Joe Abercrombie - Half the World

“A ruler must plow her own furrow,” said Yarvi.

“Easier said than done, Father Yarvi. The soil is very stony hereabouts.”

“I could help you dig it over.”

“I wish you could. Sumael says you are a good man.”

“Above average.” Sumael had a little smile at the corner of her mouth. “I’ve known worse men with both their hands.”

“But you cannot help me. No one can.” Vialine drew up her hood, and with one last glance toward Thorn, still kneeling in the middle of the courtyard with the box in her hand, the Empress of the South turned to leave. “And I am sorry, but I cannot help you.”

It was hardly what they’d all been hoping for. But so it goes, with hopes.

Skifr came at her again but this time Thorn was ready. The old woman grunted in surprise as Thorn’s ax caught her boot and sent her lurching. She parried the next blow but it rocked her on her heels and the one after tore her sword from her hand and knocked her clean on her back.

Even on the ground Skifr was dangerous. She kicked dust in Thorn’s face, rolled and flung her ax with deadly accuracy. But Thorn was ready for that too, hooked it from the air with her own and sent it skittering into the corner, pressing on, teeth bared, and pinning Skifr against one of the pillars, the point of her sword tickling the old woman’s sweat-beaded throat.

Skifr raised her gray brows. “Auspicious.”

“I won!” bellowed Thorn, shaking her notched wooden weapons at the sky. It had been months since she dared hope she might ever get the better of Skifr. Those endless mornings being beaten with the oar as Mother Sun rose, those endless evenings trying to hit her with the bar by the light of Father Moon, those endless blows and slaps and slides into the mud. But she had done it. “I beat her!”

“You beat her,” said Father Yarvi, nodding slowly.

Skifr winced as she clambered up. “You have beaten a grandmother long years past her best. There will be sterner challenges ahead for you. But … you have done well. You have listened. You have worked. You have become deadly. Father Yarvi was right-”

“When am I wrong?” The minister’s smile vanished at a hammering on the door. He jerked his head toward Koll and the boy slid back the bolt.

“Sumael,” said Yarvi, smiling as he did whenever she visited. “What brings-”

She was breathing hard as she stepped over the threshold. “The empress wishes to speak to you.”

Father Yarvi’s eyes widened. “I’ll come at once.”

“Not you.” She was looking straight at Thorn. “You.”

BRAND HAD SPENT MOST of his life feeling out of place. Beggar among the rich. Coward among the brave. Fool among the clever. But a visit to the Palace of the Empress opened up whole new gulfs of crippling inadequacy.

“Gods,” he whispered, every time he crept around another corner after Thorn and Sumael into some new marbled corridor, or gilded stairway, or cavernous chamber, each richer than the last. He tiptoed down a hallway lit with candles tall as a man. Dozens of them, each worth more in Thorlby than he was, left burning on the chance that someone might happen by. Everything was jewelled or silvered, panelled or painted. He looked at a chair inlaid with a dozen kinds of wood, and thought how much more it must have cost than everything he had earned in his life. He wondered if he was dreaming it, but knew he didn’t have a good enough imagination.

“Wait here,” said Sumael, as they reached a round room at the top of a flight of steps, every bit of the marble walls carved as finely as Koll’s mast with scenes from some story. “Touch nothing.” And she left Brand alone with Thorn. The first time since that day in the market.

And look how that turned out.

“Quite a place,” he muttered.

Thorn stood with her back to him, turning her head to show a sliver of frown. “Is that why Father Yarvi sent you along? To say what anyone could see?”

“I don’t know why he sent me along.” Chill silence stretched out. “I’m sorry if I dragged you back. The other day. You’re far the better fighter, I should’ve let you take the lead.”

“You should’ve,” she said, without looking at him.

“Just … seems like you’re angry with me, and whatever I-”

“Does now seem like the time?”

“No.” He knew some things were better left unsaid but he couldn’t stand thinking she hated him. He had to try and put things right. “I just-” He glanced across at her, and she caught him looking, the way she had dozens of times the last few weeks, but now her face twisted.

“Just shut your bloody mouth!” she snarled, white with fury, and looked ready to give him a bloody mouth as well.

He looked down at the floor, so highly polished he could see his own stricken face staring stupidly back, and had nothing to say. What could you say to that?

“If you love-birds are quite finished,” said Sumael from the doorway, “the empress is waiting.”

“Oh, we’re finished,” snapped Thorn, stalking off.

Sumael shrugged her shoulders at Brand, and two frowning guards shut the doors on him with a final-sounding click .

The gardens were like something from a dream, all lit in strange colors by the purple sunset and the shifting torchlight, flames flickering from cages of coals that sent sparks dancing with every breath of wind. Nothing was the way the gods had made it, everything tortured by the hands of man. Grass shaved as carefully as a romancer’s jaw. Trees clipped into unnatural shapes and bowing under the weight of their own bloated, sweet-smelling blossom. Birds too, twittering from the twisted branches, and Thorn wondered why they didn’t fly away until she saw they were all tethered to their perches with silver chains fine as spider’s threads.

Paths of white stone twisted between statues of impossibly stern, impossibly slender women wafting scrolls, books, swords. Empresses of the past, Thorn reckoned, and all wondering why this half-shaved horror had been allowed among them. The guards looked as if they had the same question. Lots of guards, every mirror-bright sword and spear making her acutely aware of how unarmed she was. She sloped after Sumael around a star-shaped pool, crystal water tinkling into it from a fountain carved like snakes coiled together, up to the steps of a strange little building, a dome set on pillars with a curved bench beneath it.

On the bench sat Vialine, Empress of the South.

She had undergone quite a transformation since she visited Father Yarvi’s crumbling house. Her hair was twisted into a shining coil netted with golden wire and hung with jewels. Her bodice was set with tiny mirrors that twinkled blue and pink with the fading light, red and orange with the torch-flames. From a streak of dark paint across the bridge of her nose, her eyes gleamed brightest of all.

Thorn wasn’t sure she’d ever felt so far out of her depth. “What do I say?”

“She’s just a person,” said Sumael. “Talk to her like she’s a person.”

“What the hell do I know about talking to a person?”

“Just be honest.” Sumael slapped Thorn on the back and sent her stumbling forward. “And do it now.”

Thorn edged onto the lowest stair. “Your radiance,” she croaked out, trying to go down on one knee then realizing it couldn’t really be done on a set of steps.

“Vialine, and please don’t kneel. A week ago I was nobody much. It still makes me nervous.”

Thorn froze awkwardly halfway down, and wobbled back to an uncertain stoop. “Sumael says you sent for-”

“What is your name?”

“Thorn Bathu, your-”

“Vialine, please. The Thorn seems self-explanatory. The Bathu?”