‘What about Rakki?’ snarled Raith, Owd hissing with annoyance as he jerked his half-bandaged arm from her hands.
‘I shall remember him fondly. Unlike others, he proved his loyalty.’
Skara saw the tendons starting from Raith’s fist as it clenched around his axe-haft, and she slipped quickly in front of him.
‘Your chain, my king.’ Lifting that rattling mass of dead men’s pommels up was such an effort her arms trembled.
Gorm stooped to duck his head inside and it brought them closer than they had ever been, her hands behind his neck, almost an awkward embrace. He had a damp-fur smell like the hounds her grandfather had kept.
‘It has grown long over the years,’ he said as he straightened.
This close he seemed bigger than ever. The top of her head could scarcely have reached his neck. Would she need to carry a step with her to kiss her husband? She might have laughed at the thought another time. She did not feel much like laughing then.
‘It was an honour to hold it.’ She wanted very much to back away but knew she could not, dropped her hands to arrange the gaudy, ghastly mementoes on his chest.
‘When we are married, I will cut off a length for you to wear.’
She blinked up at him, cold all over. A chain of dead men to be forever tethered with. ‘I have not earned the right,’ she croaked out.
‘No false modesty, please! Only half a war is fought with swords, my queen, and you have fought the other half with skill and courage.’ He was smiling as he turned away. ‘There will be hundreds dead for your brave work.’
Skara jerked awake, clutching at the furs on her bed, ears straining at the silence.
Nothing.
She hardly slept now. Two or three times every night Bright Yilling’s warriors would come.
They had tried to swim into the harbour, brave men fighting the surging waves in the darkness. But sentries on the towers above had riddled them with arrows, left their bodies tangled on the chains across the entrance.
They had charged up with a felled tree shod in iron as a ram, brave men holding shields above, and made a din upon the gates to wake the dead. But the gates had hardly been scratched.
They had shot swarms of burning arrows over the walls to fall on the yard like tiny shooting stars in the night. They had bounced harmless from flagstones and slates but some had caught among the thatch. Skara’s chest was sore from the billowing smoke, her voice cracked from shrieking orders to soak the roofs, her hands raw from dragging buckets from the well. The stables where she had first saddled a pony as a girl were a scorched shell, but they had managed to stop the fire from spreading.
In the end she had climbed to the walls, soot-smudged but triumphant to shriek, ‘thanks for the arrows!’ at the High King’s retreating bowmen.
By fire or by water, over the walls or under, nothing had worked. Bail’s Point was the strongest fortress in the Shattered Sea, its defenders the picked warriors of three warrior nations. Bright Yilling lost twenty to every one of theirs.
And yet the reinforcements kept coming. Every morning Mother Sun rose upon more warriors of Yutmark, Inglefold and the Lowlands. More mad-eyed, bone-pierced, painted Shends. More ships outside the harbour, stopping any help from coming to the defenders. Their spirits might be buoyed by little victories, but the terrible arithmetic had only worsened. Mother Owd’s cellars overflowed with wounded. Twice they had sent boats drifting out with crews of dead to burn upon the water.
Skara felt as if they were digging ditches to stop the tide. You might keep out one wave. You might keep out ten. But the tide always wins.
She gave an acid burp, choked back sick and swung her legs from the bed, pushed her head into her hands and gave a long growl.
She was a queen. Her blood worth more than gold. She had to hide her fear and show her deep-cunning.She could not use a sword, so she had to fight theother half of the war, and fight it better than Bright Yilling. Better than Father Yarvi and Mother Scaer too. There were people looking to her. People who had gambled their futures on her. She was hedged in by the hopes and needs and expectations of the living and the dead as if she slipped through a maze of thorns. A dozen opinions to consider and a hundred lessons to remember and a thousand proper things that had to be done and ten thousand improper ones she could never contemplate …
Her eyes slid to the door. On the other side, she knew, Raith would be sleeping. Or lying awake.
She did not know what she felt for him. But she knew she had never felt it for anyone else. She remembered the cold shock when she had thought him dead. The warm relief when she had seen him living. The spark of heat when their eyes met. The strength she felt when he was beside her. Her head knew he was a wretched match in every possible way.
But the rest of her felt otherwise.
She stood, heart thudding as she padded across the floor, stone cold against her bare feet. She glanced towards the little room where her thrall slept, but she would have better sense than to meddle in her mistress’s business.
Her hand froze just short of the door, fingertips tingling.
His brother was dead. She told herself he needed her, when she knew she needed him. Needed to forget her duty. Needed to forget her land and her people and have something for herself. Needed to know what it felt like to be kissed, and held, and wanted by someone she chose, before it was too late.
Mother Kyre would have torn her hair out at the thought of it, but Mother Kyre was gone through the Last Door. Now, in the night, with Death scratching at the walls, what was proper no longer seemed so important.
Skara slid the bolt back with trembling fingers, biting at her lip with the need to stay silent.
Gently, gently, she eased open her door.
No Lover
Raith kept his eyes closed afterwards, and breathed. He just wanted to hold someone, and be held, and he slid his bandaged hand up her bare back and pressed her tight against him.
Rakki was dead.
He kept realizing it fresh. Kept seeing that last glimpse of his face before the fire, and the earth fell.
She kissed him. Wasn’t harsh or hurried, but he could tell it was a parting kiss, and he strained up to make it last. Hadn’t done enough kissing in his life. Might not get the chance to do much more. All the time he’d wasted on nothing, now every moment past seemed an aching loss. She put a hand on his chest, pushing gently. Took an effort to let go.
He stifled a groan as he swung his legs onto the rush matting, holding his ribs, his side one great ache. He watched her dress, black against the curtain. Caught little details in the faint light. The shifting muscles in her back, the veins on her foot, a glow down the side of her face as she turned away from him. He couldn’t tell whether she was smiling or frowning.
Rakki was dead.
He looked down at his bandaged arm. He’d forgotten the pain for a moment but it was coming back now twice as bad. He winced as he touched it, remembering that last glimpse of his brother’s face, so like his own and so different. Like two prow-beasts on the same ship, always facing different ways. Only now there was only one, and the ship was adrift with no course to hold to.
She sat beside him. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘Like it’s still burning.’ He worked his fingers and felt the fire all the way to his elbow.
‘Can I do anything?’
‘No one can do anything.’
They sat silently, side by side, her hand resting on his arm. Strong, her hands, but gentle. ‘You can’t stay. I’m sorry.’
‘I know.’
He gathered up his scattered clothes, but while he was putting them on he started to cry. One moment he was fumbling at his belt, burned hand too clumsy to fasten it, then his sight started to swim, then his shoulders were shaking with silent sobs.