Half the World

DEBTS AND PROMISES

Thorn’s eyes opened and it was dark.

The darkness beyond the Last Door?

She tried to move, and gasped at the pain.

Surely the one good thing about death was that the pain stopped?

She felt bandages across her face, remembered the jolt as Duke Mikedas’s knife punched through her mouth, gave a rusty groan, her throat dry as old bones.

She squinted toward a slit of brightness, fumbled back blankets and slowly, ever so slowly, swung her legs down, everything bruised and battered and stabbed through with cramps. She moaned as she tried to put weight on her left leg, pain catching fire in her thigh, creeping up into her back, down through her knee.

She hopped and she shuffled, clutching at the wall. Gods, the pain in her leg, but when she winced at that, gods, the pain in her face, and when she whimpered at that, gods, the pain in her chest, up her throat, in her eyes as the tears flowed, and she made it to that strip of light, the light under a door, and pawed it open.

She shuffled forward with one hand up to shield her sore eyes, like staring into the blinding sun even though it was only a single candle. A thick candle with long, jewelled pins stuck into the wax. She saw crumbling plaster, fallen clothes casting long shadows across the boards, the dark folds on a rumpled bed-

She froze. A dark-skinned back, a bare back, lean muscles shifting. She heard a slow grunting, a woman’s voice and a man’s, together, and Thorn saw a pale arm slip up that back, a long, wasted arm and on the end was a shrivelled hand with just one stump of a finger.

“Uh,” she croaked, eyes wide, and the woman’s head jerked around. Black hair across her face, and a scar through her top lip, and a notch of white tooth showing. Sumael, and with Father Yarvi underneath her.

“Uh.” Thorn couldn’t go forward, couldn’t go back, and she stared at the floor, burning with pain and embarrassment, trying to swallow but feeling as if she’d never have spit again in the aching hole of her mouth.

“You’re awake.” Father Yarvi scrambled from the bed and into his trousers.

“Am I?” she wanted to ask, but it came out, “Uh.”

“Back to bed before you set that leg bleeding.” And the minister slipped his arm around her and started helping her to hop and shuffle back toward the dark doorway.

Thorn couldn’t help glancing over her shoulder as they passed the threshold, saw Sumael stretched out naked as though nothing could be more ordinary, looking sideways at her through narrowed eyes.

“In pain?” asked Father Yarvi as he lowered her onto the bed.

“Uh,” she grunted.

Water sloshed into a cup, a spoon rattled as he mixed something in. “Drink this.”

It tasted beyond foul and her ripped mouth and her swollen tongue and her dry throat burned from it, but she fought it down, and at least she could make words afterward.

“I thought,” she croaked, as he swung her legs back into the bed and checked the bandages around her thigh, “you swore … an oath.”

“I swore too many. I must break some to keep another.”

“Who decides which ones you keep?”

“I’ll keep my first one.” And he closed the fingers of his good hand and made a fist of it. “To be revenged upon the killers of my father.”

She was growing drowsy. “I thought … you did that … long ago.”

“On some of them. Not all.” Yarvi pulled the blankets over her. “Sleep, now, Thorn.”

Her eyes drifted closed.

“Don’t get up.”

“Your radiance-”

“For God’s sake: Vialine.” The empress had some scratches across her cheek, but no other sign of her brush with Death.

“I should-” Thorn winced as she tried to sit and Vialine put her hand on her shoulder, and gently but very firmly pushed her back onto the bed.

“Don’t get up. Consider that an imperial edict.” For once, Thorn decided not to fight. “Are you badly hurt?”

She thought about saying no, but the lie would hardly have been convincing. She shrugged, and even that was painful. “Father Yarvi says I’ll heal.”

The empress looked down as though she was the one in pain, her hand still on Thorn’s shoulder. “You will have scars.”

“They’re expected on a fighter.”

“You saved my life.”

“They would have killed me first.”

“Then you saved both our lives.”

“Brand played his part, I hear.”

“And I have thanked him. But I have not thanked you.” Vialine took a long breath. “I have dissolved the alliance with the High King. I have sent birds to Grandmother Wexen. I have let her know that, regardless of what gods we pray to, the enemy of Gettland is my enemy, the friend of Gettland is my friend.”

