Half the World

‘Swore an oath, didn’t I?’ Thorn muttered back.

‘To do whatever service I think fit, as I recall.’

The black woman chuckled softly to herself. ‘Oooh, but that wording’s awfully vague.’

‘Isn’t it?’ said Yarvi. ‘Glad to see you’re making yourself known to the crew.’

Thorn glanced around at them, worked her mouth sourly as she saw her mother and Rulf still deep in conversation. ‘They seem a noble fellowship.’

‘Nobility is overrated. You met Skifr, did you?’

‘You’re Skifr?’ Thorn stared at the black-skinned woman with new eyes. ‘The thief of elf-relics? The murderer? The one sorely wanted by Grandmother Wexen?’

Skifr sniffed at her fingers, still slightly smeared with grey, and frowned as though she could not guess how bird-droppings might have got there. ‘As for being a thief, the relics were just lying in Strokom. Let the elves impeach me! As for being a murderer, well, the difference between murderer and hero is all in the standing of the dead. As for being wanted, well, my sunny disposition has made me always popular. Father Yarvi has hired me to do … various things, but among them, for reasons best known to himself,’ and she pressed her long forefinger into Thorn’s chest, ‘to teach you to fight.’

‘I can fight,’ growled Thorn, drawing herself up to her most fighting height.

Skifr threw back her shaved head and laughed. ‘Not that risible stomping about I saw. Father Yarvi is paying me to make you deadly.’ And with blinding speed Skifr slapped Thorn across the face, hard enough to knock her against a barrel.

‘What was that for?’ she said, one hand to her stinging cheek.

‘Your first lesson. Always be ready. If I can hit you, you deserve to be hit.’

‘I suppose the same would go for you.’

Skifr gave a huge smile. ‘Of course.’

Thorn dived at her but caught only air. She stumbled, her arm suddenly twisted behind her, and the slimy boards of the wharf smashed her in the face. Her fighting scream became a wheeze of shock and then, as her little finger was savagely twisted, a long moan of pain.

‘Do you still suppose I have nothing to teach you?’

‘No! No!’ whimpered Thorn, writhing helplessly as fire shot through every joint in her arm. ‘I’m keen to learn!’

‘And your first lesson?’

‘If I can be hit I deserve it!’

Her finger was released. ‘Pain is the best schoolmaster, as you will soon discover.’

Thorn clambered to her knees, shaking out her throbbing arm, to find her old friend Brand standing over her, a sack on his shoulder and a grin on his face.

Skifr grinned back. ‘Funny, eh?’

‘Little bit,’ said Brand.

Skifr slapped him across the cheek and he tottered against a post, dropped his sack on his foot, and was left stupidly blinking. ‘Are you teaching me to fight?’

‘No. But I see no reason you shouldn’t be ready too.’

‘Thorn?’ Her mother was offering a hand to help her up. ‘What happened?’

Thorn pointedly didn’t take it. ‘I suppose you’d know if you’d been seeing your daughter off instead of snaring our helmsman.’

‘Gods, Hild, you’ve no forgiving in you at all, have you?’

‘My father called me Thorn, damn it!’

‘Oh, your father, yes, him you’ll forgive anything—’

‘Maybe because he’s dead.’

Thorn’s mother’s eyes were already brimming with tears, as usual. ‘Sometimes I think you’d be happier if I joined him.’

‘Sometimes I think I would be!’ And Thorn dragged up her sea-chest, her father’s sword rattling inside as she swung it onto her shoulder and stomped towards the ship.

‘I like that contrary temperament of hers,’ she heard Skifr saying behind her. ‘We’ll soon have that flowing down the right channels.’

One by one they clambered aboard and set their sea-chests at their places. Much to Thorn’s disgust Brand took the other back oar, the two of them wedged almost into each other’s laps by the tapering of the ship’s sides.

‘Just don’t jog my elbow,’ she growled, in a filthier mood than ever.

Brand wearily shook his head. ‘I’ll just throw myself in the sea, shall I?’

‘Could you? That’d be perfect.’

‘Gods,’ muttered Rulf, at his place on the steering platform above them. ‘Will I have to listen to you two snap at each other all the way up the Divine like a pair of mating cats?’

‘More than likely,’ said Father Yarvi, squinting up. The sky was thick with cloud, Mother Sun barely even a smudge. ‘Poor weather for picking out a course.’

‘Bad weatherluck,’ moaned Dosduvoi, from his oar somewhere near the middle of the boat. ‘Awful weatherluck.’

Rulf puffed out his grizzled cheeks. ‘Times like this I wish Sumael was here.’

‘Times like this and every other time,’ said Father Yarvi, with a heavy sigh.

‘Who’s Sumael?’ muttered Brand.

Thorn shrugged. ‘How the hell should I know who he is? No one tells me anything.’

Queen Laithlin watched them push away with one palm on her child-swollen belly, gave Father Yarvi a terse nod, then turned and was gone towards the city, her gaggle of thralls and servants scurrying after. This crew were men who blew with the wind, so there was only a sorry little gathering left to wave them off. Thorn’s mother was one, tears streaking her cheeks and her hand raised in farewell until the wharf was a distant speck, then the citadel of Thorlby only a jagged notching, then Gettland fading into the grey distance above the grey line of Mother Sea.

The thing about rowing, you face backward. Always looking into the past, never the future. Always seeing what you’re losing, never what you’ve got to gain.

Thorn put a brave face on it, as always, but a brave face can be a brittle thing. Rulf’s narrowed eyes were fixed ahead on the horizon. Brand kept to his stroke. If either of them saw her dashing the tears on her sleeve they had nothing to say about it.

THE SECOND LESSON (#ulink_b19921cd-05be-5bb1-870d-958dae249c03)

Roystock was a reeking spew of wooden shops, piled one on the other and crammed onto a rotting island at the mouth of the Divine River. The place spilled over with yammering beggars and swaggering raiders, rough-handed dockers and smooth-talking merchants. Its teetering wharves were choked by strange boats with strange crews and stranger cargoes, taking on food and water, selling off goods and slaves.