“Thanks for your kindness,” she muttered as she passed the key-keeper
The woman glared back. “I hope you never need it again.”
“No offense, but so do I.” And Thorn followed Father Yarvi along the dim corridor and up the steps, blinking into the light.
He might have had one hand but his legs worked well enough, setting quite a pace as he stalked across the yard of the citadel, the breeze making the branches of the old cedar whisper above them.
“I should speak to my mother—” she said, hurrying to catch up.
“I already have. I told her I had found you innocent of murder but you had sworn an oath to serve me.”
“But … how did you know I’d—”
“It is a minister’s place to know what people will do.” Father Yarvi snorted. “As yet you are not too deep a well to fathom, Thorn Bathu.”
They passed beneath the Screaming Gate, out of the citadel and into the city, down from the great rock and towards Mother Sea. They went by switching steps and narrow ways, sloping steeply between tight-crammed houses and the people tight-crammed between them.
“I’m not going on King Uthil’s raid, am I?” A fool’s question, doubtless, but now Thorn had stepped from Death’s shadow there was light enough to mourn her ruined dreams.
Father Yarvi was not in a mourning mood. “Be thankful you’re not going in the ground.”
They passed down the Street of Anvils, where Thorn had spent long hours gazing greedily at weapons like a beggar child at pastries. Where she had ridden on her father’s shoulders, giddy-proud as the smiths begged him to notice their work. But the bright metal set out before the forges only seemed to mock her now.
“I’ll never be a warrior of Gettland.” She said it soft and sorry, but Yarvi’s ears were sharp.
“As long as you live, what you might come to be is in your own hands, first of all.” The minister rubbed gently at some faded marks on his neck. “There is always a way, Queen Laithlin used to tell me.”
Thorn found herself walking a little taller at the name alone. Laithlin might not be a fighter, but Thorn could think of no one she admired more. “The Golden Queen is a woman no man dares take lightly,” she said.
“So she is.” Yarvi looked at Thorn sidelong. “Learn to temper stubbornness with sense and maybe one day you will be the same.”
It seemed that day was still some way off. Wherever they passed people bowed, and muttered softly, “Father Yarvi,” and stepped aside to give the minister of Gettland room, but shook their heads darkly at Thorn as she skulked after him, filthy and disgraced, through the gates of the city and out onto the swarming dockside. They wove between sailors and merchants from every nation around the Shattered Sea and some much farther off, Thorn ducking under fishermen’s dripping nets and around their glittering, squirming catches.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Skekenhouse.”
She stopped short, gaping, and was nearly knocked flat by a passing barrow. She had never in her life been further than a half-day’s walk from Thorlby.
“Or you could stay here,” Yarvi tossed over his shoulder. “They have the stones ready.”
She swallowed, then hurried again to catch him up. “I’ll come.”
“You are as wise as you are beautiful, Thorn Bathu.”
That was either a double compliment or a double insult, and she suspected the latter. The old planks of the wharf clonked under their boots, salt water slapping at the green-furred supports below. A ship rocked beside it, small but sleek and with white-painted doves mounted at high prow and stern. Judging by the bright shields ranged down each side, it was manned and ready to sail.
“We’re going now?” she asked.
“I am summoned by the High King.”
“The High … King?” She looked down at her clothes, stiff with dungeon filth, crusted with her blood and Edwal’s. “Can I change, at least?”
“I have no time for your vanity.”
“I stink.”
“We will haul you behind the ship to wash away the reek.”
“You will?”
The minister raised one brow at her. “You have no sense of humor, do you?”
“Facing Death can sap your taste for jokes,” she muttered.
“That’s the time you need it most.” A thickset old man was busy casting off the prow rope, and tossed it aboard as they walked up. “But don’t worry. Mother Sea will have given you more washing than you can stomach by the time we reach Skekenhouse.” He was a fighter: Thorn could tell that from the way he stood, his broad face battered by weather and war.
“The gods saw fit to take my strong left hand.” Yarvi held up his twisted claw and wiggled the one finger. “But they gave me Rulf instead.” He clapped it down on the old man’s meaty shoulder. “Though it hasn’t always been easy, I find myself content with the bargain.”
Rulf raised one tangled brow. “D’you want to know how I feel about it?”
“No,” said Yarvi, hopping aboard the ship. Thorn could only shrug at the gray-bearded warrior and hop after. “Welcome to the South Wind.”
She worked her mouth and spat over the side. “I don’t feel too welcome.”
Perhaps forty grizzled-looking oarsmen sat upon their sea chests, glaring at her, and she had no doubts what they were thinking. What is this girl doing here?
“Some ugly patterns keep repeating,” she murmured.
Father Yarvi nodded. “Such is life. It is a rare mistake you make only once.”
“Can I ask a question?”
“I have the sense that if I said no, you would ask anyway.”
“I’m not too deep a well to fathom, I reckon.”
“Then speak.”
“What am I doing here?”
“Why, holy men and deep-cunning women have been asking that question for a thousand years and never come near an answer.”
“Try talking to Brinyolf the Prayer-Weaver on the subject,” grunted Rulf, pushing them clear of the wharf with the butt of a spear. “He’ll bore your ears off with his talk of whys and wherefores.”
