Then he felt his mother’s hand on his. “I am proud. Your father would have been proud. All that matters is that you have come back to me.”
“Thanks to these four,” said Yarvi, swallowing sour spit.
Yarvi’s mother swept his companions with her searching gaze. “You all have my thanks.”
“It was nothing,” grunted Nothing, eyes locked to the floor, face hidden behind his tangle of hair.
“My honor,” said Jaud, bowing his head.
“We couldn’t have made it without him,” muttered Rulf.
“He was a sore pain in my arse every mile,” said Sumael. “If I had it to do again I’d leave him in the sea.”
“And then where would you find a ship to take you home?” asked Yarvi, grinning at her.
“Oh, I would think of something else,” she said, grinning back.
Yarvi’s mother did not join them. She took in every detail of the look they gave each other, and her eyes narrowed. “What is my son to you, girl?”
Sumael blinked, and her dark cheek colored. “I …” Yarvi had never seen her at a loss for words before.
“She is my friend,” he said. “She risked her life for mine. She is my oarmate.” He paused for a moment. “She is my family.”
“Is that so?” Yarvi’s mother still glared at Sumael, who was now studying the floor with minute interest. “Then she must be mine also.”
In truth Yarvi was far from sure what they were to each other, and less than keen to put it to the test before his mother. “Things have changed here.” He nodded towards the window, the entreaties of the One God’s priest coming faint from outside.
“Things lie in ruins here.” His mother’s eyes came back to his, and angrier than ever. “I had only just taken off my black for your death when an eagle came to Mother Gundring. An invitation to the High King’s wedding in Skekenhouse.”
“Did you go?”
She snorted. “I was, and am, reluctant to attend.”
“Why?”
“Because Grandmother Wexen has me in mind for the bride, Yarvi.”
Yarvi’s eyes went wide. “Oh.”
“Yes. Oh. They think to chain me to the key of that withered old remnant and have me spin them gold out of straw. Meanwhile your snake of an uncle and his worm of a daughter frustrate me at every turn, and do their damndest to destroy all I have built here.”
“Isriun?” muttered Yarvi, with the slightest croak in his throat. He almost added, “my betrothed,” but with a glance at Sumael thought it best to stop short.
“I know her name,” growled his mother. “I choose not to use it. They break agreements years in the making, turn hard-won friends to enemies in a moment, seize the goods of foreign merchants and drive them from the market. If their aim was to ruin Gettland they could not have done a finer job. They have given my mint over as a temple to the High King’s false god, you saw that?”
“Something of the kind—”
“One God standing above all others, just as one High King sits above all others.” She barked a joyless laugh that made Yarvi jump. “I fight them, but I am losing ground. They do not understand the battlefield, but they have the Black Chair. They have the key to the treasury. I have fought them every day, with every weapon and strategy—”
“Except the sword,” grunted Nothing, without looking up.
Yarvi’s mother turned her dagger gaze on him. “That will be next. But Odem takes no chances with his safety, and has all the warriors of Gettland behind him. I have no more than two score men in my household. There is Hurik—”
“No,” said Yarvi. “Hurik is Odem’s man. He tried to kill me.”
His mother’s eyes widened. “Hurik is my Chosen Shield. He would never betray me—”
“He betrayed me easily enough.” Yarvi remembered Keimdal’s blood speckling his face. “Believe me. It is a moment I am not likely to forget.”
She bared her teeth and placed one trembling fist upon the table. “I will see him drowned in the mire. But to beat Odem we will need an army.”
Yarvi licked his lips. “I have one on the way.”
“Did I lose a son and gain a magician? From where?”
“Vansterland,” said Nothing.
There was a stony pause then. “I see.” Yarvi’s mother turned her glare on Sister Owd, who ventured an apologetic smile, then cleared her throat and looked down at the floor. Few looked elsewhere when his mother was in the room. “You forged an alliance with the Grom-gil-Gorm? The man who killed your father and sold you as a slave?”
