Half a War (Shattered Sea, Book 3)

The Opinions of the Pigs

It was two years since Koll visited Roystock, and the place had sprouted upwards and outwards from its boggy island like a tumour.

Wooden tentacles had shot across the water on rickety stilts, crooked piers with houses clinging to their sides like stubborn barnacles, sheds built on shacks at every angle but straight, a rotting forest of warped supports below and a hundred chimneys puffing a pall of smoke above. Little clumps of hovels had been flung out like spatters from spew, catching on every hump dry enough to hold a pile among the marshes at the wide mouth of the Divine.

Never in his life had Koll seen so much appalling carpentry gathered in one place.

‘It’s grown,’ he said, wrinkling his nose. ‘I guess that’s progress.’

Thorn pinched hers closed entirely. ‘The smell’s progressed some, that’s sure.’ The heady mix of ancient dung and salt decay with an acrid edge of fish-smoking, cloth-dying and leather-tanning made the breath snag at the back of Koll’s throat.

Queen Laithlin was not a woman to be put off business by an odour, however. ‘The headmen of Roystock have grown fat on the trade coming up the Divine,’ she said. ‘Their city has bloated up with them.’

‘Varoslaf has come for his mouthful of the meat.’ Koll frowned towards the wharves as they grew closer. ‘And he’s brought a lot of ships.’

Thorn’s eyes were narrowed to slits as she scanned across those long, lean, vessels. ‘I count thirteen.’

‘More than just a show of strength,’ murmured Queen Laithlin. ‘I think the Prince of Kalyiv means to stay.’

Mother Sun was warm outside, but in the hall there was a chill.

Prince Varoslaf sat at the head of a long table, so polished one could see another, blurry, Prince Varoslaf reflected in its top. One was more than enough to worry Koll.

He was not a large man, wore no weapon, had not a hair on his head, his jaw, even his brows. There was no wrath, no scorn, no brooding threat on his face, only a stony blankness somehow more troubling than any snarl. Behind him was gathered a crescent of fierce warriors, another of kneeling slaves with heavy thrall-chains dangling. Beside him stood a spear-thin servant, coins twinkling from a scarf across her forehead.

The nine headmen of Roystock sat on one side of the table between Varoslaf and Laithlin, boasting their best silks and richest jewels but with their nervousness written plainly on their faces. Like the crew of a rudderless ship, drifting in the northern ice, hoping they wouldn’t be crushed between two mighty bergs. Koll had a feeling hope would get them nowhere in this company.

‘Queen Laithlin, Jewel of the North.’ Varoslaf’s voice was as dry and whispery as the rustling of autumn leaves. ‘I feel favoured by the gods to once again bask in the radiance of your presence.’

‘Great prince,’ answered Laithlin, her own entourage crowding with heads bowed into the hall behind her, ‘the whole Shattered Sea trembles at your coming. I congratulate you on your famous victory over the Horse People.’

‘If one can call it a victory over the flies every time the horse swishes his tail. The flies always return.’

‘I have brought gifts for you.’ Two of Laithlin’s thralls, twins with braids so long they wore them wound around one arm, shuffled forward with boxes of inlaid wood, imported at daunting expense from far-off Catalia.

But the prince held up his hand, and Koll saw the deep groove across his calloused fingers left by constant practice with a bow. ‘As I have gifts for you. There will be time for gifts later. Let us first discuss the matter.’

The Golden Queen raised one golden brow. ‘Which is?’

‘The great Divine, and the money that flows along it, and how we should share it between us.’

Laithlin sent her thralls scuttling back with a waft of her finger. ‘Do we not already have agreements that have profited us both?’

‘Put plainly, I would like them to profit me more,’ said Varoslaf. ‘My minister has devised many ways of doing so.’

There was a pause. ‘You have a minister, great prince?’ asked Koll.

Varoslaf turned his chill gaze upon Koll and he could almost feel his balls retreating into the warmth of his stomach. ‘The rulers of the Shattered Sea seem to find them indispensable. I thought I would buy one of my own.’

