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Mother Gundring unwrapped the sacred cloth and Yarvi snatched free his good hand, sticky-pink and tingling. His uncle seized him by the shoulders and said into his ear, ‘Well done!’, though Yarvi had done nothing but stand there and sing some promises he hardly understood.
The guests filed out, and Brinyolf closed the doors of the hall with an echoing clap, leaving Yarvi and Isriun alone with the gods, the Black Chair, the weight of their uncertain future, and an ocean of awkward silence.
Isriun rubbed gently at the hand that had held Yarvi’s, and looked at the floor. He looked at the floor too, not that there was anything so very interesting down there. He cleared his throat. He shifted his sword-belt. It still hung strangely on him. He felt as if it always would. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, at last.
She looked up, one eye shining in the heavy darkness. ‘Why are you sorry?’ Then she remembered to add uncertainly, ‘my king?’
He almost said That you’ll have half a man for a husband, but settled for, ‘That you’re passed around my family like a feast-day cup.’
‘On feast-day, everyone’s happy to get the cup.’ She gave a bitter little smile. ‘I’m the one who should be sorry. Imagine me a queen.’ And she snorted as though there never was a more foolish joke.
‘Imagine me a king.’
‘You are a king.’
He blinked at that. He had been so fixed on his shortcomings it had never occurred she might be fixed on her own. That thought, as the misery of others often can, made him feel just a little better.
‘You manage your father’s household.’ He looked down at the golden key hanging on her chest. ‘That’s no small task.’
‘But a queen manages the business of a country! Everyone says your mother has a high art at it. Laithlin, the Golden Queen!’ She spoke the name like a magic spell. ‘They say she’s owed a thousand thousand favours, that a debt to her is a matter for pride. They say her word is valued higher than gold among merchants, because gold may go down in worth but her word never does. They say some traders of the far north have given up praying to the gods and worship her instead.’ She spoke faster and faster, and chewed at her nails, and tugged at one thin hand with the other, eyes opening very wide. ‘There’s a rumour she lays silver eggs.’
Yarvi had to laugh. ‘I’m reasonably sure that one’s false.’
‘But she’s raised granaries and had channels dug and brought more earth under the plough so there’ll never again be a famine that forces folk to draw lots to see who must find new homes across the sea.’ Isriun’s shoulders drifted up as she spoke until they were hunched about her ears. ‘And people flock to Thorlby from across the world to trade, so the city’s tripled in size and split its walls and your mother’s built new walls and split them again.’
‘True, but—’
‘I’ve heard she has a mighty scheme to stamp every coin of one weight, and these coins will pass through all the lands about the Shattered Sea, so that every trade will be made with her face, and make her richer even than the High King in Skekenhouse! How will … I?’ Isriun’s shoulders slumped and she flicked at the key on her chest and set it swinging by its chain. ‘How can the likes of me—’
‘There’s always a way.’ Yarvi caught Isriun’s hand in his before she could get her vanishing nails to her teeth again. ‘My mother will help you. She’s your aunt, isn’t she?’
‘She’ll help me?’ Instead of pulling her hand away she drew him closer by it. ‘Your father may have been a great warrior but I rather think he was your less fearsome parent.’
Yarvi smiled, but he did not deny it. ‘You were luckier. My uncle’s always as calm as still water.’
Isriun glanced nervously towards the door. ‘You don’t know my father like I do.’
‘Then … I’ll help you.’ He had held her hand half the morning and it could have been a dead fish in his clammy palm. Now it felt like something else entirely – strong, and cool, and very much alive. ‘Isn’t that the point of a marriage?’
‘Not just that.’ She seemed suddenly very close, taper-light reflected in the corners of her eyes, teeth shining between parted lips.
There was a smell to her, not sweet and not sour, he could not name it. Faint, but it made his heart jump.
He did not know if he should close his eyes, then she did, so he did, and their noses bumped awkwardly.
Her breath tickled at his cheek and made his skin flush hot. Frighteningly hot.
Her lips just barely brushed his and he broke away with all the dignity of a startled rabbit, caught his leg on his sword and nearly fell over it.
‘Sorry,’ she said, shrinking back and staring at the floor.
‘It’s me who should be sorry.’ For a king Yarvi spent a great deal of his time apologizing. ‘I’m the sorriest man in Gettland. No doubt my brother gave you a better kiss. More practice … I suppose.’
‘All your brother did was talk about the battles he’d win,’ she muttered at her feet.
‘No danger of that with me.’ He could not have said why he did it – to shock her, or as revenge for the failed kiss, or simply to be honest – but he held up his crooked hand, shaking his sleeve free so it was between them in all its ugliness.
He expected her to flinch, to pale, to step away, but she only looked thoughtfully at it. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘Not really … sometimes.’
