Half a War (Shattered Sea, Book 3)

One Vote

There was an overgrown courtyard at the heart of the house that Skara had taken for her own. It was choked with weeds and throttled with ivy but someone must have cared for it once, for late flowers were still blossoming in a sweet-smelling riot against the sunny wall.

Even though the leaves were falling and the year was growing cold, Skara liked to sit on a lichen-spattered stone bench there. It reminded her of the walled garden behind the Forest where Mother Kyre had taught her the names of herbs. Except there were no herbs. And Mother Kyre was dead.

‘The atmosphere in Skekenhouse is …’

‘Poisonous,’ Mother Owd finished for her.

As usual, her minister chose an apt word. The citizens were steeped in grudges and fear. The remains of the alliance were at one another’s throats. Grandfather Yarvi’s warriors were everywhere, the white dove of Father Peace on their coats but Mother War’s tools always close to twitchy fingers.

‘It is high time we left for Throvenland,’ said Skara. ‘We have much to do there.’

‘The ships are already being fitted, my queen,’ said Blue Jenner. ‘I was going to offer Raith an oar—’

Skara looked up sharply. ‘Has he asked for one?’

‘He’s not the kind to ask. But I heard it didn’t work out too well for him with Thorn Bathu, and it’s not as though he can carry Gorm’s sword any more—’

‘Raith made his choice,’ snapped Skara, her voice cracking. ‘He cannot come with us.’

Jenner blinked. ‘But … he fought for you at the straits. Saved my life at Bail’s Point. I said we’d always have a place for him—’

‘You shouldn’t have. It is not up to me to keep your promises.’

It hurt her, to see how hurt he looked at that. ‘Of course, my queen,’ he muttered, and walked stiffly into the house, leaving Skara alone with her minister.

The wind swirled up chill, leaves chasing each other about the old stones. A bird twittered somewhere in the dry ivy. Mother Owd cleared her throat.

‘My queen, I must ask. Is your blood coming regularly?’

Skara felt her heart suddenly thudding, her face burning, and she looked down at the ground.

‘My queen?’

‘No.’

‘And … might that be … why you are reluctant to give an oar to King Gorm’s sword-bearer?’ Blue Jenner might be baffled but plainly Mother Owd guessed the truth. The trouble with a shrewd advisor is they see through your own lies as easily as your enemy’s.

‘His name’s Raith,’ muttered Skara. ‘You can use his name, at least.’

‘He Who Sprouts the Seed has blessed you,’ said the minister softly.

‘Cursed me.’ Though Skara knew she had no one else to blame. ‘When you doubt you’ll live through tomorrow you spare few thoughts for the day after.’

‘One cannot do the wise thing every time, my queen. What do you want to do?’

Skara dropped her head into her hands. ‘Gods help me, I’ve no idea.’

Mother Owd knelt in front of her. ‘You could carry the child. We might even keep it secret. But there are risks. Risks to you and risks to your position.’

Skara met her eyes. ‘Or?’

‘We could make your blood come. There are ways.’

Skara’s tongue felt sticky as she spoke. ‘Are there risks to that?’

‘Some.’ Mother Owd looked evenly back. ‘But I judge them less.’

Skara set her palm on her belly. It felt no different. No more sickness than usual. No sign of anything growing. When she thought of it gone it gave her nothing but relief, and a trace of queasy guilt that she felt nothing more.

But she was getting practised at storing away regrets. ‘I want it gone,’ she whispered.

Mother Owd gently took her hands. ‘When we get back to Throvenland, I will make the preparations. Don’t spare it another thought. You have enough to carry. Let me carry this.’

Skara had to swallow tears. She had faced threats, and rage, and even Death, with eyes dry, but a little kindness made her want to weep. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

‘A touching scene!’

Mother Owd stood quickly, twisting around as Grandfather Yarvi stepped out into their little garden.

He still wore the same plain coat. The same worn sword. He still carried the elf-metal staff he used to, though it sent a very different message since he killed Bright Yilling with it. But he had around his neck the chain Grandmother Wexen once wore, a rustling mass of papers of his own already threaded on it. And his face had changed. There was a bitter brightness in his eye Skara had not seen before. Perhaps he had put on a ruthless mask, since he moved into the Tower of the Ministry. Or perhaps, no longer needed, he had let a soft mask fall away.

All too often when we topple something hateful, rather than breaking it and starting fresh, we raise ourselves up in its place.

‘Even my battered little stone of a heart is warmed to see such closeness between ruler and minister.’ And Yarvi gave a smile with no warmth in it at all. ‘You are a woman who inspires loyalty, Queen Skara.’

‘There is no magic to it.’ She stood herself, carefully smoothing the front of her dress, carefully smoothing her face too, giving nothing away, the way Mother Kyre had taught her. She had a feeling she might need all of Mother Kyre’s lessons and more in the next few moments. ‘I try to treat people the way I would want to be treated. The powerful cannot only be ruthless, Grandfather Yarvi. They must be generous too. They must have some mercy in them.’

