Half the World (Shattered Sea, Book 2)

FAREWELLS

Thorn gently slid her oar from its port and gave the sweat-polished wood a fond final stroke with her fingertips.

‘Fare you well, my friend.’ The oar was all indifference, though, so with a parting sigh she hefted her sea-chest rattling onto the wharf and sprang up after it.

Mother Sun smiled down on Thorlby from a clear sky, and Thorn closed her eyes and tipped her face back, smiling as the salt breeze kissed her scarred cheeks.

‘Now that’s what weather should be,’ she whispered, remembering the choking heat of the First of Cities.

‘Look at you.’ Rulf paused in tying off the prow-rope to shake his balding head in wonder. ‘Hard to believe how you’ve grown since you first sat at my back oar. And not just in height.’

‘From girl to woman,’ said Father Yarvi, clambering from the South Wind.

‘From woman to hero,’ said Dosduvoi, catching Thorn in a crushing hug. ‘Remember that crew of Throvenmen singing a song about you on the Divine? The she-devil who killed ten warriors and saved the Empress of the South! A woman who breathes fire and looks lightning!’

‘Snake for a tail, wasn’t it?’ grunted Fror, winking his smaller eye at her.

‘All that time spent staring at your arse,’ mused Koll, ‘and I never noticed the tail – ow!’ As his mother clipped him around the head.

Dosduvoi was still chuckling over the Throvenmen. ‘Their faces when they realized you were sitting right in front of them!’

‘And then they begged to fight you.’ Rulf laughed with him. ‘Bloody fools.’

‘We warned ’em,’ grunted Fror. ‘What did you say, Safrit?’

‘She might not breathe fire, but you’ll get burned even so.’

‘And she kicked their white arses one after another and dumped their captain in the river!’ shouted Koll, springing up onto the ship’s rail and balancing there with arms spread wide.

‘Lucky he didn’t drown with all that ice,’ said Rulf.

In spite of the warmth, Thorn shivered at the memory. ‘Gods, but it was cold up there on the Divine.’

The ice had come early, crackling against the keel, and just a week north of the tall hauls it had locked the river tight. So they’d dragged the South Wind over and made a hall of her again, and lived there huddled like a winter flock for two freezing months.

Thorn still trained as hard as if she could hear Skifr’s voice. Harder, maybe. She fought Dosduvoi and Fror and Koll and Rulf, but though she saw him watching, she never asked for Brand.

She still woke when Skifr would’ve woken her. Earlier, maybe. She’d look down in the chill darkness through the smoke of her breath and see him lying, chest slowly shifting, and wish she could drop down beside him in the warmth the way she used to. Instead she’d force herself out into the bitter chill, teeth clenched against the aching in her leg as she ran across a white desert, the elf-bangle glowing chill white at her wrist, the streak of the crew’s campfire the one feature in the great white sky.

She had what she’d always wanted. Whatever Hunnan and his like might say she had proved herself a warrior, with a favoured place on a minister’s crew and songs sung of her high deeds. She had sent a dozen men through the Last Door. She had won a prize beyond price from the most powerful woman in the world. And here was the harvest.

A thousand miles of lonely nothing.

Thorn had always been happiest in her own company. Now she was as sick of it as everyone else was. So she stood on the docks of Thorlby and hugged Safrit tight, and dragged Koll down from the rail and scrubbed his wild hair while he squirmed in embarrassment, then caught Rulf and kissed him on his balding pate, and seized hold of Dosduvoi and Fror and hauled them into a struggling, sour-smelling embrace. A frowning giant and a scarred Vansterman, foul as dung and frightening as wolves when she met them, grown close to her as brothers.

‘Gods damn it but I’ll miss you horrible bastards.’

‘Who knows?’ said Mother Scaer, still stretched out among their supplies where she had spent most of the homeward voyage. ‘Our paths may cross again before too long.’

‘Let’s hope not,’ Thorn muttered under her breath, looked over those familiar faces, and gave it one last try. ‘How’d you get the scar, Fror?’

The Vansterman opened his mouth as if to toss out one of his jokes. He always had one ready, after all. Then his eyes flickered to her scarred cheeks and he stopped short, thinking. He took a long breath, and looked her straight in the eye.

‘I was twelve years old. The Gettlanders came before dawn. They took most of the villagers for slaves. My mother fought and they killed her. I tried to run, and their leader cut me with his sword. Left me for dead with nothing but this scar.’

There was the truth, then, and it was ugly enough. But there was something else in the way Fror looked at her. Something that made the hairs stand on Thorn’s neck. Her voice cracked a little when she asked the question. ‘Who was their leader?’

‘They called him Headland.’

Thorn stared down at the sword she wore. The sword that had been her father’s. ‘This sword, then?’

‘The gods cook strange recipes.’

‘But you sailed with Gettlanders! You fought beside me. Even though you knew I was his daughter?’

‘And I’m glad I did.’ Fror shrugged. ‘Vengeance only walks a circle. From blood, back to blood. Death waits for us all. You can follow your path to her bent under a burden of rage. I did, for many years. You can let it poison you.’ He took a long breath, and let it sigh away. ‘Or you can let it go. Be well, Thorn Bathu.’

‘You too,’ she muttered, hardly knowing what to say. Hardly knowing what to think.

