The hate should have flooded in, and swept away all Yarvi’s fears, and drowned his nagging doubts that ripping the Black Chair back from his uncle’s clutches might not be worth the blood it would surely cost.
But instead, when he saw the face of his enemy, the killer of his family and thief of his kingdom, Yarvi’s heart betrayed him, and he felt of all things a choking surge of love. For the only one in his family who had ever given him kindness. Had ever made him feel that he was liked. Had ever made him feel he was worth liking. Next came a choking sorrow at the loss of that man, and Yarvi felt tears in his eyes, and he ground his twisted knuckles into the cold stone beside him, hating himself for his weakness.
“Stop looking at me!”
Yarvi jerked back from the slot but Odem’s gaze was fixed high above. He walked slowly, the taps of his footfalls echoing in the velvet dimness of that great space.
“Have you deserted me?” he called out. “As I have deserted you?”
He was speaking to the amber statues set about the dome. He was speaking to the gods, and his cracking voice was anything but calm. Now he lifted off the King’s Circle Yarvi had once worn and with a wince rubbed at the marks left on his forehead.
“What could I do?” he whispered, so quietly Yarvi could scarcely hear it. “We all serve someone. For everything there is a price.”
And Yarvi thought of Odem’s last words to him, sharp as knives in his memory.
You would have been a fine jester. But is my daughter really to have a one-handed weakling for a husband? A crippled puppet dangling on his mother’s string?
And now the hate boiled up, hot and reassuring. Had he not sworn an oath? For his father. For his mother.
For himself.
With the faintest ringing, the point of Shadikshirram’s sword left the sheath, and Yarvi pressed the knobbled fist of his left hand against the hidden door. One good shove would send it swinging, he knew. One shove, and three steps, and a thrust of the blade could end this. He licked his lips, and worked his hand about the grip, setting his shoulders for the effort, the blood surging at his temples—
“Enough!” roared Odem, the echoes ringing, and Yarvi froze again. His uncle had snatched up the King’s Circle and twisted it back on. “What’s done is done!” He shook his fist towards the ceiling. “If you wanted it otherwise, why did you not stop me?” And he spun on his heel and strode from the chamber.
“They have sent me to do it,” whispered Yarvi, sliding Shadikshirram’s sword back into its sheath. Not now. Not yet. Not as easily as that. But his doubts were burned away.
Even if he had to sink Thorlby in blood.
Odem had to die.
34.
A FRIEND’S FIGHT
Yarvi strained at the oar, knowing the whip was over him. He tugged and snarled, plucked even with the stub of finger on his useless hand, but how could he move it alone?
Mother Sea burst roaring into the hold of the South Wind and Yarvi fumbled desperately with the ladder, watched the men straining against their chains for a last breath as the water surged over their faces.
“Clever children drown just like stupid ones,” said Trigg, blood running from the neat split in his skull.
Yarvi took one more floundering step in the merciless snow, slipped and teetered on hot rock smooth as glass. However he ran the dogs were always snapping at his heels.
Grom-gil-Gorm’s bared teeth were red and his face blood-dashed and Yarvi’s fingers threaded on his necklace. “I am coming,” he sang like the clanging of a bell. “And Mother War comes with me!”
“Are you ready to kneel?” asked Mother Scaer, arms covered in flashing elf-bangles and the crows on her shoulders laughing, laughing.
“He is on his knees already,” said Odem, elbows upon the black arms of the Black Chair.
“He always has been,” said Isriun, smiling, smiling.
“We all serve someone,” said Grandmother Wexen, a hungry brightness in her eye.
“Enough!” hissed Yarvi. “Enough!”
And he flung open the hidden door and lashed out with the curved sword. Ankran’s eyes bulged as the blade slid through him. “Steel is the answer,” he croaked.
Shadikshirram grunted and elbowed and Yarvi punched at her, and metal squelched in flesh, and she smiled at him over her shoulder.
“He is coming,” she whispered. “He is coming.”
YARVI WOKE WET WITH SWEAT, tangled with his blankets, stabbing at his mattress.
