Half a King Read online

  Would Mother Gundring be standing minister to him, whispering her pithy wisdom in his ear? More than likely.

  Had another apprentice taken Yarvi’s place as her successor, sitting on his stool, feeding his doves, and bringing the steaming tea every evening? How could it be otherwise?

  Would Isriun be weeping bitter tears because her crippled betrothed would never return? As easily as she forgot Yarvi’s brother she would forget again.

  Perhaps his mother would be the only one to miss him, and that because, in spite of all her cunning, her grip on power would surely crumble without her puppet son perched on his toy chair.

  Had they burned a ship and raised an empty howe for him as they had for his drowned Uncle Uthil? Somehow he doubted it.

  He realized he had bunched his shrivelled hand into a trembling, knobbled fist.

  “What’s troubling you?” asked Jaud.

  “This was my home.”

  Rulf gave a sigh. “Take it from one who knows, cook’s boy. The past is best buried.”

  “I swore an oath,” said Yarvi. “An oath there can be no rowing away from.”

  Rulf sighed again. “Take it from one who knows, cook’s boy. Never swear an oath.”

  “But once you have sworn,” said Jaud. “What then?”

  Yarvi frowned up towards the citadel, his jaw clenched painfully tight. Perhaps the gods had sent him this ordeal as a punishment. For being too trusting, too vain, too weak. But they had left him alive. They had given him a chance to fulfill his oath. To spill the blood of his treacherous uncle. To reclaim the Black Chair.

  But the gods would not wait forever. With every dawn the memory of his father would fade, with every noon his mother’s power would wane, with every dusk his uncle’s grip on Gettland would grow firmer. With every sunset Yarvi’s chances dwindled into darkness.

  He would take no vengeance and reclaim no kingdom lashed to an oar and chained to a bench, that much was clear.

  He had to get free.

  12.

  THE MINISTER’S TOOLS

  Stroke by backbreaking stroke, Thorlby, and home, and Yarvi’s old life slipped into the past. Southwards dragged the South Wind, though the wind rarely seemed to blow her oarslaves much help. Southwards down the ragged coast of Gettland, with its islands and inlets, its walled villages and fishing boats bobbing on the tide, its fenced farmsteads on sheep-dotted hillsides.

  And on went Yarvi’s pitiless, sinew-shredding, tooth-grinding war against the oar. He could not have said he was winning. No one won. But perhaps his defeats were not quite so one-sided.

  Sumael brought them tight to the coast as they passed the mouth of the Helm River, and the ship began to hum with muttered prayers. The oarsmen cast fearful glances out to sea towards a spiral of blackened cloud that tore the sky. They could not see the splintered elf-towers on the broken islands beneath it, but everyone knew they lurked behind the horizon.

  “Strokom,” muttered Yarvi, straining to see and fearing to see at once. In ages past men had brought relics from that cursed elf-ruin, but in their triumph they had sickened and died, and the Ministry had forbidden any man to go there.

  “Father Peace protect us,” grunted Rulf, making a shambles of holy symbols over his heart, and the slaves needed no whip to double their efforts and leave that shadow far in their wake.

  The irony was not lost on Yarvi that this was the very route he would have taken to his Minister’s Test. On that voyage Prince Yarvi, swaddled in a rich blanket with his books, would have spared no thought for the suffering of the oarslaves. Now, chained to the benches, he made the South Wind his study. The ship, and the people on it, and how he might use them to get free of it.

  For people are the minister’s best tools, Mother Gundring always said.

  Ebdel Aric Shadikshirram, self-renowned merchant, lover and naval captain, spent most of her time drunk and most of the rest passed out drunk. Sometimes her snoring could be heard through the door of her cabin in the aftcastle, eerily keeping time to the movement of the rowers. Sometimes she would stand upon the forecastle in melancholy mood, one hand on her slouched hip and the other clutching a half-empty bottle, frowning into the wind as though daring it to blow harder. Sometimes she would prowl the gangway slapping backs and telling jokes as though she and her slaves were old friends together. When she passed the nameless deck scrubber she would never miss a chance to kick, throttle or upend the night-bucket over him; then she would swig from her wine, and roar out, “on to profits!” and the oarsmen would cheer, and a man who cheered especially loudly might get a taste of the captain’s wine himself, and a man who stayed silent might get a taste of Trigg’s whip instead.

