Half a King

by Joe Abercrombie

  “Why not?” answered Trigg, giving a tug on Yarvi’s chain. He could hardly believe they were thinking about money even now, but perhaps when the Last Door stands open for them men fall back on what they know. He had fallen back on his minister’s wisdom, after all. And a flimsy shield it seemed as the Shends got steadily closer in all their painted savagery.

  They did not scream or shake their weapons. They were more than threatening enough without. They simply stepped back to make room as Yarvi came near, herded through the trees by Trigg and into a clearing where more Shends were gathered about a fire. Yarvi swallowed as he realized how many more. They might have outnumbered the whole crew of the South Wind three to one.

  A woman sat among them, whittling at a stick with a bright knife. Strung around her neck on a leather thong was an elf-tablet, the green card studded with black jewels, scrawled with incomprehensible markings, riddled with intricate golden lines.

  The first thing a minister learns is to recognize power. To read the glances, and the stances, the movements and tones of voice that mark the followers from the leader. Why waste time on underlings, after all? So Yarvi stepped between the men as if they were invisible, looking only into the woman’s frowning face, and the warriors shuffled after and hedged him and Trigg and Ankran in with a thicket of naked steel.

  For the briefest moment Yarvi hesitated. For a moment, he enjoyed Trigg and Ankran’s fear more than he suffered with his own. For a moment he had power over them, and found he liked the feeling.

  “Speak!” hissed Trigg.

  Yarvi wondered if there was a way to get the overseer killed. To use the Shends to get his freedom, perhaps Rulf’s and Jaud’s as well … But the stakes were too high and the odds too long. The wise minister picks the greater good, the lesser evil, and smooths the way for Father Peace in every tongue. So Yarvi dropped down, one knee squelching into the boggy ground, his withered hand on his chest and the other to his forehead in the way Mother Gundring had taught him, to show he spoke the truth.

  Even if he lied through his teeth.

  “My name is Yorv,” he said, in the language of the Shends, “and I come humbly upon bended knee, stranger no longer, to beg the guest-right for me and my companions.”

  The woman slowly narrowed her eyes at Yarvi. Then she looked about at the warriors, carefully sheathed her knife and tossed her stick into the fire. “Damn it.”

  “Guest-right?” muttered one of the warriors, pointing towards the stranded ship in disbelief. “These savages?”

  “Your pronunciation is dismal.” The woman flung up her hands. “But I am Svidur of the Shends. Stand, Yorv, for you are welcome at our hearth, and safe from harm.”

  Another of the warriors angrily flung his ax on the ground and stamped off into the brush.

  Svidur watched him go. “We were very much looking forward to killing you and taking your cargo. We must take what we can, for your High King will make war upon us again when the spring comes. The man is made of greed. I swear I have no idea what we have that he wants.”

  Yarvi glanced back at Ankran, who was frowning at the conversation with the deepest suspicion. “It is my sad observation that some men always want more.”

  “They do.” She sadly propped elbow on knee and chin on hand as she watched her crestfallen warriors sit down in disgust, one of them already bunching moss to scrub off his battle-paint. “This could have been a profitable day.”

  “It still can be.” Yarvi clambered to his feet, and clasped his hands the way his mother did when she began a bargain. “There are things for which my captain would like to trade …”

  15.

  UGLY LITTLE .…SECRETS

  Shadikshirram’s cabin was cramped and garish, gloomy from the three slit windows, shadowy from sacks and bags dangling from the low roof-beams. Her bed, heaped with sheets and furs and stained pillows, took up most of the floor. An outsize, iron-bound chest took up most of the rest. Empty bottles had rolled to every corner. The place smelled of tar, salt and incense, stale sweat and stale wine. And yet compared to the life Yarvi had been living—if that even qualified as a life—it seemed the height of indulgent luxury.

  “The repair won’t last,” Sumael was saying. “We should head back to Skekenhouse.”

  “The wonderful thing about the Shattered Sea is that it forms a circle.” Shadikshirram made a circle in the air with her bottle. “We will come to Skekenhouse either way.”

  Sumael blinked at that. “But one in days, the other months!”

