Half a War

‘Came to finish the scabbard,’ he croaked, face burning as he turned quickly back to his table and brushed some shavings onto the floor.

‘Let’s see it.’ Brand put an arm around Koll’s shoulder. Gods, it was a big arm, heavy with muscle, rope scar coiling up the wrist. Koll remembered seeing Brand take the weight of a ship across his shoulders, a ship that had been on the point of crushing Koll dead, as it happened. Then he wondered what it’d be like getting punched by that arm if Brand found out everything his sister and Koll were up to. He swallowed with more than a little difficulty.

But Brand only pushed the stray hair out of his face and grinned. ‘Beautiful work. You’re blessed, Koll. Same gods as blessed my sister.’

‘She’s … a deeply spiritual girl.’ Koll shifted awkwardly to get his trousers settled while Rin stuck her lips out in a mad pout behind her brother’s back.

Gods, Brand was oblivious. Strong and loyal and good humoured as a cart-horse, but for obliviousness he set new standards. Probably you couldn’t be married to Thorn Bathu without learning to let a lot of things drift past.

‘How’s Thorn?’ asked Koll, aiming at a distraction.

Brand paused as if that was a puzzle that took considerable thought. ‘Thorn is Thorn. But I knew that when I married her.’ He gave Koll that helpless grin of his. ‘Wouldn’t have it any other way.’

‘Can’t be the easiest person to live with.’

‘I’ll let you know if it happens. She’s half her time with the queen and half the rest training harder than ever, so I tend to get her asleep or ready to argue.’ He scratched wearily at the back of his head. ‘Still, I knew that when I married her too.’

‘Can’t be the easiest person not to live with.’

‘Huh.’ Brand stared off into space like a veteran still struggling to make sense of the horrors he’d seen. ‘She surely can cook a fight from the most peaceful ingredients. But nothing worth doing is easy. I love her in spite of it. I love her because of it. I love her.’ And his face broke out in that grin again. ‘Every day’s a new adventure, that’s for sure.’

There was a harsh knocking at the door and Brand shook himself and went to answer. Rin mimed blowing a kiss and Koll mimed clutching it to his heart and Rin mimed puking all over her work-bench. He loved it when she did that.

‘Good to see you, Brand.’ Koll looked up, surprised to see his master in Rin’s forge.

‘Likewise, Father Yarvi.’

You get a special kind of kinship when you take a long journey with a man, and though Brand and Yarvi could hardly have been less alike they hugged each other, and the minister slapped the smith’s broad back affectionately with his withered hand.

‘How are things in the blade business?’ he called to Rin.

‘Men always need good blades, Father Yarvi,’ she said. ‘And the word business?’

‘Men always need good words too.’ The minister traded his smile for the usual sternness when he looked at Koll. ‘I had a feeling you’d be here. It’s past midday.’

‘Already?’ Koll pulled his apron off, got caught in the straps, tore free and tossed it down, slapping the wood dust from his hands.

‘Usually the apprentice comes to the master.’ The tip of the minister’s elf-metal staff rang against the floor as he walked over. ‘You are my apprentice, aren’t you?’

‘Of course, Father Yarvi,’ said Koll, shifting guiltily away from Rin.

Yarvi narrowed his eyes as he glanced from one of them to the other, plainly missing nothing. Few men were less oblivious than he. ‘Tell me you fed the doves.’

‘And cleaned out their cages, and sorted the new herbs, and read twenty more pages of Mother Gundring’s history of Gettland, and learned fifty words in the tongue of Kalyiv.’ Koll’s endless questions had always driven his mother mad, but studying for the Ministry he had so many answers he felt his head was going to burst.

‘The food of fear is ignorance, Koll. The death of fear is knowledge. What about the movements of the stars? Did you copy the charts I gave you?’

Koll clutched at his head. ‘Gods, I’m sorry, Father Yarvi. I’ll do it later.’

