Joe Abercrombie - Half the World

Brand stood behind her, close enough that she could almost smell his breath, sleeves rolled up to show the snaking scars about his forearms, stronger and quieter and better-looking than ever.

“Reckon I’ll be seeing you, then,” he said.

His eyes were fixed on her, gleaming behind those strands of hair across his face. It seemed she’d spent most of the last six months trying not to think about him, which was every bit as bad as thinking about him but with the added frustration of failing not to. Hard to forget someone when they’re three oars in front of you. His shoulder moving with the stroke. His elbow at his oar. A sliver of his face as he looked back.

“Aye,” she muttered, putting her eyes to the ground. “I reckon.” And she stepped around him, and down the bouncing planks of the wharf, and away.

Maybe it was hard, to leave it at that after all they had been through. Maybe it was cowardly. But she had to put him behind her, and leave her disappointment and her shame and her foolishness along with him. When something has to be done, there’s nothing to be gained by putting it off but pain.

Damn, but she was starting to sound like Skifr.

That thought rather pleased her.

Thorlby was changed. Everything so much smaller than she remembered. Grayer. Emptier. The wharves were nowhere near so crowded as they used to be, a sorry few fisherman working at their squirming catches, scales flashing silver. Warriors stood guard on the gate, but young ones, which made Thorn wonder what the rest were busy at. She knew one from the training square, his eyes going wide as ale cups as she strutted past.

“Is that her?” she heard someone mutter.

“Thorn Bathu,” a woman whispered, voice hushed as if she spoke a magic spell.

“The one they’re singing of?”

Her legend had marched ahead of her, would you believe? So Thorn put her shoulders back, and her bravest face on, and she let her left arm swing, the elf-bangle shining. Shining in the sunlight, shining with its own light.

Up the Street of Anvils she went, and the customers turned to stare, and the hammering ceased as the smiths looked out, and Thorn whistled a song as she walked. The song those Throvenmen had sung, about a she-devil who saved the Empress of the South.

Why not? Earned it, hadn’t she?

Up the steep lanes she’d walked down with Father Yarvi when he led her from the citadel’s dungeons and off to Skekenhouse, to Kalyiv, to the First of Cities. A hundred years ago it seemed, as she turned down a narrow way where every stone was familiar.

She heard muttering behind and saw she’d picked up a little gaggle of children, peering awestruck from around the corner. Just like the ones that had followed her father when he was in Thorlby. Just as he used to she gave them a cheery wave. Then just as he used to she bared her teeth and hissed, scattered them screaming.

Skifr always said that history turns in circles.

The narrow house, the step worn in the middle, the door her father badly carved, all the same, yet somehow they made her nervous. Her heart was hammering as she reached up to shove the door wide, but at the last moment she bunched her fist and knocked instead. She stood waiting, awkward as a beggar even though this was her home, fingers clutched tight around the pouch at her neck, thinking about what Fror had told her.

Maybe her father hadn’t been quite the hero she always reckoned him. Maybe her mother wasn’t quite the villain either. Maybe no one’s all one or all the other.

It was her mother who answered. Strange, to see her looking just the same after all that had happened. Just another hair or two turned gray, and for a moment Thorn felt like a child again, clamping a brave face over her anger and her fear.

“Mother …” She tried to tame the tangled side of her head, plucking at the gold and silver rings bound up in her matted hair. A fool’s effort, as she couldn’t have combed that thicket with an ax. She wondered what her mother’s tongue would stab at first: the madness of her hair or the ugliness of her scars or the raggedness of her clothes, or the-

“Hild!” Her face lit up with joy and she caught Thorn in her arms and held her so tight she made her gasp. Then she jerked her out to arm’s length and looked her up and down, beaming, then clutched her tight again. “I’m sorry, Thorn-”

“You can call me Hild. If you like.” Thorn snorted out a laugh. “It’s good to hear you say it.”

“You never used to like it.”

“There’s a lot changed this past year.”

“Here too. War with the Vanstermen, and the king ill, and Grandmother Wexen keeping ships from the harbor … but there’ll be time for that later.”

“Aye.” Thorn slowly pushed the door shut and leaned back against it. It was only then she realized how tired she was. So tired she nearly slid down onto her arse right there in the hall.

“You were expected back weeks ago. I was starting to worry. Well, I started worrying the day you left-”

“We got caught in the ice.”

“I should’ve known it would take more than half the world to keep my daughter away. You’ve grown. Gods, how you’ve grown!”

“You’re not going to say anything about my hair?”

Her mother reached out, and tidied a loose worm of it behind Thorn’s ear, touched her scarred cheek gently with her fingertips. “All I care about is that you’re alive. I’ve heard some wild stories about- Father Peace, what’s that?” Her mother caught Thorn’s wrist and lifted it, the light from the elf-bangle falling across her face, eyes glittering with golden reflections as she stared down.

“That …” muttered Thorn, “is a long story.”

Brand said he’d help them unload.

Maybe because that was the good thing to do. Maybe because he couldn’t bear to leave the crew quite yet. Maybe because he was scared to see Rin. Scared she’d come to harm while he was gone. Scared she might blame him for it.

So he said as long as he didn’t have to lift the ship he’d help them unload it, and told himself it was the good thing to do. There aren’t many good things don’t have a splinter of selfishness in them somewhere, after all.

And when the unloading was done and half the crew already wandered their own ways he hugged Fror, and Dosduvoi, and Rulf, and they laughed over things Odda had said on the way down the Divine. Laughed as Mother Sun sank toward the hills behind Thorlby, shadows gathering in the carvings that swirled over the whole mast from its root to its top.

“You did one hell of a job on that mast, Koll,” said Brand, staring up at it.

“It’s the tale of our voyage.” Koll had changed a deal since they set out, twitchy-quick as ever but deeper in the voice, stronger in the face, surer in the hands as he slid them gently over the carved trees, and rivers, and ships, and figures all wonderfully woven into one another. “Thorlby’s here at the base, the Divine and Denied flow up this side and down the other, the First of Cities at the mast-head. Here we cross the Shattered Sea. There Brand lifts the ship. There we meet Blue Jenner.”

“Clever boy, isn’t he?” said Safrit, hugging him tight. “Just as well you didn’t fall off the bloody yard and smash your brains out.”

“Would’ve been a loss,” murmured Brand, gazing up at the mast in more wonder than ever.

Koll pointed out more figures. “Skifr sends Death across the plain. Prince Varoslaf chains the Denied. Thorn fights seven men. Father Yarvi seals his deal with the empress, and …” He leaned close, made a few more cuts to a kneeling figure at the bottom with his worn-down knife and blew the chippings away. “Here’s me, now, finishing it off.” And he stepped back, grinning. “Done.”