The First of Ministers smiled as if at the innocence of a child. ‘Charming sentiments, my queen. I understand you will soon be leaving for Throvenland. I need to speak to you first.’

‘Wishes for good weatherluck, most honoured Grandfather Yarvi?’ Mother Owd folded her arms as she faced him. ‘Or matters of state?’

‘Matters best discussed in private,’ he said. ‘Leave us.’

She gave a questioning sideways glance, but Skara returned it with the faintest nod. Some things must be faced alone. ‘I will be just inside,’ said Mother Owd as she stepped through the door. ‘If you need me for anything.’

‘We won’t!’ The pale eyes of the First of Ministers settled on Skara, cold as new snow. The look of a man who knows he has won before the game is even played. ‘How did you poison Grom-gil-Gorm?’

Skara raised her brows. ‘Why would I? He suited me much better on this side of the Last Door. The one who gained most from his death is you.’

‘Not every scheme is mine. But I’ll admit the dice have fallen well for me.’

‘A lucky man is more dangerous than a cunning one, eh, Grandfather Yarvi?’

‘Tremble, then, when you see both together!’ He smiled again, but there was something hungry in it that made every hair on her spine stand up. ‘It is true that things have changed since we last negotiated, among the howes outside Bail’s Point. Much … simpler. No need to talk any longer of alliances, or compromises, or votes.’

You can only conquer your fears by facing them, her grandfather used to say. Hide from them, and they conquer you. Skara tried to draw herself up proudly, the way he had, when he faced Death. ‘Uthil and Gorm are both gone through the Last Door,’ she said. ‘There is only one vote, now, and it is—’

‘Mine!’ barked Yarvi, opening his eyes very wide. ‘I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to talk to someone who sees straight to the heart of things, so I will not insult you by dithering. You will marry King Druin.’

Skara had been prepared for many things, but she could not quite smother a gasp at that one. ‘King Druin is three years old.’

‘Then you will find him a far less demanding husband than the Breaker of Swords would have been. The world is changed, my queen. And it seems to me now that Throvenland …’ Yarvi lifted his withered hand and turned it around and around in the air. ‘Serves little purpose.’ He somehow managed to snap that one stubby finger with a sharp click. ‘It shall be part of Gettland from now on, though I think it best if my mother continues to wear the key of the treasury.’

‘And me?’ Skara struggled to keep her voice level for the thumping of her heart.

‘My queen, you look beautiful whatever you wear.’ And Grandfather Yarvi turned towards the door.

‘No.’ She could hardly believe how utterly certain she sounded. A strange calm had come over her. The calm that Bail the Builder felt before a battle, perhaps. She might be no warrior, but this was her battlefield, and she was ready to fight.

‘No?’ Yarvi turned back, his smile fading. ‘I came to tell you how things would be, not to ask for an opinion, but perhaps I overestimated your—’

‘No,’ she said again. Words would be her weapons. ‘My father died for Throvenland. My grandfather died for Throvenland. I gave up everything to fight for Throvenland. While I live I will not see it torn apart like a carcass between wolves.’

The First of Ministers stepped towards her, gaunt face tight with anger. ‘Do not presume to defy me, you puking waif!’ he snarled, stabbing at his chest with his withered hand. ‘You have no idea what I have sacrificed, what I have suffered! No idea of the fires I was forged in! You do not have the gold, or the men, or the swords—’

‘Only half a war is fought with swords.’ Mother Kyre had always said a smile costs nothing, so Skara showed the very sweetest one she could as she took the slip of paper from behind her back, folded between two fingers, and held it out. ‘A gift for you, Grandfather Yarvi,’ she said. ‘From Bright Yilling.’

There might have been no man in the Shattered Sea more deep-cunning than he, but Skara had been taught how to read a face, and she caught the twitch by his eye, and knew Yilling’s final whisper on the battlefield before Bail’s Point was true.

‘To being a puking waif I freely confess,’ she said as Yarvi snatched the paper from her fingers. ‘I am told I keep my fears in my stomach. But I have seen some tempering myself over the last few months. Do you recognize the hand?’

He looked up, jaw clenched tight.

‘I thought you might. It seems now great foresight on Mother Kyre’s part that she taught me to read.’

His face twitched again at that. ‘Far from proper, spreading the secret of letters outside the Ministry.’

‘Oh, Mother Kyre could be far from proper when the future of Throvenland was at stake.’ Now she put a little iron in her voice. She had to show her strength. ‘And so can I.’

Father Yarvi crumpled the paper in his trembling fist, but Skara only smiled the wider.