  Trigg was the overseer, the chain-master, the grip, second-in-command and with a full share in the enterprise. He ordered the guards, perhaps two dozen of them, and watched over the slaves, and made sure they kept whatever pace the captain asked for. He was a brutal man, but there was a kind of awful justice in him. He had no favorites and made no exceptions. Everyone was whipped alike.

  Ankran was the storekeeper and there was no justice in him at all. He slept below decks with the stores, and was the only slave to be regularly let off the ship. It was his task to buy food and clothes and share them out and he worked a thousand tiny swindles every day—buying meat that was halfway spoiled, and trimming every man’s rations, and making them mend clothes that were worn to rags—and splitting the profits with Trigg.

  Whenever he passed by Rulf would spit with particular disgust. “What does that crooked bastard want with the money?”

  “Some men simply like money,” said Jaud mildly.

  “Even slaves?”

  “Slaves have the same appetites as other men. It’s the chance to indulge them they lack.”

  “True enough,” said Rulf, looking wistfully up at Sumael.

  The navigator spent most of her time on the roof of one of the castles, checking charts and instruments, or frowning up at sun or stars while she worked quick sums on her fingers, or pointing out some rock or ripple, some cloud or current, and snapping out warnings. While the South Wind was at sea she went where she pleased, but when they came into dock the captain’s first act was always to lock her by her long, fine chain to an iron ring on the aftcastle. A slave with her skills was probably worth more than their whole cargo.

  Sometimes she threaded among the rowers, clambering heedlessly over men, oars and benches to pick at some fixing or other, or to lean over the ship’s side to check depths with a knotted plumbline. The only time Yarvi ever saw her smile was when she was perched on one of the mastheads with the wind tearing at her short hair, as happy there as Yarvi might have been at Mother Gundring’s firepit, scanning the coast through a tube of bright brass.

  It was Throvenland that ground by now, gray cliffs besieged by the hungry waves, gray beaches where the sea sucked at the shingle, gray towns where gray-mailed spearmen frowned from the wharves at passing ships.

  “My home was near here,” said Rulf, as they unshipped the oars on one gray morning, a thin drizzle beading everything with dew. “Two days’ hard ride inland. I had a good farm with a good stone chimney, and a good wife who bore me two good sons.”

  “How did you end up here?” asked Yarvi, fiddling pointlessly at the strapping on his raw left wrist.

  “I was a fighting man. An archer, sailor, swordsman and raider in the summer months.” Rulf scratched at his heavy jaw, already gray stubbled, for his beard seemed to spring out an hour after it was shaved. “I served a dozen seasons with a captain called Halstam, an easy-going fellow. I became his helmsman and, along with Hopki Strangletoes and Blue Jenner and some other handy men we enjoyed some successes in the raiding business, enough that I could sit with my feet to the fire and drink good ale all winter.”

  “Ale never agreed with me, but it sounds a happy life,” said Jaud, gazing into the far distance. Towards a happy past of his own, perhaps.

  “The gods love to laugh at a happy man.”
Rulf noisily gathered some spit and sent it spinning over the side of the ship. “One winter, somewhat the worse for drink, Halstam fell from his horse and died, and the ship passed to his oldest son, Young Halstam, who was a different kind of man, all pride and froth and scant wisdom.”

  “Sometimes father and son aren’t much alike,” muttered Yarvi.

  “Against my better judgment I consented to be his helmsman, and not a week from port, ignoring my advice, he tried to take a too-well-guarded merchant ship. Hopki and Jenner and most of the rest went through the Last Door that day. I was one among a handful taken prisoner and sold on. That was two summers ago, and I’ve been pulling an oar for Trigg ever since.”

  “A bitter ending,” said Yarvi.

  “Many sweet stories have them,” said Jaud.

  Rulf shrugged. “Hard to complain. In my voyages we must’ve stolen ten score Inglings and sold ’em for slaves and taken great delight in the profits.” The old raider rubbed his rough palm against the grain of the oar. “They say the seed you scatter will be the seed you harvest, and so it seems indeed.”

