Yarvi had faced Death before. Many times, now, she had eased open the Last Door for him, and he was still casting a shadow. Though he was far from comfortable in her chill presence, as with many things he had improved with practice. This time at least, though his heart pounded and his mouth was sour, he faced her standing, and let his voice ring out clear.
“I made a mistake!” called Yarvi. “I made many. I know it. But I swore an oath! Before the gods I swore it. A sun-oath and a moon-oath. And I saw no other way to keep it. To avenge the killing of my father and brother. To turn the traitor Odem out of the Black Chair. And, though I am sorry for the blood that was spilled, thanks to the favor of the gods … “Yarvi gazed up towards them, then humbly down at the floor, spreading his arms in submission. “The rightful king has returned.”
Uthil frowned towards his hand, fingers resting upon the metal of the Black Chair. A small reminder that he owed it to Yarvi’s plans could do no harm. The angry muttering began again, mounted, swelled, until Uthil raised his hand to bring silence.
“It is true that Odem set you on the path,” he said. “His crimes were greater by far than yours, and you have already delivered his just punishment. You had reasons for what you did, and there has been enough death here, I think. Yours would be no justice.”
Yarvi kept his head bowed, and swallowed his relief. In spite of the hardships of the last few months, he liked being alive. He liked it more than ever.
“But there must be a reckoning.” And it seemed there was a sadness in Uthil’s eyes. “I am sorry, truly I am. But your sentence must be exile, for a man who has sat once in the Black Chair will always seek to reclaim it.”
“I didn’t think it so very comfortable.” Yarvi took one step up the dais. He knew what he had to do. He had known ever since Odem lay dead at his feet and he saw the face of Father Peace above him. Exile was not without some appeal. To owe nothing. To be anything. But he had wandered long enough. This was his home, and he was going nowhere.
“I never wanted the Black Chair. I never expected it.” Yarvi lifted his left hand and shook it so the one finger flopped back and forth. “I am no one’s notion of a king, least of all my own.” In silence he knelt. “I offer another solution.”
Uthil’s eyes narrowed, and Yarvi prayed to Father Peace that his uncle was looking for a way to pardon him. “Speak, then.”
“Let me do what is best for Gettland. Let me give up all claim to your chair forever. Let me take the Minister’s Test, as I was to do before my father’s death. Let me surrender all title and inheritance, and let my family be the Ministry. I belong here, in the Godshall. Not in the Black Chair, but beside it. Show your greatness through your mercy, my king, and let me atone for my mistakes through loyal service to you and to the land.”
Uthil slowly sat back, frowning, while the silence stretched out. Finally the king leaned towards his minister.
“What think you to this, Mother Gundring?”
“A solution Father Peace will smile upon,” she murmured. “I always believed Yarvi would make a fine minister. I still believe it. He has proved himself a deep-cunning man.”
“That much I believe.” But Uthil still hesitated, rubbing at his sharp jaw in consideration.
Then his mother let go Yarvi’s arm and swept up towards the Black Chair, the train of her red dress spilling down the steps as she knelt at Uthil’s feet. “A great king is merciful,” she murmured. “Please, my king. Let me have my only son.”
Uthil stirred, and his mouth opened but no words came. He might have been fearless before Grom-gil-Gorm, but faced with Yarvi’s mother he trembled.
“We were once promised to each other,” she said. One hard breath would have sounded like thunder in the Godshall, then, but every breath was held. “You were thought dead … but the gods have brought you back to your rightful place …” She put her hand gently upon the scarred back of his, where it rested on the arm of the Black Chair, and Uthil’s eyes were fixed on her face. “My dearest wish is to see that promise fulfilled.”
Mother Gundring shuffled closer, speaking low. “The High King has proposed marriage to Laithlin more than once, he will take it very ill—”
Uthil did not look at her. His voice was rough. “Our promise is older than the High King’s suit by twenty years.”
“But only today Grandmother Wexen sent another eagle to—”
“Does Grandmother Wexen sit in the Black Chair, or do I?” Uthil finally turned his bright eyes on his minister.