She reached out, then, sliding her fingers around his knobbled knuckles and pressing at the crooked palm with her thumb while the breath stopped in his throat. No one had ever touched that hand as if it was just a hand. A piece of flesh with feelings like any other.
‘I heard you beat Keimdal in the square even so,’ she said.
‘I only gave the order. I learned a long time ago that I’m not much good at fair fights.’
‘A warrior fights,’ she said, looking him in the eye. ‘A king commands.’ And with a grin she drew him up the dais. He went uneasily, for even though this was his hall, with every step he felt more like a trespasser.
‘The Black Chair,’ he muttered as they reached it.
‘Your chair,’ said Isriun, and to his horror she reached out and swept her fingertips down the perfect metal of the arm with a hiss that made Yarvi’s skin prickle. ‘Hard to believe it’s the oldest thing here. Made by the hands of elves before the Breaking of the World.’
‘You’re interested in the elves?’ he squeaked, terrified she might make him touch it or, more awful yet, sit in it, and desperate for a distraction.
‘I’ve read every book Mother Gundring has about them,’ she said.
Yarvi blinked. ‘You read?’
‘I once trained to be a minister. I was Mother Gundring’s apprentice, before you. Bound for a life of books, and plants, and soft words spoken.’
‘She never said so.’ It seemed they had more in common than he had imagined.
‘I was promised to your brother, and that was the end of it. We must do what’s best for Gettland.’
They gave much the same sigh at much the same time. ‘So everyone tells me,’ said Yarvi. ‘We’ve both lost the Ministry.’
‘But gained each other. And we’ve gained this.’ Her eyes shone as she gave the perfect curve of the Black Chair’s arm one last stroke. ‘No mean wedding present.’ Her light fingertips slipped from the metal and onto the back of his hand, and he found that he very much liked having them there. ‘We were meant to discuss when we’ll be married.’
‘As soon as I get back,’ he said, voice slightly hoarse.
She gave his withered hand one last squeeze then let it fall. ‘I’ll expect a better kiss after your victory, my king.’
As he watched her walk away Yarvi was almost glad neither one of them had joined the Ministry. ‘I’ll try not to trip over my sword!’ he called as she reached the doorway.
She smiled at him over her shoulder as she slipped through, the daylight setting a glow in her hair. Then the doors shut softly behind her. Leaving Yarvi marooned on the dais, in the midst of all that silent space, his doubts suddenly looming even higher than the Tall Gods above. It took a fearsome effort to turn his head back towards the Black Chair.
Could he truly sit in it, between gods and men? He, who could hardly bring himself to touch it with his crippled joke of a hand? He made himself reach out, his breath coming shallow. Made himself lay his one trembling fingertip upon the metal.
Very cold and very hard. Just as a king must be.
Just as Yarvi’s father used to be, sitting there with the King’s Circle on his furrowed brow. His scarred hands gripping the arms, the pommel of his sword never far out of reach. The sword that hung at Yarvi’s belt now, dragging at him with its unfamiliar weight.
I didn’t ask for half a son.
And Yarvi shrank from the empty chair with even less dignity than when his father still sat in it. Not towards the doors of the Godshall and the waiting crowd beyond, but away towards the statue of Father Peace, pressing himself to the stone and working his fingers into the crack beside the giant leg of the patron god of ministers. In silence the hidden door sprang open, and like a thief fleeing the scene of his crime Yarvi slipped into the blackness beyond.
The citadel was full of secret ways, but nowhere so riddled as the Godshall. Passages passed under its floor, inside its walls, within its very dome. Ministers of old had used them to show the will of the gods with the odd little miracle – feathers fluttering down, or smoke rising behind the statues. Once blood had been dripped on Gettland’s reluctant warriors as the king called for war.
The passageways were dark and full of sounds, but Yarvi had no fear of them. These tunnels had long been his domain. He had hidden from his father’s blazing anger in the darkness. From his brother’s crushing love. From his mother’s chill disappointment. He could find his way from one end of the citadel to the other without once stepping into the light.
Here he knew all the ways, as any good minister should.
Here he was safe.
DOVES (#ulink_402dd4d0-9fb0-5962-a1d1-f18fc69de19e)
The dovecote was perched in the top of one of the citadel’s highest towers, streaked inside and out with centuries of droppings, and through its many windows a chill wind blew.
As Mother Gundring’s apprentice, feeding the doves had been Yarvi’s task. Feeding them, and teaching them the messages they were to speak, and watching them clatter into the sky to take news, and offers, and threats to other ministers about the Shattered Sea.
From the many cages ranked around the walls they looked down on him now, the doves, and one great bronze-feathered eagle which must have brought a message from the High King in Skekenhouse. The one person in the lands around the Shattered Sea who had the right to make requests of Yarvi now. Yet here he sat against the dropping-speckled wall, picking at the nail on his shrivelled hand, buried beneath a howe of demands he could never fulfil.