  “You’ll keep us going, you always do. The sailor’s worst enemy is the sea, but wood floats, no? How difficult can it be? We head on.” Shadikshirram’s eyes drifted to Yarvi as he ducked under the low lintel. “Ah, my ambassador! Since we still have our skins I assume things went well?”

  “I need to speak to you, my captain.” He spoke with eyes downcast, the way a minister speaks to their king. “You alone.”

  “Hmmm.” She stuck out her bottom lip and plucked at it like a musician might a harp. “A man seeking a private audience always intrigues me, even one so young, crippled, and otherwise unattractive as you. Get to your caulk and timber, Sumael, I want us back on the salt by morning.”

  The muscles at the sides of Sumael’s head bunched as she ground her teeth. “On it or under it.” And she shouldered past Yarvi and out.

  “So?” Shadikshirram took a long swig of wine and set the bottle rattling down.

  “I begged the Shends for guest right, my captain. They have a solemn tradition not to deny a stranger who asks properly.”

  “Nimble,” said Shadikshirram, gathering her black-and-silver hair in both hands.

  “And I negotiated for the things we need, and made what I consider an excellent trade.”

  “Very nimble,” she said, winding her hair into its usual tangle.

  But now was when his nimbleness would truly be needed. “You may not think it quite so excellent a deal as I, my captain.”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. “How so?”

  “Your storekeeper and overseer took their own shares in your profits.”

  There was a long pause while, one by one, Shadikshirram slid the pins carefully through her hair to hold it fast. Her face did not change by the slightest detail, yet Yarvi felt suddenly that he was standing at the brink of a precipice.

  “Did they?” she said.

  He had expected anything but this offhand coolness. Did she know already but not care? Would she send him back to the oar regardless? Would Trigg and Ankran learn he had betrayed them? He licked his lips, knowing he stood on desperately thin ice. But he had no choice but to press on, and hope somehow to reach solid ground.

  “Not for the first time,” he croaked.

  “No?”

  “In Vulsgard you gave money for healthy oarslaves and they bought the cheapest dregs they could find, myself among them. I’ve a guess you received little change.”

  “Pathetically little.” Shadikshirram picked up her bottle between two fingers and took a long swig. “But I begin to wonder whether I got a bargain with you.”

  Yarvi felt a strange desire to blurt the words out, had to make himself speak calmly, earnestly, just as a minister should. “They made both arrangements in Haleen, thinking no one would understand. But I speak that language too.”

  “And sing in it, no doubt. For an oarslave you have many talents.”

  A minister should endeavor never to be asked a question they do not already know the answer to, and Yarvi had a lie hanging ready for that. “My mother was a minister.”

  “A minister’s belt should remain ever fastened.” Shadikshirram sucked air through her pursed lips. “Oh, ugly little secret.”

  “Life is full of them.”

  “So it is, boy, so it is.”

  “She taught me tongues, and numbers, and the lore of plants, and many other things. Things that could be of use to you, my captain.”

  “A useful child indeed. You may need two hands to fight someone, but
only one to stab them in the back, eh? Ankran!” she sang through the open door. “Ankran, your captain would speak with you!”

  The storekeeper’s footsteps came fast, but not as fast as Yarvi’s heart. “I’ve been checking the stores, Captain, and there’s a hatchet missing—” He saw Yarvi as he ducked through the doorway, and his face twitched, shock at first, then suspicion, and finally he tried to smile.

  “Can I bring you more wine—”

  “Never again.” There was an ugly pause, while the captain smiled bright-eyed, and the color steadily drained from Ankran’s face, and the blood in Yarvi’s temples surged louder and louder. “I expect Trigg to rob me: he is a free man and must look to his own interests. But you? To be robbed by one’s own possessions?” Shadikshirram drained her bottle, licked the last drops from the neck and weighed it lazily in her hand. “You must see that is something of an embarrassment.”

  The storekeeper’s thin lips twisted. “He’s lying, Captain!”

  “But his lies match my suspicions so closely.”

