Half a King

Crows

Yarvi pulled the fur collar of his borrowed cloak up against the wind and wrinkled his nose at the salt tang of the sea. That and the stink of the slaves pulling the oars. He had grown used to it when he was one of them, slept with his face in Rulf’s armpit and scarcely noticed. He had stunk just as bad as the rest, he knew. But that made their smell no better now.

All the worse, in fact.

“Poor dogs.” Jaud frowned over the rail of the aftcastle at them struggling below. For such a strong man he had a weak heart.

Rulf scrubbed at the gray-brown hair that had sprouted above his ears, though his pate was bald as ever. “Be nice to set ’em free.”

“Then how would we get to Thorlby?” said Yarvi. “Someone has to row. Will you pull an oar?”

His old oarmates both looked sharply across at him. “You have changed,” said Jaud.

“I’ve had to.” And he turned away from them and the benches where he had once struggled. Sumael stood at the rail, a huge smile on her face as the salt wind tore at her hair, grown longer now than it had been, black as raven’s feathers.

“You look pleased,” said Yarvi, happy to see her happy. He had not seen it often enough.

“Glad to be on the sea again.” She spread her arms wide, wriggling her fingers. “And with no chains!”

He felt his smile fade, for he still had a chain he could not break. The one he had forged himself with his own oath. The one that drew him back to Thorlby, and bound him to the Black Chair. And he knew then that sooner or later Sumael would stand at the rail of another ship. One that would carry her back to the First of Cities, and away from him forever.

Her smile faltered too, as though she had the same thought at the same moment, and they looked away from each other to watch Father Earth grinding by in awkward silence.

For two lands so bitterly opposed, Vansterland and Gettland looked very much the same. Barren beaches, forest, and fen. He had seen few people, and those hurrying inland, fearful at the sight of a ship. Narrowing his eyes to the south, he saw a little tooth upon a headland, the smoke of houses smudging the white sky.

“What’s that town?” he asked Sumael.

“Amwend,” she said. “Near the border.”

Amwend, where he had led the raid. Or flopped from a ship without a shield and straight into a trap, at least. That was the tower, then, where Keimdal had died. Where Hurik had betrayed him. From which Odem had thrown him down, down into the bitter sea, and even more bitter slavery.

Yarvi realized he had ground his shriveled hand into the rail until it hurt. He turned his eyes away from land, toward the white-churned water in their wake, the marks of the oars quickly fading to leave no sign of their passing. Would it be so with him? Faded and forgotten?

Sister Owd, the apprentice Mother Scaer had sent with them, was looking straight at him. A furtive sort of look, then quickly down at something she was writing on a tiny slip of paper, tugged and twitched under her charcoal by the wind.

Yarvi walked slowly to her. “Keeping an eye on me?”

“You know I am,” she said, without looking up. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“Do you doubt me?”

“I just tell Mother Scaer what I see. She chooses what to doubt.”

She was small and round-faced, one of those people whose age is hard to guess, but even so Yarvi did not think she could be older than him. “When did you take the Minister’s Test?”

“Two years ago,” she said, shielding the little slip of paper with her shoulder.

He gave up trying to see it. Ministers have their own signs anyway: he doubted he could read them. “What was it like?”

“Not hard, if you’re prepared.”

“I was prepared,” said Yarvi, thinking back to that night Odem came in out of the rain. The flames reflected in the jars, the creases in Mother Gundring’s smile, the purity of question and answer. He felt a surge of longing, then, for that simple life with no uncles to kill or oaths to keep or hard choices to be made. For the books and the plants and the soft word spoken. He had to force it away to the back of his mind with an effort. He could not afford it now. “But I never got the chance to take it.”

“You didn’t miss much. A lot of fussing outside the door. A lot of being stared at by old women.” She finished the message and began to roll it up into a tiny pellet. “Then the honor of being kissed by Grandmother Wexen.”

“How was that?”

Sister Owd puffed out her cheeks and gave a long sigh. “Wisest of all women she may be, but I was hoping my last kiss would be from someone younger. I saw the High King, from a distance.”

“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 skillfully 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 oarslaves 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.

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 license 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 license 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 license 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 toward 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—”

Sumael dealt the tabletop a fearsome blow, snarling into the dockmistress’s face and making her shrink back, astonished. “You speak of my mother, Ebdel Aric Shadikshirram, and you’ll speak with more respect! She is gone through the Last Door. Drowned in the icy waters of the North.” Her voice cracked, and she dabbed at her dry eyes with the back of her hand. “Her business she entrusted to me, her loving daughter Sumael Shadikshirram.” She snatched the license back from the table and shouted again, flecking dockmistress, guards, and Yarvi too with spit. “And I have business with Queen Laithlin!”

“She is queen no—”

“You know who I speak of! Where is Laithlin?”

“Usually at her counting house—”

“I will have words with her!” And Sumael turned on her heel and stalked off up the jetty.

“She may not take visitors …” the dockmistress muttered weakly after her.

Sister Owd gave the table a friendly pat as Yarvi and the rest filed past. “If it’s any consolation, she’s like this with everyone.”

“A winning performance,” said Yarvi as he caught up to Sumael, hurrying past the fish hanging and the nets heaped and the fishers shouting prices for the morning’s catch. “What would we do without you?”

“I nearly wet myself,” she hissed back. “Is anyone following?”

“Not even looking.” The dockmistress was busy venting her frustrations on the next arrival and they soon left her behind.

Home at last, but Yarvi felt like a stranger. It all seemed smaller than he remembered, less busy, berths and stalls standing empty, buildings abandoned. His heart leapt whenever he saw a familiar face and, like a thief passing the place of his crime, he shrank farther into his hood, back prickling with sweat despite the cold.

If he was recognized King Odem would soon hear of it, and lose no time in finishing what began on the roof of Amwend’s tower.

“Those are the howes of your ancestors, then?”

Nothing was staring through his tangle of hair toward the north, down the long and lonely sweep of beach and the file of grassy humps above it, the nearest with just a few months of patchy green on its fallow flanks.

“Of my murdered father Uthrik.” Yarvi worked his jaw. “And my drowned uncle Uthil, and kings of Gettland back into the darkness of history.”

Nothing scratched at his grizzled cheek. “Before them you swore your oath.”

“As before me you swore yours.”

“Never fear.” Nothing grinned as they threaded through a crowded gate in the outermost wall of the city. That mad, bright-eyed grin that gave Yarvi more fears rather than fewer. “Flesh may forget, but steel never does.”

Sister Owd seemed to know the ways of Thorlby better even than Yarvi, its native son. Its king. She led them up narrow streets zigzagging the steep hillside, houses crammed tall and narrow between outcroppings of rock, the gray bones of Gettland showing through the city’s skin. She led them across bridges over surging streams where slaves leaned out to fill the jugs of the wealthy. She led them finally to a long, slim yard in the shadow of the lowering citadel where Yarvi had been born, and raised, and daily humiliated, and studied to be a minister, and found out he was a king.

“The house is here,” said Sister Owd. It was in plain sight. One Yarvi had often walked past.

“Why does Gorm’s minister keep a house in Thorlby?”

“Mother Scaer says the wise minister knows her enemy’s house better than her own.”

“Mother Scaer is as prone to pithy phrases as Mother Gundring,” grunted Yarvi.

Owd turned the key. “It’s what the Ministry is all about.”

“Take Jaud with you.” Yarvi drew Sumael to one side and spoke softly to her. “Go to the counting house and speak to my mother.” If his luck held, Hurik would be at the training square now.

“And say what?” asked Sumael. “That her dead son has come calling?”

“And that he’s finally learned to fasten his cloak-buckle. Bring her here.”

“What if she doesn’t believe me?”

Yarvi pictured his mother’s face, then, as she used to frown down at him, and thought it very likely she would doubt. “Then we must think of something else.”

“And if she doesn’t believe me, and orders me dead for the insult?”

Yarvi paused. “Then I must think of something else.”

“Who among you has been sent bad weatherluck or bad weaponluck?” came a ringing voice from across the square. A crowd had gathered before a grand building, new-raised, pillars of white marble at its front, and before them a priest in robes of humble sackcloth stood with arms spread and wailed his message. “Who among you finds their prayers to the many gods ignored?”

“My prayers were ignored so much I stopped making ’em,” muttered Rulf.

“It would be small wonder!” called out the priest. “For there are not many gods but one! All the arts of the elves could not break her! The arms of the One God, and the gates of her temple, are flung wide for all!”

“Temple?” Yarvi frowned. “My mother built that place to be a mint. They were going to stamp coins there, every one the same weight.” Now the seven-rayed sun of the One God — the High King’s god — was raised above the doorway.

“Her comfort, her mercy, her shelter, is freely given!” roared the priest. “Her only demand is that you love her as she loves you!”

Nothing spat on the stones. “What have gods to do with love?”

“Things have changed here,” said Yarvi, glancing about the square and pulling his hood a little lower.

“New king,” said Sumael, licking at her scarred lip, “new ways.”

Great Stakes

They heard the door open, and Yarvi stiffened. They heard footsteps in the hallway, and Yarvi swallowed with an effort. The door swung open and Yarvi took a halting step toward it, hardly able to breathe—

Two slaves ducked through, hands on their swords. Two huge-shouldered Inglings with silver collars. Nothing bristled, steel glinting as he drew.

“No!” said Yarvi. He knew these two. Slaves of his mother’s.

And now their owner swept into the room with Sumael just behind.

She was not changed.

Tall and stern, golden hair oiled and piled in shining coils. She wore few jewels but those of humbling size. The great Queen’s Key, key to the treasury of Gettland, was gone from her chain, and in its place was a smaller, set with dark rubies like drops of spilled blood.

Yarvi might have had trouble convincing his companions he was a king, but his mother filled that small room to its corners with an effortless majesty.

“Gods,” croaked Rulf, and with a wince lowered himself to his knees, and Sister Owd, and Jaud and Sumael, and the two slaves hurried to follow him. Nothing knelt last, eyes and sword’s point on the floor, so that only Yarvi and his mother were left standing.

She did not so much as acknowledge them. She stared at Yarvi, and he at her, as though they were alone. She walked to him, neither smiling nor frowning, until she stood but a stride away, and she seemed to him so beautiful it hurt his eyes to look at her, and he felt in them the burning of tears.

“My son,” she whispered, and folded him in her arms. “My son.” And she held him so tight that it was almost painful, and her tears wetted his head while his wetted her shoulder.

Yarvi had come home.

