Half a War (Shattered Sea, Book 3)

Young Love

She pushed her hand into his hair, pulled him down so their foreheads were pressed hard together, quick breath hot on his face. For a long while they lay tangled with each other, the furs kicked down around their ankles, in silence.

Not one word spoken since Koll said his goodbyes to Thorn on the docks and strode up like a thief after a promising purse through the darkened city. In silence Rin had opened her door, taken him into her house, into her arms, into her bed.

Koll had always loved words, but to be a minister’s apprentice was to drown in them. True words, false words, words in many tongues. Right words, wrong words, written and spoken and unspoken. For now silence suited him. To forget for a moment what he owed Father Yarvi, and what he owed Rin, and how there was no way he could settle both debts. Whatever words he said, he felt like a liar.

Rin put one rough hand on his cheek, gave him a parting kiss and slithered out from under him. He loved to watch her move, so strong and sure, shadows shifting between her ribs as she fished his shirt from the floor and pulled it on. He loved it when she wore his clothes, not asking, not needing to ask. It made them feel so close together, somehow. That and he loved the way the hem only came halfway down her bare backside.

She squatted, the key she wore to her own locks swinging free on its chain, tossed a log on the fire, sparks drifting up and the light flaring on her face. Not one word spoken all that time but, like everything good, the silence couldn’t last.

‘You’re back, then,’ she said.

‘Only for tonight.’ Koll probed gently at the bridge of his nose, still not quite healed from its sharp meeting with Raith’s head. ‘The Prince of Kalyiv has come to Roystock. Queen Laithlin is sailing to an audience and needs a minister beside her. Father Yarvi’s busy trying to bail out our foundering alliances, so …’

‘She calls on the mighty Koll! Changing the world, just like you always wanted.’ Rin drew his shirt tight about her, the flames reflected in the corners of her eyes. ‘Minister to the Golden Queen and you never even took the Minister’s Test.’

‘No, but … I will have to. And swear the Minister’s Oath too.’

That fell between them like gull’s droppings from a great height. But if Rin was hurt she didn’t show it. That wouldn’t have been her way at all. He loved that about her.

‘What was Bail’s Point like?’

‘It reminded me very much of a big elf-stone fortress by the sea.’

‘You’re almost as funny as you think you are. I mean, what was it like climbing into it?’

‘Heroes never think about the danger.’

She grinned. ‘So you pissed yourself?’

‘I tried, but I was so scared my bladder clenched up tight as King Uthil’s fist. Couldn’t get a drip out for days afterward.’

‘Koll the warrior, eh?’

‘I thought it best to leave the fighting to others.’ Koll tapped at his head. ‘Half a war is fought up here, Queen Skara is always saying.’

‘Queen Skara, now.’ Rin snorted. ‘I’ve yet to meet a man who isn’t much taken with that girl’s wisdom.’

‘I expect a lot of it’s in the, you know …’ Koll waved a hand about. ‘Jewellery and so on.’

Rin raised one brow at him. ‘Oh, you expect that, do you?’

‘No doubt she looks like something from the songs.’ He put his arms over his head, quivering as he stretched out. ‘But I reckon a stiff breeze could blow her away. I like a woman with both feet on Father Earth.’

‘That’s your notion of a compliment? Earthy?’ She made a tube of her tongue and spat hissing into the fire. ‘Some honeyed minister’s mouth you have.’

His mother’s weights clicked around his neck as Koll rolled onto one elbow. ‘What makes a woman beautiful to me isn’t her blood or her clothes but what she can do. I like a woman with strong hands who isn’t afraid of sweat or hard work or anything else. I like a woman with pride, and ambition, and quick wit, and high skill.’ Just words, maybe, but he meant them. Or half-meant them, anyway. ‘That’s why I never saw a woman anywhere so beautiful as you, Rin. And that’s before I even get to your arse, which I can’t imagine has an equal anywhere around the Shattered Sea.’

