Half a King Read online

  Gods, how he hated his mail. How he hated Hunnan, the master-at-arms who had been for so many years his chief tormentor. How he loathed swords and shields, and detested the training square, and despised the warriors who made it their home. And most of all how he hated his own bad joke of a hand, which meant he could never be one of them.

  “Watch your footing, my king,” murmured Odem.

  “My footing won’t be my problem,” snapped Yarvi. “I have two feet, at least.”

  For three years he had scarcely touched a sword, spending every waking hour in Mother Gundring’s chambers, studying the uses of plants and the tongues of far-off places. Learning the names of the Small Gods and taking such very special care over his penmanship. While he had been learning how to mend wounds these boys—these men, he realized with a sour taste in his mouth—had put all their efforts into learning how to make them.

  Odem gave him a reassuring clap on the shoulder which nearly knocked him over. “Keep your shield up. Wait for your chance.”

  Yarvi snorted. If they waited for his chance they would be here until the tide drowned them all. His shield was lashed tight about his withered forearm with a sorry mass of strapping, and he clung to the handle with his thumb and one stub of finger, arm already burning to the shoulder from the effort of letting the damn thing dangle.

  “Our king has been away from the square for some time,” called Master Hunnan, and worked his mouth as though the words were bitter. “Go gently today.”

  “I’ll try not to hurt him too badly!” shouted Yarvi.

  There was some laughter, but he thought it had an edge of scorn. Jokes are a poor substitute in a fight for strong sinews and a shield-hand. He looked into Keimdal’s eyes, and saw his easy confidence, and tried to tell himself that strong men are many and wise men few. Even in his own skull the thought rang hollow.

  Master Hunnan did not smile. No joke was funny, no child lovable, no woman beautiful enough to bend those iron lips. He only gave Yarvi that same long stare he always used to have, as full of quiet contempt for him whether prince or king. “Begin!” he barked.

  If quickness was a mercy, it was a merciful bout indeed.

  The first blow crashed on Yarvi’s shield, tore the handle from his feeble grip so that the rim caught him in the mouth and sent him stumbling. He managed by some shred of instinct to parry the next so that it glanced from his shoulder and numbed his arm, but he never even saw the third, only felt the sharp pain as his ankle was swept from under him and he crashed down on his back, all his breath wheezing out like the air from a split bellows.

  He lay blinking for a moment. They still told tales of his Uncle Uthil’s matchless performances in the square. It seemed his own might live just as long in the memory. Alas, for very different reasons.

  Keimdal thrust his wooden sword into the sand and offered his hand. “My king.” Far better disguised than it used to be, but Yarvi thought there was a mocking curl to the corner of his mouth.

  “You’ve got better,” Yarvi forced through his clenched teeth, twisting his crippled hand free of the useless shield-straps so Keimdal had no choice but to grasp it to pull him to his feet.

  “As have you, my king.” Yarvi could see Keimdal’s disgust as he touched the twisted thing, and made sure to give him a parting tickle with the stub of his finger. A petty gesture, perhaps, but the weak must thrive on small revenges.

  “I’ve got worse,” muttered Yarvi as Keimdal walked back to his peers. “If you can believe it.”

  He caught sight of a girl’s face among the younger students. Thirteen years old, maybe, fierce-eyed, dark hair flicking around her sharp cheeks. Probably Yarvi should have been grateful Hunnan had not picked her to give him his beating. Perhaps that would be next in the procession of humiliations.

  The master-at-arms gave a scornful shake of his head as he turned away and the anger surged up in Yarvi, bitter as a winter tide. His brother might have inherited all their father’s strength, but he had got his full share of the rage.

  “Shall we have another bout?” he snapped across the square.

  Keimdal’s brows went up, then he shrugged his broad shoulders and hefted his sword and shield. “If you command.”

  “Oh, I do.”

  A grumbling passed around the older men and Hunnan frowned even harder. Must they endure more of this demeaning farce? If their king was embarrassed they were embarrassed, and in Yarvi they could see embarrassments enough to crowd the rest of their days.