Thorn blinked. “You’re too generous.”

“I can afford to be, now. My uncle ruled an empire within the empire, but without him it has fallen like an arch without its keystone. I have taken your advice. To strike swiftly, and without mercy. Traitors are being weeded out of my council. Out of my guard.” There was a hardness in her face, and just then Thorn was glad she was on Vialine’s right side. “Some have fled the city, but we will hunt them down.”

“You will be a great empress,” croaked Thorn.

“If my uncle has taught me anything, it is that an empress is only as great as those around her.”

“You have Sumael, and you-”

Vialine’s hand squeezed her shoulder, and she looked down with that earnest, searching gaze. “Would you stay?”

“Stay?”

“As my bodyguard, perhaps? Queens have them, do they not, in the North? What do you call them?”

“A Chosen Shield,” whispered Thorn.

“As your father was. You have proved yourself more than qualified.”

A Chosen Shield. And to the Empress of the South. To stand at the shoulder of the woman who ruled half the world. Thorn fumbled for the pouch around her neck, felt the old lumps inside, imagining her father’s pride to hear of it. What songs might be sung of that in the smoky inns, and in the narrow houses, and in the high Godshall of Thorlby?

And at that thought a wave of homesickness surged over Thorn, so strong she nearly choked. “I have to go back. I miss the gray cliffs. I miss the gray sea. I miss the cold.” She felt tears in her eyes, then, and blinked them away. “I miss my mother. And I swore an oath.”

“Not all oaths are worth keeping.”

“You keep an oath not for the oath but for yourself.” Her father’s words, whispered long ago beside the fire. “I wish I could split myself in half.”

Vialine sucked at her teeth. “Half a bodyguard would be no good to me. But I knew what your answer would be. You are not one to be held, Thorn Bathu, even with a gilded chain. Perhaps one day you will come back of your own accord. Until then, I have a gift for you. I could only find one worthy of the service you have done me.”

And she brought out something that cast pale light across her face, and struck a spark in her eyes, and stopped Thorn’s breath in her throat. The elf-bangle that Skifr had dug from the depths of Strokom, where no man had dared tread since the Breaking of God. The gift the South Wind had carried all the long road down the Divine and the Denied. A thing too grand for an empress to wear.

“Me?” Thorn wriggled up the bed in an effort to get away from it. “No! No, no, no!”

“It is mine to give, well-earned and freely given.”

“I can’t take it-”

“One does not refuse the Empress of the South.” Vialine’s voice had iron in it, and she raised her chin and glared down her nose at Thorn with an authority that was not to be denied. “Which hand?”

Thorn mutely held out her left, and Vialine slipped the elf-bangle over it and folded the bracelet shut with a final sounding click, the light from its round window glowing brighter, shifting to blue-white, metal perfect as a cut jewel gleaming, and circles within circles slowly shifting beneath the glass. Thorn stared at it with a mixture of awe and horror. A relic beyond price. Beautiful beyond words. Sitting now, on her ridiculous bony wrist, with the bizarre magnificence of a diamond on a dung-heap.

Vialine smiled, and finally let go of her shoulder. “It looks well on you.”

The shears click-clicked over the left side of Thorn’s scalp and the hair fluttered down onto her shoulder, onto her bandaged leg, onto the cobbles of the yard.

“Do you remember when I first clipped your head?” asked Skifr. “You howled like a wolf cub!”

Thorn picked up a tuft of hair and blew it from her fingers. “Seems you can get used to anything.”

“With enough work.” Skifr tossed the shears aside and brushed the loose hair away. “With enough sweat, blood, and training.”

Thorn worked her tongue around the unfamiliar inside of her mouth, rough with the stitches, and leaned forward to spit pink. “Blood I can give you.” She grimaced as she stretched her leg out, the elf-bangle flaring angry purple with her pain. “But training might be difficult right now.”

Skifr sat, one arm about Thorn’s shoulders, rubbing her hand over her own stubbled hair. “We have trained for the last time, my dove.”

“What?”

