He heaved in a wheezing breath, sword no more than quarter drawn, eyes more crossed than ever, pawing at her shoulder.
“You …” And he crashed over on his back, dragging her on top of him.
Thorn tore his limp hand away and struggled up. His black clothes turned blacker as blood soaked them, the eating knife wedged in his heart to the handle.
She squeezed her eyes shut, but when she opened them, he was still there.
Not a dream.
“Oh, gods,” she whispered.
“They rarely help.” Father Yarvi stood frowning in the doorway. “What happened?”
“He had poison,” muttered Thorn, pointing weakly at the fallen jar. “Or … I think he did …”
The minister squatted beside the dead man. “You have a habit of killing people, Thorn Bathu.”
“That’s a bad thing,” she said in a voice very small.
“It does rather depend on who you kill.” Yarvi slowly stood, looked about the room, walked over to her, peering at her face. “He hit you?”
“Well … no—”
“Yes.” He punched her in the mouth and she sprawled against the table. By then he was already throwing the door wide. “Bloodshed in King Fynn’s Hall! To arms! To arms!”
First came Rulf, who blinked down at the corpse and softly said, “That works.”
Then came guards, who blinked down at the corpse and made their weapons ready.
Then came the crew, who shook their shaggy heads and rubbed their stubbled jaws and murmured prayers.
And finally came King Fynn.
Thorn had moved among the powerful since she killed Edwal. She had met five ministers and three kings, one of them High, and the only one to impress her was the one who killed her father. Fynn might have been famed for his anger, but the first thing that struck Thorn was what a strangely shapeless man the King of Throvenland was. His chin melted into his neck, his neck into his shoulders, his shoulders into his belly, his sparse gray hairs in wafting disarray from the royal bed.
“Kneeling isn’t your strength, is it?” hissed Rulf, dragging Thorn down along with everyone else. “And for the gods’ sake fasten your damn belt!”
“What happened here?” roared the king, spraying his wincing guards with spit.
Thorn kept her eyes down as she fumbled with her buckle. Crushing with rocks looked inevitable now. Certainly for her. Possibly for the rest of the crew too. She saw the looks on their faces. This is what happens if you give a girl a blade. Even a little one.
Mother Kyre, immaculate even in her nightclothes, took up the fallen jar between finger and thumb, sniffed at it and wrinkled her nose. “Ugh! Poison, my king.”
“By the gods!” Yarvi put his hand on Thorn’s shoulder. The same hand he had just punched her with. “If it wasn’t for this girl’s quick thinking, I and my crew might have passed through the Last Door before morning.”
“Search every corner of my hall!” bellowed King Fynn. “Tell me how this bastard got in!”
A warrior who had knelt to root through the dead man’s clothes held out his palm, silver glinting. “Coins, my king. Minted in Skekenhouse.”
“There is altogether too much from Skekenhouse in my hall of late.” Fynn’s quivering jowls had a pink flush. “Grandmother Wexen’s coins, Grandmother Wexen’s eagles, Grandmother Wexen’s demands too. Demands of me, the King of Throvenland!”
“But think of your people’s welfare, my king,” coaxed Mother Kyre, still clinging to her smile, but it hardly touched her mouth now, let alone her eyes. “Think of Father Peace, Father of Doves, who makes of the fist—”
“I have suffered many indignities on behalf of Father Peace.” The flush had spread to King Fynn’s cheeks. “Once the High King was the first among brothers. Now he gives a father’s commands. How men should fight. How women should trade. How all should pray. Temples to the One God spring up across Throvenland like mushrooms after the rains, and I have held my tongue!”
“You were wise to do so,” said Mother Kyre, “and would be wise to—”
“Now Grandmother Wexen sends assassins to my land?”
“My king, we have no proof at all—”
Fynn bellowed over his minister, doughy face heating from pink to blazing crimson. “To my very house? To poison my guests?” He stabbed at the corpse with one sausage of a finger. “Beneath my own roof and under my protection?”