“You do.” Mother Gundring turned hers to the floor. The wise minister coaxes, wheedles, argues, advises, and the wise minister obeys.
“Then send Grandmother Wexen’s bird back to her with an invitation to our wedding.” Uthil turned over his hand so that he held Yarvi’s mother’s in his calloused palm, worn to the shape of a scrubbing block. “You will wear the key to my treasury, Laithlin, and manage those affairs at which you have proved yourself so very able.”
“Gladly,” said Yarvi’s mother. “And my son?”
King Uthil looked at Yarvi for a long moment. Then he nodded. “He shall take back his place as Mother Gundring’s apprentice.” And at a stroke he made himself look stern and merciful both at once.
Yarvi breathed out. “At last Gettland has a king to be proud of,” he said. “I will thank Mother Sea every day for sending you back from the depths.”
And he stood and followed Grom-gil-Gorm towards the doors. He smiled through the taunts, and the jeering, and the mutters, and rather than hide his withered hand up his sleeve as his old habit had been, he let it proudly dangle. Compared to the slave pens of Vulsgard, and the torments of Trigg’s whip, and the cold and hunger of the trackless ice, the scorn of fools was not so very difficult to endure.
With a little help from his two mothers, each no doubt with her own reasons, Yarvi walked from the Godshall alive. A crippled outcast once again, and bound for the Ministry. Where he belonged.
He had come full circle. But he had left a boy, and returned a man.
THE DEAD WERE LAID OUT on chill slabs in a chill cellar beneath the rock. Yarvi did not want to count them. Enough. That was their number. The harvest of his carefully-sown plans. The consequences of his rash oath sworn. No faces, only shrouds peaked at the nose, the chin, the feet. There was no way to tell his mother’s hired killers from the honoured warriors of Gettland. Perhaps, once they had passed through the Last Door, there was no difference.
Yarvi knew which body was Jaud’s, though. His friend’s. His oarmate’s. The man who had forged a path through the snow for him to follow. Whose soft voice had murmured “one stroke at a time” as he whimpered over the oar. Who had taken Yarvi’s fight as his own, even though he had been no fighter. It was the one Sumael stood beside, her clenched fists on the slab, dark face lit down one side by the flame of a single flickering taper.
“Your mother’s found a place for me on a ship,” she said, without looking up, her voice with a softness he was not used to hearing there.
“Good navigators are always in demand,” said Yarvi. The gods knew, he could have done with someone to point out the path for him.
“We leave at first light for Skekenhouse, then on.”
“Home?” he asked.
Sumael closed her eyes, and nodded, the faintest smile at the corner of her scarred mouth. “Home.” When he first saw her he had not thought of her as fine-looking, but she seemed beautiful now. So much he could not look away.
“Have you thought that, maybe … you could stay?” Yarvi hated himself even for asking. For making her turn him down. He was bound for the Ministry anyway. He had nothing to offer her. And Jaud’s body lay between them, a barrier there was no crossing.
“I have to go,” she said. “I can barely remember who I used to be.”
He could have said the same. “Surely all that matters is who you are now.”
“I barely know that either. Besides, Jaud carried me, in the snow.” Her hand twitched towards the shr
oud, but much to Yarvi’s relief she let it lie. “The least I can do is carry his ashes. I’ll leave them at his village. Maybe I’ll even drink from that well of his. Drink for both of us.” She swallowed, and all the while for some reason Yarvi felt a cold anger growing in him. “Why miss the sweetest water in the—”
“He chose to stay,” snapped Yarvi.
Sumael slowly nodded, not looking up. “We all did.”
“I didn’t force him.”
“No.”
“You could have left, and taken him, if you’d fought harder.”
Now she looked up, but with none of the anger he knew he deserved, only her own share of the guilt. “You’re right. That will be my weight to carry.”
Yarvi looked away, and suddenly his eyes swam with tears. A set of things done, and choices made, and each had seemed the lesser evil but had somehow led him here. Could this really be anyone’s greater good?
