Yarvi smiled as he bowed. ‘You are as wise as you are beautiful, my queen.’
Raith turned back into the room after he pushed the door shut. ‘I don’t trust that bastard.’ It was so improper Skara could not help a snort of laughter. She had never known anyone who let as little slip as Father Yarvi, nor anyone who kept as little hidden as Raith. His every thought was plainly written on that blunt, scarred, handsome face.
‘Why?’ she asked, ‘because he judges me wise and beautiful?’
Raith’s eyes were still on her. ‘Just ’cause a man tells two truths doesn’t mean he’s got no lies in him.’
So Raith found her wise and beautiful too. That pleased her a great deal, but it would not do to show it. ‘Father Yarvi gives us a chance to strike at the High King,’ she said. ‘I do not mean to miss it.’
‘You do trust him, then?’
‘You do not have to trust a man to make use of him. My doorkeeper, after all, used to fill cups for Grom-gil-Gorm.’
Raith frowned harder than ever as he fiddled at that notch in his ear. ‘You might be best not trusting anyone.’
‘Good advice.’ Skara met his eye in the mirror. ‘You can leave, now.’ And she snapped her fingers at the thrall to bring her clothes.
The Opinions of the Pigs
It was two years since Koll visited Roystock, and the place had sprouted upwards and outwards from its boggy island like a tumour.
Wooden tentacles had shot across the water on rickety stilts, crooked piers with houses clinging to their sides like stubborn barnacles, sheds built on shacks at every angle but straight, a rotting forest of warped supports below and a hundred chimneys puffing a pall of smoke above. Little clumps of hovels had been flung out like spatters from spew, catching on every hump dry enough to hold a pile among the marshes at the wide mouth of the Divine.
Never in his life had Koll seen so much appalling carpentry gathered in one place.
‘It’s grown,’ he said, wrinkling his nose. ‘I guess that’s progress.’
Thorn pinched hers closed entirely. ‘The smell’s progressed some, that’s sure.’ The heady mix of ancient dung and salt decay with an acrid edge of fish-smoking, cloth-dying and leather-tanning made the breath snag at the back of Koll’s throat.
Queen Laithlin was not a woman to be put off business by an odour, however. ‘The headmen of Roystock have grown fat on the trade coming up the Divine,’ she said. ‘Their city has bloated up with them.’
‘Varoslaf has come for his mouthful of the meat.’ Koll frowned towards the wharves as they grew closer. ‘And he’s brought a lot of ships.’
Thorn’s eyes were narrowed to slits as she scanned across those long, lean, vessels. ‘I count thirteen.’
‘More than just a show of strength,’ murmured Queen Laithlin. ‘I think the Prince of Kalyiv means to stay.’
Mother Sun was warm outside, but in the hall there was a chill.
Prince Varoslaf sat at the head of a long table, so polished one could see another, blurry, Prince Varoslaf reflected in its top. One was more than enough to worry Koll.
He was not a large man, wore no weapon, had not a hair on his head, his jaw, even his brows. There was no wrath, no scorn, no brooding threat on his face, only a stony blankness somehow more troubling than any snarl. Behind him was gathered a crescent of fierce warriors, another of kneeling slaves with heavy thrall-chains dangling. Beside him stood a spear-thin servant, coins twinkling from a scarf across her forehead.
The nine headmen of Roystock sat on one side of the table between Varoslaf and Laithlin, boasting their best silks and richest jewels but with their nervousness written plainly on their faces. Like the crew of a rudderless ship, drifting in the northern ice, hoping they wouldn’t be crushed between two mighty bergs. Koll had a feeling hope would get them nowhere in this company.
‘Queen Laithlin, Jewel of the North.’ Varoslaf’s voice was as dry and whispery as the rustling of autumn leaves. ‘I feel favoured by the gods to once again bask in the radiance of your presence.’
‘Great prince,’ answered Laithlin, her own entourage crowding with heads bowed into the hall behind her, ‘the whole Shattered Sea trembles at your coming. I congratulate you on your famous victory over the Horse People.’
‘If one can call it a victory over the flies every time the horse swishes his tail. The flies always return.’
‘I have brought gifts for you.’ Two of Laithlin’s thralls, twins with braids so long they wore them wound around one arm, shuffled forward with boxes of inlaid wood, imported at daunting expense from far-off Catalia.
But the prince held up his hand, and Koll saw the deep groove across his calloused fingers left by constant practice with a bow. ‘As I have gifts for you. There will be time for gifts later. Let us first discuss the matter.’
The Golden Queen raised one golden brow. ‘Which is?’