Joe Abercrombie: Half a King

From the many cages ranked around the walls they looked down on him now, the doves, and one great bronze-feathered eagle which must have brought a message from the High King in Skekenhouse. The one person in the lands around the Shattered Sea who had the right to make requests of Yarvi now. Yet here he sat against the dropping-speckled wall, picking at the nail on his shrivelled hand, buried beneath a howe of demands he could never fulfill.

He had always been weak, but he never felt truly powerless until they made him a king.

He heard shuffling feet on the steps and Mother Gundring ducked through the low doorway, breathing hard.

“I thought you’d never get here,” said Yarvi.

“My king,” replied the old minister once she had the breath. “You were expected before the Godshall.”

“Aren’t the tunnels meant for a king’s escape?”

“From armed enemies. From your family, your subjects, not to mention your bride-to-be, less so.” She peered up at the domed ceiling, at the gods painted there as birds, taking to a brilliant sky. “Were you planning to fly away?”

“To Catalia, perhaps, or the land of the Alyuks, or up the Divine River to Kalyiv.” Yarvi shrugged. “But I don’t have two good hands, never mind two good wings.”

Mother Gundring nodded. “In the end, we must all be what we are.”

“And what am I?”

“The King of Gettland.”

He swallowed then, knowing how disappointed she must be. How disappointed he was himself. In the songs great kings rarely crawled off to hide from their own people. He caught sight of the eagle as he looked away, huge and serene in its cage.

“Grandmother Wexen has sent a message?”

“A message,” echoed one of the doves in its scratching mockery of a voice. “A message. A message.”

Mother Gundring frowned up at the eagle, still as a stuffed trophy. “It came from Skekenhouse five days ago. Grandmother Wexen sent to ask when you would arrive for your test.”

Yarvi remembered the one time he had seen the First of Ministers, a few years before when the High King had visited Thorlby. The High King had seemed a grim and grasping old man, offended by everything. Yarvi’s mother had been obliged to soothe him when someone did not bow in quite the manner he liked. Yarvi’s brother had laughed that such a feeble little wisp-haired man should rule the Shattered Sea, but his laughter died when he saw the number of warriors that followed him. Yarvi’s father had raged because the High King took gifts and gave none. Mother Gundring had clicked her tongue and said, The wealthier a man is, the more he craves wealth.

Grandmother Wexen had scarcely left her proper place at the High King’s side, ever smiling like a kindly grandparent. When Yarvi knelt before her she had looked at his crippled hand, and leaned down to murmur, My prince, have you considered joining the Ministry? And for a moment he had seen a hungry brightness in her eye which scared him more than all the High King’s frowning warriors.

“So much interest from the First of Ministers?” he muttered, swallowing an aftertaste of that day’s fear.

Mother Gundring shrugged. “It is rare to have a prince of royal blood join the Ministry.”

“No doubt she’ll be as disappointed as everyone else that I’ve taken the Black Chair instead.”

“Grandmother Wexen is wise enough to make the best of what the gods serve her. As must we all.”

Yarvi’s eyes slid across the rest of the cages, seeking a distraction. Pitiless though they were, the eyes of the birds were easier to bear than those of his disappointed subjects.

“Which dove brought the message from Grom-gil-Gorm?”

“I sent it back to Vansterland. To his minister, Mother Scaer, carrying your father’s agreement to a parley.”

“Where was the meeting to be?”

“On the border, near the town of Amwend. Your father never reached the place.”

“He was ambushed in Gettland?”

“So it appears.”

“It does not seem like my father, to be so keen to end a war.”

“War,” croaked one of the doves. “End a war.”

Mother Gundring frowned at the gray-spattered floor. “I counselled him to go. The High King has asked for all swords to be sheathed until his new temple to the One God is completed. I never suspected even a savage like Grom-gil-Gorm would betray the sacred word given.” She made a fist, as though she would strike herself, then slowly let it uncurl. “It is a minister’s task to smooth the way for Father Peace.”

“But had my father no men with him? Had he-”

“My king.” Mother Gundring looked at him from under her brows. “We must go down.”

Yarvi swallowed, his stomach seeming to jump up his throat and wash his mouth with sour spit. “I’m not ready.”

“No one ever is. Your father was not.”

Yarvi made a sound then, half a laugh, half a sob, and wiped tears on the back of his crooked hand. “Did my father weep after he was betrothed to my mother?”

“In fact, he did,” said Mother Gundring. “For several years. She, on the other hand …”

And Yarvi gurgled up a laugh despite himself. “My mother’s even meaner with her tears than her gold.” He looked up at the woman who had been his teacher, would now be his minister, that face full of kindly lines, the bright eyes filled with concern, and found he had whispered, “You’ve been like a mother to me.”

“And you like a son to me. I am sorry, Yarvi. I am sorry for everything but … this is the greater good.”

“The lesser evil.” Yarvi fussed at his stub of a finger, and blinked up at the birds. The many doves, and the one great eagle. “Who will feed them now?”

“I will find someone.” And Mother Gundring offered her bony hand to help him up. “My king.”

It was a great affair.

Many powerful families in the far reaches of Gettland would be angered that news of King Uthrik’s death had barely reached them before he was burned, denying them the chance to have their importance noted at an event that would live so long in the memory.

No doubt the all-powerful High King on his high chair in Skekenhouse, not to mention the all-knowing Grandmother Wexen at his elbow, would be far from delighted that they received no invitation, as Mother Gundring was keen to point out. But Yarvi’s mother forced through her clenched teeth, “Their anger is dust to me.” Laithlin might have been queen no longer but no other word would fit her, and Hurik still hovered huge and silent at her shoulder, sworn forever to her service. Once she spoke it was a thing already done.

The procession passed from the Godshall through the yard of the citadel, grass littered with the sites of Yarvi’s many failures, under the limbs of the great cedar his brother used to mock him for being unable to climb.

Yarvi went at the fore, of course, his mother overshadowing him in every sense at his shoulder and Mother Gundring struggling to keep up behind, bent over her staff. Uncle Odem led the king’s household, warriors and women in their best. Slaves came behind, collars rattling and their eyes on the ground where they belonged.

Yarvi glanced up nervously as they passed through the one entrance tunnel, saw the bottom edge of the Screaming Gate gleam in the darkness, ready to drop and seal the citadel against any enemy. It was said to have been let fall only once, and that long before he was born, but still he swallowed as he always did when he passed beneath it. A mountain’s weight of polished copper hanging by a single pin tended to rattle the nerves.

Especially when you were about to burn half your family.

“You’re doing well,” Yarvi’s uncle whispered in his ear.