Half a King

“So did I, once. He seemed small, and old, and greedy, and complained about everything, and was scared of his food. But he had many strong warriors with him.”

“Time hasn’t changed him much, then. Except he worships the One God now, he’s more gripped with his own power than ever, and by all accounts can’t stay awake longer than an hour at a time. And those warriors have multiplied.” She rolled up the canvas cover on the cage. The birds inside did not move, did not startle at the light, only stared levelly at Yarvi with half a dozen pairs of unblinking eyes. Black birds.

Yarvi frowned at them. “Crows?”

“Yes.” Sister Owd pulled up her sleeve, unhooked the tiny door and skilfully wormed a white arm inside the cage, took a crow about the body and drew it out, still and calm as a bird made from coal. “Mother Scaer hasn’t used doves for years.”

“Not at all?”

“Not since I’ve been her apprentice.” She made the message fast about the bird’s ankle and spoke softly. “The rumor is a dove sent from Mother Gundring tried to claw her face. She doesn’t trust them.” She leaned close to the black bird and cooed, “We are a day from Thorlby.”

“Thorlby,” spoke the crow in its croaking voice, then Sister Owd flicked it into the skies where it clattered away to the north.

“Crows,” murmured Yarvi, watching it skim the white-flecked waves.

“Promises of obedience to your master, Grom-gil-Gorm?” Nothing stood beside Yarvi, still hugging his sword like a lover even though he had a perfectly good sheath for it now.

“He’s my ally, not my master,” answered Yarvi.

“Of course. You are a slave no longer.” Nothing rubbed gently at the scars all about his stubbled neck. “I remember our collars coming off, in that friendly farmstead. Before Shadikshirram burned it. No slave, you. And yet you made the deal with the Vanstermen kneeling.”

“We were all on our knees at the time,” growled Yarvi.

“My question is, are we still? You will win few friends when you take back the Black Chair with the help of Gettland’s worst enemy.”

“I can win friends once I’m in the chair. It’s getting enemies out of it that concerns me now. What should I have done? Let the Vanstermen burn us?”

“Perhaps there was middle ground between letting Gorm kill us and selling him the land of our birth.”

“Middle ground has been hard to find of late,” Yarvi forced through gritted teeth.

“It always is, but a king’s place is upon it. There will be a price for this, I think.”

“You are quick with the questions but tardy on the answers, Nothing. Did you not swear an oath to help me?”

Nothing narrowed his eyes at Yarvi, the wind blowing up and lashing the gray hair about his battle-beaten face. “I swore an oath, and mean to see it through or die.”

“Good,” said Yarvi, turning away. “I will hold you to it.”

Below them the oar-slaves were working up a sweat, teeth clenched at their benches, grunting in time as the overseer stalked between them, whip coiled behind his back. Just as Trigg had done on the deck of the South Wind. Yarvi remembered well enough the burning in his muscles, the burning of the lash across his back.

But the closer he came to the Black Chair the heavier weighed his oath, and the shorter grew his patience.

Someone has to row.

“More speed!” he growled at the overseer.

31

YOUR ENEMY’S HOUSE

Sumael sprang from ship to jetty and shoved through the press to the table where Thorlby’s dockmistress sat flanked by guards. Yarvi followed with a little less agility and a lot less authority across the gangplank, onto the ground that should have been his kingdom, eyes down and hood up, the others at his back.

“My name is Shadikshirram,” Sumael said, flicking the paper carelessly open and dropping it onto the table, “and I carry a licence to trade from the High King, stamped with the rune of Grandmother Wexen herself.”

They had waited until the most junior dockmistress took her turn at the table in the hope she would wave them through. Instead she frowned at the licence long enough for everyone to get twitchy, fingering the two keys about her neck, one of her household and one of her office. Yarvi noticed with a wave of sick nerves that one corner of the licence was brown with old blood. The blood of its rightful owner, indeed, and spilled by Yarvi’s own hand. The dockmistress peered up at Sumael, and spoke the words he had been dreading.

“You’re not Shadikshirram.” One of the guards shifted his gloved hand slightly on the haft of his spear, and Nothing shifted his thumb in his belt towards his sword, and Yarvi’s sickness swelled to dread. Would it all end here, in an ugly little brawl on the docks? “I saw her come ashore here often, usually drunk-”