It was some time before his mother let him go, and held him at arm’s length, and carefully wiped her cheeks. He realized he looked up into her face no longer. He had grown, then. Grown in many ways.

“It seems your friend spoke the truth,” she said.

Yarvi slowly nodded. “I am alive.”

“And have learned to fasten your cloak-buckle,” she said, giving it a searching tug and finding it secure.

IN SILENCE SHE LISTENED to his story.

In silence she heard of the raid and the burning of Amwend. Of Odem’s betrayal and Yarvi’s long fall into the bitter sea.

Shall Gettland have half a king?

In silence she heard him made a slave, and sold a slave, only her eyes moving to the faint scars on his neck.

These are some wretched leavings.

In silence he made his escape, endured the long ordeal in the ice, fought for his life in the elf-ruin, and all the while Yarvi thought what a song it would make if he lived to have it set to music.

You cannot expect all the heroes to survive a good song.

And when it came to Ankran’s death and then to Shadikshirram’s, Yarvi thought of the red knife in his hand, and his grunting and hers, and his throat closed, and he shut his eyes and could not speak.

You may need two hands to fight someone, but only one to stab them in the back.

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 toward 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 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.”

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, shoulder blades 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 toward 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 honored 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 bookkeeper,” 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.

The hate should have flooded in, and swept away all Yarvi’s fears, and drowned his nagging doubts that ripping the Black Chair back from his uncle’s clutches might not be worth the blood it would surely cost.

But instead, when he saw the face of his enemy, the killer of his family and thief of his kingdom, Yarvi’s heart betrayed him, and he felt of all things a choking surge of love. For the only one in his family who had ever given him kindness. Had ever made him feel that he was liked. Had ever made him feel he was worth liking. Next came a choking sorrow at the loss of that man, and Yarvi felt tears in his eyes, and he ground his twisted knuckles into the cold stone beside him, hating himself for his weakness.

“Stop looking at me!”

Yarvi jerked back from the slot but Odem’s gaze was fixed high above. He walked slowly, the taps of his footfalls echoing in the velvet dimness of that great space.

“Have you deserted me?” he called out. “As I have deserted you?”

He was speaking to the amber statues set about the dome. He was speaking to the gods, and his cracking voice was anything but calm. Now he lifted off the King’s Circle Yarvi had once worn and with a wince rubbed at the marks left on his forehead.

“What could I do?” he whispered, so quietly Yarvi could scarcely hear it. “We all serve someone. For everything there is a price.”

And Yarvi thought of Odem’s last words to him, sharp as knives in his memory.

You would have been a fine jester. But is my daughter really to have a one-handed weakling for a husband? A crippled puppet dangling on his mother’s string?

And now the hate boiled up, hot and reassuring. Had he not sworn an oath? For his father. For his mother.

For himself.

With the faintest ringing, the point of Shadikshirram’s sword left the sheath, and Yarvi pressed the knobbled fist of his left hand against the hidden door. One good shove would send it swinging, he knew. One shove, and three steps, and a thrust of the blade could end this. He licked his lips, and worked his hand about the grip, setting his shoulders for the effort, the blood surging at his temples—

“Enough!” roared Odem, the echoes ringing, and Yarvi froze again. His uncle had snatched up the King’s Circle and twisted it back on. “What’s done is done!” He shook his fist toward the ceiling. “If you wanted it otherwise, why did you not stop me?” And he spun on his heel and strode from the chamber.

“They have sent me to do it,” whispered Yarvi, sliding Shadikshirram’s sword back into its sheath. Not now. Not yet. Not as easily as that. But his doubts were burned away.

Even if he had to sink Thorlby in blood.

Odem had to die.

A Friend’s Fight

Yarvi strained at the oar, knowing the whip was over him. He tugged and snarled, plucked even with the stub of finger on his useless hand, but how could he move it alone?

Mother Sea burst roaring into the hold of the South Wind and Yarvi fumbled desperately with the ladder, watched the men straining against their chains for a last breath as the water surged over their faces.

“Clever children drown just like stupid ones,” said Trigg, blood running from the neat split in his skull.

Yarvi took one more floundering step in the merciless snow, slipped and teetered on hot rock smooth as glass. However he ran the dogs were always snapping at his heels.

Grom-gil-Gorm’s bared teeth were red and his face blood-dashed and Yarvi’s fingers threaded on his necklace. “I am coming,” he sang like the clanging of a bell. “And Mother War comes with me!”

“Are you ready to kneel?” asked Mother Scaer, arms covered in flashing elf-bangles and the crows on her shoulders laughing, laughing.

“He is on his knees already,” said Odem, elbows upon the black arms of the Black Chair.

“He always has been,” said Isriun, smiling, smiling.

“We all serve someone,” said Grandmother Wexen, a hungry brightness in her eye.

“Enough!” hissed Yarvi. “Enough!”

And he flung open the hidden door and lashed out with the curved sword. Ankran’s eyes bulged as the blade slid through him. “Steel is the answer,” he croaked.

Shadikshirram grunted and elbowed and Yarvi punched at her, and metal squelched in flesh, and she smiled at him over her shoulder.

“He is coming,” she whispered. “He is coming.”

YARVI WOKE WET WITH SWEAT, tangled with his blankets, stabbing at his mattress.

A devil’s face loomed over him, made of flame and shadow and stinking of smoke. He shrank away, then gasped in relief as he realized it was Rulf, a torch in his hand against the darkness.

“Grom-gil-Gorm is coming,” he said.

Yarvi tore free of his blankets. Sounds echoed distorted through the shutters at the window. Crashing. Shouting. The clangor of bells.

“He’s crossed the border with more than a thousand men. Might be a hundred thousand depending on what rumor you listen to.”

Yarvi tried to blink away his dream. “Already?”

“He moves quick as fire and spreads as much chaos. The messengers barely outrode him. He’s only three days from the city. Thorlby’s in uproar.”

Downstairs the faintest gray of dawn was leaking through the shutters and across pale faces. The faintest smell of smoke tickled Yarvi’s nose. Smoke and fear. Faintly he could hear the priest outside calling in a broken voice for folk to kneel before the One God and be saved.

To kneel before the High King and be made slaves.

“Your crows fly swiftly, Sister Owd,” said Yarvi.

“I told you they would, my king.” Yarvi flinched at the word. It still sounded like a joke to him. It was a joke, and would be until Odem was dead.

He looked at the faces of his oarmates. Sumael and Jaud each nursing their own kind of fear. Nothing with hungry smile and polished sword both unsheathed.

“This is my fight,” said Yarvi. “If any of you want to leave, I won’t blame you.”

“I and my steel are sworn to the purpose.” Nothing rubbed a speck from his sword with a thumb-tip. “The only door that will stop me is the Last.”

Yarvi nodded, and with his good hand clasped Nothing’s arm. “I don’t pretend to understand your loyalty, but I’m grateful for it.”

The others were slower to the cause. “I’d be lying if I said the odds didn’t bother me,” said Rulf.

“They bothered you on the border,” said Nothing, “and that ended with the burning bodies of our enemies.”

“And of our friend. And our capture by a crowd of angry Vanstermen. Angry Vanstermen are again involved, and if this plan miscarries I doubt we’ll be talking our way clear, however nimble-tongued the young king may be.”

Yarvi put his twisted palm on the pommel of Shadikshirram’s sword. “Then our steel must talk for us.”

“Easy to say before it’s drawn.” Sumael frowned across to Jaud. “I think we had better head south before the swords begin to speak.”

Jaud looked from Yarvi to Sumael and back, and his big shoulders slumped. The wise wait for the moment. But never let it pass.

“You can go with my blessing, but I’d rather have you at my side,” said Yarvi. “Together we braved the South Wind. Together we escaped her. Together we faced the ice and came through. We’ll come through this as well. Together. Only take one more stroke with me.”

Sumael blinked at Jaud, then leaned close to him. “You’re not a warrior, not a king. You’re a baker.”

Jaud looked sidelong at Yarvi, and sighed. “And an oarsman.”

“Not by choice.”

“Not much in life that matters is by choice. What kind of oarsman abandons his mate?”

“This isn’t our fight!” hissed Sumael, low and urgent.

Jaud shrugged. “My friend’s fight is my fight.”

“What about the sweetest water in the world?”

“It will be just as sweet later. Sweeter still, maybe.” And Jaud gave Yarvi a weak smile. “When you have a load to lift, you’re better lifting than weeping.”

“We all might end up weeping.” Sumael took a slow step toward Yarvi, dark eyes fixed on his. She raised a hand to reach toward him, and the breath caught in his throat. “Please, Yorv—”

“My name is Yarvi.” And though it hurt to do it he met her gaze with flinty hardness, the way his mother might have. He would have liked to take her hand. To hold it the way he had in the snow. To be pulled far away by it to the First of Cities, and be Yorv again, and the Black Chair be damned.

He would have loved to take her hand, but he could not afford to weaken. Not for anything. He had sworn an oath, and he needed his oarmates beside him. He needed Jaud. He needed her.

“What about you, Rulf?” he asked.

Rulf worked his mouth, carefully rolled his tongue, and neatly spat out of the window. “When the baker fights, what can the warrior do?” His broad face broke into a grin. “My bow’s yours.”

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.

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 eyeglass 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 back, unblinking. 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 TIM,” 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.

Honestly, they inspired scant confidence in Yarvi. It was a company of horribles his mother’s gold had brought to his cause. Every land about the Shattered Sea — and some much further flung — had contributed a couple of its worst sons. There were rogues and cutthroats, sea-raiders and convicts, some with their crimes tattooed on their foreheads. One with an always-weeping eye had a face scrawled blue with them. Men without king or honor. Men without conscience or cause. Not to mention three fearsome Shend women, bristling with blades and muscled like masons, who took great delight in baring teeth filed to wicked points at anyone who glanced their way.

“Not the first folk I’d pick to trust my life to,” murmured Rulf, carefully averting his eyes.

“What can you think about a cause,” muttered Jaud, “when all the decent folk stand on the other side?”

“Many tasks call for decent folk.” Nothing twisted his helmet carefully back and forth. “The murder of a king is not one such.”

“This is no murder,” growled Yarvi. “And Odem no true king.”

“Shhh,” said Sumael, eyes rolling to the ceiling.

Faint sounds were leaking through the rock. Shouting, perhaps, the rattle of arms. The very faintest whiff of alarm.

“They know our friends have arrived.”

Yarvi swallowed a surge of nerves. “To your places.”

