At that moment the soft arts of the minister were shown to have their limitations.
“We’ve got a bet going,” said Trigg, “on how long it takes you to sink.”
Yarvi plucked at Trigg’s arm, scratched at his shoulder with his nails, but the overseer scarcely noticed. Out of the corner of his weeping eye he saw Sumael standing, shaking off her blankets. When Trigg unlocked Yarvi’s chain he unlocked hers too.
But Yarvi knew he could expect no help from her. He could expect no help at all.
“Let this be a lesson to the rest of you!” Trigg stabbed at his chest with his free thumb. “This is my ship. Cross me and you’re done.”
“Let him be!” someone growled. “He’s done no harm.” Jaud, Yarvi saw as he was dragged past. But no one marked the big man. Beside him, from Yarvi’s old place, Ankran watched, rubbing at his crooked nose. It did not look like such a bad place now.
“You should’ve taken the deal,” Trigg bundled Yarvi over the shipped oars like a sack of rags. “I can forgive a lot in a fine singer, boy, but—”
With a sudden yelp the overseer fell sprawling, hand suddenly loose, and Yarvi jabbed his twisted little finger in Trigg’s eye, gave him a wriggling kick in the chest and went tumbling free.
Trigg had tripped on Nothing’s heavy chain, pulled suddenly taut. The deck-scrubber hunched in the shadows, eyes gleaming behind his hanging hair. “Run,” he whispered.
Perhaps Yarvi had made one friend after all.
The first breath he heaved in made his head reel. He scrambled up, sobbing, snorting, careered into the benches, through oarslaves half asleep, clambering, slithering, under oars and over them.
People were shouting but Yarvi could scarcely hear the words through the throbbing of blood in his ears, like the mindless thunder of a storm.
He saw the forward hatch, wobbling, shuddering. His hand closed around the handle. He hauled it open and pitched face-first into the darkness.
18.
DEATH WAITS
Yarvi fell, knocked his shoulder, cracked his head, tumbled over sacks and sprawled on his face.
Wet on his cheek. In the hold.
He rolled with an effort, dragged himself into the shadows.
Dark down here. Pitch-dark, but a minister must know the ways, and he felt them out now with his fingertips.
Roaring in his ears, burning in his chest, terror tickling at every part of him, but he had to master it, and think. There is always a way, his mother used to tell him.
He could hear the guards shouting as they looked down into the hatch, too close, too close behind. He jerked his chain after him, squirming between crates and barrels in the hold, a flicker of light from the torches above catching bands and rivets, guiding him towards the ship’s stores.
He slithered through the low doorway, sloshing between shelves and boxes in the freezing puddle that was today’s leakage. He crouched against the ship’s cold side, breath whooping and wheezing, more light now as the guards brought their torches down after him.
“Where is he?”
There had to be a way. Surely they’d be coming from the other direction soon, from the aft hatch. His eyes flickered to its ladder.
Had to be some way. No time for a plan, all his plans were gone like smoke. Trigg would be waiting. Trigg would be angry.
His eyes darted to every sound, to every glint of light, searching desperately for some means of escape, some place to hide, but there was none. He needed an ally. He pressed himself helplessly back against the wood, felt the icy dampness there, heard the drip of saltwater. And Mother Gundring’s voice came to him, soft and careful at the firepit.
When a wise minister has nothing but enemies, she beats one with a worse.
Yarvi dived below the nearest shelf, fumbling in the black, and his fingers closed around the iron bar he kept to knock in nails.
The sailor’s worst enemy is the sea, Shadikshirram never tired of saying.
“Where are you, boy?”
He could just see the outlines of Sumael’s repair and he rammed the iron bar between hull and fresh timbers and dragged on it with all his strength. He gritted his teeth and worked it deeper and snarled out all his fury and his pain and his helplessness and ripped at that bar as though it was Trigg and Odem and Grom-gil-Gorm combined. He tore at it, strained at it, wedged the wrist of his useless hand around it, the tortured wood creaking, pots and boxes clattering down as he barged the shelves with his shoulder.
