Half the World (Shattered Sea #2)(32)



And here they went, forty little people in a hollow twig, rowing through the midst of the greatest elf-ruins Thorn had ever seen.

“Gods,” breathed Brand again, twisting to look over his shoulder.

There was a bridge ahead, if you could call a thing built on that scale a bridge. It must once have crossed the river in a single dizzying span, the slender roadway strung between two mighty towers, each one dwarfing the highest turret of the citadel of Thorlby. But the bridge had fallen centuries before, chunks of stone big as houses hanging from tangled ropes of metal, one swinging gently with the faintest creak as they rowed beneath.

Rulf gripped the steering oar, mouth hanging wide as he stared up at one of the leaning towers, crouching as if he expected it to topple down and crush the tiny ship and its ant-like crew into nothingness. “If you ever needed reminding how small you are,” he muttered, “here’s a good spot.”

“It’s a whole city,” whispered Thorn.

“The elf-city of Smolod.” Skifr lounged on the steering platform, peering at her fingernails as though colossal elf-ruins were hardly worthy of comment. “In the time before the Breaking of God it was home to thousands. Thousands of thousands. It glittered with the light of their magic, and the air was filled with the song of their machines and the smoke of their mighty furnaces.” She gave a long sigh. “All lost. All past. But so it is with everything. Great or small, the Last Door is life’s one certainty.”

A sheet of bent metal stuck from the river on rusted poles, arrows sweeping across it in flaking paint, bold words written in unknowable elf-letters. It looked uncomfortably like a warning, but of what, Thorn could not say.

Rulf tossed a twig over the side, watched it float away to judge their speed and gave a grudging nod. For once he had to bellow no encouragements—meaning insults—to get the South Wind moving at a pretty clip. The ship itself seemed to whisper with the prayers, and oaths, and charms of its crew, spoken in a dozen languages. But Skifr, who had something for every god and every occasion, for once let the heavens be.

“Save your prayers for later,” she said. “There is no danger here.”

“No danger?” squeaked Dosduvoi, fumbling a holy sign over his chest and getting his oar tangled with the man in front.

“I have spent a great deal of time in elf-ruins. Exploring them has been one of my many trades.”

“Some would call that heresy,” said Father Yarvi, looking up from under his brows.

Skifr smiled. “Heresy and progress often look much alike. We have no Ministry in the south to meddle with such things. Rich folk there will pay well for an elf-relic or two. The Empress Theofora herself has quite a collection. But the ruins of the south have often been picked clean. Those about the Shattered Sea have much more to offer. Untouched, some of them, since the Breaking of God. The things one can find there …”

Her eyes moved to the iron-shod chest, secured by chains near the setting of the mast, and Thorn thought of the box, and the light from inside it. Had that been dug from the forbidden depths of a place like this one? Was there magic in it that could break the world? She gave a shiver at the thought.

But Skifr only smiled wider. “If you go properly prepared into the cities of elves, you will find less danger than in the cities of men.”

“They say you’re a witch.” Koll blew a puff of wood-chips from his latest patch of carving and looked up.

“They say?” Skifr widened her eyes so the white showed all the way around. “True and false are hard to pick apart in the weave of what they say.”

“You said you know magic.”

“And so I do. Enough to cause much harm, but not enough to do much good. So it is, with magic.”

“Could you show it to me?”

Skifr snorted. “You are young and rash and know not what you ask, boy.” They rowed in the shadow of a vast wall, its bottom sunk in the river, its top broken off in a skein of twisted metal. Rank upon rank of great windows yawned empty. “The powers that raised this city also rendered it a ruin. There are terrible risks, and terrible costs. Always, there are costs. How many gods do you know the names of?”

“All of them,” said Koll.

“Then pray to them all that you never see magic.” Skifr frowned down at Thorn. “Take your boots off.”

Thorn blinked. “Why?”

“So you can take a well-deserved break from rowing.”

Thorn looked at Brand and he shrugged back. Together they pulled their oars in and she worked off her boots. Skifr slipped out of her coat, folded it and draped it over the steering oar. Then she drew her sword. Thorn had never seen it drawn before, and it was long, and slender, and gently curved, Mother Sun glinting from a murderous edge. “Are you ready, my dove?”

The break from rowing suddenly did not seem so appealing. “Ready for what?” asked Thorn, in a voice turned very small.

“A fighter is either ready or dead.”

On the barest shred of instinct Thorn jerked her oar up, the blade of Skifr’s sword chopping into it right between her hands.

“You’re mad!” she squealed as she scrambled back.

“You’re hardly the first to say so.” Skifr jabbed left and right and made Thorn hop over the lowered mast. “I take it as a compliment.” She grinned as she swished her sword back and forth, oarsmen jerking fearfully out of her way. “Take everything as a compliment, you can never be insulted.”

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