Their plans were well rehearsed. Rulf took a dozen men skilled with bows. Each of the Inglings took a dozen more to hiding places from which they could quickly reach the yard. The dozen that remained crept up the winding stair after Yarvi and Nothing. Toward the chain room above the citadel’s one entrance. Toward the Screaming Gate.

“Have care,” whispered Yarvi, pausing at the hidden door, though his throat was almost too tight to force words through. “The men in there aren’t our enemies—”

“They will do for today,” said Nothing. “And Mother War hates care.” He kicked the door wide and ducked through.

“Damn it!” hissed Yarvi, scrambling after.

The chain room was dim, light leaking in from narrow windows, the rumble of thumping boots echoing loud from the passageway below. Two men sat at a table. One turned, smile vanishing as he saw Nothing’s drawn sword.

“Who are—”

Steel flashed through a strip of light and his head came off with a wet click, spinning into a corner. Ridiculous, it seemed, a mummer’s joke at a spring fair, but no children laughed now. Nothing stepped past the slumping body, caught the other man under his arm as he rose and slid the sword through his chest. He gave a ragged gasp, pawed toward the table where an ax lay.

Nothing pushed the table carefully out of reach with one boot, then pulled his sword free and lowered the man gently to sit against the wall, shuddering silently as Death eased open the Last Door for him.

“The chain room is ours.” Nothing peered through an archway at the far end, then dragged the door shut and slid the bolt.

Yarvi knelt beside the dying man. He knew him. Or had done. Ulvdem was his name. No friend of his, but not one of the worst. He had smiled once at a joke Yarvi made, and Yarvi had been glad of it.

“Did you have to kill them?”

“No.” Nothing carefully wiped clean his sword. “We could have let Odem be king.”

The hirelings were spreading out, frowning toward the centerpiece of the room, and their plan, the Screaming Gate. Its bottom was sunken in the floor and its top in the ceiling, a wall of polished copper softly gleaming, engraved with a hundred faces which snarled, screeched, howled in pain or fear or rage, flowing into one another like reflections in a pool.

Sumael stood looking at it with hands on hips. “I think I can guess now why it’s called the Screaming Gate.”

“A hideous thing to hang our hopes on,” said Jaud.

Yarvi brushed the metal with his fingertips, cold and awfully solid. “A hideous thing to have drop on your head, no doubt.” Beside the great slab, about a post carved with the names of fifteen gods, was a confusion of interlocking gears, inscribed wheels, coiled chains, that even with his minister’s eye he could not begin to fathom the workings of. In its center was a single silver pin. “This is the mechanism.”

Jaud reached toward it. “All you do is pull the pin?”

Yarvi slapped his hand away. “At the right moment! The last moment. The more of Odem’s men have gone to face Gorm the better our chances.”

“Your uncle speaks,” called Nothing from one of the narrow windows.

Yarvi eased open the shutters of another and peered down into the yard. That familiar patch of green among the towering gray walls, the cedar spreading its branches at one side. Men were gathered there, many hurriedly arming, many already arrayed for battle. Yarvi’s eyes widened as he took in the number. Three hundred at a guess, and he knew there would be far more making ready outside the citadel. Above them, upon the marble steps of the Godshall, in fur and silvered mail and with the King’s Circle on his brow, stood Yarvi’s uncle Odem.

“Who stands outside the walls of Thorlby now?” he was roaring at the gathered warriors. “Grom-gil-Gorm, the Breaker of Swords!”

The men stamped their feet and let go a storm of curses and contempt. “He who murdered Uthrik, your king, my brother!” Howls of anger at that, and Yarvi had to stop himself making one of his own at the lie.

“But in his arrogance he has brought few men with him!” called Odem. “We have the right, we have the ground, we have the numbers and the quality! Will we let this army of scum stand a moment longer within sight of the howes of my brothers Uthrik and Uthil, the howe of my grandfather Angulf Clovenfoot, Hammer of the Vanstermen?”

The warriors clattered weapons on shields and shields on armor and roared that they would not.

Odem reached out, his kneeling blade-bearer offered up his sword, and he drew it and held it high, the steel breaking from the shadows and flashing so brightly for an instant Yarvi had to look away. “Then let us do honor to Mother War, and bring her a red day! Let us leave our walls at our backs and stride out, and before sunset see the heads of Grom-gil-Gorm and his Vanster dogs above our gates.”

“We’ll see whose head sits on the walls tonight,” said Yarvi, words lost in the answering cheer of the warriors of Gettland. The warriors who should have been cheering for him.

“They go to fight,” said Nothing, as men began to file from the yard, called off in stretches of the shield wall, each knowing his place, each ready to die for his shoulder-man. “You guessed your uncle’s mind correctly.”

“It was no guess,” said Yarvi.

“Your mother was right.” He saw Nothing’s eyes glint in the darkness of his helmet’s slot. “You have become a deep-cunning man.”

The youngest warriors came first, some younger even than Yarvi, the older and more battle-worn were next. They tramped under the Screaming Gate, the clatter of harness echoing about the chain room, shadows shifting across the pitted faces of Yarvi’s rogues as they peered through the slots in the floor to watch better men pass below. And with each one gone down that passageway Yarvi’s happiness grew, for he knew their odds were so much the better, and his fear grew too, for he knew the moment was almost upon them.

The moment of his vengeance. Or the moment of his death.

“The king’s moving,” said Sumael, pressed into the shadows beside another window. Odem was striding through his veterans toward the gate, shield-bearer, and blade-bearer, and standard-bearers at his back, clapping men on their shoulders as he went.

“The moment is not ripe,” murmured Nothing.

“I see that!” hissed Yarvi. The boots tramped on, men draining from the citadel, but there were far too many yet in the yard.

Had he endured all this, suffered all this, sacrificed all this so Odem could wriggle carefree from the hook at the last moment? He fussed with his stub of finger, the very tips of his thumbs sweating.

“Do I pull the pin?” called Jaud.

“Not yet!” squeaked Yarvi, terrified they would be heard through the slots in the floor. “Not yet!”

Odem strode on, soon to be lost from view below the archway. Yarvi raised his hand to Jaud, ready to bring it down and all the weight of the Screaming Gate with it.

Even if it doomed them all.

“My king!” Yarvi’s mother stood on the steps of the Godshall, Hurik huge at one shoulder, Mother Gundring bent over her staff at the other. “My brother!”

Yarvi’s uncle stopped, frowning, and turned.

“Odem, please, a word!”

Yarvi hardly dared breathe in case it somehow upset the delicate balance of the moment. Time crawled as Odem looked to the gate, then to Yarvi’s mother, then, cursing, strode back toward her, his closest retainers rattling after.

“Wait!” hissed Yarvi, and with wide eyes Jaud eased his fingers from the pin.

Yarvi strained toward the window, cool breeze kissing his sweat-sheened face, but could not hear what was said on the steps of the Godshall. His mother knelt at Odem’s feet, pressed hands to her chest, humbly bowed her head. Perhaps she made abject apologies for her stubbornness, her ingratitude to her brother and the High King. Perhaps she swore obedience and begged forgiveness. Then she took Odem’s hand in both of hers, and pressed her lips to it, and Yarvi’s skin crawled.

His uncle looked at Mother Gundring, and gave the slightest nod. His minister looked back, and gave the slightest shrug. Then Odem touched Yarvi’s mother on the cheek and strode away, back toward the gate, his servants and closest guards about him in an eager gaggle.

The last trickle of warriors were following their brothers out of the citadel, no more than three dozen left in the yard. Yarvi’s mother clasped her hands, and looked up toward the gatehouse, and Yarvi fancied she might even have met his eye.

“Thank you, Mother,” he whispered. Once again he lifted his withered hand to Jaud. Once again he watched Odem approach the gate. But this time, instead of seeing the gods pull all his plans apart, he saw them offer him his chance.

“Wait,” he whispered, the hot breath of the word tickling at his lips.

“Wait.” Here was the day. Here the hour.

“Wait.” Here the moment.

“Now.”

He chopped down his crippled hand and, weak though it was, thanks to the ingenuity of six ministers of old, it fell with the weight of mountains. Jaud snatched free the pin, gears whirred, a chain snapped taut, and the reason for the name was suddenly made clear. With a shrieking like all the dead in hell and a blast of wind that tore Yarvi’s helmet off and slammed him against the wall, the Screaming Gate plunged through the floor.

It struck the ground below with a crash that shook the citadel to its elf-tunneled roots, sealing the entrance with a weight of metal Father Earth himself would have strained to lift.

The floor reeled, tipped, and Yarvi wondered for a moment if the very gatehouse was collapsing at that shattering impact.

He stumbled to a slot in the floor, trying to shake the dizziness from his head, the ringing from his ears. The passageway below was full of Odem’s closest. Some were tottering with hands clasped to their heads. Some were fumbling out their weapons. Some clustered at the gate, silently shouting, silently, stupidly, uselessly beating against the screaming faces. The false king himself stood in their midst, staring up. His eyes met Yarvi’s, and his face paled as though he saw a demon that had clawed its way back through the Last Door.

And Yarvi smiled.

Then he felt himself seized by the shoulder.

Nothing was dragging at him, shouting in his face, he could see his mouth moving in the slot in his helmet, but could hear only a vague burble.

He scrambled after, the floor settling to level, down a winding stair, bouncing from the walls, jostled by men behind. Nothing flung a door wide, a bright archway in the dark, and they burst into the open air.

The Last Door

In the yard of the citadel, chaos ruled.

Weapons swung and splinters flew, steel clashed and faces snarled, arrows flitted and bodies dropped, all in dream-like silence.

Just as Yarvi had planned, his mother’s hirelings had spilled from hidden doorways and taken Odem’s veterans in their backs, hacked them down where they stood, driven them witless about the yard, left their scattered bodies bleeding.

But those that survived the first shock were fighting back fiercely, the battle broken up into ugly little struggles to the death. In blinking silence Yarvi watched one of the Shend women stabbing at a man while he opened gashes down her face with the rim of his shield.

Just as he had planned, Yarvi saw Rulf and his archers send a flight of arrows from the roofs. Silently they went up, silently rattled down, prickling the shields of Odem’s closest guards, formed into a knot about their king. One man caught a shaft in the face and seemed hardly to notice, still pointing toward the Godshall with his sword, still bellowing silent words. Another went down, clutching at an arrow in his side, clutching at the leg of the man beside him who kicked his hand away and shuffled on. Yarvi knew them both, honored men who once stood guard at the entrance to the king’s chamber.

