Half the World (Shattered Sea #2)(74)

Thorn mutely held out her left, and Vialine slipped the elf-bangle over it and folded the bracelet shut with a final sounding click, the light from its round window glowing brighter, shifting to blue-white, metal perfect as a cut jewel gleaming, and circles within circles slowly shifting beneath the glass. Thorn stared at it with a mixture of awe and horror. A relic beyond price. Beautiful beyond words. Sitting now, on her ridiculous bony wrist, with the bizarre magnificence of a diamond on a dung-heap.

Vialine smiled, and finally let go of her shoulder. “It looks well on you.”

THE SHEARS CLICK-CLICKED OVER the left side of Thorn’s scalp and the hair fluttered down onto her shoulder, onto her bandaged leg, onto the cobbles of the yard.

“Do you remember when I first clipped your head?” asked Skifr. “You howled like a wolf cub!”

Thorn picked up a tuft of hair and blew it from her fingers. “Seems you can get used to anything.”

“With enough work.” Skifr tossed the shears aside and brushed the loose hair away. “With enough sweat, blood, and training.”

Thorn worked her tongue around the unfamiliar inside of her mouth, rough with the stitches, and leaned forward to spit pink. “Blood I can give you.” She grimaced as she stretched her leg out, the elf-bangle flaring angry purple with her pain. “But training might be difficult right now.”

Skifr sat, one arm about Thorn’s shoulders, rubbing her hand over her own stubbled hair. “We have trained for the last time, my dove.”

“What?”

“I have business I must attend to. I have ignored my own sons, and daughters, and grandsons, and granddaughters too long. And only the most wretched of fools would dare now deny that I have done what Father Yarvi asked of me, and made you deadly. Or helped you make yourself deadly, at least.”

Thorn stared at Skifr, an empty feeling in her stomach. “You’re leaving?”

“Nothing lasts forever. But that means I can tell you things I could not tell you before.” Skifr folded her in a tight, strange-smelling hug. “I have had twenty-two pupils in all, and never been more proud of one than I am of you. None worked so hard. None learned so fast. None had such courage.” She leaned back, holding Thorn at arm’s length. “You have proved yourself strong, inside and out. A loyal companion. A fearsome fighter. You have earned the respect of your friends and the fear of your enemies. You have demanded it. You have commanded it.”

“But …” muttered Thorn, rocked far more by compliments than blows, “I’ve still got so much to learn …”

“A fighter is never done learning. But the best lessons one teaches oneself. It is time for you to become the master.” And Skifr held out her ax, letters in five languages etched on the bearded blade. “This is for you.”

Thorn had dreamed of owning a weapon like that. A thing fit for a hero’s song. Now she took it numbly, and laid it on her lap, and looked down at the bright blade. “To the fighter, everything must be a weapon,” she muttered. “What will I do without you?”

Skifr leaned close, her eyes bright, and gripped her tight. “Anything! Everything! I am no mean prophet and I foresee great things for you!” Her voice rose higher and higher, louder and louder, and she pointed one clawing finger toward the sky. “We will meet again, Thorn Bathu, on the other side of the Last Door, if not on this one, and I will thrill to the tales of your high deeds, and swell with pride that I played my own small part in them!”

“Damn right you will,” said Thorn, sniffing back her tears. She had held this strange woman in contempt. She had hated her, and feared her, and cursed her name all down the Divine and the Denied. And now she loved her like a mother.

“Be well, my dove. Even more, be ready.” Skifr’s hand darted out but Thorn caught it by the wrist before it could slap her and held it trembling between them.

Skifr smiled wide. “And always strike first.”

FATHER YARVI SMILED AS he peeled away the bandages. “Good. Very good.” He pressed gently at the sore flesh of her cheeks with his fingertips. “You are healing well. Walking already.”

“Lurching like a drunk already.”

“You are lucky, Thorn. You are very lucky.”

“Doubtless. Not every girl gets to be stabbed through the face.”

“And by a duke of royal blood too!”

“The gods have smiled on me, all right.”

“It could have been through your eye. It could have been through your neck.” He started to bathe her face with a flannel that smelled of bitter herbs. “On the whole I would prefer to be scarred than dead, wouldn’t you?”

Thorn pushed her tongue into the salty hole her missing tooth had left. It was hard to think of herself as lucky just then. “How are the scars? Tell me the truth.”

“They will take time to heal, but I think they will heal well. A star on the left and an arrow on the right. There must be some significance in that. Skifr might have told us, she had an eye for portents—”

Thorn did not need Skifr to see into her face’s future. “I’ll be monstrous, won’t I?”

“I know of people with uglier deformities.” And Yarvi put his withered hand under her nose and let the one finger flop back and forth. “Next time, avoid the blade.”