would go for you.’
Skifr gave a huge smile. ‘Of course.’
Thorn dived at her but caught only air. She stumbled, her arm suddenly twisted behind her, and the slimy boards of the wharf smashed her in the face. Her fighting scream became a wheeze of shock and then, as her little finger was savagely twisted, a long moan of pain.
‘Do you still suppose I have nothing to teach you?’
‘No! No!’ whimpered Thorn, writhing helplessly as fire shot through every joint in her arm. ‘I’m keen to learn!’
‘And your first lesson?’
‘If I can be hit I deserve it!’
Her finger was released. ‘Pain is the best schoolmaster, as you will soon discover.’
Thorn clambered to her knees, shaking out her throbbing arm, to find her old friend Brand standing over her, a sack on his shoulder and a grin on his face.
Skifr grinned back. ‘Funny, eh?’
‘Little bit,’ said Brand.
Skifr slapped him across the cheek and he tottered against a post, dropped his sack on his foot, and was left stupidly blinking. ‘Are you teaching me to fight?’
‘No. But I see no reason you shouldn’t be ready too.’
‘Thorn?’ Her mother was offering a hand to help her up. ‘What happened?’
Thorn pointedly didn’t take it. ‘I suppose you’d know if you’d been seeing your daughter off instead of snaring our helmsman.’
‘Gods, Hild, you’ve no forgiving in you at all, have you?’
‘My father called me Thorn, damn it!’
‘Oh, your father, yes, him you’ll forgive anything—’
‘Maybe because he’s dead.’
Thorn’s mother’s eyes were already brimming with tears, as usual. ‘Sometimes I think you’d be happier if I joined him.’
‘Sometimes I think I would be!’ And Thorn dragged up her sea-chest, her father’s sword rattling inside as she swung it onto her shoulder and stomped towards the ship.
‘I like that contrary temperament of hers,’ she heard Skifr saying behind her. ‘We’ll soon have that flowing down the right channels.’
One by one they clambered aboard and set their sea-chests at their places. Much to Thorn’s disgust Brand took the other back oar, the two of them wedged almost into each other’s laps by the tapering of the ship’s sides.
‘Just don’t jog my elbow,’ she growled, in a filthier mood than ever.
Brand wearily shook his head. ‘I’ll just throw myself in the sea, shall I?’
‘Could you? That’d be perfect.’
‘Gods,’ muttered Rulf, at his place on the steering platform above them. ‘Will I have to listen to you two snap at each other all the way up the Divine like a pair of mating cats?’
‘More than likely,’ said Father Yarvi, squinting up. The sky was thick with cloud, Mother Sun barely even a smudge. ‘Poor weather for picking out a course.’
‘Bad weatherluck,’ moaned Dosduvoi, from his oar somewhere near the middle of the boat. ‘Awful weatherluck.’
Rulf puffed out his grizzled cheeks. ‘Times like this I wish Sumael was here.’
‘Times like this and every other time,’ said Father Yarvi, with a heavy sigh.
‘Who’s Sumael?’ muttered Brand.
Thorn shrugged. ‘How the hell should I know who he is? No one tells me anything.’
Queen Laithlin watched them push away with one palm on her child-swollen belly, gave Father Yarvi a terse nod, then turned and was gone towards the city, her gaggle of thralls and servants scurrying after. This crew were men who blew with the wind, so there was only a sorry little gathering left to wave them off. Thorn’s mother was one, tears streaking her cheeks and her hand raised in farewell until the wharf was a distant speck, then the citadel of Thorlby only a jagged notching, then Gettland fading into the grey distance above the grey line of Mother Sea.
The thing about rowing, you face backward. Always looking into the past, never the future. Always seeing what you’re losing, never what you’ve got to gain.
Thorn put a brave face on it, as always, but a brave face can be a brittle thing. Rulf’s narrowed eyes were fixed ahead on the horizon. Brand kept to his stroke. If either of them saw her dashing the tears on her sleeve they had nothing to say about it.
Roystock was a reeking spew of wooden shops, piled one on the other and crammed onto a rotting island at the mouth of the Divine River. The place spilled over with yammering beggars and swaggering raiders, rough-handed dockers and smooth-talking merchants. Its teetering wharves were choked by strange boats with strange crews and stranger cargoes, taking on food and water, selling off goods and slaves.
‘Gods damn it I need a drink!’ snarled Odda, as the South Wind scraped alongside her wharf and Koll sprang ashore to make her fast.
‘I might be persuaded to join you,’ said Dosduvoi. ‘As long as there are no dice involved. I have no luck at dice.’ Brand could have sworn the South Wind rose a few fingers in the water when he heaved himself ashore. ‘Care to join us, boy?’
It was a sore temptation after the hell of hard work and hard words, bad weather and bad tempers they’d been through on the way across the Shattered Sea. Brand’s hopes for the wondrous voyage had so far proved a great deal more wondrous than the voyage itself, the crew less a family bound tight by a common goal than a sackful of snakes, spitting poison at each other as though their journey was a struggle that could have only one winner.
Brand licked his lips as he remembered the taste of Fridlif’s ale going down. Then he caught sight of Rulf’s disapproving face, and remembered the taste of Fridlif’s ale coming back up, and chose to stand in the light. ‘I’d best not.’
Odda spat in disgust. ‘One drink never hurt anyone!’
‘One didn’t,’ said Rulf.
‘Stopping at one is my problem,’ said Brand.
‘Besides, I have a better use for him.’ Skifr slipped between Brand and Thorn, one long arm hooking each of their necks. ‘Fetch weapons, my sprouts. It is past time the education began!’
Brand groaned. The last thing he wanted to do was fight. Especially to fight Thorn, who’d been jostling his oar at every stroke and sneering at his every word since they left Thorlby, no doubt desperate to even the score. If the crew were snakes, she was the most venomous of the lot.
