Half a War (Shattered Sea, Book 3)

The Tears of Father Peace

Father Yarvi strode at their head, the tapping of the elf-staff that had killed Bright Yilling echoing down the hallway. He went so swiftly Koll had to jog the odd step to keep up, Skifr’s cloak of rags snapping about the elf-weapon she held down by her side, the gear of Rulf and his warriors rattling as they followed. Mother Adwyn stumbled at the back, her fin of red hair grown out into a shapeless mop, one hand trying to drag some slack into the rope around her chafed neck.

The hallway was lined with weapons, bent and rust-speckled. The weapons of armies defeated by High Kings of the past few hundred years. But there would be no victory for the High King today. From beyond the narrow windows, Koll could hear the sack of Skekenhouse. Could smell the burning. Could feel the fear, catching as the plague.

He put his head down, trying not to imagine what was happening out there. Trying not to imagine what might happen here, when Father Yarvi finally came face to face with Grandmother Wexen.

‘What if she has fled?’ snapped Skifr.

‘She is here,’ said Yarvi. ‘Grandmother Wexen is not the fleeing kind.’

High doors of dark wood stood at the end of the hallway, carved with scenes from the life of Bail the Builder. How he conquered Throvenland. How he conquered Yutmark. How he climbed a hill of dead enemies to conquer the whole Shattered Sea. Another day Koll would’ve admired the craftsmanship, if not the conquest, but no one was in the mood for woodwork now.

A dozen guards blocked the way, mailed men with frowns fixed and spears levelled.

‘Step aside,’ said Father Yarvi, Rulf and his warriors spreading out across the width of the hallway. ‘Tell them, Mother Adwyn.’

‘Let them through, I beg you!’ Adwyn spoke as though the words hurt her more than the rope, but she spoke even so. ‘The city is fallen. Blood spilled now is blood wasted!’

Koll hoped they would listen. But you know how it goes, with hopes.

‘I cannot.’ The captain of the guards was a warrior of no small fame, his silver-studded shield painted with the eagle of the First of Ministers. ‘Grandmother Wexen has ordered that these doors stay sealed, and I have sworn an oath.’

‘Oaths,’ muttered Koll. ‘Nothing but trouble.’

Skifr nudged him aside as she stepped past, raising her elf-relic to her shoulder. ‘Break your oath or meet Death,’ she said.

‘Please!’ Mother Adwyn tried to duck in front of Skifr, but the warrior who held her rope dragged her back.

The captain raised his shield to look proudly over the rim. ‘I do not fear you, witch! I—’

Skifr’s weapon barked once, thunderously loud in the narrow space. Half the captain’s shield blew apart, his arm flew off in a gout of fire and knocked over the man beside him. He was flung against the door, bounced off and crumpled on his face. One leg kicked a little then was still, blood spreading about the smouldering corpse, blood spattered across the fine carvings on the door. A little piece of metal fell, bounced, tinkled away into a corner.

‘Does anyone else wish to stay loyal to Grandmother Wexen?’ asked Yarvi.

As if by prior agreement the guards flung down their weapons.

‘Merciful god,’ whispered Mother Adwyn as Rulf stepped smartly over their dead leader, seized the iron handles and heaved on them to no effect.

‘Locked,’ he growled.

Skifr raised her elf-relic again. ‘I have the key.’

Rulf flung himself to the floor. Koll clapped his hands over his ears as the weapon spat fire, blasting chunks from the beautiful woodwork where the two doors met, splinters flying in stinging clouds. Before the echoes faded Skifr stepped forward, raised her boot, and kicked the ruined doors shuddering open.

Even for a man who’d seen the wonders of Strokom the Hall of Whispers was dizzying, elf-stone and elf-glass soaring up into the distance, a ring-shaped balcony five times a man’s height above them, another as far above that, another above that. It was all lit by a flickering madman’s glare, for in the centre of the round expanse of floor a huge fire burned. A pyre of books, and papers, and scrolls as high as a king’s barrow, the heat of the roaring flames sucking the sweat from Koll’s brow.

