Читать книгу Half a King - Джо Аберкромби - Страница 12

‘… Mother Sun and Father Moon, shine your gold and silver lights upon this union between Yarvi, son of Laithlin, and Isriun, daughter of Odem …’

The towering statues of the six Tall Gods glowered down with pitiless garnet eyes. Above them, in niches ringing the dome of the ceiling, the amber figures of the small gods gleamed. All judging Yarvi’s worth and no doubt finding him as horribly wanting as he did himself.

He curled up his withered hand and tried to work it further into his sleeve. Everyone in the Godshall knew well enough what he had on the end of his arm. Or what he hadn’t.

Yet still he tried to hide it.

‘Mother Sea and Father Earth, grant them your harvests and your bounty, send them good weatherluck and good weaponluck …’

In the centre of the hall the Black Chair stood upon its dais. It was an elf-relic from the time before the Breaking of God, forged by unknown arts from a single piece of black metal, impossibly delicate and impossibly strong, and countless years had left not a single scratch upon it.

Seat of kings, between gods and men. Far too high for such a wretched thing as Yarvi to sit in. He felt unworthy even to look upon it.

‘Mother War and Father Peace, grant them the strength to face whatever Fate brings …’

He had expected to be a minister. To give up wife and children with hardly a thought. Kissing the aged cheek of Grandmother Wexen when he passed the test was the closest he had hoped to come to romance. Now he was to share his life, such as it was, with a girl he hardly knew.

Isriun’s palm was clammy against his, sacred cloth wrapped about their clasped hands to make a clumsy bundle. They gripped each other, and were tied together, and pressed together by the wishes of their parents, and bound together by the needs of Gettland, and still it felt as if there was an unbridgeable chasm between them.

‘Oh, He Who Sprouts the Seed, grant them healthy issue …’

Yarvi knew what every guest was thinking. Not crippled issue. Not one-handed issue. He stole a glance sideways at this small, slight, yellow-haired girl who should have been his brother’s wife. She looked scared and slightly sick. But who wouldn’t, being forced to marry half a man?

This was everyone’s second best. A day of celebration mourned by all. A tragic compromise.

‘Oh, She Who Guards the Locks, keep safe their household …’

Only Brinyolf the Prayer-Weaver was enjoying himself. He had spun one ponderous blessing for Isriun at her betrothal to Yarvi’s brother and now – to his delight if not hers – got the chance to construct a second. His voice droned on, exhorting Tall Gods and Small Gods to grant fertility in their fields, and obedience in their slaves, and no one would have been surprised by a plea for regularity in their bowels next. Yarvi hunched his shoulders, swamped by one of the heavy furs his father used to wear, dreading the magnitude of Brinyolf’s blessing at the wedding itself.

‘Oh, She of the Ewer, pour prosperity upon this royal couple, upon their parents and their subjects, and upon all of Gettland!’

The prayer-weaver stepped back, smug as a new parent, his chin vanishing into the roll of fat beneath it.

‘I shall be brief,’ said Mother Gundring, with the slightest knowing glance at Yarvi. He spluttered on a stifled laugh, then caught his mother’s eye upon him, cold as the winter sea, and had no need to stifle another.

‘A kingdom stands upon two pillars,’ spoke the old minister. ‘We already have a strong king.’ No one laughed. Admirable self control. ‘Soon, gods willing, we will have a strong queen also.’ Yarvi saw Isriun’s pale throat flutter as she swallowed.

Mother Gundring beckoned forward Yarvi’s mother and his Uncle Odem, the one person who looked happy to be in attendance, to give their blessing by placing their hands upon the bundle. Then with an effort she lifted high her staff, tubes and rods of the same elf-metal as the Black Chair gleaming, and called out, ‘They are promised!’

So it was done. Isriun was not asked for an opinion on the matter, and neither was Yarvi. It seemed there was little interest in the opinions of kings. Certainly not of this one. The audience, a hundred strong or more, served up restrained applause. The men – heads of some of Gettland’s greatest families, sword-hilts and cloak-buckles set with gold – beat approval on broad chests with heavy fists. On the other side of the hall the women – hair glistening with fresh oil and their household keys hung on best jewel-lustred chains – tapped fingers politely in their scented palms.

Mother Gundring unwrapped the sacred cloth and Yarvi snatched free his good hand, sticky-pink and tingling. His uncle seized him by the shoulders and said into his ear, ‘Well done!’, though Yarvi had done nothing but stand there and sing some promises he hardly understood.