He could hear the guards now, near, the glow of their lamps in the hold, their humped shapes in the low doorway, the gleam of their blades.
“Come here, cripple!”
He screamed as he made one last muscle-tearing effort. There was a crack as the timbers suddenly gave, Yarvi lurched flailing backwards, and hissing with the rage of a devil released from hell Mother Sea burst into the stores.
Yarvi brought a shelf crashing down with him, was soaked in an instant in icy water, rolled gasping towards the aft hatch, up and slithering sodden, the din of shouting men and furious sea and splintering wood in his ears.
He floundered to the ladder, the water already to his knees. A guard was at his heels, clutching in the darkness. Yarvi flung the bar at him, sent him stumbling into the jet of water and it tore him across the store like a toy. More leaks had sprung, the sea showering in at a dozen angles, the wails of the guards hardly heard over its deafening roar.
Yarvi dragged himself up the ladder a couple of rungs, heaved the hatch open, slithered through and stood, swaying, wondering if some magic had transported him onto the deck of some other ship in the midst of battle.
The gangway between the benches crawled with men, struggling in the garish light of burning oil which a broken lamp must have sprayed across the forecastle. Flickering flames danced in the black water, in the black eyes of panicked slaves, on the drawn blades of the guards. Yarvi saw Jaud grab one of them and fling him bodily into the sea.
He was up from his bench. The slaves were freed.
Or some of them. Most were still chained, huddling towards the rowlocks to escape the violence. A few lay bleeding on the gangway. Others were even now leaping over the side, preferring to take their chance with Mother Sea than with Trigg’s men, who were flailing about them without mercy.
Yarvi saw Rulf butt a guard in the face, heard the man’s nose-bone pop and his sword clatter away across the deck.
He had to help his oarmates. The fingers of his good hand twitched open and closed. Had to help them, but how? The last few months had only reinforced Yarvi’s long-held opinion that he was no hero. They were outnumbered and unarmed. He flinched as a guard cut down a helpless slave, ax opening a yawning wound. He could feel the slope in the deck, tilting as the sea rushed in below and dragged the South Wind down.
A good minister faces the facts, and saves what he can. A good minister accepts the lesser evil. Yarvi clambered across the nearest bench, towards the ship’s side and the black water beyond. He set himself to dive.
He was halfway off the ship when he was snatched back by his collar. The world tumbled and he crashed down, gasping like a landed fish.
Trigg stood over him, the end of his chain in one fist. “You’re going nowhere. boy.”
He leaned down and planted his other hand around Yarvi’s throat, just under his collar so the metal bit into his jaw, but this time the overseer squeezed even harder. He dragged Yarvi up until his kicking boots only just scraped the deck, twisting his face around to look at the carnage that choked the ship. Dead men and wounded men, two guards beating a slave with their sticks in the midst.
“See the trouble you’ve caused me?” he screeched, one eye red and weepy from Yarvi’s finger. The guards were all yammering over each other.
“Where’s Jaud and that bastard Rulf?”
“Got onto the jetty. But they’ll freeze out there for sure.”
“Gods, my fingers!”
“How’d they get free?”
“Sumael.
”
“That little bitch had a key.”
“Where the hell did she get that hatchet?”
“She cut my fingers off! Where are they?”
“What does it matter? They’re no use now!”
“He broke the hull!” gasped a soaked guard as he crawled from the aft-hatch. “There’s water flooding in!” And as though to make the point the South Wind shuddered again, the deck tilting further so that Trigg had to grab at a bench to stay upright.
“Gods help us!” screeched one of the chained oarslaves, clawing at his collar.
“Are we sinking?” asked another, wide eyes rolling down.
“How are we going to explain this to Shadikshirram?”
“Gods damn it!” roared Trigg, and he smashed Yarvi’s head against the blunt end of the nearest oar, filling his skull with light and his mouth with scalding sick, then drove him down against the deck and started choking him in earnest.
Yarvi struggled mindlessly but the overseer’s full weight was on him and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see anything but Trigg’s snarling mouth, and that growing blurrier, as though it was at the end of a tunnel down which Yarvi was being steadily dragged.
