Half the World

WRONG IDEAS

“Reckon I need a new sword.”

Thorn sighed as she laid her father’s blade gently on the table, the light of the forge catching the many scratches, glinting on the deep nicks. It was worn almost crooked from years of polishing, the binding scuffed to greasy shreds, the cheap iron pommel rattling loose.

The apprentice gave Thorn’s sword one quick glance and Thorn herself not even that many. “Reckon you’re right.” She wore a leather vest scattered with burns, gloves to her elbow, arms and shoulders bare and beaded with sweat from the heat, hard muscles twitching as she turned a length of metal in the glowing coals.

“It’s a good sword.” Thorn ran her fingers down the scarred steel. “It was my father’s. Seen a lot of work. In his day and in mine.”

The apprentice didn’t so much as nod. Somewhat of a gritty manner she had, but Thorn had one of those herself, so she tried not to hold it too much against her.

“Your master about?” she asked.

“No.”

Thorn waited for more, but there wasn’t any. “When will he be back?”

The girl just snorted, slid the metal from the coals, looked it over, and rammed it hissing back in a shower of sparks.

Thorn decided to try starting over. “I’m looking for the blade-maker on Sixth Street.”

“And here I am,” said the girl, still frowning down at her work.

“You?”

“I’m the one making blades on Sixth Street, aren’t I?”

“Thought you’d be … older.”

“Seems thinking ain’t your strength.”

Thorn spent a moment wondering whether to be annoyed by that, but decided to let it go. She was trying to let things go more often. “You’re not the first to say so. Just not common, a girl making swords.”

The girl looked up then. Fierce eyes, gleaming with the forge-light through the hair stuck across her strong-boned face, and something damned familiar about her but Thorn couldn’t think what. “Almost as uncommon as one swinging ’em.”

“Fair point,” said Thorn, holding out her hand. “I’m-”

The sword-maker slid the half-made blade from the forge, glowing metal passing so close Thorn had to snatch her hand back. “I know who y’are, Thorn Bathu.”

“Oh. Course.” Thorn guessed her fame was running off ahead of her. She was only now starting to see that wasn’t always a good thing.

The girl took up a hammer and Thorn watched her knock a fuller into the blade, watched her strike the anvil-music, as the smiths say, and quite a lesson it was. Short, quick blows, no wasted effort, all authority, all control, each one perfect as a master’s sword thrust, glowing dust scattering from the die. Thorn knew a lot more about using swords than making them, but an idiot could’ve seen this girl knew her business.

“They say you make the best swords in Thorlby,” said Thorn.

“I make the best swords in the Shattered Sea,” said the girl, holding up the steel so the glow from it fell across her sweat-shining face.

“My father always told me never get proud.”

“Ain’t a question of pride. It’s just a fact.”

“Would you make me one?”

“No. Don’t think I will.”

Folk who are the best at what they do sometimes forego the niceties, but this was getting strange. “I’ve got money.”

“I don’t want your money.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like you.”

Thorn wasn’t usually slow to rise to an insult but this was so unexpected she was caught off-guard. “Well … I guess there are other swords to be found.”

“No doubt there are.”

“I’ll go and find one, then.”

“I hope you find a long one.” The swordmaker on Sixth Street leaned down to blow ash from the metal with a gentle puff from her pursed lips. “Then you can stick it up your arse.”

Thorn snatched her old sword up, gave serious thought to clubbing the girl across the head with the flat, decided against and turned for the door. Before she quite made it to the handle, though, the girl spoke again.

“Why’d you treat my brother that way?”

She was mad. Had to be. “Who’s your damn brother?”

The girl frowned over at her. “Brand.”

The name rocked Thorn surely as a kick in the head. “Not Brand who was with me on-”

“What other Brand?” She jabbed at her chest with her thumb. “I’m Rin.”

Thorn surely saw the resemblance, now, and it rocked her even more, so it came out a guilty squeak when she spoke. “Didn’t know Brand had a sister …”

Rin gave a scornful chuckle. “Why would you? Only spent a year on the same boat as him.”