A devil’s face loomed over him, made of flame and shadow and stinking of smoke. He shrank away, then gasped in relief as he realized it was Rulf, a torch in his hand against the darkness.
“Grom-gil-Gorm is coming,” he said.
Yarvi tore free of his blankets. Sounds echoed distorted through the shutters at the window. Crashing. Shouting. The clangour of bells.
“He’s crossed the border with more than a thousand men. Might be a hundred thousand depending on what rumor you listen to.”
Yarvi tried to blink away his dream. “Already?”
“He moves quick as fire and spreads as much chaos. The messengers barely outrode him. He’s only three days from the city. Thorlby’s in uproar.”
Downstairs the faintest gray of dawn was leaking through the shutters and across pale faces. The faintest smell of smoke tickled Yarvi’s nose. Smoke and fear. Faintly he could hear the priest outside calling in a broken voice for folk to kneel before the One God and be saved.
To kneel before the High King and be made slaves.
“Your crows fly swiftly, Sister Owd,” said Yarvi.
“I told you they would, my king.” Yarvi flinched at the word. It still sounded like a joke to him. It was a joke, and would be until Odem was dead.
He looked at the faces of his oarmates. Sumael and Jaud each nursing their own kind of fear. Nothing with hungry smile and polished sword both unsheathed.
“This is my fight,” said Yarvi. “If any of you want to leave, I won’t blame you.”
“I and my steel are sworn to the purpose.” Nothing rubbed a speck from his sword with a thumb-tip. “The only door that will stop me is the Last.”
Yarvi nodded, and with his good hand clasped Nothing’s arm. “I don’t pretend to understand your loyalty, but I’m grateful for it.”
The others were slower to the cause. “I’d be lying if I said the odds didn’t bother me,” said Rulf.
“They bothered you on the border,” said Nothing, “and that ended with the burning bodies of our enemies.”
“And of our friend. And our capture by a crowd of angry Vanstermen. Angry Vanstermen are again involved, and if this plan miscarries I doubt we’ll be talking our way clear, however nimble-tongued the young king may be.”
Yarvi put his twisted palm on the pommel of Shadikshirram’s sword. “Then our steel must talk for us.”
“Easy to say before it’s drawn.” Sumael frowned across to Jaud. “I think we had better head south before the swords begin to speak.”
Jaud looked from Yarvi to Sumael and back, and his big shoulders slumped. The wise wait for the moment. But never let it pass.
“You can go with my blessing, but I’d rather have you at my side,” said Yarvi. “Together we braved the South Wind. Together we escaped her. Together we faced the ice and came through. We’ll come through this as well. Together. Only take one more stroke with me.”
Sumael blinked at Jaud, then leaned close to him. “You’re not a warrior, not a king. You’re a baker.”
Jaud looked sidelong at Yarvi, and sighed. “And an oarsman.”
“Not by choice.”
“Not much in life that matters is by choice. What kind of oarsman abandons his mate?”
“This isn’t our fight!” hissed Sumael, low and urgent.
Jaud shrugged. “My friend’s fight is my fight.”
“What about the sweetest water in the world?”
“It will be just as sweet later. Sweeter still, maybe.” And Jaud gave Ya
rvi a weak smile. “When you have a load to lift, you’re better lifting than weeping.”
“We all might end up weeping.” Sumael took a slow step towards Yarvi, dark eyes fixed on his. She raised a hand to reach towards him, and the breath caught in his throat. “Please, Yorv—”
“My name is Yarvi.” And though it hurt to do it he met her gaze with flinty hardness, the way his mother might have. He would have liked to take her hand. To hold it the way he had in the snow. To be pulled far away by it to the First of Cities, and be Yorv again, and the Black Chair be damned.
He would have loved to take her hand, but he could not afford to weaken. Not for anything. He had sworn an oath, and he needed his oarmates beside him. He needed Jaud. He needed her.
“What about you, Rulf?” he asked
Rulf worked his mouth, carefully rolled his tongue, and neatly spat out of the window. “When the baker fights, what can the warrior do?” His broad face broke into a grin. “My bow’s yours.”
Sumael let her hand fall and stared at the floor, her scarred mouth twisted. “Mother War rules, then. What can I do?”
