Half the World

‘I’ll be like a swimmer who just shrugged her armour off.’ She gave him the scornful face but he saw straight through it. She was fifteen years old, and he was all the family she had, and she was scared, and that made him scared too. Scared of fighting. Scared of leaving home. Scared of leaving her alone.

‘I’ll be back, Rin. Before you know it.’

‘Loaded with treasures, no doubt.’

He winked. ‘Songs sung of my high deeds and a dozen fine Islander slaves to my name.’

‘Where will they sleep?’

‘In the great stone house I’ll buy you up near the citadel.’

‘I’ll have a room for my clothes,’ she said, stroking at the wattle wall with her fingertips. Wasn’t much of a home they had, but the gods knew they were grateful for it. There’d been times they had nothing over their heads but weather.

Brand lay down too, knees bent since his legs hung way off the end of his bench these days, and started unrolling his own smelly scrap of blanket.

‘Rin,’ he found he’d said, ‘I might’ve done a stupid thing.’ He wasn’t much at keeping secrets. Especially from her.

‘What this time?’

He set to picking at one of the holes in his blanket. ‘Told the truth.’

‘What about?’

‘Thorn Bathu.’

Rin clapped her hands over her face. ‘What is it with you and her?’

‘What d’you mean? I don’t even like her.’

‘No one likes her. She’s a splinter in the world’s arse. But you can’t seem to stop picking at her.’

‘The gods have a habit of pushing us together, I reckon.’

‘Have you tried walking the other way? She killed Edwal. She killed him. He’s dead, Brand.’

‘I know. I was there. But it wasn’t murder. What should I have done? Tell me that, since you’re the clever one. Kept my mouth shut with everyone else? Kept my mouth shut and let her be crushed with rocks? I couldn’t carry the weight of that!’ He realized he was near-shouting, anger bubbling up, and he pressed his voice back down. ‘I couldn’t.’

A silence, then, while they frowned at each other, and the fire sagged, sending up a puff of sparks. ‘Why does it always fall to you to put things right?’ she asked.

‘I guess no one else is doing it.’

‘You always were a good boy.’ Rin stared up towards the smoke-hole and the chink of starry sky showing through it. ‘Now you’re a good man. That’s your trouble. I never saw a better man for doing good things and getting bad results. Who’d you tell your tale to?’

He swallowed, finding the smoke-hole mightily interesting himself. ‘Father Yarvi.’

‘Oh, gods, Brand! You don’t like half measures, do you?’

‘Never saw the point of them,’ he muttered. ‘Dare say it’ll all work out, though?’ wheedling, desperate for her to tell him yes.

She just lay staring at the ceiling, so he picked her dagger up again, watched the bright steel shine with the colours of fire.

‘Really is fine work, Rin.’

‘Go to sleep, Brand.’

KNEELING (#ulink_b0d2fd35-72c7-54e4-a82e-88c540cbf89c)

‘If in doubt, kneel.’ Rulf’s place as helmsman was the platform at the South Wind’s stern, steering oar wedged under one arm. ‘Kneel low and kneel often.’

‘Kneel,’ muttered Thorn. ‘Got it.’ She had one of the back oars, the place of most work and least honour, right beneath his ever-watchful eye. She kept twisting about, straining over her shoulder in her eagerness to see Skekenhouse, but there was a rainy mist in the air and she could make out nothing but ghosts in the murk. The looming phantoms of the famous elf-walls. The faintest wraith of the vast Tower of the Ministry.

‘You might be best just shuffling around on your knees the whole time you’re here,’ said Rulf. ‘And by the gods, keep your tongue still. Cause Grandmother Wexen some offence and crushing with stones will seem light duty.’

Thorn saw figures gathered on the dock as they glided closer. The figures became men. The men became warriors. An honour guard, though they had more the flavour of a prison escort as the South Wind was tied off and Father Yarvi and his bedraggled crew clambered onto the rain-slick quay.

At sixteen winters Thorn was taller than most men but the one who stepped forward now might easily have been reckoned a giant, a full head taller than she was at least. His long hair and beard were darkened by rain and streaked with grey, the white fur about his shoulders beaded with dew.

‘Why, Father Yarvi.’ His sing-song voice was strangely at odds with that mighty frame. ‘The seasons have turned too often since we traded words.’

‘Three years,’ said Yarvi, bowing. ‘That day in the Godshall, my king.’

Thorn blinked. She had heard the High King was a withered old man, half-blind and scared of his own food. That assessment seemed decidedly unfair. She had learned to judge the strength of a man in the training square and she doubted she had ever seen one stronger. A warrior too, from his scars, and the many blades sheathed at his gold-buckled belt. Here was a man who looked a king indeed.

‘I remember well,’ he said. ‘Everyone was so very, very rude to me. The hospitality of Gettlanders, eh, Mother Scaer?’ A shaven-headed woman at his shoulder glowered at Yarvi and his crew as if they were heaps of dung. ‘And who is this?’ he asked, eyes falling on Thorn.

At starting fights she was an expert, but all other etiquette was a mystery. When her mother had tried to explain how a girl should behave, when to bow and when to kneel and when to hold your key, she’d nodded along and thought about swords. But Rulf had said kneel, so she dropped clumsily down on the wet stones of the dock, scraping her sodden hair out of her face and nearly tripping over her own feet.

‘My king. My high … king, that is—’

Yarvi snorted. ‘This is Thorn Bathu. My new jester.’

‘How is she working out?’

‘Few laughs as yet.’

The giant grinned. ‘I am but a low king, child. I am the little king of Vansterland, and my name is Grom-gil-Gorm.’

Thorn felt her guts turn over. For years she had dreamed of meeting the man who killed her father. None of the dreams had worked out quite like this. She had knelt at the feet of the Breaker of Swords, the Maker of Orphans, Gettland’s bitterest enemy, who even now was ordering raids across the border. About his thick neck she saw the chain, four times looped, of pommels twisted from the swords of his fallen enemies. One of them, she knew, from the sword she kept at home. Her most prized possession.

She slowly stood, trying to gather every shred of her ruined dignity. She had no sword-hilt to prop her hand on, but she thrust her chin up at him just as if it was a blade.

The King of Vansterland peered down like a great hound at a bristling kitten. ‘I am well accustomed to the scorn of Gettlanders, but this one has a cold eye upon her.’

‘As if she has a score to settle,’ said Mother Scaer.

Thorn gripped the pouch about her neck. ‘You killed my father.’

‘Ah.’ Gorm shrugged. ‘There are many children who might say so. What was his name?’