  “It’s all—”

  So fast that Yarvi hardly saw it, only heard the hollow thud, Shadikshirram clubbed Ankran with the base of her bottle. He dropped with a grunt and lay blinking, blood streaming down his face. She stepped forward, lifting her boot over his head and, calmly, steadily, frowning with concentration, started stamping on his face.

  “Swindle me?” she hissed through gritted teeth, heel opening a cut down his cheek.

  “Steal from me?” as her boot smashed Ankran’s nose sideways.

  “Take me for a fool?”

  Yarvi looked away into the corner of the room, the breath crawling in his throat as the sick crunching went on.

  “After all … I’ve … done for you!”

  Shadikshirram squatted down, forearms resting on her knees and her hands dangling. She thrust her jaw forward and blew a loose strand of hair out of her face. “I am once again disappointed by the wretchedness of humanity.”

  “My wife,” Ankran whispered, bringing Yarvi’s eyes crawling back to his ruined face. A bubble of blood formed and broke on his lips. “My wife … and my son.”

  “What of them?” snapped Shadikshirram, frowning at a red spatter that had caught the back of her hand and wiping it clean on Ankran’s clothes.

  “The flesh dealer … you bought me from … in Thorlby.” Ankran’s voice was squelchy. “Yoverfell. He has them.” He coughed, and pushed a piece of tooth out of his mouth with his tongue. “He said he’d keep them safe … as long as I brought him their price … every time we passed through. If I don’t pay …”

  Yarvi felt weak at the knees. So weak he thought he might fall. Now he understood why Ankran had needed all that money.

  But Shadikshirram only shrugged. “What’s that to me?” And she twisted her fingers in Ankran’s hair and pulled a knife from her belt.

  “Wait!” shouted Yarvi.

  The captain looked over at him sharply. “Really? Are you sure?”

  It took everything he had to force his mouth into a watery smile. “Why kill what you can sell?”

  She squatted there a moment, staring at him, and he wondered if she would kill them both. Then she snorted out a laugh, and lowered the knife. “I do declare. My soft heart will be my undoing. Trigg!”

  The overseer paused for just a moment when he stepped into the cabin and saw Ankran on the floor with his face a bloodied pulp.

  “It turns out our storekeeper has been robbing me,” said the captain.

  Trigg frowned at Ankran, then at Shadikshirram, and finally, for a long time, at Yarvi. “Seems some people think only of themselves.”

  “And I thought we were one family.” The captain stood, dusting off her knees. “We have a new storekeeper. Get him a better collar.” She rolled Ankran towards the door with her foot. “And put this thing in the space on Jaud’s oar.”

  “Right y’are, Captain.” And Trigg dragged Ankran out by one arm and kicked the door closed.

  “You see that I am merciful,” said Shadikshirram brightly, with merciful gestures of the blood-spotted hand which still loosely held her knife. “Mercy is my weakness.”

  “Mercy is a feature of greatness,” Yarvi managed to croak.

  Shadikshirram beamed at that. “Isn’t it? But, great though I am … I rather think Ankran has used up all my mercy for this year.” She put her long arm about Yarvi’s shoulders, hooking her thumb through his collar, and drew him close, close, close enough to smell the wine on her whisper. “If another storekeeper betrayed my trust …” And she trailed off into silence more eloquent than any words.

  “You have nothing to worry about, my captain.” Yarvi looked into her face so close that her black eyes seemed to merge into one. “I have no wife or children to distract me.” Only an uncle to kill, and his daughter to marry, and the Black Chair of Gettland to reclaim. “I’m your man.”

  “You’re scarcely a man, but otherwise, excellent!” And she wiped her knife one way then the other on the front of Yarvi’s shirt. “Then wriggle down to your stores, my little one-handed minister, ferret out where Ankran was hiding my money and bring me up some wine! And smile, boy!” Shadikshirram pulled a golden chain from around her neck and hung it over one of the posts of her bed. A key dangled from it. The key to the oarslaves’ locks. “I like my friends smiling and my enemies dead!” She spread her arms wide, wriggled the fingers, and toppled back onto her furs. “Today dawned with such little promise,” she mused at the ceiling. “But it turns out everyone got what they wanted.”