She looked back to the fire, lips curling at the corner. ‘That’s better, I’ll admit. Even if it is all a hatful of winds.’

Koll was much pleased with himself. He loved it when he made her smile. ‘Sweet smelling breezes at least, I hope?’

‘Better than your usual farts. Will you be charming Prince Varoslaf’s nose with your flattery?’

That dented his smugness considerably. By all accounts the Prince of Kalyiv’s taste ran less to funny men and more to skinned ones. ‘I doubt I’ll comment on his arse, at least. I may keep my mouth shut altogether and leave the talking to Queen Laithlin. Silent men rarely cause offence.’

‘You can probably find a way. What does Varoslaf want?’

‘What the powerful always want. More power. Or so Thorn says. This trip to Roystock isn’t to her taste at all. She wanted to fight.’

Rin stood up. ‘She usually does.’

‘She’s in a bastard of a mood now. Wouldn’t want to be Brand tonight.’

‘He’ll manage.’ She slid back into the bed beside him, propping herself on one elbow, his shirt rumpled across her chest. ‘They love each other.’

Rin’s eyes, fixed on him so close, were making Koll quite uncomfortable. He felt cornered in that narrow bed. Trapped by the heat of her. ‘Maybe.’ He kicked over onto his back, frowning at the ceiling. He had great things to do. Stand at the shoulder of kings and so on. How could he change the world with Rin smothering him? ‘Love’s hardly the answer to every question, though, is it?’

She turned away, drawing the furs up to her waist. ‘Certainly seems not.’

With so many men away there were more women working on the docks of Thorlby than usual, busy at nets and sorting through the morning’s squirming catches. Fewer guards about too – older men, and boys Koll’s age yet to take their warrior’s tests, and some of the girls that Thorn had been training – but otherwise you might never have known there was any war at all.

Six battered ships had landed the night before from the long journey up the Divine, and their sunburned crews were bringing ashore silks, and wine, and all manner of fine curiosities from the south. Queen Laithlin’s men were loading her four ships for the voyage to Roystock and the air rang with their cries, and the barking of a stray being beaten away from the fish, and the laughter of children ducking among the wagons, and the calls of the scavenging gulls as they drifted in lazy circles, watching for spilled grain.

Mother Sun was bright as ever in the east, and Koll shaded his eyes as he gazed off towards Roystock, and sucked in a long, salty breath through his nostrils.

‘Smells like good luck!’

‘That and fish.’ Rin wrinkled her nose. ‘Four ships? To carry one woman?’

‘And her minister!’ Koll puffed up his chest and jabbed at it with his thumb. ‘A man of that stature must be properly attended.’

‘They’re going to lash two ships together just to carry his swollen head, are they?’

‘That and the Chosen Shield’s temper,’ he muttered, as Thorn’s angry orders came chopping through the hubbub. ‘You can tell a woman’s importance by the gifts she gives and the company she keeps. Queen Laithlin means to make a deep impression on Varoslaf by taking plenty of both.’

Rin glanced sideways. ‘What does it say about me that I keep company with you?’

Koll slipped his arm about her waist, grinning at how well it seemed to fit there. ‘That you’re a woman of high taste and refinement, not to mention excellent luck, and— Gods!’ As the crowd shifted Koll caught a glimpse of Brand, hefting a great crate as if it had nothing in it at all. He ducked behind a rack where fish big as boys had been hung glittering in the sunlight. One that still had a little life in it twitched about, seeming to give him a rather disapproving stare.

So did Rin, looking down with hands on hips. ‘The conqueror of Bail’s Point.’ And she stuck her tongue between her lips and blew a long fart at him.

‘Strong men are many, wise men are few. Did he see us?’

‘If you climbed inside one of those fish I think you could make sure.’

‘You’re almost as funny as you think you are.’ He pushed a fish aside with a fingertip to peer past. ‘We’d best part now.’

