Thorn’s mother flashed a simpering smile. ‘What else can any of us promise?’
‘Gods,’ hissed Thorn, turning away. The one thing she hated worse than being fussed over was being ignored.
Brinyolf the Prayer-Weaver had wrought murder on some unwitting animal and was daubing its blood on the South Wind’s prow-beast, red to the wrists as he wailed out a blessing to Mother Sea and She Who Finds the Course and He Who Steers the Arrow and a dozen other small gods whose names Thorn had never even heard before. She’d never been much for prayers and had her doubts the weather was that interested in them either.
‘How does a girl end up on a fighting crew?’
She turned to see a young lad had stolen up on her. Thorn judged him maybe fourteen years, slight, with a bright eye and a twitchy quickness to him, a mop of sandy hair and the first hints of beard on his sharp jaw.
She frowned back. ‘You saying I shouldn’t be?’
‘Not up to me who gets picked.’ He shrugged, neither scared nor scornful. ‘I’m just asking how you did.’
‘Leave her be!’ A small, lean woman gave the lad a neat cuff around the ear. ‘Didn’t I tell you to make yourself useful?’ Some bronze weights swung on a cord around her neck while she herded him off towards the South Wind, which made her a merchant, or a storekeeper, trusted to measure fairly.
‘I’m Safrit,’ she said, planting her hands on her hips. ‘The lad with all the questions is my son Koll. He’s yet to realize that the more you learn the more you understand the size of your own ignorance. He means no harm.’
‘Nor do I,’ said Thorn, ‘but I seem to cause a lot even so.’
Safrit grinned. ‘It’s a habit with some of us. I’m along to mind the stores, and cook, and watch the cargo. Fingers off, understand?’
‘I thought we were aiming to win friends for Gettland? We’re carrying cargo too?’
‘Furs and tree-tears and walrus ivory among … other things.’ Safrit frowned towards an iron-shod chest chained up near the mast. ‘Our first mission is to talk for Father Peace but Queen Laithlin paid for this expedition.’
‘Ha! And there’s a woman who never in her life missed out on a profit!’
‘Why would I?’
Thorn turned again to find herself looking straight into the queen’s face at a distance of no more than a stride. Some folk are more impressive from far off but Laithlin was the opposite, as radiant as Mother Sun and stern as Mother War, the great key to the treasury shining on her chest, her thralls and guards and servants in a disapproving press behind her.
‘Oh, gods … I mean, forgive me, my queen.’ Thorn wobbled down to one knee, lost her balance and nearly caught Laithlin’s silken skirts to steady herself. ‘Sorry, I’ve never been much good at kneeling—’
‘Perhaps you should practise.’ The queen was about as unlike Thorn’s mother as was possible for two women of an age – not soppy, soft and circumspect but hard and brilliant as a cut diamond, direct as a punch in the face.
‘It’s an honour to sail with you as patron,’ Thorn blathered. ‘I swear I’ll give your son the very best service – Father Yarvi, that is,’ realizing he wasn’t supposed to be her son any longer. ‘I’ll give your minister the very best service—’
‘You are the girl who swore to give that boy a beating just before he gave you one.’ The Golden Queen raised a brow. ‘Fools boast of what they will do. Heroes do it.’ She summoned one of her servants with a snap of her fingers and was already murmuring instructions as she swept past.
Thorn might never have got off her knees had Safrit not hooked her under the arm and dragged her up. ‘I’d say she likes you.’
‘How does she treat folk she doesn’t like?’
‘Pray you never find out.’ Safrit clutched at her head as she saw her son had swarmed up the mast nimbly as a monkey and was perched on the yard high above, checking the knots that held the sail. ‘Gods damn it, Koll, get down from there!’
‘You told me to be useful!’ he called back, letting go the beam with both hands to give an extravagant shrug.
‘And how useful will you be when you plummet to your doom, you fool?’
‘I’m so pleased to see you’re joining us.’ Thorn turned once more to find Father Yarvi at her side, the old bald woman with him.
‘Swore an oath, didn’t I?’ Thorn muttered back.
‘To do whatever service I think fit, as I recall.’
The black woman chuckled softly to herself. ‘Oooh, but that wording’s awfully vague.’
‘Isn’t it?’ said Yarvi. ‘Glad to see you’re making yourself known to the crew.’
Thorn glanced around at them, worked her mouth sourly as she saw her mother and Rulf still deep in conversation. ‘They seem a noble fellowship.’
‘Nobility is overrated. You met Skifr, did you?’
‘You’re Skifr?’ Thorn stared at the black-skinned woman with new eyes. ‘The thief of elf-relics? The murderer? The one sorely wanted by Grandmother Wexen?’
Skifr sniffed at her fingers, still slightly smeared with grey, and frowned as though she could not guess how bird-droppings might have got there. ‘As for being a thief, the relics were just lying in Strokom. Let the elves impeach me! As for being a murderer, well, the difference between murderer and hero is all in the standing of the dead. As for being wanted, well, my sunny disposition has made me always popular. Father Yarvi has hired me to do … various things, but among them, for reasons best known to himself,’ and she pressed her long forefinger into Thorn’s chest, ‘to teach you to fight.’
‘I can fight,’ growled Thorn, drawing herself up to her most fighting height.
Skifr threw back her shaved head and laughed. ‘Not that risible stomping about I saw. Father Yarvi is paying me to make you deadly.’ And with blinding speed Skifr slapped Thorn across the face, hard enough to knock her against a barrel.
‘What was that for?’ she said, one hand to her stinging cheek.
‘Your first lesson. Always be ready. If I can hit you, you deserve to be hit.’
‘I suppose the same 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