Battle makes all men animals, Yarvi’s father used to tell him. He saw a snarling thug with sheep thief written on his cheek cut down an unarmed slave, water jug flying from his hands and shattering against a wall.

Could this be what he had planned? What he had prayed for?

He had flung wide the door, and begged Mother War to be his guest. He could not stop this. No one could. Surviving it would be challenge enough.

He saw Nothing hack the legs from under one man, slash another across the back as he turned to run, shove another by the shield so he tottered into the low wall of the well and over, vanishing from sight into the depths.

In a deafened stupor he dragged Shadikshirram’s sword from its sheath. That was what a man did in battle, wasn’t it? Gods, it felt heavy all of a sudden. Men jostled him as they ran past to join the madness, but he was rooted to the earth.

He saw the doors of the Godshall standing open, Odem’s guards crouching behind arrow-bristled shields around the archway, shepherding the false king into the shadows.

Yarvi pointed his sword toward them, shouted, “There!” The deafness was fading. Enough that he heard thudding footsteps in time to spin around.

But not to do much more.

Steel clashed on steel and the sword was wrenched in his fist, almost out of his hand. He caught a glimpse of Hurik’s scarred face, heard a snatch of his low growl before his shield crashed into Yarvi’s chest, lifted him from his feet and dumped him groaning on his back two strides away.

Hurik’s eyes slid sideways and he twisted to catch an ax on his shield, splinters spinning from the force of the blow. Jaud, charging in with a roar, hacking away like a mad woodsman at a stump. Hurik gave ground, blocked the second blow, but the third was clumsy and he caught it in a ready crouch, steering it wide, the heavy blade missing his shoulder by a hand’s breadth and thudding into the turf. He clubbed Jaud in the head with the rim of his shield as he stumbled past, knocking him off balance, then with a short chop of his sword ripped the ax from Jaud’s hand.

It seemed a baker was no match for a queen’s Chosen Shield, however good a man he was.

Hurik’s bared teeth showed white in his black beard, his sword flashed as he stabbed, blade sinking into Jaud’s ribs to the hilt.

“No,” croaked Yarvi, struggling to get up, but wanting a thing is not always enough.

Jaud dropped to his knees, face crushed up with pain, and Hurik planted one great boot on his shoulder, ripped his sword free, then kicked Jaud onto his back. He turned to Yarvi.

“Let us finish what we started in Amwend.”

He stepped forward, red sword raised. Yarvi would have liked to face Death smiling, but few have courage when the Last Door yawns before them, even kings. Kings least of all, perhaps. He slithered back, holding up his withered hand as though that might ward off the blade.

Hurik’s lip twisted. “What a king you would have made—”

“We shall see.”

Hurik’s chin was jerked back and there was steel under his white-streaked beard. A dagger, polished to an icy gleam. The face of Yarvi’s mother, eyes narrowed and jaw clenched, appeared beside his.

“Drop your sword, Hurik.”

He hesitated for a moment and she leaned closer and murmured in his ear. “You know me. Few better. Can it really be …” and she twisted the blade until a line of blood ran down his thick neck, “that you doubt my will?”

Hurik swallowed, wincing as the knobble on his stubbled throat squirmed against the steel, then let his blade clatter to the dirt. Yarvi scrambled up, clutching Shadikshirram’s sword, leveling the point at Hurik’s chest.

“Wait,” said his mother. “First answer me this. For nineteen years you have been my Chosen Shield. Why break your oath?”

Hurik’s eyes shifted to Yarvi. Sad they looked now, and broken. “Odem told me the boy must die, or you must.”

“And why not kill Odem where he stood?”

“Because the High King had decreed it!” Hurik hissed out. “And the High King would not be denied. My oath was to protect you, Laithlin.” He pushed his shoulders back, and slowly closed his eyes. “Not your crippled son.”

“Then consider your oath discharged.”

The smallest movement of the knife and Yarvi stumbled back as blood spotted his cheek. Hurik fell, and keeled on his face, and Yarvi stood with his sword slack in his hand, blinking down at the dark pool creeping through the grass.

His skin was flushed and prickling. The breath tore at his throat. Lights danced in his eyes, his limbs heavy, bruised chest throbbing. He wanted only to sit down. To sit in the darkness and cry.

The dead and wounded were scattered blade-slashed and arrow-prickled across the grass where Yarvi had played as a child. Cherished swords and shields, heirlooms of noble houses, had fallen from lifeless fingers and lay shattered, filthy with blood. The doors of the Godshall were sealed, those of Yarvi’s men still standing gathered about them, Rulf’s face red-streaked from a cut in his hair. The two big Inglings were pounding away with their axes but the heavy wood stayed firm.

And against the trunk of the spreading cedar, that Yarvi’s brother used to mock him for being too scared to climb, Jaud sat still with head tipped back and hands limp in his bloody lap. Sumael knelt beside him, her head hanging and her lips curled from her teeth, clutching at one bloody fistful of his shirt, as though she might lift him up. As though she might carry him to safety, as he once carried her. But there was nowhere to take him, even had she had the strength.

Nowhere but through the Last Door.

And Yarvi realized then that Death does not bow to each person who passes her, does not sweep out her arm respectfully to show the way, speaks no profound words, unlocks no bolts. The key upon her chest is never needed, for the Last Door stands always open. She herds the dead through impatiently, heedless of rank or fame or quality. She has an ever-lengthening queue to get through. A blind procession, inexhaustible.

“What have I done?” whispered Yarvi, taking a halting step toward Jaud and Sumael.

“What you had to.” His mother’s grip on his arm was iron. “There is no time to mourn, now, my son. My king.” One side of her face was pale, the other dotted red, and she looked at that moment like Mother War indeed. “Follow Odem.” She squeezed harder. “Kill him, and take back the Black Chair.”

Yarvi clenched his jaw then, and nodded. There could be no going back.

“Stop that!” he called at the Inglings. “There are better ways.” They lowered their axes to stare darkly at him. “Mother, stay with them and watch the door. Make sure no one leaves.”

“Not until Odem is dead,” she said.

“Nothing, Rulf, gather a dozen men and follow me.”

Rulf stared at the carnage in the yard of the citadel, breathing hard. The wounded and the dying, the hobbling and the bleeding. And Jaud, brave Jaud, who had stood by his oarmate, sitting with his back to the trunk of the cedar, no oar to pull, no load to lift, no encouragement to give any longer.

“Will I find a dozen still able?” he whispered.

Yarvi turned away. “Get what there is.”

A Lonely Seat

“Ready?” whispered Yarvi.

“Always,” said Nothing.

Rulf worked his head one way then the other, the blood that streaked his face black in the shadows. “Don’t see that I’ll get any readier.”

Yarvi heaved in a great breath, and as he pushed it out drove the heel of his twisted hand into the catch, barged the hidden door open with his shoulder, and burst into the sacred vastness of the Godshall.

Empty at the top of its dais the Black Chair stood, in the sight of the Tall Gods, their jeweled eyes agleam. Above them, about the dome, the amber statues of the Small Gods observed the petty doings of humanity without comment, emotion, or even much interest.

Odem had only ten men left and those in a sorry state, clustered about the doors as they shook faintly from blows outside. Two were trying to shore them up with spears. Two others had swept the holy offerings from a table shiny with age and were dragging it toward the entrance as a barricade. The rest sat bewildered or stood stunned, not knowing how their king could have been taken unawares by a company of rogues in the heart of his own citadel. Mother Gundring hunched beside Odem, tending to his standard-bearer’s bleeding arm.

“To the king!” he shrieked as he saw Yarvi burst in, and Odem’s men clustered about their master, raising their shields before him, weapons ready. The man with the arrow in his face had snapped it off, the bloody shaft poking from his cheek. He had been leaning groggily on his sword but now he pointed it, wobbling, toward Yarvi.

Nothing rushed up at his left shoulder, Rulf at his right, and those slaves and mercenaries who could still fight spread out about them, bristling with sharpened metal.

They edged around the Black Chair, down the steps of the dais, spitting and rasping curses in half a dozen languages. Odem urged his men forward, the space between them ten strides of stone, then eight, then six, the coming violence hanging heavy as a stormcloud in the still air of the Godshall.

Then Mother Gundring squinted toward Yarvi, and her eyes went wide. “Wait!” she screamed, beating her elf-staff upon the ground and sending crashing echoes bouncing about the dome above. “Wait!”

For a moment the men held, staring, snarling, hands tickling their weapons, and Yarvi leapt into the narrow gap of opportunity the old minister had opened for him.

“Men of Gettland!” he shouted. “You know me! I am Yarvi, son of Uthrik!” And he pointed at Odem with the one stubby finger of his left hand. “This treacherous thing tried to steal the Black Chair, but the gods will not suffer a usurper to sit upon it for long!” He dug his thumb into his chest. “The rightful king of Gettland has returned!”

“The woman’s puppet?” spat Odem at him. “The half-king? The king of cripples?”

Before Yarvi could shriek his reply he felt a strong hand on his shoulder, steering him aside. Nothing stepped past, unbuckling the strap on his helmet. “No,” he said. “The rightful king.” And he pulled it off and tossed it spinning across the floor of the Godshall with a steely clatter.

He had chopped his wild shag of hair to a short gray fuzz, shaved clean his thicket of a beard. The face revealed was all sharp angles and ruthless lines, bones broken and set harder, work- and weather-worn, beating- and battle-scarred. The beggar of twigs and string was gone, and in his place a warrior of oak and iron stood, but his eyes, deep set in hollow sockets, were the same.

Still burning with a fire at the brink of madness. Hotter than ever.

And suddenly Yarvi was no longer sure who this man was that he had traveled beside, fought beside, slept beside. No longer sure what he had brought with him into the citadel of Gettland, right to the Black Chair itself.

He blinked around him, suddenly full of doubt. The young warriors of Gettland still growled their defiance. But on the older men the sight of Nothing’s face worked a strange transformation.

Jaws dropped, blades wavered, eyes widened, even brimmed with tears, breathed oaths drifted from quivering lips. Odem had turned paler even than when he saw Yarvi. The face of a man who looks upon the end of creation.

“What sorcery is this?” whispered Rulf, but Yarvi could not say.

The elf-metal staff slipped from Mother Gundring’s limp fingers and clattered to the floor, the echoes fading into heavy silence.

“Uthil,” she whispered.

“Yes.” And Nothing turned his mad smile on Odem. “Well met, brother.”

And now the name was spoken Yarvi saw how like the two men were, and felt a chill to the tips of his fingers.