“I would counsel caution—”
“You always do, Mother Kyre, but there is a limit on my forbearance, and the High King has stepped over it!” With face now fully purple he seized Father Yarvi’s good hand. “Tell my beloved niece Queen Laithlin and her honored husband that they have a friend in me. A friend whatever the costs! I swear it!”
Mother Kyre had no smile ready for this moment, but Father Yarvi certainly did. “Your friendship is all they ask for.” And he lifted King Fynn’s hand high.
The guards cheered this unexpected alliance between Throvenland and Gettland with some surprise, the South Wind’s crew with great relief, and Thorn Bathu should no doubt have applauded loudest of all. Killing a man by accident had made her a villain. Killing another on purpose had made her a hero.
But all she could do was frown at the body as they dragged it out, and feel there was something very odd in all this.
LOST AND FOUND
Brand was proper drunk.
He often had been, lately.
Lifting on the docks was the best work he could find, and a day of that was thirsty work indeed. So he’d started drinking, and found he’d a real gift for it. Seemed he’d inherited something from his father after all.
The raid had been a mighty success. The Islanders were so sure the High King’s favor would protect them they were taken unawares, half their ships captured and half the rest burned. Brand had watched the warriors of Gettland swagger up through the twisting streets of Thorlby when they landed, laden with booty and covered in glory and cheered from every window. He heard Rauk took two slaves, and Sordaf got himself a silver arm-ring. He heard Uthil dragged old King Styr naked from his hall, made him kneel and swear a sun-oath and a moon-oath never to draw a blade against another Gettlander.
All heroes’ news, like something from the songs, but there’s nothing like others’ successes to make your own failures sting the worse.
Brand walked the crooked walk down some alley or other, between some houses or other, and shouted at the stars. Someone shouted back. Maybe the stars, maybe from a window. He didn’t care. He didn’t know where he was going. Didn’t seem to matter anymore.
He was lost.
“I’m worried,” Rin had said.
“Try having all your dreams stolen,” he’d spat at her.
What could she say to that?
He tried to give her the dagger back. “I don’t need it and I don’t deserve it.”
“I made it for you,” she’d said. “I’m proud of you whatever.” Nothing made her cry but she had tears in her eyes then, and they hurt worse than any beating he’d ever taken and he’d taken plenty.
So he asked Fridlif to fill his cup again. And again. And again. And Fridlif shook her gray head to see a young life wasted and all, but it was hardly the first time. Filling cups was what she did.
At least when he was drunk Brand could pretend other people were to blame. Hunnan, Thorn, Rauk, Father Yarvi, the gods, the stars above, the stones under his feet. Sober, he got to thinking he’d brought this on himself.
He blundered into a wall in the darkness and it spun him about, the anger flared up hot and he roared, “I did good!” He threw a punch at the wall and missed, which was lucky, and fell in the gutter, which wasn’t.
Then he was sick on his hands.
“Are you Brand?”
“I was,” he said, rocking back on his knees and seeing the outline of a man, or maybe two.
“The same Brand who trained with Thorn Bathu?”
He snorted at that, but his snorting tasted of sick
and nearly made him spew again. “Sadly.”
“Then this is for you.”
Cold water slapped him in the face and he spluttered on it, tried to scramble up and slipped over in the gutter. An empty bucket skittered away across the cobbles. Brand scraped the wet hair out of his eyes, saw a strip of lamplight across an old face, creased and lined, scarred and bearded.
“I should hit you for that, you old bastard,” he said, but getting up hardly seemed worth the effort.
“But then I’d hit you back, and a broken face won’t mend your troubles. I know. I’ve tried it.” The old man put hands on knees and leaned down close. “Thorn said you were the best she used to train with. You don’t look like the best of anything to me, boy.”
“Time hasn’t been kind.”
“Time never is. A fighter keeps fighting even so. Thought you were a fighter?”
“I was,” said Brand.
The old man held out his broad hand. “Good. My name’s Rulf, and I’ve got a fight for you.”
