Half the World (Shattered Sea, Book 2)

WHAT GETTLAND NEEDS

Kalyiv was a sprawling mass, infesting one bank of the Denied and spreading like a muddy sickness onto the other, the bright sky above smudged with the smoke of countless fires and dotted with scavenging birds.

The prince’s hall stood on a low hill over the river, gilded horses carved upon its vast roof beams, the wall around it made as much from mud as masonry. Crowding outside that was a riot of wooden buildings ringed by a fence of stout logs, the spears of warriors glinting at the walkway. Crowding outside that, a chaos of tents, yurts, wagons, shacks and temporary dwellings of horrible wretchedness sprawled out over the blackened landscape in every direction.

‘Gods, it’s vast,’ muttered Brand.

‘Gods, it’s ugly,’ muttered Thorn.

‘Kalyiv is as a slow-filling bladder,’ said Skifr, thoughtfully picking her nose, considering the results, then wiping them on the shoulder of the nearest oarsman so gently he didn’t even notice. ‘In spring it swells with northerners, and folk from the empire, and Horse People from across the steppe all swarming here to trade. In summer it splits its skin and spills filth over the plains. In winter they all move on and it shrivels back to nothing.’

‘It surely smells like a bladder,’ grunted Rulf, wrinkling his nose.

Two huge, squat towers of mighty logs had been thrown up on either side of the river and a web of chains strung between them, links of black iron spiked and studded, bowing under the weight of frothing water, snarled up with driftwood and rubbish, stopping dead all traffic on the Denied.

‘Prince Varoslaf has fished up quite a catch with his iron net,’ said Father Yarvi.

Thorn had never seen so many ships. They bobbed on the river, and clogged the wharves, and had been dragged up on the banks in tight-packed rows stripped of their masts. There were ships from Gettland and Vansterland and Throvenland. There were ships from Yutmark and the Islands. There were strange ships which must have come up from the south, dark-hulled and far too fat-bellied for the trip over the tall hauls. There were even two towering galleys, each with three ranks of oars, dwarfing the South Wind as they glided towards the harbour.

‘Look at those monsters,’ murmured Brand.

‘Ships from the Empire of the South,’ said Rulf. ‘Crews of three hundred.’

‘It’s the crews he’s after,’ said Father Yarvi. ‘To fight his fool’s war against the Horse People.’

Thorn was far from delighted at the thought of fighting more Horse People. Or for that matter of staying in Kalyiv for the summer. It had smelled a great deal better in her father’s stories. ‘You think he’ll want our help?’

‘Certainly he’ll want it, as we want his.’ Yarvi frowned up towards the prince’s hall. ‘Will he demand it, is the question.’

He had demanded it of many others. The harbour thronged with sour-faced men of the Shattered Sea, all mired in Kalyiv until Prince Varoslaf chose to loosen the river’s chains. They lazed in sullen groups about slumping tents and under rotten awnings, and played loaded dice, and drank sour ale, and swore at great volume, and stared at everything with hardened eyes, the newest arrivals in particular.

‘Varoslaf had better find enemies for these men soon,’ murmured Yarvi, as they stepped from the South Wind. ‘Before they find some nearer to hand.’

Fror nodded as he made fast the prow-rope. ‘Nothing more dangerous than idle warriors.’

‘They’re all looking at us.’ Brand’s bandages had come off that morning and he kept picking nervously at the rope-scabs snaking up his forearms.

Thorn dug him with her elbow. ‘Maybe your hero’s fame goes ahead of us, Ship-lifter.’

‘More likely Father Yarvi’s does. I don’t like it.’

‘Then pretend you do,’ said Thorn, putting her bravest face on and meeting every stare with a challenge. Or the most challenge she could manage with a hot wind whipping grit in her eyes and flapping her shirt against her sweaty back.

‘Gods, it stinks,’ choked Brand as they made it off the creaking wharves and onto Father Earth, and Thorn could not have disagreed even if she could have taken a full breath to do it. The crooked streets were scattered with baking dung, dogs squabbling over rubbish, dead animals skewered on poles beside doorways.

‘Are they selling those?’ muttered Brand.

‘They’re offering them up,’ answered Father Yarvi, ‘so their gods can see which houses have made sacrifices and which have not.’

‘What about those?’ Thorn nodded towards a group of skinned carcasses dangling from a mast raised in the middle of a square, gently swinging and swarming with flies.

‘Savages,’ murmured Rulf, frowning up at them.

With an unpleasant shifting in her stomach, Thorn realized those glistening bodies were man-shaped. ‘Horse People?’ she croaked.

Father Yarvi grimly shook his head. ‘Vanstermen.’

‘What?’ The gods knew there were few people who liked Vanstermen less than Thorn, but she could see no reason for the Prince of Kalyiv to skin them.