  He felt his uncle gently take his arm. “My king,” he murmured, soft and soothing. Always he was soft and soothing as a breeze on a summer day. “Perhaps you should not exert yourself too much—”

  “You’re right, of course,” said Yarvi. A fool is his anger’s slave, Mother Gundring once told him. The wise man’s anger is his tool. “Hurik. You stand for me.”

  There was a silence as all eyes turned to the queen’s Chosen Shield, sitting huge and silent on the carved stool that marked him out among Gettland’s most honoured warriors, the great scar down his cheek becoming a white streak where it touched his beard.

  “My king,” he rumbled as he stood and worked one arm through the tangled strapping of the fallen shield. Yarvi handed him his training sword. It looked like a toy in Hurik’s great, scarred fist. You could hear his footsteps as he took his place opposite Keimdal, suddenly looking very much his sixteen years. Hurik crouched, twisting his boots into the sand, then bared his teeth and made a fighting growl, deep and throbbing, louder and louder until the square seemed to shake with it, and Yarvi saw Keimdal’s eyes wide with doubt and fear, just as he had always dreamed of seeing them.

  “Begin,” he said.

  This bout was over quicker even than the last, but no one could have called it merciful.

  To give Keimdal his due, he leapt in bravely enough, but Hurik caught the blow on his sword, wooden blades scraping, then darted in quick as a snake despite his size and kicked Keimdal’s feet away. The lad whooped as he fell, but only until Hurik’s shield rim caught him above the eye with a hollow ping and knocked him half senseless. Hurik frowned as he stepped forward, planted his boot on Keimdal’s sword hand and ground it under his heel. Keimdal groaned, one half of his grimace plastered with sand, the other blood-streaked from the gash on his forehead.

  The girls might not have agreed, but Yarvi thought he had never looked better.

  He swept the warriors with a glare, then. The kind his mother gave a slave who displeased her. “One to me,” he said, and he stepped over Keimdal’s fallen sword as he strode from the square, choosing a path that forced Master Hunnan to shuffle awkwardly aside.

  “That was ungenerous, my king,” said Uncle Odem, falling into step at his shoulder. “But not unfunny.”

  “I’m glad I made you laugh,” grunted Yarvi.

  “Much more than that, you made me proud.”

  Yarvi glanced sideways and saw his uncle looking back, calm and even. Always he was calm and even as fresh-fallen snow.

  “Glorious victories make fine songs, Yarvi, but inglorious ones are no worse once the bards are done with them. Glorious defeats, meanwhile, are just defeats.”

  “On the battlefield there are no rules,” said Yarvi, remembering something his father told him once when he was drunk and bored with shouting at his dogs.

  “Exactly.” Odem put his strong hand on Yarvi’s shoulder, and Yarvi wondered how much happier his life might have been had his uncle been his father. “A king must win. The rest is dust.”

  4.

  BETWEEN GODS AND MEN

  “… Mother Sun and Father Moon, shine your gold and silver lights upon this union between Yarvi, son of Laithlin, and Isriun, daughter of Odem …”

  The towering statues of the six Tall Gods glowered down with pitiless garnet eyes. Above them, in niches ringing the dome of the ceiling, the amber figures of the small gods gleamed. All judging Yarvi’s worth and no doubt finding him as horribly wanting as he did himself.


  He curled up his withered hand and tried to work it further into his sleeve. Everyone in the Godshall knew well enough what he had on the end of his arm. Or what he hadn’t.

  Yet still he tried to hide it.

  “Mother Sea and Father Earth, grant them your harvests and your bounty, send them good weatherluck and good weaponluck …”

  In the center of the hall the Black Chair stood upon its dais. It was an elf-relic from the time before the Breaking of God, forged by unknown arts from a single piece of black metal, impossibly delicate and impossibly strong, and countless years had left not a single scratch upon it.

  Seat of kings, between gods and men. Far too high for such a wretched thing as Yarvi to sit in. He felt unworthy even to look upon it.

