Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

“On the battlefield there are no rules,” said Yarvi, remembering something his father told him once when he was drunk and bored with shouting at his dogs.

“Exactly.” Odem put his strong hand on Yarvi’s shoulder, and Yarvi wondered how much happier his life might have been had his uncle been his father. “A king must win. The rest is dust.”

“… Mother Sun and Father Moon, shine your gold and silver lights upon this union between Yarvi, son of Laithlin, and Isriun, daughter of Odem …”

The towering statues of the six Tall Gods glowered down with pitiless garnet eyes. Above them, in niches ringing the dome of the ceiling, the amber figures of the small gods gleamed. All judging Yarvi’s worth and no doubt finding him as horribly wanting as he did himself.

He curled up his withered hand and tried to work it further into his sleeve. Everyone in the Godshall knew well enough what he had on the end of his arm. Or what he hadn’t.

Yet still he tried to hide it.

“Mother Sea and Father Earth, grant them your harvests and your bounty, send them good weatherluck and good weaponluck …”

In the center of the hall the Black Chair stood upon its dais. It was an elf-relic from the time before the Breaking of God, forged by unknown arts from a single piece of black metal, impossibly delicate and impossibly strong, and countless years had left not a single scratch upon it.

Seat of kings, between gods and men. Far too high for such a wretched thing as Yarvi to sit in. He felt unworthy even to look upon it.

“Mother War and Father Peace, grant them the strength to face whatever Fate brings …”

He had expected to be a minister. To give up wife and children with hardly a thought. Kissing the aged cheek of Grandmother Wexen when he passed the test was the closest he had hoped to come to romance. Now he was to share his life, such as it was, with a girl he hardly knew.

Isriun’s palm was clammy against his, sacred cloth wrapped about their clasped hands to make a clumsy bundle. They gripped each other, and were tied together, and pressed together by the wishes of their parents, and bound together by the needs of Gettland, and still it felt as if there was an unbridgeable chasm between them.

“Oh, He Who Sprouts the Seed, grant them healthy issue …”

Yarvi knew what every guest was thinking. Not crippled issue. Not one-handed issue. He stole a glance sideways at this small, slight, yellow-haired girl who should have been his brother’s wife. She looked scared and slightly sick. But who wouldn’t, being forced to marry half a man?

This was everyone’s second best. A day of celebration mourned by all. A tragic compromise.

“Oh, She Who Guards the Locks, keep safe their household …”

Only Brinyolf the Prayer-Weaver was enjoying himself. He had spun one ponderous blessing for Isriun at her betrothal to Yarvi’s brother and now-to his delight if not hers-got the chance to construct a second. His voice droned on, exhorting Tall Gods and Small Gods to grant fertility in their fields, and obedience in their slaves, and no one would have been surprised by a plea for regularity in their bowels next. Yarvi hunched his shoulders, swamped by one of the heavy furs his father used to wear, dreading the magnitude of Brinyolf’s blessing at the wedding itself.

“Oh, She of the Ewer, pour prosperity upon this royal couple, upon their parents and their subjects, and upon all of Gettland!”

The prayer-weaver stepped back, smug as a new parent, his chin vanishing into the roll of fat beneath it.

“I shall be brief,” said Mother Gundring, with the slightest knowing glance at Yarvi. He spluttered on a stifled laugh, then caught his mother’s eye upon him, cold as the winter sea, and had no need to stifle another.

“A kingdom stands upon two pillars,” spoke the old minister. “We already have a strong king.” No one laughed. Admirable self control. “Soon, gods willing, we will have a strong queen also.” Yarvi saw Isriun’s pale throat flutter as she swallowed.

Mother Gundring beckoned forward Yarvi’s mother and his Uncle Odem, the one person who looked happy to be in attendance, to give their blessing by placing their hands upon the bundle. Then with an effort she lifted high her staff, tubes and rods of the same elf-metal as the Black Chair gleaming, and called out, “They are promised!”

So it was done. Isriun was not asked for an opinion on the matter, and neither was Yarvi. It seemed there was little interest in the opinions of kings. Certainly not of this one. The audience, a hundred strong or more, served up restrained applause. The men-heads of some of Gettland’s greatest families, sword-hilts and cloak-buckles set with gold-beat approval on broad chests with heavy fists. On the other side of the hall the women-hair glistening with fresh oil and their household keys hung on best jewel-lustred chains-tapped fingers politely in their scented palms.

Mother Gundring unwrapped the sacred cloth and Yarvi snatched free his good hand, sticky-pink and tingling. His uncle seized him by the shoulders and said into his ear, “Well done!” though Yarvi had done nothing but stand there and sing some promises he hardly understood.

The guests filed out, and Brinyolf closed the doors of the hall with an echoing clap, leaving Yarvi and Isriun alone with the gods, the Black Chair, the weight of their uncertain future, and an ocean of awkward silence.

Isriun rubbed gently at the hand that had held Yarvi’s, and looked at the floor. He looked at the floor too, not that there was anything so very interesting down there. He cleared his throat. He shifted his sword belt. It still hung strangely on him. He felt as if it always would. “I’m sorry,” he said, at last.

She looked up, one eye shining in the heavy darkness. “Why are you sorry?” Then she remembered to add uncertainly, “my king?”

He almost said That you’ll have half a man for a husband , but settled for, “That you’re passed around my family like a feast-day cup.”

“On feast-day, everyone’s happy to get the cup.” She gave a bitter little smile. “I’m the one who should be sorry. Imagine me a queen.” And she snorted as though there never was a more foolish joke.

“Imagine me a king.”

“You are a king.”

He blinked at that. He had been so fixed on his shortcomings it had never occurred she might be fixed on her own. That thought, as the misery of others often can, made him feel just a little better.

“You manage your father’s household.” He looked down at the golden key hanging on her chest. “That’s no small task.”

“But a queen manages the business of a country! Everyone says your mother has a high art at it. Laithlin, the Golden Queen!” She spoke the name like a magic spell. “They say she’s owed a thousand thousand favours, that a debt to her is a matter for pride. They say her word is valued higher than gold among merchants, because gold may go down in worth but her word never does. They say some traders of the far north have given up praying to the gods and worship her instead.” She spoke faster and faster, and chewed at her nails, and tugged at one thin hand with the other, eyes opening very wide. “There’s a rumor she lays silver eggs.”

Yarvi had to laugh. “I’m reasonably sure that one’s false.”

“But she’s raised granaries and had channels dug and brought more earth under the plow so there’ll never again be a famine that forces folk to draw lots to see who must find new homes across the sea.” Isriun’s shoulders drifted up as she spoke until they were hunched about her ears. “And people flock to Thorlby from across the world to trade, so the city’s tripled in size and split its walls and your mother’s built new walls and split them again.”