To her, it murmured a reassurance. She had been through the fire, and like the best steel come out stronger.
To others, it spoke a threat. No matter your fame, make an enemy of this woman and you will end up one more lump of metal on her chain.
‘A gift fit for a High Queen of the Shattered Sea,’ she said, pressing it to her chest.
‘I wished to set your mind at rest since I am … perhaps not the man you would have chosen. I wished to tell you that I mean to be a good husband. To defer to you in matters of the coin and the key. To give you sons.’
Skara swallowed at that, but it was a proper thing to say, and Mother Kyre would never have forgiven her if she had not made a proper reply. ‘No less do I mean to be a good wife to you. To defer to you in matters of the plough and the sword. To give you daughters.’
Gorm’s craggy face broke out in a strange grin. ‘I hope so.’ He glanced down at Druin, staring up at him from so far below. ‘Small people, at your feet, to whom you can give the future. That seems a fine thing.’
Skara tried not to let her doubts show. Tried to give a winning, willing smile. ‘We will find our way through it together, hand in hand.’ And she held hers out to him.
It looked tiny, and white, and smooth in his great scarred paw. It looked like a child’s hand. But its grip was the firmer. It seemed his trembled.
‘I have no doubt you will make as fine a husband as you do a warrior,’ she said, putting her other hand under his to still it.
‘We will be as formidable together as Mother Sea and Father Earth.’ He brightened as he moved to more familiar ground. ‘And I will start by bringing you the High King’s head as a wedding gift!’
Skara winced. ‘I would prefer peace.’
‘Peace comes when you have killed all your enemies, my queen.’ Gorm took back his hand, bowed again, and strode off towards his ship.
‘If that chain around his neck should have taught him anything,’ murmured Laithlin, ‘it is that there are always more enemies.’
The Minister’s Battlefield
‘You think you have so much time,’ said Skifr, staring into the flames. ‘So many brave prizes ahead, so many harvests to reap. Mark my words, my dove, before you realize it, your glorious future has become a set of tired old stories, and there is nothing ahead but dust.’
Koll puffed out his cheeks. The firelight on Skifr’s face reminded him of the forgelight on Rin’s, dragged their miserable last meeting to his mind. Two women could hardly have looked less alike, but when you’re in a sorry mood, everything brings up a sorry memory.
‘Have some tea, eh?’ he ventured, trying and failing to sound perky as he pulled the pot off the fire. ‘Perhaps things won’t seem so dark afterward-’
‘Seize life with both hands!’ snapped Skifr, making Koll jump and nearly upend the pot in his lap. ‘Rejoice in what you have. Power, wealth, fame, they are ghosts! They are like the breeze, impossible to hold. There is no grand destination. Every path ends at the Last Door. Revel in the sparks one person strikes from another.’ She huddled into her cloak of rags. ‘They are the only light in the darkness of time.’
Koll dumped the pot back, making tea slop and hiss in the flames. ‘Have some tea, eh?’ Then he left Skifr alone with her darkness, and took his own out of the ruin and onto the hillside, staring down towards Skekenhouse, seat of the High King.
The Tower of the Ministry rose from the centre, perfect elf-stone and elf-glass soaring up and up, then sheared off by the Breaking of God, a crusting of man-made walls, towers, domes, roofs covering the wound like an unsightly scab. Specks circled those highest turrets. Doves, perhaps, like the ones Koll used to tend, bringing panicked messages from far-flung ministers. Or eagles sent out with Grandmother Wexen’s desperate last orders.
The High King’s vast new temple to the One God squatted in the elf-tower’s shadow, a damned ugly thing for all the effort lavished upon it, still crusted with scaffolding after ten years of building, half the rafters bare like the rib-bones of a long-dead corpse. He’d built it to show men could make great works too. All he’d proved was how feeble their best efforts were beside the relics of the elves.
Roofs spread out around tower and temple in every direction, a maze of narrow streets between buildings of stone and buildings of wood and buildings of wattle and hide. Outside stood the famous elf-walls. Miles of them. Crumbling in places, shored up by man-built bastions and crowned by man-built battlements. But strong, still. Very strong.
‘We need to get in,’ Thorn was snarling, elf-bangle smouldering red as she glowered at the city like a wolf at a chicken coop. Koll wouldn’t have been surprised to see her drooling like one, she was that hungry for vengeance.
‘No doubt,’ said Mother Scaer, eyes narrowed to their habitual slits. ‘How, is the question?’
‘We still have elf-weapons. I say we crack Grandmother Wexen’s shell and prick her from the wreckage.’
‘Even with elf-weapons it will take time to overcome those walls,’ said Father Yarvi. ‘Who knows what mischief Grandmother Wexen could cook up in the meantime?’
‘We could shoot burning arrows over them,’ offered Rulf, patting his black horn bow. ‘Man-weapons will do for that, and we’d soon get a good blaze going.’
‘This is my city now,’ said Father Yarvi. ‘I do not wish to see it burned to the ground.’
‘Your city?’ sneered Mother Scaer.
‘Of course.’ Yarvi took his eyes from Skekenhouse and turned them calmly upon her. ‘I will be Grandfather of the Ministry, after all.’
Scaer gave a disbelieving snort. ‘Will you indeed?’
‘If Vansterland is to have the High King’s chair, and Throvenland the High Queen’s key, it seems only fair that Gettland should have the Tower of the Ministry.’
Mother Scaer narrowed her eyes even further, trapped on uncomfortable ground between suspicion at the thought of Yarvi raised up and ambition at the thought of Gorm enthroned. ‘We should have a proper moot upon it.’
‘Must people as wise as we really discuss the obvious? Must we hold a moot to establish that Mother Sun will follow Father Moon across the sky?’
‘Only fools argue over what they don’t have,’ murmured Koll. He seemed to be the only minister trying to smooth the way for Father Peace, and he hadn’t even sworn his Oath.
Rulf pushed his thumbs into his weathered sword-belt. ‘For weeks they were stuck outside our elf-walls. Now we’re stuck outside theirs.’
‘Bright Yilling made the mistake of trying to climb over them or dig under them,’ said Yarvi.
‘What should he have done?’ snapped Thorn.
Koll already knew the answer, even if he didn’t much like it. ‘Talked through them.’
‘Precisely.’ Father Yarvi took up his staff, and began to pick his way down the hillside. ‘The warriors can stay here. You stand on the minister’s battlefield now.’
‘As long as there’s vengeance to be found there!’ growled Thorn at his back.
Yarvi turned, teeth bared. ‘Oh, there will be vengeance enough for everyone, Thorn Bathu. I have sworn it.’
Before the gates of Skekenhouse the road was churned to a squelching bog, littered with trampled rubbish, with torn tents and broken furniture and dead animals. The possessions of folk who’d tried to crowd into Skekenhouse for safety. Or maybe those who’d tried to swarm out for it. Folly, whichever. When Mother War spreads her wings, there is no safe place.
Koll felt as if he had a rock in his throat. He’d hardly been more scared approaching Strokom. He kept finding himself creeping closer to Rulf and his shield, hunching down as the elf-walls loomed over them, the long banners of the High King and his One God hanging weather-stained from the battlements.
‘Ain’t you the one climbed into Bail’s Point alone in bad weather?’ grunted the helmsman from the side of his mouth.