Half the World

The master-at-arms bunched his fists but Queen Laithlin spoke first. ‘What would be the punishment for such a murder?’

‘To be crushed with stones, my queen.’ The minister spoke calmly, as if they considered crushing a beetle, not a person, and that a person Brand had known most of his life. One he’d disliked almost as long, but even so.

‘Will anyone here speak for Thorn Bathu?’ thundered the king.

The echoes of his voice faded to leave the silence of a tomb. Now was the time to tell the truth. To do good. To stand in the light. Brand looked across the Godshall, the words tickling at his lips. He saw Rauk in his place, smiling. Sordaf too, his doughy face a mask. They didn’t make the faintest sound.

And nor did Brand.

‘It is a heavy thing to order the Death of one so young.’ Uthil stood from the Black Chair, mail rattling and skirts rustling as everyone but the queen knelt. ‘But we cannot turn from the right thing simply because it is a painful thing.’

Father Yarvi bowed still lower. ‘I will dispense your justice according to the law.’

Uthil held his hand out to Laithlin, and together they came down the steps of the dais. On the subject of Thorn Bathu, crushing with rocks was the last word.

Brand stared in sick disbelief. He’d been sure among all those lads someone would speak, for they were honest enough. Or Hunnan would tell his part in it, for he was a respected master-at-arms. The king or the queen would draw out the truth, for they were wise and righteous. The gods wouldn’t allow such an injustice to pass. Someone would do something.

Maybe, like him, they were all waiting for someone else to put things right.

The king walked stiffly, drawn sword cradled in his arms, his iron-grey stare wavering neither right nor left. The queen’s slightest nods were received like gifts, and with the odd word she let it be known that this person or that should enjoy the favour of visiting her counting house upon some deep business. They came closer, and closer yet.

Brand’s heart beat loud in his ears. His mouth opened. The queen turned her freezing gaze on him for an instant, and in shamed and shameful silence he let the pair of them sweep past.

His sister was always telling him it wasn’t up to him to put the world right. But if not him, who?

‘Father Yarvi!’ he blurted, far too loud, and then, as the minister turned towards him, croaked far too soft, ‘I need to speak to you.’

‘What about, Brand?’ That gave him a pause. He hadn’t thought Yarvi would have the vaguest notion who he was.

‘About Thorn Bathu.’

A long silence. The minister might only have been a few years older than Brand, pale-skinned and pale-haired as if the colour was washed out of him, so gaunt a stiff breeze might blow him away and with a crippled hand besides, but close up there was something chilling in the minister’s eye. Something that caused Brand to wilt under his gaze.

But there was no going back, now. ‘She’s no murderer,’ he muttered.

‘The king thinks she is.’

Gods, his throat felt dry, but Brand pressed on, the way a warrior was supposed to. ‘The king wasn’t on the sands. The king didn’t see what I saw.’

‘What did you see?’

‘We were fighting to win places on the raid—’

‘Never again tell me what I already know.’

This wasn’t running near as smoothly as Brand had hoped. But so it goes, with hopes. ‘Thorn fought me, and I hesitated … she should’ve won her place. But Master Hunnan set three others on her.’

Yarvi glanced towards the people flowing steadily out of the Godshall, and eased a little closer. ‘Three at once?’

‘Edwal was one of them. She never meant to kill him—’

‘How did she do against those three?’

Brand blinked, wrong-footed. ‘Well … she killed more of them than they did of her.’

‘That’s in no doubt. I was but lately consoling Edwal’s parents, and promising them justice. She is sixteen winters, then?’

‘Thorn?’ Brand wasn’t sure what that had to do with her sentence. ‘I … think she is.’

‘And has held her own in the square all this time against the boys?’ He gave Brand a look up and down. ‘Against the men?’

‘Usually she does better than hold her own.’

‘She must be very fierce. Very determined. Very hard-headed.’

‘From what I can tell her head’s bone all the way through.’ Brand realized he wasn’t helping and mumbled weakly, ‘But … she’s not a bad person.’

‘None are, to their mothers.’ Father Yarvi pushed out a heavy sigh. ‘What would you have me do?’

‘What … would I what?’

‘Do I free this troublesome girl and make enemies of Hunnan and the boy’s family, or crush her with stones and appease them? Your solution?’

Brand hadn’t expected to give a solution. ‘I suppose … you should follow the law?’

‘The law?’ Father Yarvi snorted. ‘The law is more Mother Sea than Father Earth, always shifting. The law is a mummer’s puppet, Brand, it says what I say it says.’

‘Just thought I should tell someone … well … the truth?’

‘As if the truth is precious. I can find a thousand truths under every autumn leaf, Brand: everyone has their own. But you thought no further than passing the burden of your truth to me, did you? My epic thanks, preventing Gettland sliding into war with the whole Shattered Sea gives me not enough to do.’

‘I thought … this was doing good.’ Doing good seemed of a sudden less a burning light before him, clear as Mother Sun, and more a tricking glimmer in the murk of the Godshall.

‘Whose good? Mine? Edwal’s? Yours? As we each have our own truth so we each have our own good.’ Yarvi edged a little closer, spoke a little softer. ‘Master Hunnan may guess you shared your truth with me, what then? Have you thought on the consequences?’

They settled on Brand now, cold as a fall of fresh snow. He looked up, saw the gleam of Rauk’s eye in the shadows of the emptying hall.

‘A man who gives all his thought to doing good, but no thought to the consequences …’ Father Yarvi lifted his withered hand and pressed its one crooked finger into Brand’s chest. ‘That is a dangerous man.’

And the minister turned away, the butt of his elf staff tapping against stones polished to glass by the passage of years, leaving Brand to stare wide-eyed into the gloom, more worried than ever.

He didn’t feel like he was standing in the light at all.

JUSTICE (#u2382b282-c063-5880-9d2c-9f02ec70241e)

Thorn sat and stared down at her filthy toes, pale as maggots in the darkness.

She had no notion why they took her boots. She was hardly going to run, chained by her left ankle to one damp-oozing wall and her right wrist to the other. She could scarcely reach the gate of her cell, let alone rip it from its hinges. Apart from picking the scabs under her broken nose till they bled, all she could do was sit and think.