Half a King

by Joe Abercrombie

  “A warrior fights,” she said, looking him in the eye. “A king commands.” And with a grin she drew him up the dais. He went uneasily, for even though this was his hall, with every step he felt more like a trespasser.

  “The Black Chair,” he muttered as they reached it.

  “Your chair,” said Isriun, and to his horror she reached out and swept her fingertips down the perfect metal of the arm with a hiss that made Yarvi’s skin prickle. “Hard to believe it’s the oldest thing here. Made by the hands of elves before the Breaking of the World.”

  “You’re interested in the elves?” he squeaked, terrified she might make him touch it or, more awful yet, sit in it, and desperate for a distraction.

  “I’ve read every book Mother Gundring has about them,” she said.

  Yarvi blinked. “You read?”

  “I once trained to be a minister. I was Mother Gundring’s apprentice, before you. Bound for a life of books, and plants, and soft words spoken.”

  “She never said so.” It seemed they had more in common than he had imagined.

  “I was promised to your brother, and that was the end of it. We must do what’s best for Gettland.”

  They gave much the same sigh at much the same time. “So everyone tells me,” said Yarvi. “We’ve both lost the Ministry.”

  “But gained each other. And we’ve gained this.” Her eyes shone as she gave the perfect curve of the Black Chair’s arm one last stroke. “No mean wedding present.” Her light fingertips slipped from the metal and onto the back of his hand, and he found that he very much liked having them there. “We were meant to discuss when we’ll be married.”

  “As soon as I get back,” he said, voice slightly hoarse.

  She gave his withered hand one last squeeze then let it fall. “I’ll expect a better kiss after your victory, my king.”

  As he watched her walk away Yarvi was almost glad neither one of them had joined the Ministry. “I’ll try not to trip over my sword!” he called as she reached the doorway.

  She smiled at him over her shoulder as she slipped through, the daylight setting a glow in her hair. Then the doors shut softly behind her. Leaving Yarvi marooned on the dais, in the midst of all that silent space, his doubts suddenly looming even higher than the Tall Gods above. It took a fearsome effort to turn his head back towards the Black Chair.

  Could he truly sit in it, between gods and men? He, who could hardly bring himself to touch it with his crippled joke of a hand? He made himself reach out, his breath coming shallow. Made himself lay his one trembling fingertip upon the metal.

  Very cold and very hard. Just as a king must be.

  Just as Yarvi’s father used to be, sitting there with the King’s Circle on his furrowed brow. His scarred hands gripping the arms, the pommel of his sword never far out of reach. The sword that hung at Yarvi’s belt now, dragging at him with its unfamiliar weight.

  I didn’t ask for half a son.

  And Yarvi shrank from the empty chair with even less dignity than when his father still sat in it. Not towards the doors of the Godshall and the waiting crowd beyond, but away towards the statue of Father Peace, pressing himself to the stone and working his fingers into the crack beside the giant leg of the patron god of ministers. In silence the hidden door sprang open, and like a thief fleeing the scene of his crime Yarvi slipped into the blackness beyond.

  The citadel was full of secret ways, but nowhere so riddled as the Godshall. Passages passed under its floor, inside its walls, within its very dome. Ministers of old had used them to show the will of the gods with the odd little miracle—feathers fluttering down, or smoke rising behind the statues. Once blood had been dripped on Gettland’s reluctant warriors as the king called for war.

  The passageways were dark and full of sounds, but Yarvi had no fear of them. These tunnels had long been his domain. He had hidden from his father’s blazing anger in the darkness. From his brother’s crushing love. From his mother’s chill disappointment. He could find his way from one end of the citadel to the other without once stepping into the light.

  Here he knew all the ways, as any good minister should.

  Here he was safe.

  5.

  DOVES

  The dovecote was perched in the top of one of the citadel’s highest towers, streaked inside and out with centuries of droppings, and through its many windows a chill wind blew.

  As Mother Gundring’s apprentice, feeding the doves had been Yarvi’s task. Feeding them, and teaching them the messages they were to speak, and watching them clatter into the sky to take news, and offers, and threats to other ministers about the Shattered Sea.

  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.”

  6.

  PROMISES

  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.

  “I am walking.”

  “You are walking like a king.”

  “I am a king and I am walking. How could it be otherwise?”

  Odem smiled at that. “Well said. My king.”

  Over his uncle’s shoulder Yarvi caught Isriun smiling at him too, the torch she carried setting a gleam to her eyes and the chain about her neck. Soon the key to the treasury of Gettland would hang upon it, and she would be queen. His queen, and the thought gave him hope amidst his fears like a spark in the darkness.

  They all carried torches, a snake of lights through the gathering gloom, though the wind had snatched out half the flames by the time the procession passed through the city’s gates and onto the bare hillside.