The guests filed out, and Brinyolf closed the doors of the hall with an echoing clap, leaving Yarvi and Isriun alone with the gods, the Black Chair, the weight of their uncertain future, and an ocean of awkward silence.

Isriun rubbed gently at the hand that had held Yarvi’s, and looked at the floor. He looked at the floor too, not that there was anything so very interesting down there. He cleared his throat. He shifted his sword-belt. It still hung strangely on him. He felt as if it always would. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, at last.

She looked up, one eye shining in the heavy darkness. ‘Why are you sorry?’ Then she remembered to add uncertainly, ‘my king?’

He almost said That you’ll have half a man for a husband, but settled for, ‘That you’re passed around my family like a feast-day cup.’

‘On feast-day, everyone’s happy to get the cup.’ She gave a bitter little smile. ‘I’m the one who should be sorry. Imagine me a queen.’ And she snorted as though there never was a more foolish joke.

‘Imagine me a king.’

‘You are a king.’

He blinked at that. He had been so fixed on his shortcomings it had never occurred she might be fixed on her own. That thought, as the misery of others often can, made him feel just a little better.

‘You manage your father’s household.’ He looked down at the golden key hanging on her chest. ‘That’s no small task.’

‘But a queen manages the business of a country! Everyone says your mother has a high art at it. Laithlin, the Golden Queen!’ She spoke the name like a magic spell. ‘They say she’s owed a thousand thousand favours, that a debt to her is a matter for pride. They say her word is valued higher than gold among merchants, because gold may go down in worth but her word never does. They say some traders of the far north have given up praying to the gods and worship her instead.’ She spoke faster and faster, and chewed at her nails, and tugged at one thin hand with the other, eyes opening very wide. ‘There’s a rumour she lays silver eggs.’

Yarvi had to laugh. ‘I’m reasonably sure that one’s false.’

‘But she’s raised granaries and had channels dug and brought more earth under the plough so there’ll never again be a famine that forces folk to draw lots to see who must find new homes across the sea.’ Isriun’s shoulders drifted up as she spoke until they were hunched about her ears. ‘And people flock to Thorlby from across the world to trade, so the city’s tripled in size and split its walls and your mother’s built new walls and split them again.’

‘True, but—’

‘I’ve heard she has a mighty scheme to stamp every coin of one weight, and these coins will pass through all the lands about the Shattered Sea, so that every trade will be made with her face, and make her richer even than the High King in Skekenhouse! How will … I?’ Isriun’s shoulders slumped and she flicked at the key on her chest and set it swinging by its chain. ‘How can the likes of me—’

‘There’s always a way.’ Yarvi caught Isriun’s hand in his before she could get her vanishing nails to her teeth again. ‘My mother will help you. She’s your aunt, isn’t she?’

‘She’ll help me?’ Instead of pulling her hand away she drew him closer by it. ‘Your father may have been a great warrior but I rather think he was your less fearsome parent.’

Yarvi smiled, but he did not deny it. ‘You were luckier. My uncle’s always as calm as still water.’

Isriun glanced nervously towards the door. ‘You don’t know my father like I do.’

‘Then … I’ll help you.’ He had held her hand half the morning and it could have been a dead fish in his clammy palm. Now it felt like something else entirely – strong, and cool, and very much alive. ‘Isn’t that the point of a marriage?’

‘Not just that.’ She seemed suddenly very close, taper-light reflected in the corners of her eyes, teeth shining between parted lips.

There was a smell to her, not sweet and not sour, he could not name it. Faint, but it made his heart jump.

He did not know if he should close his eyes, then she did, so he did, and their noses bumped awkwardly.

Her breath tickled at his cheek and made his skin flush hot. Frighteningly hot.

Her lips just barely brushed his and he broke away with all the dignity of a startled rabbit, caught his leg on his sword and nearly fell over it.

‘Sorry,’ she said, shrinking back and staring at the floor.

‘It’s me who should be sorry.’ For a king Yarvi spent a great deal of his time apologizing. ‘I’m the sorriest man in Gettland. No doubt my brother gave you a better kiss. More practice … I suppose.’

‘All your brother did was talk about the battles he’d win,’ she muttered at her feet.