He made the slightest jerk of his bald head and one of the slaves stood, and pushed back her hood, and Koll heard Thorn give a low growl.

Apart from a thin braid above one ear the woman’s hair had been clipped to yellow fuzz. She wore a thrall-ring of silver wire around her long, lean neck and another around her wrist, a fine chain between them not quite long enough for comfort. She had been tattooed on one cheek with a prancing horse, the prince’s mark of ownership, but it seemed her hatred was still at liberty. Her pink-rimmed eyes, sunken in bruised sockets, blazed with it as she glared across the hall.

‘Gods,’ Koll murmured under his breath, ‘this is ill luck.’ He knew that face. Isriun, daughter to King Uthil’s treacherous brother Odem, who once had been Father Yarvi’s betrothed, then Minister of Vansterland, but had taken too high a hand with the Breaker of Swords and been sold as a slave.

‘Odem’s brat dogs me once again,’ hissed Queen Laithlin.

The foremost of the headmen, a sharp-eyed old merchant festooned with silver chains, cleared his throat. ‘Most feared great prince.’ His voice wobbled only a little as Varoslaf’s eyes slid towards him. ‘And most admired Queen Laithlin, these matters concern us all. If I may—’

‘It is traditional for the farmer and the butcher to divide the meat without seeking the opinions of the pigs,’ said Varoslaf.

For a moment the silence was absolute, then the Prince of Kalyiv’s slender servant leaned slowly towards the headmen and gave a thunderous pig’s oink. The nearest recoiled. Several flinched. All paled. They must have closed many fine deals at that finely polished table, but it was awfully plain they would be turning no profits today.

‘What is it you want, great prince?’ asked Laithlin.

Isriun leaned down to whisper in Varoslaf’s ear, her braid brushing gently against his shoulder, her bright eyes flickering to Laithlin and back.

Her master’s face remained an unknowable mask. ‘Only what is fair.’

‘There is always a way,’ said the queen, dryly. ‘We could perhaps offer you an extra tenth part of a tenth part of every cargo …’

Isriun leaned down again, whispering, whispering, chewed-short fingernails fussing at the tattoo on her cheek.

‘Four tenths of a tenth part,’ droned Varoslaf.

‘Four parts is as far from fair as Roystock is from Kalyiv.’

This time Isriun didn’t bother to speak through her master, but simply snapped the rejoinder to Laithlin’s face. ‘The battlefield is not fair.’

The queen narrowed her eyes. ‘So you came for a battle?’

‘We are ready for one,’ said Isriun, lip wrinkled with contempt.

As long as she was whispering poison in the prince’s ear they would travel a stony path indeed. Koll remembered the skinned men swinging on the docks of Kalyiv, and swallowed. Varoslaf was not a man to be intimidated, nor tricked into a rage, nor swayed by flattery or bluster or jokes. Here was a man no man dared challenge. A man whose power was built on fear.

Laithlin and Isriun had fallen into a duel as savage and skilful as any in the training square. They slashed mercilessly at each other with portions and prices, stabbed with tithes and parried with fractions while Varoslaf sat back in his chair, his hairless face a mask.

Koll saw only one chance, and he put his fingers to the weights under his shirt. He thought of his mother, screaming at him to come down from the mast. No doubt you will be safer on the deck. But if you wish to change the world, you must take a risk or two.

‘Oh, great prince!’ He was surprised to find his voice as bright and easy as it might have been in Rin’s forge. ‘Perhaps you should retire to bed and leave your minister to make the arrangements.’

Maybe cowards handle great terrors better than heroes, for they face fear every day. Koll forced his feet forward, forced his face into a smile, flapped his hands about with carefree disrespect.

