Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

“Have you considered the Ministry?” it croaked at him.

“I am a king!” he snarled, cheeks burning, hiding his useless clown’s hand behind his back.

“A king sits between gods and men,” said Keimdal, blood leaking from his cut throat.

“A king sits alone,” said Yarvi’s father, leaning forward in the Black Chair, the wounds that had been dry all dripping fresh and spilling a slick of blood across the floor of the Godshall.

Odem’s screams had turned to giggles. “You would have made a fine jester.”

“Damn you!” snarled Yarvi, trying to stab harder but the knife was so heavy he could hardly lift it.

“What are you doing?” asked Mother Gundring. She sounded scared.

“Shut up, bitch,” said Odem, and he caught Yarvi around the neck, and squeezed …

YARVI WOKE WITH A HORRIBLE jolt to find Trigg’s hands around his throat.

A crescent of fierce grins swam above him, teeth shining in torchlight. He retched and twisted but he was held fast as a fly in honey.

“You should’ve taken the deal, boy.”

“What are you doing?” asked Sumael again. He’d never heard her sound scared before. But she sounded nowhere near as scared as Yarvi was.

“I told you to shut your mouth !” one of the guards snarled in her face. “Unless you want to go with him!”

She shrank back into her blankets. She knew what to do, and when. Perhaps a friend would’ve been better than an accomplice after all, but it was a little late now to find one.

“I told you clever children drown just like stupid ones.” Trigg slid his key into the lock and unfastened Yarvi’s chain. Freedom, but not quite how he had pictured it. “We’re going to put you in the water and see if it’s true.”

And Trigg dragged Yarvi down the deck like a chicken plucked and ready for the pot. Past the oarsmen sleeping on their benches, the odd one peering from his bald furs. None of them stirred to help him. Why would they? How could they?

Yarvi’s heels kicked pointlessly at the deck. Yarvi’s hands fumbled at Trigg’s, good and bad equally useless. Perhaps he should have bargained, bluffed, flattered his way free, but his bursting chest could only gather the air to make a small wet sound, like a fart.

At that moment the soft arts of the minister were shown to have their limitations.

“We’ve got a bet going,” said Trigg, “on how long it takes you to sink.”

Yarvi plucked at Trigg’s arm, scratched at his shoulder with his nails, but the overseer scarcely noticed. Out of the corner of his weeping eye he saw Sumael standing, shaking off her blankets. When Trigg unlocked Yarvi’s chain he unlocked hers too.

But Yarvi knew he could expect no help from her. He could expect no help at all.

“Let this be a lesson to the rest of you!” Trigg stabbed at his chest with his free thumb. “This is my ship. Cross me and you’re done.”

“Let him be!” someone growled. “He’s done no harm.” Jaud, Yarvi saw as he was dragged past. But no one marked the big man. Beside him, from Yarvi’s old place, Ankran watched, rubbing at his crooked nose. It did not look like such a bad place now.

“You should’ve taken the deal,” Trigg bundled Yarvi over the shipped oars like a sack of rags. “I can forgive a lot in a fine singer, boy, but-”

With a sudden yelp the overseer fell sprawling, hand suddenly loose, and Yarvi jabbed his twisted little finger in Trigg’s eye, gave him a wriggling kick in the chest and went tumbling free.

Trigg had tripped on Nothing’s heavy chain, pulled suddenly taut. The deck-scrubber hunched in the shadows, eyes gleaming behind his hanging hair. “Run,” he whispered.

Perhaps Yarvi had made one friend after all.

The first breath he heaved in made his head reel. He scrambled up, sobbing, snorting, careered into the benches, through oarslaves half asleep, clambering, slithering, under oars and over them.

People were shouting but Yarvi could scarcely hear the words through the throbbing of blood in his ears, like the mindless thunder of a storm.

He saw the forward hatch, wobbling, shuddering. His hand closed around the handle. He hauled it open and pitched face-first into the darkness.

Yarvi fell, knocked his shoulder, cracked his head, tumbled over sacks and sprawled on his face.

Wet on his cheek. In the hold.

He rolled with an effort, dragged himself into the shadows.

Dark down here. Pitch-dark, but a minister must know the ways, and he felt them out now with his fingertips.

Roaring in his ears, burning in his chest, terror tickling at every part of him, but he had to master it, and think. There is always a way , his mother used to tell him.

He could hear the guards shouting as they looked down into the hatch, too close, too close behind. He jerked his chain after him, squirming between crates and barrels in the hold, a flicker of light from the torches above catching bands and rivets, guiding him towards the ship’s stores.

He slithered through the low doorway, sloshing between shelves and boxes in the freezing puddle that was today’s leakage. He crouched against the ship’s cold side, breath whooping and wheezing, more light now as the guards brought their torches down after him.

“Where is he?”

There had to be a way. Surely they’d be coming from the other direction soon, from the aft hatch. His eyes flickered to its ladder.

Had to be some way. No time for a plan, all his plans were gone like smoke. Trigg would be waiting. Trigg would be angry.

His eyes darted to every sound, to every glint of light, searching desperately for some means of escape, some place to hide, but there was none. He needed an ally. He pressed himself helplessly back against the wood, felt the icy dampness there, heard the drip of saltwater. And Mother Gundring’s voice came to him, soft and careful at the firepit.

When a wise minister has nothing but enemies, she beats one with a worse.

Yarvi dived below the nearest shelf, fumbling in the black, and his fingers closed around the iron bar he kept to knock in nails.

The sailor’s worst enemy is the sea , Shadikshirram never tired of saying.

“Where are you, boy?”

He could just see the outlines of Sumael’s repair and he rammed the iron bar between hull and fresh timbers and dragged on it with all his strength. He gritted his teeth and worked it deeper and snarled out all his fury and his pain and his helplessness and ripped at that bar as though it was Trigg and Odem and Grom-gil-Gorm combined. He tore at it, strained at it, wedged the wrist of his useless hand around it, the tortured wood creaking, pots and boxes clattering down as he barged the shelves with his shoulder.

He could hear the guards now, near, the glow of their lamps in the hold, their humped shapes in the low doorway, the gleam of their blades.

“Come here, cripple!”

He screamed as he made one last muscle-tearing effort. There was a crack as the timbers suddenly gave, Yarvi lurched flailing backwards, and hissing with the rage of a devil released from hell Mother Sea burst into the stores.

Yarvi brought a shelf crashing down with him, was soaked in an instant in icy water, rolled gasping towards the aft hatch, up and slithering sodden, the din of shouting men and furious sea and splintering wood in his ears.

He floundered to the ladder, the water already to his knees. A guard was at his heels, clutching in the darkness. Yarvi flung the bar at him, sent him stumbling into the jet of water and it tore him across the store like a toy. More leaks had sprung, the sea showering in at a dozen angles, the wails of the guards hardly heard over its deafening roar.