Half a King (Shattered Sea, #1)

by Joe Abercrombie

BETTER GEAR THAN GOOD SENSE A TRAVELER CANNOT CARRY FROM HÁVAMÁL, THE SPEECH OF THE HIGH ONE

Always remember: strong men are many, wise men are few.”

He heard his uncle step close, speaking with the soft voice one might use on a skittish foal. “You know your mother loves you.” “Do I?”

“That was ungenerous, my king,” said Uncle Odem, falling into step at his shoulder. “But not unfunny.”

“Glorious victories make fine songs, Yarvi, but inglorious ones are no worse once the bards are done with them. Glorious defeats, meanwhile, are just defeats.”

It seemed there was little interest in the opinions of kings. Certainly not of this one.

He had always been weak, but he never felt truly powerless until they made him a king.

“In the end, we must all be what we are.”

To the unarmed, armed men all look the same.

“My hands are bloody to the shoulder, cook’s boy, for of all things blood pleases me the most. But, sad to say, not all men that die are killed by me.”

Strange, how quickly a king could become an animal. Or half a king half an animal. Perhaps even those we raise highest never get that far above the mud.

“You prayed for help, didn’t you?” said the southerner, without looking around. “Here is help.” “I prayed for help with two hands.” “Be thankful for half of what you prayed for,” said Yarvi. “Believe me, I prayed for none of this.”

“When you have a load to lift, you’re better lifting than weeping.

The wise speaker learns first when to stay silent.

“Slaves have the same appetites as other men. It’s the chance to indulge them they lack.”

The food of fear is ignorance, Mother Gundring used to say. The death of fear is knowledge.

When you study a race of men you find they are just men like any others.

The wise wait for their moment, Mother Gundring used to say, but never let it pass.

“It is my honor,” he said sweetly, while thinking about putting black-tongue root in her wine, “to sing for one so famous.”

“Why are they watching me?” he murmured to Jaud. “It is rare they get a good thing. You gave them one.”

The fool strikes, she had said. The wise man smiles, and watches, and learns. Then strikes.

He might have read that the Shends were peaceable enough but these ones did not look as if they had read the same books he had.

The wise minister picks the greater good, the lesser evil, and smooths the way for Father Peace in every tongue.

“It is my sad observation that some men always want more.”

A good minister never says no, if they can say perhaps.

It is for one’s own sake that one does good things.

But enemies, as his mother used to say, are the price of success.

A risk, he knew, but with her help things could be so much easier, and a man with time against him must sometimes throw the dice.

When a wise minister has nothing but enemies, she beats one with a worse.

“Talk only makes problems.” Nothing lifted the sword. “Steel is always the answer.” And he spun it in his hand so the blade caught the light and danced red and white and yellow and all the colors of fire. “Steel does not flatter or compromise. Steel tells no lies.”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t,” said Nothing, twisting the sword from Trigg’s head, “but I feel much better.”

He had been betrayed by his own family, his own people, and found loyalty among a set of slaves who owed him nothing. He was so pathetically glad of it he wanted to weep. But he had a feeling he would need his tears later.

“Plans must sometimes bend with circumstance,” said Jaud.

“Sometimes, might be is the best you can hope for.”

“Like many things, gods seem bigger when you are closer to them. Here, She Who Breathes Out the Snows is ever at our elbows.”

Shidwala nodded. “And may the gods walk with you.” She turned to go but Nothing dropped suddenly to his knees, took her hand, and pressed his cracked lips to it. “I will never forget this kindness,” he said, wiping tears on the back of his hand. “None of us will,” said Yarvi. With a smile she pulled Nothing to his feet, and patted his grizzled cheek. “That is its own reward.”

“If you can’t find anything to complain about you aren’t looking hard enough.”

“I believe.” Nothing stood, eyes black and huge, lifting his sword high. “And I now swear an oath!” He rammed the blade into the fire, sparks whirling and everyone shuffling back in surprise. “A sun-oath and a moon-oath. Let it be a chain about me and a goad within me. I will not rest until the rightful King of Gettland sits in the Black Chair once again!”

“What I hated most about that ship wasn’t what was done to me, but what I was made to do. No. What I chose to do.”

“A band of brave companions escorting the rightful king of Gettland to his stolen chair! A last stand amid the elf-ruins of yore! You cannot expect all the heroes to survive a good song, you know.”

“When you’re in hell,” murmured Yarvi, “only a devil can point the way out.”

Could it really be one of them had to kill the other? To end everything he was, everything he might ever be?

“No,” she snarled. She tried to lift the sword but the weight of it was too much. “Not like this. Not here.” Her bloody lips twisted as she looked up at him. “Not you.” “Here,” said Yarvi. “Me. What was it you said? You may need two hands to fight someone. But only one to stab them in the back.”

And he realized then that he had not lost all those times in the training square because he lacked the skill, or the strength, or even a hand. He had lacked the will. And somewhere on the South Wind, somewhere in the trackless ice, somewhere in this ancient ruin, he had found it.

He was the King of Gettland, after all, was he not? He had knelt enough.

“Then you are more a fool than I first took you for. The gods give no finer gift than a good enemy. Like a good whetstone on the blade,” and Nothing frowned down at his sword, clean of blood though his fingernails were still crusted with it, and gave the steel another shrieking lick with his stone. “A good enemy keeps you ever sharp.”

“Pick your enemies more carefully than your friends,” Nothing was muttering at the flames. “They will be with you longer.”

“If life has taught me one thing it’s that your next enemy is never far away.”

“You can always make enemies of your friends,” said Sumael, pulling Shadikshirram’s coat tight about her shoulders. “Making frien...

“What is the world coming to when an honest man cannot burn corpses without suspicion?” asked Nothing.