Half a King

Shadikshirram waved her warnings away like flies. “The storms in this little pond are nothing, and I have always had outstanding weatherluck. We go on.” And she flung an empty bottle into the sea and called to Ankran for another, leaving Sumael to shake her head at the heavens unmarked.

While the South Wind rocked gently and the guards and sailors huddled at a brazier on the forecastle to dice for trinkets, one of the slaves began to sing a bawdy song in a voice thin and cracked. At one point he forgot the words and filled them in with nonsense sounds, but at the end there was a scattering of tired laughter, and the hollow thumping of fists on oars in approval.

Another man broke in with a rousing bass, the song of Bail the Builder, who in truth had built nothing but heaps of corpses, and made himself the first High King with fire and sword and a hard word for everyone. Tyrants look far better when looked back on, though, and soon enough other voices joined the first. Eventually Bail passed through the Last Door in battle, as heroes do, and the song came to an end, as songs do, and the singer was rewarded with a round of wood-thumping of his own.

“Who else has a tune?” somebody called.

And to everyone’s surprise, not least his own, it turned out Yarvi did. It was one his mother used to sing at night, when he was young and scared in the dark. He did not know why it came to him then, but his voice soared high and free, to places far from the reeking ship and things these men had long forgotten. Jaud blinked at him, and Rulf stared, and it seemed to Yarvi that, chained and helpless in this rotting tub, he had never sung half so well.

There was a silence when he was done, with only the faint creaking of the ship on the shifting water, and the wind in the rigging, and the far, high calls of distant gulls.

“Give us another,” someone said.

So Yarvi gave them another, and another, and another after that. He gave them songs of love lost and love found, of high deeds and low. The Lay of Froki, so cold-blooded he slept through a battle, and the song of Ashenleer, so sharp-eyed she could count every grain of sand on a beach. He sang of Horald the Far-Traveled who beat the black-skinned King of Daiba in a race and in the end sailed so far he fell off the edge of the world. He sang of Angulf Clovenfoot, Hammer of the Vanstermen, and did not mention the man was his great grandfather.

Each time he finished he was asked for another, until Father Moon’s crescent showed over the hills and the stars began to peep through heaven’s cloth, and the last note of the tale of Bereg, who died to found the Ministry and protect the world from magic, smoked out into the dusk.

“Like a little bird with only one wing.” When Yarvi turned Shadikshirram was looking down at him, adjusting the pins in her tangle of hair. “Fine singing, eh, Trigg?”

The overseer sniffed, and wiped his eyes on the back of his hand, and in a voice choked with emotion said, “I never heard the like.”

The wise wait for their moment, Mother Gundring used to say, but never let it pass. So Yarvi bowed, and spoke to Shadikshirram in her own language. He did not know it well, but a good minister can make anyone a fine greeting.

“It is my honor,” he said sweetly, while thinking about putting black-tongue root in her wine, “to sing for one so famous.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Aren’t you full of surprises?” And she tossed him her mostly-empty bottle and walked away, humming so tunelessly he could only just tell it was the Lay of Froki.

If he had been served that wine at his father’s table he would have spat it in the slave’s face, but now it seemed the best he ever tasted, full of sun and fruit and freedom. It was a wrench to share the splash he had, but the sight of Rulf’s huge smile after he took his swallow was well worth the price.

As they made ready to sleep, Yarvi found the other slaves were looking at him differently. Or perhaps it was that they were looking at him at all. Even Sumael gave him a thoughtful frown from her place outside the captain’s cabin, as though he were a sum she could not quite make add.

“Why are they watching me?” he murmured to Jaud.

“It is rare they get a good thing. You gave them one.”

Yarvi smiled as he pulled the stinking furs to his chin. He would not be cutting the guards down with an eating knife, but perhaps the gods had given him better weapons. Time might be slipping through his fingers. He lacked a full set, after all. But he had to be patient. Patient as the winter.

Once, after his father had hit him in a rage, Yarvi’s mother had found him crying. The fool strikes, she had said. The wise man smiles, and watches, and learns.

Then strikes.

14

SAVAGES