He’d cheated Death half a dozen times in the last few weeks, but no matter how strong or clever, no matter how good your weaponluck or your weatherluck, none can cheat her forever. Heroes and High Kings and Grandmothers of the Ministry all pass through her door in the end: she makes no exceptions for one-handed boys with big mouths and bitter tempers. The Black Chair would be Odem’s, his father unavenged, his oath forever unfulfilled …
Then, through the surging of trapped blood in his ears, Yarvi heard a voice.
It was a broken, whispering voice, rough as a scrubbing block. Had it been Death’s voice he would not have been surprised. Except by what it said.
“Did you not hear Shadikshirram?”
With an effort Yarvi forced his weeping eyes towards it.
Nothing stood in the middle of the deck. His grease-matted hair was pushed back and for the first time Yarvi could see his face, bent and lop-sided, scarred and broken, twisted and hollowed, his eyes wide and gleaming wet.
His heavy chain was wound around and around one arm, and from his fist the hasp dangled free, a chunk of splintered wood and nails still attached. In his other hand he held the sword Rulf had knocked from a guard’s hand.
Nothing smiled. A broken smile full of broken teeth and speaking of a broken mind. “She told you never to give me a blade.”
“Put the sword down!” Trigg barked the last word, but his voice creaked with something Yarvi had never heard there before.
Fear.
As if it was Death indeed that stood before him on the deck.
“Oh, no, Trigg, no.” Nothing’s smile grew broader, and madder, and the tears brimmed in his eyes and left shining streaks on his pitted cheeks. “I think it will put you down.”
A guard charged at him.
Scrubbing the deck Nothing had seemed old, and painfully slow. A brittle remnant. A man of twigs and string. With sword in hand he flowed like water, danced like flickering fire. It was as if the blade had its own mind, quick and merciless as lightning, and Nothing was pulled after.
The sword darted out, its point glinted between the charging guard’s shoulder blades and was gone, left him tottering, wheezing, hand clasped to his chest. Another guard swung an ax and Nothing slipped out of its way and let it chop splinters from the corner of a bench. It went up again and with a click of metal the arm that held it spun off into the darkness. The guard sank to his knees, eyes goggling, and Nothing’s bare foot knocked him flat.
A third came at him from behind, sword raised. Without looking, Nothing thrust his blade out, took the guard through the throat and left him spluttering blood, then knocked a club away with his chain-wrapped arm and smashed the pommel of his sword into the mouth of its owner, sending teeth flying, dropped soundlessly to scythe the legs from under another and send him spinning onto the deck face-down.
All this in the space of time that Yarvi might have taken one breath. If he could have taken a breath.
The first guard still stood, fumbling at his pierced chest, trying to speak but saying only red froth. Nothing pushed him gently out of his way with the back of his arm as he passed, the balls of his bare feet making no sound. He looked down at the blood-soaked boards and clicked his tongue.
“The deck is very dirty.” He looked up, wasted face all black-dashed and red-speckled. “Shall I scrub it, Trigg?”
The overseer backed away while Yarvi fumbled helplessly with his hand. “Come closer and I kill him!”
“Kill him.” Nothing shrugged. “Death waits for us all.” The guard with the ruined legs was whimpering as he tried to drag himself up the tilted deck. Nothing stabbed him through the back in passing. “Today she waits for you. She reaches for her key, Trigg. She unlocks the Last Door.”
“Let’s talk about it!” Trigg backed off with one palm up. The deck was tipping further now, black water welling from the aft-hatch. “Let’s just talk!”
“Talk only makes problems.” Nothing lifted the sword. “Steel is always the answer.” And he spun it in his hand so the blade caught the light and danced red and white and yellow and all the colors of fire. “Steel does not flatter or compromise. Steel tells no lies.”
“Just give me a chance!” whined Trigg, water pouring over the sides of the ship now, flooding among the benches.
“Why?”
