Half the World (Shattered Sea) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,7

cold, gray-blue eyes. “I’ll take any punishment. I’ll do any penance. I swear it!”

He raised one pale brow. “You should be careful what oaths you make, Thorn. Each one is a chain about you. I swore to be revenged on the killers of my father and the oath still weighs heavy on me. That one might come to weigh heavy on you.”

“Heavier than the stones they’ll crush me with?” She held her open palms out, as close to him as the chains would allow. “I swear a sun-oath and a moon-oath. I’ll do whatever service you think fit.”

The minister frowned at her dirty hands, reaching, reaching. He frowned at the desperate tears leaking down her face. He cocked his head slowly on one side, as though he was a merchant judging her value. Finally he gave a long, unhappy sigh. “Oh, very well.”

There was a silence then, while Thorn turned over what he’d said. “You’re not going to crush me with stones?”

He waved his crippled hand so the one finger flopped back and forth. “I have trouble lifting the big ones.”

More silence, long enough for relief to give way to suspicion. “So … what’s the sentence?”

“I’ll think of something. Release her.”

The jailer sucked her teeth as if opening any lock left a wound, but did as she was bid. Thorn rubbed at the chafe-marks the iron cuff left on her wrist, feeling strangely light without its weight. So light she wondered if she was dreaming. She squeezed her eyes shut, then grunted as the key-keeper tossed her boots over and they hit her in the belly. Not a dream, then.

She couldn’t stop herself smiling as she pulled them on.

“Your nose looks broken,” said Father Yarvi.

“Not the first time.” If she got away from this with no worse than a broken nose she would count herself blessed indeed.

“Let me see.”

A minister was a healer first, so Thorn didn’t flinch when he came close, prodded gently at the bones under her eyes, brow wrinkled with concentration.

“Ah,” she muttered.

“Sorry, did that hurt?”

“Just a litt—”

He jabbed one finger up her nostril, pressing his thumb mercilessly into the bridge of her nose. Thorn gasped, forced down onto her knees, there was a crack and a white-hot pain in her face, tears flooding more freely than ever.

“That got it,” he said, wiping his hand on her shirt.

“Gods!” she whimpered, clutching her throbbing face.

“Sometimes a little pain now can save a great deal later.” Father Yarvi was already walking for the door, so Thorn tottered up and, still wondering if this was some trick, crept after him.

“Thanks for your kindness,” she muttered as she passed the key-keeper

The woman glared back. “I hope you never need it again.”

“No offense, but so do I.” And Thorn followed Father Yarvi along the dim corridor and up the steps, blinking into the light.

He might have had one hand but his legs worked well enough, setting quite a pace as he stalked across the yard of the citadel, the breeze making the branches of the old cedar whisper above them.

“I should speak to my mother—” she said, hurrying to catch up.

“I already have. I told her I had found you innocent of murder but you had sworn an oath to serve me.”

“But … how did you know I’d—”

“It is a minister’s place to know what people will do.” Father Yarvi snorted. “As yet you are not too deep a well to fathom, Thorn Bathu.”

They passed beneath the Screaming Gate, out of the citadel and into the city, down from the great rock and towards Mother Sea. They went by switching steps and narrow ways, sloping steeply between tight-crammed houses and the people tight-crammed between them.

“I’m not going on King Uthil’s raid, am I?” A fool’s question, doubtless, but now Thorn had stepped from Death’s shadow there was light enough to mourn her ruined dreams.

Father Yarvi was not in a mourning mood. “Be thankful you’re not going in the ground.”

They passed down the Street of Anvils, where Thorn had spent long hours gazing greedily at weapons like a beggar child at pastries. Where she had ridden on her father’s shoulders, giddy-proud as the smiths begged him to notice their work. But the bright metal set out before the forges only seemed to mock her now.

“I’ll never be a warrior of Gettland.” She said it soft and sorry, but Yarvi’s ears were sharp.

“As long as you live, what you might come to be is in your own hands, first of all.” The minister rubbed