“He never told me!”

“Did you ask?”

“Of course! Sort of.” Thorn swallowed. “No.”

“A year away.” Rin rammed the blade angrily back into the coals. “And the moment he sees me, do you know what he sets to talking about?”

“Er …”

She started pounding at the bellows like Thorn used to pound Brand’s head in the training square. “Thorn Bathu ran the oars in the middle of an elf-ruin. Thorn Bathu saved his life in the shield wall. Thorn Bathu made an alliance that’ll put the world to rights. And when I could’ve bitten his face if I heard your name one more time, what do you think he told me next?”

“Er …”

“Thorn Bathu scarcely spoke a word to him the whole way back. Thorn Bathu cut him off like you’d trim a blister. I tell you what, Thorn Bathu sounds something of a bloody bitch to me, after all he’s done for her and, no, I don’t much fancy making a sword for-”

“Hold it there,” snapped Thorn. “You don’t have the first clue what happened between me and your brother.”

Rin let the bellows be and glared over. “Enlighten me.”

“Well …” Last thing Thorn needed was to rip that scab off again just when there was a chance of letting it heal. She wasn’t about to admit that she made a fool’s mistake, and burned herself bad, and had to make herself not look at Brand or talk to Brand or have anything to do with Brand every moment of every day in case she burned herself again. “You got it back to front is all!”

“Strange how people are always getting the wrong idea about you. How often does that have to happen, ’fore you start thinking maybe they got the right idea?” And Rin dragged the iron from the forge and set it back on the anvil.

“You don’t know me,” growled Thorn, working up the bellows on some anger of her own. “You don’t know what I’ve been through.”

“No doubt we’ve all had our struggles,” said Rin, lifting her hammer. “But some of us get to weep over ’em in a big house our daddy paid for.”

Thorn threw up her hands at the fine new forge behind the fine home near the citadel. “Oh, I see you and Brand have barely been scraping by!”

Rin froze, then, muscles bunching across her shoulders, and her eyes flicked over, and she looked angry. So angry Thorn took a little step back, a cautious eye on that hovering hammer.

Then Rin tossed it rattling down, pulled her gloves off and flung them on the table. “Come with me.”

“My mother died when I was little.”

Rin had led them outside the walls. Downwind, where the stink of Thorlby’s rubbish wouldn’t bother the good folk of the city.

“Brand remembers her a little. I don’t.”

Some of the midden heaps were years covered over and turned to grassy mounds. Some were open and stinking, spilling bones and shells, rags and the dung of men and beasts.

“He always says she told him to do good.”

A mangy dog gave Thorn a suspicious eye, as though it considered her competition, and went back to sniffing through the rot.

“My father died fighting Grom-gil-Gorm,” muttered Thorn, trying to match ill-luck for ill-luck. Honestly, she felt a little queasy. From the look of this place, and the stink of it, and the fact she had scarcely even known it was here because her mother’s slaves had always carted their rubbish. “They laid him out in the Godshall.”

“And you got his sword.”

“Less the pommel,” grunted Thorn, trying not to breathe through her nose. “Gorm kept that.”

“You’re lucky to have something from your father.” Rin didn’t seem bothered by the stench at all. “We didn’t get much from ours. He liked a drink. Well. I say a drink. He liked ’em all. He left when Brand was nine. Gone one morning, and maybe we were better off without him.”

“Who took you in?” asked Thorn in a small voice, getting the sense she was far outclassed in the ill-luck contest.

“No one did.” Rin let that sink in a moment. “There were quite a few of us living here, back then.”

“Here?”

“You pick through. Sometimes you find something you can eat. Sometimes you find something you can sell. Winters.” Rin hunched her shoulders and gave a shiver. “Winters were hard.”