His uncle Uthil, whose matchless skill the warriors toasted before every training, whose drowned body had never been washed from the bitter sea, whose howe above the wind-blasted beach stood empty.

His uncle Uthil had been standing at his side for months.

His uncle Uthil stood before him now.

“Here is the reckoning,” said Nothing. Said Uthil. And he stepped forward, sword in hand.

“Blood cannot be shed in the Godshall!” shouted Mother Gundring.

Uthil only smiled. “The gods love nothing better than blood, my minister. What better place to shed it?”

“Kill him!” shrieked Odem, no calm in his voice now, but no one rushed to obey. No one so much as spoke a word. “I am your king!”

But power can be a brittle thing. Slowly, carefully, as though they thought with one mind, the warriors backed away from him to form a crescent.

“The Black Chair is a lonely seat indeed,” said Uthil, glancing up at it, empty on its dais.

The muscles in Odem’s jaw worked as he gazed at the circle of grim faces ranged about him, at those of his guards and those of the hirelings, at Mother Gundring’s and at Yarvi’s, and finally at Uthil’s, so like his own, but passed through twenty years of horrors. He snorted, and spat on the holy stones at his brother’s feet.

“So be it, then.” And Odem snatched his shield from its bearer, gilded and with winking jewels set in its rim, and barged the man away.

Rulf offered out his shield but Nothing shook his head. “Wood has its place, but here steel is the answer.” And he raised his blade, the same simple one he had carried through the wastes, plain steel polished to a frosty shine.

“You have been so long away, brother.” Odem lifted his sword, one forged for Yarvi’s father, pommel of ivory and hilt of gold, runes of blessing worked into the mirror-bright blade. “Let us embrace.”

He darted forward, so scorpion-quick that Yarvi gave a gasp and stumbled back a pace himself, twitching this way and that as he followed his uncles’ movements. Odem thrust, and thrust again, hissed as he slashed high and low with blows to cleave a man in two. But fast and deadly as he was, his brother was faster. Like smoke on a mad wind Uthil drifted, twisted, reeled, while the bright steel carved the air but gave him not a kiss.

“Do you remember when we last saw each other?” Uthil asked as he danced away. “In that storm, at the prow of our father’s ship? Laughing into the gale with my brothers at my back?”

“You never cared for anything but your laughter!” Odem rushed in again, chopping left and right and making the watchful guards lurch back. But Uthil wheeled to safety, not even raising his sword.

“Is that why you and Uthrik together threw me into the bitter sea? Or was it so that he could steal my birthright? And you in turn could steal it from him?”

“The Black Chair is mine!” Odem’s sword was a shining arc over his head. But Uthil caught it on his own with a ringing crash. He caught Odem’s shield as well and for a moment Yarvi’s two uncles were locked together, blades grating. Then Uthil dipped his shoulder and jerked the shield upward, the rim cracking into Odem’s jaw. He twisted his other shoulder and flung Odem away, heels kicking at the stones, falling in a tangle against the men behind him.

They pushed him off and Odem shrank behind his shield, but Uthil only stood his ground in the center of the circle. “Even though my empty howe stands above the beach, I did not drown. I was plucked from the sea by slavers, and made to fight in a pit. And in those years in the darkness, for the amusement of blood-drunk animals, I killed ninety-nine men.” Uthil pressed a finger to his ear, and for a moment looked like Nothing once again. “I hear them whisper, sometimes. Can you hear them whisper, Odem?”

“You’re mad!” spat Odem, blood on his lips.

But Uthil only smiled the wider. “How could it be otherwise? They promise a hundredth victory will set you free, but I was tricked and sold again.” Odem circled him, stalking in a hunter’s crouch, shield up, sweat across his forehead from the weight of his silvered mail. Uthil stood tall, sword swinging loose and easy in his hand, scarcely even breathing hard. “I was a war-slave, then an oarslave, then … nothing. A dozen bitter years I spent upon my knees. It is a good place to think.”

“Think on this!” Odem spat blood as he came again, feinted a thrust and made it into a hissing, angling cut. But Uthil steered it wide to crash into the stone of the floor, striking sparks and filling the Godshall with ear-splitting echoes.

Odem gasped, stumbled, shuddering with the impact, and Uthil stepped away and with a terrible precision slashed him across the arm, just above his shield’s garnet-studded rim.

Odem gave a howl, the gaudy thing sliding from his limp left hand and the blood already tapping on it from his dangling fingertips. He looked up at Uthil, eyes wide. “I was the best among the three of us! I should have been king! Uthrik was nothing but violence, you nothing but vanity!”

“So true.” Uthil frowned as he wiped both sides of his sword carefully on his sleeve. “How the gods have punished me for it. The lessons they have taught me, Odem. And now they have sent me to teach one to you. They do not make the best man king, but the first-born.” He nodded toward Yarvi. “And our nephew was right about one thing. They will not suffer a usurper to sit in the Black Chair for long.” He bared his teeth and hissed out the words. “It is mine.”

He sprang forward and Odem met him snarling. Blades clashed, once, twice, faster than Yarvi could follow. The third blow Uthil slid beneath, slashing his brother’s leg as he danced away and making him roar again. Odem winced, knee buckling, only staying upright by using his sword as a crutch.

“The Last Door opens for you,” said Uthil.

Odem found his balance, chest heaving, and Yarvi saw the silvered mail on his leg turned red, fast-flowing blood working its way out from his boot down the cracks between the stones.

“I know it.” Odem lifted his chin, and Yarvi saw a tear leak from the corner of his eye and streak his face. “It has stood open at my shoulder all these years.” And with a sound between a snort and a sob, he tossed his sword down to clatter into the shadows. “Ever since that day in the storm.”

The blood surged in Yarvi’s ears as Uthil lifted his sword high, blade catching the light and its edge glittering cold.

“Just answer me one question …” breathed Odem, eyes fixed above him on his death.

For a moment Uthil hesitated. The sword wavered, drifted down. One brow twitched up, questioning. “Speak, brother.”

And Yarvi saw Odem’s hand shifting, subtly shifting around his back, fingers curling toward the hilt of a dagger at his belt. A long dagger with a pommel of black jet. The same one he had showed to Yarvi on the roof of Amwend’s tower.

We must do what is best for Gettland.

Yarvi sprang down the steps in one bound.

He might not have been the sharpest pupil in the training square, but he knew how to stab a man. He caught Odem under the arm and the curved blade of Shadikshirram’s sword slid through his mail and out of his chest with hardly a sound.

“Whatever your question,” Yarvi hissed into his ear, “steel is my answer!” And he stepped back, ripping the blade free.

Odem gave a bubbling gasp. He took one drunken step and dropped onto his knees. He slowly turned his head, and for a moment, over his shoulder, his disbelieving eye met Yarvi’s. Then he toppled sideways. He lay still on the sacred stones, at the foot of the dais, in the sight of the gods, in the center of that circle of men, and Yarvi and Uthil were left staring at each other over his body.

“It seems there is a question between us, nephew,” said his one surviving uncle, that one brow still raised. “Shall steel be our answer?”

Yarvi’s eyes flickered up to the Black Chair, standing silent above them.

Hard it might be, but harder than the benches of the South Wind? Cold it might be, but colder than the snows of the utmost north? He did not fear it anymore. But did he truly want it? He remembered his father sitting in it, tall and grim, his scarred hand never far from his sword. A doting son to Mother War, just as a king of Gettland should be. Just as Uthil was.

The statues of the Tall Gods gazed down, as though awaiting a decision, and Yarvi looked from one stony face to another, and took a long breath. Mother Gundring always said he had been touched by Father Peace, and he knew she was right.

He had never really wanted the Black Chair. Why fight for it? Why die for it? So Gettland could have half a king?

He made of his fist an open hand, and let Shadikshirram’s sword drop rattling to the bloody stones.

“I have my vengeance,” he said. “The Black Chair is yours.” And he slowly sank to his knees before Uthil, and bowed his head. “My king.”

The Blame

Grom-gil-Gorm, King of Vansterland, bloodiest son of Mother War, Breaker of Swords and Maker of Orphans, strode into the Godshall with his minister and ten of his most battle-tested warriors at his back, huge left hand slack upon the hilt of his huge sword.

He had a new white fur about his heavy shoulders, Yarvi noticed, and a new jewel on one great forefinger, and the triple-looped chain about his neck had lengthened by a few pommels. Mementos of his bloody jaunt through Gettland, at Yarvi’s invitation, stolen from the innocent along with their lives, no doubt.

But the hugest thing of all, as he stepped between the scarred doors and into the house of his enemy, was his smile. The smile of a conqueror, who sees all his plans ripen, all his adversaries brought low, all the dice come up his number. The smile of a man greatly favored by the gods.

Then he saw Yarvi standing on the steps of the dais between his mother and Mother Gundring, and his smile buckled. And then he saw who sat in the Black Chair, and it crumpled entire. He came to an uncertain halt in the center of that wide floor, on about the spot where Odem’s blood still stained the cracks in the stones, surrounded on all sides by the glowering great of Gettland.

Then he scratched at one side of his head, and said, “This is not the king we expected.”

“Many here might say so,” said Yarvi. “But it is the rightful one, even so. King Uthil, my eldest uncle, has returned.”

“Uthil.” Mother Scaer gave a hiss through her teeth. “The proud Gettlander. I thought I knew that face.”

“You might have mentioned it.” Gorm frowned around at the gathered warriors and wives, keys and cloak-buckles all aglitter in the shadows, and heaved up a weighty sigh. “I’ve an unhappy sense you will not be kneeling before me as my vassal.”

“I have spent long enough on my knees.” Uthil stood, his sword still cradled in his arms. That same plain sword he had taken up from the listing deck of the South Wind and polished until the blade glittered like moonlight on the chill sea. “If anyone kneels it should be you. You stand on my land, in my hall, before my chair.”

Gorm lifted the toes of his boots and peered down at them. “So it would seem. But I have always been stiff in the joints. I must decline.”

“A shame. Perhaps I can unstiffen you with my sword when I visit you in Vulsgard in the summer.”

Gorm’s face hardened. “Oh, I can guarantee any Gettlander who crosses the border a warm welcome.”

“Why wait for summer, then?” Uthil took the steps one by one, until he stood on the lowest, so that he looked straight into Gorm’s face on about a level footing. “Fight me now.”

