‘We won’t!’ The pale eyes of the First of Ministers settled on Skara, cold as new snow. The look of a man who knows he has won before the game is even played. ‘How did you poison Grom-gil-Gorm?’
Skara raised her brows. ‘Why would I? He suited me much better on this side of the Last Door. The one who gained most from his death is you.’
‘Not every scheme is mine. But I’ll admit the dice have fallen well for me.’
‘A lucky man is more dangerous than a cunning one, eh, Grandfather Yarvi?’
‘Tremble, then, when you see both together!’ He smiled again, but there was something hungry in it that made every hair on her spine stand up. ‘It is true that things have changed since we last negotiated, among the howes outside Bail’s Point. Much … simpler. No need to talk any longer of alliances, or compromises, or votes.’
You can only conquer your fears by facing them, her grandfather used to say. Hide from them, and they conquer you. Skara tried to draw herself up proudly, the way he had, when he faced Death. ‘Uthil and Gorm are both gone through the Last Door,’ she said. ‘There is only one vote, now, and it is-’
‘Mine!’ barked Yarvi, opening his eyes very wide. ‘I cannot tell you how refreshing it is to talk to someone who sees straight to the heart of things, so I will not insult you by dithering. You will marry King Druin.’
Skara had been prepared for many things, but she could not quite smother a gasp at that one. ‘King Druin is three years old.’
‘Then you will find him a far less demanding husband than the Breaker of Swords would have been. The world is changed, my queen. And it seems to me now that Throvenland …’ Yarvi lifted his withered hand and turned it around and around in the air. ‘Serves little purpose.’ He somehow managed to snap that one stubby finger with a sharp click. ‘It shall be part of Gettland from now on, though I think it best if my mother continues to wear the key of the treasury.’
‘And me?’ Skara struggled to keep her voice level for the thumping of her heart.
‘My queen, you look beautiful whatever you wear.’ And Grandfather Yarvi turned towards the door.
‘No.’ She could hardly believe how utterly certain she sounded. A strange calm had come over her. The calm that Bail the Builder felt before a battle, perhaps. She might be no warrior, but this was her battlefield, and she was ready to fight.
‘No?’ Yarvi turned back, his smile fading. ‘I came to tell you how things would be, not to ask for an opinion, but perhaps I overestimated your-’
‘No,’ she said again. Words would be her weapons. ‘My father died for Throvenland. My grandfather died for Throvenland. I gave up everything to fight for Throvenland. While I live I will not see it torn apart like a carcass between wolves.’
The First of Ministers stepped towards her, gaunt face tight with anger. ‘Do not presume to defy me, you puking waif!’ he snarled, stabbing at his chest with his withered hand. ‘You have no idea what I have sacrificed, what I have suffered! No idea of the fires I was forged in! You do not have the gold, or the men, or the swords-’
‘Only half a war is fought with swords.’ Mother Kyre had always said a smile costs nothing, so Skara showed the very sweetest one she could as she took the slip of paper from behind her back, folded between two fingers, and held it out. ‘A gift for you, Grandfather Yarvi,’ she said. ‘From Bright Yilling.’
There might have been no man in the Shattered Sea more deep-cunning than he, but Skara had been taught how to read a face, and she caught the twitch by his eye, and knew Yilling’s final whisper on the battlefield before Bail’s Point was true.
‘To being a puking waif I freely confess,’ she said as Yarvi snatched the paper from her fingers. ‘I am told I keep my fears in my stomach. But I have seen some tempering myself over the last few months. Do you recognize the hand?’
He looked up, jaw clenched tight.
‘I thought you might. It seems now great foresight on Mother Kyre’s part that she taught me to read.’
His face twitched again at that. ‘Far from proper, spreading the secret of letters outside the Ministry.’
‘Oh, Mother Kyre could be far from proper when the future of Throvenland was at stake.’ Now she put a little iron in her voice. She had to show her strength. ‘And so can I.’
Father Yarvi crumpled the paper in his trembling fist, but Skara only smiled the wider.
‘Keep that one, by all means,’ she said. ‘Yilling gave me a whole pouch full. There are seven people I trust scattered across Throvenland with one each. You will never know who. You will never know where. But if I should suffer some accident, trip one night and fall through the Last Door like my husband-to-be, messages will be sent, and the story told on every coast of the Shattered Sea …’ She leaned close and murmured the words. ‘That Father Yarvi was the traitor within our alliance.’
‘No one will believe it,’ he said, but his face had turned very pale.
‘A message will find its way to Master Hunnan and the warriors of Gettland, telling them that it was you who betrayed their beloved King Uthil.’
‘I don’t fear Hunnan,’ he said, but his hand was trembling on his staff.
‘A message will find its way to your mother, the Golden Queen of Gettland, telling her that her own son sold her city to her enemies.’
‘My mother would never turn against me,’ he said, but his eyes were glistening.
‘A message will find its way to Thorn Bathu, whose husband Brand was killed in the raid you made happen.’ Skara’s voice was cold, and slow, and relentless as the tide. ‘But perhaps she is more forgiving than she appears. You know her much better than I.’
As a stick bent further and further snaps all at once, Grandfather Yarvi gave a kind of gasp and the strength seemed to go suddenly from his legs. He tottered back, stumbled into the stone bench and fell heavily upon it, elf-staff clattering from his good hand as he clutched out to steady himself. He sat, shining eyes wide, staring at Skara. Staring through her, as if his gaze was fixed on ghosts far beyond.
‘I thought … I might sway Bright Yilling,’ he whispered. ‘I thought I might bait him with little secrets and hook him with one great lie. But it was he that hooked me at the straits.’ A tear trickled from one of his swimming eyes and streaked his slack cheek.
‘The alliance was faltering. King Uthil’s resolve was waning. My mother saw more profit in peace. I could not trust Gorm and Scaer.’ He made a crooked fist of his left hand. ‘But I had sworn an oath. A sun-oath and a moon-oath. To be revenged on the killers of my father. I could not have peace.’ He blinked stupidly, tears rolling down his pale face, and Skara realized, perhaps for the first time, how young he was. Only a few years older than she.
‘And so I told Bright Yilling to attack Thorlby,’ he whispered. ‘To make an outrage from which there could be no turning back. I told him when and how. I did not mean for Brand to die. The gods know I did not mean it, but …’ He swallowed, the breath clicking in his throat, his shoulders hunched and his head hanging as though the weight of what he had done was crushing him. ‘A hundred decisions made, and every time the greater good, the lesser evil. A thousand steps taken and each one had to be taken.’ He stared down at the elf-staff on the ground, and his mouth twisted with disgust. ‘How could they lead me here?’
Skara felt no hate for him then, only pity. She was up to her neck in her own regrets, knew she could give him no worse punishment than he would give himself. She could give him no punishment at all. She needed him too badly.
She knelt before him, the chain of pommels rattling against her chest, and took his tear-stained face in her hands. Now she had to show her compassion. Her generosity. Her mercy. ‘Listen to me.’ And she shook his head so that his glazed eyes flicked to hers. ‘Nothing is lost. Nothing is broken. I understand. I know the weight of power and I do not judge you. But we must be together in this.’