“Nothing,” said Nothing, simply.
35.
MOTHER WAR’S BARGAIN
The dovecote was still perched in the top of one of the citadel’s highest towers, still streaked inside and out with centuries of droppings, and still through its many windows a chill wind blew. More chill than ever.
“Gods damn this cold,” muttered Yarvi.
Sumael kept looking through her eyeglass, mouth fixed in a hard line. “You saying you haven’t been colder?”
“You know I have.” They both had, out there in the crushing ice. But it seemed there had been a spark between the two of them to warm him. He had well and truly snuffed it out now.
“I’m sorry,” he said, though it came out a grudging grunt. She kept her silence, and he found himself meandering on. “For what my mother said to you … for asking Jaud to stay … for not—”
Her jaw-muscles worked. “Surely a king need never apologize.”
He winced at that. “I’m the same man you slept beside on the South Wind. The same man you walked beside in the snow. The same man—”
“Are you?” She looked at him then, finally, but there was no softness in it. “Over the hill there.” She passed the eye-glass across. “Smoke.”
“Smoke,” croaked one of the doves. “Smoke.”
Sumael eyed it suspiciously, and from their cages ranged about the walls the doves eyed her unblinking back. All apart from the bronze eagle, huge and regal, which must have come from Grandmother Wexen with another offer—or demand—of marriage for Yarvi’s mother. It poked proudly at its plumage and did not deign to look down.
“Smoke, smoke, smoke …”
“Can you stop them doing that?” asked Sumael.
“They echo bits of the messages they’ve been trained to say,” said Yarvi. “Don’t worry. They don’t understand them.” Though as those dozens of eyes turned on him as one, heads attentively cocked, he was forced again to wonder whether they might understand more than he did. He turned back to the window and pressed the glass to his eye, saw the crooked thread of smoke against the sky.
“There is a steading that way.” The owner had been one among the procession of hand-wringing mourners at his father’s howing up. Yarvi tried not to wonder whether that man had been on his farm when Grom-gil-Gorm came visiting. And if he had not, who had been there to greet the Vanstermen, and what had happened to them since …
A wise minister weighs the greater good, Mother Gundring always said, and finds the lesser evil. Surely a wise king could only do the same?
He jerked the eyeglass away from the burning steading, scanning the jagged horizon, and caught the glint of sun on steel.
“Warriors.” Coming down the northern road, spilling from a cleft in the hills. Slow as treacle in winter they seemed to crawl from this distance, and Yarvi found he was chewing at his lip, wishing them on.
“The King of Gettland,” he muttered to himself. “Urging an army of Vanstermen to Thorlby.”
“The gods cook strange recipes,” said Sumael.
Yarvi looked up at the domed ceiling, gods painted there as birds in flaking colors. He Who Carries the Message. She Who Stirs the Branches. She Who Spoke the First Word and Will Speak the Last. And painted with red wings at the center, smiling blood, Mother War.
“I’ve rarely prayed to you, I know,” Yarvi whispered at her image. “Father Peace always suited me better. But give me victory this day. Give me back the Black Chair. You’ve tested me and I stand ready. I’m not the fool I was, not the coward, not the child. I am the rightful king of Gettland.”
One of the doves chose that moment to loose a spatter of droppings onto the floor beside him. Mother War’s answer, perhaps?
Yarvi ground his teeth. “If you choose not to make me king … if you choose to send me through the Last Door today … at least let me keep my oath.” He clenched his fists, such as they were, knuckles white. “Give me Odem’s life. Give me revenge. Grant me that much, and I’ll be satisfied.”
Not a nurturing prayer of the kind that ministers are taught. Not a giving or a making prayer. But giving and making are nothing to Mother War. She is the taker, the breaker, the widow-maker. She cares only for blood.
“The king must die,” he hissed.
“The king must die!” screeched the eagle, standing tall and spreading its wings so it filled its cage and seemed to darken the whole chamber. “The king must die!”
“IT’S TIME,” SAID YARVI.
“Good,” said Nothing. His voice, through the tall slot in a helmet that hid most of his face, rang with metal.