Statues of the six Tall Gods loomed high, flames glimmering in their garnet eyes, and standing even taller a new statue of the One God, neither man nor woman, gazing down with bland indifference on the destruction. Smaller figures were picked out against the flames. Grey-robed Sisters of the Ministry, some staring in horror towards the door, some still frantically feeding the fire, half-burned papers floating high into the echoing space above, fluttering down like leaves in autumn.

‘Stop them!’ bellowed Yarvi, voice shrill over the roar of the flames. ‘Collar them! Chain them! We will choose later who to spare and who to blame!’

Rulf’s warriors were already spilling through the doors, their mail, and blades, and eager eyes shining with the colours of fire. A shaven-headed girl was dragged kicking past, blood on her bared teeth. An apprentice like Koll, only doing as she was ordered, and he rubbed at the old chafe-marks where his own thrall-collar had sat, long ago.

Some might think it strange that a man who’d suffered as a slave himself could be so quick to force slavery on others, but Koll knew better. We all teach the lessons we are taught, after all.

‘Where is Grandmother Wexen?’ snarled Skifr, spit flecking from her burned lips.

‘Above!’ squealed a cringing minister. ‘The second balcony!’ There was no loyalty left in Skekenhouse, only fire and chaos.

Across the wide floor to a narrow passageway, ash fluttering down around them like black snow. Up a curving stair, higher and higher, their breath echoing and their shadows dancing in the darkness. Past one doorway and out of another, into the garish light.

An old woman stood at the elf-metal rail in a robe that trailed the floor, white hair cut short, a great stack of books beside her, their spines marked with gold, set with gems. She snatched up an armful and flung them over the rail: years of work, decades of lessons, centuries of learning gone to the flames. But so it goes when Mother War spreads her wings. She rips apart in a gleeful moment what it takes her weeping husband Father Peace lifetimes to weave.

‘Grandmother Wexen!’ called Yarvi.

She froze, shoulders hunched, then slowly turned.

The woman who had ruled the Shattered Sea, chosen the fates of countless thousands, made warriors quail and used kings as puppets, was not at all what Koll had expected. No cackling villain. No towering evil. Only a motherly face, round and deeply lined. Wise-seeming. Friendly-seeming. No gaudy marks of status. Only a fine chain about her neck, and strung upon it papers scrawled with writing. Writs, and judgments, and debts to be settled, and orders to be obeyed.

She smiled. Hardly the desperate prey, finally at bay. The look of a mentor whose wayward pupil has at last answered their summons.

‘Father Yarvi.’ Her voice was deep, and calm, and even. ‘Welcome to Skekenhouse.’

‘Burning books?’ Yarvi eased ever so slowly towards his old mistress. ‘I thought it was a minister’s place to preserve knowledge?’

Grandmother Wexen gently clicked her tongue. The disappointment of the learned teacher at the rash pupil’s folly. ‘That you should lecture me on a minister’s place.’ She let a last armful of books fall over the balcony. ‘You will not benefit from the wisdom I have gathered.’

‘I do not need it.’ He held up his elf-staff. ‘I have this.’

‘The elves had that, and look what became of them.’

‘I have learned from their example. Not to mention yours.’

‘I fear you have learned nothing.’

‘Forget learning,’ growled Skifr. ‘You will bleed for the blood of my children you have shed, the blood of my children’s children you have shed.’ She levelled her elf-weapon. ‘My one regret is that you can never bleed enough.’

Grandmother Wexen did not so much as flinch in the face of Death. ‘You are deceived if you think the blood of your children is on my hands, witch. I heard you were seen in Kalyiv, and was happy that you were gone from the Shattered Sea, and more than content that you would never return.’

‘You are made of lies, minister,’ snarled Skifr, the sweat glistening on her furrowed forehead. ‘You sent thieves and killers to pursue me!’