“I have business I must attend to. I have ignored my own sons, and daughters, and grandsons, and granddaughters too long. And only the most wretched of fools would dare now deny that I have done what Father Yarvi asked of me, and made you deadly. Or helped you make yourself deadly, at least.”

Thorn stared at Skifr, an empty feeling in her stomach. “You’re leaving?”

“Nothing lasts forever. But that means I can tell you things I could not tell you before.” Skifr folded her in a tight, strange-smelling hug. “I have had twenty-two pupils in all, and never been more proud of one than I am of you. None worked so hard. None learned so fast. None had such courage.” She leaned back, holding Thorn at arm’s length. “You have proved yourself strong, inside and out. A loyal companion. A fearsome fighter. You have earned the respect of your friends and the fear of your enemies. You have demanded it. You have commanded it.”

“But …” muttered Thorn, rocked far more by compliments than blows, “I’ve still got so much to learn …”

“A fighter is never done learning. But the best lessons one teaches oneself. It is time for you to become the master.” And Skifr held out her ax, letters in five languages etched on the bearded blade. “This is for you.”

Thorn had dreamed of owning a weapon like that. A thing fit for a hero’s song. Now she took it numbly, and laid it on her lap, and looked down at the bright blade. “To the fighter, everything must be a weapon,” she muttered. “What will I do without you?”

Skifr leaned close, her eyes bright, and gripped her tight. “Anything! Everything! I am no mean prophet and I foresee great things for you!” Her voice rose higher and higher, louder and louder, and she pointed one clawing finger toward the sky. “We will meet again, Thorn Bathu, on the other side of the Last Door, if not on this one, and I will thrill to the tales of your high deeds, and swell with pride that I played my own small part in them!”

“Damn right you will,” said Thorn, sniffing back her tears. She had held this strange woman in contempt. She had hated her, and feared her, and cursed her name all down the Divine and the Denied. And now she loved her like a mother.

“Be well, my dove. Even more, be ready.” Skifr’s hand darted out but Thorn caught it by the wrist before it could slap her and held it trembling between them.

Skifr smiled wide. “And always strike first.”

Father Yarvi smiled as he peeled away the bandages. “Good. Very good.” He pressed gently at the sore flesh of her cheeks with his fingertips. “You are healing well. Walking already.”

“Lurching like a drunk already.”

“You are lucky, Thorn. You are very lucky.”

“Doubtless. Not every girl gets to be stabbed through the face.”

“And by a duke of royal blood too!”

“The gods have smiled on me, all right.”

“It could have been through your eye. It could have been through your neck.” He started to bathe her face with a flannel that smelled of bitter herbs. “On the whole I would prefer to be scarred than dead, wouldn’t you?”

Thorn pushed her tongue into the salty hole her missing tooth had left. It was hard to think of herself as lucky just then. “How are the scars? Tell me the truth.”

“They will take time to heal, but I think they will heal well. A star on the left and an arrow on the right. There must be some significance in that. Skifr might have told us, she had an eye for portents-”

Thorn did not need Skifr to see into her face’s future. “I’ll be monstrous, won’t I?”

“I know of people with uglier deformities.” And Yarvi put his withered hand under her nose and let the one finger flop back and forth. “Next time, avoid the blade.”

She snorted. “Easily said. Have you ever fought seven men?”

Drops trickled into the steaming bowl as he wrung out the flannel, the water turning a little pink. “I could never beat one.”

“I saw you win a fight once.”

He paused. “Did you indeed?”

“When you were king, I saw you fight Keimdal in the square.” He stared at her for a moment, caught for once off-balance. “And when you lost, you asked to fight him again, and sent your mother’s Chosen Shield in your place. And Hurik ground Keimdal’s face into the sand on your behalf.”

“A warrior fights,” murmured Yarvi. “A king commands.”

“So does a minister.”

He started to smear something on her face that made the stitches sting. “I remember you now. A dark-haired girl, watching.”

“Even then you were a deep-cunning man.”

“I have had to be.”

“Your trip to the First of Cities has turned out better than anyone could’ve hoped.”

