Joe Abercrombie - Half the World

Suddenly his arm was around her, herding her back into a doorway. Her heart was in her mouth, she even gave a little girlish squeak as he pressed up tight against her. Then everyone was scrambling to the sides of the lane as horses clattered by, feathers on their bridles thrashing and gilded armor glinting and tall riders in tall helmets caring nothing for those who cowered to either side. Duke Mikedas’s men, no doubt.

“Someone could get hurt,” Brand muttered, frowning after them.

“Aye,” she croaked. “Someone could.”

She was fooling herself. Had to be. They were friends. They were oarmates. That was all they needed to be. Why ruin it by pushing for something she couldn’t have, didn’t deserve, wouldn’t get … then she caught his eye, and there was that damn look again that set her heart going as if she’d rowed a hard mile. He jerked away from her, gave an awkward half-smile, strode on as the crowds pressed back in after the horsemen.

What if he felt the same as her, wanting to ask but scared to ask and not knowing how to ask? Every conversation with him felt dangerous as a battle. Sleeping in the same room was torture. They’d just been oarmates on one floor when they first threw their blankets down, laughing at the state of the great ruin Yarvi had bought, daylight showing through the roof. But now she only pretended to sleep while she thought about how close he was, and sometimes she thought he was pretending too, could swear his eyes were open, watching her. But she was never sure. The thought of sleeping next to him made her miserable, and the thought of not sleeping next to him made her miserable.

Do you … like me? Like? Like?

The whole thing was a bloody riddle in a language she couldn’t speak.

Brand puffed out his cheeks and wiped sweat from his forehead, no doubt blissfully unaware of the trouble he was causing. “Guess we’ll be gone soon as we strike a deal with the empress.”

Thorn tried to swallow her nerves and talk normally, whatever that meant. “I’m thinking that won’t happen.”

Brand shrugged. Calm and solid and trusting as ever. “Father Yarvi’ll find a way.”

“Father Yarvi’s deep-cunning all right but he’s no sorcerer. If you’d been at the palace, seen that duke’s face …”

“Sumael will find a way for him, then.”

Thorn snorted. “You’d think Mother Sun was up that woman’s arse for the light she’s shining into everyone’s lives.”

“Not yours, I reckon.”

“I don’t trust her.”

“You don’t trust anyone.”

She almost said, “I trust you,” but swallowed it at the last moment and settled for a grunt.

“And Rulf trusts her,” Brand went on. “With his life, he told me. Father Yarvi too, and he’s hardly the trusting type.”

“Wish I knew more about what happened with those three,” said Thorn. “There’s a story there.”

“Sometimes you’ll be happier for knowing less.”

“That’s you. Not me.” She glanced over at him and caught him looking back. Hungry almost, scared almost, and she felt that tingle deep in her stomach and would have been off on a mad argument with herself yet again if they hadn’t come to the market.

One of the markets, anyway. The First of Cities had dozens, each one big as Roystock. Places of mad bustle and noise, cities of stalls choked with people of every shape and color. Great scales clattered and abacuses rattled and prices were screamed in every tongue over the braying and clucking and honking of the livestock. There was a choking reek of cooking food and sickly-sweet spice and fresh dung and the gods knew what else. Everything else. Everything in the world for sale. Belt buckles and salt. Purple cloth and idols. Monstrous, sad-eyed fishes. Thorn squeezed her eyes shut and forced them open, but the every-colored madness still boiled before her.

“Just meat,” said Thorn plaintively, weighing Father Yarvi’s purse in her hand. “We just want meat.” Safrit hadn’t even asked for a certain kind. She dodged as a woman in a stained apron strode past with a goat’s head under her arm. “Where the hell do we start?”

“Hold up.” Brand had stopped at a stall where a dark-skinned merchant was selling strings of glass beads and lifting one so Mother Sun sparkled through the yellow glass. “Pretty, ain’t they? Sort of thing a girl likes as a gift.”

Thorn shrugged. “I’m no expert on pretty. Girls neither, for that matter.”

“You are one, aren’t you?”

“So my mother tells me.” She added in a mutter, “Opinion’s divided.”

He held up another necklace, green and blue this time. “Which ones would you want?” And he grinned sideways. “For a gift?”

Thorn felt that tingling in her stomach, stronger than ever. Close to actual vomiting. If ever she was going to get proof then here it was. A gift. For her. Hardly the one she would have chosen but with luck that might be next. If she picked out the right words. What to say? Gods, what to say? Her tongue seemed twice its usual size of a sudden.

“Which ones would I want, or …” She kept her eyes on him and let her head drop to one side, tried to make her voice soft. Winsome, whatever that sounded like. She couldn’t have been soft more than three times in her life and winsome never, and it came out a clumsy growl. “Which ones do I want?”

The puzzled look, now. “I mean, which ones would you want brought back? If you were in Thorlby.”

And in spite of the cloying heat a coldness spread out, starting in Thorn’s chest and creeping slowly to her very fingertips. Not for her. For someone back in Thorlby. Of course they were. She’d let herself get blown away on her own wind, in spite of Skifr’s warnings.

“Don’t know,” she croaked, trying to shrug as if it was nothing, but it wasn’t nothing. “How should I know?” She turned away, her face burning as Brand talked prices with the merchant, and she wished the ground would open up and eat her unburned like the southern dead.

She wondered what girl those beads were for. Wasn’t as if there were that many in Thorlby the right age. More than likely Thorn knew her. More than likely Thorn had been laughed at and pointed at and sneered at by her. One of the pretty ones her mother always told her to be more like. One of the ones who knew how to sew, and how to smile, and how to wear a key.

She thought she’d made herself tough right through. Slaps and punches and shield blows hardly hurt her. But everyone has chinks in their armor. Father Yarvi might have stopped them crushing her with stones, but casually as that Brand crushed her just as flat with a string of beads.

He was still grinning as he slipped them into a pocket. “She’ll like them, I reckon.”

Thorn’s face twisted. Never even occurred to him she might think they were for her. Never even occurred to him to think of her the way she’d come to think of him. It was as if all the color had drained out of the world. She’d spent a lot of her life feeling shamed and foolish and ugly, but never so much as this.

“I’m such a stupid shit,” she hissed.

Brand blinked at her. “Eh?”

The helpless look, this time, and the temptation to sink her fist into it was almost overpowering, but she knew it wasn’t his fault. It was no one’s fault but her own, and punching yourself never solves anything. She tried to put a brave face on but she couldn’t find it right then. She wanted just to get away. To get anywhere, and she took one step and stopped dead.

The scowling Vansterman who had stood beside Mother Scaer in the palace was blocking her path, his right hand hidden in a rolled up cloak where, she had no doubt, it held a blade. There was a rat-faced little man at his shoulder and she could feel someone moving over on her left. The big Lowlander, she guessed.