He had always been weak, but he never felt truly powerless until they made him a king.
He heard shuffling feet on the steps and Mother Gundring ducked through the low doorway, breathing hard.
‘I thought you’d never get here,’ said Yarvi.
‘My king,’ replied the old minister once she had the breath. ‘You were expected before the Godshall.’
‘Aren’t the tunnels meant for a king’s escape?’
‘From armed enemies. From your family, your subjects, not to mention your bride-to-be, less so.’ She peered up at the domed ceiling, at the gods painted there as birds, taking to a brilliant sky. ‘Were you planning to fly away?’
‘To Catalia, perhaps, or the land of the Alyuks, or up the Divine River to Kalyiv.’ Yarvi shrugged. ‘But I don’t have two good hands, never mind two good wings.’
Mother Gundring nodded. ‘In the end, we must all be what we are.’
‘And what am I?’
‘The King of Gettland.’
He swallowed then, knowing how disappointed she must be. How disappointed he was himself. In the songs great kings rarely crawled off to hide from their own people. He caught sight of the eagle as he looked away, huge and serene in its cage.
‘Grandmother Wexen has sent a message?’
‘A message,’ echoed one of the doves in its scratching mockery of a voice. ‘A message. A message.’
Mother Gundring frowned up at the eagle, still as a stuffed trophy. ‘It came from Skekenhouse five days ago. Grandmother Wexen sent to ask when you would arrive for your test.’
Yarvi remembered the one time he had seen the First of Ministers, a few years before when the High King had visited Thorlby. The High King had seemed a grim and grasping old man, offended by everything. Yarvi’s mother had been obliged to soothe him when someone did not bow in quite the manner he liked. Yarvi’s brother had laughed that such a feeble little wisp-haired man should rule the Shattered Sea, but his laughter died when he saw the number of warriors that followed him. Yarvi’s father had raged because the High King took gifts and gave none. Mother Gundring had clicked her tongue and said, The wealthier a man is, the more he craves wealth.
Grandmother Wexen had scarcely left her proper place at the High King’s side, ever smiling like a kindly grandparent. When Yarvi knelt before her she had looked at his crippled hand, and leaned down to murmur, My prince, have you considered joining the Ministry? And for a moment he had seen a hungry brightness in her eye which scared him more than all the High King’s frowning warriors.
‘So much interest from the First of Ministers?’ he muttered, swallowing an aftertaste of that day’s fear.
Mother Gundring shrugged. ‘It is rare to have a prince of royal blood join the Ministry.’
‘No doubt she’ll be as disappointed as everyone else that I’ve taken the Black Chair instead.’
‘Grandmother Wexen is wise enough to make the best of what the gods serve her. As must we all.’
Yarvi’s eyes slid across the rest of the cages, seeking a distraction. Pitiless though they were, the eyes of the birds were easier to bear than those of his disappointed subjects.
‘Which dove brought the message from Grom-gil-Gorm?’
‘I sent it back to Vansterland. To his minister, Mother Scaer, carrying your father’s agreement to a parley.’
‘Where was the meeting to be?’
‘On the border, near the town of Amwend. Your father never reached the place.’
‘He was ambushed in Gettland?’
‘So it appears.’
‘It does not seem like my father, to be so keen to end a war.’
‘War,’ croaked one of the doves. ‘End a war.’
Mother Gundring frowned at the grey-spattered floor. ‘I counselled him to go. The High King has asked for all swords to be sheathed until his new temple to the One God is completed. I never suspected even a savage like Grom-gil-Gorm would betray the sacred word given.’ She made a fist, as though she would strike herself, then slowly let it uncurl. ‘It is a minister’s task to smooth the way for Father Peace.’
‘But had my father no men with him? Had he—’
‘My king.’ Mother Gundring looked at him from under her brows. ‘We must go down.’
Yarvi swallowed, his stomach seeming to jump up his throat and wash his mouth with sour spit. ‘I’m not ready.’
‘No one ever is. Your father was not.’
Yarvi made a sound then, half a laugh, half a sob, and wiped tears on the back of his crooked hand. ‘Did my father weep after he was betrothed to my mother?’
‘In fact, he did,’ said Mother Gundring. ‘For several years. She, on the other hand …’
And Yarvi gurgled up a laugh despite himself. ‘My mother’s even meaner with her tears than her gold.’ He looked up at the woman who had been his teacher, would now be his minister, that face full of kindly lines, the bright eyes filled with concern, and found he had whispered, ‘You’ve been like a mother to me.’
‘And you like a son to me. I am sorry, Yarvi. I am sorry for everything but … this is the greater good.’