THEY’D MADE THE TORCHLIT storehouse up like a training square, ropes on the old boards marking the edge. There wasn’t as big an audience as Brand was used to, but what there was made him want to be sick again.
On one of the stools, with the key to the kingdom’s treasury gleaming on her chest, sat Laithlin, Golden Queen of Gettland. Beside her was the man who had once been her son and was now her minister, Father Yarvi. Behind them were four silver-collared slaves—two huge Inglings with hard axes at their belts and even harder frowns on their rock-chiselled faces, and two girls like as the halves of a walnut, each with braids so long they had them looped around and around one arm.
And leaning against the far wall with one boot up on the stonework and that mocking little lop-sided smile on her lips was Brand’s least favorite sparring partner, Thorn Bathu.
And the strange thing was, though he’d spent long drunk hours blaming her for all his woes, Brand was happy to see her face. Happier than he’d been in a long while. Not because he liked her so much, but because the sight of her reminded him of a time when he liked himself. When he could see his future, and liked what he saw. When his hopes stood tall and the world seemed full of dares.
“Thought you’d never get here.” She worked her arm into the straps of a shield and picked out a wooden sword.
“Thought they crushed you with rocks,” said Brand.
“It’s still very much a possibility,” said Father Yarvi.
Rulf gave Brand a shove between the shoulderblades and sent him tottering into the square. “Get to it, then, lad.”
Brand knew he didn’t have the fastest mind, and it was far from its fastest then, but he got the gist. He walked almost a straight line to the practice weapons and picked out a sword and shield, keenly aware of the queen’s cold eyes judging his every movement.
Thorn was already taking her mark. “You’re a sorry bloody sight,” she said.
Brand looked down at his vest, soaked and somewhat sick-stained, and had to nod. “Aye.”
That wrinkle to her mouth twisted into a full sneer. “Weren’t you always telling me you’d be a rich man after your first raid?”
That stung. “I didn’t go.”
“Hadn’t marked you for a coward.”
That stung more. She’d always known how to sting him. “I didn’t get picked,” he grunted.
Thorn burst out laughing, no doubt showing off in front of the queen. She’d never tired of spouting how much she admired the woman. “Here’s me full of envy, expecting you all puffed up like a hero, and what do I find but some drunk beggar-boy?”
Brand felt a cold flush through him then, sweeping the drink away more surely than any ice water. He’d done more than his share of begging, that was true. But it’s the true ones that sting.
Thorn was still chuckling at her cleverness. “You always were an idiot. Hunnan stole my place, how did you toss yours away?”
Brand would’ve liked to tell her how he’d lost his place. He would’ve liked to scream it in her face, but he couldn’t get the words out because he’d started growling like an animal, growling louder and louder until the room throbbed with it, and his chest hummed with it, his lips curled back and his jaw clenched so hard it seemed his teeth would shatter, and Thorn was frowning at him over the rim of her shield like he’d gone mad. Maybe he had.
“Begin!” shouted Rulf, and he was on her, hacked her sword away, struck back so hard he sent splinters from her shield. She twisted, quick, she’d always been deadly quick, made enough space to swing but he wasn’t hesitating this time.
He shrugged the blow off his shoulder, barely felt it, bellowed as he pressed in blindly, driving her staggering back, shield-rims grinding together, almost lifting her as she tripped over the rope and crashed into the wall. She tried to twist her sword free but he still had it pinned useless over his shoulder, and he caught her shield with his left hand and dragged it down. Too close for weapons, he flung his practice blade away and started punching her, all his anger and his disappointment in it, as if she was Hunnan, and Yarvi, and all those so-called friends of his who’d done so well from doing nothing, stolen his place, stolen his future.
He hit her in the side and heard her groan, hit her again and she folded up, eyes bulging, hit her again and she went down hard, coughing and retching at his feet. He might’ve been about to set to kicking her when Rulf caught him around the neck with one thick forearm and dragged him back.
“That’s enough, I reckon.”
“Aye,” he muttered, going limp. “More’n enough.”
