Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

“You’re not Shadikshirram.” One of the guards shifted his gloved hand slightly on the haft of his spear, and Nothing shifted his thumb in his belt towards his sword, and Yarvi’s sickness swelled to dread. Would it all end here, in an ugly little brawl on the docks? “I saw her come ashore here often, usually drunk-”

Sumael dealt the tabletop a fearsome blow, snarling into the dockmistress’s face and making her shrink back, astonished. “You speak of my mother, Ebdel Aric Shadikshirram, and you’ll speak with more respect! She is gone through the Last Door. Drowned in the icy waters of the North.” Her voice cracked, and she dabbed at her dry eyes with the back of her hand. “Her business she entrusted to me, her loving daughter Sumael Shadikshirram.” She snatched the licence back from the table and shouted again, flecking dockmistress, guards, and Yarvi too with spit. “And I have business with Queen Laithlin!”

“She is queen no-”

“You know who I speak of! Where is Laithlin?”

“Usually at her counting house-”

“I will have words with her!” And Sumael turned on her heel and stalked off up the jetty.

“She may not take visitors …” the dockmistress muttered weakly after her.

Sister Owd gave the table a friendly pat as Yarvi and the rest filed past. “If it’s any consolation, she’s like this with everyone.”

“A winning performance,” said Yarvi as he caught up to Sumael, hurrying past the fish hanging and the nets heaped and the fishers shouting prices for the morning’s catch. “What would we do without you?”

“I nearly wet myself,” she hissed back. “Is anyone following?”

“Not even looking.” The dockmistress was busy venting her frustrations on the next arrival and they soon left her behind.

Home at last, but Yarvi felt like a stranger. It all seemed smaller than he remembered, less busy, berths and stalls standing empty, buildings abandoned. His heart leapt whenever he saw a familiar face and, like a thief passing the place of his crime, he shrank further into his hood, back prickling with sweat despite the cold.

If he was recognized King Odem would soon hear of it, and lose no time in finishing what began on the roof of Amwend’s tower.

“Those are the howes of your ancestors, then?”

Nothing was staring through his tangle of hair towards the north, down the long and lonely sweep of beach and the file of grassy humps above it, the nearest with just a few months of patchy green on its fallow flanks.

“Of my murdered father Uthrik.” Yarvi worked his jaw. “And my drowned uncle Uthil, and kings of Gettland back into the darkness of history.”

Nothing scratched at his grizzled cheek. “Before them you swore your oath.”

“As before me you swore yours.”

“Never fear.” Nothing grinned as they threaded through a crowded gate in the outermost wall of the city. That mad, bright-eyed grin that gave Yarvi more fears rather than less. “Flesh may forget, but steel never does.”

Sister Owd seemed to know the ways of Thorlby better even than Yarvi, its native son. Its king. She led them up narrow streets zigzagging the steep hillside, houses crammed tall and narrow between outcroppings of rock, the gray bones of Gettland showing through the city’s skin. She led them across bridges over surging streams where slaves leaned out to fill the jugs of the wealthy. She led them finally to a long, slim yard in the shadow of the lowering citadel where Yarvi had been born, and raised, and daily humiliated, and studied to be a minister, and found out he was a king.

“The house is here,” said Sister Owd. It was in plain sight. One Yarvi had often walked past.

“Why does Gorm’s minister keep a house in Thorlby?”

“Mother Scaer says the wise minister knows her enemy’s house better than her own.”

“Mother Scaer is as prone to pithy phrases as Mother Gundring,” grunted Yarvi.

Owd turned the key. “It’s what the Ministry is all about.”

“Take Jaud with you,” Yarvi drew Sumael to one side and spoke softly to her. “Go to the counting house and speak to my mother.” If his luck held, Hurik would be at the training square now.

“And say what?” asked Sumael. “That her dead son has come calling?”

“And that he’s finally learned to fasten his cloak-buckle. Bring her here.”

“What if she doesn’t believe me?”

Yarvi pictured his mother’s face, then, as she used to frown down at him, and thought it very likely she would doubt. “Then we must think of something else.”

“And if she doesn’t believe me, and orders me dead for the insult?”

Yarvi paused. “Then I must think of something else.”

“Who among you has been sent bad weatherluck or bad weaponluck?” came a ringing voice from across the square. A crowd had gathered before a grand building, new-raised, pillars of white marble at its front, and before them a priest in robes of humble sack cloth stood with arms spread and wailed his message. “Who among you finds their prayers to the many gods ignored?”

“My prayers were ignored so much I stopped making ’em,” muttered Rulf.

“It would be small wonder!” called out the priest. “For there are not many gods but one! All the arts of the elves could not break her! The arms of the One God, and the gates of her temple, are flung wide for all!”

“Temple?” Yarvi frowned. “My mother built that place to be a mint. They were going to stamp coins there, every one the same weight.” Now the seven-rayed sun of the One God-the High King’s god-was raised above the doorway.

“Her comfort, her mercy, her shelter, is freely given!” roared the priest. “Her only demand is that you love her as she loves you!”

Nothing spat on the stones. “What have gods to do with love?”

“Things have changed here,” said Yarvi, glancing about the square and pulling his hood a little lower.

“New king,” said Sumael, licking at her scarred lip, “new ways.”

They heard the door open, and Yarvi stiffened. They heard footsteps in the hallway, and Yarvi swallowed with an effort. The door swung open and Yarvi took a halting step towards it, hardly able to breathe-

Two slaves ducked through, hands on their swords. Two huge-shouldered Inglings with silver collars. Nothing bristled, steel glinting as he drew.

“No!” said Yarvi. He knew these two. Slaves of his mother’s.

And now their owner swept into the room with Sumael just behind.

She was not changed.

Tall and stern, golden hair oiled and piled in shining coils. She wore few jewels but those of humbling size. The great Queen’s Key, key to the treasury of Gettland, was gone from her chain, and in its place was a smaller, set with dark rubies like drops of spilled blood.

Yarvi might have had trouble convincing his companions he was a king, but his mother filled that small room to its corners with an effortless majesty.

“Gods,” croaked Rulf, and with a wince lowered himself to his knees, and Sister Owd, and Jaud and Sumael, and the two slaves hurried to follow him. Nothing knelt last, eyes and sword’s point on the floor, so that only Yarvi and his mother were left standing.

She did not so much as acknowledge them. She stared at Yarvi, and he at her, as though they were alone. She walked to him, neither smiling nor frowning, until she stood but a stride away, and she seemed to him so beautiful it hurt his eyes to look at her, and he felt in them the burning of tears.

“My son,” she whispered, and folded him in her arms. “My son.” And she held him so tight that it was almost painful, and her tears wetted his head while his wetted her shoulder.