‘I see your decisions are all made by King Uthil’s niece. A snake that turned against her own family. A snake that still drips poison even collared and chained. Why waste all our time pretending otherwise? After all,’ and Koll put one hand on his chest, ‘it is traditional for the farmer,’ and he held that hand out towards Isriun, ‘and the butcher … to divide the meat without seeking the opinions …’ And now he held both hands out towards Queen Laithlin and Prince Varoslaf. ‘Of the pigs.’

There was a disbelieving silence. Then Varoslaf’s guards bristled. One muttered a curse in the tongue of the Horse People. Another stepped forward, reaching for his curved sword. Then there was a sharp smack as Thorn hit Koll backhanded across the face.

He would’ve liked to say he went down on purpose, but in truth it was like being hit with a hammer. He struggled up onto one elbow, his face burning and his head reeling, to see Queen Laithlin glaring down.

‘I will have you flogged for that.’

Varoslaf’s grooved hand was held up lazily to hold his warriors back, his gaze so cold Koll thought he could feel the piss freezing in his bladder. It was only a few days ago he’d been telling himself he was nowhere near as clever as he supposed. Some men never learn.

Isriun leaned towards Varoslaf’s ear. ‘You must demand his skin for that—’

It was cut off in a squawk as he dragged her down by her chain. ‘Never tell me what I must do.’ And he flung Isriun stumbling towards the door, while Thorn caught Koll under the arm with fearsome strength and dragged him cringing after.

‘Nicely done,’ she whispered. ‘Didn’t hurt you, did I?’

‘You hit like a girl,’ he squeaked, as she flung him bodily out into the anteroom and slammed the doors closed.

‘You must be pleased,’ snarled Isriun.

Koll slowly sat up, touched his fingertips to his lip and brought them away red. ‘I’d be more pleased without the bloody mouth.’

‘You can laugh!’ Isriun bared her teeth, closer to a grimace of agony than a smile. ‘The gods know I’d laugh, in your place. I was daughter to a king! I was a minister, at the side of Grandmother Wexen! Now …’ She jerked her wrist so her chain snapped taut and the collar bit into her neck, but however she squirmed she couldn’t quite get her arm straight. ‘I’d laugh myself, in your place!’

Koll shook his head as he clambered up. ‘Not me. I know what it is to be a slave.’ He remembered the cellar where he and his mother had been kept. The darkness of it. The smell of it. He remembered the feeling of the collar, the feeling when Father Yarvi ordered it struck off. Not things easily forgotten. ‘I’m sorry. It’s worth nothing, but I’m sorry.’

The tattooed horse on Isriun’s face shifted as she ground her teeth. ‘I only did what I had to. Stood with those who stood with me. I tried to do my duty. I tried to keep my word.’

‘I know.’ Koll winced at the floor, feeling a long way from the best man he could be. ‘But I have to do the same.’

It was some time later the doors opened and Queen Laithlin swept into the anteroom.

‘Did you reach an agreement, my queen?’ asked Koll.

‘Once the poison was drawn from the wound. That was subtle thinking on your part. You will make a fine minister, I think.’

Koll felt such a warm glow at that he could hardly hide his smile. The praise of the powerful was an intoxicating draught indeed. He bowed low. ‘You are too kind.’

‘Needless to say, if you ever do such a thing again, I really will have you flogged.’

Koll bowed lower yet. ‘You are far too kind.’

‘There was only one point on which I and the prince could not agree.’

Thorn grinned over at Isriun. ‘Your price.’

‘Mine?’ she muttered, eyes going wide.

‘I offered a fine red jewel for you, and the girl who oils my hair.’ Laithlin shrugged. ‘But Varoslaf wanted a hundred pieces of silver too.’

Isriun’s face twitched, caught between fear and defiance. ‘Did you pay?’

‘I could buy a good ship with that money, sail and all. Why pay it just to see some thrall drowned in the sewer? Your master is waiting, and not in the best of moods.’

‘I’ll be revenged on you!’ snarled Isriun. ‘On you and your crippled son! I’ve sworn it!’