  The king’s own ship, the best in Thorlby’s crowded harbor, twenty oars upon a side and its high prow and tail carved as finely as anything in the Godshall, was dragged by honoured warriors to the chosen place among the dunes, keel grinding out a snaking trench in the sand. The same ship in which King Uthrik had sailed across the Shattered Sea on his famous raid to Sagenmark. The same ship which had wallowed low in the water with slaves and plunder when he returned in triumph.

  On its deck they laid the pale bodies of the king and his heir upon a bier of fine swords, for Uthrik’s fame as a warrior had stood second only to his dead brother Uthil’s. All Yarvi could think was how that showed great warriors die no better than other men.

  And usually sooner.

  Rich offerings were placed about the dead in the manner the prayer-weaver judged the gods would most appreciate. Weapons and armor the king had won in battle. Armrings of gold, coins of silver. Treasures heaped glittering. Yarvi put a jewelled cup in his brother’s fists, and his mother put a cloak of white fur over the dead king’s shoulders, and placed one hand upon his chest, and stood looking down, her jaw clenched tight, until Yarvi said, “Mother?”

  She turned without a word and led him to the chairs on the hillside, the sea wind catching the brown grass and setting it thrashing about their feet. Yarvi squirmed for a comfortable position in that hard, high seat, his mother motionless on his right with Hurik a huge shadow behind her, Mother Gundring perched on a stool at his left hand, her staff clutched in one bony fist, the twisted elf-metal alive with reflected flames from the rustling torches.

  Yarvi sat between his two mothers. One who believed in him. One who had given birth to him.

  Mother Gundring leaned close then and said softly, “I am sorry, my king. This is not what I wanted for you.”

  Yarvi could show no weakness now. “We must make the best of what fate serves us,” he said. “Even kings.”

  “Especially kings,” grated out his mother, and gave the signal.

  Two dozen horses were led onto the ship, hooves clattering at the timbers, and slaughtered so their blood washed the deck. All agreed Death would show King Uthrik and his son through the Last Door with respect, and they would be acknowledged great among the dead.

  Uncle Odem stepped out before the ranks of battle-ready warriors massed upon the sand, a torch in one hand. With his silvered mail and winged helm and red cloak snapping he looked like a son, and brother, and uncle of kings indeed. He nodded solemnly to Yarvi, and Yarvi nodded back, and he felt his mother clutch his right hand and squeeze it hard.

  Odem set the torch to the pitch-soaked kindling. The flames licked about the ship and in a moment it was all ablaze, a sorrowful moan drawn from the crowds—from the honoured and wealthy upon the high terraces before the walls of Thorlby, the crafters and merchants below them, the foreigners and peasants below them, the beggars and slaves scattered in whatever crevices the wind allowed th
em, each person in the place the gods had reckoned proper.

  And Yarvi had to swallow, because he realized of a sudden that his father would never come back and he truly would have to be king, from now until he was burned himself.

  He sat there, cold and sickly, a drawn sword across his knees, as Father Moon showed himself and his children the stars came out, and the flames of the burning ship, and the burning goods, and his burning family lit up the faces of the hundred hundred mourners. As scattered lights showed in the stone buildings of the city, and the wattle hovels huddled outside the walls, and in the towers of the citadel upon the hill. His citadel, although to him it had always had the look of a prison.

  It took a hero’s struggle to stay awake. He had barely slept last night, or any night since they put the King’s Circle on him. The shadows in the cold depths of his father’s yawning bedchamber seemed crowded with fears, and by ancient tradition there was no door he could bolt since the King of Gettland is one with the land and the people and must hide nothing from them.

  Secrets, and bedroom doors, were luxuries reserved for luckier folk than kings.

  A queue of proud men in their war-gear and proud women with keys polished, some of them sore trouble to King Uthrik while he lived, filed past Yarvi and his mother to wring their hands, and press gaudy grave gifts on them, and speak in swollen terms of the dead lord’s high deeds. They lamented that Gettland would never see his like again, then remembered themselves and bowed and mouthed “my king” while behind their smiles no doubt they wondered how it might be made to profit them to have this one-handed weakling in the Black Chair.

  Only the occasional hiss passed between Yarvi and his mother. “Sit up. You are a king. Do not apologize. You are a king. Straighten your cloak-buckle. You are a king. You are a king. You are a king.” As if she was trying to convince him, and herself, and the world of it against all the evidence.

  Surely the Shattered Sea had never seen so cunning a merchant, but he doubted even she could sell this.

  They sat until the flames sank to a flickering, and the dragon-carved keel sagged into whirling embers, and the first muddy smear of dawn touched the clouds, glittering on the copper dome of the Godshall and setting the sea-birds calling. Then his mother clapped her hands and the slaves with clinking collar-chains began to dig the earth over the still-smouldering pyre, raising a great howe that would stand tall beside that of Yarvi’s uncle Uthil, swallowed in a storm, and his grandfather Brevaer, and his great-grandfather Angulf Clovenfoot. On down the coast marched the grassy humps until they were lost among the dunes, diminishing into the fog of time before She Who Writes entrusted woman with the gift of letters, and ministers trapped the names of the dead in their high books.