“Good,” said the two Inglings together, one of them spinning a great ax about in his fists as though it were a toy.
“Good,” murmured Jaud, but he looked far from happy. Uncomfortable in his borrowed war-gear, and more uncomfortable still at the sight of his brothers-in-arms, squatting in the deep shadows of the elf-tunnel.
Honestly, they inspired scant confidence in Yarvi. It was a company of horribles his mother’s gold had brought to his cause. Every land about the Shattered Sea—and some much further flung—had contributed a couple of its worst sons. There were rogues and cut-throats, sea-raiders and convicts, some with their crimes tattooed on their foreheads. One with an always-weeping eye had a face scrawled blue with them. Men without king or honor. Men without conscience or cause. Not to mention three fearsome Shend women, bristling with blades and muscled like masons, who took great delight in baring teeth filed to wicked points at anyone who glanced their way.
“Not the first folk I’d pick to trust my life to,” murmured Rulf, carefully averting his eyes.
“What can you think about a cause,” muttered Jaud, “when all the decent folk stand on the other side?”
“Many tasks call for decent folk.” Nothing twisted his helmet carefully back and forth. “The murder of a king is not one such.”
“This is no murder,” growled Yarvi. “And Odem no true king.”
“Shhh,” said Sumael, eyes rolling to the ceiling.
Faint sounds were leaking through the rock. Shouting, perhaps, the rattle of arms. The very faintest whiff of alarm.
“They know our friends have arrived.”
Yarvi swallowed a surge of nerves. “To your places.”
Their plans were well rehearsed. Rulf took a dozen men skilled with bows. Each of the Inglings took a dozen more to hiding places from which they could quickly reach the yard. The dozen that remained crept up the winding stair after Yarvi and Nothing. Towards the chain room above the citadel’s one entrance. Towards the Screaming Gate.
“Have care,” whispered Yarvi, pausing at the hidden door, though his throat was almost too tight to force words through. “The men in there aren’t our enemies—”
“They will do for today,” said Nothing. “And Mother War hates care.” He kicked the door wide and ducked through.
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“Damn it!” hissed Yarvi, scrambling after.
The chain room was dim, light leaking in from narrow windows, the rumble of thumping boots echoing loud from the passageway below. Two men sat at a table. One turned, smile vanishing as he saw Nothing’s drawn sword.
“Who are—”
Steel flashed through a strip of light and his head came off with a wet click, spinning into a corner. Ridiculous, it seemed, a mummer’s joke at a spring fair, but no children laughed now. Nothing stepped past the slumping body, caught the other man under his arm as he rose and slid the sword through his chest. He gave a ragged gasp, pawed towards the table where an ax lay.
Nothing pushed the table carefully out of reach with one boot, then pulled his sword free and lowered the man gently to sit against the wall, shuddering silently as Death eased open the Last Door for him.
“The chain room is ours.” Nothing peered through an archway at the far end, then dragged the door shut and slid the bolt.
Yarvi knelt beside the dying man. He knew him. Or had done. Ulvdem was his name. No friend of his, but not one of the worst. He had smiled once at a joke Yarvi made, and Yarvi had been glad of it.
“Did you have to kill them?”
“No.” Nothing carefully wiped clean his sword. “We could have let Odem be king.”
The hirelings were spreading out, frowning towards the centerpiece of the room, and their plan, the Screaming Gate. Its bottom was sunken in the floor and its top in the ceiling, a wall of polished copper softly gleaming, engraved with a hundred faces which snarled, screeched, howled in pain or fear or rage, flowing into each other like reflections in a pool.
Sumael stood looking at it with hands on hips. “I think I can guess now why it’s called the Screaming Gate.”
“A hideous thing to hang our hopes on,” said Jaud.
Yarvi brushed the metal with his fingertips, cold and awfully solid. “A hideous thing to have drop on your head, no doubt.” Beside the great slab, about a post carved with the names of fifteen gods, was a confusion of interlocking gears, inscribed wheels, coiled chains, that even with his minister’s eye he could not begin to fathom the workings of. In its center was a single silver pin. “This is the mechanism.”
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