Half a War

‘Tell me about them,’ she said.

‘What do you want to know?’

Knowledge is power, Mother Kyre used to say when Skara complained about her endless lessons. ‘I want to know everything.’

For Both of Us (#ulink_da045cbf-eddd-5af2-bc77-1db2a3ea68a4)

Raith woke with a mad jolt to find someone pawing at him.

He grabbed that bastard around the throat and slammed him against the wall, snarling as he whipped his knife out.

‘Gods, Raith! It’s me! It’s me!’

Wasn’t until then Raith saw, in the flickering light of the torch just down the corridor, that he’d got his brother pinned and was about to cut his throat.

His heart was hammering. Took him a moment to work out he was in the citadel in Thorlby. In the corridor outside Gorm’s door, tangled with his blanket. Just where he was meant to be.

‘Don’t wake me like that,’ he snapped, forcing the fingers of his left hand open. They always ached worst just after he woke.

‘Wake you?’ whispered Rakki. ‘You would’ve woken the whole of Thorlby the way you were shouting out. You dreaming again?’

‘No,’ grunted Raith, sitting back against the wall and scrubbing at the sides of his head with his nails. ‘Maybe.’ Dreams full of fire. The smoke pouring up and the stink of destruction. Mad light in the eyes of the warriors, the eyes of the dogs. Mad light on that woman’s face. Her voice, as she shrieked for her children.

Rakki offered him a flask and Raith snatched it from him, rinsed out his mouth, cut and sore inside and out from Gorm’s slaps, but that was nothing new. He sloshed water into his hand, rubbed it over his face. He was cold with sweat all over.

‘I don’t like this, Raith. I’m worried for you.’

‘You, worried for me?’ Gorm’s sword must’ve been knocked clear in the scuffle, and Raith took it up, hugged it to his chest. If the king saw he’d let it lie in the cold he’d get another slap, and maybe worse. ‘That’s a new one.’

‘No, it isn’t. I’ve been worried for you a long time.’ Rakki glanced nervously towards the door of the king’s chamber, let his voice drop soft and eager as he leaned forward. ‘We could just go. We could find a ship to take us down the Divine and the Denied, like you always talk of. Like you used to talk of, anyway.’

Raith nodded towards the door. ‘You think he’d let us just go? You think Mother Scaer would wave us off smiling?’ He snorted. ‘I thought you were supposed to be the clever one. It’s a pretty dream, but there’s no going back. You forgotten what things were like before? Being hungry, and cold, and afraid all the time?’

‘You’re not afraid all the time?’ Rakki’s voice was so small it brought Raith’s anger boiling up and chased the terror of his dreams away. Anger was the answer to most problems, when it came to it.

‘No I’m not!’ he snarled, shaking Gorm’s sword and making his brother flinch. ‘I’m a warrior, and I’m going to win a name for myself in this war, and enough ring-money we’ll never be hungry again. This is my right place. Fought for it, haven’t I?’

‘Aye, you’ve fought for it.’

‘We serve a king!’ Raith tried to feel the same pride he used to. ‘The greatest warrior in the Shattered Sea. Unbeaten in duel or battle. You like to pray. Give thanks to Mother War that we stand with the winners!’

Rakki stared at him across the hallway, his back against Gorm’s war-scarred shield, his eyes wide and glistening with the torchlight. Strange, how his face could be so like Raith’s but his expression so different. Sometimes seemed they were two prow-beasts carved alike, forever stuck to the same ship but always looking opposite ways.

‘There’s going to be killing,’ he muttered. ‘More than ever.’

‘Reckon so,’ said Raith, and he lay down, turning his back on his brother, hugging Gorm’s sword against him and drawing the blanket over his shoulder. ‘It’s a war, ain’t it?’

‘I just don’t like killing.’

Raith tried to sound like it was nothing, and couldn’t quite get there. ‘I can kill for both of us.’

A silence. ‘That’s what scares me.’

Clever Hands (#ulink_f40f7892-a961-5249-bb84-5e7e18320e5f)

Koll tapped out the last rune and smiled as he blew a puff of wood-dust away. The scabbard was finished, and he was good and proud of the outcome.

He’d always loved working with wood, which kept no secrets and told no lies and having been carved never came uncarved. Not like minister’s work, all smoke and guesses. Words were trickier tools than chisels, and people changeable as Mother Sea.

His back prickled as Rin reached around his shoulder, tracing one of the lines of runes with a fingertip. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Five names of Mother War.’

‘Gods, it’s fine work.’ Her hand slid down the dark wood, lingering on the carved figures, and animals, and trees, all flowing one into another. ‘You’ve got clever hands, Koll. None cleverer.’

She slipped the chape she’d made onto the scabbard’s point, bright steel hammered to look like a serpent’s head, fitting his work as perfectly as a key fits a lock. ‘Look at the beautiful things we can make together.’ Her iron-blackened fingers slid into the gaps between his wood-browned ones. ‘Meant to be, isn’t it? My sword. Your sheath.’ He felt her other hand sliding across his thigh and gave a little shiver. ‘And the other way around …’

‘Rin—’

‘All right, more dagger than sword.’ He could hear the laughter in her voice, could feel it tickling his neck. He loved it when she laughed.

‘Rin, I can’t. Brand’s like a brother to me—’

‘Don’t lie with Brand. Problem solved.’

‘I’m Father Yarvi’s apprentice.’

‘Don’t lie with Father Yarvi.’ He felt her lips brush his neck and send a sweaty shudder down his back.

‘He saved my mother’s life. Saved my life. He set us free.’

Her lips were at his ear now, her whisper so loud it made him hunch his shoulders, the weights rattling on their thong around his neck. ‘How did he set you free if you can’t make your own choices?’

‘I owe him, Rin.’ He could feel her chest pressing against his back with each breath. Her fingers had curled round to grip his hand tight. She was as strong as he was. Stronger, probably. He had to shut his eyes to think straight. ‘When this war’s done I’ll take the Minister’s Test, and swear the Minister’s Oath, and I’ll be Brother Koll, and have no family, no wife— ah.’

Her hand slid down between his legs. ‘Till then what’s stopping you?’

‘Nothing.’ He twisted around, pushing his free hand into her short-chopped hair and dragging her close. They laughed and kissed at once, hungrily, sloppily, stumbling against a bench and knocking a clutch of tools clattering across the floor.

It always ended up this way when he came here. That was why he kept coming.

Slick as a salmon she twisted free of him, darted to the clamp and snatched up her whetstone, peering down at the blade she was working on as if she’d done nothing else all morning.

Koll blinked. ‘What are—’

The door clattered open and Brand walked in, Koll marooned in the middle of the floor with a great tent in his trousers.

‘Hey, Koll,’ said Brand. ‘What’re you doing here?’