  “You wouldn’t leave if you could?” muttered Yarvi, with a glance towards Trigg to make sure they were not heard.

  Jaud snorted. “There is a well in the village where I used to live, a well that gives the sweetest water in the world.” He closed his eyes and licked at his lips as if he could taste it. “I would give anything to drink from that well again.” He spread his palms. “But I have nothing to give. And look at the last man who tried to leave.” And he nodded towards the scrubber, his block scraping, scraping, scraping endlessly down the deck, his heavy chain rattling as he shuffled stiffly on scabbed knees to nowhere.

  “What’s his story?” asked Yarvi.

  “I don’t know his name. Nothing, we all call him. When I was first brought to the South Wind he pulled an oar. One night, off the coast of Gettland, he tried to escape. Somehow he got free of his chain and stole a knife. He killed three guards and cut another’s knee so he never walked again, and he gave our captain that scar before she and Trigg put a stop to him.”

  Yarvi blinked at the shambling scrubber. “All that with a knife?”

  “And not a large one. Trigg wanted to hang him from a mast but Shadikshirram chose to keep him alive as an example to the rest of us.”

  “Mercy’s ever been her weakness,” said Rulf, and gave a grunt of joyless laughter.

  “She stitched her cut,” said Jaud, “and put that great chain on him, and hired more guards, and told them never to let him get his hands upon a blade, and ever since he has been scrubbing the deck, and never since have I heard him say a word.”

  “What about you?” asked Yarvi.

  Jaud grinned sideways at him. “I speak when I have something worth saying.”

  “No. I mean, what’s your story?”

  “I used to be a baker.” Ropes hissed as they brought up the anchor, and Jaud sighed, and worked his hands about the handles his own palms had polished to a gleam. “Now my story is I pull this oar.”

  13.

  THE FOOL STRIKES

  Jaud pulled their oar, and so did Yarvi, with the calluses thickening even on his crippled hand, his face hardening against the weather and his body turning lean and tough as Trigg’s whip. They rounded Bail’s Point in a soaking squall, hardly able to see the brooding fortress there for the rain, and turned eastwards into calmer waters, busy with ships of all shapes and nations, Yarvi twisting around at the oar in his eagerness to see Skekenhouse.

  It was the elf-ruins he saw first, of course. The giant walls, sheer and perfectly smooth at their bases, were unmarked by Mother Sea’s fury but torn off ragged higher up, twisted metal showing in the cracks like splintered bone in a wound, battlements of new masonry perching at their tops, the flags of the High King proudly fluttering.

  The Tower of the Ministry loomed over all. Over every building about the Shattered Sea, unless you counted the ruins of Strokom or Lanangad where no man dared tread. For three-quarters of its staggering height it was elf-built: pillars of jointless stone, perfectly square, perfectly true, with giant expanses of black elf-glass still twinkling at some of the great windows.

  At perhaps five times the height of the tallest tower in Thorlby’s citadel the elf-stone was sheared away, rock melted and congealed in giant tears by the Breaking of God. Above, long generations of ministers had constructed a riotous crown of timber and tile—turrets, platforms, slumping roofs, balconies, sprouting with smoking chimneys and festooned with dangling ropes and chains, all streaked with age and droppings, the rotting work of men ridiculous by comparison with the stark perfection below.

  Gray specks circled the highest domes. Doves, perhaps, like the ones Yarvi once tended. Like the one that lured his father to his death. Croaking out messages from the many ministers scattered about the Shattered Sea. Could he even see the odd bronze-feathered eagle carrying the High King’s wishes back?

  In that ancient tower, Yarvi would have taken the test. There he would have kissed the cheek of Grandmother Wexen when he passed. There his life as a prince would have ended, and his life as a minister begun, and his life as a wretched slave never come to pass.

  “Ship the oars!” called Sumael.

  “Ship the oars!” bellowed Trigg, to make sure everyone saw he gave the orders.

  “Oars out, oars in,” grunted Rulf. “You’d think they could make up their bloody minds.”

