Sumael grinned back. “You must be buoyant, then.”
Brand laughed, and Thorn gave him a glare, and he stopped.
“So you sit at the right hand of the most powerful woman in the world?” asked Rulf, shaking his balding head.
“By no means alone.” That strand fell again and Sumael gave a twitch of annoyance and started pulling the pins from her hair. “There’s a council of dozens, and most of them belong to Duke Mikedas. Vialine may be empress in name but he holds the power, and has no intention of sharing.”
“He shared nothing with us,” said Yarvi.
“I heard.” The hair fell in a black curtain across half of her face, the other eye twinkling. “At least you came away with your heads.”
“You think we’ll keep them if we stay?” asked Yarvi.
Sumael’s eye slid across to Thorn. “That depends on how diplomatic you can be.”
“I can be diplomatic,” snarled Thorn.
Sumael only smiled the wider. She seemed immune to intimidation. “You remind me of a ship’s captain Yarvi and I used to sail with.”
Yarvi burst out laughing, and so did Rulf, and Thorn frowned through it. “Is that an insult or a compliment?”
“Call it a little of both.” Yarvi sat forward, elbows on the table and his shrivelled hand clasped in the other. “The High King is making ready for war, Sumael. Who knows, war might already have started.”
“What allies do you have?” she asked, sweeping her hair up with both hands and gathering it in a knot.
“Fewer than we need.”
“Some things never change, eh, Yarvi?” Sumael slid the pins back with nimble fingers. “The duke is not so taken with the One God as Theofora was, but he means to honor the alliance with Grandmother Wexen, even so. He can pick a winner.”
“We shall see,” said Yarvi. “I need to speak to the empress.”
Sumael puffed out her cheeks. “I can try. But more than a hearing I cannot promise.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
She held his eye as she flicked the last pin home, its jewelled end glittering. “It’s not a question of debts. Not between us.”
Yarvi looked to be caught between laughing and crying, and in the end he sat back, and gave a ragged sigh. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
Sumael smiled, that notch of white tooth showing, and Brand found he was starting to like her. “And?”
“I’m glad I was wrong.”
“So am I.” That strand of hair fell into her face again and she frowned cross-eyed at it a moment, and blew it back.
HOPES
Thorn pushed through a grumbling throng flooding into a temple for prayers. So many temples here, and so much crowding into them to pray.
“Worshipping this One God takes up a lot of time,” grunted Brand, trying to work his broad shoulders through the press.
“The tall gods and the small gods have their own business to be about. The One God only seems to care for meddling in everyone else’s.”
“And bells.” Brand winced at another clanging peel from a white tower just above them. “If I never hear another bloody bell I won’t complain.” He leaned close to whisper. “They bury their dead unburned. Bury them. In the ground. Unburned.”
Thorn frowned at the overgrown yard beside the temple, crammed with marking stones wonky as a beggar’s teeth, each one, she guessed, with a corpse beneath it, rotting. Hundreds of them. Thousands. A charnel pit right inside the city.
She gave a sweaty shudder at the thought, squeezing at the pouch that held her father’s fingerbones. “Damn this city.” He might have loved talking about the place, but she was starting to hate it. Far too big, the size of it was crushing. Far too noisy so you couldn’t think straight. Far too hot, always sticky and stinking day or night. Rubbish and flies and rot and beggars everywhere, it made her dizzy. So many people, and all of them passing through, no one knowing each other, or wanting anything from each other but to claw out a profit.
“We should go home,” she muttered.
“We only just got here.”
“Best time to leave a place you hate.”
“You hate everything.”
“Not everything.” She glanced sideways and caught Brand looking at her, and felt that tingling in her stomach again as he quickly looked away.