Half the World (Shattered Sea #2)(61)

“What allies do you have?” she asked, sweeping her hair up with both hands and gathering it in a knot.

“Fewer than we need.”

“Some things never change, eh, Yarvi?” Sumael slid the pins back with nimble fingers. “The duke is not so taken with the One God as Theofora was, but he means to honor the alliance with Grandmother Wexen, even so. He can pick a winner.”

“We shall see,” said Yarvi. “I need to speak to the empress.”

Sumael puffed out her cheeks. “I can try. But more than a hearing I cannot promise.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

She held his eye as she flicked the last pin home, its jewelled end glittering. “It’s not a question of debts. Not between us.”

Yarvi looked to be caught between laughing and crying, and in the end he sat back, and gave a ragged sigh. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

Sumael smiled, that notch of white tooth showing, and Brand found he was starting to like her. “And?”

“I’m glad I was wrong.”

“So am I.” That strand of hair fell into her face again and she frowned cross-eyed at it a moment, and blew it back.





HOPES


Thorn pushed through a grumbling throng flooding into a temple for prayers. So many temples here, and so much crowding into them to pray.

“Worshipping this One God takes up a lot of time,” grunted Brand, trying to work his broad shoulders through the press.

“The tall gods and the small gods have their own business to be about. The One God only seems to care for meddling in everyone else’s.”

“And bells.” Brand winced at another clanging peel from a white tower just above them. “If I never hear another bloody bell I won’t complain.” He leaned close to whisper. “They bury their dead unburned. Bury them. In the ground. Unburned.”

Thorn frowned at the overgrown yard beside the temple, crammed with marking stones wonky as a beggar’s teeth, each one, she guessed, with a corpse beneath it, rotting. Hundreds of them. Thousands. A charnel pit right inside the city.

She gave a sweaty shudder at the thought, squeezing at the pouch that held her father’s fingerbones. “Damn this city.” He might have loved talking about the place, but she was starting to hate it. Far too big, the size of it was crushing. Far too noisy so you couldn’t think straight. Far too hot, always sticky and stinking day or night. Rubbish and flies and rot and beggars everywhere, it made her dizzy. So many people, and all of them passing through, no one knowing each other, or wanting anything from each other but to claw out a profit.

“We should go home,” she muttered.

“We only just got here.”

“Best time to leave a place you hate.”

“You hate everything.”

“Not everything.” She glanced sideways and caught Brand looking at her, and felt that tingling in her stomach again as he quickly looked away.

Turned out he didn’t just have the puzzled look and the helpless look, he had another, and now she was catching it all the time. Eyes fixed on her, bright behind a few stray strands of hair. Hungry, almost. Scared, almost. The other day, when they’d been pressed together on the ground, so very close, there’d been … something. Something that brought the blood rushing to her face, and not just her face either. In her guts she was sure. Just below her guts, even more so. But the doubts crowded into her head like the faithful into their temples at prayer time.

Could you just ask? I know we used to hate each other but I’ve come to think I might like you quite a lot. Any chance you like me, at all? Gods, it sounded absurd. All her life she’d been pushing folk away, she had no idea where to start at pulling one in. What if he looked at her as if she was mad? The thought yawned like a pit at her feet. What do you mean like? Like, like like? Should she just take hold of him and kiss him? She kept thinking about it. She hardly thought about anything else anymore. But what if a look was just a look? What if it was like her mother said—what man would want someone as strange and difficult and contrary as she was? Not one like Brand who was well-made and well-liked and what a man should be and could have anyone he wanted—

Suddenly his arm was around her, herding her back into a doorway. Her heart was in her mouth, she even gave a little girlish squeak as he pressed up tight against her. Then everyone was scrambling to the sides of the lane as horses clattered by, feathers on their bridles thrashing and gilded armor glinting and tall riders in tall helmets caring nothing for those who cowered to either side. Duke Mikedas’s men, no doubt.

“Someone could get hurt,” Brand muttered, frowning after them.

“Aye,” she croaked. “Someone could.”

She was fooling herself. Had to be. They were friends. They were oarmates. That was all they needed to be. Why ruin it by pushing for something she couldn’t have, didn’t deserve, wouldn’t get … then she caught his eye, and there was that damn look again that set her heart going as if she’d rowed a hard mile. He jerked away from her, gave an awkward half-smile, strode on as the crowds pressed back in after the horsemen.

What if he felt the same as her, wanting to ask but scared to ask and not knowing how to ask? Every conversation with him felt dangerous as a battle. Sleeping in the same room was torture. They’d just been oarmates on one floor when they first threw their blankets down, laughing at the state of the great ruin Yarvi had bought, daylight showing through the roof. But now she only pretended to sleep while she thought about how close he was, and sometimes she thought he was pretending too, could swear his eyes were open, watching her. But she was never sure. The thought of sleeping next to him made her miserable, and the thought of not sleeping next to him made her miserable.