‘Then it still works?’
‘Shall I make it turn?’
‘No,’ said Father Yarvi. ‘Make it turn for the Empress of the South, not before.’
‘There is the question of—’
Without taking her eyes from the box, the queen held out a folded paper. ‘Your debts are all cancelled.’
‘The very question I had in mind.’ The black-skinned woman frowned as she took it between two fingers. ‘I have been called a witch before but here is sorcery indeed, to trap such a weight of gold in a scrap of paper.’
‘We live in changing times,’ murmured Father Yarvi, and he snapped the box shut, putting the light out with it. Only then Brand realized he’d been holding his breath, and slowly let it out. ‘Find us a crew, Rulf, you know the kind.’
‘Hard ones, I’m guessing,’ said the old warrior.
‘Oarsmen and fighters. The outcasts and the desperate. Men who don’t get weak at the thought of blood or the sight of it. The journey is long and the stakes could not be higher. I want men with nothing to lose.’
‘My kind of crew!’ The black-skinned woman slapped her thigh. ‘Sign me up first!’ She slipped between the stools and strutted over towards Brand, and for a moment her cloak of rags came open and he saw the glint of steel. ‘Can I buy you a drink, young man?’
‘I think the boy has drunk enough.’ Queen Laithlin’s grey eyes were on him, and the eyes of her four slaves as well, and Brand swallowed, his sick-tasting mouth suddenly very dry. ‘Though my first husband gave me two sons, for which I will always be grateful, he drank too much. It spoils a bad man. It ruins a good one.’
‘I … have decided to stop, my queen,’ mumbled Brand. He knew then he wasn’t going back. Not to the ale-cup, nor to begging, nor to lifting on the docks.
The black woman puffed out her cheeks in disappointment as she made for the door. ‘Young people these days have no ambition in them.’
Laithlin ignored her. ‘The way you fight reminds me of an old friend.’
‘Thank you—’
‘Don’t. I had to kill him.’ And the Queen of Gettland swept out, her slaves following in her wake.
‘I’ve a crew to gather.’ Rulf took Brand under the arm. ‘And no doubt your gutter’s missing you—’
‘It’ll manage without me.’ Rulf was strong but Brand wouldn’t be moved. He’d remembered how it felt to fight, and how it felt to win, and he was more sure of the good thing to do than he’d ever been in his life. ‘Luck’s with you, old man,’ he said. ‘Now you need to gather one less.’
Rulf snorted. ‘This ain’t no two-day jaunt, boy, nor even a raid to the Islands. We’re headed far up the Divine River and down the Denied, over the tall hauls and beyond. We go to speak to the Prince of Kalyiv. To seek an audience with the Empress of the South in the First of Cities, even! All kinds of dangers on that journey, even if you’re not seeking allies against the most powerful man in the world. We’ll be gone months. If we come back at all.’
Brand swallowed. Dangers, no doubt, but opportunities too. Men won glory on the Divine. Men won fortunes beyond it. ‘You need oarsmen?’ he said. ‘I can pull an oar. You need loads lifted? I can lift a load. You need fighters?’ Brand nodded towards Thorn, who’d managed to stand, wincing as she kneaded at her battered ribs. ‘I can fight. You want men with nothing to lose? Look no further.’
Rulf opened his mouth but Father Yarvi spoke over him. ‘The way may be hard, but we go to smooth the path for Father Peace. We go to find allies.’ The minister gave Brand the slightest nod. ‘We might need one man aboard who spares some thought for doing good. Give him a marker, Rulf.’
The old warrior scratched at his grey beard. ‘Yours’ll be the lowest place, boy. The worst work for the thinnest rewards. Back oar.’ He jerked his head over at Thorn. ‘Opposite that article.’
Thorn gave Brand a long, hard frown and spat, but it only made him smile wider. He saw his future once again, and he liked what he saw. Compared to lifting loads on the docks, he liked it a lot.
