Half the World (Shattered Sea, Book 2)

FAMILY

‘You are late.’

Rin was right. Father Moon was smiling bright, and his children the stars twinkling on heaven’s cloth, and the narrow hovel was lit only by the embers of the fire when Brand ducked through the low doorway.

‘Sorry, sister.’ He went in a stoop to his bench and sank down with a long groan, worked his aching feet from his boots and spread his toes at the warmth. ‘But Harper had more peat to cut, then Old Fen needed help carrying some logs in. Wasn’t like she was chopping them herself, and her axe was blunt so I had to sharpen it, and on the way back Lem’s cart had broke an axle so a few of us helped out—’

‘Your trouble is you make everyone’s trouble your trouble.’

‘You help folk, maybe when you need it they’ll help you.’

‘Maybe.’ Rin nodded towards the pot sitting over the embers of the fire. ‘There’s dinner. The gods know, leaving some hasn’t been easy.’

He slapped her on the knee as he leaned to get it. ‘But bless you for it, sister.’ Brand was fearsome hungry, but he remembered to mutter a thanks to Father Earth for the food. He remembered how it felt to have none.

‘It’s good,’ he said, forcing it down.

‘It was better right after I cooked it.’

‘It’s still good.’

‘No, it’s not.’

He shrugged as he scraped the pot out, wishing there was more. ‘Things’ll be different now I’ve passed the tests. Folk come back rich from a raid like this one.’

‘Folk come to the forge before every raid telling us how rich they’re going to be. Sometimes they don’t come back.’

Brand grinned at her. ‘You won’t get rid of me that easily.’

‘I’m not aiming to. Fool though y’are, you’re all the family I’ve got.’ She dug something from behind her and held it out. A bundle of animal skin, stained and tattered.

‘For me?’ he said, reaching through the warmth above the dying fire for it.

‘To keep you company on your high adventures. To remind you of home. To remind you of your family. Such as it is.’

‘You’re all the family I need.’ There was a knife inside the bundle, polished steel gleaming. A fighting dagger with a long, straight blade, crosspiece worked like a pair of twined snakes and the pommel a snarling dragon’s head.

Rin sat up, keen to see how her gift would sit with him. ‘I’ll make you a sword one day. For now this was the best I could manage.’

‘You made this?’

‘Gaden gave me some help with the hilt. But the steel’s all mine.’

‘It’s fine work, Rin.’ The closer he looked the better it got, every scale on the snakes picked out, the dragon baring little teeth at him, the steel bright as silver and holding a deadly edge too. He hardly dared touch it. It seemed too good a thing for his dirty hands. ‘Gods, it’s master’s work.’

She sat back, careless, as though she’d known that all along. ‘I think I’ve found a better way to do the smelting. A hotter way. In a clay jar, sort of. Bone and charcoal to bind the iron into steel, sand and glass to coax the dirt out and leave it pure. But it’s all about the heat … You’re not listening.’

Brand gave a sorry shrug. ‘I can swing a hammer all right but I don’t understand the magic of it. You’re ten times the smith I ever was.’

‘Gaden says I’m touched by She Who Strikes the Anvil.’

‘She must be happy as the breeze I quit the forge and she got you as an apprentice.’

‘I’ve a gift.’

‘The gift of modesty.’

‘Modesty is for folk with nothing to boast of.’

He weighed the dagger in his hand, feeling out the fine heft and balance to it. ‘My little sister, mistress of the forge. I never had a better gift.’ Not that he’d had many. ‘Wish I had something to give you in return.’

She lay back on her bench and shook her threadbare blanket over her legs. ‘You’ve given me everything I’ve got.’

He winced. ‘Not much, is it?’

‘I’ve no complaints.’ She reached across the fire with her strong hand, scabbed and calloused from forge-work, and he took it, and they gave each other a squeeze.

He cleared his throat, looking at the hard-packed earth of the floor. ‘Will you be all right while I’m gone on this raid?’

‘I’ll be like a swimmer who just shrugged her armour off.’ She gave him the scornful face but he saw straight through it. She was fifteen years old, and he was all the family she had, and she was scared, and that made him scared too. Scared of fighting. Scared of leaving home. Scared of leaving her alone.

‘I’ll be back, Rin. Before you know it.’

‘Loaded with treasures, no doubt.’

He winked. ‘Songs sung of my high deeds and a dozen fine Islander slaves to my name.’

‘Where will they sleep?’

‘In the great stone house I’ll buy you up near the citadel.’

‘I’ll have a room for my clothes,’ she said, stroking at the wattle wall with her fingertips. Wasn’t much of a home they had, but the gods knew they were grateful for it. There’d been times they had nothing over their heads but weather.

Brand lay down too, knees bent since his legs hung way off the end of his bench these days, and started unrolling his own smelly scrap of blanket.

‘Rin,’ he found he’d said, ‘I might’ve done a stupid thing.’ He wasn’t much at keeping secrets. Especially from her.

‘What this time?’

He set to picking at one of the holes in his blanket. ‘Told the truth.’

‘What about?’

‘Thorn Bathu.’

Rin clapped her hands over her face. ‘What is it with you and her?’

‘What d’you mean? I don’t even like her.’

‘No one likes her. She’s a splinter in the world’s arse. But you can’t seem to stop picking at her.’

‘The gods have a habit of pushing us together, I reckon.’

‘Have you tried walking the other way? She killed Edwal. She killed him. He’s dead, Brand.’

‘I know. I was there. But it wasn’t murder. What should I have done? Tell me that, since you’re the clever one. Kept my mouth shut with everyone else? Kept my mouth shut and let her be crushed with rocks? I couldn’t carry the weight of that!’ He realized he was near-shouting, anger bubbling up, and he pressed his voice back down. ‘I couldn’t.’

A silence, then, while they frowned at each other, and the fire sagged, sending up a puff of sparks. ‘Why does it always fall to you to put things right?’ she asked.

‘I guess no one else is doing it.’

‘You always were a good boy.’ Rin stared up towards the smoke-hole and the chink of starry sky showing through it. ‘Now you’re a good man. That’s your trouble. I never saw a better man for doing good things and getting bad results. Who’d you tell your tale to?’

He swallowed, finding the smoke-hole mightily interesting himself. ‘Father Yarvi.’

‘Oh, gods, Brand! You don’t like half measures, do you?’

‘Never saw the point of them,’ he muttered. ‘Dare say it’ll all work out, though?’ wheedling, desperate for her to tell him yes.

She just lay staring at the ceiling, so he picked her dagger up again, watched the bright steel shine with the colours of fire.

‘Really is fine work, Rin.’

‘Go to sleep, Brand.’