“He did not kill my father. I am sure of that.” Three-quarters sure, at least. “Odem killed your husband and your son, his own brother and nephew. And we must seize the allies the wind blows us.”
“What was Gorm’s price?”
Yarvi worked his tongue around his dry mouth. He should have known the Golden Queen would miss no detail of a deal. “That I would kneel before him and be his vassal.” And from the corner of the room Nothing gave an angry grunt.
His mother’s eye twitched. “Their king kneeling before their most hated enemy? What will our people think of such a devil’s bargain?”
“Once Odem is sunk in the midden they can think what they will. Better a king on my knees than a beggar on my feet. I can stand later.”
A smile touched the corner of her mouth. “You are far more my son than your father’s.”
“And proud to be so.”
“Still. Would you unleash that butcher in Thorlby? Make our city a slaughter-yard?”
“He’ll only act as bait for the city’s warriors,” said Yarvi. “Lure them out so the citadel is lightly manned. We’ll enter by the tunnels beneath the rock, seal the Screaming Gate, and take Odem while he’s unguarded. Can you find enough good men for that?”
“Perhaps. I think so. But your uncle is no fool. What if he will not spring your trap? What if he keeps his men in the citadel and bides his time in safety?”
“And seem a coward while the Breaker of Swords mocks him from his very doorstep?” Yarvi sat forward, staring into his mother’s eyes. “No. I have sat where he sits and I know his mind. Odem is new to the Black Chair. He has no great victories to sing of. And he has the memory of my father, and the legend of my Uncle Uthil to contend with.” And Yarvi smiled, for he knew how it felt to lurk always in the shadow of a better brother. “Odem will not give up a golden chance to do what his brothers never could. Defeat Grom-gil-Gorm and prove himself a mighty war leader.”
His mother’s smile spread, and Yarvi wondered whether he had ever seen her look at him with admiration before. “Your brother may have got more than his share of the fingers, but the gods kept all the wits for you. You have become a deep-cunning man, Yarvi.”
It seemed that empathy, properly used, could be a deadly weapon. “My years’ training for the Ministry were not wasted. Still, help from someone close to Odem would only sweeten our chances. We could go to Mother Gundring—”
“No. She is Odem’s minister.”
“She is my minister.”
Yarvi’s mother shook her head. “At best her loyalties would be split. Who knows what she would judge the greater good? There is already so much that could go wrong.”
“But so much to win. Great stakes mean great risks.”
“So they do.” She stood, shaking out her skirts, and looked down at him in wonder. “When did my favorite son become a gambler?”
“When his uncle threw him into the sea and stole his birthright.”
“He underestimated you, Yarvi. And so did I. But I am glad to learn my error.” Her smile faded and her voice took on a deadly edge. “His will bring him a bloody reckoning. Send your bird to Grom-gil-Gorm, little sister. Tell him we most keenly await his arrival.”
Sister Owd bowed very low. “I will, my queen, but … once I do, there can be no going back.”
Yarvi’s mother barked a joyless laugh. “Ask your mistress, Sister. I am not one for going back.” She reached across
the table and placed her strong hand on Yarvi’s weak. “Nor is my son.”
33.
IN DARKNESS
“This is a bastard of a risk,” whispered Rulf, his words deadened in the darkness.
“Life is a risk,” answered Nothing. “All things, from birth on.”
“A man can still rush at the Last Door naked and screaming or tread softly the other way.”
“Death will usher us all through regardless,” said Nothing. “I choose to face her.”
“Can I choose to be elsewhere the next time?”
“Enough of your squabbling!” hissed Yarvi. “You’re like old hounds over the last bone!”
“We can’t all act like kings,” muttered Rulf, with more than a little irony. Perhaps when you’ve watched a man make soil every day in a bucket beside you, it is hard to accept he sits between gods and men.
Bolts squealed with the rust of years and in a shower of dust the gate swung open. One of his mother’s Inglings was crammed into the narrow archway beyond, frowning down at them.
“Were you seen?” asked Yarvi.