A twitch began at the corner of Gorm’s eye and set his cheek to flutter. Yarvi saw his scarred knuckles white on the grip of his sword, the eyes of his warriors darting about the room, the gathered men of Gettland hardening their frowns. “You should know that Mother War breathed upon me in my crib,” growled the King of Vansterland. “It has been foreseen no man can kill me—”

“Then fight me, dog!” roared Uthil, the echoes crashing about the hall and every person holding their breath as if it would be their last. Yarvi wondered if they might see a second king die in the Godshall within a day, and he would not have cared to bet on which of these two it would be.

Then Mother Scaer rested her thin hand gently on Gorm’s fist. “The gods guard those who guard themselves,” she whispered.

The King of Vansterland took a long breath. His shoulders relaxed, and he peeled his fingers from his sword and gently combed them through his beard. “This new king is very rude,” he said.

“He is,” said Mother Scaer. “Did you not teach him diplomacy, Mother Gundring?”

The old minister gazed sternly at them from her place beside the Black Chair. “I did. And who deserves it.”

“I believe she means we don’t,” said Gorm.

“I take that to be the case,” answered Mother Scaer. “And find her rude also.”

“Is this how you keep a bargain, Prince Yarvi?”

This hall full of worthies had once lined up to kiss Yarvi’s hand. Now they looked as if they would happily queue to cut his throat. He shrugged. “I am prince no longer, and I have kept what I could. No one foresaw this turn of events.”

“There’s events for you,” said Mother Scaer. “They never flow quite down the channel you dig for them.”

“You will not fight me, then?” asked Uthil.

“Why so very bloodthirsty?” Gorm pushed out his bottom lip. “You are new in the job, but you will learn a king is more than just a killer. Let us give Father Peace his season, abide by the wishes of the High King in Skekenhouse and make of the fist an open hand. In summer, perhaps, on ground that suits me better, you can put Mother War’s breath to the test.” He turned away, and followed by his minister and his warriors, strode for the door. “I thank you for your winning hospitality, Gettlanders! You will hear from me!” He paused for a moment on the threshold, a great black outline against the daylight. “And on that day, I shall speak in thunder.”

The doors of the Godshall were swung shut upon them.

“The time may come when we wish we had killed him here today,” murmured Yarvi’s mother.

“Death waits for us all,” said Uthil, lowering himself back into the Black Chair, sword still cradled in his arms. He had a way of sitting in it, slouched and easy, that Yarvi never could have managed. “And we have other matters to attend to.” The king’s eyes drifted across to Yarvi’s, bright as the day they met upon the South Wind. “My nephew. Once prince, once king, now—”

“Nothing,” said Yarvi, lifting his chin.

Uthil gave the faintest sad smile at that. A glimpse of the man Yarvi had slogged through the ice with, shared his last crust with, faced death beside. A glimpse, then the king’s face was sword-sharp and ax-hard once again.

“You made a pact with Grom-gil-Gorm,” he said, and angry mutterings broke out about the hall. A wise king always has someone to blame, Mother Gundring used to say. “You invited our most bitter enemy to spread fire and murder across Gettland.” Yarvi could hardly deny it, even if denials could have been heard above the mounting anger in the Godshall. “Good people died. What price does the law demand for that, Mother Gundring?”

The minister looked from her new king to her old apprentice, and Yarvi felt his mother’s hand grip tight at his arm, for they both knew the answer. “Death, my king,” croaked Mother Gundring, seeming to slump against her staff. “Or exile, at the least.”

“Death!” screeched a woman’s voice from somewhere in the darkness, and the harsh echoes faded into a quiet stony as a tomb’s.

Yarvi had faced Death before. Many times, now, she had eased open the Last Door for him, and he was still casting a shadow. Though he was far from comfortable in her chill presence, as with many things he had improved with practice. This time at least, though his heart pounded and his mouth was sour, he faced her standing, and let his voice ring out clear.

“I made a mistake!” called Yarvi. “I made many. I know it. But I swore an oath! Before the gods I swore it. A sun-oath and a moon-oath. And I saw no other way to keep it. To avenge the killing of my father and brother. To turn the traitor Odem out of the Black Chair. And, though I am sorry for the blood that was spilled, thanks to the favor of the gods …” Yarvi gazed up toward them, then humbly down at the floor, spreading his arms in submission. “The rightful king has returned.”

Uthil frowned toward his hand, fingers resting upon the metal of the Black Chair. A small reminder that he owed it to Yarvi’s plans could do no harm. The angry muttering began again, mounted, swelled, until Uthil raised his hand to bring silence.

“It is true that Odem set you on the path,” he said. “His crimes were greater by far than yours, and you have already delivered his just punishment. You had reasons for what you did, and there has been enough death here, I think. Yours would be no justice.”

Yarvi kept his head bowed, and swallowed his relief. In spite of the hardships of the last few months, he liked being alive. He liked it more than ever.

“But there must be a reckoning.” And it seemed there was a sadness in Uthil’s eyes. “I am sorry, truly I am. But your sentence must be exile, for a man who has sat once in the Black Chair will always seek to reclaim it.”

“I didn’t think it so very comfortable.” Yarvi took one step up the dais. He knew what he had to do. He had known ever since Odem lay dead at his feet and he saw the face of Father Peace above him. Exile was not without some appeal. To owe nothing. To be anything. But he had wandered long enough. This was his home, and he was going nowhere.

“I never wanted the Black Chair. I never expected it.” Yarvi lifted his left hand and shook it so the one finger flopped back and forth. “I am no one’s notion of a king, least of all my own.” In silence he knelt. “I offer another solution.”

Uthil’s eyes narrowed, and Yarvi prayed to Father Peace that his uncle was looking for a way to pardon him. “Speak, then.”

“Let me do what is best for Gettland. Let me give up all claim to your chair forever. Let me take the Minister’s Test, as I was to do before my father’s death. Let me surrender all title and inheritance, and let my family be the Ministry. I belong here, in the Godshall. Not in the Black Chair, but beside it. Show your greatness through your mercy, my king, and let me atone for my mistakes through loyal service to you and to the land.”

Uthil slowly sat back, frowning, while the silence stretched out. Finally the king leaned toward his minister.

“What think you to this, Mother Gundring?”

“A solution Father Peace will smile upon,” she murmured. “I always believed Yarvi would make a fine minister. I still believe it. He has proved himself a deep-cunning man.”

“That much I believe.” But Uthil still hesitated, rubbing at his sharp jaw in consideration.

Then his mother let go Yarvi’s arm and swept up toward the Black Chair, the train of her red dress spilling down the steps as she knelt at Uthil’s feet. “A great king is merciful,” she murmured. “Please, my king. Let me have my only son.”

Uthil stirred, and his mouth opened but no words came. He might have been fearless before Grom-gil-Gorm, but faced with Yarvi’s mother he trembled.

“We were once promised to each other,” she said. One hard breath would have sounded like thunder in the Godshall, then, but every breath was held. “You were thought dead … but the gods have brought you back to your rightful place.…” She put her hand gently upon the scarred back of his, where it rested on the arm of the Black Chair, and Uthil’s eyes were fixed on her face. “My dearest wish is to see that promise fulfilled.”

Mother Gundring shuffled closer, speaking low. “The High King has proposed marriage to Laithlin more than once, he will take it very ill—”

Uthil did not look at her. His voice was rough. “Our promise is older than the High King’s suit by twenty years.”

“But only today Grandmother Wexen sent another eagle to—”

“Does Grandmother Wexen sit in the Black Chair, or do I?” Uthil finally turned his bright eyes on his minister.

“You do.” Mother Gundring turned hers to the floor. The wise minister coaxes, wheedles, argues, advises, and the wise minister obeys.

“Then send Grandmother Wexen’s bird back to her with an invitation to our wedding.” Uthil turned over his hand so that he held Yarvi’s mother’s in his calloused palm, worn to the shape of a scrubbing block. “You will wear the key to my treasury, Laithlin, and manage those affairs at which you have proved yourself so very able.”

“Gladly,” said Yarvi’s mother. “And my son?”

King Uthil looked at Yarvi for a long moment. Then he nodded. “He shall take back his place as Mother Gundring’s apprentice.” And at a stroke he made himself look stern and merciful both at once.

Yarvi breathed out. “At last Gettland has a king to be proud of,” he said. “I will thank Mother Sea every day for sending you back from the depths.”

And he stood and followed Grom-gil-Gorm toward the doors. He smiled through the taunts, and the jeering, and the mutters, and rather than hide his withered hand up his sleeve as his old habit had been, he let it proudly dangle. Compared to the slave pens of Vulsgard, and the torments of Trigg’s whip, and the cold and hunger of the trackless ice, the scorn of fools was not so very difficult to endure.

With a little help from his two mothers, each no doubt with her own reasons, Yarvi walked from the Godshall alive. A crippled outcast once again, and bound for the Ministry. Where he belonged.

He had come full circle. But he had left a boy, and returned a man.

THE DEAD WERE LAID OUT on chill slabs in a chill cellar beneath the rock. Yarvi did not want to count them. Enough. That was their number. The harvest of his carefully-sown plans. The consequences of his rash oath sworn. No faces, only shrouds peaked at the nose, the chin, the feet. There was no way to tell his mother’s hired killers from the honored warriors of Gettland. Perhaps, once they had passed through the Last Door, there was no difference.

Yarvi knew which body was Jaud’s, though. His friend’s. His oarmate’s. The man who had forged a path through the snow for him to follow. Whose soft voice had murmured “one stroke at a time” as he whimpered over the oar. Who had taken Yarvi’s fight as his own, even though he had been no fighter. It was the one Sumael stood beside, her clenched fists on the slab, dark face lit down one side by the flame of a single flickering taper.

“Your mother’s found a place for me on a ship,” she said, without looking up, her voice with a softness he was not used to hearing there.

“Good navigators are always in demand,” said Yarvi. The gods knew, he could have done with someone to point out the path for him.

“We leave at first light for Skekenhouse, then on.”

“Home?” he asked.

Sumael closed her eyes, and nodded, the faintest smile at the corner of her scarred mouth. “Home.” When he first saw her he had not thought of her as fine-looking, but she seemed beautiful now. So much he could not look away.

“Have you thought that, maybe … you could stay?” Yarvi hated himself even for asking. For making her turn him down. He was bound for the Ministry anyway. He had nothing to offer her. And Jaud’s body lay between them, a barrier there was no crossing.

“I have to go,” she said. “I can barely remember who I used to be.”

He could have said the same. “Surely all that matters is who you are now.”

“I barely know that either. Besides, Jaud carried me, in the snow.” Her hand twitched toward the shroud, but much to Yarvi’s relief she let it lie. “The least I can do is carry his ashes. I’ll leave them at his village. Maybe I’ll even drink from that well of his. Drink for both of us.” She swallowed, and all the while for some reason Yarvi felt a cold anger growing in him. “Why miss the sweetest water in the—”

“He chose to stay,” snapped Yarvi.