Yarvi gestured towards some letters scraped into a wooden sign. ‘A crew that defied Prince Varoslaf’s wishes and tried to leave. Other men of the Shattered Sea are discouraged from following their example.’

‘Gods,’ whispered Brand, only just heard over the buzzing of the flies. ‘Does Gettland want the help of a man who does this?’

‘What we want and what we need may be different things.’

A dozen armed men were forcing their way through the chaos of the docks. The prince might have been at war with the Horse People, but his warriors did not look much different to the Uzhaks Thorn had killed higher up the Denied. There was a woman in their midst, very tall and very thin, coins dangling from a silk headscarf wound around her black, black hair.

She stopped before them and bowed gracefully, a satchel swinging from her slender neck. ‘I am servant to Varoslaf, Great Prince of Kalyiv.’

‘Well met, and I am—’

‘You are Father Yarvi, Minister of Gettland. The prince has given me orders to conduct you to his hall.’

Yarvi and Rulf exchanged a glance. ‘Should I be honoured or scared?’

The woman bowed again. ‘I advise you to be both, and prompt besides.’

‘I have come a long way for an audience and see no reason to dawdle. Lead on.’

‘I’ll pick out some men to go with you,’ growled Rulf, but Father Yarvi shook his head.

‘I will take Thorn and Brand. To go lightly attended, and by the young, is a gesture of trust in one’s host.’

‘You trust Varoslaf?’ muttered Thorn, as the prince’s men gathered about them.

‘I can pretend to.’

‘He’ll know you pretend.’

‘Of course. On such twisted foundations are good manners built.’

Thorn looked at Brand, and he stared back with that helpless expression of his.

‘Have a care,’ came Skifr’s voice in her ear. ‘Even by the ruthless standards of the steppe Varoslaf is known as a ruthless man. Do not put yourself in his power.’

Thorn looked to the great chains strung across the river, then to those dangling bodies swinging, and could only shrug. ‘We’re all in his power now.’

The Prince of Kalyiv’s hall seemed even bigger on the inside, its ribs fashioned from the trunks of great trees still rooted in the hard-packed earth, shafts of sunlight filled with floating dust spearing down from windows high above. There was a long firepit but the flames burned low and the echoing space seemed almost chill after the heat outside.

Varoslaf, Prince of Kalyiv, was much younger than Thorn had expected. Only a few years older than Yarvi, perhaps, but without a hair on his head, nor his chin, nor even his brows, all smooth as an egg. He was not raised up on high, but sat on a stool before the firepit. He was not a big man, and he wore no jewels and boasted no weapon. He had no terrible frown upon his hairless face, only a stony blankness. There was nothing she could have described to make him seem fearsome to a listener, and yet he was fearsome. More so, and more, the closer they were led across that echoing floor.

By the time she and Brand stood at Father Yarvi’s shoulders a dozen strides from his stool, Thorn feared Prince Varoslaf more than anyone she had ever met.

‘Father Yarvi.’ His voice was dry and whispery as old papers and set a sweaty shiver down her back. ‘Minister of Gettland, high is our honour at your visit. Welcome all to Kalyiv, Crossroads of the World.’ His eyes moved from Brand, to Thorn, and back to Yarvi, and he reached down to stroke the ears of a vast hound curled about the legs of his stool. ‘It is a well-judged compliment that a man of your standing comes before me so lightly attended.’

Thorn did indeed feel somewhat lonely. As well as that bear of a dog there were many guards scattered about the hall, with bows and curved swords, tall spears and strange armour.

But if Yarvi was overawed, the minister did not show a grain of it. ‘I know I will want for nothing in your presence, great prince.’

‘Nor will you. I hear you have that witch Scarayoi with you, the Walker in the Ruins.’

‘You are as well-informed as a great lord should be. We call her Skifr, but she is with us.’

‘Yet you keep her from my hall.’ Varoslaf’s laugh was harsh as a dog’s bark. ‘That was well-judged too. And who are these young gods?’

‘The back oars of my crew. Thorn Bathu, who killed six Uzhaks in a skirmish on the Denied, and Brand who took the whole weight of our ship across his shoulders as we crossed the tall hauls.’

‘Slayer of Uzhaks and Lifter of Ships.’ Brand shifted uncomfortably as the prince gave the two of them a searching gaze. ‘It warms me to see such strength, and skill, and bravery in those so young. One could almost believe in heroes, eh, Father Yarvi?’

‘Almost.’

The prince jerked his head towards his willow-thin servant. ‘A token for tomorrow’s legends.’

She drew something from the satchel around her neck and pressed it into Brand’s palm, then did the same to Thorn. A big, rough coin, crudely stamped with a prancing horse. A coin of red gold. Thorn swallowed, trying to judge its value, and guessed she had never held so much in her hand before.

‘You are too generous, great prince,’ croaked Brand, staring down with wide eyes.