“You don’t hate me?” he whispered.
“I’ve lost one friend, I don’t mean to throw away another.” And she put one hand gently on his shoulder. “I’m not much good at making new ones.”
He pressed his own on top of it, wishing he could hold it there. Strange, how you never see how much you want a thing until you know you cannot have it.
“You don’t blame me?” he whispered.
“Why would I?” She gave him a last parting squeeze, then let him go. “It’s better if you do it.”
39.
SOME ARE SAVED
“I’m glad you came,” said Yarvi. “I’m fast running out of friends.”
“Happy to do it,” said Rulf. “For you and for Ankran. Can’t say I loved the skinny bastard when he was storekeeper, but I warmed to him in the end.” He grinned at Yarvi, the big scab above his eye shifting. “Some men you stick to right off, but it’s those that take time to stick as stick longest. Shall we get some slaves?”
There was a muttering, and a grunting, and a clattering of chains as the wares got to their feet for inspection, each pair of eyes with its own mixture of shame, and fear, and hope, and hopelessness, and Yarvi found himself rubbing gently at the faint scars on his throat where his own collar used to sit. The stink of the place smothered him with memories he would much rather have forgotten. Strange, how quickly he had grown used to free air again.
“Prince Yarvi!” The proprietor hurried from the shadows at the back, a big man with a soft, pale face, faintly familiar. One of the procession who had grovelled before Yarvi at his father’s howing up. Now he would have a chance to grovel again.
“I’m a prince no longer,” said Yarvi, “but, otherwise, yes. You’re Yoverfell?”
The flesh-dealer puffed up with pride at being known. “Indeed I am, and deeply honoured by your visit! Might I ask what sort of slave you are—”
“Does the name Ankran mean much to you?”
The merchant’s eyes flickered to Rulf, standing grim and solid with his thumbs in his silver-buckled sword-belt. “Ankran?”
“Let me sharpen your memory as the reek of your shop has sharpened mine. You sold a man called Ankran, then extorted money from him to keep his wife and child safe.”
Yoverfell cleared his throat. “I have broken no law—”
“And nor will I when I call in your debts.”
The merchant’s face had drained of color. “I owe you nothing …”
Yarvi chuckled. “Me? No. But my mother, Laithlin, soon to be once again the Golden Queen of Gettland and holder of the key to the treasury … I understand you do owe her a trifling debt?”
The knobble on the merchant’s scrawny throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I am my queen’s most humble servant—”
“Her slave, I’d call you. If you sold all you own it wouldn’t come close to covering what you owe her.”
“Her slave, then, why not?” Yoverfell gave a bitter snort. “Since you concern yourself with my business, it was because of the interest on her loans that I had to squeeze what I could from Ankran. I did not want to do it—”
“But you put your wishes aside,” said Yarvi. “How noble.”
“What do you want?”
“Let us begin with the woman and her child.”
“Very well.” Eyes on the ground, the merchant scraped away into the shadows. Yarvi looked across at Rulf, and the old warrior raised his brows, and about them the slaves looked on in silence. Yarvi thought one might be smiling.
He was not sure what he had been expecting. Outstanding beauty, or stunning grace, or something that struck him instantly to the heart. But Ankran’s family were an ordinary-looking pair. Most people are, of course, to those that don’t know them. The mother was small and slight with a defiant set to her jaw. The son was sandy-headed, as his father had been, and kept his eyes down.
Yoverfell ushered them forward, then plucked nervously at one of his hands with the other. “Healthy and well cared for, as promised. They are yours, of course, gifts, with my compliments.”
“Your compliments you can keep,” said Yarvi. “Now you will pack up here, and move your business to Vulsgard.”
“Vulsgard?”
“Yes. They have many flesh-dealers there, you will feel very much at home.”
“But why?”
“So you can keep an eye on the business of Grom-gil-Gorm. Know your enemy’s house better than your own, I’ve heard it said.”