“Thanks to you.” He unwound a length of bandage. “You have done what no diplomat could achieve, and made an ally of the Empire of the South. Almost enough to make me glad I didn’t crush you with rocks. And you have your reward.” He tapped at the elf-bangle, its faint light showing through her sleeve.

“I’d give it back if I could open it.”

“Skifr says it cannot be opened. But you should wear it proudly. You have earned it, and more besides. I may not be my mother’s son any longer, but I still have her blood. I remember my debts, Thorn. Just as you remember yours.”

“I’ve had a lot of time for remembering, the last few days. I’ve been remembering Throvenland.”

“Another alliance that no one could have hoped for.”

“You have a habit of coming away with them. I’ve been thinking about the man who poisoned the water.”

“The man you killed?”

Thorn fixed his pale blue eye with hers. “Was he your man?”

Father Yarvi’s face showed no surprise, no confirmation and no denial. He wound the bandages around her head as if she had not spoken.

“A deep-cunning man,” she went on, “in need of allies, knowing King Fynn’s ready temper, might have staged such a thing.”

He pushed a pin gently through the bandages to hold them firm. “And a hot-headed girl, a thorn in the world’s arse, not knowing anything, might have got herself caught up in the gears of it.”

“It could happen.”

“You are not without some cunning of your own.” Father Yarvi put the bandages and the knife carefully away in his bag. “But you must know a deep-cunning man would never lay bare his schemes. Not even to his friends.” He patted her on the shoulder, and stood. “Keep your lies as carefully as your winter grain, my old teacher used to tell me. Rest, now.”

“Father Yarvi?” He turned back, a black shape in the bright outline of the door. “If I hadn’t killed that poisoner … who would have drunk the water?”

A silence, then, and with the light behind him she could not see his face. “Some questions are best not asked, Thorn. And certainly best not answered.”

“Rulf’s been getting the crew back together.” Brand pushed some invisible dust around with the toe of his boot. “Few new men but mostly the same old faces. Koll can’t wait to get started carving the other side of the mast, he says. And Dosduvoi’s thinking of preaching the word of the One God up north. Fror’s with us too.”

Thorn touched a finger to her bandages. “Reckon folk’ll be asking me how I got the scars, now, eh?”

“Hero’s marks,” said Brand, scratching at the ones that snaked up his own forearms. “Marks of a great deed.”

“And it’s hardly like my looks were ever my strongest point, is it?” Another awkward silence. “Father Yarvi says you killed Duke Mikedas.”

Brand winced as though the memory was far from pleasant. “The ground killed him. I just made the introduction.”

“You don’t sound proud of it.”

“No. Not sure I’m touched by Mother War like you are. Don’t have your …”

“Fury?”

“I was going to say courage. Anger I’ve got plenty of. Just wish I didn’t.”

“Father Yarvi says you carried me back. He says you saved my life.”

“Just what an oar-mate does.”

“Thanks for doing it, even so.”

He stared at the ground, chewing at his lip, and finally looked up at her. “I’m sorry. For whatever I did. For …” He had that helpless look of his again, but rather than making her want to hold him, it made her want to hit him. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” she grated out. “Just the way things are.”

“I wish they were a different way.”

“So do I.” She was too tired, too sore, too hurting inside and out to try and make it pretty. “Not as if you can make yourself like someone, is it?”

“Guess not,” he said in a meek little voice that made her want to hit him even more. “Been through a lot together, you and me. Hope we can be friends, still.”

She made her voice cold. Cold and sharp as a drawn blade. It was that or she might set to crying and she wouldn’t do it. “Don’t think that’ll work for me, Brand. Don’t see how this just goes back the way it was.”

His mouth gave a sorry twist at that. As if he was the one hurt. Guilt, more than likely, and she hoped it stung. Hoped it stung half as much as she did. “Up to you.” He turned his back on her. “I’ll be there. If you need me.”

The door shut, and she bared her teeth at it, and that made her face ache, and she felt tears in her eyes, and dashed them hard away. Wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair at all, but she guessed love’s even less fair than the battlefield.

To fool herself once was once too often. She had to rip those hopes up before they could take root. She had to kill the seeds. As soon as she could she limped off to find Rulf and asked for a different oar to pull on the way back home.

Owed her that much, didn’t they?