Half the World (Shattered Sea #2)(54)

Brand kept his own in a pouch around his neck. It was a new life for Rin, and he didn’t plan on losing that for anything.

“There she is, Rulf!” called Father Yarvi, clambering between the smiling oarsmen toward the steering platform. “I’ve a good feeling.”

“Me too,” said the helmsman, a cobweb of happy lines cracking the skin at the corners of his eyes.

Skifr frowned up at the wheeling birds. “Good feelings, maybe, but poor omens.” Her mood had never quite recovered from the battle on the Denied.

Father Yarvi ignored her. “We will speak to Theofora, the Empress of the South, and we will give her Queen Laithlin’s gift, and we shall see what we shall see.” He turned to face the crew, spreading his arms, tattered coat flapping in the breeze. “We’ve come a long and dangerous way, my friends! We’ve crossed half the world! But the end of the road is ahead!”

“The end of the road,” murmured Thorn as the crew gave a cheer, licking her cracked lips as if she was a drunk and the First of Cities a great jug of ale on the horizon.

Brand felt a childish rush of excitement and he splashed water from his flask all over them, spray sparkling as she slapped it away and shoved him off his sea-chest with her boot. He punched her on the shoulder, which these days was like punching a firmly-held shield, and she caught a fistful of his frayed shirt, the two of them falling in a laughing, snarling, sour-smelling wrestle in the bottom of the boat.

“Enough, barbarians,” said Rulf, wedging his foot between them and prying them apart. “You are in a civilized place, now! From here on we expect civilized behavior.”

THE DOCKS WERE ONE vast riot.

Folk shoved and tugged and tore at each other, lit by garish torchlight, the crowd surging like a thing alive as fights broke out, fists and even blades flashing above the crowd. Before a gate a ring of warriors stood, dressed in odd mail like fishes’ scales, snarling at the mob and occasionally beating at them with the butts of their spears.

“Thought this was a civilized place?” muttered Brand as Rulf guided the South Wind toward a wharf.

“The most civilized place in the world,” murmured Father Yarvi. “Though that mostly means folk prefer to stab each other in the back than the front.”

“Less chance of getting blood on your fine robe that way,” said Thorn, watching a man hurry down a wharf on tiptoe holding his silken skirts above his ankles.

A huge, fat boat, timbers green with rot, was listing badly in the harbor, half its oars clear of the water, evidently far overloaded and with panicked passengers crammed at its rail. While Brand pulled in his oar two jumped—or were pushed—and tumbled flailing into the sea. There was a haze of smoke on the air and a smell of charred wood, but stronger still was the stink of panic, strong as hay-reek and catching as the plague.

“This has the feel of poor luck!” called Dosduvoi as Brand clambered onto the wharf after Thorn.

“I’m no great believer in luck,” said Father Yarvi. “Only in good planning and bad. Only in deep cunning and shallow.” He strode to a grizzled northerner with a beard forked and knotted behind his neck, frowning balefully over the loading of a ship much like theirs.

“A good day to—” the minister began.

“I don’t think so!” the man bellowed over the din. “And you won’t find many who do!”

“We’re with the South Wind,” said Yarvi, “come down the Denied from Kalyiv.”

“I’m Ornulf, captain of the Mother Sun.” He nodded toward his weatherbeaten vessel. “Came down from Roystock two years hence. We were trading with the Alyuks in spring, and had as fine a cargo as you ever saw. Spices, and bottles, and beads, and treasures our womenfolk would’ve wept to see.” He bitterly shook his head. “We had a storehouse in the city and it was caught up in the fire last night. All gone. All lost.”

“I’m sorry for that,” said the minister. “Still, the gods left you your lives.”

“And we’re quitting this bloody place before we lose those too.”

Yarvi frowned at a particularly blood-curdling woman’s shriek. “Are things usually like this?”

“You haven’t heard?” asked Ornulf. “The Empress Theofora died last night.”

Brand stared at Thorn, and she gave a grimace and scratched at the scar on her scalp.

The news sucked a good deal of the vigor from Father Yarvi’s voice. “Who rules, then?”

“I hear her seventeen-year-old niece Vialine was enthroned as thirty-fifth Empress of the South this morning.” Ornulf snorted. “But I received no invitation to the happy event.”

“Who rules, then?” asked Yarvi, again.

The man’s eyes swiveled sideways. “For now, the mob. Folk taking it upon themselves to settle scores while the law sleeps.”

“Folk love a good score down here, I understand,” said Rulf.

“Oh, they hoard ’em up for generations. That’s how that fire got started, I hear, some merchant taking vengeance on another. I swear they could teach Grandmother Wexen a thing or two about old grudges here.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that,” muttered Father Yarvi.

“The young empress’s uncle, Duke Mikedas, is having a stab at taking charge. The city’s full of his warriors. Here to keep things calm, he says. While folk adjust.”