Thorn could only stand there and blink, feeling cold all over even if summer was well on the way. She’d always supposed she’d had quite the tough time growing up. Now she learned that while she raged in her fine house because her mother didn’t call her by the name she liked, there had been children picking through the dung for bones to chew. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Cause Brand didn’t say and you didn’t ask. We begged. I stole.” Rin gave a bitter little smile. “But Brand said he had to do good. So he worked. He worked at the docks and the forges. He worked anywhere folk would give him work. He worked like a dog and more than once he was beaten like one. I got sick and he got me through it and I got sick again and he got me through it again. He kept on dreaming of being a warrior, and having a place on a crew, a family always around him. So he went to the training square. He had to beg and borrow the gear, but he went. He’d work before he trained and he’d work after, and even after that if anyone needed help he’d be there to help. Do good, Brand always said, and folk’ll do good for you. He was a good boy. He’s become a good man.”

“I know that,” growled Thorn, feeling the hurt all well up fresh, sharper than ever for the guilt that welled up with it, now. “He’s the best man I know. This isn’t bloody news to me!”

Rin stared at her. “Then how could you treat him this way? If it wasn’t for him I’d be gone through the Last Door, and so would you, and this is the thanks-”

Thorn might have been wrong about a few things, and she might not have known a few others she should have, and she might have been way too wrapped up in herself to see what was right under her nose, but there was a limit on what she’d take.

“Hold on, there, Brand’s secret sister. No doubt you’ve opened my eyes wider than ever to my being a selfish arse. But me and him were oarmates. On a crew you stand with the men beside you. Yes, he was there for me, but I was there for him, and-”

“Not that! Before. When you killed that boy. Edwal.”

“What?” Thorn felt queasier still. “I remember that day well enough and all Brand did was bloody stand there.”

Rin gaped at her. “Did you two talk at all that year away?”

“Not about Edwal, I can tell you that!”

“Course you didn’t.” Rin closed her eyes and smiled as though she understood it all. “He’d never take the thanks he deserves, the stubborn fool. He didn’t tell you.”

Thorn understood nothing. “Tell me what, damn it?”

“He went to Father Yarvi.” And Rin took Thorn gently but firmly by the shoulder and let the words fall one by one. “He told him what happened on the beach. Even though he knew it’d cost him. Master Hunnan found out. So it cost him his place on the king’s raid, and his place as a warrior, and everything he’d hoped for.”

Thorn made a strange sound then. A choked-off cluck. The sound a chicken makes when its neck gets wrung.

“Brand went to Father Yarvi,” she croaked.

“Yes.”

“Brand saved my life. And lost his place for it.”

“Yes.”

“Then I mocked him over it, and treated him like a fool the whole way down the Divine and the Denied and the whole way back up again.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t he just bloody say-” And that was when Thorn saw something gleaming just inside the collar of Rin’s vest. She reached out, hooked it with a trembling finger, and eased it into the light.

Beads. Glass beads, blue and green.

The ones Brand bought that day in the First of Cities. The ones she’d thought were for her, then for some other lover back in Thorlby. The ones she now saw were for the sister she’d never bothered to ask if he had.

Thorn made that squawking sound again, but louder.

Rin stared at her as if she’d gone mad. “What?”

“I’m such a stupid shit.”

“Eh?”

“Where is he?”

“Brand? At my house. Our house-”

“Sorry.” Thorn was already backing away. “I’ll talk to you about the sword later!” And she turned and started running for the gate.

He looked better than ever. Or maybe she just saw him differently, knowing what she knew.

“Thorn.” He looked surprised to see her and she could hardly blame him. Then he looked worried. “What’s wrong?”

She realized she must look worse even than usual and wished she hadn’t run all the way, or at least waited to knock until she’d caught her breath and wiped the sweat from her forehead. But she’d been dancing around this far too long. Time to face it, sweaty or not.

“I talked to your sister,” she said.

He looked more worried. “What about?”

“About you having a sister, for one thing.”

“That’s no secret.”

“That might not be.”

He looked even more worried. “What did she tell you?”

“That you saved my life. When I killed Edwal.”

He winced. “I told her not to say anything!”

“Well, that didn’t work.”

“Reckon you’d best come in. If you want to.” He stepped back from the door and she followed him into the shadowy hallway, heart pounding harder than ever. “You don’t have to thank me.”

