Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

Was she promised to some better husband, now? Smiling at some other man? Kissing another lover? Yarvi clenched his teeth. He had to get home.

His every idle moment was crowded with plans for escape.

At a trading post where the buildings were so rough-hewn a man could get splinters just from walking by, Yarvi pointed out a servant-girl to Trigg, then among the salt and herbs acquired some extra supplies while the overseer was distracted. Enough tanglefoot leaf to make every guard on the ship slow and heavy, or even send them off to sleep if the dose was right.

“What about the money, boy?” Trigg hissed as they headed back to the South Wind .

“I have a plan for that,” and Yarvi gave a humble smile while he thought of rolling a slumbering Trigg over the side of the ship.

He was a great deal more valued, respected and, being honest, useful as a storekeeper than he had been as a king. The oarslaves had enough to eat, and warmer clothes to wear, and grunted their approval as he passed. He had the run of the ship while they were on the salt, but like a miser with his profits that much freedom only sharpened his hunger for more.

When Yarvi thought no one could see, he dropped crusts near Nothing’s hand, and saw him slip them quickly into his rags. Once their eyes met afterward, and Yarvi wondered if the scrubber could be grateful, for it hardly seemed there was anything human left behind those strange, bright, sunken eyes.

But Mother Gundring always said, It is for one’s own sake that one does good things . He kept dropping crumbs when he could.

Shadikshirram noted with pleasure the greater weight of her purse, and with even more the improvement in her wine, achieved in part because Yarvi was able to buy in such impressive bulk.

“This is a better vintage than Ankran brought me,” she muttered, squinting at its color in the bottle.

Yarvi bowed low. “One worthy of your achievements.” And behind the mask of his smile he considered how, when he sat in the Black Chair once more, he would see her head above the Screaming Gate and her cursed ship made ashes.

Sometimes as darkness fell she would stick one foot at him so he could pull her boots off while she spouted some tale of past glories, the names and details shifting like oil with every telling. Then she would say he was a good and useful boy, and if he was truly lucky would give him scraps from her table and confess, “my soft heart will be my undoing.”

When he could keep himself from cramming them in his mouth on the spot he would slip them to Jaud, who would pass them to Rulf, while Ankran sat frowning into nowhere between them, his scalp cut from his shaving and his scabbed face a very different shape than it had been before its argument with Shadikshirram’s boot.

“Gods,” grunted Rulf. “Remove this two-handed fool from our oar and give us Yorv again!”

The oarslaves about them laughed, but Ankran sat still as a man of wood, and Yarvi wondered whether he was turning over his own oath for vengeance. He glanced up and saw Sumael frowning down from her place on the yard. She was always watching, judging, as though at a course she could not approve. Even though they were chained at night to the same ring outside the captain’s cabin she said nothing to him beyond the odd grunt.

“Get rowing,” snapped Trigg, shoving past and barging Yarvi into the oar he used to pull.

It seemed he had made enemies as well as friends.

But enemies , as his mother used to say, are the price of success .

“BOOTS, YORV!”

Yarvi flinched as if at a slap. His thoughts had wondered far away, as they often did. Back to the slopes above his father’s burning ship, swearing his oath of vengeance before the gods. Back to the roof of Amwend’s holdfast, the smell of burning in his nose. Back to his uncle’s calmly smiling face.

You would have been a fine jester.

“Yorv!”

He struggled from his blankets, tugging a length of chain after him, stepping over Sumael, hunched in her own bundle, dark face twitching silently in her sleep. It was growing colder as they headed north, and specks of snow whirled from the night on a keen wind, dotting the furs the oarslaves huddled under with white. The guards had given up patrolling and the only two awake hunched over a brazier by the forward hatch into the hold, pinched faces lit in orange.

“These boots are worth more than you, damn it!”

Shadikshirram was sitting on her bed, eyes shining wet, straining forward and trying to grab her foot but so drunk she kept missing. When she saw him she sagged back.

“Give me a hand, eh?”

“As long as you don’t need two,” said Yarvi.

She gurgled with laughter. “You’re a clever little crippled bastard, aren’t you? I swear the gods sent you. Sent you … to get my boots off.” Her chuckles became like snores, and by the time he wrestled her second boot off and heaved her leg onto the bed she was sound asleep, head back, hair fluttering over her mouth with each snorting breath.

Yarvi stopped still as stone. Her shirt had come open at the collar and the chain slipped from it. Glinting on the furs beside her neck was the key to every lock on the ship.

He looked towards the door, open a crack, snow flitting outside. He opened the lamp and blew out the flame, and the room sank into darkness. It was an awful risk, but a man with time against him must sometimes throw the dice.

The wise wait for their moment, but never let it pass .

He inched to the bed, skin prickling. and slipped his fingerless hand under Shadikshirram’s head.

Gently, gently he lifted it, shocked at the dead weight, teeth clenched with the effort of moving so slowly. He winced as she twitched and snorted, sure her eyes would flick open, thinking of her heel smashing his face as it had smashed Ankran’s.

He took a breath and held it, reached across her for the key, caught by a gleam of Father Moon’s light from one of the narrow windows. He strained for it … but his itching fingertips came up just short.

There was a choking pressure around his neck. His chain had snagged on something. He turned, thinking to yank it free, and there in the doorway, jaw locked tight and Yarvi’s chain gripped firmly in both fists, stood Sumael.

For a moment they were frozen there. Then she began to reel him in.

He let Shadikshirram’s head fall as gently as he could, gripped the chain with his good hand and tried to drag it back, breath hissing. Sumael only pulled harder, the collar grinding into Yarvi’s neck, the links of the chain cutting into his hand, making him bite his lip to keep from crying out.

It was like the rope contest that the boys used to play on the beach in Thorlby, except only one of them had both hands and one end was around Yarvi’s neck.

He twisted and struggled but Sumael was too strong for him, and in silence she dragged him closer, and closer, his boots slipping on the floor, catching a bottle and sending it rolling, until in the end she caught him by the collar and hauled him out into the night, dragging him close.

“You damn fool!” she snarled in his face. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“What do you care?” he hissed back, her knuckles white around his collar and his knuckles white around her fist.

“I care if they change all the locks because you stole the key, idiot!”

There was a long pause, then, while they stared at each other in the darkness, and it settled on him just how very close they were. Close enough for him to see the angry creases at the bridge of her nose, to see her teeth gleaming through the notch in her lip, to feel her warmth. Close enough for him to smell her quick breath, a little sour, but none the worse for that. Close enough, almost, to kiss. It must have settled on her at the same moment, because she let go his collar as if it was hot, pulled away and twisted her wrist free of his grip.