The high walls at the far end of the hall had been painted in pink and blue and gold, scenes of winged women he couldn’t make a start at understanding, the work of hours and days and weeks. Gorm’s warriors chuckled as they practised their aim with throwing axes, smashing the plaster away, scattering it across the floor. Men Raith had laughed with once, as they watched farms burn up near the border. They hardly spared him a glance now.
At the back of the temple was a marble dais, and on the dais a great block of black stone. Grom-gil-Gorm stood with his fists upon it, frowning up towards a high window filled with chips of coloured glass to make a scene, a figure with the sun behind handing something down to a bearded man.
‘Beautiful,’ murmured Raith, admiring the way Mother Sun caught the glass and cast strange colours across the floor, across the block of stone and the candles, the cup of gold, the wine jug that stood upon it.
Gorm looked sideways. ‘I remember when the only things beautiful to you were blood and glory.’
Raith could hardly deny it. ‘I reckon folk can change, my king.’
‘Rarely for the better. What happened to your face?’
‘Said the wrong thing to a woman.’
‘Her counter-argument was impressive.’
‘Aye.’ Raith winced as he touched one finger to his throbbing nose. ‘Thorn Bathu is quite the debater.’
‘Ha! You cannot say you were not warned about her.’
‘I fear I’m prone to recklessness, my king.’
‘The line between boldness and folly is a hard one even for the wise to find.’ Gorm toyed thoughtfully with one of the pommels strung around his neck, and Raith wondered what dead man’s sword it had balanced. ‘I have been puzzling over this window, but I cannot fathom what story it tells.’
‘The High King given his chair by this One God, I reckon.’
‘You’re right!’ Gorm snapped his fingers. ‘But it is all a pretty lie. I once met the man who carved that chair, and he was not a god but a slave from Sagenmark with the most awful breath. I never thought it fine craftsmanship and my opinion has not changed. Too fussy. I will have a new one made, I think.’
Raith raised his brows. ‘A new one, my king?’
‘I shall soon sit enthroned in the Hall of Whispers as High King over the whole Shattered Sea.’ Gorm peered sideways, mouth pressed into a smug little smile. ‘No man was ever favoured with greater enemies than I. The three brothers Uthrik, Odem and Uthil. The deep-cunning Queen Laithlin. Bright Yilling. Grandmother Wexen. The High King himself. I have prevailed over them all. By strength and cunning and weaponluck. By the favour of Mother War and the treachery of Father Yarvi.’
‘The great warrior is the one who still breathes when the crows feast. The great king is the one who watches the carcasses of his enemies burn.’ How hollow those words rang to Raith now, but Gorm smiled to hear them. Men always smile to hear their own lessons repeated.
‘Yes, Raith, yes! Your brother may have spoken more, but you were always the clever one. The one who truly understood! Just as you said, Skara will be the envy of the world as a queen, and manage my treasury well, and bear me strong children, and speak fair-sounding words that will bring me friends across the sea. As it turns out, you were right not to kill her.’
Raith’s knuckles ached as he bunched his fist. ‘You think so, my king?’ His voice almost croaked away to nothing, he was so sickened with jealousy, sickened with the unfairness of it, but Gorm took it for tearful gratitude.
‘I do, and … I forgive you.’ The Breaker of Swords smiled as though his forgiveness was the best gift a man could have, and certainly a better one than Raith deserved. ‘Mother Scaer likes things that are constant. But I want men about me, not unquestioning slaves. A truly loyal servant must sometimes protect his master from his own rash decisions.’
‘The gods have truly favoured you, my king, and given you more than any man could desire.’ More than any man could deserve. Especially one like this. Raith stared up into that smiling face, scarred by a hundred fights, lit in garish colours from the window. The face of the man he’d once so admired. The face of the man who’d made him what he was.
A killer.
He snatched up the golden cup from the altar. ‘Let me pour a toast to your victory!’ And he tipped the jug so it slopped over, dark wine spattering red as blood-spots on the marble dais. He took the sip the cup-filler takes to make sure the wine’s safe for better lips than his.
There was an echoing crash behind them, bellowed insults, and Gorm turned. Long enough for Raith to slip two fingers into his pouch and feel the cold glass between them.
The High King’s stringy corpse had been knocked from its funeral table and flopped onto the floor while two of Gorm’s warriors fought over his crimson shroud, fine cloth ripping as they dragged it between them like dogs over a bone.