  “Mother War and Father Peace, grant them the strength to face whatever Fate brings …”

  He had expected to be a minister. To give up wife and children with hardly a thought. Kissing the aged cheek of Grandmother Wexen when he passed the test was the closest he had hoped to come to romance. Now he was to share his life, such as it was, with a girl he hardly knew.

  Isriun’s palm was clammy against his, sacred cloth wrapped about their clasped hands to make a clumsy bundle. They gripped each other, and were tied together, and pressed together by the wishes of their parents, and bound together by the needs of Gettland, and still it felt as if there was an unbridgeable chasm between them.

  “Oh, He Who Sprouts the Seed, grant them healthy issue …”

  Yarvi knew what every guest was thinking. Not crippled issue. Not one-handed issue. He stole a glance sideways at this small, slight, yellow-haired girl who should have been his brother’s wife. She looked scared and slightly sick. But who wouldn’t, being forced to marry half a man?

  This was everyone’s second best. A day of celebration mourned by all. A tragic compromise.

  “Oh, She Who Guards the Locks, keep safe their household …”

  Only Brinyolf the Prayer-Weaver was enjoying himself. He had spun one ponderous blessing for Isriun at her betrothal to Yarvi’s brother and now—to his delight if not hers—got the chance to construct a second. His voice droned on, exhorting Tall Gods and Small Gods to grant fertility in their fields, and obedience in their slaves, and no one would have been surprised by a plea for regularity in their bowels next. Yarvi hunched his shoulders, swamped by one of the heavy furs his father used to wear, dreading the magnitude of Brinyolf’s blessing at the wedding itself.

  “Oh, She of the Ewer, pour prosperity upon this royal couple, upon their parents and their subjects, and upon all of Gettland!”

  The prayer-weaver stepped back, smug as a new parent, his chin vanishing into the roll of fat beneath it.

  “I shall be brief,” said Mother Gundring, with the slightest knowing glance at Yarvi. He spluttered on a stifled laugh, then caught his mother’s eye upon him, cold as the winter sea, and had no need to stifle another.

  “A kingdom stands upon two pillars,” spoke the old minister. “We already have a strong king.” No one laughed. Admirable self control. “Soon, gods willing, we will have a strong queen also.” Yarvi saw Isriun’s pale throat flutter as she swallowed.

  Mother Gundring beckoned forward Yarvi’s mother and his Uncle Odem, the one person who looked happy to be in attendance, to give their blessing by placing their hands upon the bundle. Then with an effort she lifted high her staff, tubes and rods of the same elf-metal as the Black Chair gleaming, and called out, “They are promised!”

  So it was done. Isriun was not asked for an opinion on the matter, and neither was Yarvi. It seemed there was little interest in the opinions of kings. Certainly not of this one. The audience, a hundred strong or more, served up restrained applause. The men—heads of some of Gettland’s greatest families, sword-hilts and cloak-buckles set with gold—beat approval on broad chests with heavy fists. On the other side of the hall the women—hair glistening with fresh oil and their household keys hung on best jewel-lustred chains—tapped fingers politely in their scented palms.

  Mother Gundring unwrapped the sacred cloth and Yarvi snatched free his good hand, sticky-pink and tingling. His uncle seized him by the shoulders and said into his ear, “Well done!,” though Yarvi had done nothing but stand there and sing some promises he hardly understood.

  The guests filed out, and Brinyolf closed the doors of the hall with an echoing clap, leaving Yarvi and Isriun alone with the gods, the Black Chair, the weight of their uncertain future, and an ocean of awkward silence.

  Isriun rubbed gently at the hand that had held Yarvi’s, and looked at the floor. He looked at the floor too, not that there was anything so very interesting down there. He cleared his throat. He shifted his sword belt. It still hung strangely on him. He felt as if it always would. “I’m sorry,” he said, at last.

  She looked up, one eye shining in the heavy darkness. “Why are you sorry?” Then she remembered to add uncertainly, “my king?”

  He almost said That you’ll have half a man for a husband, but settled for, “That you’re passed around my family like a feast-day cup.”