Grandmother Wexen gave a sorry sigh. ‘Says the thief and killer who licks the feet of the prince of liars.’ She swept Koll, and Skifr, and finally Yarvi with her eyes. ‘From the moment when you kissed my cheek after your test, I knew you were a snake. I should have crushed you then, but I chose mercy.’

‘Mercy?’ Yarvi barked out a laugh. ‘You hoped you could make me bite for you, rather than against.’

‘Perhaps.’ Grandmother Wexen looked with disgust at the elf-weapon Skifr cradled in her arms. ‘But I never dreamed you would resort to this. To break the deepest laws of our Ministry? To risk the world for your ambitions?’

‘You know the saying. Let Father Peace shed tears over the methods. Mother War smiles upon results.’

‘I know the saying, but it belongs in the mouths of murderers, not ministers. You are poison.’

‘Let us not pretend only one of us stands in the shadows.’ Father Yarvi’s eyes glittered with reflected fire as he eased forward. ‘I am the poison you mixed with your own schemes. The poison you brewed when you ordered my father and brother killed. The poison you never supposed you would drink yourself.’

Grandmother Wexen’s shoulders sagged. ‘I am not without regrets. That is all power leaves you, in the end. But Laithlin’s arrogance would have dragged us into Mother War’s embrace sooner or later. I tried to steer us clear of the rocks. I tried to choose the lesser evil and the greater good. But you demanded chaos.’

The First of Ministers ripped a paper from the chain around her neck and flung it at Yarvi so it floated down between them. ‘I curse you, traitor.’ She raised her hand, and tattooed upon her palm Koll saw circles within circles of tiny letters. ‘I curse you in the name of the One God and the many.’ Her voice rang out, echoing in the towering space of the Hall of Whispers. ‘All that you love shall betray you! All that you make shall rot! All that you build shall fall!’

Father Yarvi only shrugged. ‘There is nothing worth less than the curses of the defeated. If you had stood upon the forbidden ground of Strokom, you would understand. Everything falls.’

He took a sudden step forward, and shoved Grandmother Wexen with his withered hand.

Her eyes went round with shock. Perhaps, however wise we are, however wide the Last Door gapes, the crossing of the threshold always comes as a surprise.

She gave a meaningless squawk as she tumbled over the rail. There was an echoing crash, and a long shriek of horror.

Koll edged forward, swallowing as he peered over the balcony. The fire still burned below, smoke pouring up, the shimmering heat like a weight pressing on his face. The all-powerful First of Ministers lay broken at its edge, her twisted body seeming small from so high up. Everything falls. Mother Adwyn slowly knelt beside her, palm pressed to her purple-stained mouth.

‘So I have kept my oath.’ Father Yarvi frowned at his withered hand as though he could hardly believe what it had done.

‘Yes.’ Skifr tossed her elf-weapon rattling down on the balcony. ‘We both have our vengeance. How does it feel?’

‘I expected more.’

‘Vengeance is a way of clinging to what we have lost.’ Skifr leaned back against the wall, slid down it until she was sitting, cross-legged. ‘A wedge in the Last Door, and through the crack we can still glimpse the faces of the dead. We strain towards it with all our being, break every rule to have it, but when we clutch it, there is nothing there. Only grief.’

‘We must find something new to reach for.’ Father Yarvi planted his shrivelled hand on the rail and leaned over. ‘Mother Adwyn!’

The red-haired minister slowly stood, looking up towards them, the tears on her cheeks glistening in the firelight.

‘Send eagles to the ministers in Yutmark and the Lowlands,’ called Yarvi. ‘Send eagles to the ministers of Inglefold and the Islands. Send eagles to every minister who knelt to Grandmother Wexen.’

Mother Adwyn blinked down at the corpse of her mistress, then up. She wiped her tears on the back of her hand and, it seemed to Koll, adjusted quite smoothly to the new reality. What choice did she have? What choice did any of them have?

‘With what message?’ she asked, giving a stiff little bow.

‘Tell them they kneel to Grandfather Yarvi now.’