Joe Abercrombie - Half the World

“What?”

“Smiling or, I don’t know, sewing.”

“I don’t need anything sewed.” And he slid off his sea chest and knelt down in front of her. His worries had faded. Things had got ruined before somehow and he wouldn’t let them get ruined again. Not for lack of trying. “I’ve wanted you since the First of Cities. Since before, maybe.” He reached out and put his hand on hers where it rested on the bed. Clumsy, maybe, but honest. “Just never thought I’d get you.” He looked into her face, groping for the right words. “Looking at you, and thinking you want me, makes me feel like … like I won.”

“Won something no one else would want,” she muttered.

“What do I care what they want?” he said, that anger catching fire again and making her look up. “If they’re too damn stupid to see you’re the best woman in the Shattered Sea that’s my good luck, isn’t it?” He fell silent, and felt his face burning, and thought for sure he’d ruined the whole thing again.

“That might be the nicest thing anyone ever said to me.” She reached up and pushed the hair out of his face. Gentle as a feather, her touch. He hadn’t realized she could be so gentle. “No one ever says anything nice to me, but even so.” The blanket slipped off her bare shoulder and he set his hand on it, slid it down her side and around her back, skin hissing on skin, warm, and smooth, her eyes closing, and his-

A thumping echoed through the house. Someone beating on the front door, and knocks that weren’t to be ignored. Brand heard the bolt drawn back, voices muttering.

“Gods,” said Thorn, eyes wide. “Could be my mother.”

They hadn’t moved so fast even when the Horse People came charging across the steppe, grabbing up clothes and tossing them to each other, pulling them on, him fumbling with his belt and getting it all messed up because he was watching her wriggle her trousers over her arse out of the corner of his eye.

“Brand?” came his sister’s voice.

They both froze, he with one boot on, she with none, then Brand called out a cracked, “Aye?”

“You all right?” Rin’s voice coming up the steps.

“Aye!”

“You alone?” Just outside the door now.

“Course!” Then, when he realized she might come in, he followed up with a guilty, “Sort of.”

“You’re the worst liar in Gettland. Is Thorn Bathu in there with you?”

Brand winced. “Sort of.”

“She’s in there or she’s not. Are you bloody in there, Thorn Bathu?”

“Sort of?” said Thorn at the door in a tiny voice.

A long pause. “That was Master Hunnan.”

The name was like a bucket of cold water down Brand’s trousers and no mistake.

“He said a dove came with news of a raid at Halleby, and with all the men gone north to fight, he’s gathering what’s left to go and see to it. Some who are training, some who are wounded, some who failed a test. They’re meeting on the beach.”

“He wants me?” called Brand, a quiver in his voice.

“He says Gettland needs you. And he says for any man who does his duty there’ll be a warrior’s place.”

A warrior’s place. Always to have brothers at your shoulder. Always to have something to fight for. To stand in the light. And quick as that the ashes of old dreams that had seemed for months burned out flared up hot and bright again. Quick as that he was decided.

“I’ll be down,” called Brand, heart suddenly beating hard, and he heard his sister’s footsteps move away.

“You’re going with that bastard?” asked Thorn. “After what he did to you? What he did to me?”

Brand pulled the blanket off the bed. “Not for his sake. For Gettland.”

She snorted. “For you.”

“All right, for me. Don’t I deserve it?”

Her jaw worked for a moment. “I notice he didn’t ask for me.”

“Would you have followed him?” he asked, putting his few things onto the blanket and making a bundle of it.

“Course I would. Then I’d have kicked his face in.”

“Maybe that’s why he didn’t ask for you.”

“Hunnan wouldn’t ask for me if I was holding a bucket of water and he was on fire. None of them would. Warriors of Gettland. There’s a bloody joke! Not a funny one, mind.” She paused halfway through dragging one boot on. “You’re not so keen to go just so you can get away from me, are you? Cause if you’re thinking better of this just tell me. I reckon we’ve had enough secrets-”

“That’s not it,” he said, even though he wondered if it was part of it. Just get some room to breathe. Just get some time to think.

“Sometimes I wish I’d stayed in the First of Cities,” she said.

“You’d never have bedded me then.”

“When I died rich and storied that could’ve been my life’s one great regret.”

“Just give me a week,” he said, strapping on Odda’s sword. “I’m not thinking better of anything, but I have to do this. I might never get another chance.”

She curled her lips back and made a long hiss. “One week. Then I go after the next man I find who can lift a ship.”

“Done.” And he kissed her one more time. Her lips were scummy, and her mouth was sour, and he didn’t care. He slung his shield over his shoulder, and hefted the little bundle he’d made with his blanket, and he took a long breath, and headed off to the iron embrace of Mother War.

Something stopped him in the doorway, though, and he took one last look back. As if to make sure she was really there. She was, and smiling at him. They were rare, her smiles, but that made them precious. Precious as gold, it seemed, and he was mightily pleased with himself for being the cause of it.

The citadel of Thorlby had not been happy ground for Thorn. The last time she visited it had been as a murderer, herded in chains to the cells. The time before it had been to see her father laid out in the Godshall, pale and cold beneath the dome, her mother sobbing beside her, and she’d looked up at the hard faces of the tall gods and known her prayers had all been wasted. She had to swallow a shadow of the anger she’d felt then, the anger that had burned at her ever since, gripping at the pouch that held her father’s fingerbones as she frowned toward the great doors of the Godshall.

There were boys training in the yard, beneath the ancient cedar. Training in the square, the way Thorn used to, their master-at-arms barking out orders as they scrambled into a rickety shield wall. They seemed so young now. So slow and so clumsy. She could hardly believe she had ever been one of them as Koll led her past.

“You are Thorn Bathu?”

An old man sat at the corner of the square, swathed in a thick black fur in spite of the warmth, a drawn sword cradled in his arms. He seemed so withered, and hunched, and pale, that even with the golden circle on his brow it took Thorn a moment to recognize him.

She wobbled down onto one knee beside Koll, staring at the grass. “I am, my king.”

King Uthil cleared his throat. “I hear unarmed you killed seven men, and forged an alliance with the Empress of the South. I did not believe it.” He narrowed his watery eyes as he looked her up and down. “Now I begin to.”

Thorn swallowed. “It was only five men, my king.”

“Only five, she says!” And he gave a throaty chuckle to the old warriors about him. A couple just about cracked smiles. The faces of the others grew more dour with every word. No deed would ever be high enough to raise her in their estimation: she was as much an object of contempt as ever. “I like you, girl!” said the king. “We should practice together.”

So she could practice with him, as long as she didn’t presume to fight for him. Thorn lowered her eyes in case she let her anger show and ended up visiting the citadel’s dungeons for a second time. “That would be a high honor,” she managed to say.