Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

His mother’s smile spread, and Yarvi wondered whether he had ever seen her look at him with admiration before. “Your brother may have got more than his share of the fingers, but the gods kept all the wits for you. You have become a deep-cunning man, Yarvi.”

It seemed that empathy, properly used, could be a deadly weapon. “My years’ training for the Ministry were not wasted. Still, help from someone close to Odem would only sweeten our chances. We could go to Mother Gundring-”

“No. She is Odem’s minister.”

“She is my minister.”

Yarvi’s mother shook her head. “At best her loyalties would be split. Who knows what she would judge the greater good? There is already so much that could go wrong.”

“But so much to win. Great stakes mean great risks.”

“So they do.” She stood, shaking out her skirts, and looked down at him in wonder. “When did my favorite son become a gambler?”

“When his uncle threw him into the sea and stole his birthright.”

“He underestimated you, Yarvi. And so did I. But I am glad to learn my error.” Her smile faded and her voice took on a deadly edge. “His will bring him a bloody reckoning. Send your bird to Grom-gil-Gorm, little sister. Tell him we most keenly await his arrival.”

Sister Owd bowed very low. “I will, my queen, but … once I do, there can be no going back.”

Yarvi’s mother barked a joyless laugh. “Ask your mistress, Sister. I am not one for going back.” She reached across the table and placed her strong hand on Yarvi’s weak. “Nor is my son.”

“This is a bastard of a risk,” whispered Rulf, his words deadened in the darkness.

“Life is a risk,” answered Nothing. “All things, from birth on.”

“A man can still rush at the Last Door naked and screaming or tread softly the other way.”

“Death will usher us all through regardless,” said Nothing. “I choose to face her.”

“Can I choose to be elsewhere the next time?”

“Enough of your squabbling!” hissed Yarvi. “You’re like old hounds over the last bone!”

“We can’t all act like kings,” muttered Rulf, with more than a little irony. Perhaps when you’ve watched a man make soil every day in a bucket beside you, it is hard to accept he sits between gods and men.

Bolts squealed with the rust of years and in a shower of dust the gate swung open. One of his mother’s Inglings was crammed into the narrow archway beyond, frowning down at them.

“Were you seen?” asked Yarvi.

The slave shook his head, turned, and plodded up the narrow stair, stooped under the low ceiling. Yarvi wondered if he could be trusted. His mother thought so. But then she had trusted Hurik. Yarvi had grown out of the childish notion that his parents knew everything.

He had grown out of all sorts of notions over the past few months.

The stair opened out into a great cave, the ragged rock of the ceiling crusted with teeth of lime, each hung with its own dewdrop, sparkling in the light of their torches.

“We’re under the citadel?” asked Rulf, peering nervously up at the unimaginable weight of stone above their heads.

“The rock is riddled with passages,” said Yarvi. “With ancient elf-tunnels and newer cellars. With hidden doors and spy-holes. Some kings, and all ministers, sometimes want to go unobserved. But no one knows these ways like me. I spent half my childhood in the shadows. Hiding from my father or my brother. Creeping from one place of solitude to another. Seeing while unseen, and pretending I was part of what I saw. Making up a life where I wasn’t an outcast.”

“A sad story,” murmured Nothing.

“Wretched.” Yarvi thought of his younger self, weeping in the darkness, wishing someone would find him but knowing they did not care enough to look, and shook his head in disgust at his own past weakness. “But it might still have a happy ending.”

“It might.” Nothing let one hand brush the wall beside them. A face of jointless elf-stone, thousands of years old and smooth as if it had been laid yesterday. “This way your mother’s men can enter the citadel unseen.”

“As Odem’s file out above to face Grom-gil-Gorm.”

The Ingling held out his arm to stop them.

The passageway ended at a round shaft. Far above a little circle of light, far below the faint glimmer of water. A stair wound about it, a stair so narrow Yarvi had to edge up sideways, shoulderblades scraping the smooth elf-stone, toes of his boots grazing the brink, sweat springing from his forehead. Halfway up there came a whirring from above and he flinched as something flashed past his face, might have toppled forward had Rulf not caught his arm.

“Wouldn’t want your reign cut short by a bucket.”

It splashed down far below and Yarvi breathed a long sigh. The last thing he needed was another plunge into cold water.

Women’s voices echoed around them, strangely loud.

“ … she still says no.”

“Would you want to marry that old husk after you’d been wife to a man like Uthrik?”

“Her wants don’t come into it. If a king sits between gods and men, the High King sits between kings and gods. No one says no to him forever …”

They shuffled on. More shadows, more steps, more shameful memories, walls of rough stone laid by the hands of men that seemed older but were thousands of years newer than the tunnels below, daylight winking through grated openings near the ceiling.

“How many men has the queen bought?” asked Rulf.

“Thirty-three,” said the Ingling over his shoulder. “So far.”

“Good men?”

“Men.” The Ingling shrugged. “They will kill or die according to their luck.”

“Of how many could Odem say the same?” asked Nothing.

“Many,” said the Ingling.

“This might be a quarter of them.” Yarvi went up on tiptoes to squint through a grate into the light.

Today’s training square had been set out in the yard of the citadel, the ancient cedar at one corner. The warriors were at shield-practice, forming walls and wedges and breaking them apart, steel flashing in the thin sun, clattering against wood, the scrape of shuffling feet. The instructions of Master Hunnan came brittle on the cold air, to lock shields, to keep by the shoulder-man, to thrust low, the way they used to be barked at Yarvi, to precious little good.

“That is a great number of men,” said Nothing, prone to understate the case.

“Well-trained and battle-hardened men, on their own ground,” added Rulf.

“My ground,” Yarvi forced through his gritted teeth. He led them on, every step, stone, turning familiar. “See there?” He drew Rulf next to him, pressing him against another narrow grate with a view of the citadel’s one gateway. The doors of studded wood stood open, flanked by guards, but in the shadows at the top of the archway burnished copper gleamed.

“The Screaming Gate,” he whispered.

“Why that name?” asked Rulf. “Because of the screams we’ll make when this goes wrong?”

“Never mind the name. It drops from above to seal the citadel. Six ministers made the mechanism. A single silver pin holds it up. It’s always guarded, but a hidden stair leads to the room. When the day comes, Nothing and I will take a dozen men and hold it. Rulf, you’ll take archers to the roof, ready to make pincushions of my uncle’s guards.”

“No doubt they’ll make fine ones.”

“When the moment is ripe we pull the pin, the gate drops, and Odem is trapped inside.” Yarvi pictured the horror on his uncle’s face as the Screaming Gate fell and he wished, not for the first time, that doing a thing was as simple as saying it.