  “Skekenhouse.” Yarvi rubbed at the red raw patches on his wrist as the South Wind was heaved into its berth while Sumael lent from the aftcastle and screamed at the struggling dockers to take care. “The center of the world.”

  Jaud snorted. “Compared to the great cities of Catalia this is a stable.”

  “We’re not in Catalia.”

  “No.” The big man heaved a heavy sigh. “Sadly.”

  The docks stank of old rot and salt decay, and with impressive power to be noticed over the stink of Yarvi and his companions. Many of the berths were empty. The windows of the decaying buildings behind gaped dark and empty. On the dockside a great heap of mouldering grain sprouted with weeds. Guardsmen in the patched livery of the High King sat idle and threw dice. Beggars slouched in the shadows. Perhaps it was the bigger city, but there was none of the vigor and vitality of Thorlby, none of the bustle or new building.

  The elf-ruins might have been stupendous, but the parts of Skekenhouse that men had built seemed quite a disappointment. Yarvi curled his tongue and neatly spat over the side of the ship.

  “Nice.” Rulf gave him a nod. “Your rowing’s not up to much, but you’re coming on where it really matters.”

  “You must struggle by without me, little ones!” Shadikshirram strutted from her cabin in her most garish garments, working an extra ring or two onto her fingers. “I am expected at the Tower of the Ministry!”

  “Our money’s expected,” grumbled Trigg. “How much for a licence this year?”

  “My guess would be a little more than last year.” Shadikshirram licked a knuckle so she could twist a particularly gaudy bauble over it. “There is, in general, an upward trajectory to the High King’s fees.”

  “Better to toss our money to Mother Sea than to the Ministry’s jackals.”

  “I’d toss you to Mother Sea if I didn’t think she’d toss you straight back.” Shadikshirram held out her jewel-crusted hand at arm’s length to admire. “With a licence we can trade anywhere around the Shattered Sea. Without one … pfah.” And she blew all profits away through her fingertips.

  “The High King is jealous of his revenues,” muttered Jaud.

  “Course he is,” said Rulf as they watched their captain aim a lazy kick at Nothing, then stroll across the bouncing gangplank, Ankran scrambling after her on a short length of chain. “It’s his revenues make him High. Without ’em he’ll crash to earth like the rest of us.”

  “And great men need great enemies,” said Jaud, “and wars are a damned expensive hobby.”

 
“Building temples comes close behind.” Rulf nodded up at the skeleton of a huge building showing itself above the nearest roofs, so covered in a ramshackle web of scaffolds, hoists and platforms Yarvi could hardly make out its shape.

  “That’s the High King’s temple?”

  “To this new god of his.” Rulf spat out of the rowlock, missed, and spattered the timbers instead. “A monument to his own vanity. Four years in the building and still not halfway done.”

  “Sometimes I think there can be no such thing as gods at all,” mused Jaud, stroking thoughtfully at his pursed lips with a fingertip. “Then I wonder who can be making my life such hell.”

  “An old god,” said Yarvi. “Not a new.”

  “How d’you mean?” asked Rulf.

  “Before the elves made their war upon Her, there was one God. But in their arrogance they used a magic so strong it ripped open the Last Door, destroyed them all and broke the One God into the many.” Yarvi nodded towards that giant building site. “Some in the south believe the One God cannot ever be truly broken. That the many are merely aspects of the one. It seems the High King has seen the merits of their theology. Or at least Grandmother Wexen has.” He considered that. “Or perhaps she sees a profit in currying favor with the Empress of the South by praying the same way she does.” He remembered the hungry brightness in her eye as he knelt before her. “Or she thinks that folk who kneel to one god will kneel more easily to one High King.”

  Rulf spat again. “The last High King was bad enough, but he ranked himself as first among brothers. The older this one gets the more he’s taken with his own power. He and his damn minister won’t be happy ’til they’re set above their own One God and all the world kneels before their withered arses.”

  “A man who worships the One God cannot choose his own path: he is given it from on high,” mused Yarvi. “He cannot refuse requests, but must bow to commands.” He drew up a length of his chain and frowned down at it. “The One God makes a chain through the world, from the High King, through the little kings, to the rest of us, each link with its right place. All are made slaves.”