‘There’s always a reason to rush the parting, isn’t there? Young love. Not quite the joy they sing of.’ She caught him by the collar and half dragged him up, gave him the quickest of kisses and left him frozen with lips puckered and eyes closed. When he opened them he was disappointed to see her already walking away, an unexpected twinge of guilt and longing making him suddenly, stupidly desperate to stretch the parting out.

‘See you in a week or two, then!’

‘If you’re luckier than you deserve!’ she called, without turning.

Koll stuck his thumbs carelessly in his belt and strolled down through the crowds, slipping around a wagon loaded with fleeces, old Brinyolf the Prayer-Weaver droning out a blessing over the voyage in the background.

He froze as a heavy arm fell across his shoulders. ‘I need a word.’ For a big man, Brand could sneak up well enough when he wanted to.

Koll sent up a quick prayer to She Who Judges for mercy he knew he didn’t deserve. ‘To me? Whatever about?’

‘The Prince of Kalyiv.’

‘Ah!’ It said something that a man famous for skinning people alive was the preferable topic. ‘Him!’

‘Varoslaf is a bad man to cross,’ said Brand, ‘and Thorn’s got a habit of crossing those kind of people.’

‘True, though she’s a pretty bad woman to cross herself.’

Brand stared back at him. ‘Well there’s a recipe for a famous bloodbath, then.’

Koll cleared his throat. ‘I see your meaning.’

‘Just keep her out of trouble.’

‘She’s a hard woman to keep out of anything, especially trouble.’

‘Believe me when I say you’re telling me nothing I don’t know. Steer her away from trouble, then.’

Steering a ship through a tempest sounded lighter work but all Koll could do was puff out his cheeks. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Steer yourself away from trouble too.’

Koll grinned. ‘That I’ve always had a knack for.’ He looked hopefully towards Brand’s scarred and muscled arm. It did not move.

‘I’m not the sharpest man in Thorlby, Koll, I know that. But how thick do you think I am exactly?’

Koll winced so hard he closed one eye and peered at Brand out of the other. ‘Not my nose. It’s still not right after that white-haired bastard butted it.’

‘I’m not going to hit you, Koll. Rin can make her own choices. I reckon she made a fine one with you.’

‘You do?’

Brand looked at him calm and level. ‘Except you’re due to swear a Minister’s Oath, and give up all your family.’

‘Ah. The Oath.’ As though he’d hardly spared it a thought till now, when in fact he’d spent hours practising the words, thinking just how to say them, dreaming of what he’d do afterward, the high folk who’d nod at his wisdom, the grand choices he’d make, the greater good and the lesser evil he’d choose—

‘Yes, the Oath,’ said Brand. ‘Seems to me you’re stuck between Rin and Father Yarvi.’

‘Believe me when I say you’re telling me nothing I don’t know,’ mumbled Koll. ‘I’ve been praying to He Who Steers the Arrow for a point in the right direction.’

‘Finding him slow to reply?’

‘Father Yarvi says the gods love those who solve their own problems.’ Koll brightened. ‘You don’t have an answer, do you?’

‘Only the one you’ve already got.’

‘Ah.’

‘To pick one or the other.’

‘Ah. I don’t much like that one.’

‘No, but you’re a man now, Koll. You can’t just wait for someone else to put things right.’

‘I’m a man.’ Koll’s shoulders sagged. ‘When did that happen?’

‘It just happens.’

‘I wish I knew what it meant, being a man.’

‘Guess it means something different for each one of us. The gods know I’m no sage, but if I’ve realized anything, it’s that life isn’t about making something perfect.’ Brand looked over at Thorn, busy shaking her fist in the face of one of the queen’s warriors. ‘Death waits for us all. Nothing’s forever. Life’s about making the best of what you find along the way. A man who’s not content with what he’s got, well, more than likely he won’t be content with what he hasn’t.’

Koll blinked. ‘You’re sure you’re not a sage?’

‘Just be honest with her. She deserves that.’

‘I know she does,’ muttered Koll, looking guiltily down at the planks of the wharf.

‘You’ll do the right thing. If not, well …’ Brand drew him close. ‘I can hit you then.’

