Joe Abercrombie - Half a King

Uthil stirred, and his mouth opened but no words came. He might have been fearless before Grom-gil-Gorm, but faced with Yarvi’s mother he trembled.

“We were once promised to each other,” she said. One hard breath would have sounded like thunder in the Godshall, then, but every breath was held. “You were thought dead … but the gods have brought you back to your rightful place …” She put her hand gently upon the scarred back of his, where it rested on the arm of the Black Chair, and Uthil’s eyes were fixed on her face. “My dearest wish is to see that promise fulfilled.”

Mother Gundring shuffled closer, speaking low. “The High King has proposed marriage to Laithlin more than once, he will take it very ill-”

Uthil did not look at her. His voice was rough. “Our promise is older than the High King’s suit by twenty years.”

“But only today Grandmother Wexen sent another eagle to-”

“Does Grandmother Wexen sit in the Black Chair, or do I?” Uthil finally turned his bright eyes on his minister.

“You do.” Mother Gundring turned hers to the floor. The wise minister coaxes, wheedles, argues, advises, and the wise minister obeys.

“Then send Grandmother Wexen’s bird back to her with an invitation to our wedding.” Uthil turned over his hand so that he held Yarvi’s mother’s in his calloused palm, worn to the shape of a scrubbing block. “You will wear the key to my treasury, Laithlin, and manage those affairs at which you have proved yourself so very able.”

“Gladly,” said Yarvi’s mother. “And my son?”

King Uthil looked at Yarvi for a long moment. Then he nodded. “He shall take back his place as Mother Gundring’s apprentice.” And at a stroke he made himself look stern and merciful both at once.

Yarvi breathed out. “At last Gettland has a king to be proud of,” he said. “I will thank Mother Sea every day for sending you back from the depths.”

And he stood and followed Grom-gil-Gorm towards the doors. He smiled through the taunts, and the jeering, and the mutters, and rather than hide his withered hand up his sleeve as his old habit had been, he let it proudly dangle. Compared to the slave pens of Vulsgard, and the torments of Trigg’s whip, and the cold and hunger of the trackless ice, the scorn of fools was not so very difficult to endure.

With a little help from his two mothers, each no doubt with her own reasons, Yarvi walked from the Godshall alive. A crippled outcast once again, and bound for the Ministry. Where he belonged.

He had come full circle. But he had left a boy, and returned a man.

THE DEAD WERE LAID OUT on chill slabs in a chill cellar beneath the rock. Yarvi did not want to count them. Enough. That was their number. The harvest of his carefully-sown plans. The consequences of his rash oath sworn. No faces, only shrouds peaked at the nose, the chin, the feet. There was no way to tell his mother’s hired killers from the honoured warriors of Gettland. Perhaps, once they had passed through the Last Door, there was no difference.

Yarvi knew which body was Jaud’s, though. His friend’s. His oarmate’s. The man who had forged a path through the snow for him to follow. Whose soft voice had murmured “one stroke at a time” as he whimpered over the oar. Who had taken Yarvi’s fight as his own, even though he had been no fighter. It was the one Sumael stood beside, her clenched fists on the slab, dark face lit down one side by the flame of a single flickering taper.

“Your mother’s found a place for me on a ship,” she said, without looking up, her voice with a softness he was not used to hearing there.

“Good navigators are always in demand,” said Yarvi. The gods knew, he could have done with someone to point out the path for him.

“We leave at first light for Skekenhouse, then on.”

“Home?” he asked.

Sumael closed her eyes, and nodded, the faintest smile at the corner of her scarred mouth. “Home.” When he first saw her he had not thought of her as fine-looking, but she seemed beautiful now. So much he could not look away.

“Have you thought that, maybe … you could stay?” Yarvi hated himself even for asking. For making her turn him down. He was bound for the Ministry anyway. He had nothing to offer her. And Jaud’s body lay between them, a barrier there was no crossing.

“I have to go,” she said. “I can barely remember who I used to be.”

He could have said the same. “Surely all that matters is who you are now.”

“I barely know that either. Besides, Jaud carried me, in the snow.” Her hand twitched towards the shroud, but much to Yarvi’s relief she let it lie. “The least I can do is carry his ashes. I’ll leave them at his village. Maybe I’ll even drink from that well of his. Drink for both of us.” She swallowed, and all the while for some reason Yarvi felt a cold anger growing in him. “Why miss the sweetest water in the-”

“He chose to stay,” snapped Yarvi.

Sumael slowly nodded, not looking up. “We all did.”

“I didn’t force him.”

“No.”

“You could have left, and taken him, if you’d fought harder.”

Now she looked up, but with none of the anger he knew he deserved, only her own share of the guilt. “You’re right. That will be my weight to carry.”

Yarvi looked away, and suddenly his eyes swam with tears. A set of things done, and choices made, and each had seemed the lesser evil but had somehow led him here. Could this really be anyone’s greater good?

“You don’t hate me?” he whispered.

“I’ve lost one friend, I don’t mean to throw away another.” And she put one hand gently on his shoulder. “I’m not much good at making new ones.”

He pressed his own on top of it, wishing he could hold it there. Strange, how you never see how much you want a thing until you know you cannot have it.

“You don’t blame me?” he whispered.

“Why would I?” She gave him a last parting squeeze, then let him go. “It’s better if you do it.”

“I’m glad you came,” said Yarvi. “I’m fast running out of friends.”

“Happy to do it,” said Rulf. “For you and for Ankran. Can’t say I loved the skinny bastard when he was storekeeper, but I warmed to him in the end.” He grinned at Yarvi, the big scab above his eye shifting. “Some men you stick to right off, but it’s those that take time to stick as stick longest. Shall we get some slaves?”

There was a muttering, and a grunting, and a clattering of chains as the wares got to their feet for inspection, each pair of eyes with its own mixture of shame, and fear, and hope, and hopelessness, and Yarvi found himself rubbing gently at the faint scars on his throat where his own collar used to sit. The stink of the place smothered him with memories he would much rather have forgotten. Strange, how quickly he had grown used to free air again.

“Prince Yarvi!” The proprietor hurried from the shadows at the back, a big man with a soft, pale face, faintly familiar. One of the procession who had grovelled before Yarvi at his father’s howing up. Now he would have a chance to grovel again.

“I’m a prince no longer,” said Yarvi, “but, otherwise, yes. You’re Yoverfell?”

The flesh-dealer puffed up with pride at being known. “Indeed I am, and deeply honoured by your visit! Might I ask what sort of slave you are-”

“Does the name Ankran mean much to you?”

The merchant’s eyes flickered to Rulf, standing grim and solid with his thumbs in his silver-buckled sword-belt. “Ankran?”

“Let me sharpen your memory as the reek of your shop has sharpened mine. You sold a man called Ankran, then extorted money from him to keep his wife and child safe.”