‘Looking forward to it.’ He plucked the marker from Rulf’s hand, the minister’s dove carved into the face, and he wrapped his fingers painfully tight about it.
It seemed Mother War had found a crew for him after all. Or Father Peace had.
(#ulink_5cba0d53-9be3-510e-8421-9a9c1b13c885)
THE FIRST LESSON (#ulink_8ac20c88-4421-5f38-931c-afcdda316d05)
The South Wind rocked on the tide, boasting new oars and a new sail, freshly painted and freshly provisioned, lean and sleek as a racing dog and with minister’s doves gleaming white at high prow and stern. It was, without doubt, a beautiful ship. A ship fit for high deeds and heroes’ songs.
Sadly, her new crew were not quite of that calibre.
‘They seem a …’ Thorn’s mother always found a pretty way to put things, but even she was stumped. ‘Varied group.’
‘Fearsome is the word I’d have reached for,’ grunted Thorn.
She might well have tripped over desperate, disgusting or axebitten on the way. All three seemed apt for the gathering of the damned crawling over the South Wind and the wharf beside it, hefting sacks and barrels, hauling at ropes, shoving, bellowing, laughing, threatening, all under Father Yarvi’s watchful eye.
Fighting men, these, but more like bandits than warriors. Men with many scars and few scruples. Men with beards forked and braided and shaved in strange patches and dyed hair chopped into spikes. Men whose clothes were ragged but whose muscled arms and thick necks and calloused fingers glittered with gold and silver ring-money, proclaiming to the world the high value they put on themselves.
Thorn wondered what mountain of corpses this lot might have heaped up between them, but she wasn’t one to be easily intimidated. Especially when she had no choice. She set down her sea-chest, everything she had inside, her father’s old sword wrapped in an oilcloth on top. She put on her bravest face, stepped up to the biggest man she could see and tapped him on the arm.
‘I’m Thorn Bathu.’
‘I am Dosduvoi.’ She found herself staring sharply up at one of the biggest heads she ever saw, tiny features squeezed into the centre of its doughy expanse, looming so high above her that at first she thought its owner must be standing on a box. ‘What bad luck brings you here, girl?’ he asked, with a faintly tragic quiver to his voice.
She wished she had a different answer, but snapped out, ‘I’m sailing with you.’
His face retreated into an even tinier portion of his head as he frowned. ‘Along the Divine River, to Kalyiv and beyond?’
She thrust her chin up at him in the usual manner. ‘If the boat floats with so much meat aboard.’
‘Reckon we’ll have to balance the benches with some little ones.’ This from a man, small and hard as Dosduvoi was huge and soft. He had the spikiest shag of red hair and the maddest eyes, bright blue, shining wet and sunken in dark sockets. ‘My name is Odda, famed about the Shattered Sea.’
‘Famed for what?’
‘All kinds of things.’ He flashed a yellow wolf-smile and she saw his teeth were filed across the front with killer’s grooves. ‘Can’t wait to sail with you.’
‘Likewise,’ Thorn managed to croak, stepping back despite herself and nearly tripping over someone else. He looked up as she turned and, brave face or no, she shrank back the other way. A huge scar started at the corner of one eye, all dragged out of shape to show the pink lid, angled across his stubbled cheek and through both lips. To make matters worse, she realized from his hair, long and braided back around his face, that they would be sailing with a Vansterman.
He met her ill-concealed horror with a mutilated blankness more terrible than any snarl and said mildly, ‘I am Fror.’
It was either bluster or look weak and Thorn reckoned that no choice at all, so she puffed herself up and snapped out, ‘How did you get the scar?’
‘How did you get the scar?’
Thorn frowned. ‘What scar?’
‘That’s the face the gods gave you?’ And with the faintest of smiles the Vansterman went back to coiling rope.
‘Father Peace protect us,’ squeaked Thorn’s mother as she edged past. ‘Fearsome is a fair word for them.’
‘They’ll be the ones scared of me soon enough,’ said Thorn, wishing, and not for the first time, that saying a thing firmly enough makes it so.