‘No danger of that with me.’ He could not have said why he did it – to shock her, or as revenge for the failed kiss, or simply to be honest – but he held up his crooked hand, shaking his sleeve free so it was between them in all its ugliness.

He expected her to flinch, to pale, to step away, but she only looked thoughtfully at it. ‘Does it hurt?’

‘Not really … sometimes.’

She reached out, then, sliding her fingers around his knobbled knuckles and pressing at the crooked palm with her thumb while the breath stopped in his throat. No one had ever touched that hand as if it was just a hand. A piece of flesh with feelings like any other.

‘I heard you beat Keimdal in the square even so,’ she said.

‘I only gave the order. I learned a long time ago that I’m not much good at fair fights.’

‘A warrior fights,’ she said, looking him in the eye. ‘A king commands.’ And with a grin she drew him up the dais. He went uneasily, for even though this was his hall, with every step he felt more like a trespasser.

‘The Black Chair,’ he muttered as they reached it.

‘Your chair,’ said Isriun, and to his horror she reached out and swept her fingertips down the perfect metal of the arm with a hiss that made Yarvi’s skin prickle. ‘Hard to believe it’s the oldest thing here. Made by the hands of elves before the Breaking of the World.’

‘You’re interested in the elves?’ he squeaked, terrified she might make him touch it or, more awful yet, sit in it, and desperate for a distraction.

‘I’ve read every book Mother Gundring has about them,’ she said.

Yarvi blinked. ‘You read?’

‘I once trained to be a minister. I was Mother Gundring’s apprentice, before you. Bound for a life of books, and plants, and soft words spoken.’

‘She never said so.’ It seemed they had more in common than he had imagined.

‘I was promised to your brother, and that was the end of it. We must do what’s best for Gettland.’

They gave much the same sigh at much the same time. ‘So everyone tells me,’ said Yarvi. ‘We’ve both lost the Ministry.’

‘But gained each other. And we’ve gained this.’ Her eyes shone as she gave the perfect curve of the Black Chair’s arm one last stroke. ‘No mean wedding present.’ Her light fingertips slipped from the metal and onto the back of his hand, and he found that he very much liked having them there. ‘We were meant to discuss when we’ll be married.’

‘As soon as I get back,’ he said, voice slightly hoarse.

She gave his withered hand one last squeeze then let it fall. ‘I’ll expect a better kiss after your victory, my king.’

As he watched her walk away Yarvi was almost glad neither one of them had joined the Ministry. ‘I’ll try not to trip over my sword!’ he called as she reached the doorway.

She smiled at him over her shoulder as she slipped through, the daylight setting a glow in her hair. Then the doors shut softly behind her. Leaving Yarvi marooned on the dais, in the midst of all that silent space, his doubts suddenly looming even higher than the Tall Gods above. It took a fearsome effort to turn his head back towards the Black Chair.

Could he truly sit in it, between gods and men? He, who could hardly bring himself to touch it with his crippled joke of a hand? He made himself reach out, his breath coming shallow. Made himself lay his one trembling fingertip upon the metal.

Very cold and very hard. Just as a king must be.

Just as Yarvi’s father used to be, sitting there with the King’s Circle on his furrowed brow. His scarred hands gripping the arms, the pommel of his sword never far out of reach. The sword that hung at Yarvi’s belt now, dragging at him with its unfamiliar weight.

I didn’t ask for half a son.

And Yarvi shrank from the empty chair with even less dignity than when his father still sat in it. Not towards the doors of the Godshall and the waiting crowd beyond, but away towards the statue of Father Peace, pressing himself to the stone and working his fingers into the crack beside the giant leg of the patron god of ministers. In silence the hidden door sprang open, and like a thief fleeing the scene of his crime Yarvi slipped into the blackness beyond.

The citadel was full of secret ways, but nowhere so riddled as the Godshall. Passages passed under its floor, inside its walls, within its very dome. Ministers of old had used them to show the will of the gods with the odd little miracle – feathers fluttering down, or smoke rising behind the statues. Once blood had been dripped on Gettland’s reluctant warriors as the king called for war.

The passageways were dark and full of sounds, but Yarvi had no fear of them. These tunnels had long been his domain. He had hidden from his father’s blazing anger in the darkness. From his brother’s crushing love. From his mother’s chill disappointment. He could find his way from one end of the citadel to the other without once stepping into the light.

Here he knew all the ways, as any good minister should.

Here he was safe.