Rulf gave an approving grunt, puffed out his chest a little and shifted his thumbs in his sword-belt.
“It’s that,” said Yarvi, “or find yourself being sold in your own shop. What price would you fetch, do you think?”
Yoverfell cleared his throat. “I will make the arrangements.”
“Quickly,” said Yarvi, and strode from the stink of that place to stand in the air and breathe, eyes closed.
“You … are our new owner, then?”
Ankran’s wife stood beside him, one finger wedged inside her collar.
“No. My name is Yarvi, this is Rulf.”
“We were friends of your husband,” said Rulf, ruffling the boy’s hair and causing him some discomfort.
“Were?” she asked. “Where is Ankran?”
Yarvi swallowed, wondering how to break that news, searching for the proper words—
“Dead,” said Rulf, simply.
“I’m sorry,” added Yarvi. “He died saving my life, which strikes even me as a poor trade. But you are free.”
“Free?” she muttered.
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to be free, I want to be safe.”
Yarvi blinked at that, then felt his mouth twitch into a sad smile. He had never wanted much more himself. “I daresay I could use a servant, if you’re willing to work.”
“I always have been that,” she said.
Yarvi stopped beside a smith’s shop, and flicked a coin over a trestle covered with boat-maker’s tools. One of the first coins of the new kind—round and perfect, and stamped on one side with his own mother’s frowning face.
“Strike their collars,” he said.
Ankran’s family gave no thanks for their freedom, but the ringing of hammer on chisel was thanks enough for Yarvi. Rulf watched with one foot up on a low wall and his forearms crossed upon his knee.
“I’m no high judge of righteousness.”
“Who is?”
“But I find this to be a good thing.”
“Don’t let anyone know, it might ruin my reputation.” Yarvi saw an old woman glaring at him from across the square, and he smiled back, and waved, and watched her scuttle muttering away. “It seems I’ve become the villain of this piece.”
“If life has taught me one thing, it’s that there are no villains. Only people, doing their best.”
“My best has proved disastrous.”
“Could’ve been far worse.” Rulf curled his tongue and spat. “And you’re young. Try again. Might be you’ll improve.”
Yarvi narrowed his eyes at the old warrior. “When did you become wis
e?”
“I’ve always been uncommonly insightful, but you were blinded by your own cleverness.”
“A common fault with kings. Hopefully I’m young enough to learn humility too.”
“It’s well one of us is.”
“And what will you do with your twilight years?” asked Yarvi.
“As it happens, the great King Uthil has offered me a place with his guard.”
“The stench of honor! You’ll accept?”
“I said no.”
“You did?”
“Honor’s a fool’s prize, and I’ve a feeling Uthil is the sort of master who’ll always have dead servants about him.”
“Wiser and wiser,” said Yarvi.
“Until recently I thought my life done, but now that it begins again I find I’ve no pressing desire to cut it short.” Yarvi looked sideways, and saw Rulf looking sideways back. “Thought maybe you could use an oarmate.”
“Me?”
“What could a one-handed minister and a rogue fifteen years past his best not achieve together?”
At a final blow the collar sprang open and Ankran’s son stood, blinking, and rubbing at his neck, and his mother took him in her arms and kissed his hair.
“I’m not alone,” murmured Yarvi.
Rulf put an arm around him and hugged him crushing tight. “Not while I’m alive, oarmate.”
IT WAS A GREAT AFFAIR.
Many powerful families in the far reaches of Gettland would be angered that news of King Uthil’s return had barely reached them before he was married, 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 at the news, as Mother Gundring was keen to point out.
But Yarvi’s mother brushed all objections away with an airy wave and said, “Their anger is dust to me.” She was the Golden Queen again. Once she had spoken it was as a thing already done.
And so in the Godshall the statues were garlanded with the first flowers of spring, and the wedding gifts were heaped about the Black Chair in gaudy abundance, and the people were packed beneath the dome tight as sheep in winter quarters until the very air was misty with their breath.