  Yarvi thought it unwise to point out, as he hurried for the door, that Ankran, not to mention his wife and child, would probably not have agreed.

  16.

  ENEMIES AND ALLIES

  To no one’s surprise, Yarvi found himself much better suited to the stores than the oars.

  At first he could hardly crawl into his shadowy, creaking new domain below decks for the confusion of barrels and boxes, of overspilling chests, of swinging bags hooked to the ceiling. But within a day or two he had everything as organized as Mother Gundring’s shelves had been, in spite of the pale new planks of the repair steadily oozing saltwater. It was not a comforting task, bucketing out the brackish puddle that built up every morning.

  But a great deal better than being back on the benches.

  Yarvi found a length of bent iron to bash at any nail that gave a hint of loosening, and tried not to imagine that just beyond that straining tissue of rough-sawn wood Mother Sea’s full crushing weight was bearing in.

  The South Wind limped eastwards and, wounded and undermanned though she was, within a few days reached the great market at Roystock, a hundred hundred shops pressed onto a boggy island near the mouth of the Divine River. Small, swift ships were caught at the tangle of wharves like flies in a spider’s web and their lean and sunburned crews were caught too. Men who had rowed hard weeks upstream, and carried their ships for even harder ones at the tall hauls, were swindled from their strange cargoes for a night or two of simple pleasures. While Sumael cursed and struggled to patch the leaking patches, Yarvi was taken ashore on Trigg’s chain, looking for stores and oarslaves to replace what the storm had taken.

  There in narrow lanes aswarm with humanity of every cut and color, Yarvi bartered. He had watched his mother do it—Laithlin, the Golden Queen, no sharper eye or quicker tongue around the Shattered Sea—and found he had her tricks without thinking. He haggled in six languages, merchants aghast to find their own secret tongues turned against them. He flattered and blustered, snorted derision at prices and contempt at quality, stamped off and was begged back, was first as yielding as oil, then immovable as iron, and left a trail of weeping traders in his wake.

  Trigg held the chain with so light a hand that Yarvi almost forgot he was chained at all. Until, when they were done and the saved hacksilver was jingling back into the captain’s purse, the overseer’s whisper tickled at Yarvi’s ear and made his every hair bristle.

  “Y
ou’re quite the cunning little cripple, aren’t you?”

  Yarvi paused a moment to collect his wits. “I have … some understanding.”

  “Doubtless. It’s clear you understood me and Ankran, and passed your understandings to the captain. Got quite the vengeful temper, don’t she? The tales she tells of herself might all be lies, but I could tell you true ones would amaze you no less. I once saw her kill a man for stepping on her shoe. And this was a big, big man.”

  “Perhaps that’s why his weight bruised her toes so.”

  Trigg yanked at the chain and the collar bit into Yarvi’s neck and made him squawk. “Don’t lean too much on my good nature, boy.”

  Trigg’s good nature did indeed seem too weak a thing to bear much weight. “I played the hand I was dealt,” croaked Yarvi.

  “We all do,” purred Trigg. “Ankran played his poorly, and paid the price. I don’t mean to do the same. So I’ll offer you the same arrangement. Half of what you take from Shadikshirram, you give to me.”

  “What if I don’t take anything?”

  Trigg snorted. “Everyone takes something, boy. Some of what you give to me, I’ll pass on to the guards, and everyone’s kept friendly. Smiles all round. Give me nothing, you’ll make some enemies. Bad ones to have.” He wound Yarvi’s chain about his big hand and jerked him closer still. “Remember cunning children and stupid ones all drown very much the same.”

  Yarvi swallowed once more. Mother Gundring used to say, A good minister never says no, if they can say perhaps.

  “The captain’s watchful. She doesn’t trust me yet. Only give me a little time.”

  With a shove, Trigg sent him stumbling back towards the South Wind. “Just make sure it’s a little.”

  That was well enough with Yarvi. Old friends in Thorlby—not to mention old enemies—would not wait for him forever. Charming though the overseer was, Yarvi hoped very much to quit Trigg’s company before too long.