “Look at you. Lost at sea and desperately in need of someone to pick out the course.”

“Some things never change,” he said. “You look … prosperous.”

“You look awful.”

“Some things never change.”

“No hug for me?”

He gave a snort, almost a sob. “I’m worried if I do I might never let go.”

She walked over, their eyes fixed on each other. “I’ll take the risk.” And she put her arms around him, going up on her toes to hold him close. He put his head on her shoulder, and tears glistened on his gaunt cheeks.

Brand stared at Thorn, and she shrugged back. “I guess now we know who Sumael is.”

“So this is the embassy of Gettland?” Sumael poked at a lump of mold-speckled plaster and it dropped from the wall and scattered across the dusty boards. “You’ve an eye for a bargain.”

“I am my mother’s son,” said Yarvi. “Even if she’s not my mother anymore.” The crumbling hall they ate in could have seated forty but most of the crew had gone their own ways and the place had a hollow echo to it now. “What are you doing here, Sumael?”

“Apart from catching up with old friends?” She sat back in her chair and let one stained boot, strangely at odds with her fine clothes, drop onto the scarred tabletop. “I helped my uncle build a ship for the Empress Theofora and one thing led to another. Much to the annoyance of several of her courtiers, she made me inspector of her fleet.” A strand of hair fell across her face and she stuck her bottom lip out and blew it back.

“You always had a touch with boats.” Rulf was beaming at her as if at a favorite daughter unexpectedly come home. “And annoying people.”

“The empire’s boats were rotting in the harbor of Rugora, down the coast. Which, as it happens, was also where the empress’s niece Vialine was being educated.” That strand of hair fell loose again and she blew it back again. “Or imprisoned, depending how you look at it.”

“Imprisoned?” asked Brand.

“There’s little trust within the royal family here.” Sumael shrugged. “But Vialine wanted to understand the fleet. She wants to understand everything. We became friends, I suppose. When Theofora fell ill and Vialine was called back to the First of Cities, she asked me to go with her, and …” She lifted the chain of eyes with a fingertip and let it fall clinking. “By some strange magic I find myself counselor to the Empress of the South.”

“Talent floats to the top,” said Rulf.

“Like turds,” grunted Thorn.

Sumael grinned back. “You must be buoyant, then.”

Brand laughed, and Thorn gave him a glare, and he stopped.

“So you sit at the right hand of the most powerful woman in the world?” asked Rulf, shaking his balding head.

“By no means alone.” That strand fell again and Sumael gave a twitch of annoyance and started pulling the pins from her hair. “There’s a council of dozens, and most of them belong to Duke Mikedas. Vialine may be empress in name but he holds the power, and has no intention of sharing.”

“He shared nothing with us,” said Yarvi.

“I heard.” The hair fell in a black curtain across half of her face, the other eye twinkling. “At least you came away with your heads.”

“You think we’ll keep them if we stay?” asked Yarvi.

Sumael’s eye slid across to Thorn. “That depends on how diplomatic you can be.”

“I can be diplomatic,” snarled Thorn.

Sumael only smiled the wider. She seemed immune to intimidation. “You remind me of a ship’s captain Yarvi and I used to sail with.”

Yarvi burst out laughing, and so did Rulf, and Thorn frowned through it. “Is that an insult or a compliment?”

“Call it a little of both.” Yarvi sat forward, elbows on the table and his shrivelled hand clasped in the other. “The High King is making ready for war, Sumael. Who knows, war might already have started.”

“What allies do you have?” she asked, sweeping her hair up with both hands and gathering it in a knot.

“Fewer than we need.”

“Some things never change, eh, Yarvi?” Sumael slid the pins back with nimble fingers. “The duke is not so taken with the One God as Theofora was, but he means to honor the alliance with Grandmother Wexen, even so. He can pick a winner.”

“We shall see,” said Yarvi. “I need to speak to the empress.”

Sumael puffed out her cheeks. “I can try. But more than a hearing I cannot promise.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

She held his eye as she flicked the last pin home, its jewelled end glittering. “It’s not a question of debts. Not between us.”

Yarvi looked to be caught between laughing and crying, and in the end he sat back, and gave a ragged sigh. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

Sumael smiled, that notch of white tooth showing, and Brand found he was starting to like her. “And?”

“I’m glad I was wrong.”

“So am I.” That strand of hair fell into her face again and she frowned cross-eyed at it a moment, and blew it back.

Thorn pushed through a grumbling throng flooding into a temple for prayers. So many temples here, and so much crowding into them to pray.

“Worshipping this One God takes up a lot of time,” grunted Brand, trying to work his broad shoulders through the press.

“The tall gods and the small gods have their own business to be about. The One God only seems to care for meddling in everyone else’s.”

“And bells.” Brand winced at another clanging peel from a white tower just above them. “If I never hear another bloody bell I won’t complain.” He leaned close to whisper. “They bury their dead unburned. Bury them. In the ground. Unburned.”

Thorn frowned at the overgrown yard beside the temple, crammed with marking stones wonky as a beggar’s teeth, each one, she guessed, with a corpse beneath it, rotting. Hundreds of them. Thousands. A charnel pit right inside the city.

She gave a sweaty shudder at the thought, squeezing at the pouch that held her father’s fingerbones. “Damn this city.” He might have loved talking about the place, but she was starting to hate it. Far too big, the size of it was crushing. Far too noisy so you couldn’t think straight. Far too hot, always sticky and stinking day or night. Rubbish and flies and rot and beggars everywhere, it made her dizzy. So many people, and all of them passing through, no one knowing each other, or wanting anything from each other but to claw out a profit.

“We should go home,” she muttered.

“We only just got here.”

“Best time to leave a place you hate.”

“You hate everything.”

“Not everything.” She glanced sideways and caught Brand looking at her, and felt that tingling in her stomach again as he quickly looked away.

Turned out he didn’t just have the puzzled look and the helpless look, he had another, and now she was catching it all the time. Eyes fixed on her, bright behind a few stray strands of hair. Hungry, almost. Scared, almost. The other day, when they’d been pressed together on the ground, so very close, there’d been … something. Something that brought the blood rushing to her face, and not just her face either. In her guts she was sure. Just below her guts, even more so. But the doubts crowded into her head like the faithful into their temples at prayer time.

Could you just ask? I know we used to hate each other but I’ve come to think I might like you quite a lot. Any chance you like me, at all? Gods, it sounded absurd. All her life she’d been pushing folk away, she had no idea where to start at pulling one in. What if he looked at her as if she was mad? The thought yawned like a pit at her feet. What do you mean like ? Like, like like? Should she just take hold of him and kiss him? She kept thinking about it. She hardly thought about anything else anymore. But what if a look was just a look? What if it was like her mother said-what man would want someone as strange and difficult and contrary as she was? Not one like Brand who was well-made and well-liked and what a man should be and could have anyone he wanted-