“I’ve got dreams! I’ve got plans! I’ve got—”
With a hollow click the sword split Trigg’s skull down to his nose. His mouth kept making words for a moment, but no breath came to give them sound. He flopped back, kicking a little, and Yarvi tore free of his limp hand, gasping in air, and coughing, and trying to drag his collar free so he could breathe.
“Perhaps I shouldn’t,” said Nothing, twisting the sword from Trigg’s head, “but I feel much better.”
All around them men were screaming. If any guards survived they’d preferred the sea to Nothing’s sword. Some slaves were trying to clamber over their sinking benches to drier ones behind, others straining at their chains as the water surged higher and higher, others with faces only just showing, mouths sucking at the air and their eyes bulging with horror. Still others, Yarvi knew, must already be below the black surface, holding their breath for a few more moments while they struggled hopelessly at their locks.
He dropped to his hands and knees, retching, head spinning, digging at Trigg’s bloody clothes for his key, struggling not to look at his split face but catching a glimpse anyway of features distorted and fleshy pulp gleaming inside the great wound and he swallowed vomit, rooting again for the key, the wails of the trapped slaves loud in his ears.
“Leave it.” Nothing stood over him, standing far taller than Yarvi had ever imagined he might, blood-spotted sword hanging from one hand.
Yarvi blinked up at him, and then down the tipping deck towards the drowning slaves. “But they’ll die.” His voice was a tiny croak.
“Death waits for us all.”
Nothing caught Yarvi by his thrall-collar, hefted him into the air and over the rail, and once again Mother Sea took him in her icy embrace.
19.
BENDING WITH CIRCUMSTANCE
Someone slapped Yarvi’s face. He saw the hand, heard the noise, but hardly felt it.
“Run,” hissed Jaud’s voice.
The closest Yarvi could manage was a shivering shamble, his flapping chain and his soaked clothes dragging him down with every step, the shingle clutching at his waterlogged boots. He tripped often, but whenever he fell strong arms would be there to haul him up, to haul him on into the darkness.
“Go,” grunted Rulf.
Near the snow-covered top of the beach Yarvi snatched one look back, and forced out, “Gods,” through his rattling teeth.
Mother Sea was hungrily swallowing the South Wind. The forecastle was wreathed in fire, ri
gging made lines of flame, the top of the mast, where Sumael used to perch, ablaze. The benches where Yarvi had struggled were flooded, tangled oars sticking up helplessly like the legs of a turned-over woodlouse. Only one corner of the aftcastle still showed above waters alive with the reflections of fire. The hold, the stores and the captain’s cabin were drowned in the silence beneath.
There were black figures on the shore, on the jetty, staring. Guards who had escaped Nothing’s sword? Slaves who had somehow got free of their chains? Yarvi wondered if he could hear faint cries above the keening of the wind. Faint screams above the crackling of the flames. There was no way to know who luck had saved from that ordeal of fire and water, who was living and who dead, and Yarvi was too cold to be glad he had survived one more disaster, let alone to be sad that anyone else had not. No doubt the regrets would come soon enough.
If he lived out the night.
“Move,” said Sumael.
They bundled him over the crest and he tumbled down the far side, came to rest on his back in a drift, skin on fire with the cold, each icy gasp like a knife in his throat. He saw Rulf’s broad face with a glimmer of orange down one cheek, Sumael’s gaunt and twitching in the light of Father Moon.
“Leave me,” he tried to say, but his mouth was too numb to make the words, his teeth chilled to the roots, and all that came was a weak puff of smoke.
“We go together,” said Sumael. “Wasn’t that the deal?”
“I thought it was finished when Trigg started throttling me.”
“Oh, you won’t wriggle out of it that easily.” She caught him by his crooked wrist. “Get up.”
He had been betrayed by his own family, his own people, and found loyalty among a set of slaves who owed him nothing. He was so pathetically glad of it he wanted to weep. But he had a feeling he would need his tears later.
With Sumael’s help he managed to get up. With Rulf’s and Jaud’s to flounder on, hardly thinking about the course except to keep the sinking South Wind somewhere at his back. The icy wetness squelched in his boots, the wind cut through his soaked and chafing clothes as though he wore nothing.