The slave shook his head, turned, and plodded up the narrow stair, stooped under the low ceiling. Yarvi wondered if he could be trusted. His mother thought so. But then she had trusted Hurik. Yarvi had grown out of the childish notion that his parents knew everything.
He had grown out of all sorts of notions over the past few months.
The stair opened out into a great cave, the ragged rock of the ceiling crusted with teeth of lime, each hung with its own dewdrop, sparkling in the light of their torches.
“We’re under the citadel?” asked Rulf, peering nervously up at the unimaginable weight of stone above their heads.
“The rock is riddled with passages,” said Yarvi. “With ancient elf-tunnels and newer cellars. With hidden doors and spy-holes. Some kings, and all ministers, sometimes want to go unobserved. But no one knows these ways like me. I spent half my childhood in the shadows. Hiding from my father or my brother. Creeping from one place of solitude to another. Seeing while unseen, and pretending I was part of what I saw. Making up a life where I wasn’t an outcast.”
“A sad story,” murmured Nothing.
“Wretched.” Yarvi thought of his younger self, weeping in the darkness, wishing someone would find him but knowing they did not care enough to look, and shook his head in disgust at his own past weakness. “But it might still have a happy ending.”
“It might.” Nothing let one hand brush the wall beside them. A face of jointless elf-stone, thousands of years old and smooth as if it had been laid yesterday. “This way your mother’s men can enter the citadel unseen.”
“As Odem’s file out above to face Grom-gil-Gorm.”
The Ingling held out his arm to stop them.
The passageway ended at a round shaft. Far above a little circle of light, far below the faint glimmer of water. A stair wound about it, a stair so narrow Yarvi had to edge up sideways, shoulderblades scraping the smooth elf-stone, toes of his boots grazing the brink, sweat springing from his forehead. Halfway up there came a whirring from above and he flinched as something flashed past his face, might have toppled forward had Rulf not caught his arm.
“Wouldn’t want your reign cut short by a bucket.”
It splashed down far below and Yarvi breathed a long sigh. The last thing he needed was another plunge into cold water.
Women’s voices echoed around them, strangely loud.
“ … she still says no.”
“Would you want to marry that old husk after you’d been wife to a man like Uthrik?”
“Her wants don’t come into it. If a king sits between gods and men, the High King sits between kings and gods. No one says no to him forever …”
They shuffled on. More shadows, more steps, more shameful memories, walls of rough stone laid by the hands of men that seemed older but were thousands of years newer than the tunnels below, daylight winking through grated openings near the ceiling.
“How many men has the queen bought?” asked Rulf.
“Thirty-three,” said the Ingling over his shoulder. “So far.”
“Good men?”
“Men.” The Ingling shrugged. “They will kill or die according to their luck.”
“Of how many could Odem say the same?” asked Nothing.
“Many,” said the Ingling.
“This might be a quarter of them.” Yarvi went up on tiptoes to squint through a grate into the light.
Today’s training square had been set out in the yard of the citadel, the ancient cedar at one corner. The warriors were at shield-practice, forming walls and wedges and breaking them apart, steel flashing in the thin sun, clattering against wood, the scrape of shuffling feet. The instructions of Master Hunnan came brittle on the cold air, to lock shields, to keep by the shoulder-man, to thrust low, the way they used to be barked at Yarvi, to precious little good.
“That is a great number of men,” said Nothing, prone to understate the case.
“Well-trained and battle-hardened men, on their own ground,” added Rulf.
“My ground,” Yarvi forced through his gritted teeth. He led them on, every step, stone, turning familiar. “See there?” He drew Rulf next to him, pressing him against another narrow grate with a view of the citadel’s one gateway. The doors of studded wood stood open, flanked by guards, but in the shadows at the top of the archway burnished copper gleamed.
“The Screaming Gate,” he whispered.
“Why that name?” asked Rulf. “Because of the screams we’ll make when this goes wrong?”