“Who is it indeed,” muttered Yarvi, frowning off toward the far horizon as though he could see the answers written in the clouds, “that can plumb the gods’ grand design? Might as well ask where the elves went!” And the old man and the young grinned at each other. Plainly this act was not new to them.
“Very good,” said Thorn. “I mean, why have you brought me onto this ship?”
“Ah.” Yarvi turned to Rulf. “Why do you think, rather than taking the easy road and crushing her, I have endangered all our lives by bringing the notorious killer Thorn Bathu onto my ship?”
Rulf leaned on his spear a moment, scratching at his beard. “I’ve really no idea.”
Yarvi looked at Thorn with his eyes very wide. “If I don’t share my thinking with my own left hand, why ever would I share it with the likes of you? I mean to say, you stink.”
Thorn rubbed at her temples. “I need to sit down.”
Rulf put a fatherly hand on her shoulder. “I understand.” He shoved her onto the nearest chest so hard she went squawking over the back of it and into the lap of the man behind. “This is your oar.”
FAMILY
“You’re late.”
Rin was right. Father Moon was smiling bright, and his children the stars twinkling on heaven’s cloth, and the narrow hovel was lit only by the embers of the fire when Brand ducked through the low doorway.
“Sorry, sister.” He went in a stoop to his bench and sank down with a long groan, worked his aching feet from his boots and spread his toes at the warmth. “But Harper had more peat to cut, then Old Fen needed help carrying some logs in. Wasn’t like she was chopping them herself, and her ax was blunt so I had to sharpen it, and on the way back Lem’s cart had broke an axle so a few of us helped out—”
“Your trouble is you make everyone’s trouble your trouble.”
“You help folk, maybe whe
n you need it they’ll help you.”
“Maybe.” Rin nodded toward the pot sitting over the embers of the fire. “There’s dinner. The gods know, leaving some hasn’t been easy.”
He slapped her on the knee as he leaned to get it. “But bless you for it, sister.” Brand was fearsome hungry, but he remembered to mutter a thanks to Father Earth for the food. He remembered how it felt to have none.
“It’s good,” he said, forcing it down.
“It was better right after I cooked it.”
“It’s still good.”
“No, it’s not.”
He shrugged as he scraped the pot out, wishing there was more. “Things’ll be different now I’ve passed the tests. Folk come back rich from a raid like this one.”
“Folk come to the forge before every raid telling us how rich they’re going to be. Sometimes they don’t come back.”
Brand grinned at her. “You won’t get rid of me that easily.”
“I’m not aiming to. Fool though y’are, you’re all the family I’ve got.” She dug something from behind her and held it out. A bundle of animal skin, stained and tattered.
“For me?” he said, reaching through the warmth above the dying fire for it.
“To keep you company on your high adventures. To remind you of home. To remind you of your family. Such as it is.”
“You’re all the family I need.” There was a knife inside the bundle, polished steel gleaming. A fighting dagger with a long, straight blade, crosspiece worked like a pair of twined snakes and the pommel a snarling dragon’s head.
Rin sat up, keen to see how her gift would sit with him. “I’ll make you a sword one day. For now this was the best I could manage.”
“You made this?”
“Gaden gave me some help with the hilt. But the steel’s all mine.”
“It’s fine work, Rin.” The closer he looked the better it got, every scale on the snakes picked out, the dragon baring little teeth at him, the steel bright as silver and holding a deadly edge too. He hardly dared touch it. It seemed too good a thing for his dirty hands. “Gods, it’s master’s work.”
She sat back, careless, as though she’d known that all along. “I think I’ve found a better way to do the smelting. A hotter way. In a clay jar, sort of. Bone and charcoal to bind the iron into steel, sand and glass to coax the dirt out and leave it pure. But it’s all about the heat … You’re not listening.”
Brand gave a sorry shrug. “I can swing a hammer all right but I don’t understand the magic of it. You’re ten times the smith I ever was.”
“Gaden says I’m touched by She who Strikes the Anvil.”
“She must be happy as the breeze I quit the forge and she got you as an apprentice.”
“I’ve a gift.”
“The gift of modesty.”
“Modesty is for folk with nothing to boast of.”
He weighed the dagger in his hand, feeling out the fine heft and balance to it. “My little sister, mistress of the forge. I never had a better gift.” Not that he’d had many. “Wish I had something to give you in return.”
She lay back on her bench and shook her threadbare blanket over her legs. “You’ve given me everything I’ve got.”
He winced. “Not much, is it?”
“I’ve no complaints.” She reached across the fire with her strong hand, scabbed and calloused from forge-work, and he took it, and they gave each other a squeeze.
He cleared his throat, looking at the hard-packed earth of the floor. “Will you be all right while I’m gone on this raid?”
“I’ll be like a swimmer who just shrugged her armor 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, 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 toward 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 colors of fire.
“Really is fine work, Rin.”
“Go to sleep, Brand.”
KNEELING
“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 honor, 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 offense 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 honor guard, though they had more the flavor 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 gray, 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.
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