‘Not today. The great moot begins in an hour and there is a cargo that needs unloading first.’

Koll looked hopefully at Brand. ‘I’m not much at shifting boxes—’

‘Jars. And they need shifting very carefully. A gift from the Empress Vialine, brought all the way up the Denied and the Divine.’

‘A gift from Sumael, you mean?’ said Brand.

‘A gift from Sumael.’ Father Yarvi had a faraway grin at the name. ‘A weapon for us to use against the High King …’ He trailed off as he stepped between Koll and Rin, balanced his staff in the crook of his arm and with his good hand lifted up the scabbard, turning it to the light to peer at the carvings.

‘Mother War,’ he murmured. ‘Mother of Crows. She Whose Feathers Are Swords. She Who Gathers the Dead. She Who Makes the Open Hand a Fist. Did you carve this?’

‘Who else is good enough?’ asked Rin. ‘Scabbard’s just as important as the blade. A good sword’s rarely drawn. It’s this folk’ll see.’

‘When you finally swear your Minister’s Oath, Koll, it will be a loss to wood-carving.’ Yarvi gave a weighty sigh. ‘But you cannot change the world with a chisel.’

‘You can change it a little,’ said Rin, folding her arms as she looked up at the minister. ‘And for the better.’

‘His mother asked me to make him the best man he could be.’

Koll shook his head frantically behind his master’s back, but Rin was not to be shut up. ‘Some of us quite like the man he is,’ she said.

‘And is that all you want, Koll? To carve wood?’ Father Yarvi tossed the scabbard rattling down on the bench and put his withered hand on Koll’s shoulder. ‘Or do you want to stand at the shoulder of kings, and guide the course of history?’

Koll blinked from one of them to the other. Gods, he didn’t want to let either of them down, but what could he do? Father Yarvi set him free. And what slave’s son wouldn’t want to stand at the shoulder of kings and be safe, and respected, and powerful?

‘History,’ he muttered, looking guiltily at the floor. ‘I reckon …’

Friends Like These (#ulink_e75a3390-a178-5cc9-826d-9fda46046293)

Raith was bored out of his mind.

Wars were meant to be a matter of fighting. And a war against the High King surely the biggest fight a man could ever hope for. But now he learned the bigger the war, the more it was all made of talk. Talk, and waiting, and sitting on your arse.

The high folk sat around three long tables set in a horseshoe, status proclaimed by the value of their drinking cups – the Vanstermen on one side, the Gettlanders opposite, and in the middle a dozen chairs for the Throvenmen. Empty chairs, because the Throvenmen hadn’t come, and Raith wished he’d followed their example.

Father Yarvi droned on. ‘Seven days ago I met with a representative of Grandmother Wexen.’

‘I should have been there!’ Mother Scaer snapped back.

‘I wish you could have been, but there was no time.’ Yarvi showed his one good palm as if you could never find a fairer man than he. ‘But you did not miss much. Mother Adwyn tried to kill me.’

‘I like her already,’ Raith whispered to his brother and made him snigger.

Raith would sooner have bedded a scorpion than traded ten words with that one-fisted bastard. Rakki had taken to calling him the Spider, and no doubt he was lean and subtle and poisonous. But unless you were a fly, spiders would let you be. Father Yarvi’s webs were spun for men and there was no telling who’d be trapped in them.

His apprentice was little better. A lanky boy with scarecrow hair, a patchy prickling of beard no particular colour and a twitchy, jumpy, blinky way about him. Grinning, always grinning like he was everyone’s friend but Raith was nowhere near won over. A look of fury, a look of pain, a look of hatred you can trust. A smile can hide anything.

Raith let his head hang back while the voices burbled on, staring up at the great domed ceiling of the Godshall. Quite a building, but aside from setting them on fire he didn’t have much use for buildings. The statues of the Tall Gods frowned down disapprovingly from on high and Raith sneered back. Aside from the odd half-hearted prayer to Mother War he didn’t have much use for gods either.