Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War 1)

“At least the ale will be cheap.” Snorri slapped what might be our only copper on the beer-puddled counter.

“Qu’est-ce que vous voulez boire?” the barkeep asked, still wiping someone’s spit from the tankard he intended to serve in.

“Kesquer-what?” I leaned in over the counter, natural caution erased by six days of rain and the foul mood that torrent had exposed. “Two ales. The best you have!”

The man favoured me with the blankest of stares. I drew breath to repeat myself rather more loudly.

“Deux biéres s’il vous plaît et que vous vendez repas?” Snorri answered, sliding his coin forwards.

“What the hell?” I blinked at him, talking over the barkeep’s reply. “How—I mean—”

“I wasn’t raised speaking the Tongue, you know?” Snorri shook his head as if I were an idiot and took the first full tankard. “When you’ve had to learn one new language you develop an interest in others.”

I took the tankard from him and eyed the beer with suspicion. It looked foreign. The floating suds made an island that put me in mind of some alien place where they’d never heard of Red March and cut princes no slack. That put a bad taste in my mouth before I’d even sipped it.

“We of the North are great traders, you know?” Snorri continued, though what sign I’d given that I might be interested I could not imagine. “Far more comes in through our ports on Norse cargo ships than in the holds of longboats returning from raids. Many a Norseman knows three, four, even five languages. Why, I myself—”

I turned away and took my foul-tasting beer off towards the tables, leaving Snorri to negotiate the food in whatever mangled tongue was required.

Finding a space proved problematic. The first burly peasant I approached refused to move despite my obvious station, instead hunkering over his huge bowl of what looked to be shit soup, but smelled infinitely worse, and ignoring me. He muttered something like “murdtet” as I moved off. The rest of the ill-mannered louts kept to their seats, and in the end I had to squeeze into place beside a nearly spherical woman drinking gin from a clay cup. The soup man then proceeded to give me the evil eye whilst toying with his wicked-looking knife—an implement generally not required for the consumption of soup—until Snorri came up with his beer and two plates of steaming offal.

“Budge up,” he ordered, and the whole row of locals edged along, my neighbour wobbling like gelatine as she undulated to the left, leaving sufficient room for the new addition.

I eyed the plate before me. “This is what any decent butcher removes from the . . . what I’ll generously assume was a cow . . . before sending it to the kitchens.”

Snorri started tucking in. “And what you leave will make a meal for someone who’s really hungry. Eat up, Jal.”

Jal again! I would have to sort that out with him sometime soon.

Snorri cleared his plate in about the same time it took me to decide which bit of mine looked least dangerous. He took a stale hunk of bread from his pocket and started scraping up the gravy. “That fellow with the knife looks like he wants to stick it into you, Jal.”

“What can you expect from this kind of establishment?” I tried for a manly growl. “You get what you pay for, and soon we won’t be able to pay for even this.”

Snorri shrugged. “Your choice. If you want luxury, sell your locket.”

I restrained myself from laughing at the barbarian’s ignorance—all the more puzzling, as you would think a man accustomed to the business of loot and pillage would have a better eye when it came to appraising which valuables to carry off. “What is it with you and my locket?”

“You’re a brave man, Jal,” Snorri said, apropos of nothing. He poked the last of the bread between his lips and started chewing, cheeks bulging.

I frowned, trying to figure out why he’d said that—was it some kind of threat? I also tried to figure out what the thing dangling from the end of my knife was. I put it in my mouth. Best not to know.

Finally Snorri managed to swallow down his huge mouthful and explained. “You let Maeres Allus break your finger rather than pay your debts. And yet you could have paid the man off at any time with that trinket of yours. You chose not to. You chose to keep and honour the memory of your mother over your own safety. That’s loyalty to family. That’s honour.”

“That’s nonsense!” Anger got the better of me. It had been a rotten day. A rotten week. The worst ever. I whipped the locket from its hiding place in a small pocket under my arm. Better judgment warned me against it. Worse judgment warned me too, but Snorri had worn both away. Snorri and the rain. “This,” I said, “is a simple piece of silver and I’ve never been brave in my—”