She took a last look at the South Wind, tame now, at the wharf, the paint flaking on the white doves mounted at prow and stern. That ship had been her home for a year. Her best friend and her worst enemy, every plank and rivet familiar. Seemed a different ship to the one they set out in. Weathered and worn, scarred and seasoned. A little bit like Thorn. She gave it a final, respectful nod, jerked her sea-chest up onto her shoulder, turned—

Brand stood behind her, close enough that she could almost smell his breath, sleeves rolled up to show the snaking scars about his forearms, stronger and quieter and better-looking than ever.

‘Reckon I’ll be seeing you, then,’ he said.

His eyes were fixed on her, gleaming behind those strands of hair across his face. It seemed she’d spent most of the last six months trying not to think about him, which was every bit as bad as thinking about him but with the added frustration of failing not to. Hard to forget someone when they’re three oars in front of you. His shoulder moving with the stroke. His elbow at his oar. A sliver of his face as he looked back.

‘Aye,’ she muttered, putting her eyes to the ground. ‘I reckon.’ And she stepped around him, and down the bouncing planks of the wharf, and away.

Maybe it was hard, to leave it at that after all they had been through. Maybe it was cowardly. But she had to put him behind her, and leave her disappointment and her shame and her foolishness along with him. When something has to be done, there’s nothing to be gained by putting it off but pain.

Damn, but she was starting to sound like Skifr.

That thought rather pleased her.

Thorlby was changed. Everything so much smaller than she remembered. Greyer. Emptier. The wharves were nowhere near so crowded as they used to be, a sorry few fishermen working at their squirming catches, scales flashing silver. Warriors stood guard on the gate, but young ones, which made Thorn wonder what the rest were busy at. She knew one from the training square, his eyes going wide as ale cups as she strutted past.

‘Is that her?’ she heard someone mutter.

‘Thorn Bathu,’ a woman whispered, voice hushed as if she spoke a magic spell.

‘The one they’re singing of?’

Her legend had marched ahead of her, would you believe? So Thorn put her shoulders back, and her bravest face on, and she let her left arm swing, the elf-bangle shining. Shining in the sunlight, shining with its own light.

Up the Street of Anvils she went, and the customers turned to stare, and the hammering ceased as the smiths looked out, and Thorn whistled a song as she walked. The song those Throvenmen had sung, about a she-devil who saved the Empress of the South.

Why not? Earned it, hadn’t she?

Up the steep lanes she’d walked down with Father Yarvi when he led her from the citadel’s dungeons and off to Skekenhouse, to Kalyiv, to the First of Cities. A hundred years ago it seemed, as she turned down a narrow way where every stone was familiar.

She heard muttering behind and saw she’d picked up a little gaggle of children, peering awestruck from around the corner. Just like the ones that had followed her father when he was in Thorlby. Just as he used to she gave them a cheery wave. Then just as he used to she bared her teeth and hissed, scattered them screaming.

Skifr always said that history turns in circles.

The narrow house, the step worn in the middle, the door her father badly carved, all the same, yet somehow they made her nervous. Her heart was hammering as she reached up to shove the door wide, but at the last moment she bunched her fist and knocked instead. She stood waiting, awkward as a beggar even though this was her home, fingers clutched tight around the pouch at her neck, thinking about what Fror had told her.

Maybe her father hadn’t been quite the hero she always reckoned him. Maybe her mother wasn’t quite the villain either. Maybe no one’s all one or all the other.

It was her mother who answered. Strange, to see her looking just the same after all that had happened. Just another hair or two turned grey, and for a moment Thorn felt like a child again, clamping a brave face over her anger and her fear.

‘Mother …’ She tried to tame the tangled side of her head, plucking at the gold and silver rings bound up in her matted hair. A fool’s effort, as she couldn’t have combed that thicket with an axe. She wondered what her mother’s tongue would stab at first: the madness of her hair or the ugliness of her scars or the raggedness of her clothes, or the—

‘Hild!’ Her face lit up with joy and she caught Thorn in her arms and held her so tight she made her gasp. Then she jerked her out to arm’s length and looked her up and down, beaming, then clutched her tight again. ‘I’m sorry, Thorn—’

‘You can call me Hild. If you like.’ Thorn snorted out a laugh. ‘It’s good to hear you say it.’

‘You never used to like it.’

‘There’s a lot changed this past year.’

‘Here too. War with the Vanstermen, and the king ill, and Grandmother Wexen keeping ships from the harbour … but there’ll be time for that later.’

‘Aye.’ Thorn slowly pushed the door shut and leaned back against it. It was only then she realized how tired she was. So tired she nearly slid down onto her arse right there in the hall.

‘You were expected back weeks ago. I was starting to worry. Well, I started worrying the day you left—’

‘We got caught in the ice.’

‘I should’ve known it would take more than half the world to keep my daughter away. You’ve grown. Gods, how you’ve grown!’

‘You’re not going to say anything about my hair?’

Her mother reached out, and tidied a loose worm of it behind Thorn’s ear, touched her scarred cheek gently with her fingertips. ‘All I care about is that you’re alive. I’ve heard some wild stories about— Father Peace, what’s that?’ Her mother caught Thorn’s wrist and lifted it, the light from the elf-bangle falling across her face, eyes glittering with golden reflections as she stared down.

‘That …’ muttered Thorn, ‘is a long story.’