  “On feast-day, everyone’s happy to get the cup.” She gave a bitter little smile. “I’m the one who should be sorry. Imagine me a queen.” And she snorted as though there never was a more foolish joke.

  “Imagine me a king.”

  “You are a king.”

  He blinked at that. He had been so fixed on his shortcomings it had never occurred she might be fixed on her own. That thought, as the misery of others often can, made him feel just a little better.

  “You manage your father’s household.” He looked down at the golden key hanging on her chest. “That’s no small task.”

  “But a queen manages the business of a country! Everyone says your mother has a high art at it. Laithlin, the Golden Queen!” She spoke the name like a magic spell. “They say she’s owed a thousand thousand favours, that a debt to her is a matter for pride. They say her word is valued higher than gold among merchants, because gold may go down in worth but her word never does. They say some traders of the far north have given up praying to the gods and worship her instead.” She spoke faster and faster, and chewed at her nails, and tugged at one thin hand with the other, eyes opening very wide. “There’s a rumor she lays silver eggs.”

  Yarvi had to laugh. “I’m reasonably sure that one’s false.”

  “But she’s raised granaries and had channels dug and brought more earth under the plow so there’ll never again be a famine that forces folk to draw lots to see who must find new homes across the sea.” Isriun’s shoulders drifted up as she spoke until they were hunched about her ears. “And people flock to Thorlby from across the world to trade, so the city’s tripled in size and split its walls and your mother’s built new walls and split them again.”

  “True, but—”

  “I’ve heard she has a mighty scheme to stamp every coin of one weight, and these coins will pass through all the lands about the Shattered Sea, so that every trade will be made with her face, and make her richer even than the High King in Skekenhouse! How will … I?” Isriun’s shoulders slumped and she flicked at the key on her chest and set it swinging by its chain. “How can the likes of me—”

  “There’s always a way.” Yarvi caught Isriun’s hand in his before she could get her vanishing nails to her teeth again. “My mother will help you. She’s your aunt, isn’t she?”

  “She’ll help me?” Instead of pulling her hand away she drew him closer by it. “Your father may have been a great warrior but I rather think he was your less fearsome parent.”

  Yarvi smiled, but he did not deny it. “You were luckier. My uncle’s always as calm as still water.”

  Isriun glanced nervously towards the door. “You don’t know my father like I do.”

  “Then … I’ll help you.” He had held her hand half the morning and it could have been a dead fish in his clammy palm. Now it felt like something else entirely—strong, and cool, and very much alive. �
��Isn’t that the point of a marriage?”

  “Not just that.” She seemed suddenly very close, taper-light reflected in the corners of her eyes, teeth shining between parted lips.

  There was a smell to her, not sweet and not sour, he could not name it. Faint, but it made his heart jump.

  He did not know if he should close his eyes, then she did, so he did, and their noses bumped awkwardly.

  Her breath tickled at his cheek and made his skin flush hot. Frighteningly hot.

  Her lips just barely brushed his and he broke away with all the dignity of a startled rabbit, caught his leg on his sword and nearly fell over it.

  “Sorry,” she said, shrinking back and staring at the floor.

  “It’s me who should be sorry.” For a king Yarvi spent a great deal of his time apologizing. “I’m the sorriest man in Gettland. No doubt my brother gave you a better kiss. More practice … I suppose.”

  “All your brother did was talk about the battles he’d win,” she muttered at her feet.

  “No danger of that with me.” He could not have said why he did it—to shock her, or as revenge for the failed kiss, or simply to be honest—but he held up his crooked hand, shaking his sleeve free so it was between them in all its ugliness.

  He expected her to flinch, to pale, to step away, but she only looked thoughtfully at it. “Does it hurt?”

  “Not really … sometimes.”

  She reached out, then, sliding her fingers around his knobbled knuckles and pressing at the crooked palm with her thumb while the breath stopped in his throat. No one had ever touched that hand as if it was just a hand. A piece of flesh with feelings like any other.

  “I heard you beat Keimdal in the square even so,” she said.

  “I only gave the order. I learned a long time ago that I’m not much good at fair fights.”