Half a King

Odem propped himself up on his elbows. “How long is this going to take?”

“Kill him,” said Yarvi’s mother. “One of us at least must be a man.”

“I am a man!” snarled Yarvi, stabbing and stabbing, his arms burning with the effort. “Or … half a man?”

Hurik raised an eyebrow. “That much?”

The knife was slippery in Yarvi’s grip and all the doves were a terrible distraction, staring at him, staring, and the bronze-feathered eagle in their midst with a message from Grandmother Wexen.

“Have you considered the Ministry?” it croaked at him.

“I am a king!” he snarled, cheeks burning, hiding his useless clown’s hand behind his back.

“A king sits between gods and men,” said Keimdal, blood leaking from his cut throat.

“A king sits alone,” said Yarvi’s father, leaning forward in the Black Chair, the wounds that had been dry all dripping fresh and spilling a slick of blood across the floor of the Godshall.

Odem’s screams had turned to giggles. “You would have made a fine jester.”

“Damn you!” snarled Yarvi, trying to stab harder but the knife was so heavy he could hardly lift it.

“What are you doing?” asked Mother Gundring. She sounded scared.

“Shut up, bitch,” said Odem, and he caught Yarvi around the neck, and squeezed …

YARVI WOKE WITH A HORRIBLE jolt to find Trigg’s hands around his throat.

A crescent of fierce grins swam above him, teeth shining in torchlight. He retched and twisted but he was held fast as a fly in honey.

“You should’ve taken the deal, boy.”

“What are you doing?” asked Sumael again. He’d never heard her sound scared before. But she sounded nowhere near as scared as Yarvi was.

“I told you to shut your mouth!” one of the guards snarled in her face. “Unless you want to go with him!”

She shrank back into her blankets. She knew what to do, and when. Perhaps a friend would’ve been better than an accomplice after all, but it was a little late now to find one.

“I told you clever children drown just like stupid ones.” Trigg slid his key into the lock and unfastened Yarvi’s chain. Freedom, but not quite how he had pictured it. “We’re going to put you in the water and see if it’s true.”

And Trigg dragged Yarvi down the deck like a chicken plucked and ready for the pot. Past the oarsmen sleeping on their benches, the odd one peering from his bald furs. None of them stirred to help him. Why would they? How could they?

Yarvi’s heels kicked pointlessly at the deck. Yarvi’s hands fumbled at Trigg’s, good and bad equally useless. Perhaps he should have bargained, bluffed, flattered his way free, but his bursting chest could only gather the air to make a small wet sound, like a fart.

At that moment the soft arts of the minister were shown to have their limitations.

“We’ve got a bet going,” said Trigg, “on how long it takes you to sink.”

Yarvi plucked at Trigg’s arm, scratched at his shoulder with his nails, but the overseer scarcely noticed. Out of the corner of his weeping eye he saw Sumael standing, shaking off her blankets. When Trigg unlocked Yarvi’s chain he unlocked hers too.

But Yarvi knew he could expect no help from her. He could expect no help at all.

“Let this be a lesson to the rest of you!” Trigg stabbed at his chest with his free thumb. “This is my ship. Cross me and you’re done.”

“Let him be!” someone growled. “He’s done no harm.” Jaud, Yarvi saw as he was dragged past. But no one marked the big man. Beside him, from Yarvi’s old place, Ankran watched, rubbing at his crooked nose. It did not look like such a bad place now.

“You should’ve taken the deal,” Trigg bundled Yarvi over the shipped oars like a sack of rags. “I can forgive a lot in a fine singer, boy, but-”

With a sudden yelp the overseer fell sprawling, hand suddenly loose, and Yarvi jabbed his twisted little finger in Trigg’s eye, gave him a wriggling kick in the chest and went tumbling free.

Trigg had tripped on Nothing’s heavy chain, pulled suddenly taut. The deck-scrubber hunched in the shadows, eyes gleaming behind his hanging hair. “Run,” he whispered.

Perhaps Yarvi had made one friend after all.

The first breath he heaved in made his head reel. He scrambled up, sobbing, snorting, careered into the benches, through oarslaves half asleep, clambering, slithering, under oars and over them.

People were shouting but Yarvi could scarcely hear the words through the throbbing of blood in his ears, like the mindless thunder of a storm.

He saw the forward hatch, wobbling, shuddering. His hand closed around the handle. He hauled it open and pitched face-first into the darkness.

18

DEATH WAITS

Yarvi fell, knocked his shoulder, cracked his head, tumbled over sacks and sprawled on his face.

Wet on his cheek. In the hold.

He rolled with an effort, dragged himself into the shadows.

Dark down here. Pitch-dark, but a minister must know the ways, and he felt them out now with his fingertips.

Roaring in his ears, burning in his chest, terror tickling at every part of him, but he had to master it, and think. There is always a way, his mother used to tell him.