“Never mind the name. It drops from above to seal the citadel. Six ministers made the mechanism. A single silver pin holds it up. It’s always guarded, but a hidden stair leads to the room. When the day comes, Nothing and I will take a dozen men and hold it. Rulf, you’ll take archers to the roof, ready to make pincushions of my uncle’s guards.”
“No doubt they’ll make fine ones.”
“When the moment is ripe we pull the pin, the gate drops, and Odem is trapped inside.” Yarvi pictured the horror on his uncle’s face as the Screaming Gate fell and he wished, not for the first time, that doing a thing was as simple as saying it.
“Odem is trapped …” Nothing’s eyes glinted in the darkness. “And so are we.”
There was cheering in the yard as the latest exercise came to its end. One side the winner, the other laid low.
Yarvi nodded towards the silent Ingling. “My mother’s slave will show you the ways. Learn them.”
“Where are you going?” asked Rulf, and then added uncertainly, “My king.”
“There’s something I have to do.”
Holding his breath lest the slightest sound betray him, Yarvi eased through the fusty darkness toward the hidden door between the legs of Father Peace, pressed himself to the spy-slot and peered through into the Godshall.
It was before noon and the King of Gettland was in his proper place—the Black Chair. Its back was toward Yarvi, so he could not see Odem’s face, only the outline of his shoulders, the gleam of the King’s Circle in his hair. Mother Gundring sat on her stool at his right hand, arm trembling with the effort of holding up her minister’s staff.
Below the dais, making a sea of dim-lit faces, were the great and good of Gettland, or at least the mean and meager, best buckles and keys polished, faces pressed into servile smiles. The same men and women who had wept as Yarvi’s father was howed up, and wondered wherever they would find his like again. Not in his crippled joke of a younger son, that was sure.
And standing unbowed upon the steps below the chair with Hurik looming at her back, was Yarvi’s mother.
He could not see Odem’s face, but he heard the false king’s voice echo in the hallowed space. As calm and reasoned as it had always been. As patient as winter, and Yarvi felt a wintry shiver at the sound of it. “Might I inquire of our honoured sister when she intends to travel to Skekenhouse?”
“As soon as I am
able, my king,” answered Yarvi’s mother. “I have pressing matters of business that—”
“I wear the key to the treasury now.”
Yarvi peered from the corner of the slot, and saw Isriun sitting on the other side of the Black Chair. His betrothed. Not to mention his brother’s. She wore the key to the treasury around her neck, and by all appearances it weighed less heavily than she had once feared. “I can resolve your business, Laithlin.”
She sounded little like the nervous girl who had sung her quavering promises to him in this very chamber. He remembered her eyes shining as she touched the Black Chair, and saw them shine now as she glanced at her father sitting in it.
It seemed Yarvi was not the only one changed since he sailed for Amwend.
“See to it soon,” came Odem’s voice.
“That you may stand as High Queen over us all,” added Mother Gundring, lifting high her staff for just a moment, elf-metal darkly gleaming.
“Or kneel as Grandmother Wexen’s book-keeper,” snapped Yarvi’s mother.
There was a pause, then Odem said softly, “there are worse fates, sister. We must do our duty. We must do what is best for Gettland. See to it.”
“My king,” she forced through gritted teeth as she bowed, and though Yarvi had often dreamed of it, he felt a burning anger at seeing her humbled.
“Now leave me with the gods,” said Odem, waving away his retainers. The doors were opened, the great men and women bowed their bottomless respect and filed out into the light. Yarvi’s mother went among them, Hurik beside her, and Mother Gundring after them, and Isriun last of all, smiling back at her father in the doorway as she had once smiled back at Yarvi.
The doors were closed with an echoing boom, and a heavy silence settled, and with a groan Odem wrenched himself up from the Black Chair as though it burned him to sit in it. He turned, and Yarvi found the breath stopped in his chest.
His uncle’s face was just as he remembered it. Strong, with hard lines in the cheeks and silver in the beard. So like Yarvi’s father, but with a softness and a care not even his own son could ever find in King Uthrik’s face.
Half a King Page 20
