Joe Abercrombie - Half the World

Uthil broke into a coughing fit, and drew his cloak tight about his shoulders. “Once my minister’s potions have worked their magic and I am past this illness. I swear those dung-tasting brews only make me weaker.”

“Father Yarvi is a deep-cunning healer, my king,” said Thorn. “I would have died without his wisdom.”

“Aye,” murmured Uthil, staring off into the distance. “I hope his wisdom works soon for me. I must go north, and teach these Vanstermen a lesson. The Breaker of Swords has questions for us.” His voice had withered to a crackling wheeze. “What should be our answer?”

“Steel!” hissed Thorn, and the other warriors about the king murmured the word as one.

Uthil’s pale hand trembled as he clutched his drawn sword close, and Thorn did not think she would be practicing with the king any time soon. “Steel,” he breathed, and settled slowly into his fur, wet eyes fixed on the boys in the square, as if he had forgotten Thorn was there.

“Father Yarvi’s waiting,” murmured Koll. He led her away across the grass, into a shadowy hall and up a long flight of steps, the scraping of their boots echoing in the darkness, the shouts of the training boys fading behind them.

“Is Brand all right?”

“How the hell should I know?” Thorn snapped, and felt guilty right away. “I’m sorry. I hope he is.”

“Are you and him …” Koll peered at her sideways. “You know.”

“I don’t know what me and him are,” she snapped, another wave of temper and another slow wash of guilt. “Sorry.”

“You’re bored.”

“I’m idle,” she growled, “while high deeds are being done.”

Her mood had been filthy for days and the scorn of Uthil’s warriors hadn’t helped. She had nothing to do but worry. Worry that Brand wouldn’t want her when he came back or that she wouldn’t want him when he came back or that he wouldn’t come back at all. She had more doubts and frustrations spinning faster around her head than before she’d bedded him and there was nothing she could do about any of it.

“Bloody men,” she muttered. “We’d be better off without them.”

“What did I do?” asked Koll.

“You don’t count.” She grinned, and ruffled his hair. “Yet.”

A heavy door squealed open on a cave of wonders. A round room, ill-lit by flickering lamps, smelling of spice and fust and lined with shelves, the shelves stacked with books, with jars of dried leaves and colored dust, with animals’ skulls and broken sticks, with bunches of herbs and stones glittering with crystals.

Safrit stood in there, beckoning Thorn up some steps toward another archway. She leaned close to whisper. “Don’t worry.”

“Eh?”

“It’ll work out fine, whatever you decide.”

Thorn stared at her. “Now I’m worried.”

Father Yarvi sat on a stool by a firepit in the room beyond, the elf-metal staff that leaned beside him gleaming with reflected fire.

Safrit knelt so low at the threshold she nearly butted the floor, but Thorn snorted as she swaggered forward.

“Having good folk kneel before you, Father Yarvi? I thought you gave up being a king-” The rest of the room came into view and Thorn saw Queen Laithlin sitting on the other side of the fire. Her robe was shrugged back, one pale shoulder bare, and she clasped a bundle of fur to her chest. Prince Druin, Thorn realized, heir to the Black Chair.

“Gods.” Thorn was being ambushed by royalty around every corner. She scrambled down to one knee, knocked a jar off a shelf with her elbow, dislodged another when she shot out a hand to catch it, ended up clumsily crowding the clinking mess back with her chest. “Sorry, my queen. I’ve never been much good at kneeling.” She remembered she had said the very same thing the last time they met, on the docks of Thorlby before the South Wind left, and she felt her face burning just as hot as it had then.

But Laithlin did not seem to notice. “The best people aren’t.” She gestured to another stool beside the firepit. “Sit instead.”

Thorn sat, but that was no more comfortable. Queen and minister both tipped their heads back and looked at her through narrowed gray eyes. The resemblance between them was uncanny. Mother and son still, whatever oaths he might have sworn to give up all family but the Ministry. They both gazed at her in calm silence. A double assessment that made Thorn feel the size of a pinhead, and all the while the infant prince sucked, sucked, sucked, and a tiny hand slipped from the fur and pulled at a strand of yellow hair.

“Last time we met,” said Laithlin, in the end, “I told you that fools boast of what they will do, while heroes do it. It seems you took my words to heart.”

Thorn tried to swallow her nerves. Thorlby might have seemed smaller after all she had seen, famed warriors feeble after all she had done, but the Golden Queen was as awe-inspiring as ever. “I’ve tried to, my queen.”

“Father Yarvi tells me you have become most deadly. He tells me you killed six Horse People in battle on the Denied. That seven men came for the Empress of the South and you fought them alone, unarmed, and won.”

“I had help. The best of teachers, and a good man beside me-men, that is. Good men beside me.”

Laithlin gave the slightest smile. “You have learned humility, then.”

“Thanks to Father Yarvi I’ve learned many things, my queen.”

“Tell me about the Empress of the South.”

“Well …” All Thorn could think of then was how very different she was from Queen Laithlin. “She is young, and small, and clever-”

“And generous.” The queen glanced down at the elf-bangle on Thorn’s wrist, which flared with it own pink as she blushed again.

“I tried not to take it, my queen, but-”

“It was meant to break an alliance. It helped forge a new one. I could not have hoped for a better return on my investment. Do you wish you had stayed in the First of Cities?”

Thorn blinked. “I …”

“I know the empress asked you to. To stand at her shoulder, and protect her from her enemies, and help steer the course of a great nation. Few indeed will ever receive such an offer.”

Thorn swallowed. “Gettland is my home.”

“Yes. And here you languish in Thorlby while Grandmother Wexen closes the Shattered Sea to our ships and the Vanstermen swarm across the border, a storied warrior sitting on her strong hands while unripe boys and doddering old men are called upon to fight. My husband the king must seem quite a fool to you. Like a man who goes to mow his meadow with a spoon, and leaves his fine new scythe to rust upon the shelf.” The queen peered down at her infant son. “The world changes. It must. But Uthil is a man of iron, and iron does not bend easily to new ways.”

“He does not seem himself,” murmured Thorn.

The minister and queen exchanged a glance she could not plumb the meaning of. “He is not well,” said Yarvi.

“And he must soothe the feelings of older and even more rigid men,” said Laithlin.

Thorn licked her lips. “I’ve done too many foolish things to accuse anyone else of folly, least of all a king.”

“But you would like to fight?”

Thorn lifted her chin and held the queen’s eye. “It’s what I’m made for.”

“It must grate on your warrior’s pride to be ignored.”

“My father told me never to get proud.”

“Fine advice.” The prince had fallen asleep and Laithlin eased him from her breast and passed him up to Safrit, shrugging her robe closed. “Your father was a Chosen Shield for a time, I understand.”

“To King Uthil’s mother,” murmured Yarvi.

“What became of him?” asked the queen, while Safrit rocked the prince in her arms and gently cooed to him.