‘The great Divine, and the money that flows along it, and how we should share it between us.’
Laithlin sent her thralls scuttling back with a waft of her finger. ‘Do we not already have agreements that have profited us both?’
‘Put plainly, I would like them to profit me more,’ said Varoslaf. ‘My minister has devised many ways of doing so.’
There was a pause. ‘You have a minister, great prince?’ asked Koll.
Varoslaf turned his chill gaze upon Koll and he could almost feel his balls retreating into the warmth of his stomach. ‘The rulers of the Shattered Sea seem to find them indispensable. I thought I would buy one of my own.’
He made the slightest jerk of his bald head and one of the slaves stood, and pushed back her hood, and Koll heard Thorn give a low growl.
Apart from a thin braid above one ear the woman’s hair had been clipped to yellow fuzz. She wore a thrall-ring of silver wire around her long, lean neck and another around her wrist, a fine chain between them not quite long enough for comfort. She had been tattooed on one cheek with a prancing horse, the prince’s mark of ownership, but it seemed her hatred was still at liberty. Her pink-rimmed eyes, sunken in bruised sockets, blazed with it as she glared across the hall.
‘Gods,’ Koll murmured under his breath, ‘this is ill luck.’ He knew that face. Isriun, daughter to King Uthil’s treacherous brother Odem, who once had been Father Yarvi’s betrothed, then Minister of Vansterland, but had taken too high a hand with the Breaker of Swords and been sold as a slave.
‘Odem’s brat dogs me once again,’ hissed Queen Laithlin.
The foremost of the headmen, a sharp-eyed old merchant festooned with silver chains, cleared his throat. ‘Most feared great prince.’ His voice wobbled only a little as Varoslaf’s eyes slid towards him. ‘And most admired Queen Laithlin, these matters concern us all. If I may—’
‘It is traditional for the farmer and the butcher to divide the meat without seeking the opinions of the pigs,’ said Varoslaf.
For a moment the silence was absolute, then the Prince of Kalyiv’s slender servant leaned slowly towards the headmen and gave a thunderous pig’s oink. The nearest recoiled. Several flinched. All paled. They must have closed many fine deals at that finely polished table, but it was awfully plain they would be turning no profits today.
‘What is it you want, great prince?’ asked Laithlin.
Isriun leaned down to whisper in Varoslaf’s ear, her braid brushing gently against his shoulder, her bright eyes flickering to Laithlin and back.
Her master’s face remained an unknowable mask. ‘Only what is fair.’
‘There is always a way,’ said the queen, dryly. ‘We could perhaps offer you an extra tenth part of a tenth part of every cargo …’
Isriun leaned down again, whispering, whispering, chewed-short fingernails fussing at the tattoo on her cheek.
‘Four tenths of a tenth part,’ droned Varoslaf.
‘Four parts is as far from fair as Roystock is from Kalyiv.’
This time Isriun didn’t bother to speak through her master, but simply snapped the rejoinder to Laithlin’s face. ‘The battlefield is not fair.’
The queen narrowed her eyes. ‘So you came for a battle?’
‘We are ready for one,’ said Isriun, lip wrinkled with contempt.
As long as she was whispering poison in the prince’s ear they would travel a stony path indeed. Koll remembered the skinned men swinging on the docks of Kalyiv, and swallowed. Varoslaf was not a man to be intimidated, nor tricked into a rage, nor swayed by flattery or bluster or jokes. Here was a man no man dared challenge. A man whose power was built on fear.
Laithlin and Isriun had fallen into a duel as savage and skilful as any in the training square. They slashed mercilessly at each other with portions and prices, stabbed with tithes and parried with fractions while Varoslaf sat back in his chair, his hairless face a mask.
Koll saw only one chance, and he put his fingers to the weights under his shirt. He thought of his mother, screaming at him to come down from the mast. No doubt you will be safer on the deck. But if you wish to change the world, you must take a risk or two.
‘Oh, great prince!’ He was surprised to find his voice as bright and easy as it might have been in Rin’s forge. ‘Perhaps you should retire to bed and leave your minister to make the arrangements.’