“Yes,” she said. “I do.”

“I wasn’t trying to do anything noble, just … something good. And I wasn’t sure, and it took me too long, and I made a bloody mess of it-”

She took a step toward him. “Did you go to Father Yarvi?”

“Yes.”

“Did Father Yarvi save my life?”

“Yes.”

“Did you lose your place because of it?”

He worked his mouth as though looking for a way to deny it, but couldn’t. “I was going to tell you, but …”

“I’m not easy to tell things to.”

“And I’m not much good at telling.” He pushed his hair back and scrubbed at his head as though it hurt. “Didn’t want you feeling in my debt. Wouldn’t have been fair.”

She blinked at that. “So … you didn’t just risk everything for my sake, you kept it to yourself so I wouldn’t feel bad about it.”

“One way of putting it … maybe.” And he looked at her from under his brows, eyes gleaming in the shadows. That look, as if there was nothing he would rather be looking at. And however she’d tried to weed those hopes away they blossomed in a riot, and the want came up stronger than ever.

She took another little step toward him. “I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“But I am. For how I treated you. On the way back. On the way out, for that matter. I’m sorry, Brand. I’ve never been sorrier. I’ve never been sorry at all, really. Got to work on that. Just … I got the wrong idea about … something.”

He stood there, silent. Waiting. Looking. No bloody help at all.

Just say it. How hard could it be? She’d killed men. Just say it. “I stopped talking to you … because …” But getting the words out was like hauling anvils out of a well. “I … like …” It was as if she tottered out onto a frozen lake, not knowing whether the next step might send her plunging to an icy doom. “I’ve always … liked …” She couldn’t make the “you.” She couldn’t have made the “you” if it was that or die. She squeezed her eyes shut. “What I’m trying to say is-Whoa!”

She snapped her eyes open. He’d touched her cheek, fingertips brushing the scar there.

“You’ve got your hand on me.” Stupidest thing she’d ever said and that with some fierce competition. They could both see he had his hand on her. Wasn’t as if it fell there by accident.

He jerked it away. “I thought-”

“No!” She caught his wrist and guided it back. “I mean … Yes.” His fingertips were warm against her face, hers sliding over the back of his hand, pressing it there and it felt … Gods. “This is happening, is it?”

He stepped a little closer, the knobble on his neck bobbing as he swallowed. “I reckon.” He was looking at her mouth. Looking at it as though there was something really interesting in there and she wasn’t sure she’d ever been so scared.

“What do we do?” she found she’d squeaked out, voice running away from her, higher and higher. “I mean, I know what we do … I guess.” Gods, that was a lie, she hadn’t a clue. She wished now Skifr had taught her a little less about swords and a bit more about the arts of love, or whatever. “I mean, what do we do now we know that, you know-”

He put his thumb gently across her lips. “Shut up, Thorn.”

“Right,” she breathed, and she realized she had her hand up between them, as if to push him away. So used to pushing folk away, and him in particular, and she forced it to go soft, laid it gently on his chest, hoped he couldn’t feel it trembling.

Closer he came, and she was taken suddenly with an urge to run for it, and then with an urge to giggle, and she made a stupid gurgle swallowing her laughter, and then his lips were touching hers. Gently, just brushing, one way, then the other, and she realized she had her eyes open and snapped them shut. Couldn’t think what to do with her hands. Stiff as a woman made of wood, she was, for a moment, but then things started to go soft.

The side of his nose nudged hers, ticklish.

He made a noise in his throat, and so did she.

She caught his lip between hers, tugged at it, slipped that hand on his chest up around his neck, and pulled him closer, their teeth knocked awkwardly together and they broke apart.

Not much of a kiss, really. Nothing like she’d imagined it would be, and the gods knew she’d imagined it enough, but it left her hot all over. Maybe that was just the running, but she’d done a lot of running and never felt quite like this.

She opened her eyes and he was looking at her. That look, through the strands of hair across his face. Wasn’t the first kiss she ever had, but the others had felt like children playing. This was as different from that as a battle from the training square.