Koll sighed. ‘It’s good to have something to look forward to.’

‘I’ll see you when you get back.’ Brand saw him off with a slap on the shoulder. ‘Till then, stand in the light, Koll.’

‘You too, Brand.’

As he hopped aboard the queen’s ship Koll thought to himself, and not for the first time, that he was nowhere near as clever as he’d supposed. Something to remember, next time he got to thinking how clever he was.

He grinned at that. So much like something his mother would’ve said he almost thought it in her voice, and he gripped those old weights about his neck and looked up at the masthead, thinking of her screaming at him as he teetered there. He’d always hated his mother’s fussing. Now he’d have given everything he had to be fussed over again.

He turned to watch Queen Laithlin fussing over her son, the heir to the throne seeming tiny surrounded by slaves and servants, two hulking Ingling bodyguards with silver thrall-collars looming over him.

She adjusted his tiny cloak-buckle, and smoothed his blonde hair, and kissed him on the head, then turned towards the ship, one of her slaves kneeling on the wharf to make a step of his back for her.

‘All will be well here, my queen,’ called Brinyolf the Prayer-Weaver, one hand on Druin’s shoulder and the other raised in an elaborate blessing. ‘And may She Who Finds the Course steer you safely home!’

‘Bye bye!’ called the prince, and while his mother was raising her arm to wave he slipped from under Brinyolf’s hand and scurried off giggling towards the city, his attendants hurrying to catch him.

Laithlin dropped her hand and gripped tight to the rail. ‘I wish I could take him, but I trust Varoslaf only a little less than a snake. I have lost one son to the sword and another to the Ministry. I cannot lose a third.’

‘Prince Druin could not be safer, my queen,’ said Koll, doing his best to say what Father Yarvi would have. ‘Thorlby is far from the fighting and still well-guarded, her walls never conquered and the citadel impregnable.’

‘Bail’s Point was impregnable. You climbed in.’

Koll dared a grin. ‘How fortunate that men of my talents are rare, my queen.’

Laithlin snorted. ‘You have a minister’s humility, already.’

Thorn was the last aboard. ‘Be safe,’ Brand called to her as she stomped past him down the wharf.

‘Aye,’ she grunted, swinging one leg over the rail. She froze as Queen Laithlin’s shadow fell across her, stuck with one foot off the ship and one foot on.

‘Young love is a treasure truly wasted on the young,’ mused the queen, frowning up towards the city with her hands clasped behind her. ‘It is my place to know the value of things, so take it from me you will have nothing in your life more precious. Soon enough the green leaves turn brown.’ She peered down sternly at her Chosen Shield. ‘I think you can do better than that.’

Thorn winced. ‘You think I can, my queen, or you’re ordering me to?’

‘To a Chosen Shield, a queen’s every whim is a decree.’

Thorn took a deep breath, swung her leg onto the wharf, and stomped back to Brand.

‘Since my queen commands it,’ she muttered, using her fingers like a comb to push the stray hair out of his face. She caught him behind the head and dragged him close, kissed him long and greedily, squeezing him so hard she lifted his toes off the wharf while the oarsmen sent up a cheer, and laughed, and thumped their oars.

‘I hadn’t marked you for a romantic, my queen,’ murmured Koll.

‘It seems I have surprised us both,’ said Laithlin.

Thorn broke away, wiping her mouth, the elf-bangle at her wrist glowing golden. ‘I love you,’ Koll heard her grunt over the noise of the crew. ‘And I’m sorry. For the way I am.’

Brand grinned back, brushing the star-shaped scar on her cheek with his fingertips. ‘I love the way you are. Be safe.’

‘Aye.’ Thorn thumped him on the shoulder with her fist, then stalked back down the wharf and vaulted over the ship’s rail. ‘Better?’ she asked.

‘I am warmed all over,’ murmured Laithlin, with just the hint of a smile. She took one last glance towards the citadel, then nodded to the helmsman. ‘Cast off.’