Half the World (Shattered Sea) - Joe Abercrombie Page 0,79

see what made it. The lid of the box was in the way, though.

“It is beautiful,” breathed the empress, reaching out. She gasped as she touched whatever was inside, the light on her face shifting from white to pink and back as she jerked her hand away. “Great God! It still turns?”

“It does,” said Skifr. “It senses you, Empress, and shifts to match your mood. It was brought from the elf-ruins of Strokom, where no man has trodden since the Breaking of God. There may not be another like it in the world.”

“Is it … safe?”

“No truly wonderful thing can be entirely safe. But it is safe enough.”

Vialine stared into the box, her wide eyes reflecting its glow. “It is too grand a gift for me.”

“How could any gift be too grand for the Empress of the South?” asked Yarvi, taking a gentle step toward her. “With this upon your arm, you will seem radiant indeed.”

“It is beautiful beyond words. But I cannot take it.”

“It is a gift freely given—”

Vialine looked up at him through her lashes. “I asked you to speak honestly, Father Yarvi.” And she snapped the box shut, and put the light out with it. “I cannot help you. My aunt Theofora made promises I cannot break.” She lifted her small fist high. “I am the most powerful person in the world!” Then she laughed, and let it fall. “And there is nothing I can do. Nothing I can do about anything. My uncle has an understanding with Mother Scaer.”

“A ruler must plow her own furrow,” said Yarvi.

“Easier said than done, Father Yarvi. The soil is very stony hereabouts.”

“I could help you dig it over.”

“I wish you could. Sumael says you are a good man.”

“Above average.” Sumael had a little smile at the corner of her mouth. “I’ve known worse men with both their hands.”

“But you cannot help me. No one can.” Vialine drew up her hood, and with one last glance toward Thorn, still kneeling in the middle of the courtyard with the box in her hand, the Empress of the South turned to leave. “And I am sorry, but I cannot help you.”

It was hardly what they’d all been hoping for. But so it goes, with hopes.

SOME BLOODY DIPLOMAT

Skifr came at her again but this time Thorn was ready. The old woman grunted in surprise as Thorn’s ax caught her boot and sent her lurching. She parried the next blow but it rocked her on her heels and the one after tore her sword from her hand and knocked her clean on her back.

Even on the ground Skifr was dangerous. She kicked dust in Thorn’s face, rolled and flung her ax with deadly accuracy. But Thorn was ready for that too, hooked it from the air with her own and sent it skittering into the corner, pressing on, teeth bared, and pinning Skifr against one of the pillars, the point of her sword tickling the old woman’s sweat-beaded throat.

Skifr raised her gray brows. “Auspicious.”

“I won!” bellowed Thorn, shaking her notched wooden weapons at the sky. It had been months since she dared hope she might ever get the better of Skifr. Those endless mornings being beaten with the oar as Mother Sun rose, those endless evenings trying to hit her with the bar by the light of Father Moon, those endless blows and slaps and slides into the mud. But she had done it. “I beat her!”

“You beat her,” said Father Yarvi, nodding slowly.

Skifr winced as she clambered up. “You have beaten a grandmother long years past her best. There will be sterner challenges ahead for you. But … you have done well. You have listened. You have worked. You have become deadly. Father Yarvi was right—”

“When am I wrong?” The minister’s smile vanished at a hammering on the door. He jerked his head toward Koll and the boy slid back the bolt.

“Sumael,” said Yarvi, smiling as he did whenever she visited. “What brings—”

She was breathing hard as she stepped over the threshold. “The empress wishes to speak to you.”

Father Yarvi’s eyes widened. “I’ll come at once.”

“Not you.” She was looking straight at Thorn. “You.”

BRAND HAD SPENT MOST of his life feeling out of place. Beggar among the rich. Coward among the brave. Fool among the clever. But a visit to the Palace of the Empress opened up whole new gulfs of crippling inadequacy.

“Gods,” he whispered, every time he crept around another corner after Thorn and Sumael into some new marbled corridor, or gilded stairway,