Half a King

Sumael let her hand fall and stared at the floor, her scarred mouth twisted. “Mother War rules, then. What can I do?”

“Nothing,” said Nothing, simply.

35

MOTHER WAR’S BARGAIN

The dovecote was still perched in the top of one of the citadel’s highest towers, still streaked inside and out with centuries of droppings, and still through its many windows a chill wind blew. More chill than ever.

“Gods damn this cold,” muttered Yarvi.

Sumael kept looking through her eyeglass, mouth fixed in a hard line. “You saying you haven’t been colder?”

“You know I have.” They both had, out there in the crushing ice. But it seemed there had been a spark between the two of them to warm him. He had well and truly snuffed it out now.

“I’m sorry,” he said, though it came out a grudging grunt. She kept her silence, and he found himself meandering on. “For what my mother said to you … for asking Jaud to stay … for not-”

Her jaw-muscles worked. “Surely a king need never apologize.”

He winced at that. “I’m the same man you slept beside on the South Wind. The same man you walked beside in the snow. The same man-”

“Are you?” She looked at him then, finally, but there was no softness in it. “Over the hill there.” She passed the eye-glass across. “Smoke.”

“Smoke,” croaked one of the doves. “Smoke.”

Sumael eyed it suspiciously, and from their cages ranged about the walls the doves eyed her unblinking back. All apart from the bronze eagle, huge and regal, which must have come from Grandmother Wexen with another offer-or demand-of marriage for Yarvi’s mother. It poked proudly at its plumage and did not deign to look down.

“Smoke, smoke, smoke …”

“Can you stop them doing that?” asked Sumael.

“They echo bits of the messages they’ve been trained to say,” said Yarvi. “Don’t worry. They don’t understand them.” Though as those dozens of eyes turned on him as one, heads attentively cocked, he was forced again to wonder whether they might understand more than he did. He turned back to the window and pressed the glass to his eye, saw the crooked thread of smoke against the sky.

“There is a steading that way.” The owner had been one among the procession of hand-wringing mourners at his father’s howing up. Yarvi tried not to wonder whether that man had been on his farm when Grom-gil-Gorm came visiting. And if he had not, who had been there to greet the Vanstermen, and what had happened to them since …

A wise minister weighs the greater good, Mother Gundring always said, and finds the lesser evil. Surely a wise king could only do the same?

He jerked the eyeglass away from the burning steading, scanning the jagged horizon, and caught the glint of sun on steel.

“Warriors.” Coming down the northern road, spilling from a cleft in the hills. Slow as treacle in winter they seemed to crawl from this distance, and Yarvi found he was chewing at his lip, wishing them on.

“The King of Gettland,” he muttered to himself. “Urging an army of Vanstermen to Thorlby.”

“The gods cook strange recipes,” said Sumael.

Yarvi looked up at the domed ceiling, gods painted there as birds in flaking colors. He Who Carries the Message. She Who Stirs the Branches. She Who Spoke the First Word and Will Speak the Last. And painted with red wings at the center, smiling blood, Mother War.

“I’ve rarely prayed to you, I know,” Yarvi whispered at her image. “Father Peace always suited me better. But give me victory this day. Give me back the Black Chair. You’ve tested me and I stand ready. I’m not the fool I was, not the coward, not the child. I am the rightful king of Gettland.”

One of the doves chose that moment to loose a spatter of droppings onto the floor beside him. Mother War’s answer, perhaps?

Yarvi ground his teeth. “If you choose not to make me king … if you choose to send me through the Last Door today … at least let me keep my oath.” He clenched his fists, such as they were, knuckles white. “Give me Odem’s life. Give me revenge. Grant me that much, and I’ll be satisfied.”

Not a nurturing prayer of the kind that ministers are taught. Not a giving or a making prayer. But giving and making are nothing to Mother War. She is the taker, the breaker, the widow-maker. She cares only for blood.

“The king must die,” he hissed.

“The king must die!” screeched the eagle, standing tall and spreading its wings so it filled its cage and seemed to darken the whole chamber. “The king must die!”

“IT’S TIME,” SAID YARVI.

“Good,” said Nothing. His voice, through the tall slot in a helmet that hid most of his face, rang with metal.

“Good,” said the two Inglings together, one of them spinning a great ax about in his fists as though it were a toy.

“Good,” murmured Jaud, but he looked far from happy. Uncomfortable in his borrowed war-gear, and more uncomfortable still at the sight of his brothers-in-arms, squatting in the deep shadows of the elf-tunnel.