He shook the shield off his arm, shocked of a sudden at what he’d done and nowhere near proud of it, knowing full well what it felt like on the other side of a beating like that. Maybe there was more than one thing he’d inherited from his father. He didn’t feel like he was standing in the light right then. Not at all.
Queen Laithlin gave a long sigh, Thorn’s coughing and dribbling in the background, and turned on her stool. “I was wondering when you’d arrive.”
And it was only then Brand noticed another watcher, slouched in the shadows of a corner in a cloak of rags every shade of gray. “Always when I am sorest needed and least expected.” A woman’s voice from within the hood and a strange accent on it. “Or hungry.”
“Did you see it?” asked Yarvi.
“I had that questionable privilege.”
“What do you think?”
“She is wretched. She is all pride and anger. She has too much confidence and too little. She does not know herself.” The figure pushed back her hood. A black-skinned old woman with a face lean as famine and hair shaved to gray fuzz. She picked her nose with one long forefinger, carefully examined the results, then flicked them away. “The girl is stupid as a stump. Worse. Most stumps have the dignity to rot quietly without causing offense.”
“I’m right here,” Thorn managed to hiss from her hands and knees.
“Just where the drunk boy put you.” The woman flashed a smile at Brand that seemed to have too many teeth. “I like him, though: he is pretty and desperate. My favorite combination.”
“Can anything be done with her?” asked Yarvi.
“Something can always be done, given enough effort.” The woman peeled herself away from the wall. She had the strangest way of walking—wriggling, jerking, strutting—as though she was dancing to music only she could hear. “How much effort will you pay for me to waste upon her worthless carcass, is the question? You owe me already, after all.” A long arm snaked from her cloak with something in the hand.
It was a box perhaps the size of a child’s head—dark, square, perfect, with golden writing etched into the lid. Brand found his eyes drawn to it. It took an effort not to step closer, to look closer. Thorn was staring too. And Rulf. And the queen’s thralls. All fascinated and afraid at once, as if by the sight of a terrible wound. None of them could read, of course, but you did not have to be a minister to know those were elf-letters on the box. Letters
written before the Breaking of God.
Father Yarvi swallowed, and with the one finger of his crippled hand eased the box open. Whatever was inside, a pale light shone from it. A light that picked out the hollows of the minister’s face as his mouth fell open, that reflected in Queen Laithlin’s widening eyes which a moment before Brand had thought nothing could surprise.
“By the gods,” she whispered. “You have it.”
The woman gave an extravagant bow, the hem of her cloak sending up a wash of straw-dust from the storehouse floor. “I deliver what I promise, my most gilded of queens.”
“Then it still works?”
“Shall I make it turn?”
“No,” said Father Yarvi. “Make it turn for the Empress of the South, not before.”
“There is the question of—”
Without taking her eyes from the box, the Queen held out a folded paper. “Your debts are all canceled.”
“The very question I had in mind.” The black-skinned woman frowned as she took it between two fingers. “I have been called a witch before but here is sorcery indeed, to trap such a weight of gold in a scrap of paper.”
“We live in changing times,” murmured Father Yarvi, and he snapped the box shut, putting the light out with it. Only then Brand realized he’d been holding his breath, and slowly let it out. “Find us a crew, Rulf, you know the kind.”
“Hard ones, I’m guessing,” said the old warrior.
“Oarsmen and fighters. The outcasts and the desperate. Men who don’t get weak at the thought of blood or the sight of it. The journey is long and the stakes could not be higher. I want men with nothing to lose.”
“My kind of crew!” The black-skinned woman slapped her thigh. “Sign me up first!” She slipped between the stools and strutted over toward Brand, and for a moment her cloak of rags came open and he saw the glint of steel. “Can I buy you a drink, young man?”
“I think the boy has drunk enough.” Queen Laithlin’s gray eyes were on him, and the eyes of her four slaves as well, and Brand swallowed, his sick-tasting mouth suddenly very dry. “Though my first husband gave me two sons, for which I will always be grateful, he drank too much. It spoils a bad man. It ruins a good one.”