‘Huh.’ Blue Jenner peered down at it, eyebrows high. ‘Guess she can wait a little longer for me.’
They hurried away through the wreckage of Yaletoft, flaming straw fluttering on the hot wind, the night boiling over with screaming and pleading and weeping. Skara kept her eyes on the ground like a good slave should, no one now to tell her not to slouch, her fear thawing slowly into guilt.
They sprang aboard Jenner’s ship and pushed off, the crew muttering prayers of thanks to Father Peace that they had been spared from the carnage, oars creaking out a steady rhythm as they slid between the boats of the raiders and out to sea. Skara slumped among the cargo, the guilt pooling slowly into sorrow as she watched the flames take King Fynn’s beautiful hall and her past life with it, the great carved gable showing black against the fire, then falling in a fountain of whirling sparks.
The burning of all she had known dwindled away, Yaletoft a speckling of flame in the dark distance, sailcloth snapping as Jenner ordered the ship turned north, towards Gettland. Skara stood and looked behind them, into the past, the tears drying on her face as her sorrow froze into a cold, hard, iron weight of fury.
‘I’ll see Throvenland free,’ she whispered, clenching her fists. ‘And my grandfather’s hall rebuilt, and Bright Yilling’s carcass left for the crows.’
‘For now, let’s stick to seeing you alive, princess.’ Jenner took the thrall collar from her neck, then wrapped his cloak around her shivering shoulders.
She looked up at him, rubbing gently at the marks the silver wire had left. ‘I misjudged you, Blue Jenner.’
‘Your judgment’s shrewd. I’ve done far worse than you thought I might.’
‘Why risk your life for mine, then?’
He seemed to think a moment, scratching at his jaw. Then he shrugged. ‘Because there’s no changing yesterday. Only tomorrow.’ He pressed something into her hand. Bail’s armring, the ruby gleaming bloody in the moonlight. ‘Reckon this is yours.’
No Peace
‘When will they be here?’
Father Yarvi sat slumped against a tree with his legs crossed and an ancient-looking book propped on his knees. He might almost have seemed asleep had his eyes not been flickering over the writing beneath heavy lids. ‘I am a minister, Koll,’ he murmured, ‘not a seer.’
Koll frowned up at the offerings about the glade. Headless birds and drained jars of ale and bundles of bones swinging on twine. A dog, a cow, four sheep, all dangling head-down from rune-carved branches, flies busy at their slit throats.
There was a man too. A thrall, by the chafe marks on his neck, a ring of runes written clumsily on his back, his knuckles brushing the bloody ground. A fine sacrifice to He Who Sprouts the Seed from some rich woman eager for a child.
Koll didn’t much care for holy places. They made him feel he was being watched. He liked to think he was an honest fellow, but everyone has their secrets. Everyone has their doubts.
‘What’s the book?’ he asked.
‘A treatise on elf-relics written two hundred years ago by Sister Slodd of Reerskoft.’
‘More forbidden knowledge, eh?’
‘From a time when the Ministry was fixed on gathering wisdom, rather than suppressing it.’
‘Only what is known can be controlled,’ muttered Koll.
‘And all knowledge, like all power, can be dangerous in the wrong hands. It is the use it is put to that counts.’ And Father Yarvi licked the tip of the one twisted finger on his withered left hand and used it to turn the page.
Koll frowned off into the still forest. ‘Did we have to come so early?’
‘The battle is usually won by the side that gets there first.’
‘I thought we came to talk peace?’
‘Talk of peace is the minister’s battlefield.’
Koll gave a sigh that made his lips flap. He perched himself on a stump at the edge of the clearing, a cautious distance from any of the offerings, slipped out his knife and the chunk of ash-wood he’d already roughly shaped. She Who Strikes the Anvil, hammer high. A gift for Rin, when he got back to Thorlby. If he got back, rather than ending up dangling from a tree in this glade himself. He flapped his lips again.
‘The gods have given you many gifts,’ murmured Father Yarvi, without looking up from his book. ‘Deft hands and sharp wits. A lovely shock of sandy hair. A slightly over-ready sense of humour. But do you wish to be a great minister, and stand at the shoulder of kings?’
Koll swallowed. ‘You know I do, Father Yarvi. More than anything.’
‘Then you have many things to learn, and the first is patience. Focus your moth of a mind and one day you could change the world, just as your mother wanted you to.’
Koll jerked at the thong around his neck, felt the weights strung on it click together under his shirt. The weights his mother Safrit used to wear as a storekeeper, trusted to measure fairly. Be brave, Koll. Be the best man you can be.
‘Gods, I still miss her,’ he muttered.