Laithlin smiled then, a smile as cold as the utmost north where the snows never melt, and Koll wondered whether she or Varoslaf was the more ruthless. ‘Enemies are the price of success, slave. I have heard a thousand such empty oaths. I still sleep soundly.’ She snapped her fingers. ‘Come, Koll.’

He took one last look back at Isriun, staring at the open door, winding the chain about her hand so tight the links dug into her fingers and turned them white. But Father Yarvi always said a good minister faces the facts, and saves what he can. Koll hurried after Laithlin.

‘What did you give him, my queen?’ he asked, as they walked down a curving hallway, Mother Sea stirring beyond the narrow windows.

‘Varoslaf is no fool and that snake Isriun had counselled him well. He knows we are weak. He wants to extend his power north, up the Divine to the shores of the Shattered Sea.’ She let her voice fall soft. ‘I had to give him Roystock.’

Koll swallowed. None of this felt very much like Brand’s idea of standing in the light. ‘A princely gift. But is it ours to give?’

‘It is Varoslaf’s to take,’ said Laithlin, ‘if neither we nor the High King stop him.’

‘We and the High King are a little busy with each other,’ growled Thorn.

‘The wise man fights no wars at all, but only a fool fights more than one at once.’

Thorn nodded to the warriors standing guard at the queen’s chambers and pushed the door wide. ‘I have a feeling Varoslaf will not stop at Roystock.’

As he stepped over the threshold Koll thought of the prince’s dead stare and gave a shudder. ‘I have a feeling Varoslaf would not stop at the edge of the world.’

‘Get back!’ snapped Thorn, barging the queen against the wall and whipping out her axe so quickly it nearly took off one of Koll’s eyebrows.

In the shadows at the far end of the room, cross-legged upon a table, a figure sat, swathed in a cloak of rags with the hood drawn down. Koll nearly dropped his dagger on his foot his heart was beating so hard. Nimble fingers tend to fail you when Death’s breath chills your neck.

Thorn, fortunately, was harder to rattle. ‘Speak now,’ she snarled, already in a fighting crouch between the queen and their visitor. ‘Or I kill you.’

‘Would you strike me with my own axe, Thorn Bathu?’ The hood shifted, the gleam of an eye inside. ‘You have grown, Koll. I remember you dangling from the masthead of the South Wind while your mother screamed for you to come down. I remember you begging me to show you magic.’

Thorn’s axe slowly drifted down. ‘Skifr?’

‘You could simply have knocked,’ said Laithlin, guiding Thorn away and smoothing her dress back to its usual perfection.

‘Knocking does not guarantee an audience, Golden Queen. And I have come a long road from the land of the Alyuks, up the Denied and Divine in the company of Prince Varoslaf. Not that he knew it.’ Skifr eased her hood back and Koll gave a ragged gasp. Even in the shadows he could see the left side of her face was streaked with mottled burns, half her eyebrow was missing and her cropped grey hair scattered with bald spots.

‘What happened?’ said Thorn.

Skifr smiled. Or one half of her face did. The other creased and twisted like old leather. ‘Grandmother Wexen sent men south, my dove. To punish me for stealing relics from the forbidden ruin of Strokom.’ She glanced towards the elf-bangle on Thorn’s wrist as it pulsed a bright blue-white. ‘They burned my house. They killed my son and his wife. They killed my son’s sons. But they found I am not easily killed.’

‘Grandmother Wexen has a long memory for scores,’ murmured Laithlin.

‘She will discover she is not the only one.’ Skifr tipped back her face, mottled burns seeming to glisten. ‘Grandmother Wexen brought Death to me. It is only good manners that I return the favour. I have read the portents. I have watched the birds across the sky. I have deciphered the ripples in the water and you will take me back across the Shattered Sea to Thorlby. Do you still wish to see magic, Koll?’

‘No?’ But it often seemed people loved to ask him questions but hadn’t much interest in his answers.

‘I must speak to Father Yarvi.’ Skifr curled back her lips to show her teeth and barked the words. ‘Then I will go to war!’