Sumael slowly nodded, not looking up. “We all did.”

“I didn’t force him.”

“No.”

“You could have left, and taken him, if you’d fought harder.”

Now she looked up, but with none of the anger he knew he deserved, only her own share of the guilt. “You’re right. That will be my weight to carry.”

Yarvi looked away, and suddenly his eyes swam with tears. A set of things done, and choices made, and each had seemed the lesser evil but had somehow led him here. Could this really be anyone’s greater good?

“You don’t hate me?” he whispered.

“I’ve lost one friend, I don’t mean to throw away another.” And she put one hand gently on his shoulder. “I’m not much good at making new ones.”

He pressed his own on top of it, wishing he could hold it there. Strange, how you never see how much you want a thing until you know you cannot have it.

“You don’t blame me?” he whispered.

“Why would I?” She gave him a last parting squeeze, then let him go. “It’s better if you do it.”

Some are Saved

“I’m glad you came,” said Yarvi. “I’m fast running out of friends.”

“Happy to do it,” said Rulf. “For you and for Ankran. Can’t say I loved the skinny bastard when he was storekeeper, but I warmed to him in the end.” He grinned at Yarvi, the big scab above his eye shifting. “Some men you stick to right off, but it’s those that take time to stick as stick longest. Shall we get some slaves?”

There was a muttering, and a grunting, and a clattering of chains as the wares got to their feet for inspection, each pair of eyes with its own mixture of shame, and fear, and hope, and hopelessness, and Yarvi found himself rubbing gently at the faint scars on his throat where his own collar used to sit. The stink of the place smothered him with memories he would much rather have forgotten. Strange, how quickly he had grown used to free air again.

“Prince Yarvi!” The proprietor hurried from the shadows at the back, a big man with a soft, pale face, faintly familiar. One of the procession who had groveled before Yarvi at his father’s howing up. Now he would have a chance to grovel again.

“I’m a prince no longer,” said Yarvi, “but, otherwise, yes. You’re Yoverfell?”

The flesh-dealer puffed up with pride at being known. “Indeed I am, and deeply honored by your visit! Might I ask what sort of slave you are—”

“Does the name Ankran mean much to you?”

The merchant’s eyes flickered to Rulf, standing grim and solid with his thumbs in his silver-buckled sword-belt. “Ankran?”

“Let me sharpen your memory as the reek of your shop has sharpened mine. You sold a man called Ankran, then extorted money from him to keep his wife and child safe.”

Yoverfell cleared his throat. “I have broken no law—”

“And nor will I when I call in your debts.”

The merchant’s face had drained of color. “I owe you nothing.…”

Yarvi chuckled. “Me? No. But my mother, Laithlin, soon to be once again the Golden Queen of Gettland and holder of the key to the treasury … I understand you do owe her a trifling debt?”

The knobble on the merchant’s scrawny throat bobbed as he swallowed. “I am my queen’s most humble servant—”

“Her slave, I’d call you. If you sold all you own it wouldn’t come close to covering what you owe her.”

“Her slave, then, why not?” Yoverfell gave a bitter snort. “Since you concern yourself with my business, it was because of the interest on her loans that I had to squeeze what I could from Ankran. I did not want to do it—”

“But you put your wishes aside,” said Yarvi. “How noble.”

“What do you want?”

“Let us begin with the woman and her child.”

“Very well.” Eyes on the ground, the merchant scraped away into the shadows. Yarvi looked across at Rulf, and the old warrior raised his brows, and about them the slaves looked on in silence. Yarvi thought one might be smiling.

He was not sure what he had been expecting. Outstanding beauty, or stunning grace, or something that struck him instantly to the heart. But Ankran’s family were an ordinary-looking pair. Most people are, of course, to those that don’t know them. The mother was small and slight with a defiant set to her jaw. The son was sandy-headed, as his father had been, and kept his eyes down.

Yoverfell ushered them forward, then plucked nervously at one of his hands with the other. “Healthy and well cared for, as promised. They are yours, of course, gifts, with my compliments.”

“Your compliments you can keep,” said Yarvi. “Now you will pack up here, and move your business to Vulsgard.”

“Vulsgard?”

“Yes. They have many flesh-dealers there, you will feel very much at home.”

“But why?”

“So you can keep an eye on the business of Grom-gil-Gorm. Know your enemy’s house better than your own, I’ve heard it said.”

Rulf gave an approving grunt, puffed out his chest a little and shifted his thumbs in his sword-belt.

“It’s that,” said Yarvi, “or find yourself being sold in your own shop. What price would you fetch, do you think?”

Yoverfell cleared his throat. “I will make the arrangements.”

“Quickly,” said Yarvi, and strode from the stink of that place to stand in the air and breathe, eyes closed.

“You … are our new owner, then?”

Ankran’s wife stood beside him, one finger wedged inside her collar.

“No. My name is Yarvi, this is Rulf.”

“We were friends of your husband,” said Rulf, ruffling the boy’s hair and causing him some discomfort.

“Were?” she asked. “Where is Ankran?”

Yarvi swallowed, wondering how to break that news, searching for the proper words—

“Dead,” said Rulf, simply.

“I’m sorry,” added Yarvi. “He died saving my life, which strikes even me as a poor trade. But you are free.”

“Free?” she muttered.

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to be free, I want to be safe.”

Yarvi blinked at that, then felt his mouth twitch into a sad smile. He had never wanted much more himself. “I daresay I could use a servant, if you’re willing to work.”

“I always have been that,” she said.

Yarvi stopped beside a smith’s shop, and flicked a coin over a trestle covered with boat-maker’s tools. One of the first coins of the new kind — round and perfect, and stamped on one side with his own mother’s frowning face.

“Strike their collars,” he said.

Ankran’s family gave no thanks for their freedom, but the ringing of hammer on chisel was thanks enough for Yarvi. Rulf watched with one foot up on a low wall and his forearms crossed upon his knee.

“I’m no high judge of righteousness.”

“Who is?”

“But I find this to be a good thing.”

“Don’t let anyone know, it might ruin my reputation.” Yarvi saw an old woman glaring at him from across the square, and he smiled back, and waved, and watched her scuttle muttering away. “It seems I’ve become the villain of this piece.”

“If life has taught me one thing, it’s that there are no villains. Only people, doing their best.”

“My best has proved disastrous.”

“Could’ve been far worse.” Rulf curled his tongue and spat. “And you’re young. Try again. Might be you’ll improve.”

Yarvi narrowed his eyes at the old warrior. “When did you become wise?”

“I’ve always been uncommonly insightful, but you were blinded by your own cleverness.”

“A common fault with kings. Hopefully I’m young enough to learn humility too.”

“It’s well one of us is.”

“And what will you do with your twilight years?” asked Yarvi.

“As it happens, the great King Uthil has offered me a place with his guard.”

“The stench of honor! You’ll accept?”

“I said no.”

“You did?”

“Honor’s a fool’s prize, and I’ve a feeling Uthil is the sort of master who’ll always have dead servants about him.”

“Wiser and wiser,” said Yarvi.

“Until recently I thought my life done, but now that it begins again I find I’ve no pressing desire to cut it short.” Yarvi looked sideways, and saw Rulf looking sideways back. “Thought maybe you could use an oarmate.”

“Me?”

“What could a one-handed minister and a rogue fifteen years past his best not achieve together?”

At a final blow the collar sprang open and Ankran’s son stood, blinking, and rubbing at his neck, and his mother took him in her arms and kissed his hair.

“I’m not alone,” murmured Yarvi.

Rulf put an arm around him and hugged him crushing tight. “Not while I’m alive, oarmate.”

IT WAS A GREAT AFFAIR.

Many powerful families in the far reaches of Gettland would be angered that news of King Uthil’s return had barely reached them before he was married, denying them the chance to have their importance noted at an event that would live so long in the memory.

No doubt the all-powerful High King on his high chair in Skekenhouse, not to mention the all-knowing Grandmother Wexen at his elbow, would be far from delighted at the news, as Mother Gundring was keen to point out.

But Yarvi’s mother brushed all objections away with an airy wave and said, “Their anger is dust to me.” She was the Golden Queen again. Once she had spoken, it was as a thing already done.

And so in the Godshall the statues were garlanded with the first flowers of spring, and the wedding gifts were heaped about the Black Chair in gaudy abundance, and the people were packed beneath the dome tight as sheep in winter quarters until the very air was misty with their breath.

The blessed couple sang promises to each other in the sight of gods and men, shafts of light from the dome above striking fire from the king’s burnished armor and the queen’s daunting jewels, and all applauded though Uthil’s singing voice was, in Yarvi’s opinion, not up to much and his mother’s little better. Then Brinyolf droned out the most elaborate blessing even that hallowed place had ever witnessed, while beside him Mother Gundring slumped ever more impatiently around her staff and every bell in the city sent up a merry clangor from below.

Oh, happy day!

How could Uthil not be pleased? He had the Black Chair and the best wife any man could ask for, coveted by the High King himself. How could Laithlin not be delighted? She had the jeweled key to the treasury of Gettland once again upon her chain and the priests of the One God dragged from her mint and whipped through Thorlby into the sea. How could the people of Gettland not rejoice? They had a king of iron and a queen of gold, rulers to trust in and be proud of. Rulers with poor singing voices, possibly, but two hands each.

In spite of all that happiness, though — or more likely because of it — Yarvi scarcely enjoyed the marriage of his mother more than he had the burning of his father. That event Yarvi had been unable to avoid. If anyone noticed him steal away from this one, no doubt they were not sad to see it.

The weather outside better suited his mood than the petal-scented warmth within. There was a seeking wind off the gray sea that day, and it moaned among the battlements of the citadel and cut at him with a salt rain as he wandered up the worn steps and along the empty walkways.

He saw her from far off, on the roof of the Godshall, clothes far too thin plastered to her with the rain, hair furiously whipping in the wind. He saw her in good time. He could have walked on and found another place to frown at the sky. But his feet led him toward her.

“Prince Yarvi,” she said as he came close, tearing a scrap from her bitten-down thumbnail with her teeth and spitting it into the wind. “What an honor.”

Yarvi sighed. There was a wearying pattern to the last few days. “I’m not a prince any more, Isriun.”

