Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

“Wait!” shouted Yarvi.

The captain looked over at him sharply. “Really? Are you sure?”

It took everything he had to force his mouth into a watery smile. “Why kill what you can sell?”

She squatted there a moment, staring at him, and he wondered if she would kill them both. Then she snorted out a laugh, and lowered the knife. “I do declare. My soft heart will be my undoing. Trigg!”

The overseer paused for just a moment when he stepped into the cabin and saw Ankran on the floor with his face a bloodied pulp.

“It turns out our storekeeper has been robbing me,” said the captain.

Trigg frowned at Ankran, then at Shadikshirram, and finally, for a long time, at Yarvi. “Seems some people think only of themselves.”

“And I thought we were one family.” The captain stood, dusting off her knees. “We have a new storekeeper. Get him a better collar.” She rolled Ankran towards the door with her foot. “And put this thing in the space on Jaud’s oar.”

“Right y’are, Captain.” And Trigg dragged Ankran out by one arm and kicked the door closed.

“You see that I am merciful,” said Shadikshirram brightly, with merciful gestures of the blood-spotted hand which still loosely held her knife. “Mercy is my weakness.”

“Mercy is a feature of greatness,” Yarvi managed to croak.

Shadikshirram beamed at that. “Isn’t it? But, great though I am … I rather think Ankran has used up all my mercy for this year.” She put her long arm about Yarvi’s shoulders, hooking her thumb through his collar, and drew him close, close, close enough to smell the wine on her whisper. “If another storekeeper betrayed my trust …” And she trailed off into silence more eloquent than any words.

“You have nothing to worry about, my captain.” Yarvi looked into her face so close that her black eyes seemed to merge into one. “I have no wife or children to distract me.” Only an uncle to kill, and his daughter to marry, and the Black Chair of Gettland to reclaim. “I’m your man.”

“You’re scarcely a man, but otherwise, excellent!” And she wiped her knife one way then the other on the front of Yarvi’s shirt. “Then wriggle down to your stores, my little one-handed minister, ferret out where Ankran was hiding my money and bring me up some wine! And smile, boy!” Shadikshirram pulled a golden chain from around her neck and hung it over one of the posts of her bed. A key dangled from it. The key to the oarslaves’ locks. “I like my friends smiling and my enemies dead!” She spread her arms wide, wriggled the fingers, and toppled back onto her furs. “Today dawned with such little promise,” she mused at the ceiling. “But it turns out everyone got what they wanted.”

Yarvi thought it unwise to point out, as he hurried for the door, that Ankran, not to mention his wife and child, would probably not have agreed.

To no one’s surprise, Yarvi found himself much better suited to the stores than the oars.

At first he could hardly crawl into his shadowy, creaking new domain below decks for the confusion of barrels and boxes, of overspilling chests, of swinging bags hooked to the ceiling. But within a day or two he had everything as organized as Mother Gundring’s shelves had been, in spite of the pale new planks of the repair steadily oozing saltwater. It was not a comforting task, bucketing out the brackish puddle that built up every morning.

But a great deal better than being back on the benches.

Yarvi found a length of bent iron to bash at any nail that gave a hint of loosening, and tried not to imagine that just beyond that straining tissue of rough-sawn wood Mother Sea’s full crushing weight was bearing in.

The South Wind limped eastwards and, wounded and undermanned though she was, within a few days reached the great market at Roystock, a hundred hundred shops pressed onto a boggy island near the mouth of the Divine River. Small, swift ships were caught at the tangle of wharves like flies in a spider’s web and their lean and sunburned crews were caught too. Men who had rowed hard weeks upstream, and carried their ships for even harder ones at the tall hauls, were swindled from their strange cargoes for a night or two of simple pleasures. While Sumael cursed and struggled to patch the leaking patches, Yarvi was taken ashore on Trigg’s chain, looking for stores and oarslaves to replace what the storm had taken.

There in narrow lanes aswarm with humanity of every cut and color, Yarvi bartered. He had watched his mother do it-Laithlin, the Golden Queen, no sharper eye or quicker tongue around the Shattered Sea-and found he had her tricks without thinking. He haggled in six languages, merchants aghast to find their own secret tongues turned against them. He flattered and blustered, snorted derision at prices and contempt at quality, stamped off and was begged back, was first as yielding as oil, then immovable as iron, and left a trail of weeping traders in his wake.

Trigg held the chain with so light a hand that Yarvi almost forgot he was chained at all. Until, when they were done and the saved hacksilver was jingling back into the captain’s purse, the overseer’s whisper tickled at Yarvi’s ear and made his every hair bristle.

“You’re quite the cunning little cripple, aren’t you?”

Yarvi paused a moment to collect his wits. “I have … some understanding.”

“Doubtless. It’s clear you understood me and Ankran, and passed your understandings to the captain. Got quite the vengeful temper, don’t she? The tales she tells of herself might all be lies, but I could tell you true ones would amaze you no less. I once saw her kill a man for stepping on her shoe. And this was a big, big man.”

“Perhaps that’s why his weight bruised her toes so.”

Trigg yanked at the chain and the collar bit into Yarvi’s neck and made him squawk. “Don’t lean too much on my good nature, boy.”

Trigg’s good nature did indeed seem too weak a thing to bear much weight. “I played the hand I was dealt,” croaked Yarvi.

“We all do,” purred Trigg. “Ankran played his poorly, and paid the price. I don’t mean to do the same. So I’ll offer you the same arrangement. Half of what you take from Shadikshirram, you give to me.”

“What if I don’t take anything?”

Trigg snorted. “Everyone takes something, boy. Some of what you give to me, I’ll pass on to the guards, and everyone’s kept friendly. Smiles all round. Give me nothing, you’ll make some enemies. Bad ones to have.” He wound Yarvi’s chain about his big hand and jerked him closer still. “Remember cunning children and stupid ones all drown very much the same.”

Yarvi swallowed once more. Mother Gundring used to say, A good minister never says no, if they can say perhaps .

“The captain’s watchful. She doesn’t trust me yet. Only give me a little time.”

With a shove, Trigg sent him stumbling back towards the South Wind . “Just make sure it’s a little.”

That was well enough with Yarvi. Old friends in Thorlby-not to mention old enemies-would not wait for him forever. Charming though the overseer was, Yarvi hoped very much to quit Trigg’s company before too long.

FROM ROYSTOCK THEY TURNED NORTHWARDS.

They passed lands that had no name, where fens of mirror pools stretched into unknown distances, thousands of fragments of sky sprinkled across this bastard offspring of earth and sea, lonely birds calling out over the desolation, and Yarvi breathed deep the salt chill and longed for home.

He thought often of Isriun, trying to remember her scent as she leaned close, the brush of her lips, the shape of her smile, sun glowing through her hair in the doorway of the Godshall. Scant memories, turned over and over in his mind until they were worn threadbare as a beggar’s clothes.