‘Keep that one, by all means,’ she said. ‘Yilling gave me a whole pouch full. There are seven people I trust scattered across Throvenland with one each. You will never know who. You will never know where. But if I should suffer some accident, trip one night and fall through the Last Door like my husband-to-be, messages will be sent, and the story told on every coast of the Shattered Sea …’ She leaned close and murmured the words. ‘That Father Yarvi was the traitor within our alliance.’

‘No one will believe it,’ he said, but his face had turned very pale.

‘A message will find its way to Master Hunnan and the warriors of Gettland, telling them that it was you who betrayed their beloved King Uthil.’

‘I don’t fear Hunnan,’ he said, but his hand was trembling on his staff.

‘A message will find its way to your mother, the Golden Queen of Gettland, telling her that her own son sold her city to her enemies.’

‘My mother would never turn against me,’ he said, but his eyes were glistening.

‘A message will find its way to Thorn Bathu, whose husband Brand was killed in the raid you made happen.’ Skara’s voice was cold, and slow, and relentless as the tide. ‘But perhaps she is more forgiving than she appears. You know her much better than I.’

As a stick bent further and further snaps all at once, Grandfather Yarvi gave a kind of gasp and the strength seemed to go suddenly from his legs. He tottered back, stumbled into the stone bench and fell heavily upon it, elf-staff clattering from his good hand as he clutched out to steady himself. He sat, shining eyes wide, staring at Skara. Staring through her, as if his gaze was fixed on ghosts far beyond.

‘I thought … I might sway Bright Yilling,’ he whispered. ‘I thought I might bait him with little secrets and hook him with one great lie. But it was he that hooked me at the straits.’ A tear trickled from one of his swimming eyes and streaked his slack cheek.

‘The alliance was faltering. King Uthil’s resolve was waning. My mother saw more profit in peace. I could not trust Gorm and Scaer.’ He made a crooked fist of his left hand. ‘But I had sworn an oath. A sun-oath and a moon-oath. To be revenged on the killers of my father. I could not have peace.’ He blinked stupidly, tears rolling down his pale face, and Skara realized, perhaps for the first time, how young he was. Only a few years older than she.

‘And so I told Bright Yilling to attack Thorlby,’ he whispered. ‘To make an outrage from which there could be no turning back. I told him when and how. I did not mean for Brand to die. The gods know I did not mean it, but …’ He swallowed, the breath clicking in his throat, his shoulders hunched and his head hanging as though the weight of what he had done was crushing him. ‘A hundred decisions made, and every time the greater good, the lesser evil. A thousand steps taken and each one had to be taken.’ He stared down at the elf-staff on the ground, and his mouth twisted with disgust. ‘How could they lead me here?’

Skara felt no hate for him then, only pity. She was up to her neck in her own regrets, knew she could give him no worse punishment than he would give himself. She could give him no punishment at all. She needed him too badly.

She knelt before him, the chain of pommels rattling against her chest, and took his tear-stained face in her hands. Now she had to show her compassion. Her generosity. Her mercy. ‘Listen to me.’ And she shook his head so that his glazed eyes flicked to hers. ‘Nothing is lost. Nothing is broken. I understand. I know the weight of power and I do not judge you. But we must be together in this.’

‘As a slave is chained to his mistress?’ he muttered.

‘As allies are bound to each other.’ She brushed away his tears with her thumb-tips. Now she had to show her cunning, and strike a deal the Golden Queen herself would be proud of. ‘I will be Queen of Throvenland not only in name but in fact. I will kneel to no one and have the full support of the Ministry. I will make my own decisions for my own people. I will choose my own husband in my own time. The straits belong as much to Throvenland as to Yutmark. Half the levies your mother is collecting from the ships that pass through it shall go to my treasury.’

‘She will not—’

Skara shook his face again, hard. ‘One right word severs a whole rope of will-nots, you know that. Throvenland bore the worst of your war. I need gold to rebuild what Bright Yilling burned. Silver to buy my own warriors and my own allies. Then you shall be Grandfather of the Ministry, and your secrets just as safe in my hands as in yours.’ She leaned down, took his staff from the ground, and offered it to him. ‘You are a minister, but you have stood for Mother War. We have had blood enough. Someone must stand for Father Peace.’

He curled his fingers around the elf-metal, mouth scornfully twisting. ‘So we will dance into your bright future hand in hand, and keep the balance of the Shattered Sea between us.’

‘We could destroy each other instead, but why? If Grandmother Wexen has taught me one lesson, it is that you are a dire enemy to have. I would much rather be your friend.’ Skara stood, looking down. ‘You may need one. I know I will.’

The pale eyes of the First of Ministers were dry again. ‘It is hardly as if I have a choice, is it?’

‘I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to talk to someone who sees straight to the heart of things.’ She brushed a few stray leaves from her dress, thinking how proud her grandfather would have been. ‘There is only one vote, Grandfather Yarvi. And it is mine.’