“No? Your mother is queen again, isn’t she? She has the key to the treasury of Gettland on her chain?” Her white hand strayed to her chest, where there was no key, no chain, nothing anymore. “What’s a queen’s son, if not a prince?”

“A crippled fool?” he muttered.

“You were that when we met, and no doubt always will be. Not to mention the child of a traitor.”

“Then we have more in common than ever,” snapped Yarvi, and saw her pale face twitch, and instantly regretted it. Had things been only a little different, it might have been the two of them raised up in glory down below. He in the Black Chair, she upon the stool beside him, eyes shining as she gently held his withered hand, as they shared that better kiss she had asked for on his return.…

But things were as they were. There would be no kisses today. Not today, not ever. He turned to look at the heaving sea, his fists bunched on the parapet. “I didn’t come to argue.”

“Why did you come?”

“I thought I should tell you, since …” He gritted his teeth, and looked down at his twisted hand, white on the wet stone. Since what? Since we were promised? Since we once meant something to each other? He could not bring himself to say the words. “I’m leaving for Skekenhouse. I’m taking the Minister’s Test. I’ll have no family, no birthright, and … no wife.”

She laughed into the wind. “And more in common yet. I’ve no friends, no dowry, and no father.” She turned to look at him then, and the hatred in her eyes made him feel sick. “They sank his body in the midden.”

Perhaps that should have made Yarvi glad. He had dreamed of it often enough, bent all his prayers and all his will toward it. Broken everything, and sacrificed his friend and his friendships for it. But looking into Isriun’s face, red eyes sunken in shadowed sockets, he felt no triumph.

“I’m sorry. Not for him, but for you.”

Her mouth twisted with contempt. “What do you think that’s worth to me?”

“Nothing. But I’m sorry still.” And he took his hands from the parapet, and turned his back on his betrothed, and walked toward the steps.

“I’ve sworn an oath!”

Yarvi paused. He wanted very much to leave that blasted roof and never return, but now the skin on his neck prickled, and he turned back despite himself. “Oh?”

“A sun-oath and a moon-oath.” Isriun’s eyes burned in her white face and her wet hair lashed at her. “I swore it before She Who Judges, and He Who Remembers, and She Who Makes Fast the Knot. My ancestors buried above the beach bore witness. He Who Watches and She Who Writes bore witness. Now you bear witness, Yarvi. It will be a chain upon me and a goad within me. I will be revenged upon the killers of my father. I have sworn it!”

She smiled a twisted smile, then. A mockery of the one she gave him when she left the Godshall on the day they were promised. “So you see, a woman can swear the same oath as a man.”

“If she’s fool enough,” said Yarvi, as he turned away.

The Lesser Evil

Mother Sun smiled even as she sank beneath the world on the evening Brother Yarvi came home.

The first day of summer, the Gettlanders had declared it, with cats basking on the hot roofs of Thorlby, the seabirds calling lazy to one another, the slightest breeze carrying a salt tang up the steep lanes and through the open windows of the city.

Through the door to Mother Gundring’s chambers too, when Yarvi finally managed to wrestle the heavy latch open with his crippled hand.

“The wanderer returns,” said the old minister, putting aside her book in a puff of dust.

“Mother Gundring.” Yarvi bowed low, and presented her with the cup.

“And you have brought me tea.” She closed her eyes, and sniffed the steam, then sipped, and swallowed. Her lined face broke into the smile which Yarvi had always felt so proud to see. “Things have not been the same without you.”

“You need never want for tea again, at least.”

“Then you passed the test?”

“Did you ever doubt?”

“Not I, Brother Yarvi, not I. And yet you wear a sword.” She frowned toward Shadikshirram’s blade, sheathed at his waist. “A kind word parries most blows.”

“I carry this for the others. It reminds me where I’ve come from. A minister stands for Father Peace, but a good one is no stranger to Mother War.”

“Hah! True enough.” Mother Gundring held out her hand to the stool on the other side of the firepit. The one where Yarvi had so often sat, following the old minister’s stories with rapt attention, learning tongues, and history, and the lore of plants, and the proper way to speak to a king. Could it really be only a few months since he last sat there? It seemed he had done so in a different world. In a dream.

And now he had woken.

“I am glad you are back,” said Mother Gundring, “and not just because of your tea. We have much to do in Thorlby.”

“I don’t think people love me here.”

Mother Gundring shrugged it off. “Already they forget. Folk have short memories.”

“The minister’s task is to remember.”

“And to advise, to heal, to speak truth and know the secret ways, to find the lesser evil and weigh the greater good, to smooth the path for Father Peace in every tongue, to spin tales—”

“Shall I spin a tale for you?”

“What manner of tale, Brother Yarvi?”

“A tale of blood and deceit, of money and murder, of treachery and power.”

Mother Gundring laughed, and took another sip from her cup. “The only sort I enjoy. Has it elves in it? Dragons? Trolls?”

Yarvi shook his head. “People can do all the evil we’ll need.”

“True again. Is it something you heard in Skekenhouse?”

“Partly. I’ve been working at this tale for a long time. Ever since that night my father died. But I think I have it now from start to end.”

“Knowing your talents it must be a fine tale indeed.”

“You will thrill to it, Mother Gundring.”

“Then begin!”

Yarvi sat forward, looking into the flames, rubbing at his twisted palm with his thumb. He had been rehearsing it ever since he passed the test, gave up his birthright, and was accepted into the Ministry. Ever since he kissed the cheek of Grandmother Wexen, looked into her eyes, found them brighter and hungrier than ever, and knew the truth. “I find I hardly know where to begin.”

“Set it up. Let’s have the background.”

“Good advice,” said Yarvi. “But yours always has been. So … a High King well past his youth, and a grandmother of the Ministry no closer to hers, most jealous of their power, as the powerful often are, looked to the north from Skekenhouse, and saw a threat to their majesty. Not a great man wielding iron and steel, but a great woman wielding gold and silver. A golden queen, with a plan to stamp coins all of one weight, so that every trade about the Shattered Sea would be made with her face.”

Mother Gundring sat back, the many lines on her forehead deepening as she considered. “This story has the smack of truth.”

“The best ones do. You taught me that.” Now that he was begun the words spilled out easily. “The High King and his minister saw the merchants leave their wharves for those of this northern queen, and their revenues shriveling month upon month, and their power shriveling with them. They had to act. But kill a woman who could spin gold from the air? No. Her husband was too proud and wrathful to be dealt with. Kill him, then, and topple the queen from her lofty perch and take her for their own, so she could spin gold for them. That was their plan.”

“Kill a king?” muttered Mother Gundring, staring hard at Yarvi over the rim of her cup.

He shrugged. “It’s how these stories often start.”

“But kings are cautious and well-guarded.”

“This one especially. They needed the help of someone he trusted.” Yarvi sat forward, the fire warm on his face. “And so they taught a bronze-feathered eagle a message. The king must die. And they sent it to his minister.”

Mother Gundring blinked, and very slowly swallowed another mouthful of tea. “A heavy task to give a minister, killing the man she was sworn to serve.”

“But was she not sworn to serve the High King and her grandmother too?”

“We all are,” whispered Mother Gundring. “You among us, Brother Yarvi.”

“Oh, I’m forever swearing oaths: I hardly know which ones to honor. This minister had the same trouble, but if a king sits between gods and men, the High King sits between gods and kings, and has been thinking himself higher yet, of late. She knew he would not be denied. So she fashioned a plan. Replace her king with a more reasonable brother. Trim away any troublesome heir. Blame some old enemy from the utmost north where even the thoughts of civilized men rarely stray. Say that a dove came from another minister with an offer of peace, and drew this rash king into an ambush.…”

“Perhaps that was the lesser evil,” said Mother Gundring. “Perhaps it was that or see Mother War spread her bloody wings across the whole Shattered Sea.”

“The lesser evil and the greater good.” Yarvi took a long breath, and it seemed to hurt deep in his chest, and he thought of the black birds blinking in Sister Owd’s cage. “Only the minister given the blame never used doves. Only crows.”

Mother Gundring paused with the cup halfway to her mouth. “Crows?”

“It is so often the small things overlooked that leave our schemes in ruins.”

“Oh, troublesome detail.” Mother Gundring’s eye twitched as she looked down at her tea and took a longer swallow, and for a while they sat in silence, only the happy crackle of the fire and the odd floating spark between them. “I thought you might untangle it in time,” she said. “But not so soon.”

Yarvi snorted. “Not before I died at Amwend.”

“That was never my choice,” said the old minister. She who had always been like a mother to him. “You were to take the test, and give up your birthright, and in time take my place as we had always planned. But Odem did not trust me. He moved too soon. I could not stop your mother putting you in the Black Chair.” She gave a bitter sigh. “And Grandmother Wexen would by no means have been satisfied with that result.”

“So you let me flounder into Odem’s trap.”

“With the deepest regret. I judged it the lesser evil.” She set her empty cup down beside her. “How does this story end, Brother Yarvi?”

“It already has. With the deepest regret.” He looked up from the flames and into her eyes. “And it is Father Yarvi now.”

The old minister frowned, first at him, then down at the cup he had brought her. “Black-tongue root?”

“I swore an oath, Mother Gundring, to be avenged on the killers of my father. I may be half a man, but I swore a whole oath.”

The flames in the firepit flickered then, their reflections dancing orange in the glass jars on the shelves.

“Your father and your brother,” croaked Mother Gundring. “Odem and his men. So many others. And now the Last Door opens for me. All … because of coins.”

She blinked then, and swayed toward the fire, and Yarvi started up and caught her gently with his left arm, and slipped the cushion behind her with his right, and eased her with great care back into her chair. “It seems coins can be most deadly.”

“I am sorry,” whispered Mother Gundring, her breath coming short.

“So am I. You will not find a sorrier man in all of Gettland.”

“I do not think so.” She gave the faintest smile. “You will make a fine minister, Father Yarvi.”

“I will try,” he said.

She did not answer.

Yarvi took a ragged breath, and brushed her eyelids closed, and crossed her withered hands in her lap, and slumped back sick and weary on his stool. He was still sitting there when the door banged wide and a figure blundered up the steps, setting the bunches of drying plants swinging like hanged men behind him.

One of the youngest warriors, newly past his tests. Younger even than Yarvi, firelight shifting on his beardless face as he loitered in the archway.

“King Uthil seeks an audience with his minister,” he said.

“Does he indeed?” Yarvi tossed the half-drunk tea into the firepit, then wrapped the fingers of his good hand about Mother Gundring’s staff. His staff, the elf-metal cold against his skin.

He stood. “Tell the king I am on my way.”