Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

“Glad to be on the sea again.” She spread her arms wide, wriggling her fingers. “And with no chains!”

He felt his smile fade, for he still had a chain he could not break. The one he had forged himself with his own oath. The one that drew him back to Thorlby, and bound him to the Black Chair. And he knew then that sooner or later Sumael would stand at the rail of another ship. One that would carry her back to the First of Cities, and away from him forever.

Her smile faltered too, as though she had the same thought at the same moment, and they looked away from each other to watch Father Earth grinding by in awkward silence.

For two lands so bitterly opposed, Vansterland and Gettland looked very much the same. Barren beaches, forest and fen. He had seen few people, and those hurrying inland, fearful at the sight of a ship. Narrowing his eyes to the south, he saw a little tooth upon a headland, the smoke of houses smudging the white sky.

“What’s that town?” he asked Sumael.

“Amwend,” she said. “Near the border.”

Amwend, where he had led the raid. Or flopped from a ship without a shield and straight into a trap, at least. That was the tower, then, where Keimdal had died. Where Hurik had betrayed him. From which Odem had thrown him down, down into the bitter sea, and even more bitter slavery.

Yarvi realized he had ground his shrivelled hand into the rail until it hurt. He turned his eyes away from land, towards the white-churned water in their wake, the marks of the oars quickly fading to leave no sign of their passing. Would it be so with him? Faded and forgotten?

Sister Owd, the apprentice Mother Scaer had sent with them, was looking straight at him. A furtive sort of look, then quickly down at something she was writing on a tiny slip of paper, tugged and twitched under her charcoal by the wind.

Yarvi walked slowly to her. “Keeping an eye on me?”

“You know I am,” she said, without looking up. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“Do you doubt me?”

“I just tell Mother Scaer what I see. She chooses what to doubt.”

She was small and round-faced, one of those people whose age is hard to guess, but even so Yarvi did not think she could be older than him. “When did you take the Minister’s Test?”

“Two years ago,” she said, shielding the little slip of paper with her shoulder.

He gave up trying to see it. Ministers have their own signs anyway: he doubted he could read them. “What was it like?”

“Not hard, if you’re prepared.”

“I was prepared,” said Yarvi, thinking back to that night Odem came in out of the rain. The flames reflected in the jars, the creases in Mother Gundring’s smile, the purity of question and answer. He felt a surge of longing, then, for that simple life with no uncles to kill or oaths to keep or hard choices to be made. For the books and the plants and the soft word spoken. He had to force it away to the back of his mind with an effort. He could not afford it now. “But I never got the chance to take it.”

“You didn’t miss much. A lot of fussing outside the door. A lot of being stared at by old women.” She finished the message and began to roll it up into a tiny pellet. “Then the honor of being kissed by Grandmother Wexen.”

“How was that?”

Sister Owd puffed out her cheeks and gave a long sigh. “Wisest of all women she may be, but I was hoping my last kiss would be from someone younger. I saw the High King, from a distance.”

“So did I, once. He seemed small, and old, and greedy, and complained about everything, and was scared of his food. But he had many strong warriors with him.”

“Time hasn’t changed him much, then. Except he worships the One God now, he’s more gripped with his own power than ever, and by all accounts can’t stay awake longer than an hour at a time. And those warriors have multiplied.” She rolled up the canvas cover on the cage. The birds inside did not move, did not startle at the light, only stared levelly at Yarvi with half a dozen pairs of unblinking eyes. Black birds.

Yarvi frowned at them. “Crows?”

“Yes.” Sister Owd pulled up her sleeve, unhooked the tiny door and skilfully wormed a white arm inside the cage, took a crow about the body and drew it out, still and calm as a bird made from coal. “Mother Scaer hasn’t used doves for years.”

“Not at all?”

“Not since I’ve been her apprentice.” She made the message fast about the bird’s ankle and spoke softly. “The rumor is a dove sent from Mother Gundring tried to claw her face. She doesn’t trust them.” She leaned close to the black bird and cooed, “We are a day from Thorlby.”

“Thorlby,” spoke the crow in its croaking voice, then Sister Owd flicked it into the skies where it clattered away to the north.

“Crows,” murmured Yarvi, watching it skim the white-flecked waves.

“Promises of obedience to your master, Grom-gil-Gorm?” Nothing stood beside Yarvi, still hugging his sword like a lover even though he had a perfectly good sheath for it now.

“He’s my ally, not my master,” answered Yarvi.

“Of course. You are a slave no longer.” Nothing rubbed gently at the scars all about his stubbled neck. “I remember our collars coming off, in that friendly farmstead. Before Shadikshirram burned it. No slave, you. And yet you made the deal with the Vanstermen kneeling.”

“We were all on our knees at the time,” growled Yarvi.

“My question is, are we still? You will win few friends when you take back the Black Chair with the help of Gettland’s worst enemy.”

“I can win friends once I’m in the chair. It’s getting enemies out of it that concerns me now. What should I have done? Let the Vanstermen burn us?”

“Perhaps there was middle ground between letting Gorm kill us and selling him the land of our birth.”

“Middle ground has been hard to find of late,” Yarvi forced through gritted teeth.

“It always is, but a king’s place is upon it. There will be a price for this, I think.”

“You are quick with the questions but tardy on the answers, Nothing. Did you not swear an oath to help me?”

Nothing narrowed his eyes at Yarvi, the wind blowing up and lashing the gray hair about his battle-beaten face. “I swore an oath, and mean to see it through or die.”

“Good,” said Yarvi, turning away. “I will hold you to it.”

Below them the oar-slaves were working up a sweat, teeth clenched at their benches, grunting in time as the overseer stalked between them, whip coiled behind his back. Just as Trigg had done on the deck of the South Wind . Yarvi remembered well enough the burning in his muscles, the burning of the lash across his back.

But the closer he came to the Black Chair the heavier weighed his oath, and the shorter grew his patience.

Someone has to row .

“More speed!” he growled at the overseer.

Sumael sprang from ship to jetty and shoved through the press to the table where Thorlby’s dockmistress sat flanked by guards. Yarvi followed with a little less agility and a lot less authority across the gangplank, onto the ground that should have been his kingdom, eyes down and hood up, the others at his back.

“My name is Shadikshirram,” Sumael said, flicking the paper carelessly open and dropping it onto the table, “and I carry a licence to trade from the High King, stamped with the rune of Grandmother Wexen herself.”

They had waited until the most junior dockmistress took her turn at the table in the hope she would wave them through. Instead she frowned at the licence long enough for everyone to get twitchy, fingering the two keys about her neck, one of her household and one of her office. Yarvi noticed with a wave of sick nerves that one corner of the licence was brown with old blood. The blood of its rightful owner, indeed, and spilled by Yarvi’s own hand. The dockmistress peered up at Sumael, and spoke the words he had been dreading.