‘Great deeds deserve great rewards from great men. Or else why raise men up at all?’ Varoslaf’s unblinking gaze shifted back to Yarvi. ‘If they are your back oars what wonders might the others perform?’

‘I daresay some of them could make the rest of your gold vanish before your eyes.’

‘No good crew is without a few bad men. We cannot all be righteous, eh, Father Yarvi? Those of us who rule especially.’

‘Power means having one shoulder always in the shadows.’

‘So it does. How is the jewel of the north, your mother, Queen Laithlin?’

‘She is my mother no more, great prince. I gave up my family when I swore my oath to the Ministry.’

‘Strange customs, you northerners have,’ and the prince fiddled lazily with the ears of his hound. ‘I think the bonds of blood cannot be severed with a word.’

‘The right words can cut deeper than swords, and oaths especially. The queen is with child.’

‘An heir to the Black Chair perhaps? News rich as gold in these unhappy times.’

‘The world rejoices, great prince. She speaks often of her desire to visit Kalyiv again.’

‘Not too soon, I pray! My treasury still bears the scars of her last visit.’

‘Perhaps we can forge an agreement that will mend those scars and make your treasury swell besides?’

A pause. Varoslaf looked to the woman and she shook herself gently, the coins dangling from her scarf twisting and twinkling on her forehead. ‘Is that why you have come so far, Father Yarvi? To make my treasury swell?’

‘I have come seeking help.’

‘Ah, you too desire the bounty of great men.’ Another pause. Thorn felt a game was played between these two. A game of words, but no less skilful than the exercises in the training square. And even more dangerous. ‘Only name your desire. As long as you do not seek allies against the High King in Skekenhouse.’

Father Yarvi’s smile did not slip by so much as a hair. ‘I should have known your sharp eyes would see straight to the heart of the matter, great prince. I – and Queen Laithlin, and King Uthil – fear Mother War may spread her wings across the Shattered Sea in spite of all our efforts. The High King has many allies, and we seek to balance the scales. Those who thrive on the trade down the Divine and the Denied may need to pick a side—’

‘And yet I cannot. As you have seen I have troubles of my own, and no help to spare.’

‘Might I ask if you have help to spare for the High King?’

The prince narrowed his eyes. ‘Ministers keep coming south with that question.’

‘I am not the first?’

‘Mother Scaer was here not a month ago.’

Father Yarvi paused at that. ‘Grom-gil-Gorm’s minister?’

‘On behalf of Grandmother Wexen. She came before me with a dozen of the High King’s warriors and warned me not to paddle in the Shattered Sea. One might almost say she made threats.’ The hound lifted its head and gave a long growl, a string of drool slipping from its teeth and spattering the ground. ‘Here. In my hall. I was sore tempted to have her skinned in the public square but … it did not seem politic.’ And he stilled his dog with the slightest hiss.

‘Mother Scaer left with her skin, then?’

‘It would not have fit me. She headed southwards in a ship bearing the High King’s prow, bound for the First of Cities. And though I much prefer your manners to hers, I fear I can only give you the same promise.’

‘Which was?’

‘To help all my good friends about the Shattered Sea equally.’

‘Meaning not at all.’

The Prince of Kalyiv smiled, and it chilled Thorn even more than his frown. ‘You are known as a deep-cunning man, Father Yarvi. I am sure you need no help to sift out my meaning. You know where I sit. Between the Horse People and the great forests. Between the High King and the empress. At the Crossroads of the World and with perils all about me.’

‘We all have perils to contend with.’

‘But a prince of Kalyiv must have friends in the east, and the west, and the north, and the south. A prince of Kalyiv thrives on balance. A prince of Kalyiv must keep a foot over every threshold.’

‘How many feet do you have?’

The dog pricked up its ears and gave another growl. Varoslaf’s smile faded as slowly as melting snow. ‘A word of advice. Stop this talk of war, Father Yarvi. Return to Gettland and smooth the way for Father Peace, as I understand a wise minister should.’

‘I and my crew are free to leave Kalyiv, great prince?’

‘Force Uthil’s minister to stay against his will? That would not be politic either.’

‘Then I thank you humbly for your hospitality and for your advice, well meant and gratefully received. But we cannot turn back. We must go on with all haste to the First of Cities, and seek help there.’

Thorn glanced across at Brand, and saw him swallow. To go on to the First of Cities, half the world away from home. She felt a flicker of excitement at that thought. And a flicker of fear.

Varoslaf merely snorted his disdain. ‘I wish you luck. But I fear you will get nothing from the empress. She has grown ever more devout in her old age, and will have no dealings with those who do not worship her One God. The only thing she hungers after more than priest-babble is spilled blood. That and elf-relics. But it would take the greatest ever unearthed as a gift to win her favour.’

‘Oh, great prince, wherever would I find such a thing?’ Father Yarvi bowed low, all innocence and humility.

But Thorn saw the deep-cunning smile at the corner of his mouth.