“Then head north, friend, while you still can.”
“Head north now you’ll find yourself in Prince Varoslaf’s nets,” said Brand.
“He’s still fishing for crews?” Ornulf grabbed his forked beard with both fists as though he’d tear it from his jaw. “Gods damn it, so many wolves! How’s an honest thief to make a living?”
Yarvi passed him something and Brand saw the glint of silver. “If he has sense, he presents himself to Queen Laithlin of Gettland, and says her minister sent him.”
Ornulf stared down at his palm, then at Yarvi’s shrivelled hand, then up, eyes wide. “You’re Father Yarvi?”
“I am.” The line of warriors had begun to spread out from their gate, shoving folk ahead of them though there was nowhere to go. “And I have come for an audience with the empress.”
Rulf gave a heavy sigh. “Unless Theofora can hear you through the Last Door, it’ll have to be this Vialine we speak to.”
“The empress dies the very day we turn up,” Brand leaned close to mutter. “What do you think about luck now?”
Father Yarvi gave a long sigh as he watched a loaded cart heaved off the docks and into the sea, the uncoupled horse kicking out wildly, eyes rolling with terror. “I think we could use some.”
BEHIND THE THRONE
“I look like a clown,” snapped Thorn, as she wove through the teeming streets after Father Yarvi.
“No, no,” he said. “Clowns make people smile.”
He’d made her wash, and put some bitter-smelling herb in the searing water to kill off her lice, and she felt as raw under her chafing new clothes as the skinned men on the docks of Kalyiv. Safrit had clipped half her hair back to stubble, then hacked at the matted side with a bone comb but given up in disgust once she broke three teeth off it. She’d given Thorn a tunic of some blood-colored cloth with gold stitching about the collar, so fine and soft it felt as if you were wearing nothing, then when Thorn demanded her old clothes back Safrit had pointed out a heap of burning rags in the street and asked if she was sure.
Thorn might’ve been a head taller but Safrit was as irresistible as Skifr in her way and would not be denied. She had ended up with jingling silver rings on her arms and a necklace of red glass beads wound around and around her neck. The sort of things that would have made her mother clasp her hands with pride to see her daughter wearing, but had always felt as comfortable as slave’s chains to Thorn.
“People here expect a certain …” Yarvi waved his crippled hand at a group of black-skinned men whose silks were set with flashing splinters of mirror. “Theater. They will find you fascinatingly fearsome. Or fearsomely fascinating. You look just right.”
“Huh.” Thorn knew she looked an utter fool because when she finally emerged in all her perfumed absurdity Koll had sniggered, and Skifr had puffed out her cheeks, and Brand had just stared at her in silence as if he’d seen the dead walk. Thorn’s face had burned with the humiliation and had hardly stopped burning since.
A man in a tall hat gaped at her as she passed. She would have liked to show him her father’s sword but foreigners weren’t allowed to carry weapons in the First of Cities. So she leaned close and snapped her teeth at him instead, which proved more than enough armament to make him squeak in fear and scurry off.
“Why haven’t you made any effort?” she asked, catching up to Yarvi. He seemed to have a knack of slipping unnoticed through the press while she had to shoulder after him leaving a trail of anger in her wake.
“I have.” The minister brushed down his plain black coat, not a trace of adornment anywhere. “Among these gaudy crowds I will stand out for my humble simplicity, a trustworthy servant of the Father of Doves.”
“You?”
“I said I’d look like one, not that I’d be one.” Father Yarvi shook his head as she dragged at the over-tight seat of her new trousers yet again. “Honestly, Brand was right when he said there is no blessing you cannot treat like a curse. Most people would be thankful for fine new clothes. I can scarcely take you to the palace reeking like a beggar, can I?”
“Why are you taking me to the palace at all?”
“Should I go alone?”
“You could take someone who won’t say the worst thing at the worst time. Safrit, or Rulf, or Brand, even? He’s got one of those faces folk trust.”
“He’s got one of those faces folk take advantage of. And not to dismiss the towering diplomatic talents of Safrit, or Rulf, or Brand, but there’s always the chance the young Empress Vialine will warm to a woman her own age.”
“Me? Folk never warm to me!” Thorn remembered the contempt of the girls in Thorlby, the dagger-stares and the poison-laughter and, even though she’d killed eight men, she shivered at the thought. “Women my age least of all.”
“This will be different.”
“Why?”