“Oh,” she croaked. “That … wasn’t so bad.”

She let go of his hand and caught a fistful of his shirt, started dragging him back toward her, caught the smile at the corner of his mouth and smiled herself-

There was a rattle outside the door.

“Rin,” muttered Brand, and as if that was the starting word on a race they both took off running. Pelted down the corridor like thieves caught in the act, tangling on a stairway, giggling like idiots as they scrambled into a room and Brand wrestled the door shut, leaning back against it as if there were a dozen angry Vanstermen outside.

They hunched in the shadows, their breath coming quick.

“Why did we run?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” Thorn whispered back.

“You think she can hear us?”

“What if she can?” asked Thorn.

“I don’t know.”

“So this is your room, is it?”

He straightened up, grinning like a king who’d won a victory. “I have a room.”

“Quite the distinguished citizen,” she said, strolling around in a circle, taking it in. Didn’t take long. There was a pallet bed in one corner with Brand’s worn-out old blanket on it, and his sea chest sitting open in another, and the sword that used to be Odda’s leaning against the wall, and aside from that just bare boards and bare walls and a lot of shadows. “Ever wonder if you’ve overdone the furniture?”

“It’s not quite finished.”

“It’s not quite started,” she said, the circle taking her back toward him.

“If it’s not what you were used to at the empress’s palace, I won’t keep you.”

She snorted. “I lived under a boat with forty men in it. Reckon I can stand this a while.”

His eyes were on her as she came close. That look. Little bit hungry, little bit scared. “Staying, then?”

“I’ve got nothing else pressing.”

And they were kissing again, harder this time. She wasn’t worrying about Brand’s sister anymore, or about her mother, or about anything. There was nothing on her mind but her mouth and his. Not to begin with, at least. But soon enough some other parts started making themselves known. She wondered what was prodding at her hip and stuck her hand down there to check and then she realized what was prodding at her hip and had to break away she felt so foolish, and scared, and hot, and excited, and hardly knew what she felt.

“Sorry,” he muttered, bending over and lifting one leg as if he was trying to hide the bulge and looking so ridiculous she spluttered with laughter.

He looked hurt. “Ain’t funny.”

“It is kind of.” She took his arm and pulled him close, then she hooked her leg around his and he gasped as she tripped him, put him down hard on his back with her on top, straddling him. Familiar territory in its way, but everything was different now.

She pressed her hips up against his, rocking back and forward, gently at first, then not so gently. She had her hand tangled in his hair, dragging his face against hers, his beard prickling at her chin, their open mouths pressed together so her head seemed to be full of his rasping breath, hot on her lips.

She was fair grinding away at him now and liking the feel of it more than a bit, then she was scared she was liking the feel of it, then she decided just to do it and worry later. She was grunting in her throat with each breath and one little part of her thinking that must sound pretty foolish but a much bigger part not caring. One of his hands slipped up her back under her shirt, the other up her ribs, one by one, and made her shiver. She pulled away, breathing hard, looking down at him, propped up on one elbow.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

“For what?” She ripped her shirt open and dragged it off, got it caught over the elf-bangle on her wrist, finally tore it free and flung it away.

She felt a fool for a moment, knew she was nothing like a woman should be, knew she was pale and hard and nothing but gristle. But he looked anything but disappointed, slid his hands up her sides and around her back, pulled her down against him, kissing at her, nipping at her lips with his teeth. The pouch with her father’s fingerbones fell in his eye and she slapped it back over her shoulder. She set to pulling his shirt open, pushing her hand up his stomach, fingers through the hairs on his chest, the bangle glowing soft gold, reflected in the corners of his eyes.

He caught her hand. “We don’t have to … you know …”

No doubt they didn’t have to, and no doubt there were a hundred reasons not to, and right then she couldn’t think of one she gave a damn about.

“Shut up, Brand.” She twisted her hand free and started dragging his belt open. She didn’t know what she was doing, but she knew some right idiots who’d done it.

How hard could it be?