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out there.
You need not accompany me, he said. Nor, now, do you need to defend these
chambers. When I am ready to return I will call on you, but for now I release you from
your service. Whatever is going on here, you are free to turn to your advantage.
He thought they looked uncomfortable as he pushed past Tuburrow s outstretched
hand it too, covered over with a fur of leaflets and went out into the corridor. So they
should. He had been more generous than was wise or sane. Why should a servant
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released ever come back, after all? They, as well as he, might have suspected sentiment
under it. Friendship, even. Not a perversion one expected of the most refined and
exquisite of the nobility.
Shaking off his discomfort at the thought that his human was bringing out in him all
kinds of unseemly softnesses hadn t he already decided his people lied when they
refused to call these things strength? Kjartan checked his defences and strode hurriedly
down to the throne chamber.
His father lay there like a giant caterpillar. White threads of decay had begun to spin
themselves out from all his dry limbs and attach themselves to the stonework of the
throne around him. He was swaddled in dry silk like a cocoon, his mouth stopped with it.
As Kjartan came in, he gave an angry grunt, and Aud leaned forward to twine the threads
across his mouth around her finger and draw them away. When she had done the same
for his dry and lifeless eyes, she found time to examine Kjartan closely and to smirk.
On the floor of the chamber, silhouetted by the sky, Bjarti stood with his back to the
king, looking out into the distance. The sound of stone on stone, the shriek and thunder
were stronger here.
Kjartan walked to his eldest brother s side and saw what he saw:
The sea boiled. All along the white beach between the ocean and the shore, a wall
fifty feet high and five paces wide had sprung up in the short time Kjartan had been gone.
The warriors of Vagar fought along the top, throwing back siege ladders which had their
further ends down deep in the water, tipping hot oil and boulders on the things in metal
skins that scurried out from the sea and gnawed at the base of the wall.
As he watched, something tall arose from the sea, as though the mast of a ship were
coming up from the depths. The war gulls descended on it in a melee of yellow beaks and
mad yellow eyes. They tore it apart and swallowed it.
And perhaps Kjartan was not entirely perverse after all, for at the sight of his country
under siege from the sea-people an enemy with whom they had held an uneasy peace
for the last hundred years he laughed until his sides were sore.
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Don t! Bjarti s meaty hand clipped him around the ear, made him freeze and
stiffen with insult.
I know you said you would conquer a dozen realms, Eldest. Kjartan sighed, wiping
his eyes. But I hoped even you had more sense than to start with our neighbours.
They were the closest threat. Bjarti now wore the bronze collar of one of the sea-
people s machines around his red hair like a circlet, and he had replaced three of the
shrunken heads on his belt with the remains of sea-knights. He was ferocious and
immovable and he stank like a fish.
Kjartan turned to the thing that was his father. Did you want this? You must have
known what would happen if you let us all off the leash. Is this your epitaph to draw the
kingdom into ruin with you by means of your sons?
If you leave your realm to the stupidity of one brother and the spite of another,
King Volmar wheezed, you are as responsible for this as they. Stop complaining, child,
and act.
Kjartan hated this kingdom. He had always hated it always told himself so, at least.
And it was true he desired to be anywhere but here. He desired to be back in Joel
Wilson s bed, where he had felt safe for the first time in his life. So whence came all this
pain and rage? Why did it feel as though the stones themselves were crying out for him to
help them, to stop this? He was a dilettante little scholar, an artist, not a ruler. He didn t
have the strength or the skill to take on Bjarti s army and Tyrnir s assassins, and he
definitely did not want to sit on a throne into which his father was softly, sweetly rotting
away.
There is nothing I can do!
Oh. The rasping, gurgling noise must be laughter. Alas for your brother Dagnar,
who had everything but timing. The rest of you are nothing. Ineffectual. Incompetent.
Bjarti picked a goblet from the window ledge and drained the contents. Then,
scowling at them both, he strode out. A moment later saw him on gull back, flying down
to the stalemate on the wall as though the addition of a single warrior would turn the tide.
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I don t have a brother called Dagnar. Kjartan gave the only possible diplomatic
response to his father s outburst. He watched with some discomfort as one of Volmar s
body servants leaned down and licked the king s open eyes, moistening them. The king
blinked after, apparently relieved.
You don t have a brother called Dagnar because Dagnar was a worthless, usurping
piece of shit, said Volmar, and I exiled him and struck his name from all the records. I
would have done the same to the rest of you if I d known you d turn out worse. Can you
truly bear to stand here and watch this? To know what Tyrnir did to your own servant in
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